"'When the Empire Calls!' February 1900: HMS Terrible unloading a gun in Durban Roads during the Boer War"

Watercolour & Bodycolour

12 1/4 x 20 inches (31 x 51 cm)

Signed, lower right, & dated '23, lower right

Framed

During the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902 the British forces fighting in Southern Africa found that they had no heavy artillery. HMS Terrible’s captain Percy Scott, an inventor and man of great energy and initiative, found a solution.

Scott devised simple field carriages for use with disembarked naval guns and organised the landing of 12-pounder, 4.7 inch and 6 inch guns from the British warships on station together with the officers and crews to man them. Captain Scott was temporarily made commander of the defence of Durban and his artillery was decisive in the later engagements.

This operation is the origin of the Royal Navy Field Gun competitions.

HMS Terrible – a first-class protected cruiser - was built, with her sister ship Powerful, as a response to the Russian cruiser Rurik. Terrible was completed in 1898 and was a very large ship for her day, over 500 feet long – she and her sister were the longest warships in the world - and as big as a contemporary battleship. In the days before turbines HMS Terrible required hundreds of stokers amongst her crew of 894. She and Powerful were designed for long range missions and even at the time were considered to be expensive luxuries.

In Ian Lowe’s painting we see HMS Terrible unloading a naval gun to a waiting lighter and tug, using the after boat lifting boom. Terrible is painted in the standard Victorian livery, in contrast to HMS Philomel, a third-class cruiser seen at the left of the painting, which is in the white tropical livery. To the right of the picture we see the Dominion Line’s SS Englishman on trooping duties and a naval steam pinnace passes to port of Terrible.

The title of the painting is taken from a popular pro-war music hall song of the time.

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A larger photograph / full description is available on request