Gerry Webb

Thanks again for another great issue. Heliograph 134 included my own article on the Egyptian cavalry and Camel Corps action at Kerreri Hills.

Since then I have acquired and enjoyed Henry Keown-Boyd's book, "A Good Dusting". The appendices include the following detail of the Egyptian Division at Omdurman, which may help readers recreate the forces engaged.

Horse Battery
Maxim Battery
Field Batteries (four) -Field batteries were presumably with the Egyptian Division and the rest of the main army.
Nine squadrons of cavalry
Eight companies of Camel Corps

Horse artillery and at least one Maxim were reported in action at Kerreri Hills. Captain Green-Wilkinson, attached to the Camel Corps wrote, "At 5.40 a.m. when the first shot was fired, we had our Maxim and four companies of blacks in line on the ridge, and four companies of Egyptians in reserve and guarding our camels." (Ziegler, 'Omdurman', p.136).

A note on page 143 includes the following summary of the Egyptian camel Corps from 1896, "eight companies, four Egyptian and four Soudanese, of approximately one hundred men each with one British officer for every two companies, in addition to the commanding officer."

Now I'm off to paint some Soudanese camelry.

Gerry, Come on over and help me paint my camelry, I could use the help. Besides they’re all your camels.

Patrick Wilson

Got my copy yesterday, and I must say I'm a little proud of all the kind things you said about TSNS and the "B'hoys!" figures by Bobby Jackson. Sorry you couldn't take a crack as assembling the cardstock samples of "B'hoys Towne," but I quite understand. Here I am designing the damn things, but I get Richard Houston to assemble them for me! He does a MUCH better job, and he's been invaluable as my "test pilot" to correct the errors that I don't catch. Please encourage whoever might take them from you to provide their own review for The Heliograph.

Glad you kept to six issues, not less. You WILL get more exposure this way and have more chance to goad/tease/shame the rest of us into contributing some way or other.

Thanks again for all your spilled ink and high praise for TSNS! If enough of the brethren see the game for themselves, it truly could be the start of the "next cycle" in Colonials that will help expand it further than ever before. No brag, just fact.

Thanks for the kind words, I praise what I like, and think is good for gaming, even if it is just for my colonial gaming pleasure.

Timothy Boyd

I'm aware that I promised you something for The Heliograph some months ago (he said, blushing). This isn't it. But I hope that it still might be useful/inspiring to somebody...

Probably this has already occurred to everybody but me, but it's an interesting thought to put the American Revolution into the larger context of British colonialism. Here, in the New World, we have locals, tired of the oppressive control of the British government in London and angry at the increasing presence of British soldiers in their towns, finally rising in revolt to push out London's representatives and their military policemen.

In response, those representatives call upon London to retake the colonies, using whatever military and naval forces necessary.

With that thought in mind, I've been reading Manuel Petinal's La Campana de Pensacola, 1781, a recent account of the successful capture by Spanish forces of the British military installations along the southern Mississippi and the Gulf Coast.

Inspired by this work, I've just begun to look around for other sources but, probably because it was a “Spanish” victory, it appears to me so far that this probably isn't a subject much covered in books on the American Revolution in English. Ward's classic, The War of the Revolution (2 vols. NY: Macmillan, 1952), for example, has a single sentence about it (vol.2, 862). Mark Boatner's Encyclopedia of the American Revolution (NY: McKay, 1966, 853-4), mostly quotes Fortescue (vol. iii, 351-2), who cheapens the Spanish success by making it sound like they were up against troops from ‘below’ the bottom of the barrel:

"worn-out veterans... Germans... condemned criminals... Irish vagabonds" and that that success had nothing to do with the fact that the Spanish commander, Bernardo de Galvez, appears to have been a soldier of energy, courage, and intelligence, and perhaps one of the better general officers of the war.

Pensacola was the main base for a series of British posts stretching west to Mobile and then up the Mississippi. These were earthwork forts with the occasional palisade and ditch and were garrisoned not by the dregs described by Fortescue (whose depiction strikes me as right in line with Victorian excuses for their defeats by colonial opponents--those Zulus at Isandhlwana weren't brave and well-led: the 24th was suffering from problems of ammunition supply and there was that awful man Durnford, who was really only an engineer, and Irish, and...), but by just the sort of troops you'd expect to find in the Crown-occupied South by 1781: a mixture of Loyalists and German troops, with a few English infantry and artillerymen added. (The defences at Pensacola, in fact, were manned by the 16th and 60th Foot, some Royal Artillerymen, the Waldeck Rgt., the Maryland Loyalists, the Pennsylvania Loyalists, small contingents of West Florida Loyalists and West Florida Royal Foresters, plus elements from the Royal Navy and numbers of the local Native Americans--Choctaws and Creeks.)

The Spanish were, eventually, more numerous, including regulars, militia, regular and marine artillery, sailors from the fleet, and even a few dragoons. Besides the Spanish, there was a smaller French contingent of regulars, regular artillerymen, marine infantry and artillery, and sailors from their squadron.

So--for wargaming, you've got just about any kind of soldier you could want: regular, "native" regular, foreign mercenary, Native American, even a naval detachment. Actions include everything from the taking of small outposts along the Mississippi to skirmishes between the Spanish and their Native American/Loyalist opponents to the full-scale formal siege of Pensacola. If a gamer is interested in naval warfare, it would be very easy to add single ship-to-ship combats or even fleet actions. (It would also be very interesting to make timing a major factor: take too long to attack Pensacola and the spring or late-summer storms could leave you without naval support or supplies.)

For figures, in 15mm (the scale in which I'm preparing “my” version of this), you have (I include a couple of the smaller company e-mail addresses):

Essex for the basic British and German troops

Old Glory for British and German troops, as well as French infantry and artillery (you could use both of these to create the Spanish, but you'd have to use Freikorps 15--see below—for Spanish grenadiers)

Lancashire Games http://website.lineone.net/~lancgames

for British and German troops, as well as French infantry and artillery

Freikorps 15 for British and German troops, plus French infantry and Spanish grenadiers, naval gun crews, and Seminoles (which I suspect that you could use for the Native Americans--Seminoles are an offshoot of the Creeks).

For the British and Loyalist troops, I'm mixing tricorns and broad-brimmed hats, as both appear to have been worn later in the war and particularly in the South and, for these, I'm using Freikorps' RWA19 (infantryman, full kit, turned-up slouch hat) and Minifigs MF122V and 131V (Amrev soldiers described as wearing "floppy" hats). The British Minifigs may be obtained from The Wargames Figures Company (www.wargames-figures.com).

Guns on naval carriages and heavy siege guns, as well as more naval gun crews, could come from Hallmark, now available from The Last Square.

TCS (TCS, Dept. MW, 545 Newport Ave., Suite #155, Pawtucket, RI, 02861) has an extensive line of entrenchments, to which could be added fascines and the like from Hallmark.

For a good start, I would recommend the book which got me started, Manuel Petinal's La Campana de Pensacola, 1781 (Madrid: Almena Ediciones, 2002), which belongs to Almena's increasingly good Osprey-like series. I'm sure that the excellent Dennis Shorthouse at On Military Matters could supply a copy militarymatters@worldnet.att.net

Armed with nothing more than high school Spanish, a decent dictionary, and the kind of mind full of military terms which is standard issue for wargamers, someone who would like to try his hand at colonial gaming in the 1780s shouldn't find the language a great barrier.

So--there you have it, Richard. I hope that there are readers out there who might find this of interest--beginning with you.

I do find it interesting and I understand that the American Revolution is British Colonialism, the colonial period is my research area at work. But I cannot seem to get interested in the American Revolution at home. I have several regts. of Hessians, Brits and unpainted Americans that have sat idle for twenty years or more. I prefer the French and Indian War personally, probably because it seems to be less formalized warfare.