The guns of Dimawe

Jeff Ramsay | Tuesday August 31, 2021 11:04

The weapons in both camps were mostly the private property of those who carried them resulting in a good deal of qualitative variation in the munitions deployed by each side.

The Boers enjoyed a quantitative advantage in terms of artillery, notwithstanding the fact that Sechele's single 6-Pounder was the largest canon in the field. In terms of other guns, the hunting rifles and muskets used by many of the Boers of the era were renowned for their superior range of 100 to 200 yards as well as general accuracy. In previous encounters they had outclassed the British Army’s Brown Bess musket, which had a maximum range of about 100 yards with limited accuracy beyond 60 yards. The quality of the trade muskets in the hands of the Batswana would have varied greatly, though by the late 1840s most local Dikgosi were adept at rejecting those that tested below standard. Manufacturers in Liege Belgium were the biggest source of guns in the region, surviving examples of which have proved accurate from 40 to 100 yards. But, Sechele also had a collection of custom-built state of the art rifles. Designed for bagging big game by well to do hunters the best of these guns had a range of up to 1,000 yards, firing armour as well as elephant piercing conical shot of 12-8 bore.

In a private letter to Oswell, dated September 20, 1852, Livingstone drew attention to Sechele's use of his heavy rifles, as well the impact of the Boer swivel artillery: “On Monday they began their attack on the town by firing with swivels. They communicated fire to the houses. This made many of the women flee and the heat became so great the men huddled together on the little hill in the middle of the town - the smoke prevented them from seeing the Boers though the latter saw them huddled in groups. They killed 60 Bakwains and 35 Boers fell – and a great number of horses. Sechele shot 4 Boers with his two double barrelled guns. When they made a dash at the hill, one bullet passing through two men, and a bullet went through the sleeve of his coat. These 60 are those whom they counted near the town. Sechele thinks others may have fallen among the women who ran away – these are not yet counted. They maintained their position one whole day on the hill, cutting off the Boers every time they came near. The Boers continued their firing with swivels till the evening and then retired.”

Taken at face value it is hard to imagine ordinary shot ball literally passing through two men in the heat of battle, while Livingstone’s reference to a bullet going through the sleeve of a Boer’s coat dovetails with Paul Kruger’s recollection that his life had been in danger when: “One of the enemy’s rifle bullets, fired by the enemy from a huge rifle, struck me on the chest and tore my jacket in two.”

Inspecting the battlefield with elders over a decade later, Andrew Anderson was informed that ‘Sechele shot a Boer whenever he showed himself, killing five, [before] they withdrew’. He further notes that the elders ‘called attention to bullets marks on the opposite rocks where portions of the bullets [fired by Sechele] still remained’.

Given that the rocks in question are granite, the casual reference to the remains of Sechele’s bullets many years after the battle is further evidence for his use of high calibre steel tipped cylindro-conical bullets as it would have been improbable for even ordinary conical shot, much less ball shot, of the era, to have become so embedded, being rather prone to ricochet and/or flatten upon impact.

With respect to artillery in terms of quantity and tactical usage the Boers appear to have had the advantage. From a September 16, 1852 report by the Rev. Robert Moffat, based on eyewitness accounts: “The Boers found means of setting fire to the town, when the hill in the centre became enveloped in heat & smoke, when a scene of confusion ensued easier conceived then described. This decided the fate of the Bakuenas, who found their efforts to defend themselves against such a force crippled by the smoke that enveloped them. Though the Boers kept a respectable distance, they were able by means of small swivels to do much execution among the natives. The Bakuenas, however, continued to defend themselves until the curtains of night were drawn over the melancholy scene.”

The importance of artillery at Dimawe is further confirmed in a September 12, 1852 dispatch to Andries Pretorius by Pieter Scholtz, which reported that: “I gave order to storm the defences when the cannons had fired. This was done with great courage, by the help of the Lord. But, you cannot conceive how hard the fight was. It must have lasted six hours altogether. Afterward I captured everything and set fire to the village. But the enemy retained the hill with caves, and I could not take it because my troops were exhausted. I had 70 cannon shots alone fired.”