Weapons
The Colt Model 1895 Machine Gun
The 1895 Model Colt machine gun that the Royal
Canadian Dragoons and other Canadian mounted units adopted after their
arrival in South Africa. It was mounted on a carriage that could be
pulled by a single horse. Here it is operated by a British
team.
Developed by the celebrated American firearm designer, John
Browning, this machine gun was introduced by the Colt Company of
Hartford, Connecticut in 1895. Like the
Maxim gun introduced four years
earlier, it operated entirely by mechanical means. The tapping of a
small amount of gas generated by the combustion of the propellant was
diverted to a piston, which drove back the breech block and cycled the
mechanisms to load, fire, and extract. Unlike the water-cooled
Maxim,
this gun was air-cooled. It had a lower rate of fire, but was of
lighter weight and was more easily handled.
This .30-calibre machine gun quickly became a favourite of the
volunteer mounted infantry units of the British Army, which found
the lightweight weapon a natural compliment to their fast moving,
highly mobile methods of warfare. Doubtless this was one of the
factors influencing the decision of their Canadian counterparts to
dispense with their Maxims
in favour of Colts after their arrival
in South Africa.
A particular advantage of the Colt, according to
Lieutenant-Colonel François-Louis
Lessard
of the
Royal Canadian Dragoons,
was that it could be "be detached from the carriage quite easily and
carried away on the saddle." Perhaps the most famous instance of this
happening involved the exploits of
Sergeant Edward Holland
of the Royal Canadian Dragoons at
Leliefontein on 7 November 1900.
Following the departure of the
Dragoons from South Africa,
their machine
gun officer,
Major Arthur L. "Gat" Howard, who had
overseen the transition from Maxims
to Colts, stayed on to form another
unit called the
Canadian Scouts. It specialized in
a daring, irregular warfare, and Howard
equipped the unit with no less
than six Colt machine guns.
The legacy of the Canadian experience with machine guns in South
Africa was that the Canadian Expeditionary Force went to war in 1914
armed with the Colt machine gun. Yet, it was the next generation of the
Maxim design, the heavy
Vickers gun, that was to dominate the static
battlefields of that war.