In 1885 Tony Gould’s great-grandfather was one of seven men killed in an accident at the School of Gunnery on the Essex coast. Here he recounts the moving details of the tragedy.
In the late summer of 2014 my wife, Jenny, and I visited Shoeburyness on the Essex coast. We had never been there before, but I had been thinking about it on and off for a long time. I wanted to see the place where, according to a small item I’d spotted in the Spectator’s ‘One hundred years ago’ column in early March 1985, a ‘frightful accident occurred … involving almost as many deaths among officers as a sharp Egyptian skirmish’. This caught my eye because the Colonel Fox-Strangways mentioned in what followed was my great-grandfather. He was one of seven men killed on that day.
The son of a Devon vicar, Walter Aston Fox-Strangways underwent his baptism of fire in the Crimean War, in which his uncle, Brigadier-General Tom F-S, a veteran of Leipzig and Waterloo, was mortally wounded at Inkerman, perched on a horse next to his commander-in-chief Lord Raglan in full view of the enemy. After Crimea the artillery concentrated on creating a dedicated school of gunnery, with the remote stretch of coast to the east of Southend-on-Sea as one possible location for it. Lack of space at the artillery’s practice range at Woolwich, the greater size and range of the guns being developed (to defeat the new ironclad warships), along with frequent interruptions to firing caused by increased traffic in the Thames estuary, all pointed to the need for an alternative site and in 1858 Shoeburyness got the official nod of approval. By October 1882, when Walter was appointed Colonel Commandant there, the School of Gunnery was well established.
Denne historien er fra The Oldie magazine - JANUARY issue (343)-utgaven av The Oldie Magazine.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent ? Logg på
Denne historien er fra The Oldie magazine - JANUARY issue (343)-utgaven av The Oldie Magazine.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
Travel: Retreat From The World
For his new book, Nat Segnit visited Britain’s quietest monasteries and islands to talk to monks, hermits and recluses
What is... a nail house?
Don’t confuse a nail house with a nail parlour. A nail house is an old house that survives as new building development goes on all around it.
Kent's stairway to heaven
Walter Barton May’s Hadlow Castle is the ultimate Gothic folly
Pursuits
Pursuits
The book that changed the world
On Marcel Proust’s 150th anniversary, A N Wilson praises his masterpiece, an exquisite comedy with no parallel
RIP the playboys of the western world
Charlie Methven mourns his dashing former father-in-law, Luis ‘the Bounder’ Basualdo, last of a dying breed
Arts
Arts
My film family's greatest hits
Downton Abbey producer Gareth Neame follows in the footsteps of his father, grandfather and great-grandmother, a silent-movie star
Books
Books
A lifetime of pin-ups
Barry Humphries still has nightmares about going on stage. He’s always admired the stars who kept battling on