Naval Brigade towed Gatling gun and limber

Finishing the towed limber and gun brings to completion my Royal Navy contingent, compising two companies of ratings, a Gatling gun battery, a company of Royal Marine Light Infantry, and Vice Admiral Hewett’s command group.

I first suggested that I might make a towed limber twenty-one months ago [link], to represent the entire battery on the move in the manner described in Richard Brooks’ The Long Arm of Empire: Naval Brigades from the Crimea to the Boxer Rebellion, where he quotes Royal Marine Artillery Gunner JT Wilkinson (p185):

I have never witnessed such a sight as the sailors drawing their machine guns. The pluck they showed and the work and labour required to drag those guns along for more than twenty miles was very great. I am sure if I had not seen it, I would not have believed it.

Blue jackets labour to bring up a Gatling gun, while a couple of additions to Hewett’s HQ look on … suitably impressed, one imagines.