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Pattern of 1907 Quillion Bayonets in Canadian Service
The earliest P1907 bayonets for the SMLE had a quillion - a hooked crossguard - which was eliminated from production before WWI - making a 'hookie' bayonet a rare find for any Enfield bayonet collector. Bayonet collectors can list a dozen reasons why P1907 quillion bayonets never saw Canadian service during WWI. A photograph from the Canadian War Museum reminds us why you should never say never.
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Background: Enfield P1907 Quillion Bayonets
In the beginning was the 'Long Lee' Enfield. Adopted in 1888, this was the first modern cartridge arm adopted by the British Empire to use smokeless powder. Topped with the Pattern of 1888 (P1888) bayonet, it was a formidable combination of fighting tools.
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| The Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) [1] revealed shortcomings in the British Army command structure and supply system. It also made many European powers, including Britain, reevaluate both small arms as well as small-unit tactics. The Short, Magazine, Lee-Enfield (SMLE) rifle, adopted in 1906, was a direct result. |
| With the new rifle came a new bayonet, the Pattern of 1907. The new bayonet was quite different from the Pattern 1888 and Pattern 1903 models that proceeded it. With an overall length of 21.75" and a blade length of 17", it was modeled on the Japanese Type 30 Arisaka bayonet, including the hooked quillion. [2] |
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| In theory, the quillion could be used to snag an opponent's blade and leveraged to snap the blade or disarm the opponent. In the real world, the quillion was hated by troops for its uncanny ability to snag on uniforms, gear and foliage. [3] The quillion crossguard was dropped, without fanfare, on 29th October 1913. [4] |
| British P1907 bayonets were manufactured with quillions from 1907 - 1913, a relatively short span. Total production was probably not much more than 250,000 units. [5] By the beginning of the Great War (1914-1919) production of the P1907 bayonet - sans quillion - was well established. Quillion bayonets that came in for maintenance or repair had their quillions removed. [6] |
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| The Great War saw a massive escalation of bayonet production with almost two million new P1907 bayonets recorded as delivered by April 1917. By 1915 bayonet production at government facilities, such as RSAF Enfield, had ceased as private contractors shouldered the entire production. [7] |
| Summary: The total British pre-war production stock of P1907 bayonets with quillions represents only a small fraction of the total P1907 bayonet production. It would seem reasonable to assume that by 1915 few, if any, pre-war bayonets were to be found held in storage anywhere. New troops would be armed as well as resupplied entirely from current production. |
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Background: Canada & the Ross Rifle 1903 - 1915
Canada, like England, had some unpleasant surprises with the Lee-Enfield rifle during the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902). They too came away from the war convinced that some changes were necessary. |
| The stage for the South African War was set in 1885 when a tremendous lode of gold was discovered in the Witwatersrand hills of the Transvaal. Almost overnight this tiny Boer Republic had the potential not only to become the economic and military powerhouse of South Africa, but to displace London as the center of the world's gold trade. [8] Cecil Rhodes, British financier and industrial magnate, struck first, in 1885, financing the Jameson Raid, an attempted coup d'etat. The raid was a flop, but it did alert the Boers of Britain's intentions. Increasing fear of British designs on the region and the amassing of British forces on their borders led the Boers to make a pre-emptive strike in 1899, quickly resulting in full-scale combat operations. |
Military units from all over the Empire - Canada, New Zealand and Australia - enthusiastically volunteered for service in the South African War. Once again, the Boers turned out to be tough and tenacious, inflicting a series of stinging defeats on British forces. It took three years, 500,000 troops, and a scorched-earth campaign designed to starve the Boers, be they fighter, farmer or family, into submission. 26,000 non-combatants, many of them Boer women and children, died of starvation and disease in Lord Kitchner's concentration camps.
The Second South African War was the first time that Canadian, New Zealand and Australian troops fought abroad as their own national contingent. It was an eye-opening experience for everyone involved. |
| The war provided the Empire with its first large-scale deployment of the new Lee-Enfield rifle. It also revealed a major weakness - Canada and Australia were shocked to discover that not only were there not enough Lee-Enfield rifles to arm their South African contingents, their orders for new rifles were routinely pre-empted by the British Army, or worse yet, refused outright. Canada and Australia came out of the Second South African War determined to develop their own arms industry. They took very different paths to do so. |
| Sir Charles Ross, a Scots-Canadian entrepreneur, persuaded the Canadian Government to adopt a rifle that he had designed, the Ross Rifle, as Canada's home grown .303 equivalent to the British SMLE. In 1903 Sir Ross landed his first government contract, for 12,000 Mark I Ross rifles. Over the next ten years Canada's growing military forces were proudly equipped with the Canadian-built Ross rifle. In international target competitions the Ross Rifle performed well, even when matched against the new British SMLE. |
| World War I broke out in August 1914. Canadian contingents were soon on the way to France and Flanders, hoping that the war would last long enough for them to see some action. It would - and the Ross Rifle was one of the first casualties. The principal problem was that the rifle jammed. Dirt, grit, variables in ammunition sizing, rough handling, any one could cause the rifle to lock up when you needed it most. |
| After the Battle of Festubert (May 15 - May 25 1915) it was discovered that more than 3,050 of the 8,422 Canadian survivors had 'exchanged' their Ross rifle for British SMLE's 'found' on the battlefield. [9] In June 1915 Sir John French, Commander-in-Chief, British Army in the Field, ordered the 1st Canadian Division to "immediately re-arm...with the Lee-Enfield rifle." Similar orders for the 2nd and 3rd Canadian Divisions soon followed. |
Quillion P1907 Bayonets in Canadian Service
Armed with this background information, most Enfield specialists would be pretty comfortable stating that no P1907 quillion bayonets ever saw Canadian service. They would point out that the quillion bayonets were obsolete and out of production almost two years before Canada adopted the SMLE rifle. They'd dig out charts and graphs to show that more than a million new P1907 bayonets were already in circulation by that time. They'd argue that any pre-war quillion bayonets in storage had undoubtedly been rushed to the remains of the British Expeditionary Force in 1914. They'd also point out that most of the surviving quillion bayonets now in the hands of museums and collectors sport British regimental marks. All of those things are true. Which makes this photograph from the archives of the Canadian War Museum all the more interesting.
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| Specialist collectors, by nature, tend to want everything neat and tidy. War, by nature, is never neat and tidy. Whether George Ormsby of the 15th Btn CEF was issued his SMLE Mk III and P1907 quillion bayonet or if he was one of the many Canadians who simply picked up a dead man's rifle, leaving his Ross 'in exchange,' we'll never know. |
The 15th Battalion CEF was raised by the 48th Highlanders of Toronto and was the first Canadian militia regiment to volunteer as a unit for overseas service. The 15th CEF (also known as the 48th Highlanders of Canada) served on the Western Front. Some 61 officers and 1,406 men of the 15th Battalion lost their lives in the Great War. [10]
George Ormsby's name does not appear among the lists of the dead prepared by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission www.cwgc.org so we presume he survived the Great War, as did this photograph. |
| You can see this photograph in detail for yourself on the Canadian War Museum website by clicking HERE. |
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© 2009 David J. Gadbois. www.Enfield-Stuff.com |
| Notes & Sources |
| Note 1 |
The name of this war has changed over time. While for many years known as "The Boer War," it was also popularly known as the "South African War" at the time. Military historians tended to prefer the "Second South African War" in order to distinguish it from the earlier "Transvaal War" (1880 - 1881) between the British and Dutch Republics in South Africa. Probably one of the best books on the topic is Thomas Parkeham's The Boer War (718 pages; Avon Books, 1992. ISBN-10: 0380720019 ISBN-13: 978-0380720019. Readily found on Amazon and in many bookstores.) |
| Note 2 |
Skennerton, Ian British & Commonwealth Bayonets (1986 ISBN 0 949749 04 4; available www.skennerton.com ) pg.186 |
| Note 3 |
Edwards, Robert W. India's Enfields, The Lee-Enfield Rifle in India 1905-2000 (Second edition 2000, 110 pages, ISBN 9-9701237-0-1. The Consortium Press, PO Box 190, Keedysville, Maryland, USA 21756) pg.25 |
| Note 4 |
List of Changes in British War Material In Relation to Edged Weapons, Firearms and Associated Ammunition and Accoutrements. (see Volume IV, 1910-1918, LoC #16755. Compiled and published by Ian D. Skennerton. ISBN 0-959749-18-4. See link above. ) |
| Note 5 |
British & Commonwealth Bayonets (above) pgs. 186-187. Australian production was around 8,000 units (pg. 275) and Indian production about 5,000 units. (Edwards, India's Enfields, (above) pg.25). The graph (and this article) does not address these two sources. |
| Note 6 |
British & Commonwealth Bayonets (above) pg. 187 |
| Note 7 |
British & Commonwealth Bayonets (above) pgs. 190-191 |
| Note 8 |
For a fascinating account of the early history of South Africa, Martin Meredith's Diamonds, Gold, and War: The British, the Boers and the Making of South Africa is hard to beat. (2007; 570 pgs. www.publicaffairsbooks.com ) Note that the book skims over the details of the conflict, focusing on the the people and events before and in the aftermath. |
| Note 9 |
A.F. Duguid, A Question of Confidence (1999, based on the 1938 monograph, Edited by Clive M Law. Service Publications, Ontario, Canada www.servicepub.com ) pg.27 |
| Note 10 |
J. Victor Taboika Military Antiques and Collectibles of the Great War: A Canadian Collection (Service Publications, 2007. 365 pgs.) Pg.117 |
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The Canadian War Museum www.civilization.ca |
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