TOPIC:

A photograph I haven't seen before. Courtesy of Mafikeng Museum.




..

Here is a unique snapshot of The Wolf (with traction engine approaching in the distance). Interestingly, it looks like the gun has been in this position for a long time. The wheels have sunk into the sand and grass is growing underneath the trail and axletree.






This second photo, from a different officer’s album, again shows grass growing under the trail. These two images, taken at different times, suggest that after the siege "The Wolf" was left out on the veldt as a curio, for passing soldiers to admire and photograph.




..

Colin Walker has kindly given me permission to reproduce his excellent article "The Wolf: Mafeking’s Homemade Cannon", published in 2006.












Type: Smooth Bore Muzzle loader Howitzer
Calibre: 5 inch = 127mm
Ammunition: Round Shot and shell. 16 lb = 7.25 kg
Range: 4,000 yards = 3692 m

Prior to the outbreak of hostilities between the Boers and the British in South Africa on October 11th 1899, Baden-Powell had asked the British High Command for two five inch howitzers to assist him. Due to a mistake in coding; it was later maintained, two obsolete 7-pounders were sent by rail from Cape Town in their place. Evidence was given to the Royal Commission after the siege that there were no five-inch guns in South Africa at the time, or any other more modern armaments that could have been sent. It was just as well that the five-inch howitzers were not sent, because the two seven-pound guns that were, fell into Boer hands and were used against the besieged garrison.

It is ironic that garrison did eventually obtain a weapon with the exact specification that B-P required, not from any of the great armament factories of Europe, but made in the railway workshops at Mafeking by men who had probably never seen a cannon in action before. The weapon was successfully used in the field by 'gunners', who had little or no experience of artillery, helping to hold off the Boers until the Relief Columns entered the town after 217 days of being massively outnumbered by Boers with far greater firepower.

The British, I remind readers, were eventually able to muster four obsolete 7-pounders with an effective range of not much more than 1500 yards (1372m), a Hotchkiss one pound machine gun, a two-barrelled Nordenfeld Machine Gun firing one-pound shells and six .303 Maxim guns not normally considered as artillery. The Boers on the other hand had a massive 94-pound (6-inch) Creusot gun with a range of five miles (8km), two quick-firing 14.5-pounders, 75 mm (3 inch) cannon, one 12-pounder (2.95 inches); one nine-pounder (2.95inches); two 7-pounders (these were the two 7-pounders sent from Cape Town in response to B-P's plea for 5-pounders captured at Kraaipan on October 12th 1899); two Krupp five pounders (2.36 inches); two pom-poms (37mm belt fed machine guns) plus at least eight Maxim machine guns.

It was vital to the British cause to make the best use of what weapons and materials they had. B-P was a master of deception and he convinced the Boers that the town was surrounded by mines. With the help of a Mr P. Walker, an acetylene salesmen besieged in the town, a portable searchlight was constructed with reflectors fashioned from biscuit tins. This was moved from place to place giving the impression that the defenders could illuminate any section of their defences at will.

Six months into the siege, set to be the longest running of the Boer War, the garrison had a great stroke of luck when an old naval cannon was found being used as a gatepost. It became known as 'Lord Nelson'. Its restoration in the Railway workshops and successful use is detailed in a later chapter. The discovery and renovation must have prompted the thought; if an old naval cannon could be renovated in the railway workshops then perhaps a gun could be manufactured from scratch?

The Makers

J. Emerson Neilly, War Correspondent for the Pall Mall Gazette, was the author of a now rare Siege Diary, entitled Besieged with B.P. He wrote:

"The second important event [the first being the discovery of 'Lord Nelson'] was the manufacture of a really fine howitzer gun in the railway workshops by a refugee engineer named Connolly, who was assisted by a brother Irishman named Coughlan. Connolly made his own blast fan out of a soap box and sundry pieces of iron; he used an old 4 ½ inch iron drain pipe for the inner tube of the gun, and on this he shrunk rings of iron. The base and trunnions (supports for the barrel) he formed of brass, [This was not so, they were bronze] and when the howitzer had been placed on the lathe and rounded off, it appeared as shapely as though it had been turned out at Woolwich [The Royal Arsenal]. Pieces of the enemy's shells were used in the construction of the gun and the projectiles fired from her, and thus the Boers were paid back with their own coin. To melt this cast iron, which was extremely hard, Connolly used ordinary Welsh coal instead of coke, and his Annealing Furnace, [ annealing is a process of heating metal to remove the stresses induced by the forging, making the metal softer] he formed with a zinc water tank lined with bricks. All praise is due to the two men who so added to our defensive powers. They carried out a work that was proclaimed to be absolutely impossible by the engineers of the railway, and met with sneers and actual opposition by those who had said that it could not be carried out."

On January 8th 1900, Connolly was promoted to foreman 'conducting the ordnance factory' at a rate of £1 per day. Another diarist, Major F.D. Baillie, wrote that it was impossible to give too much credit to Connolly and ... his mates' ingenuity, ability and energy' for their part in the defence of the town. The Mafeking Mail, the town's newspaper produced special Siege Slips throughout most of the Siege, 'Shells Permitting'. On March 2nd 1900, it recorded that a special gratuity was paid to Connolly in recognition of good work in making the new howitzer. He also made shells for 'The Wolf' from a hoard of five-pound shells stashed away at the time of the ill-fated Jameson Raid which started from Mafeking district, at Pitsani, in December 1895. His Irish patriotism led him to paint them green. The Times of March 14th 1900, stated that Foreman Connolly had 'by noteworthy co-incidence' been employed before the outbreak of hostilities in the ordnance factory in Pretoria to supervise the production of larger shells, including those for the 94 lb Creusot gun which was presently bombarding Mafeking with examples of his own workmanship.

Whilst there is no doubt that Connolly and Coughlan were key to the manufacture of the gun they did not design it. Shortly after the end of the siege, Ben Weil proprietor of Mafeking's largest store and partner in the family firm that helped supply the British Army in South Africa, wanted, at the conclusion of the Siege, to award Connolly £50, as he considered the making of 'the Wolf' significant in the defence of the town. B-P refused the offer stating that Connolly was just following orders and that Major Panzera was the designer of the gun. This is not to say that the famous defender of Mafeking underestimated the part paid by Connolly, as he later wrote of him as his ... energetic and ingenious foreman.

Major Francis William Panzera was Second in Command of the British South Africa Police and a member of its Bechuanaland Protectorate Division in Mafeking. Of Italian extraction, he was born in 1851 and joined the Royal Artillery in England holding several commissions before being dispatched to South Africa in 1892. On October 31st 1899, after the deaths of Captains Marsham and Pechell at Cannon Kopje, Major Panzera was appointed the Garrison's Senior Artillery Officer. This was a logical appointment because he was the only Imperial Officer in the garrison trained in artillery (Lieut. Daniels had as a young soldier had some experience in the Glamorganshire Militia). One of Panzera's first tasks was to comb the ranks of the all the Garrison's forces to find anybody with any previous experience in this field. He found ex-sailors and members of the British South Africa Police who were prepared to lie in order to be allowed to fire artillery. (See the account of the 'Lord Nelson' cannon).

According to Baden-Powell's Staff Diary, January 6th 1900, Panzera was ordered to take over the Railway Workshops 'owing to local jealousies'. There is some evidence that at first Panzera was reluctant to commit himself to the idea of building a 'home-made' cannon, believing that the town did not have sufficient resources to build such a weapon and had to be persuaded otherwise by Foreman Connolly. This is somewhat ironic as Panzera is often given the credit for the gun. (See B-Ps refusal of Weil's £50 award for Connolly). Panzera himself never made such claims and in a letter home to his wife dated March 10th 1900 (Colin Walker Collection). Panzera writes about running short of ammunition and says "but we have made powder, cast shells and made a gun to add to our armament." The use of the word 'we' somewhat distances Panzera from personal involvement in the making of the gun and is a correct perspective. This quite proper reservation in not taking the total credit for the work of others was consistent with an admirable personality.

Auctioneer and diarist Edward Ross described Panzera as:

" .. absolutely the best, pluckiest and most gentlemanly officer in the whole garrison, with no exception."

This was not however how Trooper Scally, BSAP (see the following chapter on the Lord Nelson canon) thought of Major Panzera, claiming that the Major took credit for work that he had tried to block.

Mafeking's blacksmith was a respected Cornishman, Mr Joseph Gerrans, called 'Old Gerrans' by all. He was a Town Councillor at the time of the siege and had made the gun carriage for the Lord Nelson cannon and so was called upon to make a carriage for the Wolf. It was fortunate that he was still alive to be able do so, because on December 6th 1899 he disobeyed a standing order issued by Baden-Powell, that no-one should attempt to remove the powder from a shell for the purposes of making a souvenir. More people had been injured and killed by attempting this practice than by actual shelling. There was, however, great temptation as many of the 94-pound shells did not explode on landing, burying themselves in the soft earth or skidding along on the top of the ground before coming to a halt. The shells, once emptied of explosive, were sold in the Market Square on Sundays for as much as £5.00 each. 'Old Gerrans' was thought to be an expert as he had successfully emptied many shells. Female diarist Ada Cock says he had a 94 lb shell fashioned into a spittoon with coin head of Kruger as its centre. Ross states that Gerrans had been warned dozens of times against the practice. On December 6th 1899, whilst extracting high explosive, a 94 lb shell exploded, Gerran's assistant, a young bicycle mechanic called Green, injured his leg in the explosion such that it had to be amputated. A bystander, a young man called W. Smith, was stuck on the thigh and died of his wound. Gerrans lost the tips of three fingers on his left hand and was hospitalized for two weeks. It might be thought that Gerrans would have been prosecuted for defying B-P's order but the Mafeking Mail Siege Slip of the following day made the townspeople's view plain.

"We have too much regard for our respected townsman to find any fault with him”.

Perhaps it was this coupled with his usefulness to the Garrison in making and repairing gun carriages that enabled him to avoid prosecution. BP later in his book Sketches in Mafeking and East Africa wrote:

"Mr Gerrans himself is a leading light among citizens and his loyalty is personified".

Private A. Forbes of the Bechuanaland Rifles was an engineer from Glasgow, a skilled lathe turner whose talents were put to good use in the construction of the gun. General Orders of January 8th 1900 states that Forbes was to work in Ordnance Factory from 6th January.

Ross' s diary for the 11th February 1900 showed the role he played.

"It [the gun barrel] is cast in brass over a steel tube, bound with wire, and then another casting of brass over that and then finally, turned polished and finished in one of the railway workshops lathes”.

On February 22nd 1900, Albert Miller, a private in the Protectorate Regiment, was killed opening a 94 lb shell belonging to Forbes. Forbes was not present at the time but was fined £25 by the Court of Summary Jurisdiction.

Forbes was not the only turner who worked on the gun. There is a letter in UK Scout Archive from a William Perry dated February 13th 1957. Perry states that shortly after the Siege, there was a photo of his school friend Tom Banks in a penny comic with Baden-Powell and the Wolf gun.

Perry maintained that Banks was specially sent for by Baden-Powell, who said that the photo could not be taken without him as … he made the gun." His importance to the project is supported by the fact that he was one of only five recipients of a superb metal model of the gun, (see p. 28).

In 1996 the Mafeking Siege Diary of Frederick Saunders was found and published in America. It contains several references to Tom Banks.

"Tom was a fitter on the Railway and was enrolled as a member of the Town Guard, He was one of the group responsible for making that miscalled weapon, the Wolf."

Banks had been apprenticed as a marine engineer in West Hartlepool, England but had gone to South Africa before the start of hostilities for health reasons. According to the Mafeking Mail Siege Slip, published on the 31st January 1900, apprentice turner, T. Banks was appointed at 10/- per day.

Below is an image scanned from a hand-tinted photographic postcard of the Wolf Gun taken outside the Railway Workshops. It was probably taken by Mafeking photographer David Taylor and reproduced as a postcard after the Siege. I believe this would have been the image that Tom's friend William Perry saw in his comic. Baden-Powell is standing to your extreme left. D.D. Hall wrote a pamphlet on Mafeking Artillery that was available in the South African National War Museum, Saxonwold, Johannesburg in 1982, (now the South African National Museum of Military History), in which he stated that Mr Coughlan, wearing a waistcoat, is the figure with his hand on the wheel of the gun to the left of the picture. The officer next to the right wheel is Major Panzera. In addition, I surmise that 'Old Gerrans' may well be the man with his foot on the left wheel hiding his injured hand behind his back and, whilst I cannot be certain, Tom Banks, the only young man still in his working clothes, is to be found in the prominent position to the right of Major Panzera. Is the man with his hand over the breech Foreman Connolly, and the officer standing between the piles of shells, Daniels? Almost certainly all the personnel mentioned in this article are present on this photograph.




The First Firing

Edward J. Ross also took a keen interest in the manufacture of the Wolf gun and on the 28th February 1900, he attempted to photograph a trial firing of the 'Wolf' and wrote:

"The gun behaved splendidly and after a couple of trial shots she was elevated, and a 30 second fuse put in the shell, and she was then fired with a time fuse. The shell carried between 3 and 4 thousand yards, (2,743m-3,658m) and then burst with a heavy discharge.
It is about 4ft (120cms) long; five inch (12. 7cms) bore, and carries a shell weighing about 16 lbs (7.3kgs), charged with 8 ozs (0.23kgs) of powder and cartridge for driving power."

The fuses were the work of Lt. R.M. Daniels who was Panzera's second in command. He ingeniously used the butt end of a Lee-Metford cartridge to act as a detonator. B-P thought highly of him and he was nominated for an Imperial Commission. (More biographical details about Lt. Daniels are to be found on p. 9.)

The Gun Fails

On March 27th, B-P asked Panzera the burning question, was the 'Wolf' powerful enough to reach the Boer's big gun? Panzera replied that it might, but the extra powder required could burst the breach. B-P told him to try it, he did and it did! Next day Panzera wrote home:

"The shot went one way and the breach went the other and we pride ourselves that we are the only people who have fired from both ends at once in this war! No one was hurt."

This disaster caused Frederick Saunders, a young soldier in the Bechuanaland Rifles to say that the 'Wolf' was misnamed, presumably because it no longer had any menace, but repairs were made. B-P in his article in 'The Scout', May 23rd 1908, wrote:

" ... we not only shrank the breech on again, but clamped it there with iron bands passed round it and hooked onto the trunnion ring so that it could not blow off."

The gun was soon back in service and used successfully against an enemy targets, notably Game Tree Fort, at a range of 2,300 yards (2,120 m).

How the Gun was named

The gun was called 'the Wolf', we are told by all contemporary sources and B-P himself, because that was the nick-name by which he was known to the natives. The wolf, however, is not indigenous to Africa. Marguerite de Beaumont in her book The Wolf the Never Sleeps, says that the name 'Impeesa' meant 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' was first given to B-P during the Matabele Campaign of 1896. The natives of Matabeleland were very unlikely to have ever met the Barolong of the Mafeking district which was some 500 miles (800 kms) distance, and if they did they would not have spoken the same language.

As it was not the Mafeking natives that called B-P 'Impeesa', it is unlikely they would have understood why the gun was so called. The name undoubtedly must have been given by B-P's officers. Some perhaps read his book, The Matabele Campaign published by Methuen in London in 1897, as a copy of which is known to have been in Mafeking during the Siege.

On page 128 of that book, B-P mentions that during the campaign his 'boy' (photographed above) told him that the natives had given him the name of 'Impeesa', and translated this to mean "the beast that does not sleep but creeps about in the night."

The animal being described was a hyena. In Victorian England, and even today, the hyena does not enjoy a very good reputation, it being considered somewhat cowardly, living mainly off rotting dead flesh. As a result Baden-Powell changed the name himself to the supposedly 'braver' and considerably more romantic 'Wolf', and I cannot blame him for that.

B-P Remembers.

There is no doubt that B-P was immensely proud of the 'Wolf' and the men that built and operated it. When he came to design the £1 siege notes produced in Mafeking in March 1900, he featured the gun prominently. There were only 683 notes printed during the last two months of the siege and they are amongst the world's rarest banknotes.




When the Scout Association was formed in 1908, the main communication between the founder and the boys was via a weekly magazine 'The Scout', first published April 18th 1908. Issue No.6 on May 23rd 1908 has an article by the founder entitled: "HOW TO MAKE BRICKS WITHOUT STRAW". This article occupies a page of the magazine and the largest part of it is taken up with a description of the making of the gun out of such materials as could be found in Mafeking. The process is described by others on these pages in more detail than B-P allows, however, his commentary on the practical procedures employed is not to be found elsewhere.

The trunnion ring with its two protruding lugs that support the weight of the cannon on its carriage was made of molten bronze. Bronze needs to be heated to a very high temperature before it can be poured into the damp sand moulds with the pattern of the part pressed deeply into the sand by use of a wooden 'form' or model. The heat required has then to be concentrated on the crucible containing the bronze and not allowed to dissipate. This is achieved by placing it in a blast furnace lined with firebricks taken from the boiler lining of redundant locomotives in the engine works. (There were some fifteen there at the start of the siege only two or three were used in operations). An ordinary fire would not in itself produce a high enough temperature so air and therefore oxygen was forced into the fire by means of a steam engine.

“….. they pumped air into the furnace, as a blacksmith does his little fire, but on a big scale by means of a fan driven by engine through a hose pipe."

The ring was then placed over the barrel and as it cooled it contracted to a very tight fit. The breach or plug to the non-business end of the cannon was made in the same way.

Wolf Models

John Ineson, a well-known collector of Mafeking items has recorded that Private A. Forbes, a lathe turner of the Bechuanaland Rifles, was presented with a replica the Wolf and an original shell because he helped to make the Wolf. Though the whereabouts of this model is not known, Forbes' involvement with the weapon is corroborated in Lord Edward Cecil's (B-P's Staff Officer) General Orders of January 8th 1900, that states that he was to work in the Ordnance Factory from 6th January. Forbes had been an engineer in Aberdeen and was well qualified to carry out this work. Why he should have been presented with such a model is a mystery but perhaps the answer is that it was Forbes himself who made this model and also the other four that were known to exist. They were all made just after the siege in the Mafeking Railway workshops of steel, burnished to a 'silver' finish.

One of these trophies was presented to the town of Mafeking and is to be found to this day in the Mafeking Museum. A second was naturally presented to Baden-Powell, but the whereabouts of this model is no longer known, it may have been stolen when B-P's home at Pax Hill, Bentley, was burgled in 1936. Lord Roberts, according to Major Panzera's widow was presented with another, but the whereabouts of this model is also unknown. Major Panzera, possibly forgetting that at first he was opposed to the construction of the full-sized gun, was presented with a fourth.

This model, sold by Major Panzera's widow, pictured below, is now in the collection of Melvyn Gallagher.




'The Wolf' Today.

After the Siege, Major Panzera as its designer and the then Resident Commissioner in Mafeking felt the gun should remain there. There was an acrimonious exchange of correspondence. B-P claimed his entitlement stemmed from that fact that he had personally paid for the gun's manufacture. I am not sure how this could have worked out in practical terms as the men that made the gun were on the army's payroll. In the end, the 'Hero of Mafeking' was not to be denied and Lord Roberts had the gun brought back to England as a present for the King. His Majesty directed that it was to be placed in the Royal United Services Institute Museum in London. For some time now it has been on public exhibition at the Woolwich Arsenal where it is on display today as part of the Firepower Museum [closed in 2016; gun now in storage].








NOTE: The Firepower Museum closed in 2016, and the contents moved to Larkhill Barracks, Wiltshire. The guns are at present in storage, where they will remain until a new home for the Royal Artillery Museum's collection is built.


Colin Walker writes [December 2025]: I do have some copies left of my book entitled Mafeking's Artillery. The Book is A4 with72 page with previously unpublished text and photos, it was published in 2006. It is £15.00 plus postage.


..