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Updated: June 19, 2025
Cary, and I must take you to lunch with the Admiral this very day. You can explain the plant better than I can, and he is dying to hear all about it. Oh, by the way, he particularly wants a description of the failure to complete the latest batch of big shell fuses, and the shortage of lyddite. You might get that done before the evening. Now for the burglary.
Sometimes we pitied the Boers; but were not cognisant, of course, in such weak moments, of the disinfecting qualities of bottled vinegar; we did not then know that a portable cruet formed part and parcel of each burgher's kit. It did not need a protest from General Joubert against the use of lyddite to confirm our impressions of what it could do.
I interviewed the sailors on the accomplishments of the new-comer, and on the effects especially of lyddite, about which we hear so much. One must allow for a little friendly exaggeration, but if the mixture of truth is in any decent proportion, I should say that spades to bury dead Boers with are all the weapons that the rest of us will require in future.
It may have been one of the sad necessities of war time, but was a fact, nevertheless, deeply to be deplored, that at four o'clock on Sunday afternoon our guns, which had been silent for a fortnight, again opened fire and shelled the Boers with lyddite.
The main armament of the Astronef consisted of four pneumatic guns, which could be mounted on swivels, two ahead and two astern, which carried a shell containing either one of two kinds of explosives invented by her creator. One of these was a solid, and burst on impact with an explosive force equal to about twenty pounds of lyddite.
Lyddite shells hurtling around the tomb and the Khalifa's quarters. Like a spouting volcano, clouds of flame, stones, and dust burst from out the city. The line of strong forts before the town and upon Tuti island had been silenced by them and the gunboats the previous day.
"In spite iv their heavy losses th' Boers kept up a fierce fire. They had no lyddite, but with their other divvlish modhern explosives they wrought thremenjous damage. F'r some hours shells burst with turr'ble precision in th' British camp. Wan man who was good at figures counted as manny as forty-two thousan' eight hundhred an' sivin burstin' within a radyus iv wan fut.
The gun uses shrapnel as well, but relies for its main effects on lyddite. As for this horrible contrivance, all I can say is that the Geneva Conference ought to interdict it. The effects of the explosion of a lyddite shell are as follows: Any one within 50 yards is obliterated, blown clean away. From 50 to 100 yards they are killed by the force of the concussion of the air.
Doyle, however, is not sure about the effect of these powerful guns, for he says: "Although the rims of the kopje were being pounded by lyddite and other bombs it is doubtful whether this terrific fire did much damage among the enemy, as seven English officers and 70 men were lying dead on the kopje against only a few Boers, who were found to have been wounded."
They made very light of lyddite, and laughed at the legend that the fumes are dangerous. In action they leave all their horses in the rear, unwatched, or with a man or two. They said, "Yes: a very small stone suffices to shelter him." They talked very good English. The right section have turned up and, I hear, are camped about two miles away.
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