The First Roars – Early British and Irish Lions tours 1888-1910

It’s nearly time for the British and Irish Lions tour to begin and I am experiencing the usual surge of anticipation and optimism at the prospect. On the back of this year’s shirt is a logo declaring this to be the 125^th anniversary of the first Lions tour.

1888 British squad

This first tour by a combined party comprising players from all four home nations to Australia and New Zealand in 1888 was a grand expedition, in which a squad of just 22 players would play in no less than 54 matches over a 21 week period. The tour was arranged by a triumvirate of English cricketing luminaries who had succeeded in turning a handsome profit from arranging cricketing tours to Australia and now sought to do the same with rugby union. Their proposal to offer players compensation for their loss of time in addition to covering their expenses, which were considerable with the tour lasting eight months including travel, caused outrage in the committee rooms of the home unions who denounced the venture as being tainted by professionalism. There was no dirtier word in rugby in those days!

The players on this first tour were not known as Lions, neither did they travel with the blessing or endorsement of their home unions. Nevertheless the tour invoked the spirit which has continued down to this day. The tourists played 16 matches in Australia and 19 in New Zealand. In addition they took on the Aussies at their own game in 19 matches of ‘Victorian Rules football’ as the uniquely Australian variation of the game was then called.

Of the 35 rugby matches they won 27, although they were not always on form. Following a dismal performance to lose 4-0 against Auckland the British team were castigated by the tour manager for indulging in ‘too much whiskey and women!’ The tour was hit by tragedy when the team captain Bob Seddon drowned in a rowing accident whilst enjoying some leisure time on the Hunter River in New South Wales. The show nevertheless went on. Seddon’s replacement as captain was legendary all-rounder Andrew Stoddart who is better known for his cricketing exploits as an Ashes-winning captain but also captained the English rugby team in ten internationals. In addition to Seddon and Stoddart only two other members of the first British touring side would ever be capped by their home nations; Englishman Tom Kent and Welshman Willie Thomas.

 

Andrew Stoddart

The 1888 tour did not deliver the big payday that its organisers had hoped for, nevertheless the idea caught on. British touring sides continued to ply their trade in the Southern Hemisphere. A British tour to South Africa in 1891 was a remarkable triumph, in which the tourists won all three test matches against the Springboks as well as all 17 provincial matches played. Oh that we should see such times again! Another tour of South Africa in 1896 saw the first international victory for South Africa, winning a single test but losing the series 3-1. A winning tour of Australia followed in 1899 with a 3-1 series victory. The dominance was not set to last however and soon the colonials were fighting back. The British side lost the only test match in South Africa in 1903 and in 1904 on a tour of both New Zealand and Australia they whitewashed the Aussies 3-0 but were beaten by the All Blacks in a single test. In the three test match series against New Zealand four years later the British team could only manage a single draw and were twice beaten.

By 1910 the four home unions had at last all come around to the idea of a combined touring party from all four nations being a jolly spiffing one. The tour to South Africa in this year was therefore the first to set out with the formal blessing of all four unions and is seen as the first ‘true’ lions tour. The name ‘Lions’ was not coined until 1924 however, when journalists covering that year’s tour of South Africa noted the lion motif sported on the ties and blazers of the British team. The test series was a 2-1 loss. In the early days the British teams played in red, white and blue stripped jerseys and later in dark blue. The quartered crest with the emblems of the four nations was adopted in 1924 and the red jersey was first seen in 1950.

 

 1910 British team

The 14 year hiatus in British overseas touring activities following the 1910 tour heralds the shadow of the Great War across this story and as you might expect many of those who took part in these early tours were young and fit at the time that war broke out and naturally served in the conflict. Eleven of them made the ultimate sacrifice.

Alex Todd, who scored a try in the second test against South Africa in 1896 fell at Ypres. Charlie Adamson; the top points scorer of the 1899 tour with two test match tries, who was capable of playing in any of the back positions, died at Salonica just two months before the end of the war. Jimmy Hossack, a forward on the 1903 tour was killed at Kangata in East Africa.

Four players from the 1904 tour to Australia and New Zealand; Sidney Crowther, Blair Swannell, Ron Rogers and David Bedell-Sivright lost their lives in the Great War. Swannell (pictured below left) was a notoriously tough forward who had settled in Australia. He was capped once by that country and fell during the landing at Anzac cove on the first day of the Gallipoli campaign. Bedell-Sivright, the 1904 captain, was a Naval Surgeon who contracted septicaemia whilst serving in Gallipoli. Rogers also lost his life at Gallipoli whilst fellow English forward Crowther was killed whilst serving as a motorcycle dispatch rider in Flanders.

Johnnie Williams (right) was a Welsh winger with a signature swerve. He was the top try scorer on the 1908 tour to Australia and New Zealand. He fell at Mametz Wood.

Three of the 1910 Lions were killed in action. Scottish Scrum half Eric Milroy fell at Delville Wood serving with the Black Watch. Welsh forward Phil Waller, who played in all three tests, remained in South Africa and played for the Golden Lions before joining the South African Artillery. He was killed at Arras. Welsh fly half Noel Humphreys served as a captain in the tank corps and was awarded the Military Cross for conspicuous gallantry after remaining with his stranded tank and digging it out whilst under enemy fire; recovering the tank and rejoining the battle in spite of being wounded. Humphreys later died of his wounds in March 1918.

1910 full back Stanley Williams survived the war and was awarded the DSO. Scottish centre Charles Timms served as a medical officer and was awarded the Military Cross on four occasions. Irish forward William Tyrrell also served as a medical officer, was mentioned in dispatches on six occasions and was awarded the MC and DSO.

One other hero who  is worthy of mention from the 1910 Lions squad is Welsh forward Harry Jarman, who played in all three tests. Jarman was killed in 1928 after he flung himself in front of a runaway coal truck which was careering towards a group of playing children.

Then as now, British Lions were a special breed of men. Enjoy the games.

http://www.lionsrugby.com/history/index.php

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Enemies at the Gate Part One – The reign of Michael III

Greetings Dear Reader. Let us resume the story of the Byzantine Empire’s efforts to resist all of those who sought to assail it throughout its long and illustrious history. I shall begin this post at the point at which the iconoclasm series left off. We find ourselves therefore in the reign of Emperor Michael III who ascended to the Byzantine throne in 842 as a two year old child. Power naturally rested with his widowed mother the Empress Theodora who, together with her ally and chief councillor the Logothete Theoctistus now held sway over the empire and presided over the triumphant restoration of the icons.

Theoctistus, like many a powerful Byzantine courtier was a eunuch, but this in no way debarred him from taking the lead of a military expedition. Since its capture by the Arabs the island of Crete had become a nest of pirates, whose activities included attacking Imperial shipping and raiding the Aegean islands and coastal settlements. In 843 Theoctistus set out at the head of an expeditionary force with the aim of retaking the island.

Arab fleet invades Crete

The expedition was initially successful and Theoctistus’ troops were able to virtually overrun the island. With victory in his grasp however, the Logothete lost his nerve when a rumour reached him of a plot to supplant him in the capital. Returning at once to Constantinople, Theoctistus left the expedition leaderless and in his absence the Arabs were able to fight back. Supported and reinforced by their co-religionists in Egypt the Arab defenders ultimately succeeded in annihilating the Byzantine expeditionary force. In the following year Theoctistus presided over another calamitous defeat at Mauropotamus in Cappadocia when his attempt to thwart an Abbasid invasion was crippled by mass desertions to the enemy. Following this defeat a period of truce was agreed between the Byzantine and Abbasid courts which allowed Theodora and Theoctistus to concentrate on the elimination of domestic enemies. The dualist sect of the Paulicians, whose numbers were on the increase in Cilicia, were subjected to a campaign of systematic persecution, causing many to flee to the lands of the Caliphate for protection. Those who remained faced a stark choice between conversion and death with most choosing the latter. The campaign against them was a short-sighted display of religious intolerance which drove the relatively harmless but numerous sect into the arms of the Arabs, depriving the empire of useful manpower.

In 853 came Theoctistus’ most notable triumph when he decided to strike against the port city of Damietta in the Nile Delta. It was a prime target; packed with ships and timber and the materials of war. Its destruction would severely hamstring Arab efforts to wage war against the empire at sea. Striking at the time of a major festival being held in Fustat, the Byzantine fleet commanded by another eunuch named Damianus fell upon the poorly defended port, disgorging five thousand troops to sack and burn the town in a two day orgy of destruction.

Theoctistus had redeemed his reputation but his continuing stranglehold on the affairs of the empire alongside Theodora was beginning to vex the young emperor Michael. By the time he had reached the age of fifteen Michael was giving vent to his frustration and found a sympathetic ear in the person of his uncle Bardas who was happy to arrange the arrest and cold-blooded murder of the Logothete and the confinement of Theodora to a nunnery. Michael was a weak-willed individual however and soon found that he had exchanged the dominance of his mother and her eunuch councillor for that of his uncle ,who would ultimately come to hold the rank of Caesar. The Patriarch Ignatius who opposed both Bardas’ increasing grip on affairs and his incestuous marriage to his own niece also soon found himself accused of conspiring with the emperor’s mother and was swiftly deposed and packed off to a monastery.

 

Michael III depicted as sole ruler on coin from British Museum collection (P Clayton)

 

Under Bardas the empire remained on an aggressive footing. Bardas’ brother Petronas led a raid deep into Arab territory in 856, ostensibly against the Paulicians, reaching Amida on the Tigris and returning heavy with captives and plunder. Three years later another raid was launched across the Euphrates which the emperor himself accompanied and in the same year another amphibious attack was made on Damietta which once again devastated the port.

In the summer of 860 whilst the emperor remained away from his capital in the east with Bardas, Petronas and most of his armed forces, a new threat to Constantinople itself appeared from an entirely unexpected direction. On the northern horizon there appeared a great swarm of sails and soon the terrorised citizens beheld the awful spectacle of a two hundred strong fleet of longships descending upon them. These were the Rus; adventurers of Scandinavian extraction who had set out to make a new home for themselves in the uncharted vastness of Russia. Here the hardy Vikings had both subjugated and been at least partially culturally assimilated by the indigenous Slavic population over the course of a generation or two. They had found plenty to trade in the form of furs, amber and slaves and had made use of the network of great rivers to explore southwards, reaching the Black Sea and establishing friendly commercial contacts with the peoples through whose lands they travelled. These particular raiders had been dispatched southwards by Rurik; the ruler of the settlement of Novgarod, to seize control of the commercially useful staging post of Kiev on the Dneiper. Having achieved this objective without difficulty, Rurik’s expeditionary force and their Slavic followers proceeded down the Dnieper into the Black Sea and thence to Constantinople. Swarming into the Bosphorus ‘like wasps’ as the Patriarch Photius described them, these invaders fell upon the vulnerable monasteries along the shore and on the islands in the Marmara. The imperial fleet was also absent and so the Rus burned and pillaged as they saw fit; destroying everything outside of the protective walls of the capital quite unopposed. The city itself remained invulnerable however and so once all  of the easy pickings had been taken the Rus turned for home.

A later legend grew up around the raid, which is preserved in the Russian Primary Chronicle, in which the Patriarch Photius dipped the sacred relic of the robe of the Virgin Mary into the waters of the Golden Horn. All at once a storm blew up and scattered the ships. The Rus however would be back.

When the Emperor had set forth against the infidels and had arrived at the Black River, the eparch sent him word that the Rus were approaching Tsargrad, and the Emperor turned back. Upon arriving inside the strait, the Rus made a great massacre of the Christians, and attacked Tsargrad in two hundred boats. The Emperor succeeded with difficulty in entering the city. He straightway hastened with the Patriarch Photius to the Church of Our Lady of the Blachernae, where they prayed all night. They also sang hymns and carried the sacred vestment of the Virgin to dip it in the sea. The weather was still, and the sea was calm,but a storm of wind came up, and when great waves straightway rose, confusing the boats of the godless Rus, it threw them upon the shore and broke them up, so that few escaped such destruction and returned to their native land.

Excerpt from Russian Primary Chronicle and detail from Kremlin fresco showing Photius dipping the robe of the Virgin in the sea.

With the capital once more safe and secure the emperor Michael could relax and enjoy himself; something in which he excelled. Leaving affairs of state in the hands of his uncle, the emperor spent his days drinking and attending the races with his closest companion Basil. Bardas meanwhile kept the empire on a war footing. In 863 the Caesar’s repeated stirring of the Muslim hornets’ nest elicited a response from Umar al Aqta; the Emir of Melitene and Islam’s most formidable warrior. Umar invaded the empire through Armenia and penetrated as far as the Black Sea coast, sacking the city of Amisus. Petronas was dispatched once more with a force of fifty thousand men and succeeded in pulling off a brilliant encirclement of Umar’s forces at Poson on the River Lalakaon. Cut down in the fighting, Umar was beheaded and his head was carried back to Constantinople on the tip of a lance to be presented to the emperor.

Defeat of Umar

Further emboldened by this success, Bardas began planning a grand new expedition for the reconquest of Crete. Troops were gathered and the fleet was prepared. By the Spring of 866 all was in readiness and the army marched out of the city accompanied by the Emperor who would see the expedition off at its point of embarkation. Unknown to Bardas however, a plot against his life was already in motion. The emperor’s favoured companion Basil, whom the Caesar had dismissed as a harmless roustabout, harboured great ambitions; ambitions which would only be furthered by removing Bardas. Basil therefore had been whispering in Michael’s ear; whispering that his uncle wished to supplant him and make himself emperor in his stead. To these poisonous whisperings Michael gave credence all too readily and gave his tacit agreement to a conspiracy to assassinate Bardas. On the day of the embarkation a pavilion had been erected from which the emperor and his attendant courtiers would watch the expeditionary troops march past. At an agreed signal Basil and an accomplice drew their swords and set upon the Caesar Bardas; cutting him down at the emperor’s feet.

 

With Bardas’ murder the grand expedition against Crete was forgotten and Michael III returned to Constantinople; there to raise up his uncle’s murderer, incredibly, as joint ruler alongside him. Michael, predictably enough, once more left affairs of state in the hands of Basil whilst he spent his days indulging in chariot racing and drinking himself insensible. It would prove to be a fatal decision for Basil’s ambition knew no bounds .Within a year Basil had tired of sharing the purple with his friend and benefactor and he struck once more; having Michael hacked to pieces in his own bed-chamber as he lay in a drunken stupor.

 

Assassination of Bardas

 

Michael III ‘the Sot’ had been, by and large, a spectator to his own reign; sitting back with cup in hand whilst better men had seen the empire through the challenges that had faced it. Theoctistus and his uncles Bardas and Petronas had waged war against the Saracens whilst the highly capable Patriarch Photius had advanced the cause of Christianity amongst the Bulgars and Slavs to the west through an intense campaign of missionary activity and had perhaps even turned back the Rus with a miracle! The usurper Basil inherited an empire in good  health, for which his predecessor was owed little and whose demise was largely unlamented. To his murdered friend Michael however, who had raised him up from a  humble stable hand to the throne of empire, Basil owed everything.

The Damietta Raid

http://byzantinemilitary.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/War%20-%20Sack%20of%20Damietta%20Egypt

The Russian Primary Chronicle 

http://www.utoronto.ca/elul/English/218/PVL-selections.pdf

 

To continue the story go to Enemies at the Gate Part Two

http://slingsandarrowsblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/enemies-at-gate-part-three-basil-i-and.html