Part 1 of 2
WILLIAM Hall volunteered for the Royal Navy in 1852, and saw action aboard HMS Rodney in the Crimea, at Inkerman and Sevastopol. Five years later, at the outbreak of the Indian Mutiny,* he was in Hong Kong on HMS Shannon when she was urgently summoned to Calcutta, and towed 600 miles up the Ganges to Allahabad.
A brigade of 450 men, including Hall, then dragged her guns 160 miles through rebel-held country to Cawnpore and Lucknow, to help Sir Colin Campbell relieve the besieged Residency there.* Hall was captain of the foretop,* but volunteered to join the gunnery crews, as they were a man short.
Under the direction of his Captain, William Peel, Hall helped to trundle four guns up close to the Shah Najaf imambara,* from which the rebels were raining down musket shot and grenades.* One by one the gunners were wounded or killed. Peel was hit in the leg. Hall was unscathed, but soon just two gun-crews were left, and little progress had been made.
See The Indian Mutiny.
See The Siege of Lucknow. Cawnpore is Kanpur.
That is, he was in charge of the crew responsible for the forward mast of the ship, its rigging, maintenance and use in all weathers and situations – physically demanding and skilful work. At his retirement he was Petty Officer First Class aboard HMS Royal Adelaide.
The Shah Najaf imambara was built in 1817 as a mausoleum for King Ghazi-ud-Din Haider of Awadh (Oudh), in whose realm Lucknow lay. An imambara is not the same as a mosque: its use is restricted to certain Shia ceremonies throughout the year.
Sir Henry Lawrence, whose Residency was being defended in the siege, had given strict instructions that holy places within the grounds of the Residency must be kept as intact as possible, but the Sikandar Bagh and the Shah Najaf were rebel-held positions. See a map of Positions held by the British in the Siege of Lucknow, June-November 1857. Shah Najaf and the Sikandar Bagh can be seen to the right.
Précis
William Hall was a black Canadian sailor who was serving on HMS SHannon in 1857 when the Indian Mutiny broke out. Shannon was called over to India from Hong Kong, and her guns brought overland to Lucknow, where Hall joined four gunnery crews hoping to breach the rebels’ defensives and relieve a four-month siege of the Residency there. (57 / 60 words)
Part Two
THE two remaining guns were now pushed to within twenty feet of the rebels. Before long there was just one gun, and just two men to work it: William Hall, and gunnery officer Lieutenant Thomas Young.
Doing the work of six under relentless enemy fire, they front-loaded and fired their solitary 24-pounder until the wall was breached, and the rebels driven back. Hall and Young were among five of Shannon’s crew, and sixteen men in total, who won the Victoria Cross on that day, November 16th. Three days later, the men, women and children trapped in the Residency were evacuated after a four-month ordeal.
William retired in 1876 to his farm at Horton Bluff, Nova Scotia, but in 1901 he turned out for a parade in honour of a visit by George, Duke of Cornwall and York, son of King Edward VII. William’s medals caught George’s eye, and he did not squander the chance to talk to the first black recipient of the Victoria Cross.
Précis
Under a hail of gunfire and grenades, three of the four British gun crews were killed or wounded, and only Hall and gunnery officer Thomas Young were left to operate the remaining gun. But they stayed at their posts until the rebels’ defences were breached, for which both received the Victoria Cross. Hall was the first black recipient ever. (59 / 60 words)