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Canopus Hill Guns get a Facelift By
Robert Rowlands The Naval six-inch guns sited on Canopus Hill have had their paint work refurbished for the first time in many years during this last week. The work was arranged by Stanley Services Limited and carried out by John Reid and Willie Youngson, employees of Forblast Limited of Dufftown, Scotland; they were in the Islands on a tank painting contract at Stanley Services Limited's fuel terminal. Plant used in the task was donated by Neil McKay. The work involved shot blasting away all rust possible and one hundred years of coatings along with many Falklands autographs etched in over the years; they were then coated with primer and finished in grey. It was noted that one barrel was dated 1900 and the other 1902; this would correspond with the launching of HMS Lancaster in 1902. They are known locally as the Canopus Guns which causes some historical confusion; the hill where they are now sited at Stanley Airport was named after HMS Canopus which, under the command of Captain Heathcote Grant, on 8 December 1914 was moored at the east end of Stanley Harbour hidden from the sea and, at 9.20am, fired her twelve-inch guns on the unsuspecting approaching German ships Gneisenau and Nurnberg who were surprised; the second salvo from Canopus at 11 kilometre range was close enough to splash Gneisenau. Both ships promptly turned away to the south east before they could hit the Marconi Wireless station or Stanley and gave Admiral Sturdee's fleet, which had arrived in Port William the previous day, time to get up steam and raise anchors to take up the pursuit. the guns arrived in the Islands in 1916 on HMS Lancaster, which was armed with 14 six-inch guns with a maximum firing range of 10.2 kilometres. HMS Lancaster was a sister to HMS Kent whose heroic crew burnt all wood on board including the timber of her decks in action on 8 December and reached a speed of 24 knots, catching up with Nurnberg, and after a two and a half hour battle, the German vessel was sunk with only seven survivors from her four hundred man crew. During this time HMS Kent received 37 shell hits and suffered twelve wounded and four dead. On arrival in the Islands, one of the guns was sited at the east end of Mount Low and the other on Sappers Hill behind Stanley. In 1932 men from HMS Durban dragged the gun from its mountain site to Sparrow Cove, loaded it on a Falkland Islands Company lighter and brought it to Stanley. It was then unloaded and, with the strength of eighty sailors, fifty government employees and two Public Works Department Morris lorries, taken to Sappers Hill, the whole operation having taken fourteen days. The captain of HMS Durban wrote at the time: "It might have been an interesting spectacle to attract islanders, but only two small boys and a girl took some slight interest; you would have thought it an every day occurrence. Truly a strange people living in a strange land." The ship's epitaph to the event read: In
everlasting memory One of the two guns' next journey was in the 1930s when it was dragged again by hundreds of men and the PWD Morris lorries from Sappers Hill to its present site; the second unit was moved from Sappers Hill by five hundred men of the West Yorkshire regiment in the 1940s. It has been told that they had to excavate twenty-two feet of peat out by buckets on a rope to prepare each foundation to mount them in the current site. It is hoped that the donation by the three companies involved will help preserve these surviving parts of Falkland naval history. Robert Rowlands is the manager of Stanley Services Limited, which provides the Islands' supplies of diesel, kerosene and petrol First published in the Penguin News, 25 February 2005, and reproduced with the kind permission of the Editor
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