Over on one of my other blogs I mention that there seems to be some confusion over the provenance of the Cooktown gun.

The myth is that in 1885 the town council was worried about a Russian invasion an requested help to defend the town, and were sent a single old and useless Napoleonic wars cannon

I havn’t got to the end of the story, but it’s true that in 1885 there was a major panic in Australia about the possibility of war with Russia over a border incident between Russia and the nominally independent emirate of Afghanistan – I say nominally independent, as while after various disastrous wars in Afghanistan throughout the nineteenth century, Britain had largely left Afghanistan to the Afghans, except for foreign policy, especially where Imperial Russia was concerned.

The British were worried, seriously worried, that as part of the Great Game Russia may somehow absorb Afghanistan as it had absorbed various other central Asian emirates, and that they would have Imperial Russia on the borders British India.

British India was key to the finances of the British Empire – without it the Empire was unsustainable, especially as the Australian colonies, New Zealand and Canada were self governing and did not contribute to the overall running of the Empire.

After the departure of British forces in the 1870s the Australian colonies largely looked after their own defence.

Some, such as gold rich Victoria took matters seriously and invested in defence with coastal defence batteries as at Port Fairy and a small coastal defence fleet. Others did less, and others such as Queensland were sort of in the middle with some coastal defence ships and a militia of sorts.

And then came 1885.

Imperial Germany was in the process of occupying what is now the northern half of PNG, and German warships were prowling off the coast of northern Australia, and somewhere, out in the Pacific was the Russian Empire’s pacific fleet.

Australia suddenly seemed very alone.

There was something not far short of panic, something reflected in the newspapers of the time.

And Cooktown, despite being an important steamship port and telegraph station was suddenly uncomfortably close to both the German forces in New Guinea and the Russian fleet, and a long way from the nearest help.

Not surprisingly there was a degree of panic with the town council asking if the government in Brisbane would pay to evecuate the (white) women and children, presumably while the men stayed to defend the town and hinterland from the tsar’s forces.

And this is where I suspect the myth of Cooktown being sent a Napoleonic war cannon to defend itself against the Russian fleet comes from.

I’ve no doubt the cannon was gifted by Queen Victoria, perhaps in connection with her 1887 Jubilee, and that this has somehow become mixed up with the military preparations in the event of a Russian invasion, and like all stories has grown in the telling….