Thunder and Lightning: The Gilded Age

THE bad man of the border land is fast passing away.

The Apache Kid and his gang of marauders and cut-throats, who murdered some twenty-two settlers, miners and teamsters along the Rio Grande border between 1890 and 1897, have gone into their graves. The Lopez band that terrorized the ranchmen and miners in Southern New Mexico and in Western Texas for ten years has been put to flight across the Rio Grande. Last month the Butch Cassidy gang of outlaws of Utah was forever dispersed and the leader shot and killed 200 miles south of Salt Lake City. Close upon this new has come the information that the last of the horrible Silva gang of Northern New Mexico has gone to the penitentiary at Santa Fe for a life term.

Old-timers all say that the Silva gang of cut-throats and thieves was the most perfectly organized ever known in the Southwest. For the five years that the Silva gang was in existence in Las Vegas the ranchmen, merchants and traders in that part of the Territory were in constant dread that their property might be robbed at any time by the unknown thieves. The people who lived on lonely sheep and cattle ranches out in the foothills were afraid to go abroad at night lest they, too, would be found dead at the hands of an unknown murderer. All the cattle ranchmen were at their wits' ends to discover how their herds were lessening.

When Colonel W. A. Adams (a cousin, by the way, of the late George M. Pullman) and his two stalwart sons were found dead at their ranch home on their sheep range over thirty miles south of Los Cerillos and their gory bodies had bullets in their heads and stabs in their chests, it was generally believed the Pueblo Indians had again revenged themselves on the white men. Vicente Silva himself went about declaring that he would be one of a committee to go and bring the Indians to justice. The ranchmen were horrified at the crime.

It transpired two years ago, however, that the murder was one of the deeds of Silva's gang and that it was done because Colonel Adams had discovered who was robbing him and his fellow sheep raisers and was about to expose the robbers. All in all the Silva gang was as desperate and at the same time as sagacious as any band of outlaws yet known in the Territories. How many crimes may be attributed to the gang will never be known, the crimes were so far apart and committed by different groups of men. So many of them also were thought at the time to have been committed by Indians and drunken cowboys.

Silva, the leader and organizer of that gang, was the last man the people of Las Vegas would have suspected of being the promoter of all the rapine and blood-shedding in that region. Vicente Silva was a saloon keeper in Las Vegas. He was born in San Bernalillo County, New Mexico, in 1845, was tall and well built and had an intelligent face and agreeable manners. He once ran for Sheriff and had a large vote. He was reared a neighbor of the Navajo Indians, and as a youth he saw repeated wanton murders, and knew all about robberies and rapine. It is natural then that he was an outlaw at 20. He went with a dozen other Mexicans to Wyoming in 1877, and was a vaquero there for about a year. One day he met the wife of a Mexican railroad laborer and together they started on broncos across the country for Colorado. The husband, Felipe Aguilar, came home the next day and started post haste after the elopers. What took place was never fully known, but Silva and his new wife reached Las Vegas, worn out and ragged, after weeks of horseback travel, and a month later the news followed after them that an American farmer in Southern Wyoming, near Cheyenne, had found the decomposed remains of a man, who resembled Felipe Aguilar beneath a straw stack. The head was nearly cut off, and there were mortal cuts through the chest. No one ever doubted that Felipe had come upon Silva and the eloping wife, and that the husband had been stabbed to death and his body concealed in the straw stack. But those were rude days.

By a lucky find of a small silver mine in Southern Colorado Silva had some capital. Ho opened a saloon on the old plaza in Las Vegas, and did a good business from the first day. His winning ways, his big mahogany bar and his gorgeous gambling rooms upstairs made this place a center of attraction. The cattle and sheep herders and silver miners made money fast in those days, and his place became the most frequented in San Miguel County. There was always a crowd of cowboys, sheep herders and wool and cattle buyers at Silva's, and the old-timers say that some of the most exciting moments they have ever known in the Territories were those in Vicente Silva's saloon of an evening, when the Mexicans from the ranges had become drunk and ugly. The cattle and wool business rapidly declined in 1887 and 1888, and custom at Silva's bar fell away fast.

Hard times and an extravagant taste quickly bred in Silva the old-time taste for outlawry as an easy means of livelihood, and, while he laughed and joked with patrons at his bar, and gave ostentatiously and generously to charity, he was secretly and at night organizing the most thorough band of marauders yet known in that region. He had been in Colorado and he saw how cattle and horses might be driven there through the unfrequented passes in the Rockies, and how they might be sold in small bunches for large prices per head at the numerous mining camps in Colorado without exciting comment and investigation. Then, too, his long association with the Mexican vaqueros in Northern New Mexico—especially in San Miguel, Santa Fe and San Bernalillo counties —made him familiar with the men most suitable for an organization for robbery and plunder, and he made few errors in his choice of followers.

The meeting place of the new band was the Silva saloon, at night, after the lights had been put out and the business closed. No bands of Molly Maguire’s were ever bound by such secrecy and oaths as were the men who joined the Silva gang. Robbery of cattle horses and sheep from the numerous lonely ranches in Northern Now Mexico, with occasional burglary, and a murder if it became necessary In the course of operations, was the purpose of the band. Silva bought for a mere song a ranch thirty-two miles from Las Vegas (near San Pedro), among the Raton Mountains, as the base of operations for his secret band of robbers. A more isolated and uninviting spot could hardly have been found in all that region. Scarcely a dozen people went that way in the course of a year. The route there twisted among towering cliffs and pinnacles of granite. Patricio Maes and Manuel Maldonado were appointed to look after the ranch, and to tell possible inquirers that it was Silva's property.

It was smooth sailing for the band for several years. Silva laughed and played the agreeable host at his saloon and gave money to the church and for the orphans' Home and poor old people about town. But almost every day he had reports from the members of his band, and once a week or fortnight there was a secret meeting at night among the dark, heavy old adobe buildings in Las Vegas. Periodically there was a division of the proceeds from recent sales of cattle, mules and sheep from Silva's mountain ranch to the buyers for the Eastern stockyards. The ranchmen were continually complaining of thefts of cattle and horses from their herds. The several Sheriffs and their deputies scoured the country over for the thieves, and the ranchmen banded themselves together to protect their property. Still the thefts went on.

In July, 1891, over seventy cattle were reported stolen, and three small post-offices were robbed. There were mysterious disappearances, also, of miners and cowboys, who carried money about their persons, and had no interested relatives in the Territory. For instance, Pedro Vejar was seen going to Las Vegas one evening in May, 1890, after he had sold his wool for $200. He was never seen alive again. Then there was Antonio Vasquez, who drew two months' pay from the Santa Fe Railroad Company one afternoon, and was seen last at Silva's saloon a few hours later, partially drunk. His cousin and sister searched diligently for him, but not a clue could ever be had to his fate. Ramon Oberro disappeared in the winter of 1891-92 along with $300 from his sale of mules. The Indians were given a good deal of credit for the crimes, but no evidence could ever be found against any of them.

The people were shocked when the news came in the summer of 1891 that the ranch home of George E. Payson (in San Bernalillo County), a young man just out from Cairo, Ill., had been found broken into and the remains lay badly decomposed on the floor, where the young man had fallen in a desperate encounter with unknown murderers. The house had been robbed of the money Payson was believed to have had there, besides its valuables. A bunch of cattle had been killed and skinned on the ranch. There was never even the faintest clue to the murderers and robbers, except that several skins bearing Payson's brand were found a year later after Silva had been killed, among several hundred skins secreted at the Silva ranch near San Pedro.

"There is no doubt that the earth under Silva's old saloon over there across the plaza holds a number of bodies of men who have mysteriously disappeared from this locality," said a merchant at Las Vegas recently to the writer as he talked of the crimes that the arrested members of the Silva gang had confessed in court and the findings of the detectives. "But the men who disappeared were persons without friends and relatives here and no one wants to pull up the floor and dig. Besides, what good would it do now, anyway? Seven people quite well known in San Miguel County dropped out of sight from 1888 to 1892. The Sheriffs of Santa Fe and San Miguel counties had a constant flow of reports of robberies of cattle and horses and burglaries of ranch houses and isolated stores, and they and their deputies were ceaselessly vigilant. There was not a clue to be had as to the offenders, search as hard as they could. Silva himself joined an organization and contributed money toward detecting the robbers and for finding what had become of the men who had so strangely disappeared."

The gang grew bolder and the secret of the frequent crimes came suddenly at last. Refugio Esquibel, the wealthiest ranchman in San Miguel County, found four of his best bred horses missing from the range. With his ranchmen he went hunting over the mountains for the animals. He came upon them in the little rock corral at Silva's lonely ranch and forthwith he went and notified the Sheriff that at last a clue had been had to the thieves who had so long been robbing the ranches for miles around. Patricio Maes, who was at the corral, was arrested and fearful of lynching he secretly offered to tell all about the robbers. He was accordingly let go for a week, in which time he was to get more accurate information for the police officers. That was in October. 1892.

A secret report was made to Silva at his saloon that Maes was about to tell all. An order that the gang only knew went forth for a business meeting at midnight at the saloon. It was believed another dividend was pending, and every one of the band was there. Then the gang assembled, coming one at a time, and being admitted by a sign at the rear door. Silva presided. Maes sat there, unmindful of the purpose of the meeting. A member rose and charged Maes with perfidy to the gang, and told what he knew about Maes' agreement to reveal the gang to the officers. A brief trial was held. Maes denied and other members of the band told what they knew about Maes' perfidy. Silva called for a vote on the guilt or innocence of the accused. Every one voted "guilty." Death had been agreed upon as the punishment for perfidy when the gang had been organized. Silva had prepared for the decision of guilty, and he had a rope and noose hidden behind his saloon.

In the partial darkness Maes was bound and gagged by his companions. He begged and wept that his life be spared. He began to shout, but he was choked by the noose about his throat. Half dead with fear the wretch was quietly dragged along the narrow streets of Las Vegas an hour before dawn to the bridge over Gallinas Creek. There amid a blinding snowstorm he was hanged from a stringer. When October 22, 1892, dawned the body of Patrick Maes, stiff, cold and covered with snow, swayed to and fro in the wind that was blowing over Raton Mountains. The Coroner's jury decided that he had been lynched for an unknown crime.

Events moved swiftly with the Silva gang after that. Silva knew that he was suspected. He fled on October 26 to a secret hiding place in the mountains near Los Alamos. He was indicted for horse and cattle stealing on November 7, 1892, and became a refugee from justice. The Governor of the Territory and the Sheriffs in Northern New Mexico together offered $1000 for his capture.

Suspecting that his wife and her youthful brother, Gabriel Sandoval, were giving information to the Sheriff and the secret organization of citizens that were slowly uncovering the crimes of his band, Silva determined to get rid of his family. So he set about planning how to expeditiously and with no suspicion of guilt on himself kill his wife and her younger brother. The plans were finished by January 23, 1893, and on the evening of that day Silva and Guadalupe Caballero rode stealthily to Las Vegas. Two policemen in the town, Julian Trugelio and Jose Chavez Chavez, who had been partially in league with the robbers and murderers from the first, were sought out. They agreed to go with Silva to his own adobe home and stand guard at the door while Silva and Caballero went inside to deliberately stab Mrs. Silva and her brother to death. Jose Chavez Chavez was sent ahead to spy out the situation at the Silva home before Silva and Caballero went there. Chavez came back and reported that Mrs. Silva had company, and that he had reconsidered and would not be a party to killing a woman who had been friendly to him.

The deed must be done that night anyhow, so the plan of procedure was quickly altered. Young Gabriel Sandoval was to be lured from his sister's home and then quietly slain. When that was over Silva was to go home to his wife, as if he had just come in secretly and hurriedly from his refuge in the mountains, and force her to flee with him back to the mountains, where her murder might be accomplished more at leisure and with no witnesses to the crime.

Those plan suited Policeman Jose Chavez, who, as an officer of the law, did not wish quite such a wholesale murder as was first proposed. Trugelio was sent to tell young Sandoval that he was wanted at the home of a sick friend in another part of Las Vegas. The young man responded to the call. Just as he was hurriedly passing along a narrow dark street, lined with one-story adobe houses, Silva leaped from a dark retreat and stabbed him. Sandoval uttered a shriek and Jose Chavez, fearing the noise would rouse the neighbors, struck the youth upon the head with a revolver until the skull was fractured. All the party fled but Silva and Caballero, who carried the body to a cesspool nearby. It was dug out two years later, when the details of the crime were confessed.

After washing his hands at Policeman Chavez's house, after the murder of Sandoval, Vicente Silva hastened to his wife. He protested his love and devotion to her and told how he had risked his very life to come to see her again. He soon induced her to leave at once with him for his hiding place among the mountains. No one knows what occurred on that ride along the lonely trail from Las Vegas to the Raton Mountains that cold January night. When Silva returned to his half dozen marauding followers the next day he said he had finished the job, and there would be no more "squealing down-in Las Vegas”. Two months later, when the gang was known and several men in were tumbling over one another in their anxiety to tell all they knew and save their necks from hanging, the body of Mrs. Silva was dug from a shallow grave in an arroyo in God-forsaken region near San Pedro. A dozen mortal, stabs about the chest told the story her death. Frightful lacerations on the dead woman’s hands told the struggle she made with her bandit husband while he stabbed her. In March, 1893, the Sheriffs of San Miguel and Santa Fe counties had got abundance of evidence as to the men who composed Vicente Silva’s gang. Twenty arrests were made in a few weeks. Several men were brought back from Texas and from the southern part of the Territory. Four made explicit confessions and three more told parts of the details of the long series of crimes. Silva was dead and there was no longer fear of vengeance from him.

Then the mills of justice in the Government courts in New Mexico began to grind. They ground very slowly and they have not ground so fine, after all, for four years the cases of the Silva gang have been in every term of the United States courts in New Mexico. The whole Territory, especially the Mexican, has watched the cases with deep interest. Three men were not convicted. Four were sentenced to death, and their sentences commuted to imprisonment for life. Three have been hanged. Five are serving sentences varying from four to ten years in the Territorial penitentiary. Two served year or two and were pardoned by the recent Governor L. Bradford Prince. The case of Jose Chavez Chavez, the policeman who assisted in the murder of young Gabriel Sandoval, was in the courts three years. Twice he was sentenced to death. He was to have been hanged on October 29 last. Governor Otero reprieved him four weeks. Now Chavez’s sentence has been commuted to life imprisonment, and the last of the Silva gang has had punishment meted out to him.
[The San Francisco Call, Sunday, July 3, 1898 -- Transcribed by Michelle Sawyer]

Mount Up: The American Range Wars Of The Wild West

The Wild West of lore ended a little after the turn of the 19th century, but it didn’t go down without a fight. As civilization made its final push into the West, farmers and ranchers had a war over whether the region would be open range or fenced-off properties. In the 1880s, cattle ranchers who had been raising beef in the West for decades took objection to the area’s newly arrived settlers.

The Old West Range Wars

Across multiple Western states, the same trends and forces caused bloody fights and feuds to break out. In true Wild West fashion, ranchers and settlers alike stole and slaughtered livestock, assassinated key political opposition, hired private gunfighters and formed posses to enforce vigilante justice. When the dust settled, the use and division of land in the U.S. became changed forever, and an era that art and culture would come to remember fondly as the Wild West had gone to pasture. This is the story of the violent range wars and civilization’s slow conquering of the American West.

For most of the 19th century, cattle ranchers, aside from gold and silver miners, were the only businessmen able to make something out of the West financially. In places like Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado, the land was not known for being particularly suited for farming or settling. The best attribute the land had, in fact, was that there was a TON of it. Forward-thinking cattlemen were able to drive livestock up from places like Texas, find space in one of the empty states mentioned above, and let their herds roam thousands of acres of mostly free-range. With enough federally owned water and grassland available during the heyday of the free-range cattle ranching that you could raise herds of multiple thousands of animals. Opportunity was plentiful enough that a rich and powerful new class of “cattle barons” emerged.

The Homestead Act

In the 1880s, waves of Easterners seeking free land pursuant to Lincoln’s Homestead Act of 1862 began to threaten the cattle barons’ livelihoods. The law allowed these settlers to pick a plot of land near a water source, build a house and farm complete with a barbed wire fence around the perimeter, and therefore, own the property indefinitely, as long as they stayed for at least five years. These fences prohibited cattle from accessing water and grassland that they depended on for survival, which incensed the ranchers who felt they had a right to the land. The settlers, however, had the force of the law on their side, which made the cattle barons feel they were left with no choice but to take matters into their own hands.

The Johnson County War, or Wyoming Range War, was perhaps the most extreme example of range war violence. Homesteaders around the town of Buffalo had fenced off a lot of the cattle barons’ prime grazing territory, and many of the small-scale farmers kept a few heads of cattle on their plots of property. It’s unclear how much cattle rustling really went on, but the barons made gross exaggerations, claiming that they were being robbed blind by a town full of criminals. Every settler keeping cattle on his property was accused of rustling them, and when the Buffalo courts wouldn’t convict every Tom, Dick and Harry on rustling charges, the cattle barons argued the entire town had been corrupted by thieves.

Enter The Gunfighter

Their response was to band together, hire mercenary gunfighters, ride into Buffalo and shoot or hang 70 people from the town that they had put on a list of suspected cattle rustlers. On April 5, 1892, an invading force of 50, which included the cattle barons themselves, their men and 23 hired guns, descended on Buffalo, Wyoming.

Their first stop was small-time rancher Nate Champion’s property. Champion had been making his way, using public range that the cattle barons felt entitled to. They surrounded his house, killed his guests, and eventually burned him out and shot him dead. Somebody witnessed the siege taking place at the Champion ranch and warned the town of Buffalo. The settlers of Buffalo rallied in impressive fashion, assembling a posse of over 200 men to defend their town against the cattle barons.

They rode out in time to meet the incoming invaders and forced them to hole up in a barn on the TA Ranch. The men from Buffalo besieged the ranch for a total of three days. Some of the posse’s members had combat experience in the Civil War and led a real, tactical siege on the barn. They built covered positions surrounding the invaders, they killed all their horses preventing escape, and they picked off anyone who broke from their cover.

Regulators, Mount Up!

The posse, in an effort to finish the siege with a dramatic tactical victory, even built a cannon, although it exploded on testing. When that didn’t work, they fashioned a large wooden wall or fort on wagon wheels they called the “ark of safety” that would serve as moving cover so posse members could get close enough to throw dynamite into the barn. Just before they were able to use it, however, the 6th Cavalry rode in from Fort McKinney and arrested the invading party.

Despite arrest, none of the cattle barons or their murderous invading force ever stood trial for their crimes, which goes to show how wealthy and well-connected they were. The settlers in this instance clearly won this battle in the range wars. More so, farmers, settlers and barbed wire fences ended up winning the range wars completely, in case you can’t tell by the miles of fencing which divide rural areas today. Range war violence peaked in most places around the 1890s, but conflict persisted well into the 20th century until the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934 regulated and limited the use of public lands for grazing. To this day, however, you can expect to see some cattle scattered across the B(ureau) (of) L(and) M(anagement) land you might find yourself hunting or hiking on, a unique remnant of the Wild West which still persists.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: The True Story of the Famous Outlaws
Members of the Wild Bunch, the robbers' life and death inspired the 1969 movie starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford.
By Hadley MearesUPDATED: SEP 8, 2020



Photo: John Swartz/American Stock/Getty Images

It’s one of the most famous endings in film history. In the 1969 movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the two outlaws, played by Paul Newman and Robert Redford respectively, appear to go out in a blaze of glory during a gun battle in Bolivia in 1908. But the film’s ambiguous ending points to a murkier truth. Many – including members of Cassidy’s family – believe that the real-life Butch Cassidy, the jovial, charismatic leader of the Wild Bunch, lived for decades after the legendary South American shoot-out.

Butch Cassidy grew up in a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints family in Utah
Few criminals have reaped as much goodwill – in life and death – as Cassidy. According to Richard Patterson, author of Butch Cassidy: A Biography, Cassidy was born Robert LeRoy Parker on April 13, 1866, in Beaver, Utah Territory. His loving parents, Ann Gillies and Maximillian Parker, were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Robert, the oldest child in a large family, grew up playing harmonica on “home evenings” when the family would read the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints doctrine and play games.

When Robert was eight, his family homesteaded a large ranch outside of Circleville, Utah. Here, he became an expert cowboy and was a playful older brother to his younger siblings. The Parker family were not the most devout members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, but it is believed that they may have been involved in an illegal “underground railroad” sheltering polygamous Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints families from the U.S. government.

Cassidy's pseudonym was inspired by a cattle rustler

While working on a nearby cattle ranch as a teenager, Robert met a man who would alter the course of his life forever. Mike Cassidy, cowboy by trade, outlaw cattle rustler by choice, seems to have indoctrinated the restless Robert into the lucrative business of stealing of livestock. At the age of 18, Robert – probably on the run from crimes committed with Cassidy or alone – left the family home, telling his mother;

Ma, there’s not much here for me. No future. Pay in Utah is low – you know that. Maybe twenty or thirty dollars a month with board – and the board’s not much to brag about in most places. There’s no excitement around here. I’m not a kid anymore. Gotta be thinking about my future.

Robert would soon enter a life of Wild West crime – cattle rustling and other petty offenses. But in 1889, he would ride into the big leagues, successfully robbing the San Miguel Valley Bank in Telluride with associates Matt Warner and Tom McCarty. “A witness recalled seeing Butch, in the weeks before the robbery, spend hours teaching his horse to stand calmly while he ran and vaulted into the saddle,” Richard Patterson writes in the magazine Wild West. “Butch and his pals also constructed special leather bags to carry the loot, and they painstakingly laid out an escape route in advance, bolstered by relay teams of fresh horses.”

This shrewd attention to detail would become a hallmark of robberies committed by the Wild Bunch. With his entry into serious crime, Robert changed his name to protect himself – and his family’s honor. He chose Cassidy in honor of his mentor Mike Cassidy, but Butch was not his personal choice. “I took a job in Rock Springs in the butcher shop when I needed to lay low for a while,” he told a friend years later. “Matt Warner nicknamed me Butch, he thought it was a big joke.”

Cassidy met the Sundance Kid after a stint in jail

Cassidy, “a big dumb kid who liked to joke” according to friend Josie Bassett, continued his life of crime. In 1896, after a stint in jail, Cassidy went right back to his old ways. It was sometime after his release when Cassidy met a stoic, handsome East Coast-born former cowboy turned outlaw named Harry Longabaugh, aka the Sundance Kid. Cassidy now had a posse of outlaw acolytes who liked to rob banks and trains and also liked to party. During one celebration, the members of the Wild Bunch dressed as waiters, much to the amusement of friend Ann Bassett:

Poor Butch, he could perform such minor jobs as robbing banks and holding up pay trains without the flicker of an eye lash but serving coffee at a grand party that was something else. The blood curdling job almost floored him, he became panicky and showed that his nerve was completely shot to bits…the boys went into a huddle in the kitchen and instructed Butch in the more formal art of filling coffee cups at the table. This just shows how etiquette can put fear into a brave man’s heart.

Thanks to Cassidy's thorough planning, the Wild Bunch pulled off many successful robberies
Cassidy and the Wild Bunch’s notoriety grew as they racked up a staggering average of $35,000 per robbery. Although Patterson thinks the bunch probably only robbed four banks, four express trains and a coal company payroll office, they were soon blamed for every robbery in the Northwest.

It was Cassidy’s meticulous planning that made his robberies so successful. According to Patterson:

Little was left to chance. Butch and a few selected gang members would spend days, sometimes weeks, scouting a robbery site and the best escape route. Wisely, they always chose the summer months for all their holdups, when the weather was favorable for eluding posses. It appears that Cassidy also avoided killing. Although shots were fired during escapes, Butch was never known to have shot anyone during a holdup. The closest Butch ever came to harming a robbery victim was when he used explosives to force his way into an express car. A few express messengers were injured in the blasts, but none seriously. The gang always warned them when they would use dynamite, and they were wise enough to protect themselves by hiding behind the cargo.

The powerful railroad companies were soon hot on the Wild Bunch’s trail. Pinkerton detective Charlie Siringo, who called Cassidy “the shrewdest and most daring outlaw of the present age,” trailed the gang all over the West, often posing as an outlaw to search for the robbers.

A break for the Pinkerton agents seems to have been the result of one of Cassidy's legendary larks. In 1900, some of the Wild Bunch was in Texas to visit their favorite brothels and blow off some steam. They decided to get a formal portrait taken as a joke. This picture of the Sundance Kid, Will Carver, Ben Kilpatrick, Harvey Logan (Kid Curry) and Cassidy was a rare misstep for him. It is said a Wells Fargo agent recognized the outlaws when the photo was displayed in the photographer’s Fort Worth studio window. It was soon on wanted posters throughout the West.

The Wild Bunch's final robbery helped fund a new life for Cassidy and Sundance in South America

By 1900, it appears Cassidy was tired of life on the run. A lawyer claimed Cassidy came to visit him, curious if he could get a pardon and settle down for good. When he was told it would be impossible, Cassidy was understanding. "You know the law, and I guess you're right,” he said. “But I'm sorry it can't be fixed some way. You'll never know what it means to be forever on the dodge."

The Wild Bunch pulled their last major robbery at the First National Bank of Winnemucca, Nevada, on September 19, 1900. According to Patterson, Cassidy managed to charm the populace yet again, even in the midst of planning and executing the robbery:

One boy, 10-year-old Vic Button, whose father managed the CS Ranch east of town where the outlaws camped, remembered Butch as a likable man with a broad grin. He said the outlaw gave him candy. Button also said that one day when he told Butch how much he admired his horse, Butch replied that someday he might give it to him. A few days later, Butch kept his word. Following the robbery, as the three outlaws were changing to fresh horses, Butch told the cowboy who had been attending the animals to give his winded horse to the young boy at the CS Ranch.

This robbery may have been to fund a new life in South America, far from Pinkerton detectives. In 1901, Cassidy and the Sundance Kid bought property in Cholila, Argentina under assumed names. They were joined on their new ranch by the mysterious, beautiful Etta Place – Sundance’s girlfriend – and according to some, Cassidy’s unrequited love. In his typical glib manner, Cassidy wrote to his friend Mathilda Davis back in America about his new setup:

Another of my Uncles died and left $30,000 to our little family of three so I took my $10,000 and started to see a little more of the world. I visited the best cities and best parts of the countries of South A. till I got here. And this part of the country looked so good that I located, and I think for good, for I like the place better every day.

The pair were killed in Bolivia, but there were alleged sightings of Cassidy after his death
It was not long before the trio were accused of bank robberies in South America. Place eventually returned to the States (disappearing into history), and Cassidy and Sundance ended up in Bolivia. On November 6, 1908, the pair were said to have stolen payroll from a mining company’s courier in San Vicente, Bolivia. A few days later, the Bolivian Cavalry surrounded the house where they were staying. A subsequent shootout left a man believed be Sundance injured. That evening, soldiers heard two shots coming from inside the house, and found the two men dead with bullet wounds in the head. The men were buried in a nearby Indian cemetery.

When news filtered back to the U.S. that Cassidy and Sundance had been killed, none of their friends seemed to have particularly believed the story. Sightings of Cassidy began almost immediately.

In Cassidy's nephew Bill Betenson’s book Butch Cassidy: My Uncle, the author points to around 20 well-documented sightings of Cassidy after 1908. In 1925, Cassidy, driving a shiny new Ford and sporting the “characteristic Parker grin,” was said to have visited family in Utah. His sister Lula Parker Betenson claimed he told the family of his exploits and kept in touch with them until is alleged real death in 1937.

Engineer William T. Phillips claimed he was the real Cassidy
For many years, it was believed that a Spokane engineer named William T. Phillips was in fact Cassidy. He seems to have done everything possible to encourage this theory, even writing a book – Bandit Invincible – about Cassidy’s exploits. He also died in 1937, though Lula claimed he was not Cassidy.

It does appear that Phillips was an imposter. Historian Larry Pointer has uncovered two mugshots – one of Cassidy and one of Phillips, from the same period in Wyoming. It appears the two men probably served time together in the penitentiary, and that Phillips may have ridden for a time with the Wild Bunch.

In the early 1990s, two bodies believed to be Cassidy and Sundance were exhumed in Bolivia. DNA tests conducted by Clyde Snow, one of the nation's foremost forensic anthropologists determined they were not Cassidy and Sundance.

According to Bill Betenson, his family knew exactly where Cassidy was buried after his alleged real death in 1937: “My great-grandmother, Butch’s little sister Lula, was very clear. She said that where he was buried, and under what name, was a family secret; that he was chased all his life and now he had a chance to finally rest in peace – and that’s the way it must be.”

Edward Austin Burke, known as Major E. A. Burke, was a Louisiana politician and newspaper publisher during the Reconstruction era. Originally from Kentucky, Burke moved to New Orleans in 1869 and spent the next twenty years developing a successful political career that ended in notoriety. Upon his arrival in New Orleans, he worked as a stone yard laborer, but within months became a successful railroad administrator. In September 1874, Burke used his influence to aid the Crescent City White League in efforts to overthrow the legally elected Louisiana government in the Battle of Liberty Place. After this introduction to the political sphere, Burke served as city administrator in New Orleans, as well as Francis T. Nicholls’s Democratic representative in the Compromise of 1877. He also served as owner/editor of the Times-Democrat newspaper, state treasurer (1878–1888), and director-general of the 1884 World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition. He is best known for having stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars from the state treasury and fleeing to Honduras.

Although specifics of Burke’s military career and his rank are subject to speculation, he attained the rank of second lieutenant in the Confederate Army in Texas. He was often referred to as “Major” and at times was even called “Colonel.” His assumed Confederate rank helped accelerate his political career in the years following the Civil War.

Burke, as a railroad administrator in 1874, was asked by the White League to help delay the arrival of federal reinforcements in the hopes that the White League could overthrow the carpetbagger governor William Pitt Kellogg. A coup later called the Battle at Liberty Place helped lead to the return of white control of the state by Bourbon Democrats. As the new regime assumed power, Burke was lauded and appointed commissary of subsistence and placed in charge of voter registration. Within three days, the Kellogg administration was reinstated. Burke’s participation in the coup did not impede his political career, however, and within months he was appointed city administrator for New Orleans.

By 1876 Burke’s popularity among fellow Redeemer Democrats (conservatives bent on ousting the Republicans who controlled Reconstruction governments) led to his appointment as the Democratic representative for governor-elect Francis T. Nicholls at the convention called to resolve the disputed presidential election of 1876. Burke took part in the controversial Wormley Hotel Conference that led to the Compromise of 1877. Under the terms of the agreement, Southern Democrats, who insisted that the Democratic candidate Samuel J. Tilden had won the election, acquiesced to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes’s presidency in exchange for concessions, including the removal of federal troops from Louisiana, Florida, and South Carolina, which in effect ended Reconstruction.

In 1878 Burke was appointed treasurer of Louisiana, a position he held until 1888, thanks in part to his close friendship with Lt. Gov. Louis A. Wiltz, who was elected governor in 1880. In this plum state office, Burke had become so affluent by 1881 that he had purchased the Times and Democrat newspapers to create the Times-Democrat, the most widely circulated newspaper in New Orleans. He also served as editor and contributor.

While allies and admirers frequently described Burke as a polished gentleman, an impressive intellect, and an accomplished administrator, his enemies experienced a different side of his character. In the month following the Battle of Liberty Place, when Burke encountered the reinstated Gov. Kellogg at a New Orleans intersection, he attacked Kellogg, and the men shot at each other with pistols. After a stay in jail, Burke was released at the request of the governor. In 1880 Henry J. Hearsey, the former editor of the Democrat, challenged Burke to a duel because Burke and his friends had acquired the newspaper through legal wrangling. Neither man was injured in that altercation, but when Burke challenged the editor of the Daily Picayune to a duel in 1882 over an editorial questioning his integrity as state treasurer, Burke received a wound in his thigh.

In 1884 the National Cotton Planters’ Association appointed Burke the director-general of the World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition that would be held later that year in New Orleans. Here, Burke gained many international allies who served him well in the future, notably the president of Honduras, Luis Bográn. After three months as director-general, Burke left his post with the failing exposition. In 1889, while in London on business, the public became aware of a scandal involving state bonds that suggested Burke had stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars from the state treasury. Burke never returned to New Orleans for trial; instead, he immediately moved with his wife Susan and son Lindsay to Honduras, which had no extradition treaty with the United States. President Bográn awarded Burke several large mining concessions, and he later served many years as an administrator of Honduran nationalized railroads. In 1928, he died a wealthy man in Tegucigalpa.

Author

Kathryn Conley

Suggested Reading

Conley, Kathryn K. The Making of an American Imperialist: Major Edward Austin Burke, Reconstruction of New Orleans and the Road to Central America. Master’s Thesis, University of New Orleans, 2012.

Vivian, James F. “Major E.A. Burke: The Honduras Exile 1889–1928.” Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association 15, no. 2 (Spring 1974): 175–94.

Watson, Thomas D. “Staging the ‘Crowning Achievement of the Age’: Major Edward A. Burke, New Orleans and the Cotton Centennial Exposition.” Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association 25, no. 3 (Summer 1984): 229–57.

Admiral Sir Percy Scott and British Naval Gunnery

By Ensign J. F. White, Jr., U. S. Navy

April 1949 Proceedings Vol. 75/4/554

The British Fleet lost three out of four frigate actions and seven out of eight sloop engagements to the infant United States Navy in the War of 1812, largely because of poor gunnery. However, in one battle between frigates, the English distinguished themselves when H.M.S. Shannon completely mastered the U.S.S. Chesapeake; the skipper of the Shannon constantly held gunnery practice.

Sir William G. Armstrong & Company, manufacturers of the first modern, breechloading, rifled cannon for the British Navy, and authorities in their field, commented: “It is indeed a very striking and remarkable fact that, during the long period of the Napoleonic Wars and earlier wars ... so little real progress (in ordnance equipment) was made.”

It was in these two lines—training in the use of existing guns and inprovement of ordnance equipment—that Admiral Sir Percy Scott (1853-1924) was to distinguish himself.

Naval gunnery was in need of his attention, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Edward H. Seymour testified of the Navy as he found it in 1852, “In those days the chief things required in a man-of-war were smart men aloft, cleanliness of the ship, her hammocks, and her boats. Her gunnery was quite a secondary thing.” Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge said of his ship in 1857, “All the guns were cast- iron smooth bores. Those on the broadside were mounted in a fashion practically identical with that of the gun-carriages in Queen Elizabeth’s ships.” Admiral Lord Charles Beresford discovered in 1861 that “gunnery was regarded as quite a secondary art. It was considered that anyone could fire a gun.” And Earl Jellicoe found things no different in 1896, saying, “. . . Gunnery took rather a back seat in considering the efficiency of a ship’s company.” True, some gunnery practice was required and prizes were given (but often were paid for out of officers’ pockets). However, ships were frequently excused, practice ammunition was wasted and thrown overboard, and Admiral Scott relates of one case where “powder was sold and paint bought with the proceeds.”

It was in 1896 that Scott assumed his first command, the H.M.S. Scylla of the Mediterranean Fleet; he had already identified himself as a gunnery enthusiast and was reporting aboard from duty with the Ordnance Committee. Since entering the Navy at thirteen, he had fought up the rivers of Africa, participated in The Crimean War, and had been officially commended in Egypt. He had been both student and staff officer at the Navy gunnery schoolships Cambridge and Excellent. While aboard the latter he had redesigned the school facilities and first enjoyed the strong support of Lord Fisher. Earl Jellicoe had been his junior on the school staff. It was to be largely due to the cooperation of these two officers that Scott was to find success.

While gunnery lieutenant aboard H.M.S. Inconstant in 1881, he had submitted to the Admiralty his first invention, an electrical range transmitter. But this type instrument was not supplied to the Navy for twenty-five years, and Scott had thus met the opposition with which he was to contend throughout his career.

H.M.S. Scylla was a cruiser of 3,400 tons, armed with two 6-inch and six 4.7-inch rifles. These weapons were gun-tubes essentially identical to those used by the British Navy in World War I. Captain Percy Scott found the guns good, but the sights poor. However, it was to be with night signal devices that he was first to occupy himself.

Scott’s experimentation and reform of flashing-light systems resulted in no immediate improvements outside of his own fleet, although his ideas were to be adopted for use in World War I. Request for patent of these inventions resulted in a threat of Admiralty prejudice against Scott’s appointment to any scientific or administrative posts—this in violation of the King’s Regulations. However, his activity accomplished the first necessary step toward gunnery improvement aboard the Scylla. Scott so won the confidence of the commander of the fleet, Admiral Sir John O. Hopkins, that in 1898 he received permission to carry out any changes in his ship that he considered might improve its shooting.

Step number one in improving accuracy of fire was the placing of telescopes on the sights. The idea was far from original, but it had never been generally adopted.1 While experimenting with his arrangement, Scott detected no improvement in the firing of the sub-caliber practice gun then standard with the Navy. Fearing loss of confidence among his men, he took them ashore where he mounted the light one-inch weapon on a rigid platform. Erratic results of fixed-firing showed clearly that the inaccuracy of the piece was no reflection of the efficiency of the sight.

A practice weapon that would shoot straight was needed, so Scott adapted a Lee-Metford rifle to be mounted within the bore of the larger guns of the ship. This arrangement thereby afforded realistic practice with the sights on the standard weapon, and the piece was rigged to be fired by the standard trigger. It was adopted generally in the Navy after seven years.

Practical difficulties in aiming then became evident to Scott, who assigned a separate. crewman to set the proper values of range and deflection on the sights. This “sight-setter,” now standard in the navies of the world and adopted by the British after four years’ wrangling, aided the gun’s pointer and trainer in keeping the piece steady on the target.

The target, too, was modified to show more clearly when it had been hit. Captain Scott found it a psychological advantage to the crew to know when their shots were passing through their mark.

There followed much practice for the prize firing of 1899. While the navies of the world were firing in rolling seas as the line of sight crossed the target, Scott was endeavoring to have his men keep the gun constantly aimed. This was difficult and was possible principally because of the very efficient elevating gear peculiar to the British Navy at this time. Only one man aboard the Scylla showed himself very apt at such work, and much practice was obviously required. Therefore, Scott invented a training device—eventually to be much publicized as the “dotter.” This device presented to the gunner a target moving up and down before the gun in the same fashion as would an actual ship. Pressing the firing key caused an electro-magnetic pencil to “dot” the target opposite the gun muzzle, thereby keeping a record of the gunner’s prowess in aiming and affording him opportunity for practice.2

The effectiveness of Captain Scott’s training was strikingly illustrated in the prize firing completed May 26, 1899. The crew of H.M.S. Scylla achieved 80 per cent hits with the 4.7-inch gun, a score so high and so unprecedented that it was not believed by many officers and men of the Navy. As ironic reward for his efforts, Percy Scott was left on half-pay, in accordance with the custom of the service, while awaiting assignment to his next ship.

H.M.S. Terrible, displacing 14,440 tons, capable of 22.4 knots, and mounting two 9.2-inch and twelve 6-inch guns, was the largest and one of the finest cruisers then in the British Navy. Scott assumed command of this proud vessel in the early fall of 1899. Gunnery still held his attention, and the new skipper brought many of his gadgets aboard. Again he changed the sights, replacing the low-power Admiralty telescopes with powerful instruments to which he fitted cross-hairs from the head of a midshipman (this proving that midshipmen can use their heads for something).

The ship was due for China, but the Boer War caused an interruption of her voyage. This diversion afforded Percy Scott opportunity to acquire the large newspaper following that aided his propagandizing efforts the remainder of his career. A very colorful character, he extemporaneously mounted 12-pounder and 4.7-inch guns from his ship on wagon wheels and sent them to the Army, which had no weapons with which to match the Boers in range. A 6-inch gun from the Terrible saw action at Colenso, and Scott’s flashing-light devices were used for land signalling. A cannon he had mounted on a railway car, he named for Lady Randolph Churchill; her son, Winston, he also entertained. As military commandant of Durban, he maintained martial law with such finesse that he was commended for “spotless integrity, practical common sense, tact, and inflexible justice.” For his work in South Africa, he was awarded the Companionship of the Bath.

After the war, H.M.S. Terrible proceeded to China in April, 1900, her captain being popularly acclaimed by the British in Shanghai and Hong Kong. There the Boxer Rebellion saw further use of Scott’s make-shift carriages for naval guns ashore. Crewmen from the Terrible manned these weapons, and valuable experience was gained in the technique of “spotting” the fall of shot.

A month’s training on shipboard with the “dotter,” and the men of the Terrible were again ready to fire from a rolling platform. For their first prize firing in 1900, they scored a record 76.8 per cent. This was hitherto unequaled for the 6-inch gun, but the men were downcast, regretting their failure to better the percentage of the Scylla’s 4.7-inch guns.

Their captain set them to work on an improvised loading machine; practice with this contrivance was designed to increase their rate of fire. A rude device to teach proper setting of deflection in sights was adapted next, and Percy Scott soon was busily engaged in study of visibility of holes made in various colored targets. He was determined that his men should see when they hit.

Admiral Lord Charles Beresford read of Scott’s 1900 results and wrote a letter asking for improvements that he might recommend for the Fleet. Scott replied at length, but he was busy at this time on a report to the Admiralty suggesting standardization on certain regulations for prize firings. Scott was assisted in this work by Captain John Jellicoe, Captain Sir George Warrender, two commanders, and ten gunnery lieutenants. His finished study was forwarded with the highest recommendations of Admiral Sir Edward H. Seymour, in command of the China Station, but it brought no official response.3

Admiral Seymour, however, was much impressed, and Scott’s suggested reforms were adopted for the China Station. Percy Scott had long complained that no trophy was given to the winning ship in a gunnery competition, and the Seymour Challenge Cup was presented by his Commander-in- Chief, who was about to be relieved for home duty.

The prize firing of 1901 for the newly donated Seymour Challenge Cup was much hailed by the British press. When the Terrible managed 80 per cent hits with her 6 inch guns, the professional journals greeted the results with cries of “magnificent,” and applauded Captain Scott for “beating the record with a vengeance.” The score and rate of fire were discussed at length, and the Army and Navy Gazette took notice that Scott’s pupil from the Scylla was gunnery lieutenant of the Barfleur, which had distinguished herself with the 4.7-inch.4

The firing of H.M.S. Barfleur was, in effect, a demonstration of the efficiency of Percy Scott’s system of instruction on ships other than his own. The captain of the Barfleur, Sir George Warrender, had adopted Scott’s teaching method, and his ship consequently fired a 71.7 per cent hits practice. The rate of fire was 5.7 hits per gun per minute, which was substantially above the record 4.6 of Captain Scott’s first ship, H.M.S. Scylla.

The Admiralty wrote Scott, requesting a description of his method for consideration for use by the ships of the entire Navy. Captain Scott forwarded a lengthy treatise, but also seems to have begun an anti-Admiralty campaign. He still complained that his electrical range transmitter was not in use, a voice tube from foremast to gun battery serving instead. Other recommendations appeared to have been ignored.

Comparisons of Scott’s shooting with other ships in the Navy appeared in the newspapers, and the Army and Navy Gazette remarked that the ship with the low record for the Channel Fleet was an admiral’s flagship. Scott noticed that 25 per cent of the ships of the British Navy excused themselves from firing at all in 1901.

In May, 1902, Captain Scott held his last prize firing aboard the Terrible. Purposely competing in bad weather, Scott was nevertheless disappointed with the initial poor results, as most shots passed well over the target. It was discovered that the cordite had been exposed to a high steam temperature, and had therefore caused an extremely great muzzle velocity. The sights were correspondingly corrected, and the remaining rounds were fired at an average of 88.2 per cent hits. The over-all practice, however, set no new record.5

Three months later, Petty Officer Grounds died. This man had, in 1901, scored eight hits with eight rounds in one minute and stood champion for the Fleet. His captain, Percy Scott, mourned his loss. The spirit of competition, enhanced by the firing of men such as Grounds, was one of the primary means used to raise the standard of gunnery training. Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge, Commander of the China Station for the past year, wished the Terrible well before she finally sailed for home.

The press anticipated the return of Percy Scott and his ship in 1902. A gala reception and banquet was given by the Major of Portsmouth; Captain Scott, officers, and crew held a colorful “At Home” aboard the Terrible. Lord Charles Beresford was reported as declaring in a public speech that he would willingly fight twelve ships with six vessels trained according to Scott’s methods. And even after a year, Admiral Lord Fisher applauded Captain Scott at the Royal Academy Banquet amid cheers. Cambridge University awarded Scott an Honorary LL.D.

Percy Scott utilized this favorable publicity to press home his growing campaign for gunnery reforms. In 1902, while visiting Edward VII to be made Commander of the Royal Victorian Order, Scott recited his list of complaints to the King. His grievances were: (1) the lack of Board of Admiralty interest in gunnery; (2) that promotions depended more upon “paintwork” than upon gunnery; (3) that target practice was poorly recognized; (4) that gunsights were inefficient; (5) that competition in gunnery was neglected; and (6) that the Admiralty concealed the results of poor target practices that did occur. This was Scott’s ultimate in going around and above the heads of his superiors.

In the late Fall of 1902, H.M.S. Terrible was dismantled and paid off. For a time her captain awaited assignment.

During September, October, and November of 1902, a great furore was raised in the naval journals over the publishing of the alleged inspection report of H.M.S. Astroea. This report included detailed descriptions of the vessels’ bedding, stokers, cleanliness, and men at drills; but nothing was said of gunnery. Enemies of the Admiralty charged “that something is rotten, even in the Navy.” The Army and Navy Gazette defended the Admiralty, calling the report “mischievous nonsense,” and declaring its acceptance “a demonstration of ignorance.” It went on to maintain that the assumed full report was only a “garbled and mutilated” part of the complete document, of which there were two sections; it deplored “the sneers and gibes of detractors.” A later issue of the same journal announced, “there is not one, but six inspection reports.”

Such is the nature of the quarrels raised in even the reputable press of Britain during this period. But gunnery was no longer “quite a secondary thing.” Lord Selborne, First Lord of the Admiralty, had declared before the House of Lords, “If I wished to tell any Admiral or Captain what in my opinion is the highest duty in the training of seamen, I would say Gunnery! Gunnery! Gunnery!” The soft-spoken Journal of the Royal United Service Institution, however, was sufficiently critical of results to remark that “the figures do not convince us that Lord Selborne’s axiom is more than a phrase.”

On the first of April, 1903, Scott was appointed Captain of H.M.S. Excellent, the School of Gunnery. He asked for Jellicoe and his ship, the Drake, to carry out experiments. Captain Jellicoe was a staunch supporter, commenting years afterwards “I found it necessary to take a pretty firm stand as to insisting upon the use of Captain Percy Scott’s aiming device for heavy gun instruction, the use of the devices being still opposed by many gunnery officers.”

Scott’s problem at that time was control of long range firing. Admiral Fisher had introduced long range target practice in the Mediterranean, but difficulty lay in spotting and correcting the fall of shot. Percy Scott found the answer simple—to fire broadsides.6 A large group of splashes was easy to observe, and by firing all guns at once it was possible to correct the salvo effectively, bringing the maximum number of guns to bear in the least time. To obtain a small pattern of splashes, however, it was necessary to have the gun sights of a battery calibrated accurately. Scott did not believe the sights then standard to be precise, even in relation to one another. After controversy with the Admiralty, he got permission to test guns at long ranges from fixed shore positions. Results of these experiments showed such a scattering of shot that, on January 11, 1904, Scott wrote the following strong letter to their Lordships:

The most important item of any gun mounting is the sighting appliance.

Our sighting appliances for all natures of guns are, I consider, at present most inefficient, and my opinion is that all the guns in the Navy should be resighted.

It is unnecessary for me to specify the defects, as I have so often done so during the last five years. It is unnecessary for me to recapitulate the facts which have led to our gun sights being in their present condition. I only wish to again urge the importance of consideration being given to the matter.

I feel it my duty as captain of the Excellent to continue urging, and to place on record that I have urged, the matter to the utmost of my power and ability, for in the event of war, and our inefficiency in sighting proving disastrous to the Fleet, had the captain of the Excellent not called the attention of the authorities to the deficiency he would have been criminally in fault.

Resighting was begun at a slow rate, and Lord Selborne and his Board were replaced at the Admiralty “before they could do any further harm to gunnery.” Sir John Fisher’s group served in their stead, and Punch gleefully captioned a full page cartoon, “No more gunnery hash now.”

First Sea Lord Fisher assured progress in 1905 by appointing now Rear Admiral Scott to the specially created post of Inspector of Target Practice. Captain Jellicoe had been elevated to Director of Naval Ordnance in 1904.7 Scott immediately applied himself to development of a calibration range on which to correctly adjust the sights of his beloved big guns.

As Inspector of Target Practice, Admiral Scott was to attend all firing practices possible, to report on them, and to make suggestions. He was present at all firings of the Channel, Atlantic, and Mediterranean Fleets in 1905. At what he saw he was “shocked,” and he considered the results “deplorable.” For the 68 ships whose practice he attended, 20 different methods of fire were used. With this in mind, Scott labored over a standard set of rules which John Jellicoe was to issue. At the end of the year, gunnery results were published for the first time in order of merit of ships, competition thus being firmly established. For those not sportingly inclined, courts of inquiry sat on all ships that did badly. Sights were further improved in 1906; and in 1907, although the range of practice increased, percentage results continued to rise steeply.

Hits per gun per minute rose in similar fashion, more than doubling for all size guns and increasing almost 800 per cent in the case of the 9.2-inch weapon. Scott had brought each of his ships up to 80 per cent accuracy; now, when he was inspector of Target Practice the entire Fleet had reached 79.1 per cent. At the launching of the Dreadnought in 1906, he had been made Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order by the King. The main battery of the Dreadnought was made effective by the work of Percy Scott.

Admiral Scott spent the last of his administration closely observing the comparative efforts of the German Navy, which was recognized generally as the potential foe. He visited Prince Henry of Prussia at Kiel and especially noted the extreme elevation being allowed German naval guns. He and Admiral Jellicoe began tests of deck armor, but the pocketbook of the Fleet prohibited application of their conclusions.

During the period of Scott’s service as Inspector of Target Practice, Fisher (First Sea Lord), Jellicoe (Director of Naval Ordnance), and Scott each noted their productive cooperation. Jellicoe and Scott tried unsuccessfully to introduce “director firing,” Percy Scott’s greatest contribution, before each went at the same time to sea duty.

When in July, 1907, Rear Admiral Scott reported aboard H.M.S. Good Hope; he assumed his first and only flag appointment: command of the Second Cruiser Squadron. As was his habit, Scott again commanded the top gunnery ship in the Navy, winning the prize firing with another record score— 6.6 hits per gun per minute. Also, according to form, Scott busily altered the equipment of his ship. With make shift materials, he pieced together a director firing system of the type he was striving so hard to introduce.

Director firing, in its barest essentials, consisted of firing all guns from a single line of sight. From a vantage point on the foremast, a crew in a director established a range and bearing to the target which all of the guns in a broadside matched through the use of repeating dials. The entire battery fired salvos that were controlled at the director and could be corrected as a group.

However, a quarrel with the Commander of the Channel Fleet, Admiral Lord Charles Beresford, resulted in Scott’s being accused of insubordination. Admiral of the Fleet Fisher was still First Sea Lord and Beresford was vigorously attacking his policies, so it was difficult to tell who was insubordinate to whom. Scott’s squadron was detached in 1908 to make a prolonged goodwill tour to South Africa and South America.

Rear Admiral Scott regarded this trip as the opportunity he had long sought. While independently assigned, he rearranged his squadron’s working day so that after 0900 paintwork was finished and technical training begun. Before returning as Vice Admiral to England in 1909, he had experimented with searchlights and director firing, the problems to plague Jellicoe at Jutland, and was calling for the installation of his systems throughout the Fleet.

From 1909 to his retirement in 1913, Scott was assigned indefinite status in which he was free to vigorously lobby for improvements. Once again he recited his grievances to the King. Again he was decorated, this time as Knight of the Companionship of the Bath. In 1910, Scott prepared with the Vickers Company final plans for a director installation. Approval was obtained from the Admiralty, and H.M.S. Neptune was suitably equipped for trials in 1911. Scott superintended these tests, and the results made headline news.

Bitter controversy over the value of Scott’s newest system caused Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, to order a dramatic competition. The Admiralty was directed to select one battleship from the Fleet to compete against another battleship equipped with Percy Scott’s director. As their champion, the Admiralty chose H.M.S. Orion, with the finest gunnery record in the Navy. Scott’s system was installed aboard the new battleship Thunderer. And on the 13th of November, 1912, the two great ships took position before the Atlantic Fleet to prove their merits. The contest was purposely held in a heavy sea.

Both vessels commenced firing simultaneously at two targets five miles distant. When the gunfire was over, eyewitness reporters described the results as “phenomenal” and considered the Orion “hopelessly beaten.” “The Thunderer made five times as many hits as the Orion and completely eclipsed all previous records of firing, including those obtained in fair weather.”

Admiral Jellicoe, as Commander-in-Chief of the Atlantic Fleet, had superintended the trials; Mr. Churchill also was present for the firing. The results were accepted as conclusive and Jellicoe threw in full force for immediate adoption of the director system. Percy Scott thus ended the series of striking demonstrations by which he had proved the value of his work for the Fleet.

Independently wealthy through monetary grants for his many inventions, Scott received a baronetcy in February, 1913. In March, he retired as Admiral Sir Percy Scott, Baronet, K.C.B., K.C.V.O., Honorary LL.D.

His service, however, was not complete. Director controlled fire was to be the standard of the day at Jutland, and Scott performed skillfully during World War I in seeing his masterpiece fitted to the ships of the Grand Fleet. He also displayed his varied talents in preparing an anti-aircraft defense for London, planning warfare on the U- Boats, and counseling the Admiralty at large.

Ever dissatisfied, he spent his postwar years mourning the ships that were not equipped in time for combat, and gloomily prophesying the extinction of battleships by aircraft and submarines.

Summary

In answer to Percy Scott’s detractors, Lord Fisher, First Sea Lord during the days of Britain’s preparation for World War I, wrote:



Admiral Scott’s character must certainly have made cooperation with superiors difficult, but he was popular with the lower deck. However, it was not for his personality, nor for whatever tactical ability he might have possessed, that Admiral Sir Percy Scott was to be best remembered. The manifest success of his director system aboard the battleship Thunderer in 1912 was the culmination of the evolutionary process from his experiments with a continuous line of sight aboard the Scylla in 1896, to the trials of the single director line of sight for control of broadsides aboard the Neptune in 1911. As the Vickers “follow the pointer” system, this method was used by the British through out World War I, and by the U. S. Navy until the 1930’s. Its concept remains unchanged today.

To young officers, the story of Percy Scott can serve best to illustrate the value of training. Each ship that Scott commanded stood first in the Fleet, thus solidly demonstrating the worth of competition, constant practice, and attention to professional duty.

1. Admiral Fiske, U.S.N., had applied for a patent in 1881.

2. Ten of these devices of Captain Scott’s were purchased in 1901 by the U. S. Navy.

3. Scott relates that the report of his board was turned down by a “very junior lieutenant” of the gunnery school-ship Excellent. He believes that while the admiralty never saw the report, its poor routing illustrates bad administration.

4. Lieutenant Sims, U.S.N., entitled his second report from the China Station, “The Remarkable Record Tar get Practice, H.M.S. Terrible,” March 15,1901. Another title was, “The Crushing Superiority of British Naval Marksmanship over Ours, as Shown by Comparison of Recent Record Practice,” February 15, 1902. The U. S. Navy Department by 1902 was using the training methods of Scott, introduced by Sims, and was attempting application of Scott’s “continuous aim” principle.

5. The U. S. Navy fired its first modem target practice on the China Station in 1902 in emulation of the results of Captain Scott.

6. At Tsushima, in the only sizable modem naval battle before World War I, the Russians had fired all of their guns at random, and had been practically unable to spot at all. The Japanese had used one gun at a time until the range was fixed, and then commenced a general fire.

The Americans at Manila had fired at random with poor results.

7. It is interesting to note that while Admiral Sims of the U. S. Navy had copied Scott’s methods in China in 1901, Scott’s title and post were modeled after that of Sims’ in 1905. Jellicoe entered into correspondence with Sims during this period, and the interchange of ideas advanced both common efficiency and friendship.

Bradley Fiske Leader of Transformation

Famous for the many innovations he produced for the Navy in the late 19th century, Bradley Fiske also had a keen mind for strategy and tactics, a talent he showed nearly a century ago in the pages of the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings.

By Captain Wayne P. Hughes Jr., U.S. Navy (Retired)

April 2004 Naval History Magazine Volume 18, Number 2

Bradley Fiske started life as a plain black-shoe line officer on commissioning from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1870. The U.S. Navy trailed the leading navies of the world in the transition from sail to steam, from wood to steel, and from smoothbores to rifled naval artillery. The Navy caught up in a hurry, however, commencing in 1880 with the “ABCD” ships (the cruisers Atlanta, Boston, and Chicago, and the dispatch boat Dolphin), followed quickly by battleships and destroyers. Fiske lived through that transformation and was a leader of it.

Young Lieutenant Fiske saw in that transition a need for electricity. At age 28 in 1882, he applied for a six-month leave of absence to study the potential of electricity in warships. There was no postgraduate school for the study of science and technology then, so he asked to go to the General Electric plant in Schenectady, New York. Then as now, service reputations were acquired early, and Fiske’s former executive officer, Captain Bowman McCalla, was Assistant Chief of the Bureau of Navigation when the request was received. He recalled Fiske as a free spirit with a flair for creative thinking. The outcome was that Fiske was sent off to study—not for six months, but a whole year.

The Navy never got a greater payback from graduate education than with its investment in Fiske. During that year he published his first technical article, sold his first patent, and was well into his first textbook on the theory and practice of electricity, which was published in 1887 and eventually went through 10 printings over the next 22 years. These were halcyon days when electricity and electrical engineering were so new that opportunities for creativity were wide open. One man working by himself could make a difference.

Between 1878 and 1896, Fiske produced a detaching device for quick release of a ship’s boat, a “pit log” to measure speed through the water electrically, a depth-sounder and forerunner of the modern fathometer, the flashing signal light for intership communication, a more efficient electrical insulator, the stadimeter for measuring short ranges between ships, and numerous other inventions, large and small.

Fiske also designed the electrical drive to rotate warship gun turrets, the electrical gears that move guns in elevation fast enough for continuous-aim fire, the first electrically actuated shell, and the powered ammunition hoist that made big guns practical. Fiske called for a central shipboard gunfire control station aloft that would permit continuous-aim salvo fire. In addition, with his technical skill, he did what gunfire innovator Vice Admiral William S. Sims never could have done: he designed a gunnery range finder and, more important, an electric remote range transmitter to centralize range-finding from high in a ship, all to fulfill his own vision.

In 1912, as a rear admiral at sea, Fiske took his first seaplane ride and became an enthusiast for naval air power. Indeed, he anticipated the torpedo bomber, for he designed and patented an aerial torpedo before aircraft power plants were strong enough to lift his torpedo into the air.

Fiske also was an innovative strategist and tactician. When he was outfitting what is now called the “New Navy,” Rear Admiral Stephen B. Luce and his protege, Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, were developing at the new Naval War College a maritime philosophy that in an amazingly short time became a mantra of navies and nations, including the U.S. Navy. Fiske was plucked to come to the war college in 1896. His studies there directed his energies in new, nontechnical directions. He became one of the upstart reformers who believed too much power both in constructing and operating the Navy resided in the Secretary of the Navy, and he argued that sea-going naval officers deserved more influence over the bureaus as well as over the conduct of operations at sea.

Fiske’s opening salvo in the battle for reform was his Naval Institute Prize Essay of 1905. It was entitled “American Naval Policy,” but this extraordinary 80-page work covered policy, strategy, operations, and tactics, and made unequivocal his belief that the design and construction of warships was to be guided by the officers who would fight in them and who knew the tactics their ships must use. In this article and appearing for the first time was the equivalent of the now-famous “Lanchester square law of combat” (used to predict the outcome and number of combatants that survive a given battle) a full decade before British engineer F. W. Lanchester himself deduced it.

Fiske was assigned as aide to Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels in 1913. Daniels is primarily remembered for drying up the seagoing Navy—removing its spirits. He was forceful and opinionated, and as a journalist by trade quite ignorant of the operating Navy at a time when the war clouds of Europe lay on the horizon. Sims later would play his own vital part in London at the war’s crisis by helping to deal with the first epidemic of German U-Boats in the Atlantic, but at the time Sims said someone else would have to fight for reform “because Bradley Fiske is constitutionally opposed to conflict of any kind.” Sims was right about Fiske’s temperament, but wrong about Fiske’s determination, for Fiske was not above a Machiavellian stroke.

In January 1915, without Daniels’s knowledge, Fiske and a few assistants met literally in the dead of night with Congressman Richmond P. Hobson, the man who as a Navy lieutenant in 1898 had almost succeeded in blocking Santiago Harbor by blowing up the collier Merrimac in its narrow entrance. With the consent of only the Navy’s Admiral George Dewey, from that meeting came the legislation establishing the office of Chief of Naval Operations. Although Daniels was able to constrain the new office’s power in the early days, the creation of the post and its staff by legislation marked a turning point and ensured the growth of the uniformed influence that Luce, Fiske, Sims, David W. Taylor, William F. Fullam, and the other progressives knew to be essential for professional planning.

Bradley Fiske was an officer who served in the Old Navy but he did more than any other single man to equip the New Navy. While leading this new force at sea before World War I, he championed the future of naval aviation, and as a senior officer he fought battles in Washington with skill, acumen, character, and honor.