Canadian Military History Volume 5 Issue 1 Article 7 1996 The Battle of Rockhead, March 1871: Training for War in Mid- Victorian Halifax Cameron Pulsifer Canadian War Museum,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.wlu.ca/cmh Recommended Citation Pulsifer, Cameron "The Battle of Rockhead, March 1871: Training for War in Mid-Victorian Halifax." Canadian Military History 5, 1 (1996) This Canadian War Museum is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in Canadian Military History by an authorized editor of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Pulsifer: The Battle of Rockhead, March 1871 Cameron Pulsifer iis paper will examine the manner construction of warships as well as to Tin which the infantry troops of the the methods and techniques of artillery British garrison in Victorian Halifax and small arms manufacture. Warships prepared themselves to militarily were now for the most part steam- confront an enemy in the field. It is based powered and iron-hulled, artillery (after upon extensive research carried out on a brief and unsuccessful flirtation with the Halifax garrison for the years 1869 breech-loading methods) was muzzle to 1871, which covers the time that the loading and rifled, while the latest small 78th Highlanders were in the city. (This arms were both rifled and breech- of course is the regiment that the re- loading. These developments had for a enactment unit "garrisoning" today's Citadel time thrown into question traditional notions represents.1) It will focus in particular on one concerning the relative power of ships versus major exercise that was held in these years in shore-based defences, and had generated the hope that it will shed some light on the fundamental reappraisals of the manner in which battlefield methods that may have been adopted infantry was to conduct itself in the field when in the period should the fortress have been facing the enemy.