"British Light Infantry signalling- horns and whistles" Topic

This is area where I'd be grateful for guidance. What do we know about LI Bn/coy signalling circa 1776-78? I have tried to search the forum but keep ending up out there with the Event Horizon.

Was the looped hunting horn used at company and battalion level, for instance, while whistles were used to issue commands within companies?

I have read a reference to the OC of the 46th LI coy at New York 1776 issuing commands only with the whistle (Loftus Cliffe Corr.)

Della Gattas's Germantown painting (perhaps of limited worth in this case) shows one 'bugler' at the head of a unit that might be a company-sized unit.

In a detachment of, say, two or three companies operating independently, how many horns might we expect to be 'in play'? My guess is that more than a few in a given area would be counter productive. Would it be reasonable to calculate that each Captain had a bugler to coordinate the deployment of the company as a whole and communicate with 'wing'/battalion/ brigade?

From scattered readings, I think "flourishes" of the hat (ie waving it in certain ways) were widely used; one officer of the 38th was widely mocked for using hand signals and a whistle, but this soon turned to keen interest once the Light Battalions took the field in earnest in the summer of '76.

Reed mentions multiple "gone to ground" calls prior to the action at Haarlem Heights, but I suspect that it wasn't until the start of the 1777 campaign that the whole Light Infantry organisation "got it's together" and had a common set of signals. Prior to that, some companies did, and I suspect the individual battalions had some broad commands that were passed by hunting horn, but that was it.

You rightly refer to groups of 2-3 companies operating as "(grand) divisions" and I suspect the senior captain would use whatever signals he and his subordinates had agreed on. Communication with his superior (battalion CO – other than Leslie in '76, I don't think there was a brigade CO as such) I would guess was done by runner/orderly dragoon, although I suspect said superior would be sufficiently familiar with the "group calls" to be aware roughly of what was happening ahead.

From three battalions of 10, 10 and 7 companies in 1776, the Light Bobs move to two battalions of 14 and 12 companies from 1777 onwards, and then one of 15 after the Caribbean contingent leaves, and I think two of 7 companies around 1781. The battalions are therefore asymmetric (in parade ground terms) for most of their existence and hence must have split into uneven sub-groups – be they wings or divisions – but presumably using increasingly a common set of signals.

Yes, "hat flourishes" came up in a long digest of LI drills I read the other day in the RevList archive, along with references to whistle signals, but no mention of bugle-horn calls.

The Revlistpost included this quotation from Ewald's Diary of the Hesse Kassel Jager Corps:
"We fell in on a footpath which ran through a thick brushwood. Here Lieutenant Bickell came to me with ten or twelve jagers and asked me to sound the call to assemble the jagers, for they had dispersed so widely in attempting to outflank the enemy that he feared a part of them would fall into enemy hands. I informed him that we did not dare to disclose ourselves by sounding the half-moon [Halbermond], and if half of them were lost, I still would not allow it to be blown; he might see if he could assemble the men by whistling or signaling."

"I was a du jour today and visited the outpost toward evening. I had hardly ridden over it when I heard assembly blown in the Jager Corps. I hurried back as quickly as possible."

"We had no choice but to lie down on the ground before the bridge, whereupon I ordered "Forward!" sounded constantly. Luckily for us, Colonel Donop's column appeared after a lapse of eight or ten minutes,whereupon the Americans abandoned the redoubt."

The post does not include references from the Diaries but I have just found a pdf of Ewald's Diary which I hope to have a chance of reading before too long.

Clearly for the jagers, "Forward" on the Halbermond was an effective cry for help!

In my reference to 'brigade' I was not so much thinking of a light corps command structure as commandd by Leslie as of the formations to which the LI were periodically attached under Cornwalli and Grey 1776-78.

Your reference to the LI officer of the 38th being mocked at Halifax, which I don't think I'm familiar with, recalls the description Loftus Cliffe gave of Captain Johnson of the LI coy, 46th Regt at New York: ["he goes thro his maneuvers by a Whistle, for which he has often been laughed at, they either form to the right or left or [s]quat or rise by a perculiar whistle which his men are well acquainted with as the Battalion with the word of Command."]

Could that be the reference you had in mind?

Given the absence of official manuals, arrangements within Howe's LI battalions must have been improvised to a considerable extent, but it occurs to me that company officers can't have just agreed commands and drills in a pre-match huddle. There must have been some training with troops. Is it not likely that the CO's of Light infantry battalions would have developed a degree of standardised practices by the time they left Halifax in July 1776?

I wasn't going to mention the bugle horn calls at Harlem Heights. Far too much has been made over the years of Joseph Reed's reference to the fox chase, in my opinion. Not only is the reference ambiguous, indeed somewhat confused, but two other soldiers present that morning heard nothing more than the British LI communicating with a "French" or "Buegel horn", either to rally the LI companies that had been skirmishing forward in pursuit of Knowlton's men, or to call for support. I don't think it is very likely that actual fox hunting calls were being sounded.

My guess is that at most, if three companies were present in the rashly exposed advanced LI detachment, there might have been three bugle horns present, one with each Captain or OC. Why would any of those musicians have been familiar with fox hunting calls- even if their officers wished to breach battlefield discipline and taunt the Americans as suggested? If by any chance there were Germans ‘ringers' who had been ‘bought in' to play the ‘jagdhorn' then they would have been familar with an entirely different tradition. Either way, any resemblance between the signals they played and hunting calls must surely have been coincidental. Interestingly, Ewald's Danish jagers were later recorded using repeated single (whistle) blasts for 'Cease Fire.' On a horn that would resemble the sound of a huntsman calling to his hounds…

This is an interesting brief survey that I re-discovered tucked away.
link

Thanks for the link 42flanker – does look interesting!

Yes, you are right – it was the 46th, not the 38th (there's a reason I thought about the latter regiment, though, but I can't recall what it was about them particularly at the moment).

I agree with you on the "taunting" thing – Reed claims the sound made him feel ashamed (probably because he knew what it meant in fox-hunting terms?, but he never said the British troops were using the calls deliberately for that purpose. It is modern US authors who have assumed this for nationalistic reasons, but there is no contemporary evidence/accusation from either side. I also agree that the period at Halifax would have been ideal for re-training and "co-ordinating" commands.

I don't think it would be difficult for officers to teach at least the sounds of particular calls to their hornists – of whatever nationality (and many British units absorbed German recruits during 1776). However, it is likely any British hornists had to learn the instrument anyway, as they were not an integral part of light companies prior to the war. Don't forget that fox-hunts in some parts of England and Wales could, by tradition, be quite egalitarian affairs and incorporate dismounted elements, as well as the "posh" types on horseback (some hunts in hilly/rocky areas were entirely dismounted, and remained so until very recent changes in the law on hunting with dogs).

The link is very interesting – as is pretty much anything written by Mr Rees. Btw, do you know Paul Pace?

Yr welcome FLyX.

Here is another brief piece that might be of interest:
link

Yes, SM,indeed. Paul Pace and I 'met' on RevList after I returned from Virginia, having realised that I knew virtually nothing about the 42nd's role in the fighting or my forbear's service in America, and started to investigate. The rest, on a good day, is history.

Yes, you are right – it was the 46th, not the 38th (there's a reason I thought about the latter regiment, though, but I can't recall what it was about them particularly at the moment)

38th William Bamford of the 38th kept a journal that has been edited and published. I haven't read it. Johnston (1897) publishes a brief excerpt in his analysis of Harlem Heights. Could it be something there that had sprung to mind?

I agree with you on the "taunting" thing – Reed claims the sound made him feel ashamed (probably because he knew what it meant in fox-hunting terms?, but he never said the British troops were using the calls deliberately for that purpose. It is modern US authors who have assumed this for nationalistic reasons, but there is no contemporary evidence/accusation from either side.

Joseph Reed's reference is ambiguous. He seems to suggest that it was merely the LI's act of sounding bugles after the rapid advance through the woods that recalled the end of a fox chase, and from this he inferred an insulting comparison between the Americans and the fugitive fox.

That in turn suggests that Reed was unaware that there would have been practical, operational reasons for the LI to sound their bugles at that moment in the engagement, which does not seem likely.

Because that contradiction is awkward to grasp, it has been customary to take Reed's meaning as being simply that the British sounded a specific hunting call, thereby making an insulting comparison, etc., etc.

(The earliest reference to a specific call that I have seen so far is from British historian George Trevelyan's American Revolution (1899-1905) where he states the call was "Gone to Ground"- explaining, inaccurately, that it was a comment on the Americans having withdrawn within their intrenchments.)

That to me seems equally unlikely because, leaving aside the odds against an enlisted musician knowing the calls*, it would be highly indisciplined, even if ordered by an officer, and risked battlefield confusion.
(* The post of huntsman, which included the specialised skill of signalling with the hunting horn, was a relatively high status, skilled occupation.)

As for adapting the deceptively simple fox hunting calls for military signalling, while not musically complex, they are difficult to sound accurately and clearly. The distinctions between the calls are subtle and I would think such nuances would be hard to teach to soldiers and difficult to distinguish in battle. Simple sequences of short and long blasts (on whistle and horn) using the German model, seem to me to be the most likely system but it seems there is little reliable evidence on the subject.

My guess is that Reed, who as far as I can gauge did not have intimate experience of fox hunting (like the majority of writers who have speculated on this episode over the years) simply heard routine LI signals that, with his sketchy awareness of hunting calls, led him in the heat of the moment to jump to conclusions.

Those crystalised in the aftermath of what turned out to be a sharp check to British over confidence. The sense of pride before a fall characterised by the imagined insults is, as you say SM, ideally suited to a Patriot narrative.