… Expedition of 1868: A Matter of Honor.
"It began with the taking of eight British civilian hostages in a faraway country about which most people in Britain knew nothing and cared less.
By the time it was over, a king lay dead by his own hand. A multi-national force had marched an 800-mile round trip through the interior of Eastern Africa, dropped off from their home base in Bombay by an armada of ships numbering in the hundreds. The power of the British Empire to protect its people, and its interests, had been displayed loud and clear.
The Abyssinian Expedition of 1868 was unlike any military campaign before or since.
Today, the idea that an entire expeditionary force could be raised to invade a country on another continent and just to rescue eight people might seem unthinkable; however, that is what happened as a matter of course at the height of the Victorian age.
The scale of the British Empire in the 1800s is truly astounding. In 1851, the population of Great Britain and Ireland was numbered at 20,959,477 (a little less than a third of what it is today), or roughly 1.6% of the world's population…"
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Amicalement
Armand
looks at a fast-assembly naval kit for the Age of Sail.