Ubique (Latin for Everywhere) - motto of H.M. Royal Engineers

Here we have put on a formal tea for our special guest, Mary Gilbert, British
Deputy Consul General in San Francisco. On the far right is our young friend
Sydney who was Leta's maid servant for the tea. On far left is Dennis Burich
who portrays Sir James Dougles, governor of the colony at the time of the crisis.

Myself and some fellow Redcoats sheltering briefly from the dreaded Noonday Sun.
Sjt. Todd Birch, at far left. And in the middle, Tim Watkins and his son Sam.

The Burra MemSahib takes her tiffin in our improvised Officers' Mess Tent.
Apologies for Snidely the Snider rifle cluttering the table; he is a decade too new to be period correct!

Meeting the Yanks at Roche Harbour for the ceremonial handing over the base to the U.S.
President Teddy Roosevelt once stayed in the old Hotel de Haro in the right background.

Some Other Reenacting Photos from the Past Year.
Lady Marshall before Confederate Brigade HQ at Snohomish. Period clothing
is one of the coolest things about doing living history and reenacting past times.

Myself and Col. Frank Starr, Confederate Brigade CO for Washington State
and overall commander of the hundreds of Southern reenactors here. Rank and
seniority in reenacting is hard earned; Col. Starr has been active in living history
for almost forty years. I am attached to his staff as a foreign military observer and
in addition to dodging the inevitable questions about Mounties and bellhops, I discuss
the often overlooked aspect of tremendous foreign interest in the outcome of the US
Civil War and the forgotten fact that Britain very nearly entered the war on the side of
The South. With the mightiest armies and navy on the face of the Earth at the time, the
involvement of the British Empire in our Civil War would have been decisive, and the
outcome of the struggle would have probably been vastly different, with immense
implications for all subsequent history. Our whole World today would be different.

Our friends Todd and Sandee. Couples like them are the backbone of
serious living history. Sandee is a brilliant seamstress and a recognized
authority on period womens' clothing and manners; and Todd, being an actual
veteran of H.M. Forces, is a Godsend to us as weapons expert and a drill serjeant.

Official British MOD site for the Royal Engineers with an excellent short history of the corps. And another good history of the RE here.

Website for the RE Museum in Kent, UK. Great stuff to see here, including stirring biographies of famous RE officers of the past, like Lt. John Chard, famous defender of Rorke's Drift in the Zulu War, Lt. Col. Durnford, who died with his men in the massacre at Isandlwana, and Gen. Charles "Chinese" Gordon, who perished at the fall of Khartoum in the Sudan.

Home site for the Royal Engineers Living History Group of British Columbia. A HUGE site with tons of information, photos, and historical research. Enjoy!

Here is the National Park Service's website on the Pig War confrontation and the British Encampment at Garrison Bay on San Juan Island. The old British RMLI base is preserved as a national park now with a new 80 foot flagmast and huge 25 foot Union Jack donated by the British Foreign Office. There is a neat slideshow of photos of the last encampment reenactment which occured in August 2007 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the new flagmast and rededication ceremony.

For information on American Civil War Reenacting in the Pacific Northwest and a schedule of events, here is the website for the Washington Civil War Association.

The most famous British observer in the Civil War was Lt. Col. Arthur Fremantle, who landed in Texas and travelled up through the entire South to reach Lee's army before Gettysburg. Enroute, he met many of the famous figures and left a fascinating diary of his American tour which is still in print. Here is a great website from a man who has portrayed him for many years.

Another lesser known Brit in the US Civil War was Col. George St. Leger Grenfell, scion of an ancient and noble English family and a famous soldier of fortune. He was both a dashing and fearless Southern cavalry commander and a Confederate spy. Imprisoned at lonely Fort Jefferson on a tiny island off the Florida Keys at war's end, he escaped in a small rowboat and vanished without a trace. His story absolutely beggers belief! Why hasn't a movie been made about this fellow?

And the famous General Patrick Cleburne, the "Stonewall Jackson of the West", one of only two foreign born Confederate officers to reach the rank of Major General, a veteran of the British Army before coming to America and considered by both Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee to have been one of the finest field commanders of the entire war. Tragically he died leading his men 30th November 1864 in a suicidal frontal assault on Union positions during the Battle of Franklin. Had he lived, he may have had a profound influence on the course of events the last year of the war because he was strongly advocating freeing the slaves and allowing them to serve in the army, a move which would have at one stroke reinforced the Southern Forces tremendously and also removed the main obstacle to Foreign Recognition of Southern Independence. Several more good sites Here and Here.

Not all British observers went South. An RE officer, Capt. Frederick Beaumont, was attached to the Federal Observation Balloon Corps during the struggle and went back to the UK to found the British Army's own observation balloon force which went into action decades later in the Boer War and which was therefore the direct ancestor of the Royal Flying Corps and the RAF.

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