There were not enough British forces in India to contain the
mutiny once it spread. And spread it did. The catalyst may have been the
perceived cultural insensitivity of the introduction of the new rifle, but dissatisfaction
with British rule kept the rebellion going.
Reinforcements were slow in coming. There was no telegraph
in India so knowledge of the mutiny took a long time to reach Britain. There
weren’t enough British troops in India to turn the tables on the mutineers
until ships with reinforcements started arriving.
Those ships would have taken over a month and closer to two
months before they berthed in Calcutta and discharged their troops. Add to that
the time that it took for word to get out and it must have taken at least three
months for reinforcements to arrive. It must have been a very long wait for the
troops already there.
The mutiny started in April of 1857 and spread through that
summer. It is not clear when the first troop ships arrived in India. In October
George Welch embarked on the ship Defiance and by November he was in Calcutta.
Other ships left and arrived at the same time. Reinforcements had arrived.
My drawing of the Defiance.
It is such an odd looking ship that it looks more like a floating arc.
Sources:
Douglas, Althea. Time
Traveller’s Handbook: A Guide to the Past. Dundern Press, Toronto, 2011
Holmes, Richard. Redcoat:
The British Soldier in the Age of Horse and Musket. Harper Collins
Publishers, London, 2001
Lewis-Stempel, John. The
Autobiography of the British Soldier: From Agincourt to Basra, in His Own
Words. Headline Publishing Group, London, 2007*
Ralby, Dr. Aaron. Atlas
of Military History: An Illustrated Global Survey of Warfare from Antiquity to
the Present Day. Parragon Books Ltd., Bath, UK, 2013
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