Landships II

Phil R · Captain

pics of water carts to go with peter's review

Centurion · Legend

These may be useful. They are taken from Horse Drawn Transport of the British Army by D J Smith a highly recommended little book packed with drawings of just about every type of British horse drawn vehicle in WW1 from pigeon lofts to wire laying wagons. Some v good drawings of the General Service wagon. Unfortunately it was published over 30 years ago so its a 2nd hand bookshop search.

As Peter says in his review, Water wagons (like field kitchens) were one of those essential but unsung foundations of the armies. An interesting point spies were asked to report on the movements of such transport as a movement of water and cooking wagons towards the front was a sure sign of an attack about to be launched.

Mark Hansen · Legend

Phil R wrote:

found a couple of good photos on the AWM site, using the search word "water" and restricting the search to "first world war"

unfortunately can't get the links to post

there are probably a few more. plenty with camels or mules.

-- Edited by Phil R at 19:49, 2006-10-07

The best way with the AWM pictures is to quote the picture number itself. If you try linking to a search result, it just returns a session timed out response from their computer.

Here are a few of the photo numbers in the AWM database for water carts:

H09021

E00173

E00174

E03357

E00031

E03093

E04833

These numbers are for water carts in Europe. There are others in Palestine.

Centurion · Legend

To add a little background:

The barrel style watercart was first introduced in 1870. There were four models, the I, II & III all proved difficult to scour out and keep clean, also when partly full the sloshing water kept changing the Cof G and made life diffcult for the horse. Barrel types had largely been replaced by 1914 but some lingered in remoter parts of the Empire. The Mark I Water Cart was introduced in 1891 and was in use throughout WW1. It was much easier to keep clean internally. The Mark II increasingly replaced the Mark I in this period. It was rectangular and even easier to keep clean and filters were added to ensure less chance of contamination when filling it. Clean water was essential in such a large army (in such dirty conditions) if a visit from Corporal Forbes* was to be avoided

* Army medical slang for Cholera Morbus

JamesH · Major

Another entertaining bit of slang. A manufacturer of water carts was Furphy's. The crews used to go from unit to unit and would carry rumours and gossip around the front with them, and they became known as "Furphy merchants". The term is still used in Australia to mean a teller of tall tales or bull*****er.

LincolnTanker · Commander in Chief

At Fort Paull, near Hull, UK, there is a WW1 water cart.� The chassis looks very unoriginal, more�like a Health and Safety officers�design for�a cart.