Page 24 - Who Was Sapper Brown

Wolseley was to have an Expeditionary Force up to 10,000 strong, mainly comprising the troops that had
deployed to Malta in April in anticipation of trouble with Russia, including the first Indian troops ever

deployed outside India:

‘The Indian troops now at Malta, the two batteries of Field Artillery that went there from India, and three
British battalions from the garrison as well as a Field Company of Royal Engineers [the 31st Fortress

Company] from England, are to form the Expeditionary Force to take over Cyprus.’6

The Royal Navy and a Tale of Silver Sixpences

Map of Cyprus, from Franz Von Löher, Cyprus, Historical and Descriptive (1878)

Admiral Hay arrived at Larnaca Bay on Thursday 4 July 1878, having invested all the Cyprus ports

with his ships to impose control.7 On 10 July, Mr Walter Baring, the Second Secretary of Her Majesty’s
Embassy at Constantinople, bearing a copy of the Convention, arrived in Larnaca from Constantinople

in the despatch vessel HMS Salamis. He was accompanied by Samih Pasha, the representative of the
Porte (the Ottoman Sultan), who brought with him the signed firman of the Sultan ordering the cession

of the island to Great Britain, in accordance with the Cyprus Convention. On 11 July Admiral Hay
despatched them to Nicosia to deliver the news to Pessim Pasha, the Turkish Governor, and prepare the

way for his own arrival the next day.8

As it was uncertain how this news would be received, and whether the Ottoman troops would consent

to lower their flag and have the British flag hoisted over them, Admiral Hay had an idea! The following
account is quoted from W Hepworth Dixon’s 1879 book, British Cyprus:

6 Wolseley Journal, Op cit, p. 4.

7 Hill G (1952), ‘The British Occupation of Cyprus’, in A History of Cyprus, Volume 4. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
8 The London Gazette 30 July 1878.

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