 headnote
Kipling the early motorist
the route in the story
text changes
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"Steam Tactics"
Notes on the text
These notes, edited by Alastair Wilson, rely much on our predecessors’ notes in the ORG. We have not distinguished between ORG text and NRG text, save where specific explanatory comment have been added in square brakets. The page and line numbers below refer to the Macmillan (London) Standard Edition of Traffics and Discoveries, as published and frequently reprinted between 1904 and 1950.
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[December 3rd 2008]
[Page 177, Title] Steam Tactics The Navy would say always Tattics! The term was adopted by the Royal Navy in the late 1860s for the manoeuvres needed to practise flag officers and captains in handling ships in a fleet when steam had superseded sail. These exercises commonly bore no more relation to battle tactics than parade ground drill does to infantry movements in the field, but they were an equally necessary element in training. Here, of course, the term alludes to the narrator’s steam-driven car.
[Page 177, line 2] narrow Sussex lane it is hard now to envisage the roads in England at this time: the coming of the railway, then almost at its zenith of ubiquity, some sixty years earlier, had resulted in neglect of the turnpike coach roads, while the by-roads were like the roughest of un-made roads today. Surfaces were of water-bound macadam, not unlike a gravelled road, and ruts and potholes were frequent – hence the frequency of punctures and broken springs to plague the early motorist. In the Middle Ages, the roads of Sussex had been notorious for their badness, and other than the five main roads from London to the coast and the three roads which traversed the county from east to west, like parallels of latitude on a globe, they were not much better at the start of the 20th century. And Kipling’s description of the road as a lane suggests that he and his engineer-chauffeur are on a minor road.
[Page 177, line 5] the carrier most villages had a ‘carrier’, a man with a horse and cart who transported goods over short distances. In 1902, he usually hauled goods from and to the nearest railway station, bringing groceries for the village shop, a new piano for the squire’s wife, small bicycle parts for the village blacksmith who was the local cycle repairer.
[Page 177, line 5] the wrong side of the road an Act was passed by Parliament in 1756 which governed on which side traffic should drive on London Bridge. From that beginning, the rule of the road which required vehicles to keep to the left has remained in force. But on a narrow lane, such rules had little meaning.
[Page 177, line 7] bell carried instead of a horn by the steam cars of the period. Since the Locomobile was American-built, this was probably following American railroad practice, whereby steam locomotives traversing public streets (as they did in some cities until the 1950s) were required to sound a bell; similarly at grade-crossings (level-crossings).
[Page 177, line 9] superior coachman an expert, proud of his master’s fine horses and carriage, was naturally contemptuous of a machine with a smell and no pedigree. It was perhaps rather early for him to foresee his own obsolescence.
[Page 177, line 11] a vociferous steam air-pump modern descriptions of the few old Locomobiles remaining make no mention of such a pump: however, if, as is suggested three pages further on, the car’s boiler had some form of forced draught, then an ‘air pump’ – more likely a fan – would be necessary It is possible that this is what Kipling meant. 
[Page 177, line 13] a bowshot’s length it is said that Henry V’s veteran archers at Agincourt were accurate up to 300 yards and had a maximum range of 400 yards or more, but we need not suppose that the carrier’s horse covered quite the distance in the time stated, however alarmed by the air pump. [And just for fun, this Editor has calculated that if one took the “bowshot’s length? as no more than 200 yards, then the speed would have been some 56 miles per hour, and would have qualified the carrier’s horse to win the Derby!]
[Page 177, line 18] My engineer the story makes it clear that only an engineer could have kept a steam car on the road for long. His name, soon given as Leggat, was Filsey in the original magazine version. In later tales, it appears with two ‘t’s.
Mr. P.W. Inwood wrote:
My Chief Mechanical Engineer, Mr. A.F. Kent, M.B.E., who worked under me for many years at the Admiralty, told me that as a youngster he was sent by his firm, the manufacturers of Kipling’s first steam car (a Locomobile, I believe) to Kipling with the car to act as engineer and chauffeur. During the 1914-18 war, he was attached to Admiral Jellicoe in the same capacity. (This would have been when Jellicoe was First Sea Lord in 1916-17: Ed.) I had intended to get a story from him as a pendant to "Steam Tactics", but he died recently? (about 1960). He was acquainted with all the mechanical vicissitudes that figure so prominently in the story. Clearly he was the original of Mr Leggat(t) and he had the same precise manner.
[Page 177, line 22/23] till the sights come on Hinchcliffe’s meaning is “wait till I’ve got all my ammunition ready, and have judged the target’s course and speed?. A destroyer making a torpedo attack at this date, when a torpedo could only be fired on a straight course, approached the enemy roughly head on, to close the range as quickly as possible, and to give the enemy the minimum target at which to fire. The torpedo tube was turned to face at 90º to the line of advance, and at the appropriate moment, the attacking destroyer put its helm over to swing the ship so that the torpedo tube was pointing a suitable distance ahead of the enemy: the torpedo sight was set so that the tube was pointing ahead of the sight, and as the destroyer swung, the sight traversed across the enemy’s line of advance. At the appropriate moment, the “sights came on?, and the torpedo was fired.
[Page 178, line 6/7] in puris naturalibus in a state of nature, stark naked. Here used jocularly, and incorrectly: another of Pyecroft’s malapropisms.
[Page 178, line 8] on leaf old-fashioned pronunciation of “on leave?: it was much used in the Navy, especially among ratings from the west country.
[Page 178, line 10] kopjes (pronounced ‘koppies’). A South African word for small hills, adopted during the Boer War period. Sussex hills may be small, but the valleys between them, especially in the Weald where the story starts, are small, steep and narrow.
[Page 178, line 15] derogation of good manners the Naval Discipline Act, commonly known as the Articles of War, read to the ship’s companies of H.M. Ships quarterly (or was, until about 40 years ago), laid down severe punishments for ‘every person subject to this Act who shall be guilty of any profane oath, cursing, execration …. or other scandalous action, in derogation of God’s honour and corruption of good manners’.
[Page 178, line 23] Linghurst with a few exceptions, mostly self-evident, the place names in this story are fictitious, though plausible. Some possible identifications are suggested in the attached note on
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Dew ponds are shallow ponds without an outlet,for agricultural or drinking purposes (livestock). The earliest were made by hill farmers and shepherds in Neolithic times to provide water when the low-lying land was dangerous or inaccessible. They are most common on the Sussex Downs (cf the poem "Sussex" verse 6: 'Only the dew pond on the height / Unfed, that never fails'). In Sussex, the watertight layer at the bottom of a pond is made up of puddled chalk – pulverised chalk, mixed with water to a plastic consistency, and spread over the bed of the excavation and the margins. Elsewhere, the bed may be puddled clay with straw interleaving two or more layers. Edward Martin, writing earlier in the 20th century observed:
... beyond any question of doubt this scene (at the end of the tale) is framed by the Furnace Ponds of Leonardslee, near Lower Beeding, Here Sir Edmund Loder (2nd. Baronet, 1849-1920) converted the banks of the Hammer ponds ... into sheltered gardens. [In 2008, they are celebrated for their displays of rhododendrons and azaleas in late Spring.] On the slopes many foreign animals have been acclimatised, and the visitor will find in the paddocks antelopes, zebras, springboks, prairie dogs and kangaroos, while below, beavers build on the streams and lakelets.
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