Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Africa Capstick, what's his problem?

I think you'll find the last Capstick book was finished by his wife Fiona and Pires who also wrote his stuff about Mozambique and FWIW, Fiona and Pires eventually married.

Pieter

The language a really tough nut to crack because it's soooooooo complicated but the good news is I'm picking it up slowly and most people here speak at least some English.

Other than that, we're having an absolute ball here and although it took us a while to settle in, wouldn't want to go back to living in Africa now.

The hunting is FAR better than I ever thought it would be and I shot my first Iberian red deer last week....... The trophies on these animals are FAR bigger than I'm used to seeing during the stalking I used to do in Scotland all those years ago and the shot was a radical raking shot that wasn't far off of a Texas heart shot from 200 yards with an open sighted K98 Mauser. I was in in the company of some really good/new made Portuguese friends so that made it pretty much perfect.

"I think you'll find the last Capstick book was finished by his wife Fiona and Pires who also wrote his stuff about Mozambique and FWIW, Fiona and Pires eventually married."

Steve is correct. Fiona finished Peter's "Warrior" after his death, and then went on to write Adelino Serras Pires' memoirs "Winds of Havoc" and two other books, "The Diana Files" and "Between Two Fires."

She currently is updating "Winds of Havoc" to include incidents not included in its first printing. The new version will be released soon by Rowland Ward in South Africa.

Bill Quimby

Thanks for the confirmation Bill.

Going back to Patterson, one really needs to cross reference his life by reading other authors such as Lake and Hunter etc to understand the whole story.

As far as I'm aware, Patterson didn't misrepresent himself at all but did go into the Tsavo thing as nothing more than a senior engineer and not a hunter so I guess one can't blame him for his errors.

I have never read Capstick's version of the battle of Tsavo, but the real Patterson, historically, is a bit more complicated than the struggling engineer (who claimed to be, but was not a colonel of engineers). Later, he got into the guiding business and ended up taking a young married couple by the name of Blythe on an extended safari. Upon leaving the coast, things got really "complicated." No one truly knows whether the husband eventually shot himself, was murdered by his wife, or was killed by Patterson. Whatever occured - nearly a century before cell phones and air evac - Ethel and Patterson buried him and then continued with the safari, apparently needing one less tent. It was all hushed up pretty effectively and Ethel's father made sure all future contact with Patterson ended. Hemingway heard the story from Percival and it inspired The Short Happy Life of Francis MaComber. Patterson went on to serve honorably in the Boer and Great Wars (where he did eventually earn that colonelcy) and then was hailed as one of the early Zionist military leaders - though raised a catholic. He eventually died in California of all places.

He didn't know what he was doing in what regards? Overseeing the building of the railroad bridge over the Tsavo river.....or dealing with two man eating lions that were killing and eating his workers?

Sorry. I meant in the way he dealt with the man-eaters..... the book although very interesting is pretty much a catalogue of stuff ups and had he done it right he'd almost certainly have nailed them a hell of a lot faster than he did....... but that said, (as I said before) he was an engineer not a lion hunter and there's no reason to expect him to have known what he was doing when it came to lion hunting.

He did the best he could under the circumstances and it must have taken a lot of courage to do it.

There have been many occasions in my life where I could have made better decisions and choices when looking back. And I did not have anywhere near the responsibility that Patterson had. One of my personal favorite short writings is Teddy Roosevelt's "Man in the arena." I think it applies to Patterson's situation as well.

As far as Capstick, one grain of salt, or a bag full. I don't care. I enjoy his writings. Have most of his books. Have read them multiple times. Have some in multiples which I have been passing along to other young men in my life.

ofcourse she is updating it.....my copy of "Winds of Havoc" just showed up today and now ill have to buy it again had to laugh though in the pic section the guy with the hundred pounder has the same last name as me....

BTW if anyone knows where i can find "The Diana Files" for a reasonable price its another i would like to read....

Good insight gentlemen. I agree that when one tends to take on something he is not familiar with, they tend to look amateurish in maybe even incompetent, but there are many professions that can make a a good capable man look incompetent in the beginning.

Too me it just seemed like there was a touch of jealousy in Capstick's writing, taking the time to inject things that "he knows" into Patterson's story. Comments such as "Patterson doesn't precisely tend to stun one with his smarts", seems a little unfair. How would Capstick have been judged his first ventures into the bush hunting lion? Capstick has no idea whether or not Patterson was a bright guy, so what is with that statement?

I am enjoying the book and as said, this is my first experience with Capstick and I recognize I can't judge the man on one writing.

I sure hope someday I get the chance to hunt Africa.

Rattler

There's a few around, including signed 1st editions but you can expect to pay around $60 & up for those.

PHC was a very gifted writer. I used to send him newspaper clippings of "death by animal" and he always graciously acknowledged them and added that he was pleased to have them to add to his files.

i wouldnt say jealousy cause Capstick lived a life most here would envy including spending time "sorting out" maneaters.....keep in mind Capstick is looking back on Patterson knowing some of the other incidents of poor judgment and lack of smarts like the safari incident previously mentioned....

+1

You can get the "Diana Files" from Safari Press.

One thing that bothered me in reading Patterson's book saw that they found a cave where the man eaters brought their kills to eat. I never heafrd of this behavior. WhereI have hunted, the lions merely drag their kills into the brush a bit so the vultures won't find them.

I think many of those old British guys were a bit daft by our own hunting standards. Jim Corbett, for whom I have a lot of respect, tells about ordering a 7mm bolt action rifle from London. He never even sighted it in or fired it. His first attempted shot was at a tiger and he fouled up because he didn't know it had a double set trigger!! The reason he hadn't shot it (open sights, BTW) was that he assumed the gunsmith in England had sighted it in.

Barkoff,

No, Your not reading him wrong - He is Monday morning QBing Patterson. He wasn't there and is relating his opinion of Patterson's mistakes.

That being said, I also think Capstick (et. al.) was correct in his criticism!

In 3 different accounts of the Lions - The Man-Eaters of Tsavo, The Legend of the Iron Snake and The Ghost & the Darkness,

I've found myself thinking how stupid and naive Patterson really was.

I am heard this mentioned by people before: in Mr Corbett's defence,the rifle was a Rigby, and in those days Rigby regulated their rifles (sighted them in) for a specific load if the customer wished. (I don't remember anything about double trigger though)

Everybody is a product of their times. WE now have another century of 'safari' stories and experience of Africa to base our opinions on.
Mr Patterson didn't have that, and basic knowledge about lion's that even non-enthusiasts may have today from watchign Discovery channel, was not available to him. no one taught him anything, nor were there a body of professional hunters like we have today.
I have read his own acount, and I do not think him naive or stupid in the context of the times, and the job he was doing, adn the social situation with the workers.
What I was suprised by was how little space was accorded to the Lions of Tsavo in his memoirs, I thought the whole book was about them. Obviuosly the story turned to legend later. I got the impression he thought it was just another interesting lion story.
For those interested, the actual cave photogrphaed in his book was found again only lastt year or the year before I think, after being lost ever since that time. There were no bones in there, or remains. It is possible that Patterson added some "colour", or that he was repeating was he was told by others and never went in the cave, or that local people or relatives removed the bones.

i also read recently in a magazine article that they tested the hairs of those lions for a molecule that build up in the lions sytem from being a man eater. They figured by the amount they found that one lion had eaten about ten people and the other about 20-30. However, they noted that if both lions had not completely devoured each body (and reports of the times as well as Patterson say they often did not) then the figures could be three times higher. But those two lions were defiinately maneaters.

It is interesting to me, to find that WDM Bell as a 17 year old got a job on the same railroad as a lion shooter at around the same time as Patterson was working there; lions were attacking camps all up and down that railway in progress. Walter Bell shot one lion. I mention it because they hired him as a lion hunter for that same railroad, and he had never even seen one before.
Different times.

( I have seen some learned experts on the internet disparaging the Lions of Tsavo story, say ing that it was actually hyena's doing the killing. The molecule test above disproves that. Also, one would have to assume that all the people there were blind. Patterson and WDM Bell both can't be wrong either. People were not stupider back in those days, they just didnt have the internet.)

just some more background, as an English officer in charge of jewish soldiers later in WW1, he took the side of his men who were oppressed by prejudice in the English army and his careeer and social position suffered greatly because of this, but he never backed down.
I think there is much to admire in the man.

The story of the Lions of Tsavo is a wonderful story that is now a legend, and I think it could be done much better as a movie than "Ghost in the Darkness".

In a non-hunting book about north Africa by a Polish journalist, I learned that the descendants of those Indian laborers still talk about the terror their grandfathers experienced. They were living in canvas tents, hearing their peers being dragged out and eaten, and were unprotected. Patterson hunted the lions by day, but he didn't come out of his caboose to fight them in the dark.

Those were days when you didn't call headquarters for a specialist when you ran into trouble. You just dealt with it as best you could. In Patterson's case, he was hunting a pair of maneaters with an Enfield .303, which was all he had. He borrowed a double rifle from a visiting sportsman once, and one barrel failed to fire, which he said taught him to test fire borrowed guns! Who would have thought that a visitor on safari would have a faulty rifle, or that he would neglect to tell a borrower about the problem?

Criticising ANYTHING a man in that position did is way beyond Monday morning quarterbacking. Most men would have taken the next boat home.

As for Capstick, he wrote some entertaining stories.

Corbett did in deed seem to do quite a few strange things. I seem to recall reading he nearly coming unstuck once or twice due to the fact he had only taken a couple of rounds to deal with a man eating tiger and had run out of ammo at a critical point..

Getting back to Capstick, I enjoyed his early books when I read them as a teenager, but in his later ones, you could almost tell he had a drink problem. After re reading some of his books not too long ago, I now find his writing style a bit
"flowery" and over the top and much prefer the likes of Corbett, Paterson and Anderson who are much more "understated"..