Warhorses

[Siely]

Albert Edward Boyer MRCVS Conducting Officer of Horse Transports.  Awarded MBE in New Year's 1918.

Later became head of Halifax Transport.

Any expert details of his war record ? e.g. Where horses were taken by ship, how many transported during the war, where the horses originally came from etc. ?

My family's transport business worked closely with vets (also horse breeders) Albert E. Boyer MBE MRCVS and Thomas Sangster MRCVS.

[*Sandra*]

The Halifax Courier and Guardian
Halifax, West Yorkshire, England 
Sat, 6 May 1939
Page 14

https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-halifax-courier-and-guardian/161868676/

In 1917, more than 94,000 horses were sent from North America to Europe and 3,300 were lost at sea. Around 2,700 of these horses died when submarines and other warships sank their vessels. On 28 June 1915, the horse transport SS 'Armenian' was torpedoed by U-24 off the Cornish coast.

SS Armenian and Her Cargo of Mules Sunk by U24

https://today-in-wwi.tumblr.com/post/123003619173/ss-armenian-and-her-cargo-of-mules-sunk-by-u24

The horse lifting boxes were fundamental to getting the horses to France through east London's dockyards. Unlike soldiers, horses don't walk up steep gangplanks very easily, so this sort of lifting box would be hoisted over the gunwales of a ship by crane and lowered into the hold where horses were stabled.

https://www.horseandhound.co.uk/features/remembrance-day-war-horses-516629#:~:text=The%20horse%20lifting%20boxes%20were,hold%20where%20horses%20were%20stabled.

Riding horses were used in the cavalry and as officers' mounts. Draught horses switched from pulling buses to hauling heavy artillery guns or supply wagons. Small but strong multi-purpose horses and ponies carried shells and ammunition. By 1917, the Army employed over 368,000 horses on the Western Front.

Lots of info on Mr Google. 

Sandra

[*Sandra*]

Uxbridge and West Drayton Gazette
Hillingdon, London, England 
Fri, 21 Jul 1944
Page 4

https://www.newspapers.com/article/uxbridge-and-west-drayton-gazette/161868870/

Sandra

[Andy J2022]

According to his obituary in the Halifax Evening Post on 15 July 1944 he made 22 crossings of the Atlantic and brought 21,000 horses from America to England, Egypt and Salonika

[Siely]

22 crossings, that's a lot of horses and mules, must have been quite an important man.

[Andy J2022]

According to John Singleton in an article in Past and Present magazine (No 139 May 1993) entitled Britain's Military Use of Horses 1914-1918, by the middle of 1917, Britain had procured 591,000 horses and 213,000 mules, as well as almost 60,000 camels and oxen.

And according to the International Museum of the Horse, between 1914 and 1918, the US sent almost one million horses overseas, and another 182,000 were taken overseas with American troops. This deployment seriously depleted the country's equine population. Only 200 returned to the US, and 60,000 were killed outright.

[Siely]

Interesting. Did the UK / US governments have the powers to take horses in compulsory purchase ?

[*Sandra*]

Mr Google................

Horses were requisitioned by the British government early in the war, for use at the front. Thomas Hooker, who later served with the Machine Gun Corps, recalled the effects of this.

And soon after this news of the war, we were told – and we saw – that horses were being commandeered on the street. Leaving the baker or the milkman to pull his own cart home: there were very few motor-cars about. And we heard that these were required for the army transport.

https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/voices-of-the-first-world-war-a-total-war

[Andy J2022]

Plus an informative Wikipedia article "To meet its need for horses, Britain imported them from Australia, Canada, the US, and Argentina, and requisitioned them from British civilians. Lord Kitchener ordered that no horses under 15 hands (60 inches, 152 cm) should be confiscated, at the request of many British children, who were concerned for the welfare of their ponies."