It might be time to go "All Metal Mode!!!"

Well it looks like the painfully quiet (the metal detector hardly ever makes a sound) and monotonous field (walking between the rows and rows of baby sugarcane where everything looks the same) deserves further investigation.

Currently cleared sugarcane field.

I had only found 3 noteworthy items after hours and hours of detecting. 2 lead bullets and 1 Victorian Era British Military button. I found one of the lead bullets a few weeks prior and since finding the button have had a renewed interest in the field. Further searching lead me to find the other bullet.

Something about these bullets got me thinking. They don't look like conventional modern bullets. At first, I thought perhaps they were homemade but then I started wondering what bullets the British soldiers would have used in Victorian times. I  think of musket balls when I think of those filmed, recreations I have seen of Anglo-Zulu war scenes. The ones with the Zulu impi's rushing the soldiers while they were frantically trying to shove gunpowder and a lead ball down the barrel of their gun.

So I consulted that distant relative that seems to know a lot about all things old, Uncle Google. I asked what "Boer war bullets" and "Anglo-Zulu war bullets" looked like and found this image.

Click to view Wikipedia article containing this image

I do believe the second from the left is the bullet I found. If you look at the picture below you can see the lines where the shell was crimped onto the bullet.

This bullet belongs to a round of ammunition used in a Martini-Henry rifle. This rifle was used by the British military from 1871 until about 1918. It has been listed as being used in the Anglo-Zulu war as well as the second Boer war.

Now the only 3 items of interest to come out of that field seem to be directly linked. A button and 2 bullets. British military issued items that date somewhere from 1871+. Slowly but surely we start uncovering the mystery and already we have a clearer date range.

What happened on this field all those years ago? Was that soldier in some sort of skirmish where shots were fired and somehow he lost a button? Or was the field used for training exercises? Time to go all metal mode on the detector and stop discriminating out iron signals. The discovery of a Zulu spearhead or other iron artifacts might shed some light on this random field in the farmlands of the once Victoria County back when it was under British rule and known as the Natal Colony.

The gift of a beautiful sunset is well received after a long day metal detecting.