This bugle sounded the Charge of the Light Brigade at the Battle of Balaclava, sending over six hundred men into the Valley of Death. It spent sixty years hanging on the wall of a pub in Newcastle, until it was sold to the American television host Ed Sullivan.
A few supposed Balaclava Bugles have emerged over the years, and some military historians dispute whether the charge was sounded on a bugle at all. But this instrument has impeccable credentials: it belonged to Trumpeter William ‘Billy’ Brittain of the 17th Lancers, who rode alongside Lord Cardigan in the death or glory charge towards a Russian artillery battery in Crimea on October 25th 1854.
It was the most notorious blunder in British military history, 110 of his comrades were killed and Billy was mortally wounded. He was carried off the battlefield clutching his bugle by Sergeant-Major Nunnerley and taken to Florence Nightingale’s hospital at Scutari, where he died four months later. Nunnerley rode behind Billy in the charge and years later would provide a sworn statement that the bugle was the genuine article.
The Balaclava Bugle was brought back to Billy’s hometown of Dublin and given to his father, who died in 1873. It then passed down through his family, and there’s some confusion over how it wound up in Newcastle. The Newcastle Daily Chronicle gave a plausible explanation in an article published in 1904, which said it was sold to James Baker, landlord of the Percy Arms, by Billy’s nephew Alfred Brittain. He was a trumpeter in the orchestra at the Palace Theatre, which was a few yards from the pub.
James Baker offered the bugle for sale at Glendinning’s auction house in London in 1905, but it was withdrawn when it failed to reach its reserve of £1,500. It languished on a wall in the Percy Arms for the next six decades, where it’s said to have been used occasionally to sound last orders at the bar.
The bugle was put up for auction again at Sotheby’s in London in 1964 by James’ son, where it caught the eye of Peter Pritchard. He was the theatrical agent for the legendary American TV host Ed Sullivan, who gave The Beatles their first TV appearance over there. He successfully bid £1,600 on behalf of Sullivan, who then gave it to the 17th Lancers’ regimental museum at Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire.
It was sold with a letter from Mrs Farrell, who was Billy’s nurse at Florence Nightingale’s hospital. It gives some poignant details of his final days, and his attachment to the instrument:
“The trumpeter that sounded the charge for Cardigan was a most pitiful case, he begged that his bugle not be taken out of his sight. Cardigan spent half an hour with him soothing him, he is lying in some plank beds and blankets. He belongs to the 17th Lancers his name is Brittain. The sergeant of the 17 calls him Billy and keeps telling him to pluck up and get out and blow another charge, but there was never any hope.”