In the Order Gallery are two iron cannonballs from Rhodes. They are small, one (LDOSJ 2698) measuring 8.9 cm in diameter, and the other (LDOSJ 2699) slightly bigger at 10.2 cm diameter. The plinths record the balls were donated by Viscountess Strangford (1826-1887) and are from the Siege of Rhodes in 1522.

The Annual Report of the Order in 1879 recorded her donation of ‘one piece of iron shot’ to the Library. It is plausible she gave the other at some point between then and her death in 1887. The museum had inherited two composite armours from the Old Jerusalem Tavern, but the date means the balls were the probably the first items of militaria ever donated to the Library at the Gate, predating the Order’s change to chivalric status and the formation of the museum. As a result, these balls are worthy of note in the history of the museum’s collections.

In later life, Viscountess Strangford would become famous for her medical work with the Order. However, before this period of her life, the then Miss Emily Anne Beaufort had been an intrepid explorer and author of travelogues.

In 1858, a year after her father’s death, Emily and her sister travelled without formal male escort to Malta, Egypt (where she went inside the Great Pyramid), then to Lebanon, Syria, the Holy Land, Rhodes, Crete, and Greece, ending in Constantinople. This trip resulted in her book Egyptian Sepulchres and Syrian Shrines published in 1861, with a new edition in 1874. Another visit to the region in 1859-1860, which she recorded in her daily journal, included Belgrade in the Adriatic.

On Rhodes, Emily and her sister stayed with the British Consul, and they were given a tour of the city by an Ottoman colonel, Suleiman Bey. Emily seemed keenly interested in the Order and its history, recording her visit to the old hospital, the Street of the Knights, carefully describing the arms of the langues above the doors, and saw the remains of the Grand Master’s Palace destroyed in 1856, after a long forgotten gunpowder magazine under the Church of St. John exploded. They visited the gate where Suleiman the Magnificent entered the city in 1523, and they walked along the ramparts. Here Emily related:

‘…there are still scores of witnesses to the sanguinity but gallantly-withstood Siege, in the shape of balls and stone-shot lying about, some of the latter thrown by ‘basilisks’ too huge to be carried far, but whose weight in falling must have been crushing. Many of the old guns remain also, some of them prettily ornamented; one from which passed so insolently close to Soleyman the Magnificent as even to scorch his beard…’ (Beaufort (Viscountess Strangford) 1874, 484)

It is tempting to suggest with so many cannonballs scattered around, Emily acquired those on display at the museum during this particular visit, and her trip to Rhodes helped to kindle her interest in the Order.

Emily met her husband, the eighth Viscount Strangford, a noted linguist, after he had given her Egyptian Sepulchres book a review in a journal. They married in 1862 enabling Emily to take her title. Viscount Strangford’s death in 1869 left no progeny, and therefore the Viscountship would be extinguished on her death.

As a result, Viscountess Strangford started a second episode in her life by devoting the rest of her years to nursing, and the newly formed Venerable Order, which she joined in 1873. This included setting up hospitals and clinics in places as far away as Bulgaria and Beirut. Strangford set up field hospitals during the Russo-Turkish War (1877-1878), where she was taken prisoner by the Russians, an experience from which, according to her obituary in the Annual Report of 1889, she never fully recovered. One of her most famous contributions was setting up, on behalf of the Order, the Victoria Hospital in Cairo with medical luminary and Knight of the Order, Herbert Sieveking.

Additionally, Viscountess Strangford composed books on nursing, set-up sub-committees, and lobbied for part-time education of nurses. However, in 1887, en-route to Port Said in Egypt to help set up another hospital, Viscountess Strangford, still highly energetic, but increasingly frail, died of a stroke.

In her day, Viscountess Strangford’s medical work drew favourable comparisons with her contemporary, Florence Nightingale, but she lacked the latter’s eye for self-promotion. Her intrepid travels to Ottoman lands are less well-known, but they have benefitted the collections at the museum immeasurably.

Bibliography:

Baigent, E. 2004. ‘Smythe (née Beaufort), Emily Anne, Viscountess Strangford’ in, Dictionary of National Biography (51) Smillie to Sprott. Oxford, 456-7.

https://archive.org/details/egyptiansepulch02stragoog

http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/womenstraveldiaries_wtddy06001_wtddy060010200/