The Cape Town Irish Volunteer Rifles were a volunteer part-time military unit, which existed for a few years in late Victorian South Africa.
The unit was formed in Cape Town in 1885, in response to fears of a war between the United Kingdom and Russia. (The Cape Town Highlanders were formed at the same time, for the same reason). Thomas O'Reilly, a prominent Irish-born Cape politician, commanded the CTIVR.
The CTIVR was never a large unit (its greatest strength, in 1888, was only 214 all ranks), and in 1891 it was taken over by the Duke of Edinburgh's Own Volunteer Rifles.
Famous quotes containing the words cape, town, irish, volunteer and/or rifles:
“A great proportion of the inhabitants of the Cape are always thus abroad about their teaming on some ocean highway or other, and the history of one of their ordinary trips would cast the Argonautic expedition into the shade.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“This was the most completely maritime town that we were ever in. It was merely a good harbor, surrounded by land, dry if not firm,—an inhabited beach, whereon fishermen cured and stored their fish, without any back country.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“O Paddy dear, an’ did ye hear the news that’s goin’ round?
The shamrock is by law forbid to grow on Irish ground!
No more Saint Patrick’s Day we’ll keep, his colour can’t be seen,
For there’s a cruel law agin the wearin’ o’ the Green!”
—Unknown. The Wearing of the Green (l. 37–40)
“We should have an army so organized and so officered as to be capable in time of emergency, in cooperation with the National Militia, and under the provision of a proper national volunteer law, rapidly to expand into a force sufficient to resist all probable invasion from abroad and to furnish a respectable expeditionary force if necessary in the maintenance of our traditional American policy which bears the name of President Monroe.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“Oh, God, why do they do this to us? We only wanted to live, you and I. Why should they send us out to fight each other? If we threw away these rifles and these uniforms, you could be my brother.”
—Maxwell Anderson (1888–1959)