Relief of Ladysmith Relief of Ladysmith When the Second Boer War broke out on 11 October 1899, the Boers had a numeric superiority within Southern Africa. They quickly invaded the British territory and laid siege to Ladysmith, Kimberley and Mafeking. Britain meanwhile transported thousands of troops both from the United Kingdom itself and from elsewhere in the Empire and by the time the siege of Ladysmith had been lifted, had a huge numeric superiority. The Colony of Natal was bisected from east to west by the Tugela River which rose in the Drakensberg (to the west) and flowed into the Indian Ocean to
Mafeking Cadet Corps act as lookouts, mainly to warn the townspeople when the Boer siege guns were aimed and fired at different parts of the town. The town produced its own postage stamps, known as "Mafeking Blues", for postage during the siege. One set depicted the cadet leader Warner Goodyear seated on a bicycle . The Mafeking stamps were unusual among the stamps of the British Empire at that time, because they did not depict the monarch. Frankie Brown, a 9-year-old boy, was killed by a shell during the siege, and is sometimes claimed as a cadet casualty, although it is unlikely that