Siege of O'Okiep

Post date: 03-Feb-2009 19:21:53

Another typographical error that saw a man become a Sheldon comes from James Barbary's 1971 book The Boer War; according to the "snippet view" on Google Book Search: "Smuts, using homemade dynamite hand grenades, had made a successful attack on the copper-mining town of O'Okiep. He had bottled up Colonel Sheldon there."

Except Smuts had not; he had in fact "bottled up" Colonel Shelton of the 3rd Queens Royal Regiment and the besieged Commandant of Namaqualand. This is confirmed in various other books, such as Deneys Reitz's Commando, Bill Nasson's Abraham Esau's War, Naphtali Levi's Jan Smuts and Rene Kraus Old Master - The Life of Jan Christian Smuts, among others, as wells as The New York Times in their 1902 article: "Part of Cape Colony was left unprotected." There is a Fort in O'Okiep named Shelton, where the battle was fought.

This error came to light while researching the 1902 Siege of O'Okiep, a late event in the Second Anglo-Boer War, which is currently being made into a film by First Star Pictures.