C.I.V.'s Marching aboard S.S. "Garth Castle"

Volunteers prepare for the long journey to South Africa

The title of this film dates it around January 1900 - when the first of two contingents of the City of London Imperial Volunteers boarded the SS Garth Castle bound for South Africa. These men would probably have volunteered less than a month before these images were shot for the Hepworth Film Company. A few weeks later they would see their first active service in the successful attempt to relieve the town of Kimberley from its Boer siege on 15 February.

The past tense of the opening intertitle points to the BFI National Archive's print being a reissued copy, perhaps from a few years later.