2nd East Riding Artillery Volunteers
military unit
The 2nd East Riding Artillery Volunteers was a part-time unit of Britain's Royal Artillery based at Hull and along the Humber Estuary. Its successor units provided field artillery on the Western Front during World War I and air defence artillery during and after World War II. Latterly it formed part of the Humber Artillery based at Hull.
Early history
At times of national crisis, volunteers were regularly called upon to defend the vulnerable harbours on the coast of the East Riding of Yorkshire. At the time of the Jacobite rising of 1745, the Wardens and Brethren of Hull Trinity House formed four volunteer artillery companies, equipped with 20 nine-pounder cannon taken from a ship lying in Hull Roads. These were the first volunteer artillery units formed in Yorkshire, though there may have been others manning the cannon in the fort covering Bridlington harbour. The companies were stood down after the Jacobite defeat at Culloden.
Hull Trinity House organised a new artillery company during the French Revolutionary Wars, and a mixed unit of infantry and artillery manned the fort at Bridlington harbour. These units existed from 1794 until the Treaty of Amiens in 1802. When the peace broke down in 1803, the Bridlington Volunteer Artillery reformed, but the guns at Hull were manned by the Sea Fencibles and by Regulars.
Volunteer Force
A number of new artillery companies were formed in the East Riding during the first enthusiasm for the Volunteer Movement in 1859–60.
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