1819-1824.
Reduction in the corps—Distribution—Sergeant Thomas Brown, the modeller—Reinforcement to the Cape, and services of the detachment during the Kaffir war—Epidemic at Bermuda—Damages at Antigua occasioned by a hurricane—Visit to Chatham of the Duke of Clarence—Withdrawal of a detachment from Corfu—A private becomes a peer—Draft to Bermuda—Second visit to Chatham of the Duke of Clarence—Fever at Barbadoes—Death of Napoleon, and withdrawal of company from St. Helena—Notice of private John Bennett—Movements of the company in Canada—Trigonometrical operations under the Board of Longitude—Feversham—Relief of the old Gibraltar company—Breastplates—St. Nicholas' Island—Condition of company at Barbadoes when inspected by the Engineer Commission—Scattered state of the detachment at the Cape—Services of the detachment at Corfu—Intelligence and usefulness of sergeant Hall and corporal Lawson—Special services of corporal John Smith—Pontoon trials—Sheerness—Notice of corporal Shorter—Forage-caps and swords.
By the royal warrant of 20th March, 1819, the peace establishment of the corps was further reduced, from twenty-four companies of 1,258 total, to twelve companies of 752. Of this number the staff embraced one brigade-major, one adjutant, one quartermaster, two sergeant-majors, two quartermaster-sergeants, and one bugle-major. The organization of each company was fixed at the subjoined detail:—
| 1 | colour-sergeant, | |
| 2 | sergeants, | |
| 3 | corporals, | |
| 3 | second-corporals, | |
| 2 | buglers, | |
| 51 | privates. | |
| Total | 62; |
and the whole were distributed, with regard to strength, consistently with the relative wants of the several stations. These stations were Woolwich, Chatham, Portsmouth, and Plymouth; Gibraltar, Corfu, Bermuda, Barbadoes, St. Helena, Kingston in Upper Canada, and the Cape of Good Hope.[[241]]
A reinforcement of thirty men, under Lieutenant Rutherford, R.E., arrived at the Cape of Good Hope on the 24th July. In consequence of hostilities with the Kaffirs the detachment marched 700 miles to the south-eastern frontier. It traversed a wild and thickly-wooded country, where there were neither bridges nor roads; and in the absence of soldiers of the quartermaster-general’s department, facilitated by their exertions the progress of the troops. In places where civil artificers could not be procured at any rate of wages, they executed various services and works of defence for the security and tranquillity of the settlement. On one occasion they constructed a temporary bridge, of chance materials, to span one of the principal rivers of the country, which was swollen by floods, and rendered deep, rapid, and dangerous. The bridge was thrown in six hours, and the whole of the force, about 2,000 horse and foot, a demi-battery of guns with ammunition waggons, about 100 baggage waggons with commissariat supplies, camp equipage, &c., crossed in perfect safety in three hours. “Without the assistance of these sappers,” writes Colonel Holloway, R.E., “the river could not have been passed without much delay, loss of property, and perhaps loss of life;” and, “both on the frontier, and at the seat of government, they were always found of the utmost benefit.” The detachment returned to Cape Town in December, when the remnant of the old party, which had been in the colony since 1806, quitted for England and arrived at Woolwich on the 5th September, 1820.
An epidemic fever of a severe character raged at Bermuda during the months of August and September, and out of a company of fifty-two total, no less than one sergeant, twenty rank and file, three women, and one child, fell victims to its virulence. Captain Cavalie S. Mercer who commanded the company, was also numbered with the dead.
From Barbadoes, thirty non-commissioned officers and men, under the command of Captain W. D. Smith, were detached to Antigua, in November, and worked in the engineer department, repairing the damage caused by a recent hurricane, until the January following, when they returned to their former station. Small parties, of fluctuating strength, were also detached to Trinidad, St. Lucia, Tobago, and Demerara, and had charge of different working parties at those islands for several years.
At Chatham on the 11th November, the Duke of Clarence reviewed the corps under arms; and after witnessing various field operations, including the firing of mines, the construction of flying saps, and the manœuvring of pontoons, inspected the model and school rooms. In the latter, he watched with great interest the system of instruction as carried out by Lieutenant-Colonel Pasley; and in expressing his perfect satisfaction with all he saw, added his opinion, that the establishment was one of great public utility.
On the 14th of the same month, thirty-four non-commissioned officers and men of the company at Corfu were withdrawn from the island in the ‘Christiana’ transport, and sailed for England. On arriving at Gibraltar, one sergeant and nineteen rank and file joined the companies there under an order from General Sir George Don; and the remaining twelve reached Chatham on the 2nd April, 1820. The conduct of the company during its brief tour of duty at Corfu, was reported to the Inspector-General of Fortifications in very favourable terms, by Lieutenant-Colonel Whitmore, R.E.[[242]]
On the 5th June thirty-one men, chiefly masons and bricklayers, under Lieutenant Skene, R.E., arrived at Bermuda, to replace the men who had died during the epidemic. A party of variable strength, with the exception of occasional periods of temporary withdrawal, was permanently detached to execute the defences at Ireland Island.
In August the Duke of Clarence again visited Chatham, and a full routine of military and field operations was carried on for his inspection. With the works, the schools, and model rooms, his Royal Highness expressed his approbation in language that was both flattering to the corps and honourable to the institution.
In October the yellow fever again visited Barbadoes, but its violence, contrasted with former visitations, was considerably assuaged, and its fatality less felt among the population. Forty-six of the corps were present during its prevalence, and though nearly the whole of the number were attacked, only eleven died, and but fifteen were invalided. The loss in the company, however, was proportionally more severe than in any other corps in garrison, and the deterioration in the general health of the men drew the particular notice of the Commander of the Forces, who made repeated comments on it in his reports to England. In consequence of these reports, the company was relieved early in 1822, some months before the completion of its tour of service. Its character while in the West India command was flatteringly spoken of by Captain W. D. Smith, R.E. In one of his communications he wrote, “Its conduct, I have pride in saying, has been most exemplary.”
Napoleon died at St. Helena on the 5th May, and his remains were deposited with quiet solemnity in an unpretending tomb, shadowed by a willow, in Slane’s valley. The company of sappers at the station took part in the funereal arrangements. The stone vault was built by privates John Warren and James Andrews. The body was lowered into its resting-place by two privates of the company, and other privates, appointed for the duty, refilled the grave, and secured all with plain Yorkshire slabs. Thus, without epitaph or memorial, were entombed the ashes of the most extraordinary man of modern times. As the necessity for retaining the company, now reduced, by deaths and the withdrawal of a detachment in 1819, to twenty-five of all ranks, no longer existed, it quitted the island and arrived at Woolwich on the 14th September. Private John Bennett was detained for three months after the removal of the company, and during that period he was employed with the Clerk of Works, in giving over the stores of the engineer department to the island storekeeper.[[243]]
The company in Upper Canada changed its head-quarters in June, from Kingston to Isle aux Noix, and afforded parties for service at Quebec and Fort George, both of which were recalled to Isle aux Noix in August. In November, 1822, the greater part of the company was removed to Quebec, and the remainder were retained for the works at Isle aux Noix.
From July to November, a sergeant and nine men, chiefly carpenters and smiths, were employed by the Board of Longitude under Major Colby and Captain Kater, in the operations for determining the difference of longitude between the observatories at Paris and Greenwich; and visited ten of the principal trigonometrical stations in England. Besides attending to the laborious requirements of the camp, the party erected poles, and constructed stages or platforms wherever needed, on commanding sites and towers, for purposes of observation; and were also intrusted with the care of the philosophical instruments. In the professional operations of the season they took no part.[[244]]
In June, one sergeant and thirty-nine rank and file under Captain John Harper, R.E., were detached from Woolwich to Feversham, and after destroying the powder-mills and premises connected with them, returned to head-quarters in September.
The first company of the corps, which had been at Gibraltar since 1772 and was present at the celebrated siege a few years afterwards, was removed, in the course of relief, from that fortress to Woolwich in June.
Breast or belt-plates of brass, in place of buckles, were adopted early in the year by permission of General Gother Mann. All ranks wore a plate of uniform device and dimensions, and each soldier paid for his own. The device consisted of the royal cipher, encircled by the garter, bearing the name of the corps and surmounted by a crown.
A fluctuating detachment, not exceeding thirteen masons and miners under a corporal, was detached in the autumn from Devonport to St. Nicholas Island, and remained there for nearly four months repairing the fortifications.
At the fall of the year the engineer commission to the West Indies, composed of Colonel Sir James Carmichael Smyth, Major Fanshawe, and Captain Oldfield inspected, in the course of their professional tour, the fourth company of sappers stationed at Barbadoes under the command of Captain Loyalty Peake. Its state was most creditable. Since its arrival in the command it had only lost one man and that from an accident. Whilst other troops quartered under the same roof were withered and sickly, the sappers were healthy—a fact that was ascribed to the attention of the officers, and the absence among the men of those intemperate habits, which in a hot and enervating climate, originate so many ailments.
Royal Sappers & Miners
Plate XII.
UNIFORM 1823.
Printed by M & N Hanhart.
The small detachment at the Cape of Good Hope was much dispersed at this period. The men detached are traced at short intervals at Cape Town, Kaffir Drift, Wiltshire, Port Elizabeth, and New Post Kat River.
The Corfu detachment of seven men was removed to Gibraltar, in the ‘Frinsbury’ transport, in December, and arrived at the Rock on the 6th March, 1824, bearing with it records of its uniform exemplary conduct and public utility. Being first-rate workmen, they were the leading men of their trades, and some of the best work at the palace was the result of their superior mechanical acquirements and skill. Sergeant John Hall was overseer and master carpenter for four years, and corporal Andrew Lawson, a man of considerable talent, was clerk of works, and also directed the masons and bricklayers.[[245]] Captain Streatfeild in parting with them, wrote “They are a very honest, trustworthy set of men, and do honour to the corps.” “The worst mechanic among them,” said Lieutenant G. Whitmore, “would be almost invaluable in the corps.” Before the company quitted Corfu, four deaths had occurred; four also took place in the small party that remained, one of whom, private Gamaliel Ashton, a bricklayer, was killed by falling from a scaffold while at work at the palace.[[246]]
Second-corporal John Smith was sent from Quebec in the summer to examine the freestone quarries of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and to report upon their capabilities and facilities for furnishing stones of certain dimensions for the service of the department. He started on his mission in a merchant schooner on the 7th August, and, with Captain Melville Glenie, of the 60th rifles, was nearly wrecked on the Beaumont shoals. The flag of distress and the shouts of the passengers being unheeded, corporal Smith procured an old musket and some powder, and having with some difficulty fired a few rounds from it, the situation of the vessel was observed by some pilots, who rescued the passengers. Next day the corporal re-embarked on board another vessel, and landing at Miramichi, visited the quarries there, and also at Remsheg, Pictou, Mergomish, and Nipisiguit. Upwards of two months were spent in completing his researches; and, returning to Quebec on the 16th October with specimens of the building stones and slates taken by him from the various quarries he had examined, he made a lucid report of their capabilities, &c, and detailed the terms upon which the owners of the properties were prepared to deal with the department. Colonel Durnford, the commanding royal engineer, expressed his entire satisfaction of the manner in which the duty was performed, and of the intelligence evinced by the corporal in his descriptive report.[[247]]
In September and October trials of the pontoons, invented respectively by Sir James Colleton and Lieutenant-Colonel Pasley, were made in the open part of the Medway near the Gunwharf, and at Rochester Bridge—on the 9th and 10th September, in the presence of a committee of seven officers of the royal artillery and royal engineers, Lieut.-General Cuppage, R.A., being the president; and on the 1st October in the presence of his Royal Highness the Duke of York. One or other of the rival systems was to supersede the use of the old English tin pontoons. To work the buoy pontoons of Sir James Colleton, seamen were lent from H.M.S. ‘Prince Regent.’ The third and sixth companies were employed with Colonel Pasley’s decked canoes. The manœuvres were exceedingly laborious, and the men were exposed a greater part of each day to very heavy rains. They not only, however, did everything to the satisfaction of his Royal Highness and of the officers composing the committee, but several distinguished naval officers declared it was impossible that any operations with boats could have been better or more quickly performed.[[248]]
From early in November to the 21st January, 1825, a party of ten privates with second-corporal Robert Shorter, was employed at Sheerness under the command of Lieutenant E. W. Durnford, R.E., in boring to ascertain the nature of the strata with a view to determine its practicability for building some permanent works of defence. The borings were carried on at all the salient points of the contemplated fortifications, ranging in depth from thirty to sixty feet. Borings were also made on the Isle of Grain, and the men of the party were occasionally employed at their trades in the engineer department. Corporal Shorter registered the daily progress and results of the operation;[[249]] but, although the intended works were never undertaken, the borings were not without interest in adding their quota of information to the cumulative discoveries of geological research.
The leather forage cap introduced in 1813, was this year superseded by a dark blue cap, called the Kilmarnock bonnet, with a yellow band manufactured in the web, and a peak and chin-strap. The crown was of immense circumference. See Plate XIII. The corporals wore the chevrons of their rank above the peak. The superior ranks had blue cloth caps, with peaks, chin-straps, and gold lace bands. The Kilmarnock bonnets were purchased by the men; the leather caps had been supplied by the public.
About this period the army pattern sword for staff-sergeants and sergeants was adopted in the corps; but the swords introduced for the buglers were of the artillery pattern.
Royal Sappers & Miners
Plate XIII.
UNIFORM & WORKING DRESS, 1825
Printed by M & N Hanhart.