1842.
Draft to Canada—Company recalled from thence—Its services and movements—Its character—Labours of colour-sergeant Lanyon—Increase to Gibraltar—Reduction in the corps—Irish survey completed; force employed in its prosecution—Reasons for conducting it under military rule—Economy of superintendence by sappers—Their employments—Sergeants West, Doull, Spalding, Keville—Corporals George Newman, Andrew Duncan—Staff appointments to the survey companies—Dangers—Hardships—Average strength of sapper force employed—Casualties—Kindness of the Irish—Gradual transfer of sappers for the English survey—Distribution; Southampton.
The company in Canada which accompanied the troops to that province on the occasion of the unsettled state of affairs on the American frontier, was increased to a full company by the arrival of thirteen men on the 8th July, 1842.
Scarcely had the party landed before the company itself was recalled, and rejoined the corps at Woolwich on the 31st October, 1842. During its four years' service on the frontier, the total of the company, with its reinforcement, counted ninety-nine of all ranks, and its casualties only amounted to eight men invalided, three discharged, and five deserted. Not a death was reported. From time to time it was stationed at Quebec, Fort Mississaqua near the Falls of Niagara, St. Helen’s Island, St. John’s, and Fort Lennox, Isle aux Noix. These were its several head-quarters, and as the company was removed from one to the other, parties were detached for service to each of the other stations, and also to Amherstburgh. In repairing and improving the defences at Mississaqua and Isle aux Noix they were found of great advantage. At the other stations they were no less usefully occupied in barrack repairs and other contingent services.
From Amherstburgh the detachment rejoined the company in 1840. Whilst the latter was at St. Helen’s and afterwards at St. John’s, the men were exercised during the summer months in pontooning with bridges of Colonel Blanshard’s construction, which had been stored at Chambly until 1840. The pontoons were found to travel well on bad roads, but the breadth of the rivers in Canada did not permit of their being often used as bridges.
After the removal of the company, Colonel Oldfield, the commanding royal engineer, thus wrote of it: “The discipline of the company was not relaxed by its four summers in Canada. It had suffered the inconvenience of several times changing its captain, but it was nevertheless maintained in good order and regular conduct. Lieutenant W. C. Roberts, R.E., however, was constantly with it, to whom and colour-sergeant Lanyon[[419]] and the non-commissioned officers, much credit is due. The desertions only amounted to six, although the company was on the frontier in daily communication with the United States. Of these six, one returned the following morning; a second would have done so but he feared the jeers of his comrades; and the other four found when too late the falsity of the inducements which had attracted them to the States, and would gladly have come back could they have done so.”[so.”] And the Colonel then concludes, “The advantages enjoyed by well-behaved men, and the esprit de corps which has always existed in the sappers have been found to render desertion rare, even when exposed to greater temptation than usually falls to the lot of other soldiers.”
In the meantime a second company had been removed to Gibraltar in the ‘Alban’ steamer under Lieutenant Theodosius Webb, R.E., and landed on the 6th July, 1842. This augmentation to the corps at that fortress was occasioned by the difficulty felt in procuring a sufficient number of mechanics for the works; and to meet the emergency, the company in Canada was recalled, as in both provinces works of considerable magnitude had been carried on by civil workmen, who could at all times be more easily engaged in a country receiving continual influxes by immigration, than in a confined fortress like Gibraltar with a limited population.
On the return of the Niger expedition in November, to which eight rank and file had been attached, the establishment of the corps was reduced from 1,298 to 1,290 of all ranks.
The survey of Ireland upon the 6-inch scale was virtually completed in December of this year, terminating with Bantry and the neighbourhood of Skibbereen. The directing force in that great national work was divided into three districts in charge of three captains of royal engineers in the country; and there was also a head-quarter office for the combination and examination of the work, correspondence, engraving, printing, &c., in charge of a fourth captain. To each of these districts the survey companies were attached in relative proportion to the varied requirements and contingencies of the service, and adapted to the many modifications which particular local circumstances frequently rendered imperative. A staff of non-commissioned officers and men was also stationed at the head-quarter office, and discharged duties of trust and importance.
In framing his instructions for the execution of the Irish survey, Colonel Colby had to reject his old opinions formed from circumscribed examples of small surveys, and to encounter all the prejudices which had been fixed in the minds of practical men. The experience of these parties did not extend beyond the surveys of estates of limited space, performed without hurry and with few assistants. Colonel Colby, on the other hand, was to survey rapidly a large country, with much more accuracy. The two modes were therefore so entirely different, that it took less time to train for its performance those who had no prejudice, and who had been brought up by military discipline to obey, than to endeavour to combine a heterogeneous mass of local surveyors fettered by preconceived notions and conceits, deficient in habits of accuracy and subordination, and who could not be obtained in sufficient numbers to form any material proportion of the force. Hence the survey of Ireland became essentially military in its organization and control, the officers of engineers being the directors of large parties, and the non-commissioned officers the subordinate directors of small parties.
In the later years of the Irish survey, however, the superintendence by the sappers became of much consequence and its advantages very appreciable in the reduction of expense. For the year 1827, the outlay for the survey was above 37,000l., at which period the sum paid to the officers was more than one-third of the whole amount; but in 1841, when the expenditure was more than doubled, the amount for superintendence had been reduced to a twelfth part of the total expenditure.[[420]]
The general employment of the sappers and miners in this great national work embraced the whole range of the scheme for its accomplishment, and many non-commissioned officers and men trained in this school became superior observers, surveyors, draughtsmen, levellers, contourers, and examiners. Among so many who distinguished themselves it would be almost invidious to name any; but there were a few so conspicuous for energy of character, efficiency of service, and attainments, that to omit them would be a dereliction no scruples could justify. Their names are subjoined:—
Colour-sergeant John West celebrated as an engraver. In 1833, the Master-General, Sir James Kempt, pointed out his name on the engraving of the index map of Londonderry to His Majesty William IV. in terms of commendation; and the Master-General, while West was yet a second-corporal, promoted him to be supernumerary-sergeant, with the pay of the rank. Most of the index maps of the counties of Ireland were executed by him, and a writer in the United Service Journal[[421]] complimented him by saying that the maps already completed by him were as superior to the famous Carte des Chasses as the latter was to the recondite productions of Kitchen, the geographer. His also was the master hand that executed the city sheet of Dublin, and his name is associated with many other maps of great national importance. The geological map of Ireland, 1839, engraved for the Railway Commissioners, was executed by him; and in all his works, which are many, he has displayed consummate skill, neatness, rigid accuracy, and beauty both of outline and topography. In October, 1846, he was pensioned at 1s. 10d. a-day, and received the gratuity and medal for his meritorious services. He is now employed at the ordnance survey office, Dublin, and continues to gain admiration for the excellency of his maps.
Sergeant Alexander Doull was enlisted in 1813. After serving a station in the West Indies, he was removed to Chatham. There on the plan of ‘Cobbett’s Grammar,’ he commenced publishing letters to his son on “Geometry,” but after the second number appeared, he relinquished the undertaking. In 1825 he joined the survey companies, and was the chief non-commissioned officer at the base of Magilligan. He was a superior mathematical surveyor and draughtsman, and his advice in difficult survey questions was frequently followed and never without success. Between 1828 and 1833 he had charge of a 12-inch theodolite, observing for the secondary and minor triangulation of one of the districts, and was the first non-commissioned officer of sappers, it is believed, who used the instrument bearing that designation. In July, 1834, while employed in the revision of the work in the neighbourhood of Rathmelton, he introduced a system of surveying similar to traverse-sailing in navigation, which effected a considerable saving of time in the progress of the work, and elicited the approbation of Colonel Colby. While on the duty he invented a plotting-scale,[[422]] and subsequently a reflecting instrument,[[423]] both simple and ingenious in construction. After a service of twenty-three years, he was discharged in January, 1838. When the tithe commutation survey was thrown into the hands of contractors, Doull got portions of the work to perform, and his maps were referred to in terms of high commendation by Edwin Chadwick, Esq.[[424]] Among several towns that he surveyed, one was Woolwich, the map of which, dedicated to Lord Bloomfield, was published by him in 1843. In the proposed North Kent Railway, Mr. Doull was assistant-engineer to Mr. Vignoles, and he planned a bridge of three arches, having a roadway at one side and a double line of rails at the other, with an ornamental screened passage between, to span the Medway where the new bridge recently constructed, connects Strood and Rochester; which plan, had the proposed railway not been superseded by a rival line, would have secured an enduring fame for the designer. This was the opinion of Mr. Vignoles and Sir Charles Pasley. Afterwards when the competing companies were preparing their respective projects, Mr. Doull represented the engineering difficulties of the opposing scheme in a pamphlet under the signature of “Calculus.” In this his military knowledge and experience were well exhibited, inasmuch as he showed how the fortifications at Chatham would be injured by the adoption of that line; and the railway consequently, on account of this and other influences, has never been prolonged so as to interfere with the defences. A few years afterwards he published a small work entitled, “Railway Hints and Railway Legislation,” which obtained for him, from the South-Eastern Railway Company—the one he so perseveringly opposed—the situation of assistant-engineer to the line. More recently he issued a pamphlet on the subject of a railway in America,[[425]] which for its boldness and lucidity gained for him the praise of a rising literary genius in the royal engineers.[[426]] His last pamphlet on the subject of opening a north-west passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, a distance of 2,500 miles, is more daring, and evinces more pretension and merit than any of his previous literary efforts. Mr. Doull is also known as the inventor of several improvements of the permanent way of railways,[[427]] and is a member both of the Society of Civil Engineers and the Society of Arts.
Serjeant Robert Spalding was for many years employed on the survey of Ireland, from which, on account of his acquirements, he was removed to Chatham to be instructor of surveying to the young sappers. To assist him in the duty he published a small manual for the use of the students. It was not an elaborate effort, but one which detailed with freedom and simplicity the principles of the science. In 1834 he was appointed clerk of works at the Gambia, where his vigorous intellect and robust health singled him out for varied colonial employment, and his merits and exertions frequently made him the subject of official encomium. Five years he spent in that baneful and exhausting climate, and in 1840, just as he was about to sail for England, the fever seized him, and in a few days he died. In his early career as a bugler he was present in much active service, and was engaged at Vittoria, San Sebastian, Bidassoa, Nivelle, Nive, Orthes, and Toulouse.
Sergeant Edward Keville was a very fair and diligent artist. He engraved the index map of the county of Louth, and assisted in the general engraving work at the ordnance survey office in Dublin. In January, 1846, he was pensioned at 1s. 10½d. a day, and obtained re-employment in the same office in which he had spent the greatest part of his military career.
Second-corporal George Newman was eminent as a draughtsman, and the unerring fineness and truthfulness of his lines and points were the more remarkable, as he was an unusually large man of great bodily weight. He died at Killarney in 1841.
Lance-corporal Andrew Duncan was a skilful and ingenious artificer. His simple contrivance for making the chains, known by the name of “Gunter’s chains,” is one proof of his success as an inventor. Those delicate measures, in which the greatest accuracy is required, have by Duncan’s process been made for the last twelve years by a labourer unused to any mechanical occupation, with an exactitude that admits of no question. The apparatus is in daily use in the survey department at Southampton, and the chains required for the service can be made by its application with great facility and rapidity. He was discharged at Dublin in September, 1843, and is now working as a superior artizan in the proof department of the royal arsenal.
Equally distinguished were sergeants William Young, William Campbell, and Andrew Bay, and privates Charles Holland and Patrick Hogan, but as their names and qualifications will be found connected with particular duties in the following pages, further allusion to them in this place is unnecessary.
Colonel Colby in his closing official report, spoke of the valuable aid which he had received from the royal sappers and miners in carrying on the survey, and as a mark of consideration for their merits, and with the view of retaining in confidential situations the non-commissioned officers who by their integrity and talents had rendered themselves so useful and essential, he recommended the permanent appointment of quartermaster-sergeant to be awarded to the survey companies; but this honour so ably urged was, from economical reasons, not conceded.
Seventeen years had the sappers and miners been employed on the general survey and had travelled all over Ireland. They were alike in cities and in wastes, on mountain heights and in wild ravines, had traversed arid land and marshy soil, wading through streams and tracts of quagmire in the prosecution of their duties. To every vicissitude of weather they were exposed, and in storms at high altitudes subjected to personal disaster and peril. Frequently they were placed in positions of imminent danger in surveying bogs and moors, precipitous mountain faces, and craggy rocks and coasts. Boating excursions too were not without their difficulties and hazards in gaining islands almost unapproachable, and bluff isolated rocks and islets, often through quicksand and the low channels of broad sandy bays and inlets of the sea, where the tide from its strength and rapidity precluded escape unless by the exercise of extreme caution and vigilance, or by the aid of boats.
Two melancholy instances of drowning occurred in these services: both were privates,—William Bennie and Joseph Maxwell; the former by the upsetting of a boat while he was employed in surveying the islands of Loch Strangford, and the latter at Valentia Island. This island consisted of projecting rocks very difficult of access, and when private Maxwell was engaged in the very last act of finishing the survey a surf swept him off the rock. A lad named Conway, his labourer, was borne away by the same wave. The devoted private had been immersed in a previous wave by which his note-book was lost, and while stooping with anxiety, to see if he could recover it, another furious wave dashed up the point and carried him into the sea.[[428]]
Hardship and toil were the common incidents of their everyday routine, for on mountain duty theirs was a career of trial and vicissitude. Comforts they had none, and what with the want of accommodation and amusement in a wild country, on a dizzy height, theirs was not an enviable situation. Covered only by a canvas tent or marquee they were barely closed in from the biting cold and the raging storm; and repeatedly tents, stores, and all, have been swept away by the wind or consumed by fire, while the hardy tenants, left on the bleak hill top, or the open heath, have remained for days together half naked and unsheltered. Such was their discipline and such their spirit, they continued to labour protected only by their great coats—if haply they escaped destruction—till, renewed with tents or huts, they pitched again their solitary dwellings far away on the height or the moor.
Even on the less exposed employments of the survey, the men were subjected to many discomforts and fatigues. The marching was harassing; miles to and from work were daily tramped, frequently in a drenching rain; and in this kind of weather soaked to the skin, they barely permitted their work to be interrupted. Night after night for two or three weeks together, have these men returned to their quarters dripping wet; and when, in frosty weather, their clothes have frozen on their backs, the removal of boots and trousers have only been accomplished by immersing the legs in warm water.
The average strength of the three companies set apart for the survey, for each year from 1825 to 1842, is subjoined:—
| Least | Greatest | Average for each | |||||||
| Strength. | Strength. | 12 Months. | |||||||
| 1825 | 61 | 109 | 86 | ||||||
| 1826 | 106 | 134 | 115 | ||||||
| 1827 | 129 | 220 | 177 | ||||||
| 1828 | 232 | 259 | 248 | ||||||
| 1829 | 234 | 257 | 242 | ||||||
| 1830 | 233 | 258 | 247 | ||||||
| 1831 | 248 | 268 | 255 | ||||||
| 1832 | 230 | 256 | 242 | ||||||
| 1833 | 211 | 231 | 220 | ||||||
| 1834 | 204 | 215 | 209 | ||||||
| 1835 | 199 | 204 | 201 | ||||||
| 1836 | 195 | 198 | 196 | ||||||
| 1837 | 191 | 213 | 199 | ||||||
| 1838 | 208 | 217 | 213 | ||||||
| 1839 | 199 | 220 | 208 | ||||||
| 1840 | 183 | 213 | 197 | ||||||
| 1841 | 87 | 179 | 142 | ||||||
| 1842 | 31 | 74 | 50 | ||||||
During the above period the casualties by death in Ireland only amounted to twenty-nine of all ranks, proving the general healthiness of their occupation. Of these, three were untimely: two by drowning as shown in a preceding paragraph, and one killed—private John Crockett—by falling from a car while proceeding on duty from Leixlip to Chapelizod.
Here it should be noted that the sappers, in the prosecution of their duty, necessarily mixed with all descriptions of society, and were invariably treated with respect, civility, and hospitality. The spirit of agrarianism, the bigotry of religion, or the natural irritable temperament of the people, were seldom evinced against the companies in abuse or conflict.
As the work was drawing to a close the sappers by rapid removals augmented the force employed in the survey of Great Britain, so that at the termination of 1841 there were no less than 143 men chiefly in the northern counties of England, and thirty-four carrying on the triangulation of Scotland, leaving for the residual work of the Irish survey only eighty-seven men of all ranks.
In June, 1842, the payment of the companies in England commenced on a system of consolidating the detachments into a series of vouchers prepared for their respective companies. At that time the force in Ireland, left for the revisionary survey of Dublin and the northern counties and for the engraving office at Mountjoy, reached a total of six sergeants and forty-one rank and file; while the absorbing work of the survey of Great Britain had on its rolls a strength of 217 of all ranks. Southampton, in consequence of the destruction of the map office at the Tower of London by fire, was established as the head-quarters of the survey companies; and in the institution formerly known as the royal military asylum for the orphan daughters of soldiers, are now carried on those scientific and extensive duties which regulate with such beautiful accuracy and order, the whole system of the national survey.