1847.
Detachments in South Australia—Corporal W. Forrest—Augmentation to the corps—Destruction of the Bogue and other forts—Services of the detachment at Canton—First detachment to New Zealand—Survey of Dover and Winchelsea—Also of Pembroke—Flattering allusion to the corps—Sir John Richardson’s expedition to the Arctic regions—Cedar Lake—Private Geddes’s encounter with the bear—Winter quarters at Cumberland House—Roadmaking in Zetland—Active services at the Cape—Company to Portsmouth.
The detachment in South Australia was in July, 1845, on the representation of his Excellency Lieutenant-Governor Grey, ordered to be reduced, its employment being considered no longer necessary or advantageous to the province. Scarcely had steps been taken to effect its disbandment, when Governor Grey, removed to another settlement, was succeeded by Colonel Robe, who, taking a different view of the services of the party, submitted the desirableness of its immediate completion to the authorized establishment. In this suggestion Earl Grey concurred, regarding it of the greatest importance that the survey department in the province should not be permitted to fall into arrear in its work; and under authority, dated 22nd October, 1846, a party of seven mechanics, who were also surveyors and draughtsmen, sailed for Port Adelaide in February and landed there the 30th June.[[503]]
The corps was increased by 200 men this year, on account of the formation of a company on the 1st April, and another on the 1st December. These companies were numbered the seventeenth and eighteenth; and the establishment now reached a total of 1,800 officers and soldiers. When the estimates for the year were under consideration in the House of Commons, Colonel Anson, the surveyor-general of the Ordnance, in claiming an increased amount to cover the augmentation, passed a high eulogium on the corps. After speaking in flattering terms of the royal engineers, the Colonel added, “He might say as much for the sappers and miners. This body was composed of most intelligent men, who applied themselves most assiduously to the discharge of their duties, and were equal to any services which they might be called upon to perform.”[[504]]
Thirty-five non-commissioned officers and men accompanied the expedition from Hong Kong to Canton, under Captain Durnford and Lieutenant Da Costa, R.E., and were present at the capture of the Bogue and other forts in the Canton river on the 2nd and 3rd April. The forts taken were fourteen in number, and 865 heavy guns were rendered useless by spiking, while a number of barbaric weapons were captured.[[505]]
The sappers were in advance, and opened the gates of the forts for the assaults, and afterwards destroyed the magazines and assisted to spike the guns. Privates James Cummins and James Smith placed the powder-bags on the gates.[[506]] Corporal Hugh Smith[[507]] laid the trains to two forts, and was favourably mentioned by Major Aldrich, R.E., to Sir John Davis, the Governor, and Major-General D’Aguilar. Sergeants Joseph Blaik[[508]] and Benjamin Darley[[509]] conspicuously distinguished themselves: the former blew in the gate of Zigzag Fort, and the latter blew up the magazine at Napier’s Fort.
At Canton the sappers were employed in barricading streets, making scaling-ladders, &c., and pulling down houses, walls, and other obstructions required to be removed. “My own observations,” wrote Colonel Phillpotts, the commanding royal engineer in China, “of the cheerful and ready manner in which they at all times performed their various and arduous duties by day, and often by night, demands my most marked approbation.” The gallant conduct of sergeant Blaik attracted the notice of Major-General D’Aguilar, for which he was promoted to the rank of colour-sergeant. The whole detachment remained at Canton until the 8th April; but on the troops quitting for Hong Kong four of the sappers were left behind, and assisted Lieutenant Da Costa, R.E., in making a survey of the European factories at that commercial emporium, until the 14th May, 1847, when they rejoined the detachment at Victoria.
On the 10th April one sergeant and twelve rank and file embarked at Deptford on board the ‘Ramilies,’ and landed at Auckland, New Zealand, on the 9th August. This was the first party of the corps detached to that remote settlement.
From April to June one sergeant and twelve rank and file from Chatham, under Captain McKerlie, R.E., assisted in the survey and contouring of Dover, within a range of a thousand yards from the fortifications. Early in the previous year five non-commissioned officers and men were employed in a military survey of portions of Winchelsea.
Pembroke was also surveyed by a party of one sergeant and eight men from the survey companies, between April and December, under Captain Chaytor, R.E. This survey included the docks, dockyard, and property in its immediate vicinity, to enable measures to be taken for raising essential defensive works to protect the place. The survey was well executed; and private John Wall,[[510]] who remained at the duty until March 1848, executed with neatness and accuracy, the required plans.
About this period the survey operations of the corps, both in the triangulation and the detail duty, were very conspicuous, and drew from the greatest of the daily London journals, in a leader, a high commendation for its services and trials. The language of the article is too forcible and brilliant to justify abridgment, and the complimentary passage is therefore given entire.—“An Englishman has a constitutional repugnance to the intrusion of soldiers into civil duties; he would rather pay them to walk about than to work, and he chooses to make a separate and private hiring of his own police. Ordinarily, soldiers are unwelcome visitors to him, seldom appearing but at the beck of some scared sheriff or meddling mayor, to correct his refractory disposition. But there is a corps which is often about him, unseen and unsuspected, and which is labouring as hard for him in peace as others do in war. If he lives near a cathedral city, he may perhaps have occasionally observed a small wooden cradle perched on the very summit of the spire or tower, and he may have pitied, perhaps, the adventurous mason who had undertaken the job. That cradle contained three sappers and miners, stationed there for five or six weeks to make surveys, and who only quitted their abode for another equally isolated and airy. Within these last five years, a handful of these men, with an engineer officer, have been frozen upon the peak of a Welsh mountain, on an allowance of provisions fit for the sixth month of a siege, and with no more possibility of communicating with the scanty natives of the place, than if they had been shipwrecked on the Sandwich Islands.”[[511]]
A party of fifteen men, selected from a number of volunteers by Sir John Richardson, joined the expedition under his orders to the Arctic seas in June. The object of the mission was to search for Sir John Franklin and his crews, by tracing the coast between the Mackenzie and Coppermine Rivers, and the shores also of Victoria and Wollaston lands, lying opposite to Cape Krusenstern. All the men were intelligent artizans, accustomed to boat service and laborious employment. They were, moreover, strongly built, of good physical powers, and, with one exception, bore excellent characters. The defaulter was addicted to drinking, but in other respects he was a good and active workman. Knowing that there would be no means of obtaining intoxicating drinks in Rupert’s Land, Sir John Richardson accepted his services, and he turned out an invaluable man. Seven of the party were carpenters, joiners, and sawyers, one was a miner, one a painter, and six were blacksmiths, armourers, and engineers, who were found useful in repairing the boats, working up iron, constructing the domicile for the winter residence of the expedition, and making the furniture required for its few and simple wants.[[512]] To suit the hard climate of the Arctic zone, each man was provided with a flannel jacket and trousers, a stout blue Guernsey frock, a waterproof overcoat and cap, and a pair of leggings. They also wore mocassins and leather coats, when the nature of the season and their employment rendered it necessary.[[513]]
On the 4th June the men were discharged from the corps, and sailed on the 15th from the Thames in the ‘Prince of Wales,’ and the ‘Westminster.’ Delayed much by ice in Hudson’s Straits, they had a long passage, and it was not until about the middle of September that the stores for the journey were wholly landed.[[514]] As soon as this service was effected, the expedition, with a number of hired men, quitted Norway House in five boats, which, from being “often stranded and broken in the shallow waters, caused frequent detention for repairs.” Overtaken by winter in Cedar Lake, Mr. Bell, who had charge of the expedition until Sir John Richardson arrived, made this a depôt, where he stored the boats and goods in a suitable house constructed by the sappers. Several of the party were left here to take care of the matériel, and also the women and children, who were unequal to a long journey over the snow.
In October the bulk of the expedition started for Cumberland House, and reached it on the eighth day after leaving Cedar Lake. On the first day’s journey private Hugh Geddes and a half-caste Indian were attacked by a bear on Muddy Lake. The latter fired three times at the beast without bringing him down. Neither of them now had any ammunition; but Geddes, who was incapable of much exertion from an axe wound in the foot, anticipating the peril, forgot his pains and felled two young birch trees, one of which he handed to his companion: with these formidable defensors both made a desperate onslaught on the raging bear, but it was not until after much labour and hazard that they succeeded in slaying it. In due time they sleighed his huge carcase to the rendezvous at Cedar Lake.
At Cumberland House one of the divisions passed the winter, and was kept in constant employment by attending to several seasonable occupations, such as cutting firewood, driving sledges with meat or fish, and fulfilling a round of services no less laborious than necessary. They also established a fishery on the Beaver Lake, two days' march north of the depôt.[[515]]
From July to December three rank and file were employed under Captain T. Webb, R.E., in surveying and laying out roads in Zetland, in connection with the Central Board for the Relief of Destitution in the Islands of Scotland. This service was ordered by the Home Government, and the party returned to Woolwich when the winter had fairly set in. Second-corporal Harnett was well reported of for his intelligence and capabilities, and the two privates for their industry and exertions.
At the Cape of Good Hope the two companies were distributed to fifteen posts and forts on the frontier. On the 2nd May the sapper force there was increased to 198 of all ranks by the arrival of thirty-five men, under Lieutenant Jesse, R.E. Between the 14th September and 23rd December one sergeant and sixteen rank and file were in the field, under Captain Walpole, R.E. They had with them an assortment of carpenters' and smiths' tools, engineer stores, and a quantity of intrenching tools, besides a large five-oared cutter, and the materials and gear to form a raft of casks. From the 1st to 6th December, eleven of these men were actively employed in transporting men and provisions to a large portion of the division on the left bank of the Kei, under Lieutenant Jervois, R.E., at a time when the rise of the river prevented any intercourse by waggons. During the six days, the party exerted themselves in a most praiseworthy manner, and sergeant Alexander McLeod was particularly active and zealous. Between the 21st November and 1st December, three sappers, with a party of the line, under Lieutenant Stokes, R.E., opened a road for waggons in the Amatola mountains, and constructed a temporary bridge across the Keiskama. Before the execution of this service provisions were conveyed to the camp in the mountains on mules, and hence the transit was slow and uncertain.
On the representation of Colonel Lewis, R.E., a company of full strength was removed from Chatham to Portsmouth, on the 22nd December. Its employment was confined to the erection and repair of such works as could not be undertaken by contract, such as strengthening the fortifications, repairing gates, laying platforms, curbs, &c. It was also considered indispensable to retain a company in that command, to execute, in the event of a war suddenly breaking out, the numerous wants likely to occur in such an emergency.