History of the Royal Sappers and Miners, Volume 1 (of 2) / From the Formation of the Corps in March 1712 to the date when its designation was changed to that of Royal Engineers

by T. W. J. Connolly

Footnotes

---

[1]. The rank of sergeant and adjutant—an odd combination certainly—was not adopted. The senior non-commissioned officer was styled sergeant-major. The authority for this are the muster rolls and returns of the company. But it is not a little remarkable that, in opposition to the fact, evidence should exist of the best kind for veracity, to oppose the averment. The error appears on a tablet built in Charles the Fifth’s wall adjoining Hargrave’s parade at Gibraltar, to the memory of the widow of the first sergeant-major of the corps. Thus runs the epitaph:—

To the Memory of Martha, wife of

Thomas Bridges, Sergeant, and as Adjutant

to His Majesty’s Artificers' Company.

She departed this life, 4th February, 1773,

Aged 38 years.

---

A more loving wife or friend sincere

Never will be buried here—

Charitable she was to all,

Altho' her income it was small.

Excuse the stanza. Perhaps the sergeant-major was a tetchy man, obstinate in maintaining his rights, and took this private opportunity of asserting his warranted rank and publishing the military anomaly in imperishable marble.

[2]. The Warrant does not designate the company by such a title. It is there called “The Military Company of Artificers.” How the change took place, does not appear.

[3]. A real is equal to 4½d. English.

[4]. The order upon this subject is given at length, as it touches upon other matters besides the discipline of the company.

Chief Engineer’s Orders, Gibraltar, 31st May, 1772.

“By the Governor’s orders of the 20th May, the company of soldier-artificers now raising and forming under the command of the Chief Engineer as captain, Captain Phipps, Captain-Lieutenant Lefance, and Lieutenant Evelegh, are appointed officers to the said company, and are, therefore, conformable to their respective ranks, henceforth to take under their command the conduct and inspection of the non-commissioned officers and private men of the said company, and to pay all sort of military attentions to their good order and regular behaviour, according to the rules and discipline of war;[^[4a]] also to the particular standing orders, as well as to the accustomary regulations of the garrison relative to all the required and expected duties of a soldier and an artificer, both when on, as well as when off, duty. Captain Phipps is also appointed to keep the accounts and to see the company duly paid their full military subsistence. The company to be paid conformable to His Majesty’s Warrant dated March 6th, 1772, upon the same footing as the rest of the troops in garrison, viz., at seventy pence sterling the Mexico or Cobb, agreeable to which, the non-commissioned officers and men are to be paid weekly as follows, the deduction for the surgeon excepted:—

Sergeant-major	5 dollars,	3 reals,	31⁄7 quarts.
Sergeants—each	2 ”	5 ”	93⁄7 ”
Corporals—each	2 ”	0 ”	124⁄7 ”
Privates and drummer—each.	1 ”	4 ”	0

One-halfpenny sterling a-week to be stopped from each private and drummer for the surgeon, and the non-commissioned officers to be stopped in proportion to their respective pays.”

[4a]. No provision was made this year for extending the Mutiny Act to the company; nor, indeed, was it noticed in any subsequent Act till 1788, when its introduction gave rise to much discussion in the House of Commons. The idea of subjecting artificers to martial law was attacked with satirical bitterness by the eloquent Sheridan.

[5]. The more particular duties of the Sergeant-major, as described in the Chief Engineer’s Order of 31st May, 1772, were “to carry all the general orders to the Chief Engineer, and the officers of the company, through the means of the other sergeants; also to make known the general orders to the rest of the non-commissioned officers and private men.” These he was required to attend to, “in lieu of an adjutant.” By the royal warrant, he should have been appointed to that rank, and not designated “sergeant-major.” No reason can be traced for altering the title. The first adjutant was an officer of engineers—Lieutenant Evelegh. He was appointed 15th June, 1773. Bridges enlisted into the 30th regiment in 1751, from which he was transferred to the corps as Sergeant-major, and being reduced during the siege (28th September, 1781), was discharged from the company 10th October, 1781.

[6]. In Hay’s ‘Western Barbary,’ chap. x., Murray’s edit., there is a very pleasing anecdote of the “half-Irish Sultan,” Mulai Yezeed, in which the name of Brown of the Royal Sappers and Miners, properly Soldier-Artificers, is introduced. To controvert a particular point to which it refers, the anecdote in an abridged form, is subjoined.

Sidi Mahomed, soon after his elevation to the throne of Morocco, about the middle of the last century, was desirous of completing the defences of Fez, and knowing the superiority of the English in engineering, he applied to the British Government for the aid of some person skilled in the art. The request was acceded to, and an experienced sergeant of the Sappers and Miners having been selected as a fit person, was placed at the disposal of his Majesty. Sidi Mahomed received him with much kindness, and allotted a suitable house for his reception. The sergeant continued in the service of the Sultan for some time after he had completed the works at Fez, and at length died, leaving his wife without issue. After his interment, the widow, who was a pretty Irishwoman, sought an interview with the Sultan, in order to obtain a pension and the means of returning to her own country. His Majesty was much struck by her fair and comely appearance, treated her with condescension and benevolence, and expressed in endearing overtures his attachment to her. Under no promises of future greatness could she be induced to relinquish the faith of her fathers for the creed of Islam, and to take an exalted station in the imperial harem. Sidi Mahomed, old as he was, was too much fascinated to yield so choice a prize on a mere question of belief, and making the fullest sacrifices to satisfy her religious scruples, the poor, friendless, Irish widow, became the Sultana of Morocco!

Corporal Brown, afterwards promoted to be sergeant, is the non-commissioned officer alluded to. He was a mason by trade, and joining the artificers on the 2nd January, 1773, he seemingly soon acquired the reputation of being an able foreman and an indispensable man. It was in 1776 he was sent to Fez, not in the middle of the century as stated in the anecdote, and he died there early in 1781. That year, or probably later, Widow Brown became the Sultana of Sidi Mahomet, and Mulai Yezeed, the reputed son of the widow by the Sultan, was then 31 years old! The age of Mulai may be gleaned from Hay’s tale, but more directly seen in Dr. Lempriere’s ‘Journey through the Barbary States.’ According to the latter author, who was at Tetuan in 1790, Mulai was the “offspring of an English renegado,” and then about 40 years of age. The Sultan died at a patriarchal age in 1790, and Mulai Yezeed succeeded him.

[7]. General Boyd, attended by General Green, the chief engineer, and many officers of the garrison, laid the foundation stone of this bastion, with the ceremony usual on such occasions. When he had finished it, he made this remarkable speech. “This is the first stone of a work which I name the King’s Bastion; may it be as gallantly defended, as I know it will be ably executed; and may I live to see it resist the united efforts of France and Spain.”—Drinkwater’s Siege of Gibraltar, p. 290, 1st edit. The desire of the worthy general was realized. He not only lived to see what he wished, but materially to assist in the operations of the siege.

[8]. To carry on the work with vigour, an opening was made in the sea-line, which, as long as it continued so, made the fortress defenceless in that part. Similar openings were made in the line some years before by a storm, which, being observed by Monsieur Crillon, who commanded at St. Roque, he proposed a scheme for an attempt on the Rock. Remembering this, the General always kept an anxious eye upon the gap; but he concealed his fears, lest they should fill the people with alarm, and the French or Spaniards with notions of invasion. He would not post any additional guards or picquets there for its protection, but gave private directions that all the guns and howitzers that could be brought into position in that part should be attended to. He, however, did not conceal his uneasiness from the Secretary of State; and in urging upon Lord Rochford the necessity for his being furnished with the means for completing the bastion, he quaintly remarked, “there is an idea of glory, my lord, in the thought of being killed in defending a breach made by the enemy, but to be knocked o' th' head in the defence of one of our own making would be a ridiculous death.”

[9]. When the Hanoverian troops left Gibraltar, the company had the best character for efficiency and utility, and its numbers therefore were not reduced.

[10]. At this bastion the company worked, by express orders, from gun-fire in the morning to gun-fire in the evening, as also on Sundays. All the work was of cut stone, and skilfully executed. A model of it, exquisitely wrought in polished stone, is in the Rotunda at Woolwich. It formerly belonged to George III. In 1820, George IV. presented it to the Royal Military Repository.

[11]. The company wanted two privates to complete.

[12]. As foreseen by the Chief Engineer, disputes soon arose between the non-commissioned officers of the company and the line, with regard to superintendence and direction. The fact having come to the Brigadier’s knowledge, he renewed, on the 10th July, 1781, his former order in a more imperative tone.

[13]. The strength of the company, including officers, when the provision supplies arrived, under Admiral Rodney, in February, 1780, and again under Admiral Darby, in April, 1781, was, on both occasions, stated to be 124. See ‘An authentic and accurate Journal of the late Siege of Gibraltar,’ pp. 22, 170.

[14]. Captain Luttrell, in some remarks in the House of Commons in 1788, relative to the expediency of raising a corps of military artificers, stated, “that at Gibraltar, where a similar body had been kept up during the siege, they had been of infinite service. When our troops had, in a sortie, possessed themselves of some of the enemy’s works, they could not destroy them until they had sent back to the garrison for the corps of artificers, who soon demolished them.”—Gent. Mag. 58, part 2, 1788.

[15]. London Gazette, 12,256. 25 to 29 December, 1781.

[16]. London Gazette, 12,256. 25 to 29 December, 1781.

[17]. To narrate the different services performed by the company during the siege, would not only be tedious, but necessarily incomplete, from no detailed record of them being preserved. A reference, however, to ‘Drinkwater’s History,’ though particularization is not even there attempted, will afford a tolerable idea of their labours.

[18]. Whether the sergeant-major obtained the thousand dollars as a douceur from the General is a question never likely to be satisfactorily answered. The probability is, that he did not receive the reward for his suggestion in this form, but some daily allowance commensurate with his skill and the importance of the duty. I was informed by the late Quarter-master-sergeant Britton Francis, who possessed a remarkable memory, and whose father was in the company before him, that Ince contracted for the work, and—such was the story current in his day—received for all the excavations, one guinea per running foot! Judging from an expression in a letter from the Duke of Richmond to Captain Evelegh, the Commanding Engineer at Gibraltar, dated 4th August, 1784, this tradition is an extravagant exaggeration. His Grace observes, “I am told that the excavation of the galleries is now constructed for, all expenses included, at one rial per foot cube;” and he adds, “I am very glad to find that a work which promises to add such effectual defences to the place, can be carried on at so cheap a rate; and I make no doubt, that great improvements will still be made by the Governor in this system of defences and lodgment for stores and troops under the rock.”

[19]. The Chief Engineer’s orders for the performance of this service were as follows:—“22nd May, 1782. A gallery 6 feet high, and 6 feet wide, through the rock, leading towards the notch nearly under the Royal Battery, to communicate with a proposed battery to be established at the said notch, is immediately to be undertaken and commenced upon by 12 miners, under the executive direction of sergeant-major Ince.” Again: “5th July, 1782. A gallery of communication, 6 feet 6 inches high, and 6 feet wide, through the intermediate rock, between the cave at the head of the King’s lines, and the cave near the west end of the Queen’s lines, is forthwith to be commenced upon by a body of miners and labourers expressly appointed for that service.”—See also ‘Drinkwater’s Siege,’ Murray’s edit., 1846, pp. 112 and 117.

[20]. ‘Drinkwater’s Siege,’ Murray’s edit., 1846, p. 118.

[21]. Drinkwater observes, page 118, that “the original intention of this opening was to communicate air to the workmen, who, before, were almost suffocated with the smoke which remained after blowing the different mines; but on examining the aperture more closely, an idea was conceived of mounting a gun to bear on all the enemy’s batteries, excepting Fort Barbara.” To ascribe it to this accidental circumstance is natural enough, but there is reason to suppose, the statement excusably differs from the fact. The galleries were begun with the express object of arming them with ordnance to play on the enemy’s works; and the formation of the embrasure alluded to, was simply the earnest of a settled scheme; the first hostile step in its development.

[22]. ‘Drinkwater’s Siege,’ Murray’s edit., 1846, note, p. 118.

[23]. ‘Drinkwater’s Siege,’ Murray’s edit., 1846, p. 113.

[24]. It is not intended to give the names of the non-commissioned officers entire at any future period. In this instance they have been mentioned, not so much for the interest of the general reader, as to preserve them. With those whose names have already been noted, these constitute the first race of non-commissioned officers in the corps.

[25]. By the Chief Engineer’s Order of 27th October, 1781, sergeant Macdonald, an active and good non-commissioned officer, was appointed to inspect and take care of all the drains throughout the fortress in the room of sergeant-major Bridges, as also to keep the keys of the gratings, and to see them locked, to prevent ingress or egress by their means. This duty was considered a very important one, both from the facility the drains afforded for the entrance of the enemy and for desertions from the place, and also from the health of the garrison being in a great measure affected by their state. Not unfrequently during heavy rains, the gravel on the rock, washed down by the torrent, would rush into the drains and choke them up. To clear them, the company of artificers was invariably called upon, often at night; and on one occasion, in April, 1813, private William Liddle, who was foremost in one of the great drains, after unlocking the grating, was carried down the sewer with the flood into the sea, and drowned.

[26]. Blyth served fifteen years in the 2nd Foot, and joined the company 14th June, 1773. He was promoted to be sergeant on the 18th April, 1781, in succession to sergeant Brown who died at Fez, and whose widow became the Sultana of Morocco. By his industry and frugality he amassed considerable property, and expended about 20,000 dollars in buildings at the fortress. He was well known as a zealous freemason, and erected a wine-house at the corner of the Eleventh, since called South Parade, in which the meetings or lodges of the fraternity were held free of expense. He was much respected by the inhabitants, and became very popular among them. On the 31st January, 1800, he was discharged from the corps, after a service of nearly forty-two years, and died at the Rock about 1804, Blyth had a nephew in the Tripoline navy, of whom a few particulars may not be uninteresting. His name was Peter Lisle. When quite a youth, Peter was wrecked at Zoara, on the coast of Tripoli. He was one of three only who escaped. For a time he endured great hardships, but at length succeeded in getting on board a British merchantman. In 1792 he was at Gibraltar, on board the ‘Embden’ letter of marque, Lynch and Ross, owners. This vessel afterwards went to Tripoli with two consuls on board; and Lisle, then chief mate, was placed in charge of the cargo, some of which was corn. On arriving at Tripoli, the barrels containing the corn were found to have been plundered, and Lisle was called upon to account for the deficiency. This he could not do; a quarrel ensued between the captain and himself, and resigning his situation, he landed, and entered the service of the Bashaw. Having been chief mate of an English vessel was a strong recommendation in his favour, and he was at once appointed gunner of the castle. Associated with a strange people, he readily conformed to their manners and customs, embraced Mahommedan tenets—at least in appearance—and assumed the name of Mourad Reis. About 1794 he was nominated captain of a xebeck mounting eighteen guns; and in the course of time, by his naval skill and abilities, became the High Admiral of the Tripoline Fleet and Minister of Marine. He married one of the daughters of the Bashaw, Sidi Yusuf, had a fine family, and enjoyed an ample income. Besides a house in the city, he had a villa and gardens in the Meshiah among the date-groves, which exhibited evidence of great taste and care, and were enriched with many trees of various species brought by him from different places at which he touched in Europe. He was a prudent and sagacious counsellor, gave excellent advice to the Bashaw, which was always based on good common sense—a quality not superabundant in the Divan—and was of great service to Lord Exmouth during his Algerine expedition. His appearance was venerable, he dressed richly, commanded much respect, and when addressing British officers—whom he always treated with great courtesy and hospitality—spoke with a broad Scotch accent, and sometimes entertained them with a relation of his own stirring adventures. He was unpopular at times, as great politicians sometimes are. Blaquiere says (1813), “Poor Peter was no longer an object of consideration with any party.” During the stay of Captain Lyon at Tripoli in 1818, Peter was in banishment, but the consul and chief people gave him an excellent character. Later, however, he again rose into confidence, for when Captain Beechey was there in 1821, Mourad Reis was much considered by his Highness, and acted as interpreter on the occasion of the Captain’s audience with his Highness the Bashaw. He also proved of great service to Captain W. H. Smyth, R.N. On the fall of the Bashaw—Yusuf Karamanli—he retreated to Sfax in Tunis, since which his fate is uncertain. When in the zenith of his power and greatness he paid occasional visits to Gibraltar. On entering the bay, he always fired a salute of four guns in honour of his uncle, serjeant Blyth, whom he treated with marked respect. This practice, however, he at length discontinued, owing to a shot, fired by mistake from one of his guns, having struck the wall of a ramp just above Hargrave’s Parade whilst he was paying his relative the usual affectionate compliment.

[27]. Finch joined the company on the 21st October, 1782, at the request of the Duke of Richmond, in whose service he had been employed at Goodwood. Anxious to secure him for the company, his Grace promised not only to make him a sergeant at once, but to give him a written protection to preserve to him as long as he remained, irrespective of his conduct, the pay of that rank. Under these circumstances Finch accepted the protective credential, enlisted, and sailed with Lord Hood for the Rock. Holding such a charter, it was not to be wondered at if he sometimes overstepped the line of prudence. Not by any means particular in his appearance, nor scrupulous in his conduct or habits, he was not unfrequently brought before his officers; but no matter how flagrant his offence, the only punishment that could be awarded to him was suspension for a month or two from rank, but not from pay. Captain Evelegh, of the engineers, finding that Finch was becoming rather troublesome, and his sentences of but little effect, endeavoured to obtain the Duke’s warrant from its possessor, but he refused to surrender it, observing to the captain, “If you get hold of it, good-bye to my rank and pay.” Finch, however, was a first-rate carpenter and foreman, and these qualifications more than counterbalanced his occasional delinquencies. He was discharged from the corps on the 13th April, 1802.

[28]. Chambers joined the company 21st September, 1772, from the 2nd Regiment of Foot, in which he had served two years. In 1791 he was promoted to be sergeant-major, on the discharge of Ince. In the summer of 1796 he was sent to Woolwich in a deranged state of mind, and on the 1st December of that year was discharged. Soon afterwards he was domiciled in a madhouse, where, his malady increasing, he was—it has been reported—smothered according to the cruel practice then in vogue with regard to incurable cases.

[29]. Woodhead joined the company 16th May, 1774, from the 12th Regiment, in which he had served seven years and a quarter. In November, 1791, he was promoted to be sergeant, and was discharged 17th July, 1807, on a pension of 2s. 7d. a-day, after a service of upwards of forty years. At Gibraltar he was found to be invaluable in the construction and repairs of the sea-line wall. He possessed a good share of intelligence; was a strong, portly, blustering mason, and well adapted for the heavy and laborious duties for which he was always selected. At Woolwich he was the military foreman of masons for many years, and was intrusted by Captain Hayter, then Commanding Royal Engineer, with the building of the wharf wall in the Royal Arsenal—a work highly creditable to the Engineer Department, and to Woodhead as the executive overseer.

[30]. Afterwards anglicised to Anthony Francis, was wounded by a shell at Willis’s. He and his brother Dominick were natives of Portugal, and the only foreigners in the company. Antonio was a Catholic; and as it was desired to preserve the Protestant character of the corps, a simple but effectual plan was taken to win his adherence to the Church of England. He asked leave to be married. The indulgence was refused unless he became a Protestant. La Fiancée was also a Catholic; but as a great event in their lives—which promised them no end of happiness—was likely to be indefinitely postponed by a stubborn acquiescence to a creed for which, probably, they felt but little interest, both renounced the belief of their fathers, and were married as members of the national faith. Their family were baptized and educated as Protestants, but the old man on his death-bed, returned to Mother-Church and died a Catholic. Three of his sons, now old men, fill comfortable appointments at Gibraltar. Their cousins, merchants at the Rock, own the plain called the “Spanish Race-course,” above a mile beyond the Lines. One, Mr. Francis Francia, is British Consul at San Roque. Midway between the village of Campo and the consulate stands his farm, which is cultivated with enlightened taste, and enriched with rare exotics in fruits and flowers.—Kelaart’s Botany and Topography of Gibraltar and its neighbourhood, pp. 179, 183.

[31]. Joined the company August, 1776, from the 56th Foot, in which he had served eleven years. Discharged about 1789.

[32]. Reconnoitering appears to have been a duty that devolved upon sergeants of the company. On the 25th December, 1782, two soldiers attempted to desert from Mount Misery; one “got down, though the rope broke, which accident was the cause of the other being retaken. A few days after a sergeant of the artificers was ordered to reconnoitre the place where this deserter descended, and he got down far enough to discover the unfortunate man dashed to pieces at the foot of the precipice,”—‘Drinkwater.’ Murray’s edit., 1846, p. 100.

[33]. ‘Gentleman’s Magazine,’ 58, part 2, 1788.

[34].

Sergeant John Richmond—date unknown.
Corporal Charles Tabb Mason Adam Parsons	}	25th November, 1781.
Mason Adam Sharp—5th March, 1782.
Mason George Brown—11th June, 1782.
Nailor Robert Shepherd—16th January, 1783.

The name of the other man killed cannot be ascertained, as the documents of the company from the commencement of the siege to the 30th September, 1781, are lost.

[35]. The names of the criminals were Artificers Samuel Whitaker and Simon Pratts.

[36]. Drinkwater’s ‘Siege of Gibraltar.’ Murray’s edit., 1846, p. 163.

[37]. Called Lower, or Union Galleries; and Upper, or Windsor Galleries.

[38]. Walsh’s ‘Campaigns in Egypt,’ 1803, p. 5. Wilkie, ‘On British Colonies considered as Military Posts,’ in United Service Journal, Part ii., 1840, p. 379.

[39]. Maule’s ‘Campaigns of North Holland and Egypt,’ &c., p. 303.

[40]. Ince had a farm at the top of the Rock, which is still called by his name. He had an only son, a clerk in the Commissariat department at Gibraltar, under Commissary-general Sweetlove, who, together with his wife, died in the fever of 1804, leaving an infant son, who was brought up by his grandmother. The eldest daughter of Lieutenant Ince was married at Gibraltar to Lieutenant R. Stapleton, of the 60th Rifles, who exchanged with Lieutenant Croker into the 13th Foot, and then sold out.

One day Mr. Ince was trotting at an easy pace up the Rock, when the Duke of Kent, overtaking him, observed, “That horse, Mr. Ince, is too old for you.” “I like to ride easy, your Royal Highness,” was the subaltern’s meek reply. “Right, but you shall have another, more in keeping with your worth and your duties;” and soon afterwards the Duke presented him with a very valuable steed. The old overseer, however, was unable to manage the animal, and he rode again to the works on his own quiet nag. The Duke, meeting him soon after, inquired how it was he was not riding the new horse, when Ince replied, he was unable sufficiently to curb his spirit and tranquillize his pace. Ince then prayed his Royal Highness to honour his servant by receiving the noble creature into his stud again. “No, no, overseer,” rejoined the Duke; “if you can’t ride him easily, put him into your pocket!” The overseer readily understood his Royal Highness, and exchanged the beautiful steed for his worth in doubloons.

[41]. ‘Drinkwater.’ Murray’s edit., 1846, p. 108.

[42]. Parsons joined the company in February, 1779, and was discharged, as a private artificer, 1st January, 1809, on 1s. 4d. a-day.

[43]. Order Book—Chief Engineer’s.

[44]. ‘Order-Book’ (Chief Engineer’s) of 21st June, 1782; and ‘Drinkwater,’ Murray’s edit., 1846, p. 118.

[45]. Not Richardson, as Drinkwater has it, p. 108.

[46]. Brand’s father, a mason by trade and a Perthshire man, was the first artificer enrolled in the company.

[47]. ‘Order-Book’ (Chief Engineer’s), 8th May, 1789.

[48]. Assisted by sergeant James Shirres, an ingenious artizan and modeller. This non-commissioned officer, after serving at the capture of Minorca, was made a sergeant-major of the company that served there, 2nd May, 1800, and on the 31st December, 1804, was appointed overseer in the royal engineer department at Plymouth.

[49]. Assisted by Antonio Marques, a Minorcaen artificer.

[50]. ‘London Gazette,’ 13,494. 15 to 19 January, 1793.

[51]. The education of these youths is highly creditable to the officers of engineers. Many similar instances of boys in the corps acquiring distinction by their talents, have subsequently occurred, the honour of which, in great measure, is due to the officers. Assistance and encouragement they never fail to give in cases where their efforts are likely to meet with success, and numbers have thus qualified themselves to fill important situations with efficiency and credit, in their own profession, and afterwards in civil life. Richmond and Brand, however, are the only instances in which commissions have been given from the ranks of the artificers, or sappers and miners, into the corps of engineers.

[52]. Drinkwater says (p. 108), “that one of the works of these young men, while pursuing their studies at Woolwich, was to finish the large model of the rock of Gibraltar.” The historian has certainly been misled here: the model was finished before it left the fortress, and did not reach the Arsenal until after its makers had been commissioned, and left England for the West Indies. The placement and adjustment of its several parts were intrusted to a military artificer named Bethell. He was to have been assisted by another private, who accompanied him for the purpose, from Gibraltar; but having broken his leg at Woolwich, his services were thus lost. Private John McNaughton, a carpenter of the Woolwich company, was put to the model in his place. I knew McNaughton well, and he assured me that the model was not touched by any hands but his own and Bethell’s, and that on no occasion were the modellers present during its fixation. McNaughton seems to have been an excellent artificer, and always an active soldier. During the mutiny of Parker, he was employed in repairing Tilbury Fort, and in erecting temporary defences below Gravesend. He afterwards served under the great Abercrombie in Egypt; next was employed in constructing the towers on the Sussex coast, at the time of the projected invasion of Napoleon; and, lastly, was many years in Newfoundland. He was discharged 24th January, 1815, on 1s. 4d. a-day, and died at Woolwich in April, 1853, aged 84.

[53]. Hague was a tall, intelligent mechanic, a fine modeller, and a smart soldier. On account of these qualities, he was selected to take charge of the models for George III. Having put them together on their tables at Buckingham Palace, His Majesty, the Queen, and royal family, with other illustrious personages of the court, came to see them. Hague was cited before them to explain the model, and to point out the defences which, from their prominence in the late siege, had acquired historic identity. His observations were listened to with attention, and His Majesty awarded him a gratifying proof of his royal approbation. Soon afterwards Hague returned to Gibraltar, and on the 31st March, 1815, was discharged and pensioned at 1s. 8d. a-day. He was subsequently employed as a modeller in the grand store; was married in 1827; and died at the Rock about 1833, upwards of 100 years old.

[54]. ‘Drinkwater.’ Murray’s edit., 1846, p. 108.

[55]. To this the visitor adds a description of the model, which is adjoined here, on account of the model itself having long since been destroyed. “First then,” says the writer, “are the Spanish lines; then the perpendicular rock, rising bold from the neck of the neutral ground, which is not many feet above high-water mark. On the east, or left hand, is the Mediterranean Sea; and on the west, within the mole or pier, is the Bay of Gibraltar, in which the largest ships in the British Navy may ride safe. The garrison, town, and forts, are to the westward, whence the rock rises with a more gradual acclivity to the summit,—the east side of which is also perpendicular, and inhabited by monkeys. On the highest point is the Levant Battery, which is nearly three times and one half the height of St. Paul’s church, or 1375 feet above the level of the sea. The southern extremity of the model of this rock towards Europa Point, being too large for the room, and less important, is cut off. This description ought to fill a volume.”—Gentleman’s Magazine, part 2, 1798, p.648.

[56]. This was on the 22nd May, 1802. The account given at the time of this disgraceful act is as follows:—“A dreadful fire broke out at Woolwich, and from the investigation which has taken place into this calamitous circumstance, there is but too much reason to believe that this disaster was not the mere effect of accident. The fire broke out, at one and the same time, in three different places, besides which a great mass of combustible materials have been discovered. The loss to Government will be immense. The damage done to the Model-room is particularly to be lamented, as several choice works of art have been destroyed, without the power of reparation; however, the injury done to the beautiful model of the rock of Gibraltar is not so great as was at first represented, it having sustained but a slight damage, which can be easily repaired, and the whole restored to its original state.”—Dodsley’s Annual Register, 1802, p. 404. The journalist is wrong in his remarks concerning the state of the model after the fire. It was completely destroyed, and not even the fragments are now in existence. Some persons, indeed, with whom I have conversed, bear out the chronicler in his record, and affirm that the model was repaired, and is now in the Rotunda; but they have given me a fair inference of the mistaken character of their recollections, by uniformly referring to the model of the north front, executed by Richmond and Marques, which, at the very time that the fire occurred, formed one of the curiosities of Buckingham Palace. Drinkwater (p. 108, Murray’s edit.) attests the fact of its destruction; and in this he is borne out by the ‘Repository Detail of Arms,’ &c., printed in 1822. In that catalogue (at p. 9-21) is a list of the arms, models, &c., of the original institution preserved from the fire of 1802, and collected by Sir William Congreve, but no mention is made of the model in question. This, then, is the best attainable evidence of the certainty of its demolition, coupled with the acknowledgment, at page 52 of the same catalogue, that the “North end of Gibraltar,” the model mistaken for the one destroyed in the Arsenal, was presented to the Repository by George IV. Had the large model of the Rock been preserved, Sir William Congreve would most certainly have noted it in the detail.

[57]. This anniversary supper was held by the non-commissioned officers annually, on the date named, at the Three Anchors. After the first year, the tickets of admission were 16s. 6d. each, or 5 dollars and 4 reals, which provided, in the language of one who used to have a seat at the table, “a sumptuous entertainment.” At that time the dollar was 3s., and the real 4½d. Each ticket admitted a married non-commissioned officer and his family, or a single one and his friend. The privates took no part in the celebration. On each occasion, the Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, &c., honoured the company with their presence, and made gratifying allusions to their services at the siege. The night of the festival used to be familiarly termed Junk-ship night, both by the inhabitants and the soldiers. The custom was perpetuated till the year 1804, when, from the fearful epidemic that prevailed, it was necessarily omitted, and was never again held. It was a common opinion that the Duke of Kent interdicted these loyal anniversaries, but such was not the case. The last one was held in September, 1803, after his Royal Highness had been recalled from Gibraltar.

[58]. This sum seems to be a sort of standing equivalent, and has existed without alteration, through all the changes of advanced or reduced prices in material and labour, to the present day.

[59]. The regulation with regard to the wives and families of recruits going to Gibraltar, as established by the Duke of Richmond, is sufficiently curious, by comparison with the present very limited system, to be mentioned here. On the 9th September, 1786, the Duke arranged that to every 20 men, 10 women and 10 children should be allowed to accompany them. If there were more than that number with the party, lots were to be drawn, and those who did not gain prizes were to find their own passages; the lots were not to divide families, but were to be drawn by the men until the number allowed was completed. If encouragement had been given to any men to hope that their families would be provided with passages, the bargain was to be faithfully adhered to.

[60]. Of the following strength:—

	21	men	15th Sept. 1786, embarked on board the 'New Euphrates,' and landed 6th Oct.
	58	”	21st Sept, 1786, embarked at Leith, on board the brig ‘Mercury.’ Wrecked 24th Sept.
	25	”	6th Nov. 1786, embarked in the ‘Adventure;’ landed.
	35	”	23rd Mar. 1787; landed.
	44	”	15th and 16 Apr. 1787; landed.
Total	183	”	About 100 of this number were bricklayers and masons, the crafts most required at the Rock.

[61]. ‘Morning Chronicle,’ 10th October, 1786, and periodical press generally. In most of the papers Daniel Thomson is, by mistake, named Daniel Campbell.

Fifteen bodies were washed ashore between Nieuport and Ostend, on the 27th and 28th September, and it is not a little remarkable that, of this small number, no less than fourteen should have been those of women.—‘General Advertiser.’ ‘Public Advertiser,’ 9th October, 1786.

[62]. I have been informed that previously to 1786, the coat was somewhat similar in colour, cut, and ornament to that shown in [Plate I.], but that the breeches were blue instead of white. The black leggings were banded above the knee. The working dress consisted of a long duck frock, and mosquito trowsers with gaiters attached. Everything was white even to the felt round hat, which at this period had the military symbols of a yellow band and yellow edge to the brim. Serge pantaloons were worn in winter.

[63]. The sergeant-major and sergeants were armed with carbines and bayonets.

[64]. This novel way of distinguishing the non-commissioned officers led to frequent misconception and mistake in the garrison. When dressed with the bayonet belt only, strangers regarded the corporals as the highest rank, and lance-corporals the next. Sometimes when taking an excursion into Spain, sentries have presented arms to them, and guards even have turned out to pay the compliment due to field officers! This military blunder continued, with greater or less observance, until the adoption of chevrons, about 1805.

[65]. These officers were also present with the corps in 1788; but after that year until 1797 no record has been discovered.

[66]. This laxity of discipline seems, in time, to have become general among the troops at the fortress, and the extent to which it was carried both by officers and men was little short of disgraceful.—‘Wilkie’s British Colonies considered as Military Posts,’ in ‘United Service Journal,’ 2, 1840, p, 379.

[67]. Martin’s British Colonies, 1835, p. 51-53.

[68]. ‘Journal, House of Commons,’ 14th February, 1783; vol. xxxix. p. 208.

[69]. If a particular acquaintance with the Duke’s plan of defence, &c., be desired, it can be obtained by referring to a work entitled ‘Observations on the Duke of Richmond’s Extensive Plans of Fortification,’ published first in 1785, and again in 1794. This work, which was brought before the public in an anonymous form, is known to have been written by Lieutenant James Glenie, of the engineers, who, after serving in the corps a few years, was compelled, as he says, p. 241, to leave it, “to avoid being ruined by the expense of continually moving from one station to another.” The attack made by this gentleman appears to have been conducted with much force and talent, displaying an intimate acquaintance with the principles of his profession. It made a great impression on the public mind, and augmented to a considerable extent the popular ferment against the new fortifications. Several of the engineers joined in opinion against them, among whom was Colonel Debbieg, who, for some expressions that he ventured, reflecting upon the Duke’s plans, was tried by a General Court-martial in 1789. In the concluding paragraph of the later edition of Mr. Glenie’s essay, the author promised to take an early opportunity of delivering his sentiments at full length respecting the corps of royal military artificers and horse artillery, which, he stated, were unquestionably great impositions on the public; but the promised exposé I have not succeeded in procuring. If it never appeared, the gallant officer, very probably, prudently relinquished the idea, or suppressed the MS., from a conviction that it was as unnecessary as unmerited. It is certainly curious that Mr. Glenie and Colonel Debbieg, who were the most violent and persevering of the Duke’s opponents, should have differed in opinion about the usefulness and importance of the corps of artificers. By the only evidence as yet discovered, it is obvious that Mr. Glenie would willingly have disbanded it; Colonel Debbieg, on the other hand, only a few years before aspired to the honour of originating it.

[70]. Dodsley’s ‘Annual Register,’ 1788. Second edit., 1790, p. 96.

[71]. Dodsley’s ‘Annual Register.’ Second edit., 1790, pp. 121-123.

[72]. Clause Lxxv. Public Acts, 28 Geo. III., vol. i., p. 369. This was not a specific clause to meet the case of the artificers, but the same which had existed, with possibly slight variations, since its first insertion in the Act It merely included the corps by name, and made other necessary alterations to embrace classes of persons heretofore inadvertently omitted. Why it should have caused so much discussion, more especially with reference to the formation of the corps, is almost marvellous, since a more fitting opportunity was afforded for that purpose, when the Ordnance estimates were presented and passed in December of the previous year. What were Mr. Sheridan, Mr. Courtenay, and the other opponents of the Duke of Richmond’s schemes about, to allow this measure to steal a successful march upon them?

[73]. In the protracted debates which occurred in 1788, on the Regency, Mr. Sheridan took occasion, when opposing the measure for reserving the patronage of the royal household, to attack the Minister—Mr. Pitt, and to wing from his bow another caustic shaft at the royal military artificers. Mr. Pitt, at some previous time, had charged a right honourable friend of Sheridan’s, on quitting office, “with having left a fortress behind him.” Sheridan admitted that the accusation was true; “but then,” continued he, in a vein of sparkling raillery, “like a coarse, clumsy workman, his right honourable friend had built his plan in open day, and retired with his friends, who served without pay. * * * Not so the right honourable gentleman over the way. Like a more crafty mason he had collected his materials with greater caution, and worked them up with abundantly more art. Perhaps he had taken the advice of the noble Duke—famous for fortification—and, with the aid of that able engineer, had provided a corps of royal military artificers, and thrown up impregnable ramparts to secure himself and his garrison. Upon this occasion the King’s arms doubtless might be seen flying as a banner on the top of his fortress, and powerful indeed must prove the effect of the right honourable gentleman’s thundering eloquence from without, and the support of the royal artificers from within, against his political adversaries.”—Sheridan’s Dramatic Works. See Life, p. 138. Bohn’s edit., 1848.

The last reference to the military artificers in Parliament was made by Mr. Courtenay on the 21st April, 1790, when, moving for a committee to inquire into the expenditure of the public money by the Duke of Richmond from the 1st January, 1784, he stated, among a variety of matter, that the corps of which his Grace was the founder, “were neither soldiers nor artificers.”—‘Gentleman’s Magazine,’ part 2, 1790, vol. 60, p. 720. This was followed, in 1794, by Mr. Glenie, who, in a second edition of his ‘Observations,’ declared that the corps was unquestionably a great imposition on the public. With this announcement the party crusade against the royal military artificers terminated.

[74]. Thus the higher branches of promotion were reserved to the three first classes of tradesmen, and none but men of the latter trades were promoted to the rank of corporals. This rule, though enforced as much as practicable, was necessarily deviated from in the lapse of a few years for the benefit of the service.

[75]. The authority for this was not embodied in the warrant for raising the corps, but conveyed in a letter to the Duke of Richmond, dated 10th October, 1787. With regard to the officers falling in with their companies, it was necessary to issue a special order, as, by a previous warrant of the 25th April, 1787, the royal engineers were to take rank with the royal artillery, and to be posted on the right or left of that regiment, according to the dates of their commissions. At Gibraltar, it was the custom of the companies with their officers, to take the right of the artillery; and they were always inserted first in the Governor’s states and returns. This was a local arrangement occasioned, probably, on account of the companies being stationary at the fortress.

[76]. The companies at Gibraltar, although similarly constituted, paid, and officered, remained a distinct and separate body until their incorporation with the corps in the year 1797.

[77]. From this arrangement, it sometimes occurred that even a Major-General was captain of a company.

[78]. In a letter bearing date 19th March, 1788.

[79]. For every labourer promoted, a guinea was granted to the master artificer, either civil or military, who had the credit of training him, as a compensation for his services and an encouragement to future exertion. This was sanctioned by his Grace in a letter dated 6th December, 1791.

[80]. This agreement was required to be attested by every recruit until about the year 1800, when it seems to have fallen into disuse.

[81]. John Drew was one of the sergeant-majors. He was the first soldier that entered the English corps of military artificers. On May 1st, 1795, he was commissioned to be second lieutenant in the invalid artillery, from which he retired in March, 1819, and died at Woolwich November 9, 1830. One of his daughters married the late Richard Byham, Esq., secretary to the honourable Board of Ordnance. A son—Richard Robinson Drew—attained the rank of Major in the royal artillery, and married Geriloma Barona, daughter of the late Marquis di Montebello. This lady died on the 4th September, 1854, and the Major survived her only four months. Both were interred in the family mausoleum at Messina. Though springing from a stock without any remarkable antecedents, good fortune seems to have attended the career of the offspring of the worthy sergeant-major; and much as his son may have added distinction to his race by his matrimonial alliance with a lady of high birth, it was still more honoured in the person of his granddaughter, who was wedded to the noble Prince di Castelcicala, the late Minister Plenipotentiary for Sicily.

Another of the sergeant-majors was Alexander Spence. He was born in 1726, and enlisted into the 20th Foot, January 16, 1756. After a service of 19 years in that regiment, and 14 as sergeant in the North Hants Militia, he joined the corps at the age of 61!! This is the period when men usually think of retiring from active employment and preparing for the end of life. Not so Spence. He was still a recruit, hale and hearty, and served his country for a further period of 21 years! If nature had taken her course, he might have lived to a great age, but disappointed in his expectation of receiving a sub-lieutenancy in the corps, he committed suicide January 11, 1809, at the age of 83.

[82]. While waiting for the issue of their regimental costume, the men, to appear smart and clean, pipe-clayed their frocks, vests, and pantaloons, and marched on Sundays to church as white as snow, and “stiff as buckram.” Unavoidably rubbing against each other during the service, the wash being thus set free, filled the sanctuary with clouds of white powder, which gave rise to the playful designation, by which they were known for some time, of “Hearts o’pipe-clay.”

[83]. A yellow silk knot was regimental; this the corporals were permitted to dispose of for a gold-fringed knot. In most of the companies the corporals wore knots on each shoulder. In the Woolwich company, one only was worn on the right shoulder.

[84]. ‘Public Advertiser.’ June 11th, 1789.

[85]. There exists two ballads with this title, one justly celebrated in the royal navy, written by Andrew Cherry, and embodied in Dibdin’s “Naval and National Songs,” and the other by a homely mariner, named, it is said, John Williams. Both songs may have taken their origin from the vessel spoken of above. Be this as it may, without doubt, one or the other was written to record the distress and struggles of the ship which conveyed the artificers to Gibraltar.

The incidents of the affair related in the first edition of this history were made to correspond with the seaman’s effusion, as there were reasons at the time for believing it referred to the vessel with the recruits on board; but, as on a closer review, there are doubts about its application, the details given in the former edition are omitted in this, leaving the question to be solved at a future day.

If the ballad of the seaman have reference to the ship in which the artificers sailed to the Rock, it differs in two known points from the facts of its voyage. The “Caroline” is the ship of the song, and she is said to have sailed from Spithead on the fourteenth day of April, whereas the party of recruits sailed apparently from Scotland, and positively landed, or, to use the official word, “joined,” at Gibraltar on the 16th April.

The seaman’s “Bay of Biscay, O!” is worked up in pure Grub-street doggrel; but bad as it is, it has been rendered worse, particularly in the last verse, by the tampering of some grossly vulgar hand. In the lapse of years the precise wording of that Catnach composition has probably been lost, and the version that exists, filled up by the imperfections of tradition, may have had its dates and places disturbed. In a printed form the ballad, seemingly, cannot be obtained.

If the differences just shown be considered fatal to the relationship between the sailor’s song and the vessel noticed in the narrative, then Cherry’s very popular ballad belongs to the history of the sappers and miners.

[86]. For full information concerning these experimental operations and manœuvres, see the ‘Public Advertiser’ for July 9th, August 7th, and August 10th, 1792.

[87]. To show how interested and considerate the Duke of Richmond was, in even trivial matters connected with the corps, it may be mentioned that on the 28th September, 1792, he ordered that six married private labourers, who had been at Bagshot Camp under his command, should each be paid half-a-guinea as a donation for the inconvenience and expense they were subjected to in being absent from their families.

[88]. Southey’s ‘Chron., Hist. West Indies,’ iii., p. 72.

[89]. ‘London Gazette Extraordinary,’ August 1, 1793.

[90]. During the formation of one of the bridges, Mrs. Fitzherbert (who had paid a visit to the Prince of Wales at Brighton) was riding by alone. Sergeant John Johnston, who was in charge of the party, recognizing the favourite, very politely touched his cap in compliment to her, and she immediately pulled up. After asking a variety of questions concerning the work, she praised the men for their exertions, and desired that each should receive an extra day’s pay. For this purpose she gave the sergeant sufficient money, and taking a note of his name, commended him for his civility and promised to remember him. Very shortly after he received the offer of an ensigncy in a regiment in the West Indies, and sailing thither in November, received his commission in the 29th Foot, 1st May, 1796. It was supposed that Mrs. Fitzherbert, true to her promise, had exerted her influence and obtained this appointment for him. George Ross, the other sergeant present with the party, was commissioned as Lieutenant in the Carnarvon Militia, in October, 1796.

[91]. Private Joshua Cook, of the Woolwich company, was sent to Toulon as orderly to Colonel D’Aubant, royal engineers, and served in that capacity in Toulon and Corsica until the Colonel returned with him to England.

[92]. Served seven years in the Royal Marines. Enlisted in the corps April 28, 1788, and was present in almost every action and capture which took place in the West Indies up to the year of his decease, which occurred at Barbadoes, July 14, 1810. Few non-commissioned officers had a more stirring career, or greater chances, by his prizes, employments, and successful speculations, of acquiring wealth. Much he gained and much he spent. He had his horses and his servants. Costly ornaments he wore with eastern profusion, and the hilt of his rapier, and the mountings of his scabbard, were of silver. Indeed it requires a couplet from Pope to do him anything like justice.

“A radiant baldrick o’er his shoulders tied

Sustain’d the sword that glitter’d at his side.”

[93]. ‘London Gazette Extraordinary,’ April 17th and 22nd, 1794.

[94]. Privates William Burrell, John Clark, Abraham Mayhead, Robert Torrince, William Fleming, and Thomas Wagg. Four of the number soon died; and the two first, on being released, joined the remnant of the company at St. Domingo on the 18th April, 1796.

[95]. ‘London Gazette,’ 13751. 10-14 February, 1795.

[96]. Lieutenant John Duncan, royal artillery, who was employed as assistant engineer in the sieges of Toulon and Corsica, “often spoke,” writes Lieutenant-General Birch, of the royal engineers, under date 22nd August, 1848, “with the very utmost enthusiasm of the conduct of the royal military artificers in these operations, and would delight to dwell in describing their conduct as being fine, brave, and enduring.”

[97]. Privates Alexander Williamson, Archibald Douglas, Alexander Stewart, Andrew Lindsay, David Morton, George Horn, and John Bristo.

[98]. ‘London Gazette Extraordinary,’ July 4th, 1796.

[99]. ‘London Gazette,’ 23rd to 26th July, 1796; takes notice of the private wounded, but not of the sergeant taken prisoner.

[100]. Lieutenant, afterwards Lieutenant-General, Evatt, who served with the company in Sir Charles Grey’s campaign of 1794, writes thus of it: “The dreadful sickness then prevailing left few or none of the men after its conclusion, and it might with truth be said, they came out, did their duty, and died!”

[101]. One of these labourers, John Alexander, enlisted in the Chatham company 15th July, 1796, and was transferred 1st April, 1797. Forty years afterwards he was commissioned as quartermaster in the royal horse artillery, and after eleven years' service in that rank, retired on full-pay in 1847, and died in 1854.

[102]. In the ‘London Gazette,’ 3rd to 6th June, 1797, the killed only are noticed.

[103]. Sir Charles Pasley, in the prefatory notes to his work on ‘Elementary Fortification,’ vol. i., p. 4, writes of the inefficiency and misconduct of detachments sent on foreign service, and concludes his observations by saying, “I am told in the West Indies, it had actually been proposed to employ negroes as engineer soldiers.” If the above is the recommendation Sir Charles alludes to, he has either been misinformed of the reasons for that proposal, or he has mistaken them; for the detachment was composed of good non-commissioned officers and well-qualified artificers from the Woolwich and Chatham companies; and in the discharge of their several duties, gave every satisfaction to their officers. The proposal was dictated by humanity, as well as with a view to the prospective advantage of the public, and in no respect originated in the misbehaviour or inefficiency of the men.

[104]. A copy of the document is subjoined:—

Plymouth Lines, 31st May, 1797.

We, the

Non-commissioned Officers

Of the Company of Royal Military

Artificers and Labourers,

Stationed at Plymouth Lines,

Come forward at the unanimous request of the Company, to avow at this momentous crisis, our firm loyalty, attachment, and fidelity to our most gracious Sovereign and our Country, and solemnly declare our firm determination to maintain subordination and discipline to our officers, with whom we have every reason to be fully satisfied, and request they will accept these, our most grateful acknowledgments for their humane attention towards us, and beg they will let this our determination be made known to the Right Honourable General Lord George Henry Lennox, Governor and Commander-in-Chief in this district.

That, as we learn, there are men endeavouring to withdraw His Majesty’s soldiers from the duty they owe to their King and Country, we are determined should any such proceedings appear amongst us, to take the earliest opportunity of checking the same; and, as a mark of our attachment to our most gracious Sovereign and glorious Constitution, we do hereby offer a reward of

Ten Guineas,

to any soldier-artificer, that will discover any person, or persons, offering them money, seditious handbills, or otherwise, with an intent to withdraw them from their duty, on conviction of the person, or persons, before a civil magistrate.

God save the King!

Witness our hands,

(Signed)	Wm. Browne,	Sergeant-major.
	Robt. Wakeham, Wm. Burgess, Jas. Moir,	}	Sergeants.
	Jno. Evelyn, Wm. Hutton, Wm. McBeath,	}	Corporals.
	Wm. Cottey, Josh. Wells, Wm. Beer.	}	Lance-corporals.

[105]. The extras were allowed the men to provide them with bread, a pair of breeches once in two years, and a rosette; and to pay the expense of making up their gaiters, and converting their uniform coats, after a certain period, into jackets.

[106]. The following is a copy of the letter of the Woolwich company, offering the contribution above alluded to:—

Woolwich, 12th February, 1798.

Sir,

At a time when the exigencies of the State appear to require the assistance of every good subject to alleviate the general burden our fellow-subjects bear, it is the unanimous wish of the non-commissioned officers, artificers, and labourers of the corps of Royal Military Artificers, &c., at this place, to manifest the gratitude they owe their King and country for the late increase of pay, as well as their attachment to His Majesty’s person and government, and their zeal for the service in which the country is engaged, by offering a contribution of three days' pay, to be applied as may be thought best to the defence of the State.

We request you will be pleased to lay this our wish before the Colonel Commandant of the corps for his approbation.

Signed on behalf of the artificers and labourers, &c., of the corps of Royal Military Artificers, &c., at Woolwich, and with their unanimous consent.

	Thos. Fortune,		Sergeant-major.[[106a]]
	James Douglas, John Levick, Edward Watson,	}	Sergeants.
	Robt. Hutchinson, John Young,	}	Corporals.
	Benj. Roberts,William Bain,Hugh Kinnaird,	}	Lance-Corporals.

Captain Charles Holloway,

Commanding the Royal Military

Artificers, &c., at Woolwich.

[106a]. Enlisted as a matross in July, 1761, in the royal artillery, and was pensioned from that regiment in October, 1783. On May 1, 1795, he enlisted into the Royal Military Artificers, at the age of 52! and died at Canterbury, August 10, 1799. Was known as the author of a small work called “The Artillerist’s Companion,” published by Egerton in 1786.

[107]. The greater part of the detachment had been specially employed in mining services at Dover.

[108]. “Lieutenant Brownrigg, R.E., in about four hours, made all his arrangements, and completely destroyed the sluices; his mines having, in every particular, the desired effect, and the object of the expedition thereby attained. * * * In Lieutenant Brownrigg, I found infinite ability and resource: his zeal and attention were eminently conspicuous.”—London Gazette, 17 to 21 July, 1798.

[109]. ‘London Gazette,’ 17 to 21 July, 1798.

[110]. This officer was “ordered to the West Indies with two companies of the royal military artificers: himself and two of the privates only escaped the baleful effects of the climate of St. Domingo.”—United Service Journal, i., 1832, p. 142.

[111]. These were privates Adam Cowan and John Westo. The former was at once appointed sergeant and conductor of stores to Commissary Meek of the Ordnance. After delivering over the stores of the department at Jamaica to a sergeant of Dutch emigrant artillery, he returned to England, and was discharged with a pension of 2s. 0½d. a-day in April, 1816.

[112]. Pasley’s ‘Elementary Fortification.’ Notes to Preface, p. iv., vol. i.

[113]. Several individual proofs could be adduced but two must suffice. Private Evan Roberts, a talented mason, was detached to Malta during the blockade of Valetta, and rendered good service as a foreman under Captain Gordon, R.E. On the formation of the Maltese artificers, he was appointed sergeant in one of the companies to prevent his removal to another station: and Sergeant-major James Shirres, formerly of the Gibraltar companies, from his correct conduct and merit as an artificer, was appointed overseer of works in the royal engineer department at Plymouth, in December, 1804.

[114]. Pasley’s ‘Elementary Fortification.’ Notes to Preface, p. iv. vol. i.

[115]. Brigadier-General Koehler, Major Holloway, and six other officers and gentlemen proceeded by the overland route to Constantinople. Three of the detachment accompanied them—privates Joseph Comfort, Jonathan Lewsey, and David Waddell. “Their journey in the outset,” says Dr. Wittman, in his ‘Travels in Turkey,’ &c., p. 6, “had been attended by uncommon severities, such, however, as might have been expected from a season more rigorous than any which had been experienced for many years. In passing over the continent, they had, at the entrance of the Elbe, been shipwrecked among the shoals of ice; and to relieve themselves from the perilous situation, had been under the necessity of passing over the ice to the extent of two miles, to gain the shore; by this effort they were providentially saved.” They now prosecuted their journey to Constantinople, where they arrived in March, 1799.

[116]. While here, sergeant Watson of the artificers, in preparing money for the payment of the mission in the presence of a Turkish marine, quitted the room for a moment, leaving the money on the table. “On his return,” writes Dr. Wittman, “the marine had disappeared with 120 piastres, about 9l. English. Having described the person of the delinquent to the Capitan Pacha, inquiries were at once commenced to detect the thief. On the second day after, the marine confessed his guilt to General Koehler, and begged his influence with the Capitan Pacha to save his life. The General did so, but several days elapsed before the affair was disposed of. During the interval, the General, anxious to prevent the culprit being strangled, expressed some doubts of the culprit’s identity; but in reply to this, the Pacha very handsomely declared his full conviction that the marine had taken the money, as he was certain an Englishman would not tell an untruth.”—Wittman’s Travels in Turkey, Asia Minor, &c., p. 65.

[117]. The above particulars are chiefly taken from Dr. Wittman’s ‘Travels in Turkey,’ &c.

[118]. Sir John Jones, in his ‘Sieges,’ vol. ii., note 38, p. 389, 2nd edit.

[119]. Gleig’s ‘Military History,’ xxxvii., p. 287.

[120]. Some time before leaving the city, private Thomas Taylor, royal military artificers, was, without any provocation, assaulted by a Turk, who attempted to stab him with his yatikan. On a report of this outrage being made to the Capitan Pacha, to whose retinue the Turk belonged, he came to a resolution to have him decapitated. By the mediation and entreaties of Lord Elgin, a mitigation of the punishment ensued, and the Turk, after receiving fifty strokes of the bastinado on the soles of his feet, was sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment in the college of Pera, to learn the Arabic language.—Dr. Wittman’s Turkey, p. 93.

[121]. Particulars for the most part obtained from Wittman’s ‘Travels in Turkey,’ &c.

[122]. The seven non-commissioned officers and men embarked at Gibraltar to join the expedition, returned to their companies at the fortress immediately after the failure at Cadiz.

[123]. Either private Jonathan Lewsey or private David Waddell, both of whom acted as servants to Major Holloway, R.E. The former was a powerful man, and remarkable from the circumstance of his having four thumbs! two on each hand in addition to the proper complement of fingers. On the breaking up of the mission at Grand Cairo, these privates returned to England with that officer by the overland route.

[124]. Sergeant Edward Watson, who enlisted into the artillery as a matross, January 28, 1775, and joined the corps at Woolwich, March 1, 1792, was the senior non-commissioned officer with the mission; and in consideration of his zeal, ability, and uniform exemplary conduct, as well in discharge of his military duties, as in the executive superintendence of the several works undertaken by Major Holloway, he was promoted, on his arrival in England, to be sergeant-major of the Woolwich company. On December 1, 1810, he was discharged. For similar reasons corporal David Pollock was advanced to the rank of sergeant, and appointed master-smith.

[125]. Wittman’s ‘Turkey,’ p. 395.

[126]. John Wallace. It is related of him that he was lost sight of for many months, and his appearance at Woolwich gave rise to as much surprise as his person to doubt. All traces of the original man had worn away, and from the oddness of his dress, and peculiarity of his manners, the task of recognition was rendered still more perplexing. Eventually, satisfactory proofs of his identity being obtained, he was again acknowledged and discharged on a pension of 1s. 6d. a-day, his service in the corps having exceeded thirty-three years.

[127]. In the ‘London Gazette,’ 26 to 30 July, 1803, this corporal is, by mistake, returned as sergeant.

[128]. ‘London Gazette Extraordinary,’ August 15, 1803.

[129]. Ibid.

[130]. ‘London Gazette,’ 19 to 23 June, 1804.

[131]. Ibid.

[132]. In the subsequent campaigns of the West Indies he behaved equally meritoriously; and in garrison and the workshops always conducted himself well. Besides being an excellent mason and foreman, no artificer in the service, perhaps, had a better practical idea of mining, in which he signalized himself at the destruction of Fort Desaix, Martinique. After sixteen years' arduous service in the West Indies, he was sent to Woolwich and discharged in July, 1814.

[133]. Sir James Fellowes ‘On the Fever of Andalusia.’

[134]. According to Sir James Fellowes, 229 men of the companies were admitted into hospital with the fever, of whom 106 recovered, and 123 died; but as Sir James has omitted the statistics for August in his tables, the apparent disparity between the two accounts is reduced to the trifling difference of 4 only, a mistake which, doubtless, occurred from some inaccuracy or accidental omission in the information furnished to Sir James from the Ordnance Hospital records.

[135]. This statement is borne out by Sir James Fellowes. See p. 450 of his work ‘On the Fever of Andalusia.’

[136]. What was most extraordinary connected with these daring fellows, was the fact, that throughout the epidemic, they enjoyed the most robust health; but, after its cessation, fearing that they were loaded with infection, and that a sudden transition to the garrison again would cause the fever to return, the authorities deemed it prudent to send the hearse-driver and gravediggers to camp at Beuna Vista, where, after about two months' quarantine, they were permitted to rejoin their companies.

[137]. ‘United Service Journal,’ i., 1845, p. 483.

[138]. This observation would appear to clash with the remarks of Sir Charles Pasley (note F, p. xvii. ‘Elementary Fortification’) upon the impropriety of enlisting militia-men; but after carefully tracing the history of many volunteers from that arm, the fact cannot be concealed that the transfers alluded to were decidedly beneficial to the corps. The best sapper, miner, and pontoneer, that ever served in the corps—perhaps the best in Europe—was a militia-man; and the name of Jenkin Jones, the faithful and zealous sergeant-major under Sir Charles Pasley at Chatham, now quartermaster at Woolwich, need only be mentioned, to verify the assertion and to corroborate the encomium. Quartermaster Hilton, the efficient sergeant-major to the corps in France under Sir James Carmichael Smyth, had also been in the militia.

[139]. ‘London Gazette Extraordinary,’ September 13, 1806.

[140]. With fifty women and forty children! More than, in these days, are permitted to accompany a battalion on foreign service.

[141]. Pasley’s ‘Elementary Fortification,’ note A, p. iv.

[142]. In the treaty of Amiens it was stipulated that one-half the soldiers in the garrison at Malta should be natives; and although the treaty had been violated by Napoleon, Great Britain still regarded its provisions, in this respect at least, as sacred and obligatory.

[143]. Styled, by local usage, “Assistant Engineer.”

[144]. Of the regimental allowances of the foreign adjutant nothing is known, nor can any record be discovered of the uniform worn by him.

[145]. In 1808 the companies were clothed in a uniform made of cotton, manufactured in the island, similar to the local corps. The facings were of black cloth. The sergeants and corporals were distinguished as before, and the sergeant-major still wore the home uniform. The substitution of cotton for cloth was ordered on account of its being cheaper and better adapted to the climate, besides forwarding the views of Government, in aiding the sale of the staple commodity of the island, deprived by the war of its usual vents.

[146]. Sir John Jones states, evidently by mistake, that the corps was composed of thirty-two companies.—Journals of Sieges, ii., note 38, p. 389, 2nd edit.

[147]. Styled Second Lieutenants in the warrant by mistake. The Sub-Lieutenants were junior to the Second Lieutenants of engineers, but held rank with Second Lieutenants of the line, according to dates of commission. This right was often questioned, but never, as long as the Sub-Lieutenants were attached to the corps, officially settled. In 1835 the position of a Sub-Lieutenant (H. B. Mackenzie), who had joined the line as paymaster being disputed, it was then settled that Sub-Lieutenants were junior to Ensigns.

[148]. Subsequently increased to 5s. 7d. a-day, and after seven years' service to 6s. 7d. a-day.

[149]. Holding comparative station with corporals of the line, according to date of promotion.

[150]. This may be regarded as a favourable view of the case. Sir John Jones states, “Each company was commanded for the moment by the senior Captain of engineers, who might happen to be placed on duty wherever the company might be; so that it was not unfrequent for a company to be commanded by five or six captains in as many months.”—Journal of Sieges, ii. note 38, p. 389, 2nd edit.

[151]. Pasley’s ‘Elementary Fortification,’ note a, p. iii.

[152]. Ibid., note F, p. xvii.

[153]. In the earlier years of his appointment he was much at Woolwich, and personally superintended the affairs of the corps; but for some years prior to the new organization, his duties in London seldom permitted him to visit the head-quarters.

[154]. Colonel Phipps was never present with the corps. As Quartermaster, he performed his duties in London. In consideration of his relinquishing the Quartermastership, and also for his good services, he was granted by His Majesty an allowance of 10s. a-day.—‘Accounts of Ordnance, House of Commons,’ 1816, p. 31.

[155]. ‘London Gazette,’ 20th to 24th January, 1807.

[156]. ‘United Service Journal,’ ii., 1843, p. 110. ‘Jones’s Sieges,’ ii., note 38, p. 389, 2nd edit.

[157]. In the absence, on foreign duty, of Captain J. T. Jones, from July, 1808, to January, 1809, Sub-Lieutenant John Eaves performed the duties of adjutant to the corps with credit and efficiency.

[158]. In Jones’s ‘Sieges,’ vol. ii., p. 269, 2nd edit., the number, including the sub-lieutenant, is shown as 261 only; at p. 415, the total of all ranks is stated to be 276; but both strengths differ from the actual force engaged.

[159]. Jones’s ‘Sieges,’ vol. ii., p. 279, 2nd edit.

[160]. Was left property to the amount of 4000l. and purchased his discharge in 1810.

[161]. ‘London Gazette.’

[162]. Hargrave’s ‘Account of Walcheren and South Beveland,’ p. 16, edit. 1812.

[163]. Jones’s Lines of Lisbon, 1829, p. 78.

[164]. ‘Prof. Papers,’ iii., p. 94.

[165]. Jones’s ‘Sieges’ vol. i. p. 377, 2nd edit.

[166]. Ibid. p. 6.

[167]. Jones’s ‘Sieges,’ vol. i., p. 10, 2nd edit.

[168]. ‘United Service Journal,’ ii., 1831, p. 329.

[169]. Jones’s ‘Sieges,’ vol. i., p. 70, 2nd edit. ‘United Service Journal,’ ii., 1831, p. 331.

[170]. Jones’s ‘Sieges,’ vol. i., p. 90, 2nd edit.

[171]. A third of whom were to be gardeners, hedgers, or canal-diggers, but only to be enlisted on special authority from head-quarters.

[172]. These appointments were never conferred. The whole business of the corps was carried on by an Adjutant, who held his office independently of the battalions.

[173]. Pasley’s ‘Elementary Fortification,’ note a, p. iv., vol. i.

[174]. There was a William Painter at Gibraltar, whose affluence was something extraordinary. He enlisted into the corps in July, 1798, and though a man of very useful intelligence, only attained the rank of second-corporal in 1807. He tried to procure his discharge to return to his estate in Cornwall, but such was the pressure for men, his desire was negatived. His humble position, however, did not prevent his living in ease and luxury. He kept his servants, horses, and, it is said, his carriage, and entertained and enjoyed very good society. Well could he do all this, for, coupling with his own receipts his wife’s settlement, he possessed an income of eleven hundreds pounds a-year! He died at the Rock, August 13, 1811, aged 45 years. By his Will he left 5000l. stock to his two sons—John, and William Grible; 300l. to Sub-Lieutenant Falconer and his family, and a few smaller legacies to relatives and an attached servant, besides considerable landed property, houses, and the usual legal addenda of “messuages, tenements, and hereditaments” at Gwennap in Cornwall to his elder son John, “and his heirs for ever.” The widow, under a jointure, was in receipt of 550l. a-year.

As if to show how likely fortune is to be overtaken by calamity, Sub-Lieutenant Falconer, five days after the death-bed remembrance of the corporal, was fired at from an open window by private Samuel Fraser. The ball luckily missed him, but whizzed sufficiently near to be alarming. The ruffian was sent to a condemned regiment in commutation for his sentence of one thousand lashes!

[175]. He invented an engine for nipping lead shot, used for years in the royal laboratory, but for which an impostor and spy, named De Haine, received a reward of 500l. While filling the office of inspector of ordnance stores, he made various improvements in the mechanical and intrenching tools. He also detected many extraordinary frauds in the deliveries made by contractors. In one attempted imposition only, he saved the Government 2000l. He designed and constructed a life-ladder, which was frequently used with success at fires, and an ingenious mortar-mill which occasioned a great saving of expense to the department. At Chatham he invented many useful tools, implements, and apparatus, and his services were repeatedly acknowledged in the order books of the establishment.

[176]. Jones’s ‘Sieges,’ 2nd edit., ii., p. 390.

[177]. ‘Wellington Dispatches,’ 1845, v., p. 508.

[178]. Jones’s ‘Sieges,’ 2nd edit., ii.. p. 392.

[179]. Among the recruits at this period was Sir John Sinclair, Bart., who, on the 12th August, 1812, enlisted in the name of John Smith. Through various misfortunes he was reduced from affluence to poverty. Noticed by Colonel Pilkington, R.E., for his uniform good conduct and attainments, he was promoted to the rank of second-corporal, and provided with a quarter at the main-guard in the royal arsenal. His lady sometimes visited him in all the pride of her station, but his own rank was as yet unsuspected. From a comrade—afterwards Sub-Lieutenant H. B. Mackenzie—he frequently borrowed plain clothes to elude arrest in the streets, and invariably proceeded to the Treasury by water to receive his allowance. He was at length dogged to Woolwich, and, on the 31st August, 1813, being taken, was thrown into the debtors' side of Newgate, from whence he was removed to the Fleet Prison, where, for a year and a half he was confined, and was then only released by an error in law. Thirteen months' sickness and distress followed his release, during which time he was supplied with means by an acquaintance of his earlier and happier days. All the while the whereabouts of John Smith was unknown, but, advised by his friend, he confessed himself a deserter, and in imploring pardon and indemnity for past errors, solicited to be received for life in the New South Wales Corps. The pardon was granted, and being relieved from further service in the sappers, he was again left at liberty to follow his own inclination.

[180]. Jones’s ‘Sieges,’ 2nd edit., ii., pp. 390, 391.

[181]. Sir John Jones, by mistake, vol. ii. p. 390, makes the alteration of the name of the corps antecedent to the creation of the establishment at Chatham.

[182]. Soon after this change, an act of gross indiscipline occurred, which will afford a tolerable notion of some of the singular characters who held rank in the corps. A sergeant’s guard usually mounted in the sappers' barracks at Woolwich. One morning sergeant Millar was appointed to the new guard, and during the ceremony of “mounting,” was posted in front of it. Lieutenant Eaves, the officer on duty, gave the usual words of command. “Sergeant, to your guard, march!” Millar no sooner heard it, than he whirled his halberd in the air, and as every one stood amazed to see the upshot of this mad manœuvre, the pike turned point downwards and stuck in the earth. At this moment, to complete the extravaganza, Millar pitched on his hands, and with his legs towering erect in the air, paddled, with all the flexibility and steadiness of an acrobat, to his wondering guard!

[183]. Jones’s ‘Sieges,’ i. p. 369, 3rd edit., and note added by Colonel Harry D. Jones.

[184]. ‘Wellington Dispatches,’ 1845, v., p. 476.

[185]. Sir John Jones, in his ‘Sieges,’ i. p. 130, 2nd edit., records, by mistake, the arrival of the company on the 15th instead of the 19th January.

[186]. ‘Wellington Dispatches,’ edit. 1845, v., p. 579.

[187]. Ibid, v., p. 650.

[188]. In the Dispatch to the Earl of Liverpool, dated Fuente Guinaldo, 10th June, 1812, the Earl of Wellington states, “I have likewise sent from this country to Gibraltar Lieutenant-Colonel Jones and four subaltern officers of engineers, and two companies of military artificers, including all the sappers there are with the army,” to join the corps d’armée under Lieutenant-General Lord William Bentinck, “to make an attack on the eastern coast of the Peninsula, with the troops from Sicily.”—Wellington Dispatches; 1845, v., p. 706, 707. The above company, 92 strong, was the only one despatched from Portugal, but one of the Maltese military artificers from Messina was added to the engineers' means for the siege, which made a combined sapper-force of 134 strong.

[189]. ‘Wellington Dispatches,’ 1845, v., p. 724.

[190]. Jones’s ‘Sieges,’ notes by Colonel Harry D. Jones, i., p. 135, 377, 3rd edit.

[191]. ‘United Service Journal,’ 2, 1829, p. 284, 285.

[192]. In 1816 this officer was appointed Town-Major at Bermuda, and from the able manner in which he discharged its duties, was honoured with the confidence and approval of his patron, Sir James Cockburn.

[193]. ‘United Service Journal,’ iii., 1844, p. 77, 78.

[194]. Sir W. Napier, in his ‘Peninsular War,’ attributes, by mistake, this service to Lieutenant G. Pringle, R.E.

[195]. Manuscript, Royal Engineer Establishment. The model in the Model Room at Brompton, showing the details of one of the stockades, was made under the direction of Sub-Lieutenant Calder.

[196]. Sir Thomas Graham, in ‘Wellington Dispatches,’ vi., p. 650, edit. 1845. Jones’s ‘Sieges,’ ii., p. 391, 2nd edit.; and Pasley’s ‘Elementary Fortification,’ note D, p. ix., vol. 1.

[197]. Pasley’s ‘Operations of a Siege,’ ii., p. 246, note.

[198]. ‘Instructions for the Defence of Fortresses,’ translated by Major Reid, R.E., 1823, p. 20.

[199]. From his perfect knowledge of the duties of field engineering, he was known among his comrades by the title of “Sap Major.”

[200]. Corporal Charles Ford was one of the prisoners. He was of a respectable family, and had a brother a clergyman in the Church of England, presiding over the cure of the parish of Kilbeaconty in Ireland. In an article in the ‘United Service Journal,’ headed, “Captivity in San Sebastian,” Captain Harry Jones, R.E., who also had been taken prisoner, alludes to this non-commissioned officer. “In the course of the day,” he says, “I was asked whether I would like to speak to a corporal of sappers, who had been made a prisoner during the sortie. I was delighted at the prospect of seeing one of my old friends, but was greatly astonished, in the afternoon, by seeing a fine tall young man, a stranger, walking into the ward, dressed in a red jacket. He was the first sapper I had seen in the new uniform, as blue was the colour worn when I was taken prisoner. Upon inquiring when he joined the army from England, he replied, 'Yesterday morning. I was put on duty in the trenches last night, and was shortly afterwards brought into the town by the enemy.'”—‘United Service Journal,’ 1, 1841, p. 198.

[201]. Napier’s ‘Peninsular War,’ vi., p. 502, edit. 1840.

[202]. Manuscript, Royal Engineer Establishment. The details of the construction of this bridge have been considered sufficiently interesting to be preserved in a model at the royal engineer establishment at Chatham.

[203]. Jones’s ‘Sieges’[‘Sieges’] ii., p. 107, 2nd edit.

[204]. Jones’s ‘Sieges,’ p. 109.

[205]. Jones’s ‘Sieges,’ ii., p. 118, 2nd edit. As a reward for their services, most of the men that belonged to the flotilla received a guinea and a pair of shoes.

[206]. Jones’s ‘Sieges,’ ii., p. 117, 2nd edit.

[207]. Colonel Harry D. Jones, royal engineers.

[208]. Napier’s ‘Peninsular War,’ vi., p. 542, edit. 1840.

[209]. Ibid., p. 543.

[210]. Jones’s ‘Sieges,’ ii., p. 126, 2nd edit.

[211]. Pasley’s ‘Elementary Fortification,’ note C, p. viii., vol. 1.

[212]. Here is a practical exemplification of esprit de corps. Whilst engaged in the attempt to destroy the shipping in the basin of Antwerp, his Royal Highness Prince William frequently visited the Napoleon battery with several military officers. On one of those visits a mounted veteran in the suite of the Prince approached private John Brennan, and said, “Sapper, will you hold this horse for an old guardsman?” Brennan, who was very busy at the time with his shovel, turned his face towards the officer, and feeling that as a sapper he was two or three removes above a groom, replied, “Egad, sir, I’d sooner be shot layin' sand-bags.”

[213]. The gentle Brennan, about whom an anecdote is told in a previous page, very reluctantly quitted the ramparts. Finding, that to save himself, retreat was inevitable, he turned his back on the fortress, and with a scowl, such only as an Irishman could make, growled out, “Bad luck to the whole ov yees!” With this mild curse, so unusual in a hot-headed, free-spoken Milesian, he scampered down the ladder, escaped without wound or touch, and finally halted, still breathing the anathema, “Bad luck to the whole ov yees!” The incident is only remarkable for its freedom from those horrible epithets and curses so common in Irish execrations. Brennan was applauded for his bravery at the storming by Captain Robert Thomson, and his subsequent exertions and constancy in the restoration of the defences of Antwerp and Ypres, where he had large parties of Hanoverian troops and Dutch peasants under his superintendence, led to his promotion first to lance-corporal and then to corporal.

[214]. Lomas was discharged in 1816 by reduction, and being a young soldier, received no pension. Some thirty years afterwards, he applied for a pension, and his exploits being still remembered, he was granted 6d. a-day.

[215]. Private Henry Scrafield behaved with spirit in overpowering two armed sentinels in the Senate-house, and taking them prisoners. A more uncompromisingly independent man perhaps never lived. Once he complained, in a petition to George IV., of the conduct of an officer, but it ended without the concession of the redress which he unwarrantably sought from His Majesty. In February, 1831, he endeavoured to save the lives of five boys who had fallen into Mulgrave Reservoir, at Woolwich. An orange had been thrown on the ice by some reckless fellow, and the unfortunate youths, scrambling after it, fell into the water. Scrafield was soon on the spot, and at imminent personal risk, crossed the broken ice on ladders, and, with ropes and grapnels, succeeded in rescuing the poor boys, but not till all life had departed. The first youth was got up in ten minutes after the catastrophe. For his judgment and intrepidity on the occasion he was promoted to be second-corporal, and the Royal Humane Society granted him a pecuniary reward. Pensioned in November, 1833, he afterwards obtained a lucrative situation on a railway, and died at Bletchington, of cholera, in September, 1849.

[216]. Pasley’s ‘Elementary Fortification,’ i., note D, p. x.

[217]. ‘London Gazette.’

[218]. Pasley’s ‘Elementary Fortification,’ i., note B, page vi.

[219]. Pasley’s ‘Elementary Fortification,’ i., note B, p. vi.

[220]. Ibid.

[221]. ‘Wellington Dispatches,’ viii., p. 18, edit. 1847.

[222]. Corroborated, by the official State on the 18th June, 1815. See ‘Gurwood,’ vol. viii., App. xiii., p. 392, edit. 1847.

[223]. Died at Tournay, 16th June, 1815.

[224]. ‘Wellington Dispatches,’ edit. 1847, (2 & 12 May,) pp. 55, 81.

[225]. To show how serious was the alarm, and how great the number of fugitives, the following extract from general orders, dated Nivelles, 20th June, 1815, will fully testify:—

“3. The Field Marshal has observed that several soldiers, and even officers, have quitted their ranks without leave, and have gone to Bruxelles, and even some to Antwerp, where, and in the country through which they have passed, they have spread a false alarm, in a manner highly unmilitary and derogatory to the character of soldiers.

“4. The Field Marshal requests the General Officers commanding divisions in the British army, and the General Officers commanding the corps of each nation of which the army is composed, to report to him in writing, what officers and men (the former by name) are now, or have been, absent without leave since the 16th instant.

“5. The Field Marshal desires that the 14th article of the 14th section of the Articles of War may be inserted in every orderly book of the British army, in order to remind officers and soldiers of the punishment affixed by law to the crime of creating false alarms.”—‘Gurwood,’ viii., p.156, edit. 1847.

Nearly 2000 men were returned “missing,” the greater number of whom were said to have gone to the rear with wounded officers and soldiers.—'Gurwood, viii., p.151, edit. 1847. But the probability is, that very few of this strength returned into the battle, but, worked upon by the alarm, helped to swell the force of the renegades. Under the circumstances, the retreat of the company of sappers is fairly exonerated, pressed as it was by masses of troops of all nations, who fled from the field in infamous haste and terror.

It is right to go a step further, and show what was the effect of the alarm at Brussels—24 miles away from the position; and thus notice the conduct of one who should be recognized in these pages. Some hours before the company arrived at Brussels, the panic was so complete, that the inhabitants flew in all directions from the horrors of an anticipated calamity, and not a few of the soldiers quartered in the place swelled the rout. Sergeant-major Hilton in charge of a detachment of sappers, prepared for the worst by packing the plans, charts, &c., of the engineer department, and also the military baggage of the commanding royal engineer. As all his own drivers had disappeared, he harnessed a couple of horses in readiness to move should necessity force him. A Belgic servant of Colonel Carmichael Smyth’s, who had been in the French service, ought to have assisted, but showing signs of treachery, an altercation ensued, in which, to save himself from the cut of a sabre, the sergeant-major wounded the shins of the Belgian with a stroke from a crowbar. Expecting no aid from this faithless foreigner, the sergeant-major looked about for more reliable intelligence respecting the rumoured reverse at Waterloo. While doing so the Commandant of Brussels accosted him, which led to his explaining the course he intended to pursue to preserve the plans, &c., from falling into the hands of the enemy. After remarking that there was no fear of the French reaching the city, the Commandant desired him to order the provost, with all the disposable men of his guard, to wait upon him immediately at the Rue Royale. Sergeant Hilton promptly complied; but the provost—this paragon of order and discipline—could not be found; and his irresolute men were only too desirous of following in the wake of the winged crowd. At last about nine of the guard accompanied the sergeant-major to the Rue Royale, where the Commandant ordered him to station the men across the road leading to Antwerp. “Stop every waggon,” he roared, furious at the insane sight that everywhere met his gaze, “and run any one through who attempts to pass in violation of your orders!” The terror of the citizens was at its highest, soldiers of every country were pouring into the capital; all was confusion and haste; the streets were lined with vehicles in endless variety, and each owner was striving to out-ride his neighbour in the frantic chase. It required to be firm at such a time, and the sergeant-major, quite as stern as the Commandant, drew his sword, and opposing himself and his small guard to the onward movement of the vans, stemmed with difficulty the flight. Quickly the horses were withdrawn from the shafts, to prevent the possibility of whipping them forward; and turning a waggon with its broadside to the stream, the outlet was thus partially closed. So great now was the pressure from behind that waggon drove on waggon, and smashing in the roadway, the passage was at length blocked up with an impenetrable barricade, which effectually checked the efflux of the fugitives to Antwerp, and calmed the agitation of the people.

[226]. The only soldier of the corps actually in the battle was lance-corporal Henry Donnelly, who was orderly to Captain and Brigade-Major, now Major-General Oldfield, K.H. He was present on the 17th and 18th, and Colonel Carmichael Smyth, who was seriously indisposed on the night of the 17th, was much indebted to him for his care and attention. His claim to a medal was warmly advocated by the Major, who testified to his presence in the field for two days, but Colonel Smyth never would allow that he was entitled to it. At the final rejection of his just right corporal Donnelly was so much affected, that shortly after he went into hospital, and died on the 25th July, 1817.

The claim of corporal Donnelly had been officially recognized at one time in the following order by the officer commanding his company:—

“Company orders. Argenteuil, August 6, 1815. In consequence of private Henry Donnelly being present at the battle of Waterloo, he is entitled to two years advance of service. He will therefore be mustered according to the regulations of his Royal Highness the Prince Regent, dated 29th July, 1815.—(Signed) Ed. Covey, Lieutenant Royal Engineers.” And he was so mustered until July 1816, when Colonel Smyth ordered its discontinuance, making at the same time these remarks:—“The sapper in question rode out a horse of Major Oldfield’s on the 17th, and returned to Brussels on the morning of the 18th, without having seen an enemy or heard a shot fired. He was in Brussels during the actions of the 16th and 18th; and under these circumstances I should have been guilty of a dereliction of duty to have certified that he was entitled to a medal, and which he could hardly have worn on the parade of his company, in preference to the very good non-commissioned officers and men of that company, who have constantly done their duty much to my satisfaction and their own credit; and who could not but have felt aggrieved to have seen a mark of distinction bestowed upon private Donnelly without his having in any way deserved it.”

[227]. Pasley’s ‘Elementary Fortification,’ i., note F, p. xii.

[228]. Ibid.

[229]. Ibid.

[230]. Pasley’s ‘Elementary Fortification,’ i., note F, p. xii.

[231]. Ibid, i., note D, p. ix.

[232]. ‘Wellington Dispatches,’ viii., p. 176, edit. 1847.

[233]. Colonel Carmichael Smyth’s ‘Plans of attack upon Antwerp,’ &c., p. 9, and plan.

[234]. Pasley’s ‘Elementary Fortification,’ i., note F, p. xii.

[235]. Pasley’s ‘Elementary Fortification,’ i., note F, p. xii.

[236]. Jones’s ‘Sieges,’ ii., p. 891, 2nd edit.

[237]. ‘London Gazette.’

[238]. Generally the sub-lieutenants were commissioned into the corps from the ranks of other regiments, as a patronage to the military friends of the Master-General. Many of them had distinguished themselves in the field, were good drills, and fine-looking soldiers; but though considered at first to promise well, they disappointed the expectations formed of their probable usefulness. Wanting the necessary ability and weight, they were neither respected in the army nor by the corps; and unable, therefore, to give the satisfaction which was reasonably hoped for, the first reduction ordered after the peace, embraced the[the] abolition of the rank.—Pasley’s Mil. Pol., pp. 18, 19, Introduction. Their removal from the corps was, nevertheless, alluded to in terms of “extreme regret” by Colonel Carmichael Smyth in his orders of the 22nd April. In concluding his address at parting, he thus wrote, “With the conduct of the whole of the sub-lieutenants Colonel Carmichael Smyth has had every reason to be satisfied, but more particularly with those who, having been longest under his command, he has had more occasion of knowing. If, in the course of future service, he should have any opportunity of being useful to them, he assures them he will embrace it with pleasure.”

[239]. In addition to this total 180 men of the companies in France were borne on the strength as supernumeraries, until December, 1818.

[240]. The orders issued for the infliction of this discipline were as follows:—

“Head Quarters, Cambray, 25th June, 1818. In consequence of the circumstances connected with the murder of Alexander Milne, of Captain Peake’s company, which have appeared upon the proceedings of a court of enquiry, the Field Marshal has directed that the rolls of the royal sappers and miners may be called, until further orders, in their several cantonments every hour from 4 in the morning until 10 at night, all the officers being present; and that a daily report thereof may be made to head-quarters.”

“Head-Quarters, Cambray, 18th July, 1818. In consequence of orders from His Grace the Commander of the Forces, the rolls of the several companies of royal sappers and miners will be called every two hours from 4 in the morning until 10 at night, in place of every hour as directed in the C. E. orders of the 25th ultimo.”

[241]. The companies at Newfoundland and at Halifax, Nova Scotia, returned to England late in 1819. To the former company belonged sergeant Thomas Brown, who was discharged from the corps in November, 1819, after a service of twelve years. In 1821 the late Sir William Congreve appointed him modeller at the royal military repository, Woolwich, which situation he has held for thirty-six years with great credit. In that period he has made 125 models, chiefly of field artillery, pontoons, bridges, and miscellaneous military subjects. The greatest number are deposited for exhibition in the Rotunda, and the remainder in the rooms of instruction for the officers and non-commissioned officers. Many others also, which were defective or out of repair he has renewed or remade. His principal works, considered with regard to the skill and artistic excellence displayed in their construction, are the model of a fortified half octagon, showing the approaches and plan of attack, on a scale of 22½ feet to an inch, and a model of St. James’s Park as it was at the celebration of the peace in 1814.

[242]. To this company belonged private James Gordon, who lost an eye by accident in mining for the foundation of the palace, and was discharged at Woolwich 30th September, 1820, with a pension of 9d. a-day. Throughout his service of nine years he was a zealous and exemplary soldier, and bore about him the stamp and evidences of a loftier origin than his humble station gave reason to expect. Singular events in life sometimes occur that make contrasts at times appear almost fabulous. “The soldier turned peer,” has hitherto been the player’s jest, but it has at last become a veritable reality, for in September, 1848, this James Gordon, the private soldier, succeeded, as heir to his grandfather, to the titles of Viscount Kenmure and Lord Lochinvar.

[243]. Was an excellent clerk, and became in time a quartermaster-sergeant. After his discharge from the corps in 1843, he filled, for about ten years, important offices under the Surveyor-General of Prisons, and died while steward of Dartmoor Prison, in February, 1853, from a cold caught in that bleak quarter. The season was a peculiarly bitter and stormy one, during which three soldiers of the line, on escort duty, in crossing Dartmoor Heath, perished in the snow.

[244]. Captain Kater, in his account of the operations published in the ‘Philosophical Transactions,’ 1828, p. 153, notices, by mistake, this party as belonging to the royal artillery. There were, it is true, two gunners of the regiment present, but they were employed as servants to the officers.

[245]. Such was the sense entertained of his services, that Sir Frederick Adam, the Lord High Commissioner, after the detachment had reached Malta, recalled him to Corfu to superintend the civil works on the island. His position thus became anomalous, and, as far as military law and usage are concerned, unexampled for privilege and emolument. Besides his regimental pay, he received an allowance of 3s. 3d. a-day working pay, (afterwards increased to 4s. 3d. a-day,) with a fine residence and free rations for his wife, family, and a servant. He had also a horse and boats at his command, was relieved from the performance of regimental duty, and was permitted at all times to wear plain clothes. Throughout the building of the palace, the Villa of Cardachio, and other important civil buildings, he was the clerk of the works, and Sir Frederic Adam took every occasion of applauding his talents and exertions. In April, 1834, after removal to Woolwich, sergeant Lawson was appointed clerk of works at Sierra Leone, where, after a brief period of service, during which he was bereaved of his wife, he died, leaving nine orphans to lament his loss. His eldest son was nominated to the appointment as the fittest person in the colony to discharge its professional duties, but the youth fell a sacrifice to the climate four days after his father’s decease. The eight remaining orphans were generously cared for by Sir Frederic Mulcaster, the inspector-general of fortifications and the executive of the corps at the Ordnance Office, who obtained from the officers of royal engineers and the civil gentlemen of the department sufficient means to free them from that distress, to which the absence of this benevolent support would have inevitably reduced them.

[246]. The remains of all were interred with unusual respectability, and the spots where they lie have been marked by neat tomb-stones—a graceful tribute from the survivors to the memory of the departed.

[247]. Smith, afterwards a sergeant, was a first-rate mason and foreman, and during his service of thirty two years, twenty-five of which were abroad, his abilities, experience, and precision were found of great benefit to the department. At Corfu, Vido, and Zante, he was entrusted with very important duties. Subsequently to his discharge in 1842 on a pension of 2s. 3½d. a-day, he superintended, on the part of the Admiralty, the building of the royal marine barracks at Woolwich by contract, and his vigilance prevented the employment of any of those artifices so commonly resorted to by contractors. He afterwards superintended for the Duke of Buckingham the building of a circular redoubt, partly of stone, for six guns, at his Grace’s ducal residence at Stowe: and in the inscription on one of the piers, his name is thus associated with the work:—

Richard Plantagenet

Duke of Buckingham & Chandos.

Robert Wilcox, Captain Royal Navy.

John Smith, Sergeant R^l Sappers and Miners.

[248]. Pasley’s ‘Narrative of Operations with the New Pontoons,’ 1824. Sir James Colleton’s ‘Buoy Pontoons.’

[249]. Shorter was afterwards stationed for fourteen years at Corfu. For seven of his twenty-seven years' service he filled the office of quartermaster-sergeant, and was honoured with an annuity and medal for his meritorious conduct. He retired from the sappers on being appointed a Yeoman of the Queen’s Guard, and was the first non-commissioned officer of the corps who received a nomination to that ancient company. While he was all that could be desired in his corps in respect to efficiency and intelligence, in private life he was a thorough humourist, and the most simple incident, with scarcely an element for merriment in it, became by his droll inventorial recital, a subject of the richest amusement.

[250]. ‘Report Army and Ordnance Expenditure,’ Minutes of Evidence, p. 617. ‘Naval and Military Gazette.’ Pasley’s ‘Mil. Policy,’ Introd., p. 37, 4th edit.

[251]. ‘Prof. Papers,’ iv.; preface, pp. xiv. xvii.

[252]. ‘Morning Herald,’ June 5, 1826.

[253]. On the removal of the fifteenth company to Canada in March, the Portsmouth station was without a company until November, 1827, when the eleventh company was sent there from Chatham.

[254]. Yolland’s ‘Lough Foyle Base,’ p. 25-27.

[255]. Ibid., p. 28.

[256]. ‘Second Report Ordnance Estimates,’ 1828, printed 12th June, 1828, p. 71, 72.

[257]. Corporal Daniel Brown.

[258]. ‘Memoir of a Practice in Mining at Quebec.’

[259]. ‘Quebec Mercury,’ February, 1828.

[260]. Was the principal military foreman, and had under his charge from 100 to 200 masons, with their labourers. In the arrangement and management of this working force he displayed much tact and judgment, and his work was always laid out and executed with exactness and success. For his services he received a gratuity and medal and a pension of 1s. 10½d. a-day in April, 1834. He was soon afterwards appointed foreman of masons in Canada, where he died.

[261]. See page [260].

[262]. Joseph Hare had formerly been a sergeant in the corps, and on his discharge in October, 1822, was appointed foreman of masons at Quebec.

[263]. ‘Second Report Ordnance Est.,’ 1828, printed 12th June, 1828, p. 25.

[264]. See page [296].

[265]. ‘United Service Journal,’ i. 1831, p. 235.

[266]. Martin’s ‘British Colonies,’ v. p. 79.

[267]. Was educated for a Baptist minister; but an introduction to Dr. Olinthus Gregory failing to realize his hopes, he enlisted in the corps in 1828. His intelligence caused him to be chosen for the two surveys of Ascension. He afterwards served at Bermuda, and at Halifax, Nova Scotia. At the former station he was wounded by the accidental firing of a mine whilst blasting rock, and submitted to the amputation of portions of his fingers with stoical composure. Wherever he went he took with him a small but valuable library, and was well read in the latest issues from the press. Byron, Carlyle, and some abstruse German writers, were his favourite authors. No man in his condition of life was, perhaps, as conversant with the roots and eccentricities of the English language as Beal, and his mental endowments rendered him capable of grasping any subject, however deep, and turning it to profit both in his duties and in his daily intercourse with men. Late in his service he attained proficiency as a draughtsman, and later still, an enterprising engineer in London submitted a plan for a system of sewers in the metropolis, which was accompanied by a report drawn up by this sergeant. He left the corps in April, 1849, with a pension of 2s.; and the knowledge and experience he had acquired by application and travel, are now being employed, with advantage to his interests, in one of the settlements on the Rideau Canal in Canada.

[268]. ‘Account of the fatal Hurricane at Barbadoes in 1831,’ p. 89.

[269]. Opposite the General Hospital, a monumental tomb, erected by his surviving comrades, marks the spot where the mangled remains of poor Shambrook were interred. Ibid., p. 95.

[270]. Ibid., p. 94.

[271]. Ibid., p. 97.

[272]. ‘Prof. Papers, Royal Engineers,’ ii. p. 36. ‘United Service Journal,’ iii. 1838, p. 37.

[273]. ‘United Service Journal,’ ii. 1839, p. 183, 184.

[274]. Speech of Major Selwyn, R.E. ‘Graham’s Town Journal,’[Journal,’] 1842.

[275]. ‘Prof. Papers, Royal Engineers,’ v. p. 157.

[276]. ‘Select Report Ordnance Est.,’ printed 12th June, 1828, p. 82.

[277]. ‘Prof. Papers, Royal Engineers,’ i. p. 86.

[278]. Most of these men received 100 acres of land each as a reward for their services and good conduct, and several were provided with appointments on the canal.

[279]. Corporal Reed, when returning home an invalid from the Mauritius, was wrecked on the 17th July, 1836, in the barque ‘Doncaster,’ on the reef L’Agulhas, 70 miles S.E. of the Cape of Good Hope, and perished with his wife and family of four children.

[280]. One quartermaster-sergeant was now reduced, and Francis Allen, who held the rank for twenty-two years, was discharged in October, 1833, and pensioned at 2s. 8½d. a-day, having completed a service of more than forty years. One of his sons, formerly in the corps, is foreman of works at Alderney, and another, until recently, was clerk of works in the royal engineer department, London district.

[281]. Had served upwards of twenty-two years in the corps; and was a shrewd man and a skilful carpenter and overseer. He was appointed in October, 1836, to Guernsey, where he died in February, 1854. His eldest son, a very promising young man, is now foreman of works in the department at the Tower.

[282]. Joined the corps a lad, and by perseverance made himself competent for higher duty. To smartness in person he united much activity of body, and in September, 1843, was advanced to the civil branch, first to Corfu and then to Gibraltar; where, in the excess of his zeal on the works, he fell from his horse by a stroke of the sun, and sustained an injury in the head. He is now at Dublin, a lunatic, passing away his life on a retirement of 32l. a-year. He served seventeen years in the sappers.

[283]. Was an excellent mason and very efficient as a foreman. He had been on a mission to Constantinople, and received from Sultan Mahmoud II. a gold medal for his services. After a service of twenty-one years in the corps, he was, in June, 1844, appointed to Gibraltar, where he fell into habits of excessive intemperance and committed suicide in 1852.

[284]. As master mason at Vido he constructed the works with remarkable ability. He also superintended the erection of the half-moon battery in the citadel and the defensive buildings at Fort Neuf. Colonel Hassard said, on his leaving, that he hardly expected a man of equal talent to fill his place: and it may be observed that he could speak with fluency the different languages of the civil workmen at Corfu. By Colonel Hassard he was recommended to visit Rome and other places for artistic improvement, but the usages of the service did not permit the concession of this favour. In 1837 he finished the erection of the Longona cistern at Paxo, which relieved the inhabitants from the necessity of taking long journeys to procure supplies. The work was very creditable to him, and gained for him the eulogy and good will of the whole island. To commemorate its completion a procession of the functionaries and élite of Paxo took place, and Wood, the great object of attraction, was warmly greeted by the grateful populace. He became foreman[foreman] of works in November, 1844, first at Cephalonia, and next at Corfu. His service in the corps was over twenty-three years.

[285]. He gained his promotion very rapidly, for he was in all respects a very clever artificer and foreman. In the works of the department at Woolwich he was found a great acquisition, and after serving for a few years at Bermuda, where his usefulness was greatly appreciated, he was discharged in May, 1845, and appointed to Canada. There he passed seven years, and is now serving at Gibraltar.

[286]. A good mason, and bore an unblameable character. After twenty years' service, chiefly at Halifax and Corfu, he was appointed to Malta in April, 1847, where he is still serving with efficiency and credit.

[287]. When he joined the corps a lad, in 1826, he could scarcely write, but by diligent application he soon exhibited talents which in after years caused him to be selected for important duties. Promotion he received rapidly, and for his intelligence and ingenuity at Sandhurst in 1839 he was honourably noticed in the ‘United Service Journal,’ ii. 1839, p. 420. For many years he served at Gibraltar and the Cape of Good Hope, became a fair draftsman and architect, and in July, 1848, after a service of twenty-two years, was appointed foreman of works, first at the Cape, and then at Woolwich. He is now clerk of works at Shoeburyness.

[288]. Was a superior mason, and trained before enlistment as an overseer. Most of his military service—nineteen years—was spent on the surveys of Great Britain and Ireland, in which he had made himself so proficient a surveyor and mathematician, that he was one of three non-commissioned officers sent to the royal observatory at Greenwich to receive instructions in the mode of making astronomical observations. This was with the view to his employment on the boundary survey in America, in which he afterwards served for a season with approbation. Colonel Estcourt wrote of him,—“He is intelligent, well educated, and efficient for almost any duty.” These acquirements, coupled with his good conduct, gained for him the vacant foremancy at Zante, in September, 1848; but, it must be added, he commenced the duty in dishonour by unwarrantably drawing a bill on the Assistant Adjutant-General of the royal engineers, and then having run a career of dissipation that nothing could check, was justly dismissed in disgrace in July, 1849.

[289]. Joined the corps from the military asylum at Chelsea. Until the Russian war broke out he had not been noticed for any particular aptitude or efficiency. When at Constantinople, thrown by circumstances into boundless difficulties consequent on the frightful pressure for hospital accommodation, his services were invaluable. “I have no hesitation,” wrote Captain E. C. A. Gordon, 20th August, 1855, “in saying, that I believe the success of the works that were executed was owing, in a great measure, to his excessive and untiring zeal and activity.” This recommendation was the occasion of his appointment at Scutari, from whence, after the return of peace, he was removed to the engineer department at Devonport.

[290]. Entered the corps a boy from Chelsea school. With a fair share of common sense, he made the best of his chances as a military foreman at the Cape of Good Hope, where he had served for many years. The recollection of his usefulness at Natal, and in other districts of the frontier, led to his being appointed civil foreman of works in that colony. In 1842, Deary fought in the actions against the insurgent Boers at Natal.

[291]. ‘United Service Journal,’ iii. 1834, p. 561, and ii. 1835, p. 277, 278.

[292]. Forbes’s Pamphlet, ‘National Defences,’ 1852.

[293]. The father of the sergeant-major, who also held that rank in the corps, died of fever at Walcheren in 1809, and, as soon as his son was old enough, he was enlisted into the sappers. His age on joining was only eight years! For a few years he was stationed at Dover, but the chief of his career was passed at Chatham, where, under Sir Charles Pasley, he received that instruction in field fortification and drawing which made his services at Sandhurst so important and successful. Here it should also be noticed that he kept his detachments in the best order; and by their steadiness and willing exertions, they earned for themselves a character which has greatly raised the corps in public estimation.

[294]. The names of the succeeding acting-adjutants at Woolwich will be found in the Appendix III.

[295]. Chesney’s ‘Expedition to the Euphrates,’ Pref. x.

[296]. Chesney’s ‘Observations on Fire-arms,’ p. 197.

[297]. On the completion of the service, the expedition was favoured with a few days' location at Damascus, where the party removed their beards and moustaches, and for the first time since the commencement of the enterprise, had the advantage of attending church for religious worship.

[298]. Pensioned in May, 1843, and appointed assistant lighthouse keeper at Europa Point, Gibraltar, under the Trinity Board of London.

[299]. Greenhill was an intelligent man, pleasantly eccentric, and fond of antiquities. While with the expedition he made a collection of silver coins of remote times, which, with laudable feelings of attachment to his native place, he presented to the Perth Museum. His hair was as white as silver, but his beard, full and flowing, was as black as ebony. To the Arabs he was quite a phenomenon, but the singularity which made him so, did not save him, on one occasion, from being rudely seized by a horde of banditti, and plundered, with almost fabulous dexterity, of the gilt buttons on his frock coat. They had nearly finished their work, when Greenhill tore himself from their grasp, but finding that a button still remained on the cuff, he audaciously pulled off the frock and threw it at them. Suspecting that their work was incomplete the Arabs pounced on the coat, and tearing off the remaining button scampered away to the hills again. When, some years later, the Niger expedition was forming, Greenhill volunteered to accompany it. He had a notion that the service would be one of suffering and vicissitude, and the better to inure himself to its contemplated hardships he submitted his body to rigorous experiments of exposure and self-denial, which, inducing erysipelas, caused his premature decease in October, 1840.

[300]. Pages 51 and 57, notes, 1st part, 2nd edit. It may be tolerated to mention the instances in which Lanyon figured, to deserve the record. In October, 1828, he finished a parallel in very easy soil of 262 cubic feet in 2 hours and 41 minutes, whilst an able-bodied sapper, unskilful at the pickaxe and the shovel, only completed the same content of excavation in 8 hours and 4 minutes! Thirty men were employed at the same time at similar tasks, the result of whose labours showed that for each man, strong and trained, it required to execute the work an average period of 4 hours and 54 minutes. The other instance refers to his completing the first task of a parallel, nearly 109 cubic feet, in easy soil in 16 minutes. In the Peninsula sieges, no more than 42 cubic feet of excavation appears to have been excavated by each individual of the military working parties as his first night’s work; but at the rate which rendered Lanyon celebrated, an active workman in these sieges ought to have finished his first night’s task in seven minutes! The comparison makes the difference so excessive, that credulity has scarcely sufficient tension to accredit it; but coming from an authority so proverbial for his accuracy, there is no alternative but to wonder at the achievements of the man who so signalized himself as a sapper; and to add, with the Colonel, the expression of mortification, “that the exertions of the British army should have fallen so miserably short of their brilliant exploits in the field.”

[301]. ‘United Service Journal,’ ii. 1837, p. 279.

[302]. Lanyon was afterwards promoted to be a colour-sergeant, and passed a few years in Canada during the revolt. On his return, his health, shattered by the exertions of his laborious life, caused him to leave the corps. Obtaining a situation as surveyor on the Trent and Mersey canal under Mr. Forbes, his former fellow labourer, he devoted himself to his new duties with his accustomed zeal: but in a few short months his powerful frame broke up, and he died at Lawton in Cheshire, in June, 1846. The integrity of his conduct and the utility of his services induced the directors of the company to honour his remains by the erection of a tomb to his memory. Here it would be proper to notice, he was one of those brave and humane miners who, in the ‘Cambria,’ bound for Vera Cruz, assisted to rescue the crew and passengers from the burning ‘Kent’ East Indiaman, in the Bay of Biscay, in February, 1825. The souls saved were 551, including 301 officers and men, 66 women, and 45 children of the 31st regiment.

[303]. ‘Grey’s Travels,’ 1841, i. p. 35.

[304]. Ibid., 1841, i. p 67-71.

[305]. ‘Grey’s Travels,’ 1841, i. p. 71-73.

[306]. Ibid., i. p. 73-76.

[307]. Ibid., i. p. 79.

[308]. ‘Grey’s Travels,’ 1841, i. p. 78.

[309]. Ibid., i. p. 82-91.

[310]. Ibid., i. p. 93-107.

[311]. ‘Grey’s Travels,’ 1841, i. p. 248.

[312]. Ibid., i. p. 93-107.

[313]. ‘Grey’s Travels,’ i. p. 121-139.

[314]. Ibid., i. p. 136-138.

[315]. ‘Grey’s Travels,’ i. p. 144.

[316]. ‘Grey’s Travels,’ i. p. 154.

[317]. Ibid., i. p. 153.

[318]. Ibid., i. p. 158.

[319]. ‘Grey’s Travels,’ i. p. 209.

[320]. Auger accompanied Captain Grey on one occasion to examine a sandstone ridge in the hope of finding egress from it. After proceeding some distance the corporal discovered a cave, in which was an intaglio face and head cut in the rock, of rather superior workmanship for an untutored savage; and Captain Grey has distinguished the work by giving a drawing of it in his Travels. Vol. i. p. 206.

Private Mustard, who had been at the Cape of Good Hope, brought his experience to bear upon the present service. He discovered the spoor of a large quadruped with a divided hoof. He had seen like impressions at the Cape. Captain Grey conceiving that Mustard had made some mistake, paid no attention to his report, until he afterwards saw traces of the animal himself. On one occasion the Captain followed its track for a mile and a half, when it was lost in rocky ground. The footmarks were larger than those of a buffalo, and it was apparently more bulky, for where it had passed through the brushwood, shrubs in its way of considerable size, had been crushed aside or broken down. The animal has not yet been seen. Its existence is, however, asserted, from the peculiarity of the spoor. Vol. i. p. 242, ‘Grey’s Travels.’

[321]. The senior of whom was second-corporal John Down, afterwards sergeant. In September, 1835, while pontooning in the Medway at Halling, he plunged into the river and saved from drowning, by means of an oar, private F. Adams of the corps. He also relieved from a very precarious situation lance-corporal Woodhead, of the Honourable East India Company’s sappers, who had jumped in to assist private Adams. For his courage and humanity the Royal Humane Society granted Down a pecuniary reward, and his officers gave him a military hold-all, containing the usual articles, chiefly of silver, bearing on a silver plate this inscription—“Presented by his officers to private John Down for his gallant conduct in rescuing a comrade from drowning.” This non-commissioned officer served two stations at Gibraltar and Bermuda, and being pensioned at 1s. 9d. in October, 1849, retired to Chatham, where he is now filling the humble but sufficient situation of pump-master to the Barracks at Brompton.

[322]. ‘United Service Journal,’ iii. 1838, p. 45, 274.

[323]. Ibid., iii. p. 41, 42.

[324]. ‘United Service Journal,’ iii. 1838, p. 45.

[325]. Ibid., iii. p. 40, 41.

[326]. ‘United Service Journal,’ iii. 1838, p. 271-274.

[327]. The disbandment of this company was the last in the annihilation of the corps. In that month it disappeared from the muster-rolls of the army.

[328]. ‘Grey’s Travels,’ i. p. 292-309.

[329]. Ibid., i. p. 310-328.

[330]. ‘Grey’s Travels,’ i. p. 329-344.

[331]. Ibid., i. p. 345-351.

[332]. Ibid., i. p. 351-353.

[333]. Ibid., i. p. 351-379.

[334]. ‘Grey’s Travels,’ i. p. 379-391.

[335]. ‘Grey’s Travels,’ i. p. 391-396.

[336]. ‘Grey’s Travels,’ i. p. 396-412.

[337]. ‘Grey’s Travels,’ ii. p. 6.

[338]. Ibid., ii. p. 1-31.

[339]. Ibid., ii. p. 31-37.

[340]. Ibid., ii. p. 31-33.

[341]. ‘Grey’s Travels,’ ii. p. 37.

[342]. Ibid., ii. p. 40-44.

[343]. Ibid., ii. p. 45-52.

[344]. ‘Grey’s Travels,’ ii. p. 54-72.

[345]. ‘Grey’s Travels,’ ii. p. 77-81.

[346]. Ibid., ii. p. 81-87.

[347]. Lady Thomas, the mother of the chief, heard of these thoughtful attentions exercised under such trying circumstances, and on the traveller being introduced to her, she acknowledged his kindness with no little emotion, and marked her grateful appreciation of it by a suitable gift.

[348]. ‘Grey’s Travels,’ ii. p. 87.

[349]. Ibid., ii. p. 88-97.

[350]. Both received 1s. a-day each working pay, and for their good and enterprising conduct a gratuity of 10l. from the Secretary of State for the Colonies.

[351]. Broken down by the service Auger felt it necessary to seek repose in civil life. When sufficiently restored he was engaged to hold a responsible situation in the Pimlico wheel factory, by Octavius Smith, Esq., of Thames Bank, the father of poor Mr. Frederick Smith, who was one of the expedition. This young gentleman offered a noble example of courage, patience, and resignation, but his delicate and shattered constitution not giving him strength to keep up in the forced marches of his chief, he was left, in the painful separation on the 10th April, with the slow marchers under Dr. Walker, and perished in the bush from want and exhaustion, at the tender age of nineteen.

Captain, now Sir George Grey, on visiting England in 1854, most kindly sought for Auger. Naturally the meeting awakened reminiscences of the New Holland struggles; and the chief, at parting, presented his corporal with an elegant silver teapot and stand, bearing this simple but expressive inscription:—“Sir George Grey to his old follower, Richard Auger, August, 1854.”

[352]. ‘South Australian Register,’ August 24, 1844.

[353]. ‘Limerick Chronicle,’ 25th May, 1839.

[354]. ‘United Service Journal,’ ii. 1839, p. 420.

[355]. Several of those who quitted obtained ready employment on these surveys, and their maps in all cases were of the first class. Mr. Chadwick, in his report to the Poor-Law Commissioners, compared the “non-efficiency of persons appointed to make surveys under the Tithe Commutation and Parochial Assessment Acts, with those executed by privates and non-commissioned officers of the sappers and miners. Out of 1,700 first-class maps, not more than one-half displayed qualifications for the execution of public surveys without superintendence. Amongst the most satisfactory surveys were those executed by a retired sergeant of the corps”—Alexander Doull.—‘British Almanac and Companion,’ 1843, p. 38.

[356]. In December, 1834, James M‘Kay was appointed acting quartermaster-sergeant with the pay of the rank. Entrusted with the care and issue of the engravings of the survey, more than 180,000 passed through his hands, amounting in value to 35,500l., the accounts for which, rendered half-yearly to the Irish Government, were never found to contain a single error. So extensive a responsibility rarely falls to a non-commissioned officer. Upwards of forty years he served in the corps, and, for his merits, received a gratuity and medal. He was discharged in July, 1844, with a pension of 2s. 4d. a-day, and afterwards obtained a quiet unpretending situation at Birmingham, where his business habits made him of essential service in the promotion of a scheme for a loan society on liberal principles.

[357]. The above detail does not exhibit a true exposition of the acquirements and usefulness of the survey companies, as many of those not advanced to the classes, had been reduced from the higher to the lower rates for irregularity; and others, on the higher rates, were not advanced as soon as their qualifications merited, it being a principle with the Colonel, not to exhaust the limited power he possessed of awarding working pay, because he wisely considered nothing was more discouraging to human exertions than the knowledge, that those whose duty it was to reward, had no further power to grant them encouragement.

[358]. ‘United Service Journal,’ i, 1840, p. 74.

[359]. Ibid., 1840, p. 74.

[360]. ‘United Service Journal,’ i. 1840, p. 76. “The sergeant-major’s composition was simply pitch softened by bees'-wax and tallow. He had tried a great number of experiments for ascertaining the best sort of waterproof composition for bags of gunpowder in 1832, when Bickford’s fuses were first used by the corps at Chatham. He also at the same period discovered the means for imitating Bickford’s fuses in an efficient manner. His imitation fuses, however, were not precisely the same, as Bickford’s fuses were evidently made by machinery.”—‘United Service Journal,’ ii. 1839, p. 192-193.

[361]. By this catastrophe, Admiral Kempenfeldt and a crew of many hundreds of seamen, with nearly 100 women and 200 Jews, then on board, perished.—‘Haydn’s Dates.’

[362]. ‘United Service Journal,’ i. 1840, p. 164.

[363]. Ibid., i. 1840, p. 338.

[364]. ‘United Service Journal,’ i. 1840, p. 153.

[365]. ‘United Service Journal,’ i. 1840, p. 156. Brabant was discharged in April, 1841, on a pension of 6d. a-day. He was quite lame, but shortly after obtained the situation of turnkey to Maidstone gaol.

[366]. ‘United Service Journal,’ i. 1840, p. 320.

[367]. Ibid., p. 323, 324.

[368]. A man of varied acquirements, a good surveyor, and an expert draughtsman and clerk, and assisted in executing the wood engravings in Colonel Pasley’s ‘Practical Operations of a Siege,’ for which his name is recorded at page 76 of the first edition of that work. Disposed to habits of irregularity, he never received promotion, and was pensioned at 1s. a-day in January, 1850.

[369]. ‘United Service Journal,’ i. 1840, p. 333.

[370]. Now sergeant-major at the royal engineer establishment, Chatham.

[371]. ‘United Service Journal,’ 1840, p. 337. A minute and faithful record of the operations will be found in the ‘United Service Journal,’ i. 1840, pp. 72-83, 149-164, 319-338.

[372]. Ambrose Cottingham was the first sergeant detached from Ireland for the survey of England, and he assisted in superintending a large force of field surveyors. It is recorded that “he performed this arduous and important duty in a manner highly advantageous to the service, and caused considerable saving of expense in that branch of the work.” Beyond, however, his zeal, industry, and the capability of keeping large bodies of men in full activity, he possessed no available acquirements. In April, 1844, he quitted the service on a pension of 1s. 8d a-day, and having amassed some property by his frugality, retired to Mayfield in Sussex.

[373]. On quitting the college became a clerk to the military prison at Gosport.

[374]. Now sergeant-major of the royal engineer establishment.

[375]. ‘Corps Orders,’ Chatham, 29th October, 1840. ‘Manuscript Journal of the Operations.’

[376]. His career in the corps was somewhat eventful. A noble soldier, with a spirit that nothing could depress, he was often selected for unusual enterprises. He received a medal for the Kaffir war of 1846-7. Another he received, and a second-class prize of five pounds, for his services at the Great Exhibition. Was also honoured with the order of the Medjidie for his heroic conduct at the battle of Guirgevo, and wore a medal for the Crimea. After serving a period in the trenches before Sebastopol, his life was sacrificed to his excesses. One morning, to the deep regret of his officers and his comrades, he was found dead in his tent.

[377]. Was recorded for distinguished conduct in the Kaffir war of 1846. Accompanying that portion of the corps which served at Gallipoli and Bulgaria, he was, on account of his experience and soldier-like deportment, appointed sergeant-major to the expedition. Through sickness his strong-built frame had become so weak and attenuated, that when the cholera seized him he was carried off in a few hours. He died on board the ‘Andes,’ when sailing for the Crimea.

[378]. Will be found noted on the same page with his late comrade, sergeant Cook, for the determination and intelligence he displayed in the Kaffir war of 1846.

[379]. Both were discharged from the corps by request at the Cape of Good Hope.

[380]. ‘Prof. Papers,’ New Series, i. p. 32.

[381]. ‘Prof. Papers,’ Royal Engineers, vi. p. 47.

[382]. This non-commissioned officer afterwards broke his leg at Beirout in falling from the roof of the ordnance store in endeavouring to get access to a building adjoining it which was on fire. In January, 1843, he was pensioned at 1s. 9d. a-day, and emigrated to Canada.

[383]. Was a clever mechanic and a handsome soldier, but his constitution eventually gave way under the influence of the Syrian fever, and he died in October, 1847.

[384]. Was discharged in October, 1850, and pensioned at 1s. 9d. a-day. Out of a service of thirteen years in the corps, he was eleven abroad, at Gibraltar, in Syria, and China. From the last station he returned in a distressing state of emaciation and weakness. There, though a sergeant, the necessities of the service required that he should labour at the anvil, and the skilfulness of his work was superior to anything that could be procured at Hong Kong.

[385]. See a representation of the encampment in the ‘Professional Papers, R.E.’ vi., p. 22. This was the note affixed to the first edition, but the plate referred to is on so small a scale, it would need more than the assistance of a powerful glass to discover the site of the tents.

[386]. Was pensioned at 2s. a-day in January, 1851. In the corps he served nearly twenty-four years, of which period he was seventeen and a-half abroad, at Corfu, the Euphrates, Gibraltar, Syria, and Halifax, Nova Scotia. His great merits obtained for him the grant of an annuity of 10l. a-year, and a silver medal, and an appointment as messenger to the commanding royal engineer’s office, in the London district. Through Lieutenant-Colonel Aldrich, his commanding-officer in Syria, he was also appointed a yeoman of the Queen’s Guard. The emoluments derived by him from these different sources, amounting to about 160l. a-year, with excellent quarters, are the hard and just earnings of a life full of vicissitude and devotion to the service.

[387]. Now a quartermaster-sergeant in the corps; and besides serving a second tour at Gibraltar, was present at the reduction of Bomarsund and the siege of Sebastopol. Is in receipt of an annuity of 10l. a-year, and wears five medals and a clasp for his active services.

[388]. The medals were copper, but washed, at the expense of the wearers, with a preparation that gave them the appearance of gold. In 1848, the British Government awarded them silver medals for the same campaign.

[389]. An anecdote may be given of this non-commissioned officer. One of the princesses of Iddah conceiving a liking for Edmonds, who was a handsome, dark-complexioned man, with a brilliant black eye, solicited the king, her father, to beg his retention there. Captain Trotter consented to let the corporal remain until the return of the expedition. Edmonds was not averse to the arrangement provided he was permitted to have with him a comrade from the ‘Albert.’ This, however, was not conceded, and the corporal rejoined his ship; but before doing so, the love-stricken princess contrived not to part with her paramour without easing him of his silk handkerchief!—to keep, perhaps, in remembrance of the interesting feeling he had unwittingly awakened in the royal breast. Edmonds served two stations, at Bermuda and Gibraltar, became a sergeant, and, on his discharge in 1854, was appointed foreman of works under the Inspector-General of Prisons in the convict establishment at Portland.

[390]. Sergeant March was two seasons at Spitbead. Many of the sketches of the wreck were executed by him with the assistance of the camera lucida, kindly lent for the purpose by the late Captain Basil Hall, R.N., from whom he received much useful instruction. Almost the whole of his service has been passed in the professional office of the director of the royal engineer establishment at Chatham, in which, either as a draughtsman or a confidential leading clerk, he has always been found, from his attainments and constitutional energy of mind and body, efficient and valuable. From time to time he has drawn the plates forming the architectural course of the study of the junior officers of the corps and the East India Company’s engineers, and also the plans and other drawings and projects comprised in the military branch of the course. He is an excellent colourist, and has a good conception of light and shade. As an artist in water-colours, he possesses undoubted talent and merit. Sergeant March is moreover an intellectual man and well informed. His controversial letters in reply to the calumnious attacks on the royal engineer establishment at Chatham have been remarked for their honesty and boldness; and his series of communications in the ‘United Service Gazette,’ in answer to the forcible animadversions of the celebrated ‘Emeritus’ in the ‘Times,’ concerning Ordnance finance, were not only well and truthfully written, but deserve for their vigour and appositeness as prominent a place in the columns of the ‘Times,’ as the communications of the more favoured ‘Emeritus.’ This non-commissioned officer is now quartermaster-sergeant of the corps at Chatham.

[391]. Three feet of the heel of it, with clamps attached, had been recovered in the previous year by George Hall the civil diver.

[392]. When corporal Jones first heard the voice, Skelton was singing,—

“Bright, bright are the beams of the morning sky,

And sweet are the dews the red blossoms sip.”

This simple incident sufficiently shows the confidence and coolness of the diver in so novel and hazardous a duty.

[393]. Much of the information about the labours of this summer has been collected from the ‘Hampshire Telegraph,’ ‘Army and Navy Register ‘Manuscript Journal of the Operations.’

[394]. Afterwards became a sergeant, and served at Gibraltar. In October, 1852, he was pensioned at 1s. 9d. a-day. Being a skilful mechanic, he obtained on the day of his discharge, employment as a blacksmith in the royal carriage department in the arsenal.

[395]. Fraser was a successful modeller, and although a carpenter by trade, made himself useful as a wood engraver. Many of the wood-cuts in Colonel Pasley’s ‘Practical Operations of a Siege,’ were executed by him, and although they exhibit but little artistic merit, they yet afford scope to show how he adapted himself to circumstances. He also assisted in the task of engraving the most difficult of the plates to the ‘Architectural Course.’ None of his works in this line betray any ambition, but his models were put out of hand in a skilful and workmanlike manner. As a whole, he was a man of singular simplicity. In July, 1849, he was pensioned at 2s. 3d. a-day, and retiring to Kilochunagan, settled down as a farmer.

[396]. Became a sergeant, and after serving at Corfu and China, was employed in the expedition under Lord Raglan to Turkey, Bulgaria, and the Crimea, where, from disease contracted in the trenches in front of Sebastopol, he died in camp before the conclusion of the siege.

[397]. ‘United Service Journal,’ ii., 1841, p. 267.

[398]. ‘United Service Journal,’ iii., 1841, p. 563. Carlin became a colour-sergeant, and prior to his discharge had served at Gibraltar and Malta, Turkey and the Crimea. When at Portsmouth, he received from Lord Frederick Fitzclarence a gold pen and engineering pencil-case, in return “for his most useful services in carrying out instruction in musketry, in which he proved himself to be exceedingly clever in calculations of a rather puzzling nature, and to be a most zealous, active, and painstaking non-commissioned officer.”

[399]. The names of the succeeding directors of the royal engineer establishment are given in the Appendix III.

[400]. ‘Military Policy.’

[401]. ‘United Service Journal,’ i., 1842, pp. 26, 27.

[402]. ‘United Service Journal,’ i., 1841, p. 443.

[403]. Jones’s ‘Sieges,’ ii. p. 391, 2nd edit.

[404]. Gleig’s ‘Mil. Hist.,’ ch. xxvii., pp. 286, 287.

[405]. Much of the above information is taken from Captain Gibb’s ‘Memoranda in Corps Papers,’ i., pp. 230-238.

[406]. Young, as a sergeant, was overseer of the works at Natal, at 2s. 6d. a-day, in addition to his regimental allowances; and, for his gallant conduct in action and useful services, was awarded a silver medal and an annuity of 10l. a-year. In July, 1850, he retired to Charleston, of Aberlour, in Banffshire, on a pension of 2s. a-day. He was a stern and an abrupt soldier, but an example of faithfulness, accuracy, and exertion.

[407]. This weapon was proposed for adoption in the corps both as a sword for personal defence and an instrument for removing obstructions on active service; but Sir George Murray, then Master-General, refused to sanction its introduction, considering it to be an improper weapon to be used in civilized warfare.

[408]. Such as auctioneer, excise-officer, &c. In carrying on the former duty, among his many sales, he disposed of the ‘Melville’ schooner, a vessel belonging to four partners, obtaining for it, from one of the partners, only 720 dollars! This may be taken as a fair specimen of the wealth of the colonists.

[409]. All had horses, as travelling on horseback was frequently necessary. The Governor presented one, with harness complete, to sergeant Hearnden. The men made themselves very expert in the management of horses, and throwing aside the rude thongs of raw hide by which they were controlled, quickly adapted the draught-horses to the use of artillery harness and collars.

[410]. ‘Philosophical Transactions,’ i., 1843, p. 45.

[411]. Reference would not have been made to this service only for the accident which attended it. Often it is the lot of the corps at the various stations to distinguish themselves at fires, and by their promptitude and cheerful exertions, to save both lives and property.

[412]. An insurance company, in no respect under obligations to the parties who assisted at the fire, felt interested in the exertions of the sappers and awarded them 5l. As the sum was too small for distribution, it was well expended in the purchase of a clock for the barracks at Woolwich.

[413]. After serving a station in China, died at Woolwich, in July, 1847.

[414]. The nine men of the East India Company’s sappers, whose names are appended, dived more or less as occasion offered. Lance-corporal Thomas Sherstone, privates James Hewitt, James Beale, George Taylor, William Brabazon, John Hunt, William England, John McIvor, and John A. Goodfellow. Hewitt was the best, Sherstone the next, and Beale and Taylor were very promising.

[415]. ‘United Service Journal,’ iii. 1843, p. 139.

[416]. Much of the information given about the wreck of the ‘Royal George,’ has been gleaned from the ‘Hampshire Telegraph,’ ‘Army and Navy Register,’ and the ‘Manuscript Journal of the Operations.’

[417]. Afterwards a sergeant. Was generally employed in duties of importance far exceeding his rank, at the Cape of Good Hope, Isle of France, and Hong-Kong. In 1847 he was present in the expedition to Canton, blew up the Zigzag Fort, and otherwise conspicuously distinguished himself. He died at Hong-Kong, after five years' service there, in 1848. Blaik had been brought up at the royal military asylum, Chelsea.

[418]. Four years previously, August, 1838, sergeant-major Jones was presented with a silver tankard, “by the sergeants of Chatham garrison, in testimony of their gratitude for the undeviating attention he evinced in superintending the formation of a military swimming-bath at that station.”

[419]. Ante, pp. 307-310. At the new barracks built for the dragoons at Niagara, sergeant Lanyon successfully constructed a circular well, about thirty feet deep, after two or three contractors had attempted it and failed. He laboured himself in laying the stones up to his hips in water, and afforded ample work for a strong party above in preparing the stones for placement, and pumping up the water. The service was effected under many difficulties and hazards, and while the weather was intensely cold. As an instance of his great strength it may be remarked, that six men complained to him of the heavy task they were subjected to in removing timbers about 15 feet long and 12 inches square for constructing a stockade at Fort Mississaqua. Lanyon made no observation, but shouldered one of the unwieldy logs, and, to the amazement of the grumblers, carried it to the spot unassisted.

[420]. ‘Second Report Army and Ordnance Expenditure,’ 1849, p. 500. To such an extent was the diminution in the number of the officers subsequently carried, that in 1849 the amount of expense incurred by the superintendence of officers was reduced to one twenty-second part of the total expenditure; therefore by the more general employment of sappers in the direction of the work, the amount of superintendence was reduced from one-third and one-fourth, to one twenty-second part.

[421]. ii., 1835, p. 154.

[422]. Frome’s ‘Surveying,’ 1840, p. 40. Simms' ‘Math. Inst.,’ 1st edit.

[423]. Frome’s ‘Surveying,’ 1840, p. 44.

[424]. ‘British Companion and Almanack,’ 1843, p. 38.

[425]. First published in a series of letters to the ‘Morning Chronicle,’ and then collected, with additional matter, in a pamphlet.

[426]. Synges’s ‘Great Britain—one Empire.’

[427]. These he patented in November, 1851. A description of the improvements, with sixteen illustrations, is given in the ‘Civil Engineer and Architects’ Journal,' xv., pp. 164, 165.

[428]. In consideration of this event, the Board of Ordnance granted his widow a donation of 20l.; and she was, moreover, assisted by a very handsome subscription from the officers and men of the district in which her husband had served.

[429]. Became in time the quartermaster of the royal engineer establishment at Chatham, and when the siege of Sebastopol was at its highest, was removed from the corps by promotion into the Turkish contingent engineers with the rank of Captain.

[430]. Sir Howard Douglas, ‘On Military Bridges,’ 3rd edit., p. 32.

[431]. Ibid., 33.

[432]. Ibid., 33.

[433]. It is simply a half-cylinder, 20 feet long by 1 foot 9 inches wide, and 3 feet deep, strengthened internally by hollow tubes, and deriving its buoyancy from an ingenious distribution of water-tight compartments, which not only preserve the flotation but provide seats for the troops. To render the contrivance more efficient for rafts or bridging purposes, a similar half-cylinder is attached to its consort by strong hinges and bolts. When shut its form is cylindrical; when open, two boats in rigid connection, taking the same swing in the water—the same motion on the wave. In this Siamese connection it is intended always to be used; and fitted as it is with all the necessary details, and the means of applying a rudder or an oar for steerage at any end, it appears to be adequate for all the uses and contingencies, not only of a pontoon, but of an ordinary passage-boat. It moreover aspires to the merciful functions of a lifeboat, being capable, without risk of capsizing or sinking, of venturing out in heavy seas to save human life imperilled by squalls or shipwreck.

[434]. ‘United Service Journal,’ iii., 1843, p. 139.

[435]. Ibid., p. 139.

[436]. Ibid., p. 138.

[437]. ‘United Service Journal,’ iii., 1843, p. 139.

[438]. Ibid., pp. 137, 140.

[439]. Quitted 28th August, 1843.

[440]. ‘United Service Journal,’ i., 1844, p. 143.

[441]. Ibid., p. 146.

[442]. This ill-fated ship, built by Bailey of Bristol in 1668, was wrecked by an explosion in 1711, and every soul on board perished.—‘United Service Journal,’ i., 1844, p. 146.

[443]. ‘United Service Journal,’ i., 1844, pp. 145, 146.

[444]. Ibid., p. 146.

[445]. ‘United Service Journal,’ iii., 1843, p. 141.

[446]. Airy’s ‘Longitude of Valentia,’ p. xi.

[447]. Owing to a rumour that the castle at Dublin could be entered by a subterranean passage or sewer from the Liffey, colour-sergeant Lanyon was directed to explore it. He did so, and found that a strong iron grating existed in the passage, which would effectually prevent the supposed entrance. In this duty, being much exposed to the influence of noxious vapours, he soon afterwards was seized with fever and jaundice, which shortened his days.

[448]. Mr. James Dawson, foreman of masons, formerly colour-sergeant in the corps, also died during the fever. He was a clever tradesman and overseer, and while in the sappers did good service at St. Helena, Corfu, and Bermuda. He was succeeded as foreman by sergeant John McKean, who was discharged in November, 1843, and still fills the appointment with ability and faithfulness.

[449]. In May, 1851, when the tour of service of the detachment had expired, only six men were at the station to be relieved. The remainder comprised one discharged in China, who soon afterwards died, twelve invalided to England, and fifteen deaths.

[450]. Arms of the percussion principle had been on trial in the corps since July, 1840.

[451]. These figures would seem to make the carbine and sword 1½ inches longer than the old musket, but the loss of the supposed additional length was occasioned by the greater depth of the socket required to give strength and stability to the weapon. The comparative weight of the two arms gave a reduction in favour of the carbine of 2 lbs. 3½ ozs.

[452]. The idea for this ornament was taken from the martial custom among the Romans of presenting a mural coronet of gold or silver to the undaunted soldier who should first scale the walls of a city and enter the place. Bailey in his Dictionary of 1727 says, “It was given to the meanest soldier as well as the greatest commander.” As the assault of fortresses in sieges is the chief business of the sappers, the round tower with its mural crown on the sergeant’s appointments, is an appropriate symbol for the corps.

[453]. ‘Professional Papers,’ N. S., i., p. 32.

[454]. ‘Professional Papers,’ N. S., i., p. 32.

[455]. About twelve miles from the sea ice was found three-eighths of an inch thick.

[456]. ‘Professional Papers,’ i., N. S., p. 32.

[457]. Ibid., p. 33.

[458]. These particulars are chiefly collected from a paper by sergeant Hemming in the ‘Royal Engineer Professional Papers,’ i., pp. 31-39. This non-commissioned officer was pensioned at 1s. 8d. a-day, in May, 1845. Of his survey services Colonel Portlock gives an interesting outline in his prefatory remarks to the sergeant’s paper. His duties appear to have been confined chiefly to the mountains of Ireland, where in winter he was exposed to fearful inclemency and subjected to much hardship. “On one occasion,” says the Colonel, “I had to place a young gentleman, who had graduated at Cambridge, under the sergeant for instruction, to whose zeal, intelligence, and respectability the pupil warmly bore testimony. Before receiving his discharge, he was appointed clerk and storekeeper to the road department in Cape Town, and some idea of the responsibility of his office may be inferred from the fact that he expended in four years, 1844-48, upwards of 36,000l.!”

[459]. A few minutes elapsed before Jones quitted the hobby-horse he was exultingly riding. Meanwhile curious to explore the gun, he thrust his hand up the bore, where a member of the crustacean family, already in quiet possession of the apartment, and not over-pleased with the unceremonious intrusion, fiercely disputed the passage. Jones, unwilling to yield, did his best to capture the exasperated crab, but its inveterate shears had so nipped and lacerated his hand, he was forced, at last, to beat a retreat. Ever after, the cruel wounds inflicted upon him by this peevish red-coat, had the effect of fixing in Jones’s memory, the date of his discovery of the ‘Edgar.’

It may strike the reader as remarkable that for the six summers of the operations at Spithead the divers were seldom attacked by any of the finny tribe; nor was it their privilege ever to meet in their subaqueous labours with any fishes larger than those ordinarily supplied for traffic in the markets. A lobster, a crab, or a conger-eel would now and then exhibit a wish to break lances with the intruders, but beyond these few instances of piscatorial interference, the under-water men had little reason to complain of the ungenerous treatment of the inhabitants of the deep.

More than once Jones was threatened or assaulted by crustacea. As on one occasion he was traversing for guns, a lobster, measuring not less than sixteen inches in length, approached him with so quick a motion, it seemed as if a bird were hovering round him. Thus attracted, he stood still to learn a fact or two in the history of its habits. The lobster stared inquisitively at Jones, as if to discover what the strange phenomenon could be. Apparently dissatisfied with the extent of the information it had acquired, it darted off like an arrow, using its fanlike tail as a rudder to shape its course. Its movements were sharp and rapid—its track in circles, each less than the other, till poising for a while within a few feet of the diver, it settled warily on the ground to resume observations. Startled by an action of the phenomenon, the lobster sailed off again in concentric circles, swishing the fan furiously to augment its speed; then, reaching the ground it spread out its feelers and claws and was soon engrossed in a brown study. Accepting the series of evolutions as a challenge, Jones prepared for the combat. Gently lifting his pricker, so as not to excite the instinctive suspicions of the lobster, he suddenly plunged it forward and pinned his antagonist to the earth. Instantly grasping it with his powerful hand behind the claws, Jones hurried on deck, and its body, weighing as much as a young goose, furnished a luxurious banquet for the captor and his friends.

Another lobster, less inquisitive but more combatative, advanced upon Jones with true military boldness. Having performed the magic circles, it was evident that the fish in armour had taken the measure of its opponent. Pushing out its claws in front like a couple of blunt spears, the lobster furiously battered against Jones’s legs, which, being cased in flannel, Mackintosh cloth, and impenetrable canvas, were proof against scars and punctures. Thick and fast came the blows, as from a ram or catapult; and it occurring to Jones that there was a chance of damage to his shins if the contest were prolonged, he turned upon his intrepid enemy, and with one kick from his leaden toe, broke up its morion and cuirass and gained the victory.

At another time, when Jones was busy making fast to a gun, a conger eel curled up in its muzzle forced out its slimy head to reconnoitre. Not relishing its savage attitude, Jones considered it best to make short work of the interview, and striking it on the cranium, the eel recoiled within its lurking place. A tompion being handy, Jones took it up and plugged up the bore. The gun in due time was hauled on deck, and on removing the tompion, the eel floundered out, and though small for a conger—about four feet long—it fought desperately, and was with great difficulty captured and decapitated.

[460]. The ‘Times,’ August 19, 1844.

[461]. These were sergeants Reid and Clarke, and privates Sticklen, Herbert, McDonald, Vallely, Canard, Robertson, Gillies, Mais, and Whelan. Clarke sent up two guns, Sticklen six, Herbert five and a half, and McDonald two. Sticklen, the most successful diver of the batch, met with an accident. In pulling him up from the bottom, he was drawn against some hard substance, which broke one of the side eyes of his helmet. His dress instantly filled, and the water rushed into his mouth. So quickly however was his removal to the deck accomplished, that his struggles for relief were short, and the injury he received was scarcely more than a temporary inconvenience.

[462]. With the reputation of being the best diver in Europe, he sailed for China in February, 1845. In April, 1847, he was present in the expedition to Canton, and took part in the capture of the Bogue and other forts. Soon after he was reduced from sergeant, but his energy of character and perseverance brought him again into favour, and he is now a sergeant in the corps. He was present during the summer of 1854 at the capture of the Aland Islands, including the demolition of the forts of Bomarsund. After his return from the Baltic he was placed at the disposal of Mr. Goldsworthy Gurney of the House of Commons, to learn the properties and management of a brilliant light that gentleman had discovered, and which he proposed to use in the trenches before Sebastopol to exhibit the enemy, at night, in their works. The experiments were carried out under the auspices of Lord Panmure; and the sergeant evinced so complete an acquaintance with its principles, that the inventor determined to intrust him with its use in the field. Submitted, however, for trial with rival lights to a committee at Woolwich, it was soon seen that its results did not equal its pretensions, inasmuch as the light at a distance was far less intense than in the vicinity of the operator. In this way sergeant Jones was relieved from a nightly exhibition, which would have made him a certain mark for the enemy to shoot at. On the occasion of the trial he also used the Drummond light, a twin invention with that of Mr. Gurney. The third light was an electric flame; all of which were condemned for the sole and sufficient reason that our own workmen would have been more exposed by the illumination than those of the garrison. Sergeant Jones served subsequently in the Crimea.

[463]. The ‘Times,’ August 19, 1844.

[464]. Discharged with a pension of 1s. 10d. a-day, in April, 1848, and obtained from the Surveyor-General of Prisons the appointment of foreman over the contractors, on the part of the Government, at 5s. a-day. Subsequently he was removed by promotion to be foreman of works in the convict establishment at Woolwich, which embrace the supervision of the convicts working both in the arsenal and dock-yard. His salary, with rent and rations, exceeded 130l. a-year. He now fills a similar situation at Chatham, with a more lucrative recompense.

[465]. Subsequently became a sergeant, and was employed on special duty at Round Down Cliff, Dover, and in the drainage works at Windsor. After passing five terms at Sandhurst, he was rewarded for his intelligence and good service, with a case of drawing instruments; and in September, 1848, was promoted to the rank of staff-sergeant at the College. Several interesting models, made by himself, of military importance, he presented to that institution.

[466]. ‘Second Report, Army and Ordnance Expenditure,’ 1849, p. 617.

[467]. The ‘Bermudian,’ March, 1848.

[468]. Joined the corps from the military asylum at Chelsea. By his attainments and merits he was in time promoted to the rank of corporal. His career, however, was marked by occasional intemperance, which at length settled into confirmed drunkenness and mental eccentricity. Unable to control his propensity to intoxication, he became a useless soldier, and after twenty years' service was discharged without a pension. He is now a vagrant and a beggar.

[469]. ‘Professional Papers,’ viii., pp. 156-180, in which will be found an interesting detail of the operations.

[470]. The voyage was full of incident. On the freight-ship, ‘Gilbert Henderson,’ sailing from Woolwich, the crew mutinied and left her at the Nore. A fresh crew, chiefly foreigners, unable to speak English, was engaged, and soon after putting to sea, the ship took fire, but the exertions of the company soon extinguished it. Near Dungeness she ran on a sand-bank, but by working all night, she was got off. When about a fortnight’s sail from Port Elizabeth, she was overtaken by a heavy squall, which carried away the greater part of her gear, and her fore and main masts. To complete the chapter of accidents, the disembarkation took place in a heavy surf, and as boats refused to venture out, the men, women, and children were borne to land on the backs of nude blacks.

[471]. Became second-corporal, and after being pensioned in April, 1847, returned as a draughtsman to the ordnance map office at Southampton. He is, perhaps, the best man of his class in the department, and his drawings are always executed with fidelity and beauty. Frequently their neatness, and richness of colouring and ornament, give them an effect truly artistic and pictorial.

[472]. Made an etching of the ‘Adelaide Oak,’ in the Home Park, which, submitted by Sir Henry de la Beche to Lord Liverpool, obtained for him a complimentary introduction to Prince Albert. His Royal Highness accepted the etching, and expressed himself much pleased with the beauty and minuteness of the execution.—‘Morning Post,’ Saturday, August 19, 1843. The tree had a pretty seat hut nearly half round the bottom of its trunk, and in another part of it was a remarkable hollow occasioned by time. Her Majesty the Queen Dowager had been known frequently to sit reading under its ample shade, and on that account it was considered to be her favourite oak. Hogan afterwards presented, through Colonel Wylde, an etching of the ‘Victoria Oak,’ in the Green Park, to the Prince; and His Royal Highness, in thanking the giver, expressed the admiration he felt for his talents as an artist, and rewarded him with the sum of 5l. These handsome pair of etchings are now the property of Her Majesty. Hogan never received promotion in the corps, as he was unqualified for command; and being discharged, on the usual pension in January, 1845, soon afterwards emigrated to South Australia.

An anecdote, which is unique in its way, may be added of this good easy man. At Trinity College, Dublin, he had gained prizes as an artist, but when he enlisted, was as ignorant of the use of fire-arms as a child. Having fired blank cartridge in the usual routine of drill, he was considered to be ripe enough to enter upon the more advanced stage of firing ball. Accordingly, with others of his company, he was ordered to attend this instructional duty. When directed to prime and load, he was observed to separate the bullet from the cartridge and throw it away. Sergeant Hilton, who had charge of the party, picked up the discarded bullet; and on asking Hogan his reason for biting it off, he replied, “Sure, sir, I didn’t know that the knob was of any use!”

[473]. ‘Military Annual,’ 1844. ‘Corps Papers,’ i., p. 107.

[474]. ‘Corps Papers,’ i., p. 107.

[475]. ‘Corps Papers,’ i., pp. 125, 126, 155.

[476]. Ibid., i., p. 155.

[477]. Ibid., i., p. 128.

[478]. ‘Corps Papers,’ i., p. 108, 109.

[479]. Ibid., i., p. 114.

[480]. ‘Corps Papers,’ i., p. 124.

[481]. The senior non-commissioned officer, sergeant James Mulligan, was much noticed for his attainments and exertions. His duties with the commission were of a nature to require the exercise of patience and resolution, and demanded always a scrupulous, unremitting attention. In this he was never found to fail, but rendered valuable services, “which,” adds Colonel Estcourt, “few civilians could have undertaken, or, if capable, would not have undertaken, but for the highest salary.” Mulligan’s survey-pay was 3s. 9d. a-day. After his discharge, in September, 1846, he was awarded, for his high merit, a silver medal, and a special gratuity of 25l. On leaving the corps he retired, with ample pecuniary means, to Ireland.

[482]. “The Alarm,” in ‘United Service Magazine,’ 1846, ii., p. 383.

[483]. ‘United Service Journal,’ iii., 1846, p. 328.

[484]. Vance is noticed in Colonel Pasley’s 'Practical Operations for a Siege’[Siege’] for his assistance in executing some of the wood engravings to the work. He was an excellent carpenter and modeller, but his efforts at engraving show but little refinement. Untaught in the art, his attempts to supply the place of competent practitioners can only be regarded as the neat and more advanced stages of carpentering. Pity, however, that such a man, so apt, so ready—should have been enslaved by his vices. A drunkard, in the most degraded sense of the word, no one regretted, when his service expired, to see him quit the corps.

[485]. Mrs. Ward’s ‘Cape and the Kaffirs,’ Bohn’s edit., 1851, pp. 145-147.

[486]. The ‘Times,’ August 19, 1846.

[487]. In the life of some men there happen singular incidents, which give either a romantic or a strangely-degraded cast to their career. In this category corporal Macpherson may be fairly included. He was a very talented and superior artificer, and his general knowledge and experience made his services conspicuous. At Hythe he absented himself, and leaving his clothes on the bank of the canal, a belief prevailed that he was drowned; he, however, turned up about a year afterwards, and was convicted of the crime of desertion. But soon gaining favour by his diligence and talents, he rose rapidly to the rank of sergeant, and was entrusted with responsible duties at Gibraltar, Hudson’s Bay, and finally in Nova Scotia. At Halifax he again deserted, with 206l. of the public money, but a vigilant piquet being on his trail, he was apprehended at Annapolis, fortunately for the captain of his company, with the whole of the treasure in his pocket. Being tried and convicted he was sentenced to fourteen years' transportation. A review of his useful services, and the humane intercession of Colonel Savage, R.E., his commanding officer, obtained for him a full pardon—only to be followed by the basest ingratitude and crime. A few months elapsed, and the forgiven felon a third time deserted. On the passage to the States he robbed a gentleman with whom he got into conversation, but as the theft was discovered before the debarkation took place, the gentleman repossessed his money, and a gold watch supposed to be stolen. On landing, the gentleman took steps for the apprehension of the delinquent, but, by artful remonstrances, he made the public believe that the reason of his arrest was not for theft as alleged, but for desertion from the British service. At once the mob sympathized with his fate, rescued him from custody, and he is now at large in the States. The gold watch, brought to Halifax by the gentleman, proved to be the property of a comrade.

[488]. Sergeant Clark was brought up in the royal military asylum. He was for some years on the survey of Ireland, and by subsequent application, became a fair surveyor and draughtsman. He served a station at Corfu before going to Hudson’s Bay, and subsequently passed a few years as colour-sergeant of the 20th company, at Freemantle, Western Australia.

[489]. An enterprising and superior surveyor. He was importantly employed in 1843 in the determination of the longitude of Valentia, and is now a sergeant at Halifax, Nova Scotia, whither he had been sent to superintend the laying of asphalte.

[490]. Accidentally drowned in the Restigouche, 28th October, 1846. His body was identified by private John Ashplant, and taken charge of by him and sergeant Calder until its removal from Campbelltown to Fredericton, where it was interred in the public cemetery.

[491]. ‘Professional Papers,’ N. S., ii., p. 36.

[492]. Ibid., p. 38.

[493]. Ibid., p. 37.

[494]. This non-commissioned officer acquired, in his early service, a sound knowledge of surveying in all its branches. For more than eighteen years he had charge of large parties of surveyors and draughtsmen, and his systematic habits and intelligence rendered his assistance of great advantage. Well adapted for carrying out any arrangement connected with the survey, and for conducting the beneficial employment of large parties over extensive districts, he was, in 1846, selected for the exploration duty above referred to; and his report on a portion of the line, which embraced the intricate parts of the Cobiquid Mountains, was considered of sufficient interest to receive a place in the ‘Parliamentary Blue Book,’ on the subject of that railway. In April, 1853, he was pensioned at 1s. 11d. a-day, and, on quitting the corps, bent his course westward and settled in Canada.

[495]. A companion plate to Chalon’s portrait of Her Majesty.

[496]. Had charge of the implement store, at 48, City-quay, which embraced the receipts and issues of thousands of wheelbarrows and hand-carts, and a great assortment of road and draining tools. These sergeant Baston was often employed to purchase, and to obtain them he perambulated both town and country. The duties entrusted to him were performed with promptitude, accuracy, and fidelity. Mr. M‘Mahon, the civil engineer, found him an exceedingly useful and zealous assistant. He is now colour-sergeant in the corps; is a well-read and talented man, and his qualifications as an artificer and overseer have rendered him capable of much higher employment. He joined the corps a lad, from the royal military asylum, and his acquirements and usefulness have entirely arisen from his own application. Besides his home services, he has passed with credit about seventeen years at Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Corfu.

[497]. The ‘Times,’ November 4, 1846.

[498]. Afterwards tried and convicted for the offence at the Limerick Spring Assizes, 1847.—‘Saunders’s News-Letter,’ March 9, 1847.

[499]. Baker became a second-corporal, and fell heroically at the first storming of the Redan, 18th June, 1855.

[500]. Each received a case of instruments from Prince Albert for merit in the execution of a drawing of Windsor.

[501]. ‘Hampshire Telegraph,’ January 30th, 1847; ‘Hampshire Advertiser,’ April 3, 1847.

[502]. ‘Hampshire Advertiser,’ April 3, 1847.

[503]. One of the party discharged under Governor Grey’s order was corporal William Forrest. Governor Robe, in a despatch to Earl Grey, spoke of his entire approbation of the corporal’s conduct, both as a soldier and surveyor. Captain Frome, the surveyor-general, attributed the rapid progress of the field surveys, and the general correctness of the work, to his steady zeal and talent. At first he superintended four or five detached survey parties, and laid out and corrected their work; but when a sufficient quantity of land had been divided into sections, corporal Forrest was transferred to the triangulation of the known portions of the colony, and connected all the detached surveys with the trigonometrical stations. This service he conducted in a most satisfactory and creditable manner. Returning to England, he was discharged in April, 1848, and is now living, in ease and comfort, at Edinburgh on his pension and his savings.

[504]. Debates in the ‘Times,’ March 6, 1847[1847]

[505]. About twenty of these curious arms, all of the spear form, but grotesquely varied, are in the model-room of the royal engineer establishment at Chatham.

[506]. Both died in China; the former on the 15th August, and the latter 15th September, 1847.

[507]. Discharged 8th October, 1850. He was then a sergeant. See ante, Syria, 1841.

[508]. Died at Hong-Kong, 15th August, 1848.

[509]. Now colour-sergeant in the corps stationed at New Zealand.

[510]. Discharged October, 1848, and is now employed with advantage as a draughtsman on the Ordnance Survey.

[511]. The ‘Times,’ 8th March, 1847.

[512]. Sir John Richardson’s ‘Journal of a Boat Voyage through Rupert’s Land and the Arctic,’ edit. 1851, p. 43.

[513]. Ibid., p. 44.

[514]. Ibid., pp. 46, 47.

[515]. Sir John Richardson’s ‘Journal of a Boat Voyage through Rupert’s Land and the Arctic,’ edit. 1851, p. 47.

---

Transcriber’s Note

Hyphens appearing in compound words on a line or page break are retained or removed based on the preponderance of instances of the word elsewhere in the text.

On occasion, tabular data which spanned pages repeated some headings. These repetitive lines are moot in this format, and have been removed.

On p. [231], the footnote number, now n222, was missing from the note, and has been restored.

There is a minor inconsistency in placing a space before the abbreviation ‘lbs.’ In the several places that the space lacking, one has been added.

The list of Illustrations and the text refer to Plates XVI. and XVII., which will appear in the 2nd volume of this work.

Errors deemed most likely to be the printer’s have been corrected, and are noted here. The corrections below refer to page and line in the original printed text. The prefix ‘n’ refers to the note number as it is numbered in this text.

[4.17]	artificers were, with few exceptions[,] dismissed;	Added.
[43.3]	Recruiting[,] reinforcements	Removed.
[135.22]	on board the ‘Ajax’[:/,]	Replaced.
[137.19]	in the [dgerms] which contained the field equipment	a large high-pooped Nile boat
[159.3]	reached the sum of 45,500l[,/.]	Replaced.
[179.10]	present at the second s[ei/ie]ge of that fortress	Transposed.
[n203.1]	Jones’s ‘Sieges,[’] ii., p. 107, 2nd edit.	Added.
[215.13]	commanding them in divi[vis/si]ons	Replaced.
[227.14]	on his way from Sandwich to Michili[ M/m]achinac	Replaced.
[235.1]	to recommend the officers [u/a]nd men	Replaced.
[247.38]	embraced th[e] abolition of the rank	Restored.
[n274.1]	‘Graham’s Town Journal,[’]	Added.
[n284.14]	He became forema[d/n] of works in November, 1844	Replaced
[303.28]	the summer of every year had been [past]	sic
[308.7]	would have thrown th[o/e]m wholly into the hands	Replaced.
[332.27]	sixty lbs. of tolerably good flour.[”]	Added.
[337.32]	a piece of torn and shred[d]ed blanket	Inserted.
[369.34]	to allow two persons to pass each other[.]	Added.
[372.29]	and the detachment retur[n]ed again to Chatham.	Inserted.
[397.31]	b[l]ood was flowing profusely	Inserted.
[402.22]	could they have done so.[”]	Added.
[445.12]	So exquisitely was the work performed	Removed.
[n484.1]	‘Practical Operations for a Siege[”/’]	Replaced.
[467.14]	checking the same simultaneo[n/u]sly	Replaced.
[n504.1]	Debates in the ‘Times,’ March 6, 1[48/84]7	Transposed.