The second date on his Cross notes the affair at the Sandbag Battery, where he joined the Grenadier officers and helped to save the colours from capture. On the third occasion when his bravery was commended for recognition he headed a ladder-party in that assault on the Redan in which Graham and Perie won such distinction.
In this attack the gallant captain was badly wounded in the head and arm, a misfortune which was the means of gaining the V.C. for another brave young sailor. From the beginning of the war Midshipman Edward St. John Daniels had attached himself to Captain Peel, acting as the latter’s aide-de-camp at Inkerman. During the battle he was a conspicuous figure, as, mounted on a pony, he accompanied his leader about the field.
In the Redan assault he was still by Peel’s side, and caught him as he fell on the glacis. Then, heedless of the danger to which he was exposed, he coolly set to work to bandage the wounded man, tying a tourniquet on his arm, which is said to have saved Peel’s life. This done, he got his chief to a place of safety.
Daniels did another plucky action some months earlier, when he volunteered to bring in ammunition from a waggon that had broken down outside his battery. The fact that the waggon became immediately the target for a murderous fire from the Russian guns weighed little with him. He brought in the cartridges and powder without receiving a scratch, and the battery cheered to a man as the plucky little chap scrambled over the parapet with his last armful.
Along with Peel and Daniels must be named that popular idol William Nathan Wrighte Hewett, known to his messmates as “Bully Hewett.” He was nearly as picturesque a character as his commander.
At Sebastopol, the day following Balaclava fight, Hewett (he was acting-mate at the time), fought a great long-range Lancaster gun that had been hauled up from his ship, H.M.S. Beagle. The gun drew a determined attack on its flank from a very large force of Russians, and orders were sent to Hewett by a military officer to spike the gun and abandon his battery. The odds were too overwhelming.
In emphatic language the young sailor declared that he’d take no orders from anyone but his own captain, and was going to stick to his gun.
The other “Beagles” were quite of his opinion. In quick time they knocked down a portion of the parapet that prevented the huge Lancaster bearing on the flank and slewed the piece round. Then, loading and firing with sailorly smartness, they poured such a hot fire into the advancing horde of Russians that the latter beat a retreat.
They used the big gun with great advantage at Inkerman, but the young mate’s splendid defence of his battery was enough by itself to win him a well-deserved V.C. Hewett died eighteen years ago, a Vice-Admiral and a K.C.B.