The subject of your letter was very fully and anxiously discussed in London before I left, and it was determined not to arm the men. They were considered too valuable to be used as soldiers, and were distinctly told that they would not be called upon to fight.
Their value, however, did not stand the test it underwent when they were called on to work the railway they had built. They were found to be lacking in any sense of discipline; they repeatedly struck work when their services were most urgently needed, and they had to be got rid of accordingly. They were replaced by men from the Army Works Corps and the Land Transport Corps, then in operation in the Crimea, and the members of the new staff—constituting a disciplined force—worked admirably. Major Powell, who became traffic manager of the line in March, 1855, and chief superintendent in the following July, has said concerning them[36]:—
Many lost their lives in the execution of their duty. When I required them to work night and day to throw forward supplies for the great struggle—the capture of Sebastopol—several of them remained seventy-two hours continuously at work.
The quantities of ammunition and stores which could be carried were below the requirements of the troops engaged in the siege operations; but during the last bombardment of Sebastopol—when the line was worked continuously, night and day, by a staff increased to about 1,000 men, of whom 400 were Turks—the transport effected rose from 200 tons a day, the limit attained under operation by the undisciplined navvies, to 700 tons. The line also did excellent work on the re-embarkment of the troops at the end of the campaign.
American Civil War
In the American War of Succession, the existing lines of railway were supplemented in various instances by "surface railroads," which consisted of rails and sleepers laid on the ordinary ground without any preparation of a proper road bed, yet serving a useful purpose, notwithstanding the rough and ready way in which they were put together.
The Abyssinian Campaign
How a railway specially constructed for the purpose may assist a military expedition in the prosecution of a "little war" in an uncivilised country, practically devoid of roads, and offering great physical difficulties, was shown on the occasion of the British Campaign in Abyssinia in 1867-68; though the circumstances under which the line in question was built were not in themselves creditable to the authorities concerned.
Sent to effect the release of the British prisoners whom King Theodore was keeping in captivity at Magdala, the expedition under Sir Robert Napier (afterwards Lord Napier of Magdala) entered upon what was to be quite as much an engineering as a military exploit. Not only was Magdala 300 miles from Annesley Bay, the base of operations on the Red Sea, but it stood, as a hill fortress, on a plateau more than 9,000 feet above the sea-level. To reach it meant the construction of roads in three sections. The first, which, in parts, had to be cut in the mountain side, rose to a height of 7,400 feet in 63 miles; the second allowed of no more than a cart road, and the third and final stage was a mere mountain track where the only transport possible was that of mules or elephants.