Appalling as was the shock to those who were near, the effect was little diminished by distance. The roar and concussion were so great in Balaklava that the ships in harbour, and outside at anchor, trembled and quivered, and the houses shook to their foundations. The ships at Kamiesch and Kazatch reeled and rolled from side to side. Mules and horses, seven and eight miles away, broke loose, and galloped across the country, wild with fright. The noise pealed through the passes at Baidar like the loudest thunder. The sense of hearing was quite deadened in many persons, and their nervous systems have not yet recovered the shock, so that any sudden noise startles them. The French had 6 officers killed and 13 wounded; 65 of their men, mostly of the artillery, were killed, and 170 wounded, of whom many will never recover. The destruction in money value of articles appertaining to the siege-train was very great. But when we came to men—to those gallant fellows who had survived the battles and the dangers of the campaign—our loss was irreparable. What value could be placed on those noble artillerymen of the siege-train who, with little praise or encouragement, stood by their guns in so many bombardments, and who had acquired skill, practice, and hardihood in the greatest siege the world ever saw?
The casualties in the Light Division were as follows:—
7th Fusiliers, 1 killed, 12 wounded; 19th Regiment, 9 wounded; 23rd Fusiliers, 2 killed, 6 wounded; 33rd Regiment, 2 killed, 13 wounded; 34th Regiment, 1 killed, 14 wounded; 77th Regiment, 3 killed, 6 wounded; 88th Regiment, 2 wounded; 90th Regiment, 1 wounded; Rifle Brigade, 1 killed, 6 wounded; total 10 killed, 69 wounded.
SUPPOSED CAUSE OF THE EXPLOSION.
The Right Siege Train suffered as severely—seven poor fellows were buried the first night, and the bodies of three more artillerymen were so torn and scattered that their remains could not be collected for interment. To this loss of ten must be added that of seven artillerymen "missing." The total of the casualties in the train amounted to fifty-two. Mr. Yellon, Deputy Assistant-Commissary of the field train, a most active, zealous officer, whose name was mentioned along with that of Mr. Hayter in Colonel St. George's despatch, was blown to pieces. Lieutenant Roberts had his left arm broken, and was severely burnt; Lieutenant Dawson lost his leg above the ankle from a dead shell, which struck him as he was in the act of carrying off a live shell from the park to a place of safety. The legs, arms, and trunks of men were blown into the camps of the Rifle Brigade and of the 34th Regiment, on the extreme right of the Light Division. I saw lying amid a heap of ruins, of old iron stores, rubbish, shot, splinters of shell and beams of wood, a man's arm scorched and burnt black, on which the tattered pieces of clothing retained the traces of a sergeant's gold stripes. The dead were terrible to look upon; but the living in their agony were still more frightful. I solemnly declare, that from the lips of none of these mutilated masses which I saw stretched out in long rows in every hospital did I hear either groan or sigh. No sound escaped them, as those who could see rolled their sad orbs and gazed upon the stranger, except in one instance, when an involuntary expression of pain was uttered by a poor French soldier in the hospital of the 23rd, where he had been trepanned, and was all but beyond the reach of his misery. Although the Russians have been justly praised for their endurance of pain, I must say I never beheld them submit to such tortures as our men experienced. As I looked upon the shattered frames before me, in which such noble spirits were enshrined, I could not but remember the howls of a Russian corporal, at Kinburn, who had been wounded in the heel. The surgeons displayed the greatest courage and kindness, and every man was at his post in the midst of fire and shell. Drs. Muir, Watt, Mouat, and Longmore particularly distinguished themselves.
Marshal Pelissier named a commission of inquiry to report upon the cause of the disastrous accident. Our men declared, of course, that it was the work of an incendiary. General Codrington seemed to give credence to the report, inasmuch as he ordered the army to turn out an hour before daybreak, to be prepared for the Russians if they really had calculated on crippling us.
The manner in which this great disaster was caused is said to have been this:—Some French artillerymen were engaged in shifting powder from case to case in the park, and as the operation is rather dangerous, every precaution was taken to prevent accidents. The powder was poured from one case into the other through copper funnels, and no fire was allowed near the place where the men were so employed. As one of the soldiers was pouring the powder out of a case he perceived a fragment of shell gliding out of it into the funnel, and, not wishing to let it get into the other case, he jerked the funnel to one side; the piece of shell fell on the stones, which were covered with loose powder, and is supposed to have struck fire in its fall, for the explosion took place at once. Miraculous as it may appear, this artilleryman, who was, as it were, in the focus of the explosion, escaped alive, being only slightly burnt and scorched. His comrade, who held the other case was blown to atoms. Another strange incident was the death of the French commandant of artillery for the day. He was near the park at the time of the explosion, and as soon as he had seen everything in order, he went off to have a look at the French batteries in and about Sebastopol, on which the Russians had just opened a heavy fire. As he rode along, a cannon-shot struck off his head. The escapes were astounding.—Clothes were torn off men's backs; the chairs or beds on which they sat, the tables at which they were eating, the earth on which they stood, were broken and torn by shot, shell, rocket-irons, shrapnell, grape, canister, and musket-balls, which literally rained down upon them. The distance to which fragments flew exceeds belief. It is difficult to explain it by mere names of localities. One piece of shell flew over Cathcart's Hill; another killed a horse in New Kadikoi. Some struck men and horses in the Guards' camp. In the Land Transport Corps of the Light Division fourteen horses were killed and seventeen were wounded. One flew over my hut; another struck the ground close to it; another went into the camp of the Land Transport Corps behind it. Mrs. Seacole, who keeps a restaurant near the Col, avers that a piece of stone struck her door, which is three and a half or four miles from the park. Pieces struck and damaged the huts in New Kadikoi. There had been some warnings of the dangers of carelessness already.
The day before the explosion Samuel Goodram, No. 6 Company, Coldstreams, a soldier of the same regiment, and a sergeant, were on duty in the Redan; the two men went into one of the casemates to remove powder and rubbish, while the sergeant remained outside. Scarcely had the men entered before an explosion took place. Goodram was blown into the air, and then buried amid fragments of gabions and falling earth, and both men were buried in the Guards' cemetery next day. I am the more particular in giving names, that I may relate an anecdote of Goodram at the attack on the Redan. The night before the attack, the Coldstreams were on duty, and were relieved some hours before the assault. On arriving at camp, Samuel Goodram was missing; and it was feared that he had gone away to indulge in potations, or had been hit as he came from the trenches. But this gallant soldier had remained behind from a pure love of fighting, and from a desire "to have a go in at the Roosians." Knowing that the assault would take place in a few hours, Goodram, as the regiment mustered and marched off, had secreted himself in the trenches, and employed his leisure time before his comrades left in filling the breast of his coat and every available place about his person with cartridges from their boxes, fearing that his private supply of fifty rounds would fail him before he had got his fill of fighting. When the storming party was advancing from the fifth parallel, Goodram appeared, rifle in hand, and joined it as a volunteer, and his regiment claim him as being the first private soldier in the Redan on that memorable day. He was twice driven out of the Redan, and was over and over again engaged individually with the Russians, and in these encounters he received two wounds—one in the side and one in the arm—but still kept up a fire when driven back by the last rush of the enemy's infantry, and forced over the parapet with the rest of our men into the ditch. Instead, however, of retiring with the others, as opportunity offered, and keeping in the ditch or getting under cover in the parallels, Goodram made an impromptu rifle-pit on the broken glacis outside the ditch, and there he maintained his fire on the enemy till his ammunition became exhausted, and his wounds so painful that he could no longer use his rifle. Then he shouldered his arms and marched stiffly up through the trenches and across the open space till he reported himself to his regiment. He was, I believe, tried for being absent without leave and for stealing his comrades' cartridges, but Minos himself could not have condemned a soldier like this to any severe punishment for a crime which Minos's jurymen would have called heroic.
RETROSPECTS