| Col.-Sergts. | Sergts. | Corporals. | 2nd Corpls. | Buglers. | Privates. | Total. |
| 1 | 6 | 7 | 7 | 2 | 82 | 105 |
This measure was recommended by Colonel Colby because, as he expressed it, “the general conduct of the non-commissioned officers was so excellent that a selection for promotion could seldom be given as a reward for a special service without showing a preference for some class of duty to the exclusion of others equally onerous and well performed;” and even with this increase, a non-commissioned officer higher than the rank of lance-corporal, could not be spared to assist in the charge of the detachment on the Great Whernside Mountain.
Second-corporal John McQueen was sent in the summer with Captain Broughton, R.E., and Mr. Featherstonhaugh to the disputed territory in North America, to aid in its reconnaissance and survey. He was dressed in plain clothes and wore in his girdle a brace of pistols. Operations commenced on the 1st August at the Grand Falls, and ceased for the winter on the 5th October, at which date the commissioners reached Quebec. Throughout this period corporal McQueen was in the bush. His duty, apart from the general services of the survey, comprised the registration of the barometers and thermometers every hour, often at intervals of half an hour, taking the bearings of the several streams, superintending the movements of the camp equipage and stores, and issuing the provisions.
The service was not accomplished without hardship and occasional privation. The marching, too, was toilsome, and it was the lot of the corporal sometimes to struggle through swamps and ford streams where the exertion of swimming was necessary for his safety. The snow at times was deep; the cold in the morning great; but generally at mid-day the heat from the density of the woods was almost insupportable. The sandflies which infested the bush were a distressing nuisance; and the expedition, to protect themselves from swollen faces and blindness, resorted to the expedient of covering the face with a gauze veil, or of tying round their hats a piece of burning cedar, by the hostile fumes of which the stinging swarm was kept at bay. On the party reaching Quebec, corporal McQueen was quartered in the artillery barracks, and worked during the winter in the engineer department, preparing for the next summer expedition such utensils and conveniences as the experience of the past had proved to be desirable.
Both terms at Sandhurst the detachment employed with the gentlemen cadets, was in charge of corporal Robert Hearnden, and being an active and intelligent non-commissioned officer, he acquitted himself extremely well. “With his own hands he completed,” says the official report, “the masonry of a small splinter-proof magazine, including a roof ingeniously constructed of tiles so arranged as to break joint, and imbedded in cement, which gives to the whole work the appearance and strength of a stone roof.” Both parties laboured with readiness and industry, and maintained their usual exemplary character. Corporal Joseph T. Meyers had been several times at Sandhurst, and was found so assiduous and deserving a non-commissioned officer, that the governor of the College rewarded him by giving him the appointment of staff-sergeant at that institution.[[373]]
Early in May, one bugler and twenty-two rank and file, with serjeant-major Jones, returned to the wreck of the ‘Royal George’ at Spithead, and under the executive charge of Lieutenant Symonds, R.E., resumed the operations which were suspended in the winter of the previous year. Colonel Pasley had the direction of the service. The duties of the sappers were similar in all respects to those mentioned on the former occasion, and the composition of the party rendered it fully equal to the varied and novel circumstances of so peculiar an undertaking. On the 27th October, the winter then having completely set in, the operations were again suspended, and the detachment returned to Chatham.
When Lieutenant Symonds quitted early in October, sergeant-major Jones took charge of the service, which he managed with success, and was fortunate in recovering a considerable portion of the wreck. Throughout the season his zeal, judgment, and activity gained the high commendation of Colonel Pasley.
Corporal David Harris was employed for several months as a diver. Ambitious to earn fame in the art, he rivalled by his exertions the professional civil divers. With exciting rapidity he sent aloft planks, beams, staves, iron knees, grape-shot, fragments of gun-carriages, abundance of sheet-lead, remnants of the galley, and a thousand et ceteras. It was he who ferreted into the store-room, and cleared out its heterogeneous contents, recovering by his zeal crates of brass locks, bolts, nuts, copper hoops, and axletrees. Now he would penetrate into a magazine, and remove its powder-barrels and bulls' hides; then, tearing down the decks and walls, would anon push into a carpenter’s shop, and surprise all hands with instalments of sash-frames, window-weights, plate-glass, and engine-hose. Into the craters formed by the large explosions he would fearlessly enter, and, probed on all sides by projecting spars and splintered beams, would drag from the abysses huge timbers and unwieldy masses of the wreck, that strained from their weight the powerful shackles and gear used to raise them on board. An entire 32-pounder gun-carriage he also obtained; and only for the snapping of the slings, would have had a gun recorded to his credit. Indeed, it was on the way to the surface, when it dropped from the broken ropes and was lost for the summer. A guinea of 1768, the only one which saw the light during the season, was among the spoils which Harris had recovered. For experiment this corporal tried to dive in one of Bethell’s dresses, but after two or three attempts it had so exhausted his energies, that he was compelled to abandon its use. From the 29th May till the winter set in, he dived incessantly, except when prevented by heavy gales of wind, the strength of the tide, or the occasional sickness which was inseparable from so hard a duty. Frequently he earned as much as 4s. 6d. a-day working pay.
Lance-corporal John Skelton, and privates Charles Symon, Richard Pillman Jones, Thomas Penny Cook, Joseph Ireland, and Andrew Duncan, also dived at intervals when available dresses offered them chances of engaging in the perilous service. In the journal of the operations Lieutenant Symonds writes—“I find but little difference between them and the other divers, except that the sappers work with a better will.” The first two of these young divers were the most promising. The former, moreover, from his skill and ingenuity as an artificer, made himself very useful, and his diligence as a workman was felt in various ways. Most of the delicate work connected with the diving-apparatus, air-pumps, voltaic-batteries, etc., in which approved judgment and intelligence were required, was turned out of the hands of this craftsman in a manner that satisfied to the utmost those whose lives depended upon the accuracy and completeness of his labours.
Only one accident of a serious nature occurred: this was to private Andrew Duncan, who a day or two before had slung a large beam of the orlop-deck with knee attached, which was hove on board with great difficulty. He had on one of Deane’s dresses, which required the head and helmet to be kept upright. Losing this position he toppled over, and falling into a hole, the water rushed into his helmet and nearly drowned him. On being brought up his face was cased with mud, and he remained insensible for several minutes, bleeding from the mouth and ears. Chafing, with other simple remedies, however, soon restored him.