The detachments at Sandhurst during the year greatly exerted themselves in the field-work instruction, and returned to the corps receiving much praise for their zeal and good conduct. Corporal John Carlin was in charge of both parties, and was extremely useful. In the spring term he skilfully prepared the apparatus for a series of subaqueous explosions by the voltaic battery;[[397]] and, at the autumn examination, the rafts and bridges exhibited on the lakes and canals were constructed by him and his party. These consisted of rafts of rough timber and bridges upon various principles, such as floating, suspension, and trestle; also spars heavily loaded at one end to act as levers, and others interlaced upon a system of mutual pressure. In carrying out these services corporal Carlin was honourably noticed, “as a non-commissioned officer of much merit and ingenuity.”[[398]] Corporal John Cameron was also mentioned in the Governor’s reports for his activity and ability, and for having executed with great neatness a quantity of sod revetments for the scarps of the field-works.
Colonel Pasley was removed from the appointment of director of the royal engineer establishment at Chatham in November, 1841, on promotion to the rank of Major-General.[[399]] Nearly thirty years he had held the office, and fulfilled its various functions with a genius, composure, and success, that no successor can ever hope to surpass. To him the corps is largely indebted for that military efficiency which has characterized its progress since 1812. Diligently superintending its practical exercise in all the operations of a siege, as well as in mining, pontooning, and bridge-making, and in the numerous other essential details of the field establishment, he made the corps fully equal to the prosecution of any service in which its assistance might be required. Some well-meaning officers of high rank did not see the necessity of training the corps in the principles of elementary fortification,[[400]] but Colonel Pasley finally overcame their honest scruples by earnest argument. He not only gained this concession, but was permitted to teach the corps the elementary principles of geometry and plan-drawing; and ultimately, so extensive and complete had his system become, that some hundreds of non-commissioned officers and men passed from his schools, as surveyors and draughtsmen, to the survey of Ireland. As a disciplinarian he was rigid; and in exacting from all under his command that obedience, attention, and punctuality which were the characteristics of his own laborious career, he was blind to that partiality or favouritism which could cover the indiscretion of one offender and punish that of another.
Here it may be right to show what was the public opinion of the corps at this period, as contrasted with its state at the commencement of the Peninsular war, and to whom its improved organization and perfect efficiency were chiefly attributed. “With respect to our engineer establishment, it would perhaps be difficult to name any occasion on which a modern European army took the field so utterly destitute of efficient means for conducting siege operations as were the British troops at the opening of the last war. At this moment, on the contrary, no army in the world possesses engineer officers and soldiers better instructed in all that relates to the science and practice of this branch of the service. We have heard one of the most able and most experienced of those officers declare, that when he was first called upon to take part in some siege operations at the very outset of the war, he had never seen a gabion, nor was there a soldier in the force who knew how to make one. To carry on a sap, or drive the gallery of a mine, was alike an impossible attempt. The army had neither a single sapper, miner, or pontoneer, and a few drunken and worthless military artificers formed the only engineer troops.... The lessons of experience thus dearly bought have not been acquired in vain. The practical engineer school at Chatham, organised and long directed by Colonel Pasley, has produced a corps of sappers and miners equal to any in Europe. Their exercises on the Medway have likewise given them the qualities of excellent pontoneers.”[[401]]
Another extract from the same journal, relative to the conduct of the corps and the impolicy of the reductions which have taken place in its numbers since the return of the army of occupation from France in 1818, should not be suppressed:—“The reductions in the sappers and miners since the war are much to be regretted; and it would be more wise to organize them equivalently to two battalions of eight companies. They are a description of troops invaluable in every respect,—being as soldierlike, and well trained in the duties of infantry, as the best regiments of that arm, and therefore equally available for all military services in garrisons and quarters; while their qualities as artificers are by no means confined to admirable proficiency in their proper business as engineer-soldiers, in the management of the pontoon-train and the conduct of siege operations. Their exemplary conduct offers an illustration of a principle too much neglected in the discipline of modern armies—that to find constant and wholesome occupation for troops, as indeed for mankind in every situation, is the best security both for happiness and good order.... But in the case of this engineer corps, apart from the important object of keeping up an efficient body for those peculiar duties of their arm in the field, which require a regular course of practical education, we are convinced it would be found true economy to increase its force for the repair and maintenance of the numerous fortifications in every quarter of our colonial empire.”[[402]]
This perhaps is the fittest place to introduce a glowing testimony to the corps, penned by one well acquainted with its merits and defects, and too impartial to append his name to any but a faithful record. “Indeed,” writes Sir John Jones, “justice requires it to be said, that these men, whether employed on brilliant martial services, or engaged in the more humble duties of their calling, either under the vertical sun of the tropics, or in the frozen regions of the north, invariably conduct themselves as good soldiers; and by their bravery, their industry, or their acquirements, amply repay the trouble and expense of their formation and instruction.”[[403]]
Nor should the testimony of the chaplain-general, the Rev. G. R. Gleig, be omitted. Unconnected as he is with the royal sappers and miners, his opinion has been formed without the prejudice of interested feelings. In taking a bird’s-eye retrospect of the formation and growth of some of our military institutions, he thus speaks of the corps: “Besides the infantry, cavalry and artillery, of which the regular army was composed, and the corps of engineers, coeval with the latter, there sprang up during the war of the French Revolution other descriptions of force, which proved eminently useful each in its own department, and of the composition of which a few words will suffice to give an account. First, the artificers as they were called, that is to say, the body of men trained to the exercise of mechanical arts, such as carpentry, bricklaying, bridgemaking, and so forth, which in all ages seem to have attended on a British army in the field, became the royal sappers and miners, whose services, on many trying occasions, proved eminently useful, and who still do their duty cheerfully and satisfactorily in every quarter of the globe. During the late war, they were commanded under the officers of engineers, by a body of officers who took no higher rank than that of lieutenant, and consisted entirely of good men, to whom their merits had earned commissions. Their education, carried on at Woolwich and Chatham, trained them to act in the field as guides and directors to all working parties, whether the business in hand might be the construction of a bridge, the throwing up of field works, or the conduct of a siege. Whatever the engineer officers required the troops to do was explained to a party of sappers, who, taking each his separate charge, showed the soldiers of the line both the sort of work that was required of them, and the best and readiest method of performing it. The regiment of sappers was the growth of the latter years of the contest, after the British army had fairly thrown itself into the great arena of continental warfare, and proved so useful, that while men wondered how an army ever could have been accounted complete without this appendage, the idea of dispensing with it in any time to come, seems never to have arisen in the minds of the most economical.”[[404]]
1842.
Party to Natal—The march—Action at Congella—Boers attack the camp—Then besiege it—Sortie on the Boers' trenches—Incidents—Privations—Conduct of the detachment; courageous bearing of sergeant Young—Services of the party after hostilities had ceased—Detachment to the Falkland Islands—Landing—Character of the country—Services of the party—Its movements; and amusements—Professor Airy’s opinion of the corps—Fire at Woolwich; its consequences—Wreck of the ‘Royal George’—Classification of the divers—Corporal Harris’s exertions in removing the wreck of the ‘Perdita’ mooring lighter—Assists an unsuccessful comrade—Difficulties in recovering the pig-iron ballast—Adventure with Mr. Cussell’s lighter—Isolation of Jones at the bottom—Annoyed by the presence of a human body; Harris, less sensitive, captures it—The keel—Accidents—Conflict between two rival divers—Conduct of the sappers employed in the operations—Demolition of beacons at Blythe Sand, Sheerness—Testimonial to sergeant-major Jones for his services in connection with it.
In January, 1842, a small force under the command of Captain Smith, 27th regiment, was sent to the Umgazi, about ten miles south of the Umzimvooboo, to watch the movements of the Boers, who had attacked a native chief in alliance with the colonial government. With this force was detached a party of eight royal sappers and miners under Lieutenant C. R. Gibb of the engineers. There the expedition was encamped for a season, when a portion of it, on the 31st March, quitted the Umgazi for Natal, taking with them seventy wheeled carriages and numerous oxen. The sappers took the lead of the column to remove obstructions on the route. The force comprised about 250 men, chiefly of the 27th regiment, and a few artillerymen.
In the journey to Natal, a distance of more than 600 miles, the greatest difficulties were encountered. Much of the ground traversed was very marshy. Rivulets and larger streams were so much increased by the rains that the broken drifts across them had frequently to be renewed or repaired after one or two waggons had crossed. Several very steep hills had to be surmounted, one of which was the Umterda, over which the hunter and trader had never attempted to take his waggon without first dismantling it, and then carrying it up or down. Up this rugged hill, formed of huge boulders of granite imbedded in a swamp, a rough road was constructed; and by putting three spans of oxen—thirty-six bullocks—to each waggon, all, after three days' heavy labour and fatigue, were got to the summit. Constantly in their progress, they had to improve the roads, to cut through wood and bush, to toil along the sand on the shore, and occasionally, harnessing themselves with ropes, drag the unwieldy train along wild passes and almost impenetrable tracts of fastness. At length, after a most harassing march of six weeks, of straining energy and arduous exertion, having crossed one hundred and seventy-two rivers and streams, much of the journey under violent rain, and often sleeping at night on the swampy ground, the troops reached Natal on the 3rd May, and encamped at the head of the bay; from whence they afterwards removed to the Itafa Amalinde, where they intrenched themselves, and placed beyond the parapet, for additional protection, the waggons which accompanied the force.