From Amherstburgh the detachment rejoined the company in 1840. Whilst the latter was at St. Helen’s and afterwards at St. John’s, the men were exercised during the summer months in pontooning with bridges of Colonel Blanshard’s construction, which had been stored at Chambly until 1840. The pontoons were found to travel well on bad roads, but the breadth of the rivers in Canada did not permit of their being often used as bridges.
After the removal of the company, Colonel Oldfield, the commanding royal engineer, thus wrote of it: “The discipline of the company was not relaxed by its four summers in Canada. It had suffered the inconvenience of several times changing its captain, but it was nevertheless maintained in good order and regular conduct. Lieutenant W. C. Roberts, R.E., however, was constantly with it, to whom and colour-sergeant Lanyon[[419]] and the non-commissioned officers, much credit is due. The desertions only amounted to six, although the company was on the frontier in daily communication with the United States. Of these six, one returned the following morning; a second would have done so but he feared the jeers of his comrades; and the other four found when too late the falsity of the inducements which had attracted them to the States, and would gladly have come back could they have done so.”[so.”] And the Colonel then concludes, “The advantages enjoyed by well-behaved men, and the esprit de corps which has always existed in the sappers have been found to render desertion rare, even when exposed to greater temptation than usually falls to the lot of other soldiers.”
In the meantime a second company had been removed to Gibraltar in the ‘Alban’ steamer under Lieutenant Theodosius Webb, R.E., and landed on the 6th July, 1842. This augmentation to the corps at that fortress was occasioned by the difficulty felt in procuring a sufficient number of mechanics for the works; and to meet the emergency, the company in Canada was recalled, as in both provinces works of considerable magnitude had been carried on by civil workmen, who could at all times be more easily engaged in a country receiving continual influxes by immigration, than in a confined fortress like Gibraltar with a limited population.
On the return of the Niger expedition in November, to which eight rank and file had been attached, the establishment of the corps was reduced from 1,298 to 1,290 of all ranks.
The survey of Ireland upon the 6-inch scale was virtually completed in December of this year, terminating with Bantry and the neighbourhood of Skibbereen. The directing force in that great national work was divided into three districts in charge of three captains of royal engineers in the country; and there was also a head-quarter office for the combination and examination of the work, correspondence, engraving, printing, &c., in charge of a fourth captain. To each of these districts the survey companies were attached in relative proportion to the varied requirements and contingencies of the service, and adapted to the many modifications which particular local circumstances frequently rendered imperative. A staff of non-commissioned officers and men was also stationed at the head-quarter office, and discharged duties of trust and importance.
In framing his instructions for the execution of the Irish survey, Colonel Colby had to reject his old opinions formed from circumscribed examples of small surveys, and to encounter all the prejudices which had been fixed in the minds of practical men. The experience of these parties did not extend beyond the surveys of estates of limited space, performed without hurry and with few assistants. Colonel Colby, on the other hand, was to survey rapidly a large country, with much more accuracy. The two modes were therefore so entirely different, that it took less time to train for its performance those who had no prejudice, and who had been brought up by military discipline to obey, than to endeavour to combine a heterogeneous mass of local surveyors fettered by preconceived notions and conceits, deficient in habits of accuracy and subordination, and who could not be obtained in sufficient numbers to form any material proportion of the force. Hence the survey of Ireland became essentially military in its organization and control, the officers of engineers being the directors of large parties, and the non-commissioned officers the subordinate directors of small parties.
In the later years of the Irish survey, however, the superintendence by the sappers became of much consequence and its advantages very appreciable in the reduction of expense. For the year 1827, the outlay for the survey was above 37,000l., at which period the sum paid to the officers was more than one-third of the whole amount; but in 1841, when the expenditure was more than doubled, the amount for superintendence had been reduced to a twelfth part of the total expenditure.[[420]]
The general employment of the sappers and miners in this great national work embraced the whole range of the scheme for its accomplishment, and many non-commissioned officers and men trained in this school became superior observers, surveyors, draughtsmen, levellers, contourers, and examiners. Among so many who distinguished themselves it would be almost invidious to name any; but there were a few so conspicuous for energy of character, efficiency of service, and attainments, that to omit them would be a dereliction no scruples could justify. Their names are subjoined:—
Colour-sergeant John West celebrated as an engraver. In 1833, the Master-General, Sir James Kempt, pointed out his name on the engraving of the index map of Londonderry to His Majesty William IV. in terms of commendation; and the Master-General, while West was yet a second-corporal, promoted him to be supernumerary-sergeant, with the pay of the rank. Most of the index maps of the counties of Ireland were executed by him, and a writer in the United Service Journal[[421]] complimented him by saying that the maps already completed by him were as superior to the famous Carte des Chasses as the latter was to the recondite productions of Kitchen, the geographer. His also was the master hand that executed the city sheet of Dublin, and his name is associated with many other maps of great national importance. The geological map of Ireland, 1839, engraved for the Railway Commissioners, was executed by him; and in all his works, which are many, he has displayed consummate skill, neatness, rigid accuracy, and beauty both of outline and topography. In October, 1846, he was pensioned at 1s. 10d. a-day, and received the gratuity and medal for his meritorious services. He is now employed at the ordnance survey office, Dublin, and continues to gain admiration for the excellency of his maps.
Sergeant Alexander Doull was enlisted in 1813. After serving a station in the West Indies, he was removed to Chatham. There on the plan of ‘Cobbett’s Grammar,’ he commenced publishing letters to his son on “Geometry,” but after the second number appeared, he relinquished the undertaking. In 1825 he joined the survey companies, and was the chief non-commissioned officer at the base of Magilligan. He was a superior mathematical surveyor and draughtsman, and his advice in difficult survey questions was frequently followed and never without success. Between 1828 and 1833 he had charge of a 12-inch theodolite, observing for the secondary and minor triangulation of one of the districts, and was the first non-commissioned officer of sappers, it is believed, who used the instrument bearing that designation. In July, 1834, while employed in the revision of the work in the neighbourhood of Rathmelton, he introduced a system of surveying similar to traverse-sailing in navigation, which effected a considerable saving of time in the progress of the work, and elicited the approbation of Colonel Colby. While on the duty he invented a plotting-scale,[[422]] and subsequently a reflecting instrument,[[423]] both simple and ingenious in construction. After a service of twenty-three years, he was discharged in January, 1838. When the tithe commutation survey was thrown into the hands of contractors, Doull got portions of the work to perform, and his maps were referred to in terms of high commendation by Edwin Chadwick, Esq.[[424]] Among several towns that he surveyed, one was Woolwich, the map of which, dedicated to Lord Bloomfield, was published by him in 1843. In the proposed North Kent Railway, Mr. Doull was assistant-engineer to Mr. Vignoles, and he planned a bridge of three arches, having a roadway at one side and a double line of rails at the other, with an ornamental screened passage between, to span the Medway where the new bridge recently constructed, connects Strood and Rochester; which plan, had the proposed railway not been superseded by a rival line, would have secured an enduring fame for the designer. This was the opinion of Mr. Vignoles and Sir Charles Pasley. Afterwards when the competing companies were preparing their respective projects, Mr. Doull represented the engineering difficulties of the opposing scheme in a pamphlet under the signature of “Calculus.” In this his military knowledge and experience were well exhibited, inasmuch as he showed how the fortifications at Chatham would be injured by the adoption of that line; and the railway consequently, on account of this and other influences, has never been prolonged so as to interfere with the defences. A few years afterwards he published a small work entitled, “Railway Hints and Railway Legislation,” which obtained for him, from the South-Eastern Railway Company—the one he so perseveringly opposed—the situation of assistant-engineer to the line. More recently he issued a pamphlet on the subject of a railway in America,[[425]] which for its boldness and lucidity gained for him the praise of a rising literary genius in the royal engineers.[[426]] His last pamphlet on the subject of opening a north-west passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, a distance of 2,500 miles, is more daring, and evinces more pretension and merit than any of his previous literary efforts. Mr. Doull is also known as the inventor of several improvements of the permanent way of railways,[[427]] and is a member both of the Society of Civil Engineers and the Society of Arts.