Serjeant Robert Spalding was for many years employed on the survey of Ireland, from which, on account of his acquirements, he was removed to Chatham to be instructor of surveying to the young sappers. To assist him in the duty he published a small manual for the use of the students. It was not an elaborate effort, but one which detailed with freedom and simplicity the principles of the science. In 1834 he was appointed clerk of works at the Gambia, where his vigorous intellect and robust health singled him out for varied colonial employment, and his merits and exertions frequently made him the subject of official encomium. Five years he spent in that baneful and exhausting climate, and in 1840, just as he was about to sail for England, the fever seized him, and in a few days he died. In his early career as a bugler he was present in much active service, and was engaged at Vittoria, San Sebastian, Bidassoa, Nivelle, Nive, Orthes, and Toulouse.
Sergeant Edward Keville was a very fair and diligent artist. He engraved the index map of the county of Louth, and assisted in the general engraving work at the ordnance survey office in Dublin. In January, 1846, he was pensioned at 1s. 10½d. a day, and obtained re-employment in the same office in which he had spent the greatest part of his military career.
Second-corporal George Newman was eminent as a draughtsman, and the unerring fineness and truthfulness of his lines and points were the more remarkable, as he was an unusually large man of great bodily weight. He died at Killarney in 1841.
Lance-corporal Andrew Duncan was a skilful and ingenious artificer. His simple contrivance for making the chains, known by the name of “Gunter’s chains,” is one proof of his success as an inventor. Those delicate measures, in which the greatest accuracy is required, have by Duncan’s process been made for the last twelve years by a labourer unused to any mechanical occupation, with an exactitude that admits of no question. The apparatus is in daily use in the survey department at Southampton, and the chains required for the service can be made by its application with great facility and rapidity. He was discharged at Dublin in September, 1843, and is now working as a superior artizan in the proof department of the royal arsenal.
Equally distinguished were sergeants William Young, William Campbell, and Andrew Bay, and privates Charles Holland and Patrick Hogan, but as their names and qualifications will be found connected with particular duties in the following pages, further allusion to them in this place is unnecessary.
Colonel Colby in his closing official report, spoke of the valuable aid which he had received from the royal sappers and miners in carrying on the survey, and as a mark of consideration for their merits, and with the view of retaining in confidential situations the non-commissioned officers who by their integrity and talents had rendered themselves so useful and essential, he recommended the permanent appointment of quartermaster-sergeant to be awarded to the survey companies; but this honour so ably urged was, from economical reasons, not conceded.
Seventeen years had the sappers and miners been employed on the general survey and had travelled all over Ireland. They were alike in cities and in wastes, on mountain heights and in wild ravines, had traversed arid land and marshy soil, wading through streams and tracts of quagmire in the prosecution of their duties. To every vicissitude of weather they were exposed, and in storms at high altitudes subjected to personal disaster and peril. Frequently they were placed in positions of imminent danger in surveying bogs and moors, precipitous mountain faces, and craggy rocks and coasts. Boating excursions too were not without their difficulties and hazards in gaining islands almost unapproachable, and bluff isolated rocks and islets, often through quicksand and the low channels of broad sandy bays and inlets of the sea, where the tide from its strength and rapidity precluded escape unless by the exercise of extreme caution and vigilance, or by the aid of boats.
Two melancholy instances of drowning occurred in these services: both were privates,—William Bennie and Joseph Maxwell; the former by the upsetting of a boat while he was employed in surveying the islands of Loch Strangford, and the latter at Valentia Island. This island consisted of projecting rocks very difficult of access, and when private Maxwell was engaged in the very last act of finishing the survey a surf swept him off the rock. A lad named Conway, his labourer, was borne away by the same wave. The devoted private had been immersed in a previous wave by which his note-book was lost, and while stooping with anxiety, to see if he could recover it, another furious wave dashed up the point and carried him into the sea.[[428]]
Hardship and toil were the common incidents of their everyday routine, for on mountain duty theirs was a career of trial and vicissitude. Comforts they had none, and what with the want of accommodation and amusement in a wild country, on a dizzy height, theirs was not an enviable situation. Covered only by a canvas tent or marquee they were barely closed in from the biting cold and the raging storm; and repeatedly tents, stores, and all, have been swept away by the wind or consumed by fire, while the hardy tenants, left on the bleak hill top, or the open heath, have remained for days together half naked and unsheltered. Such was their discipline and such their spirit, they continued to labour protected only by their great coats—if haply they escaped destruction—till, renewed with tents or huts, they pitched again their solitary dwellings far away on the height or the moor.
Even on the less exposed employments of the survey, the men were subjected to many discomforts and fatigues. The marching was harassing; miles to and from work were daily tramped, frequently in a drenching rain; and in this kind of weather soaked to the skin, they barely permitted their work to be interrupted. Night after night for two or three weeks together, have these men returned to their quarters dripping wet; and when, in frosty weather, their clothes have frozen on their backs, the removal of boots and trousers have only been accomplished by immersing the legs in warm water.