During the season corporal Jones got up nineteen guns, besides an immense pile of other articles in endless variety; and when the rough and generally unfavourable state of the weather which prevailed is taken into account, his activity and industry appear strikingly prominent. “Whatever success,” writes General Pasley, “has attended our operations, is chiefly to be attributed to the exertions of corporal Jones, of whom as a diver I cannot speak too highly.”[[462]]
Corporal Girvan was also very successful as a diver while health permitted, but he was prevented from rendering any particular assistance after the 27th July, from an accident occasioned by the air-pipe of his apparatus blowing off the pump on deck. He was aware that something had gone wrong, and making the signal, was drawn up sensible, but much injured about the throat and head, and blood was flowing copiously from his mouth and ears. The air rushed violently out of his helmet, as if no safety valve had been attached to it. This arose from the valve not having been taken to pieces since the commencement of the season, and, moreover, being clogged with verdigris, could not be properly shut, and hence the air was enabled to escape.[[463]]
Private John Skelton, so frequently praised for his ingenuity as a workman and for his daring as a diver, was during the operations drowned by accident off Southsea Castle.
The conduct and exertions of the whole detachment were flatteringly spoken of by Major-General Pasley, particularly sergeant Lindsay,[[464]] who, next to the officer in command, had the chief superintendence. Corporal John Rae[[465]] and private Alexander Cleghorn were also named for their intelligence and services in the management of the voltaic batteries and firing of the charges, and their duties, next to the divers, were the most important. The divers occasionally went down as many as twenty times in a tide, and the remuneration of each was from 1s. 3d. to 2s. a tide, besides the usual working pay of 1s. a-day. This enabled each first-class diver to realize between 5s. and 6s. a-day, exclusive of his regimental allowances.
The royal mail steamer ‘Tay,’ on her passage to Bermuda, sustained some damage to her bottom by running a-shore on the Cuban coast. On her arrival at Bermuda on the 16th August, corporal Harris was employed to examine her. Supplied with a diving-helmet and suit from the dockyard, he went down and found part of her cutwater and keel and about twelve feet of planking on her starboard side carried away. Forty-one times he dived in repairing the injury, and in three days so effectually finished his work that the vessel was enabled to return safely to England with the mails.
By an order from the Secretary of State for the Colonies, then Lord Stanley, this non-commissioned officer was attached, late in the year, to the department of the Naval Inspector of Works at Bermuda, for the purpose of removing, by submarine mining, coral reefs from the entrances of harbours, so as to make them accessible to ordinary vessels. Lieutenant-Colonel Reid, R.E., the Governor of the Island, carried on a correspondence which extended over a period of eighteen months, to obtain the services of this diver.[[466]] The first work undertaken by him was widening and deepening the ship channel leading into the harbour of St. George. For three or four years he confined his exertions to this point, and so well planned and skilfully executed were his operations that all natural impediments militating against the safety of the channel, were at length completely removed by the explosions of innumerable charges of gunpowder, fired through the agency of voltaic electricity. Under Colonel Barry, the commanding royal engineer who had the superintendence of the service for most of the period, the work was successfully prosecuted. The spaciousness of the channel for the passage of steam-vessels of large tonnage and great draught of water, was practically tested on the 26th February, 1848, by Her Majesty’s steamer ‘Growler,’ of 1,200 tons, Captain Hall. The vessel steamed into the harbour against wind and tide, drawing fifteen and one-third feet of water, and effected the passage with ease and steadiness, having beneath her keel when passing “the bar,” the worst part of the channel, at least five feet of water.[[467]] These signally successful operations saved the Government several thousands of pounds; and in the event of Hamilton losing its commercial importance, the harbour of St. George will, no doubt, be selected as the chief water for the passage of the mails and the trade and marine of the Islands.
At Chatham, late in the year, some mining operations were carried on under Colonel Sir Frederick Smith, the director of the royal engineer establishment. The works were pushed under the glacis in front of the left face of the ravelin, and the right face of the Duke of Cumberland’s Bastion. All the corps at the station, with the East India Company’s sappers, were present, working night and day in three reliefs of six hours each, and the numerous explosions that took place, and the attempts made to render abortive the schemes of opposing parties, invested the operations with the character in many essential respects of subterranean warfare. The exciting experiments, however, were not concluded without casualty, for on one occasion from inhaling foul air, a sapper of the East India Company named James Sullivan was killed, and three of the royal sappers were drawn out in a state of dangerous insensibility. These were privates John Murphy, John A. Harris, and Edward Bailey. Lieutenant Moggeridge, R.E., who had charge of the party, also fainted, but he was saved from serious injury by colour-sergeant George Shepherd rushing into the gallery and bringing him out. At the time of the accident, the miners were about one hundred and fifty feet from the mouth of the shaft; and several who went in to rescue their comrades suffered more or less from the air. Singular, however, as it may appear, lights were burning near the ground the whole time, and instantly after the last man was carried out of the gallery, it was traversed in its whole length by lance-corporal John Wood,[[468]] who carried a light in his hand and experienced no great difficulty in breathing.[[469]]
The Hong Kong party under Major Aldrich, R.E., was inspected in the autumn by Major-General D’Aguilar, C.B., in command of the troops in China; and his Excellency in his official report “regretted that a detachment of so much importance, and so well constituted, should have been reduced by six deaths and three invalided during the half year, and that the men present should, in their appearance, show the effects of climate.” In December following the detachment was ordered to be increased to a half company, and the reinforcement of fifteen rank and file, sailing from the West India Docks in the ‘William Shand’ freight-ship, in February, 1845, landed at Victoria on the 28th June following. In May, 1851, the party returned to England, but its strength was reduced by casualties to six men only. Of the remainder, four were invalided, three died, one was drowned on passage from Victoria to Macao, and one was killed by falling over a precipice.
1845.
Sheerness—Increase to the corps at the Cape—Survey of Windsor—Skill of privates Holland and Hogan as draughtsmen—Etchings by the latter for the Queen and Prince Albert—Unique idea of the use of a bullet—Inspection at Gibraltar by Sir Robert Wilson—Falkland Islands—Discharges on the survey duty during the railway mania.