Having made considerable proficiency in their trades, they were employed for some years previous to their discharge as modellers, which art they continued to follow with great tact, skill, and perseverance, until they quitted the fortress. After several trial models of various subjects, these young men commenced the gigantic task of modelling Gibraltar, at which they worked with unwearied application for nearly three years. Succeeding so well in this their first great and public undertaking, Brand[[48]] was directed to make a model in polished stone of the King’s Bastion, and Richmond[[49]] a model of the north front of Gibraltar. Nearly the whole of the years 1790 and 1791 were spent in perfecting them; and for these noble specimens of art they were favoured with the flattering congratulations of the highest authorities at the fortress. The better to exemplify the appreciation entertained of the models, and of the merits and talents of the modellers, they were recommended to the Duke of Richmond for commissions. His Grace immediately ordered them to proceed to Woolwich, to undergo some slight preparatory training. That training was short—a few months sufficed, and then they were honoured with appointments as second lieutenants in the royal engineers. Their commissions were dated 17th January, 1793.[[50]] Soon the young subalterns, rich in intelligence and full of promise, were sent abroad; but before the close of the year, both fell a prey to the prevailing yellow fever in the West Indies.[[51]]

The three models alluded to were brought to England in 1793 by desire of General O’Hara. The large model of the entire Rock was deposited in the museum in the Royal Arsenal, and the other two were presented to His Majesty George III. Private Joseph Bethell had charge of the first model,[[52]] and Private Thomas Hague[[53]] of the other two. The large model, from being lodged in a public place open to visitors, was well known. It was an object of considerable attraction, “and was much admired,” so Drinkwater writes, “for beauty of execution and minute correctness.”[[54]] A visitor to the Arsenal in those days corroborates the just encomium of the historian, and thus records his impressions:—

“I walked yesterday morning to Woolwich Warren, that immense repository of military arts, the palladium of our empire, where one wonder succeeds another so rapidly, that the mind of a visitor is kept in a continual gaze of admiration. Should I be asked what has made the strongest impression on mine, it is a magnificent view of the rock of Gibraltar, which was made there, formed of the very rock itself, on a scale of twenty-five feet to an inch, and presents a most perfect view of it in every point of perspective.”[[55]]

Nine years after its placement, the museum in the arsenal was fired by an incendiary, and this celebrated model was unfortunately destroyed.[[56]] The other two models, which held a place in Buckingham Palace for about twenty-seven years, were presented in 1820 by George IV. to the Royal Military Repository at Woolwich. They are now daily exhibited in the Rotunda, and are, perhaps, about the best specimens of workmanship and ingenuity in the place. That of the King’s Bastion is finely wrought, and is really beautiful; that of the north front, bold and masterly. Both claim the particular attention of visitors, exciting at once their surprise and admiration.

1783.

State of the fortress—Execution of the works depended upon the company—Casualties filled up by transfers from the line—Composition—Recruiting—Relieved from all duties, garrison and regimental—Anniversary of the destruction of the Spanish battering flotilla.

For about six months previously to the termination of hostilities, the siege had been carried on with fearful vigour, and the destruction it occasioned, revealed to a mournful extent the efficiency of the enemy’s cannonade. The tiers of batteries on the north front, the whole of the fortifications along the sea face, and indeed every work of a permanent character, were considerably damaged or thrown down. The town too was little better than a vast ruin, and its houses were levelled to the rock, or were left standing in tottering fragments, or at best in their shells, despoiled and untenanted, as so many monuments of an unbounded calamity. The inhabitants, driven shelterless into the streets, were compelled either to leave the fortress, or to locate themselves under canvas amid the general desolation; or to seek a comfortless retreat in the dark and gloomy caverns of the rock. Such was the wreck to which Gibraltar was reduced at the close of the siege, and the work of restoration, therefore, was both extensive and pressing.

The reconstruction or repair of the fortifications and other public works at the fortress, in great part depended upon the company; and the more so, since the numbers of the line competent to work as tradesmen were inconsiderable. Assistance from the civil population of the place was neither given nor expected, as the works in the town secured to them abundance of employment and excellent wages. Policy, therefore, dictated the expediency of paying particular regard both to the numerical and physical efficiency of the company.

At the close of the siege, there were twenty-nine rank and file wanting to complete the soldier-artificers, which number was increased to thirty-nine by the end of May. To supply this deficiency, the Governor ordered the transfer of an equal number of artificers from regiments in the garrison; and on the 31st July, the company was complete. Still, there were many of the men who, from wounds received at the siege, or from privation and hardship, or from exposure in camp, in summer, to the excessive heat of the sun, and in the autumn, to the heavy rains, were unequal to the exertion required from them on the works. Among them were the best masons and carpenters of the company, who were stated to have been “expended” during the siege. Accordingly, on the 31st of August, sixty-seven men, good “old servants, and those that had lost the use of their limbs in the service,” were discharged and “recommended,” whose vacancies were at once filled up by volunteers from the line.

After this desirable pruning, the composition of the company stood as under:—