Whether or no these preliminary exertions verified the information which had fallen by the chances of war to the assailants it is needless to inquire, but the resolution had gone forth which doomed the docks to destruction. Accordingly on the 24th October, the sinking of shafts was resumed by forty-eight sappers commanded by a subaltern, who took possession of the large storehouse vacated by the previous detachment. A few companies of the 18th foot were also appointed to assist, a portion of whom from the 2nd of November was domiciled with the sappers. Another reinforcement of forty-eight men of the corps under a subaltern was, about this time, turned into the shafts; and as the demolition progressed, and the line miners began to show expertness in the duty, some of the best of them toiled equally with the sappers in the pits and galleries.
Late in November a demand for more help was met by the addition of sixty sappers to the docks. There were now 156 men of the corps and 150 of the line in the Karabelnaia. A party of linesmen was also sent up daily from the camp, so that the working means at the disposal of the engineers was swelled to a force of about 500 of all ranks. This perhaps was the greatest number employed in the demolitions. Nine hours the men worked daily; but on the 24th November, as important events were evolving which seemed to urge a rapid completion of the service, the whole 24 hours saw reliefs of sturdy men in the mines. Each relief was on duty eight hours. Now it was that serious impediments occurred from the presence of water in the shafts and galleries, but the chief result of these untoward obstacles was the exercise of an energy as extraordinary as continuous. When, however, about the 17th December, the frost set in and the miners suffered severely, night duty, except on pressing occasions, was given up; but to make up for this remission, the sappers and infantry miners toiled in reliefs thirteen hours a-day. In the middle of January, 1856, the 18th foot was relieved by an equal number of the 48th, and the ninth company, brought from Kamara, took the place of the 11th. The second, fourth, and eighth companies of the corps also shared in the operations. Major Nicholson was the superintending engineer.
The docks were situated on the southern extremity of the Karabelnaia creek, and their destruction was a mutual operation between the French and English. For their share the allies took the two outer or northern locks with the three interjacent locks; while that apportioned to the English were the three inner or southern docks. Between these structures was an immense quadrangular fitting-basin rising nearly 30 feet above the level of the Black Sea, supplied with water from the Tchernaya, pouring into the reservoir through aqueducts and tunnels. Thus provided, it fed the five docks; and the outlet for the waste run between the two French docks by a channel with a series of prodigious locks into the sea. Of this basin the French was charged with the destruction of the half contiguous to the northern docks, and the English that adjacent to the southern.
Of the nature of the duty which had devolved on the assailants some idea may be gleaned from a consideration of the dimensions of the docks. Stretching a line longitudinally from end to end the mean distance was 205 feet. The width was 92 feet; the depth 29 feet. The floors measured 190 feet long, compressed at the sides into a width of 40 feet. The revetments at the top were nearly 7 feet. The French docks were each 188 feet long and 92 feet broad. All the works were of the most solid kind. The hills out of which they were hollowed were of clay abounding with rock. They were thus in great part embedded in rock or hewn out of it at every point where the geological strata favoured the adaptation of natural expedients to a great end. Hard limestone was abundantly used in the work; so also was a material of a softer kind in unexposed situations. Granite of different colours in heavy blocks was used in all parts where resistance and impregnability were essential. In their massiveness and durability both docks and basin seemed likely to tire the patience of old Time himself. The steps—of the heaviest masonry—cut around the elliptical hollows, forming them, as it were, into amphitheatres, were “fit for a giant’s staircase.” But what seemed impenetrable to the wear and tear of ages and innocuous to those influences which insidiously eat away vitality from the mightiest fabrics was, in a few short months, torn up by mines and dashed into ruins as prodigious perhaps as those of Nineveh. Curved iron gates, unrivalled for size and strength, and covered with thick iron sheets overlapping each other and rivetted like the plates of a leviathan boiler, closed the entrances to the several docks. They might have served to turn back the sea in some turbulent strait; and when it was required to move a single pair of them as memorials of Russian greatness and our own energy, it took no less than 140 artillerymen under a skilful engineer, Lieutenant-Colonel Bent, to lift them from their position, not in their entirety, but rib by rib and sheet by sheet.[[203]]
To accomplish the overthrow of such stupendous works shafts and galleries were sunk and driven in various places to different depths and lengths. The shafts behind the revetments were at least 30 feet deep; those running along the floors not less than 12, whilst others sunk in salient spots varied between the extremes. The shafts were more than 70; the mines not less perhaps than 150. Culverts were also employed as galleries where their use promised to be of advantage. All the chambers held specific charges calculated with extreme nicety. In each case the result was a more than tantamount destruction with the least possible show. The English docks being four feet below those of the French were never free of water. There the land-springs, seeking the lowest levels, emptied themselves. To cope with a difficulty of such magnitude it needed more than the resource of the bucket and pulley; and yet these simple means were not less serviceable than more ambitious appliances. Pumps of various kinds were employed, but failing in the deep shafts to raise the water to the summit, their use was confined to the pits of the floors, where they seemed more successful. In the deep shafts the run of the bucket was incessant, for a suspension of labour, however short, was likely to be attended with an influx that would have overmatched any exertion. “The sappers,” observed ‘The Times,’ “experienced great difficulty in firing the mines in consequence of the water running in on them from the clay, but with their usual energy they worked away and formed the mines.”[[204]]
The works pressed on satisfactorily till the 16th December, when there occurred a storm which had been ushered in by two or three days’ heavy rain. As may be expected, the shafts were inundated; those behind the revetments were filled nearly to the surface; some had twenty feet of water in them, while the bottoms of the docks were covered with the tempest rain to the height of two feet and more. Against such obstacles who could bear up? And yet none concerned in the works succumbed. To clear the water from the deep shafts with the means at command was impracticable. It was therefore permitted, in great part, to waste away; while the primitive service of the bucket and pulley aided somewhat to reduce the quantity. On the floors of the docks coffer-dams were constructed to detach the several shafts from the general flow, and pumps were worked by stout hearts to draw off the water; but the pressure for progress did not allow of this tedious process, and luckily the expedient was hit upon of cutting a channel through the revetment wall of the entrance into the feeder of each dock. The French miners made the desired opening, and the docks were almost drained. Still the shafts were full, and it was only by a sustained outlay of unrelaxed effort that the water was sufficiently reduced to enable the sappers to go below and fashion the galleries.
It was a great blow to the works was this storm. Everything was put back by it. Some of the shafts were given up as beyond all power to continue them, and many of the galleries, almost completed, had to be driven anew. Choked up with mud, the difficulties of working them were tenfold more trying than before. To master them the labour was as unsparing as incredible. Even in home works, away from the annoyance of an enemy, to overcome such obstacles would have been regarded as extraordinary. In such circumstances it needed artificial stimulants to maintain the strength and spirit of the men and offer an antidote against ills to which they were constantly exposed. An extra half-gill of rum was therefore issued daily to the sappers and linesmen, under the sanction of the Commander-in-Chief. But it did little to check the sickness which the miseries of the enterprise gave rise to. A nipping frost having succeeded the storm added greatly to their risks. Working in wet shafts in a close atmosphere, with vapour rising in streams from the depths, weakened the men by excessive perspiration. It is also recorded that many of them on reaching the surface from the galleries became frozen. Colds were so frequent and coughs so general that the barrack was like an hospital. Dredging-boots were scarcely any protection to the sappers and line miners, for the water poured in over the thigh tops and kept the limbs in perpetual slop. The few who were covered in miners’ suits were hardly better off than their comrades. To them was assigned the most laborious portions of the work. Driving wet and muddy galleries was a relief compared with the operation of stowing away the powder in the chambers. Inclosed in three or four boxes or casks, the charge—sometimes weighing with its cases as much as 320 lbs.—was pushed on skids to the extremity of the narrow gallery. It required a series of plunges to move the burden to its place and give it a compact standing in a safe corner; and this frequently was done while the miners were up to their waists in water. Soaked to the skin, and coated with clay, it was a wonder that the workmen did not flinch from such hardships and break up under such trials. He indeed was a strong man who had worked his way through the entire demolition without a chest complaint or a pulmonary disease!
The blowing up of the docks was controlled by circumstances. It was hoped to level at a crash the entire works by a simultaneous burst of the whole magazines. The intention, however, was shown to be abortive by the constant intrusion of water into the mines, which necessitated the less striking resort to a piecemeal demolition. The explosions were numerous, but three or four large ones were ventured which amply repaid by their success the risk of the experiments. Several failures took place, as was natural in an undertaking so great, from the unavoidable dampness of the powder and accidents to the agencies of ignition. The quantity of powder used was 49,384 lbs. or more than 22 tons! On the 6th of February the last explosion took place, and the memorable docks of Sebastopol were numbered with the structures of the past.
Who could look over the ruins without melancholy reflections on the insignificant origin of such a catastrophe? At an outlay of treasure that would have made an ordinary kingdom bankrupt those once superb docks were built. It took years to construct them, but a few months were more than enough to blot them out of the roll of Russian wonders! Uprooted from their foundations and tumbled over in the hollows, scarcely any two blocks maintained their former fellowship. Counterforts, copings, quoins, steps, and the general masonry were broken up and hurtled into strange heaps. Mingled with the tumuli were fractured beams and timbers, massive frames, and portions of the ponderous gates. Here and there were torn sheets of iron, splintered pintels, fragments of heavy posts, broken ribs, and bolts like crowbars, with clump heads as large as sledge-hammers. Sticking up in the confusion were the angles of mammoth blocks of granite, some red, some blue, which by their garish aspect in the midst of so much devastation gave a play of vividness to the desolation. All that remained were a few dingy cantles of wall smoked by the explosions tottering upon the corners of some broken steps, waiting for a gust[gust] of wind to blow them down. As if to remind one of the incalculable loss to which the aggressive pride of Russia had given rise, there in all their vastness stood the scarps of the hills in which the overthrown docks had been reared. Fissured and caved they resembled frowning cliffs eaten away by a surging sea and the wear of centuries. Blackened craters and chasms intervened among the piles of fallen greatness and helped to augment the sternness and solitude of a demolition which was as complete as engineering skill could make it.
Beyond the ailments induced by wet, cold, and fatigue, the sappers quitted the docks, having suffered but triflingly from accidents. Private William Harvey was injured while at the bottom of a shaft by a man of the 18th regiment falling on him. A private of that regiment fell, on the 10th December, at night, into a pit upwards of thirteen feet deep and three parts full of water. His breast struck against an obstruction, which took away his consciousness. Corporal Cray, whose recklessness of self repeatedly gained him praise, descended the shaft to rescue the miner. The water was thick and discoloured with clay. Unable to feel the man, he was obliged to come up to recover breath. The second descent took him to the end of one gallery without success, and the third gave him the only hope of finding him in the other gallery. The struggles of the linesman had carried him in that direction, and Cray, almost exhausted, bore him to the top of the shaft, but life was extinct. Cray—poor fellow—ready in every danger, and foremost in many, was not, though he had escaped often and strangely, invulnerable against exposure, and the result of his gallant efforts was an attack which, reducing his voice to the feebleness of a whisper, sent him an invalid to England.