| London—Department of Practical Science and Art. | ||
| Shoeburyness. | ||
| Alderney. | ||
| Isle of Wight. | ||
| Greece—Boudroun. | ||
| Danube. | ||
| Bessarabia—Bolgrad. | ||
| Turkey—Scutari—(one corporal only closing up, under Major E.C.A. Gordon, the transfer of the buildings in charge of the expedition). | ||
| Ceylon. | ||
| Bermuda. | ||
| South Australia—Port Adelaide. | ||
| Victoria—Melbourne. | ||
| Sydney, New South Wales. | ||
| Companies | ||
| Service companies | 22 | |
| Companies not formed | 6 | |
| Survey companies | 4 | |
| 32 | ||
| Aldershot—Driver troop | 1 | |
| Total | 33 | |
For Sandhurst a detachment is furnished for two periods in each year for the practical instruction of the cadets in field engineering, pontooning, and bridgemaking. A similar party is also provided for the instruction of the gentlemen cadets at Woolwich; but its services are simply confined to the construction of a few field-works, and the making of fascines and gabions.
It will be unnecessary to allude to the present employment of the sappers further than to notice, that at all engineering stations at which they are quartered, they are appointed to share in the execution of ordnance works.
At Chatham the sappers receive instruction in the field services of the royal engineer department. The course followed is very complete, omitting no detail with which a sapper should be acquainted, and embraces the teaching of a system of pontooning with every variety of means and appliance, also bridgemaking, photography, telegraphy, and the recently-introduced system of rifle science and judging distances. Now that permanent teachers are appointed to the establishment to afford tuition in the elementary principles of fortification, and in plan-drawing and surveying, there is every reason for anticipating that the corps will much improve in the theoretical as well as practical knowledge of its peculiar duties, and be better fitted—when thrown by accident away from their officers into circumstances of difficulty and danger—to apply the resources of their acquirements and experience to master the one and conquer the other.
The four survey companies are engaged in completing the secondary and minor triangulation of Great Britain; the detail survey and contouring of Scotland and the four northern counties of England, and the revision and contouring of the northern counties of Ireland. Occasionally they carry on special surveys for the Government; execute similar work for sanitary purposes for local boards of health, and make surveys of particular towns, parishes, and manorial estates—for municipal service or proprietary record and reference—at the expense of local corporations or of private noblemen and gentlemen. Small parties have at times been employed in making tidal observations for investigating the theory of the tides and for other scientific uses, and also in gleaning much subsidiary information, to be embodied in the Ordnance Memoir of the Survey, should it at a future day be published. In Ireland, the companies did excellent service in collecting various statistical details, and gathering minerals, fossils, and objects of natural history, to assist in developing the investigations of those interesting subjects. In conducting the survey of Great Britain, however, that branch of the duty has been abandoned.
The survey department comprises nine divisions, the headquarters of which are at Newcastle-on-Tyne, Darlington, Carlisle, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Kelso, Ayr, Dumfries, and the Harris isles, a group in the Hebrides. Southampton is the chief station. Special divisions also include detachments employed in the triangulation, perambulation of boundaries, in the duty of levelling and contouring, and hill-sketching, while a strong force is employed in Ireland, with its principal offices at Dublin, Belfast, and Enniskillen. No idea, however, can be formed from this detail of the actual distribution of the survey companies, for the men are dispersed, singly or in small numbers, throughout the United Kingdom. The duty of levelling alone at one time engaged no less than thirty-six detached parties.
The survey is organized and conducted on military principles, “and though the assistance of civilians is largely made available, it is simply to serve as the muscles for the military skeleton. No branch of the duty,” except the engraving, “is performed exclusively by civilians.” The officers of royal engineers have the chief direction. “Their number, however, is by no means constant, but is regulated by the extent of ground under survey, and by the degree of proficiency of the non-commissioned officers.”[[213]]
Until 1843 one or more officers always remained with each great instrument, “but now the non-commissioned officers are so well instructed, that they can observe as correctly as their superiors, and the constant presence of an officer is no longer necessary.”[[214]]
The non-commissioned officers who have, as observers, had charge of the different great instruments are as follows:—
Ordnance 3-feet Theodolite by Ramsden.