[126]. Served in Turkey, Bulgaria, Wallachia, and the Crimea. Was promoted for his gallantry at the battle of Giurgevo, and died of wounds received in the trenches before Sebastopol, in May, 1855.
[127]. An accident occurred to this soldier at Virginia Lake, which but for his presence of mind was likely to have terminated fatally. The waggons were parked on the slopes of the water, and it being desired to pack the stores on them, private Collins with three other privates rushed to the spot, and put a waggon in motion. Collins laid hold of the shafts,—the others pushed in the rear. By some mistake the men in rear quitted their hold, and the waggon thus left to itself rolled with great velocity down the slope, forcing Collins on with it. His situation was now very critical; but seeing at once the danger and the way to escape, he plunged from between the shafts, in an oblique direction into the lake, and saved himself by swimming, while the waggon with its own impetus dashed onwards, until its speed was spent by the resistance of the water. Had he not thus extricated himself, he would have been tumbled over by the waggon, and most likely drowned under its body. Served afterwards in Turkey, Circassia, Bulgaria, and the Crimea. Was present at the bombardment of Odessa, capture of Redoubt Kaleh, and at the siege of Sebastopol, and bore the character of being a good sapper and a first-rate man in bridge-making and boat services. By his comrades he was respected for his wit and spirit. His constitution giving way in the trenches, he died at Kululee on the 2nd April, 1855.
[128]. Under an officer, he has charge of the preparation of the 10·56 feet plans of Plymouth, Stonehouse, and Devonport, and of the office for the examination of plans and documents antecedent to the engraving of the work.
[129]. He also assisted Captain Fowke, R.E., in testing the comparative qualities of various woods, products of New South Wales, British Guiana, and Jamaica, which had been exhibited at the Palais de l’Industrie. “In conducting and registering these experiments,” wrote Captain Fowke, “I was assisted by corporal James Mack, of the royal sappers and miners, who displayed the greatest zeal, intelligence, and ability throughout.”—‘Reports on the Paris Universal Exhibition.’ Part i. 1856, p. 407.
[130]. Of the connection of the sappers with a service so interesting, the following anecdote is an illustration. A “foreigner of distinction” paid a visit to the Palais de l’Industrie. With Captain Fowke he rambled over the courts, and while the Captain was explaining to him, among other matters, his experiments on the strength of woods, they reached the spot where corporal Mack, in the Captain’s temporary absence, was carrying them on with all the intelligence of a scientific man. A little further on was another sapper. This was sergeant Jenkins, who, for the visitor’s information, cleverly expatiated on some philosophical apparatus in his charge. A red-coat in the building was an object of decided attraction, and the foreigner looked with no little satisfaction at corporal Clabby, who was then making a minute and accurate survey of the position of the cases and objects in the Exhibition. He had scarcely withdrawn his attention from the draughtsman, when a fourth sapper in the person of corporal Key, the indefatigable overseer, came in for a share of the foreigner’s approbation, and he expressed to Captain Fowke his amazement that so many difficult and important duties could, with such efficient results, be intrusted to them. But the measure of his astonishment was not yet full. There was a magnificent organ, built by Bevington and Son, of Greek-street, Soho, in the Palais, which had gained the first-class prize, on which, while the distinguished foreigner was taking his tour, an amateur with a small body and a young and pleasing countenance was performing. Drawn by the power and grandeur of its tones, the Captain and his friend repaired to the compartment where it had a locâle, but on turning the corner, instead of finding, as was expected, a “Maestro,” or “un professeur anglais,” seated before the instrument disporting himself with the hauteur of a musical genius, the foreigner was struck by seeing another sapper, complacently playing with the proficiency and grace of a modest professional. “Mon Dieu!” he cried, as if the varied employments of the British sappers were too exuberant to merit a less startling exclamation, “Encore un sapeur du genie!” And the foreigner went away with a most excited opinion of the talents and attainments of the corps, of which the men above named were the creditable representatives. The military Mozart on this occasion, who strangely enough was named after that “divine composer,” was Ludovico Amedius Woolfgang Hart!—a name due less to his English than his German extraction. As young Hart had opportunity, he applied himself to the great organ with its three rows of keys, pedals, and accessory movements, containing also eighteen hundred and eleven pipes and forty-two stops. His performances comprised selections from Handel’s Messiah, Haydn’s Creation, and other oratorios. Once when Her Majesty was passing through the English department he took his place at the instrument, and made the Palais swell with “God save the Queen;” and on another eventful day, when the Emperor of the French was visiting the Exposition, he struck up the national anthem of France—“Partant pour le Syrie.”
[131]. The first time the Emperor visited the portion of the gallery allotted to Great Britain, he condescended to scan the survey contributions. As he approached the compartment, sergeant Jenkins saluted him. In return the Emperor took off his hat and bowed; and, as if to make the sergeant feel perfectly at home in his presence, smiled and seemed in delightful humour. After glancing at the six-inch map of Edinburgh, over which was written in conspicuous letters, “Ordnance survey of Scotland,” His Majesty exclaimed, “Ordnance survey of Scotland! but where is the map of England?” Jenkins explained that he had several specimens of the one-inch map of England, and invited the illustrious Monarch to inspect them. “O! certainly;” and His Majesty graciously accompanied the sergeant to the interior of the little court taken up by the survey specimens, where, in a measure, His Majesty was isolated from the crowd, which, with straining curiosity and awe, followed the imperial footsteps. When examining the one-inch map of North Wales, the Emperor traced his finger over the neighbourhood of Snowdon, and observed, “the shading of the hills is beautifully executed.” The sergeant then directed the Emperor’s attention to the plan of St. Andrews on the five-feet scale—a map very much commended for its finish by all the eminent engineers who had examined it. His Majesty appeared highly pleased with it, and then succeeded a string of questions which the sergeant—a stranger to the parasitical language of the courtier—answered with the honest pertinence and refinement of a man of good common sense. Among the interrogatories was one in which the Emperor enquired,—“Has the whole of England been surveyed on the six-inch scale?” In looking at the great theodolite, the Emperor evinced unequivocal interest; more so, when the sergeant informed him it had been in use above sixty years, and had operated on the summits of the highest mountains and most of the important trigonometrical stations in England, Scotland, and Ireland. Of its action, adjustment, and peculiarities the Emperor asked several questions, and called a scientific attendant, to whom His Majesty explained, in French, what the sergeant had communicated to him. The Emperor then examined the models of Arthur’s seat and the Merrick hills, and also that of the zenith sector, with all of which His Majesty was well satisfied. Surrounded by a vast assembly, with heads uncovered and in breathless admiration of the magnanimity of the incident, thus was passed an interview of about a quarter of an hour, between the Emperor of the French and a British soldier!
[132]. Of the party, Clabby, Hart, and Kelly only were at the fire. They attached themselves to the engine nearest the building; so close was it, that Kelly was struck on the shoulder with a piece of burning timber. At one time the pipe burst, spirting the water over the workmen. One of the Zouaves was up to his knees in water trying to mend the fracture, when corporal Clabby went to his assistance, and taking the handkerchief from his neck bound it round the pipe, and partially removed the annoyance. This little act, so gracefully and promptly performed, met with a shout of applause from the multitude, and before the ringing of the acclamations had subsided, an officer from the Marshal of the “Garde de Paris” made a note of their names; with what object, perhaps, the future may tell.
[133]. The ancestry of the Bradfords can be traced, traditionally, to a very remote period. It commenced, as far as the family information extends, with Ranulph de Broade Forde—since contracted into Bradford—who in 1191 served under Richard I. in the Holy War, and fought at the siege of Ascalon in the third crusade. Apparently, the patronymic of the Broade Fordes was derived from a fortress held by Ranulph as the heir of his race, which defended a ford at the confluence of two streams important in border warfare on the marches of Wales.
Without attempting to renew the links in the broken chain of genealogical succession, it seems that in the direct line from Ranulph sprang John Bradford, who was born at Manchester about 1522. At an early age, under Sir John Harington, Knight of Exton in Rutland, “treasurer of the King’s camps and buildings,” and chief engineer at Boulogne, he served as paymaster at the siege of Montreuil in 1544. Three years later he was a student of common law at the Inner Temple, where he became a convert to Protestantism; and relinquishing, in 1548, his secular intentions, became a student at Cambridge, and soon after a Fellow of Pembroke College. Ridley, Bishop of London, ordained him deacon in 1550, and next year he was installed as a prebendary of St. Paul’s, and appointed one of the six chaplains of Edward VI. to preach in the distant parts of the kingdom. In 1553, a month after the king’s death, and the accession of Queen Mary, Bradford was a State prisoner. The truthfulness of his preaching, his great popularity as a minister, and Christian firmness in promoting the reformed doctrines, did not suit the religious régime which, under the bigoted intolerance of the Queen, had commenced to disturb the fabric of the reformation. On a trumped-up charge of sedition and heresy he suffered two years incarceration in the Tower and King’s Bench, and, at length, refusing to retract his pious convictions, was martyred, by burning, at Smithfield, 1st July, 1555.
From a brother of this “champion of the faith” lineally descended the Rev. Edward Bradford, rector of Buckland Filleigh.