1853.
CHOBHAM CAMP.
Nature of the ground—Position of the sappers—Their strength—Quarters and cantonments—Equipment—Duties and services—The survey—Marking out the encampment—Forming tanks—Wells—Lakes—Construction of stables—Camp-kitchen—Oven—Incidental employments; Royal pavilion; Queen’s road—Sentry-boxes—Post-office and postal statistics—Intrenchments—Submarine mining—Passage of Virginia Water—Her Majesty’s gracious acknowledgments of the conduct of the sappers in the operation—The second passage of the lake—Also of the Thames at Runnymead—Field-days—Inspections by the Queen—Breaking up the camp—Satisfaction of Colonel Vicars and Lord Seaton.
In common with the army, the royal sappers and miners furnished detachments for the camp at Chobham about four miles from Chertsey. The common where the encampment was formed was an extensive tract of waste, varied with hill and dale. The amplitude of the district, its freedom from enclosures, from wood or bush, or from barriers or hedges to mark the boundaries of individual or corporate properties, and its succession of swelling heights, well adapted it for the purposes of an instructional encampment, and for the campaigning evolutions of a concentrated force, assembled less for military parade and display than to realize in degree some of the chequered difficulties and vicissitudes which fill up the hard and comfortless career of an army engaged in the active operations of war.
The camp was established on the concave edge of the ridge. Each end was advanced, while the centre with a sweep receded, giving to the position a curved line approaching the segment of a circle. The detachment of sappers was tented south of the ‘Magnet,’ the name given to the hill where the head-quarters were established, and next to the left of the Coldstream guards, close to the road leading across the common to Bagshot. The line regiments which succeeded, fell back from the detachment. To be regimentally correct, the sappers should have been on the right of the Grenadier guards, but the position was chosen for the corps because it was central, prominent, and easily accessible to the troops requiring the use of entrenching tools and field implements. The division, consisting of a due proportion of cavalry, artillery and infantry, was under the orders of Lieutenant-General Lord Seaton, G.C.B. The sappers were among the first troops on the ground. As[As] soon as it was determined to form the camp, the party at Sandhurst—one sergeant and twelve rank and file—was directed to suspend its services at the college, and remove to the encamping district. It commenced work on the 21st of April and ceased on the 7th of May, when it returned to the royal military college to carry out the concluding operations of the term. Lieut. Drake, R.E., commanded this party.
To make a hurried survey of the ground one sergeant and eighteen rank and file were detached from Southampton between the 27th of April and the first of May, who, as the service permitted, returned in sections to the ordnance survey. A small party detained at Windlesham for special purposes, in connexion with the military survey, did not quit the district till late in July. Lieutenant Stotherd, R.E., directed the detachment.
Colour-sergeant Henry Brown and twenty rank and file from Chatham, reached the encamping ground on the 9th of May. On the 13th following, this detachment was increased to a company (numbered the 2nd) of three sergeants and eighty-seven rank and file from the royal engineer establishment, under the command of Captain Lovell, R.E. Lieutenant and Adjutant Somerset from Woolwich, joined the company on the 14th of June. The whole were under the orders of Lieutenant-Colonel Vicars, R.E.
To diversify the operations, a pontoon train was ordered to be attached to the division; and on the 20th of June, the sappers appointed for this duty commenced to move in detachments. The force consisted of drafts from the first, fifth, and eleventh companies detached from Chatham, and reached a total of
| 1 | quartermaster—George Allan, |
| 1 | sergeant-major—William Read, |
| 12 | sergeants, |
| 16 | corporals, |
| 3 | buglers, and |
| 156 | privates. |
| 189 | Total |
under the command of Colonel Harry D. Jones, assisted by Captains H. St. George Ord, G. Ross, and W. M. Inglis, and ten subalterns of the royal engineers. The great bulk of the men arrived at Wellington camp on the 22nd of June, on which date the totals of the combined force of sappers counted 297 of all ranks.
A day or two after the pontoon operations at Virginia Water were concluded, the first company, with a detachment of the eleventh, quitted Wellington camp, and returned to Chatham the same day.