Sergeant James H. Drew—dangerously, in the left shoulder and collar-bone, by a shot.[[163]]

Private Samuel Coles—killed by a round shot, which struck his left shoulder, and carried away his arm.

Lance-corporal William Eastley—severely, in left leg, by splinter of shell.

The second company of 113 strong, under Captain King, reinforced the corps in the Crimea on the 20th December. As the weather was severe and the road to the camp almost impassable, the company was attached to the invalid battalion at the port. Considerations for its convenience did not, however, long prevail, for the want of sappers at the siege brought an order from Lord Raglan to remove the company on Christmas-day with its camp equipage and stores to the right attack. To assist the men on the march his lordship sent 150 Turks to meet them at the French barrier near Kadikoi, guided by sergeant Ramsay and another sapper who had reached the rendezvous before the company. The arrival of the new sappers elicited no concern from the stolid Turks, who, seated on the ground, smoking their fuming chibouks, declined to attend to any orders which should impose on them the labour of carrying the stores. Captain King did his best to beguile their obedience, but without effect. It so happened that colour-sergeant Brown of the company, who had been in Syria, had picked up a smattering of Arabic and knew something of the native idiosyncracy. Permitted by his captain, he tried to win the acquiescence of the Turks by appealing gestures and the stammering out of a few imperfect words, which must have grated on their ears as so much jargon; but his best arts, either to force or delude them, failed to dissipate their obstinacy. In the meantime he told off the officers and men to their duties. Brown wore on his breast three medals, one of which he had received from the Sultan for services in Syria. On its reverse was an Ottoman inscription, similar to the standard impression on the Turkish money. Curious to know the history of the medals, a young officer of the detachment stepped up to the sergeant, and handling the decorations, was surprised to find that one of them was the gift of the Sultan. Naming the fact to a group of his brother-officers, it quickly spread among the men, who, thinking that Brown was invested with authority from his Majesty, bounded to their feet, loaded themselves like mules with the equipage, and paced away with their burdens at a warm and earnest rate, stopping not, though fatigued, till their arrival at the sapper camp before Sebastopol. What was more remarkable in the affair, was the refusal of the Turks, though indisposed to give their labour without adequate compensation, to take tickets for working pay. Lieutenant Ewart, at a loss to conjecture the reason, whether to ascribe it to disaffection or disinterestedness, was not a little tickled when informed, that the demonstration arose from the Turks regarding the sergeant as a pacha.

In the early part of the siege, from the afflictions of a hard campaign, great difficulty was found in procuring a sufficiently strong party from the line for trench duty; and to make up for the deficiency a regiment of Turks, quartered at Balaklava, was appointed to the front. From their idle habits and indulgences, seldom could more than 400 men be brought together for work, which number was still further frittered away by disease and death to about 200. From the lack of land transport this force was usually absorbed in the carriage of stores to the batteries. To stimulate them to exertion, the sappers who superintended them were empowered to give such of their parties as deserved it, a ticket for pay, or even two, if their zeal were conspicuous; but to withhold the recognition, if from indolence they did but little to further the service. A sergeant of sappers—who was cashier and paymaster—always gave a day’s pay for every authorized ticket presented to him; and this system, acting like the prick of a spur on the sides of a sulky hack, moved them to the exercise of an amount of effort which it would have been next to impossible to have wrung from them by any other scheme.

Reduced when hostilities commenced to the minimum of peace requirement, the sappers, whose duty it was to execute any description of work which war or the elements might originate, were unable to spare a man from the trenches for the pressing services of the rear. The troops of the line, decimated and exhausted, were utterly inadequate to meet any extra contingency; and thus arose a crisis in the affairs of the campaign which led to the gravest considerations and misgivings at home. So terrible had been the weather, so destructive the storms, so complete the disruption of the communication between Balaklava and the camp—in consequence of the road having become a swamp—that no resource was left to the War Minister but to seek for remedies by the employment of novel establishments. At his call a corps of hardy navvies sprung up in a day, and controlled by civil superintendents, untrammelled by the rigours and nice exactions of military discipline, the Balaklava railway was commenced and carried through with so much despatch, that no one regretted the temporary creation of a force which in its wonderful zeal relieved the overworked and perishing troops of one of the most appalling miseries of the campaign.

So obvious were the benefits evolved from this experiment, that when the engagement of the navvies had ceased, the idea of perpetuating the existence of so useful a body in an altered character assumed a permanent form. Though ready, the navvies were rough and undisciplined, bearing no connection with the great military expedition of which they formed a part. This gave rise to the Army Works Corps, for the execution of all extra services not properly belonging to the battle-field, the trenches, or the operations of an army. It was arranged, it would seem, that their duties should embrace the construction of roads and drains, preparation of sites for encampment, erection of huts, &c. The pecuniary advantages offered to candidates were of such a high standard that an enthusiastic recruitment was the consequence. A few weeks were more than enough to embody the corps, which consisted principally of navigators, and about a fifth of mechanics of various crafts. Overseers were engaged to superintend the gangs, with designations suitable to their avocations, and a civil engineer commanded the whole, with the relative rank of colonel. Later the force formed an important branch of the army. Fostered and shielded by the ministry, it was equipped with gear and working accessories of the most perfect and costly kind; and before the close of the war, it had grown into an authorized body of 3,470 officers and men, requiring for its sustenance in strength and efficiency no less a sum for one year than 408,595l.

In time, the formation of this working force was much commented on in the House of Commons. While it was regarded—with insufficient reason perhaps—as a reflection on the efficiency of the royal sappers and miners, there were not wanting advocates—and none more earnest than members of the ministry, particularly Mr. Monsell—to vindicate the character of the corps, and to compliment it, in terms full of appreciation and praise for its usefulness at the siege, and its capability, with augmented numbers, of performing any amount of work which the terrible exigencies of storm or war might render indispensable.[[164]]

1855.
1st January-8th April.
SIEGE OF SEBASTOPOL.

Sanitary state of companies—Warm clothing—Collecting detachments in England to forward to the siege—Services of party with Omar Pasha’s army—Granted medals by the Sultan—Mishap on the Tchernaya—Destruction of the village of Inkermann—Exertions of sappers in the trenches during snow storms—Anecdote, Corrigan’s charcoal—Obstructions to the trenches by mud—Arrival of first company—Hut stables for the cavalry horses—French build No. 9 battery; right attack—Conduct of corporal Lendrim—Sappers share of the work—The parallels-Huts—French sappers entertained at Southampton—Casualties—Reforming works to counteract enfilade fire—Nos. 7 and 8 batteries, left attack—Moving guns to the front—International parallel; zeal of non-commissioned officers—Destroying a rifle screen—Completion of the parallel—Death of captain Craigie—Sir John Burgoyne’s farewell address—Sorties—Bearing in a wounded Russian—Augmentation to corps—Driver troop—Efforts to obtain recruits; militia men—Sergeant Docherty captured on suspicion of being a Russian spy—Countermine under cave magazine—Casualties—Zigzag from right rifle pit in advance of second parallel; wound sustained by a singular agent—Death of Lieutenant Bainbrigge—Third parallel, right attack—Progress of the works—Faultless energy of sappers in building a two-gun battery in the third parallel, left attack—Two corporals singularly escape from a shell which destroyed the magazine they were erecting—Embrasures of No. 7 battery opened—Preparations for a bombardment—The weather.