A few nights later, the seventh company quitted the heights under an assistant engineer—Mr. Newsome, who afterwards got a commission in the corps—to collect timber to be used for magazines and platforms in the mortar battery at Inkermann. Reaching the village unperceived, several of the men ascended the housetops, and throwing down the tiles, dislodged the beams and sheeting, whilst others ript up the floors and removed everything capable of serving the wants of an insatiable siege. Bearing loads far greater than under ordinary circumstances would have been allotted for carriage, the sappers turned their backs upon that desolate homestead; and, as if driven into the earth, bent under the pressure of their burdens. It was a severe night, and the nipping air so braced up the men that their power to bear was redoubled, but their progress with such weights was necessarily slow. Soon they reached a steep hill up which they clambered with a lagging tread and hard breath, retaining with difficulty their footing, for the slope was slippery. Nevertheless they gradually pushed up, till a heavy shot made them drop their loads, to seek, by prostration, a possible escape. Every one was down in an instant, and the hissing projectile plunged into the hill side two or three feet above the head of private A. Grant. Another such a shot was aimed at them before they reached the summit of the hill, but it soared far too high to do any injury. Quickened by the danger of their situation, and thus feeling less the heaviness of their burdens, the party jogged on at a greatly accelerated pace, and reached the camp unharmed. This was the only instance, it is said, of the Russians firing at night while the Inkermann works were in progress, and was no doubt due to the noise occasioned by the rattling of tiles and timbers in devastating the village.
For some period in the new year, the weather continued so inclement that very little progress was made in the works. On several occasions the line parties could not be employed, for necessity more than commiseration returned them freezing to their tents. Directed by their officers, the sappers, only, held their posts and laboured as best they could against the stinging storms and winds which swept over the frosted hills. Many were frostbitten, several acutely; a few lost their limbs, and one man fell never to rise more. Yet amid all this severity they blasted the rock in many places to obtain cover, made loop-holes, erected gabion revetment, and where the drift had piled the snow in the more important excavations, removed it with almost impossible energy.[[168]]
On the 16th January, there were furnished for the right attack a minimum party of twenty-eight linesmen and two brigades of sappers under Captain Craigie and Lieutenant De Vere of the engineers. Bitter weeks of hard weather had already been experienced, but it required no uncommon spirit and fortitude to bear up against the trials of this day. By employing only a few men and constantly relieving them, it was hoped that the batteries might be kept clear. The men could scarcely feel their tools; their clothes in a few minutes became frozen; and a mass of ice covering those hirsute arrangements to which the dire necessities of war had given rise, all that could be seen of the countenance was a couple of patches of cadaverous skin drawn tightly over protruding bones. With the line the attempt to make way against the elements was given up; but the sappers stood boldly to their work though the drift fell in quite as fast as they shovelled it out, and the snow in heavy flakes beat against them. At length, however, they abandoned, not before they were ordered, a task in which no amount of human exertion could succeed. Hobbling home benumbed in every limb with curdled blood and almost lifeless hearts, they appeared at the tents covered from head to heel in a panoply of ice. What misery followed their return few can imagine. From their great coats they shook the snow in cakes, and tore it from their beards and moustaches; then throwing themselves on their wretched pallets undressed and unbooted, sought repose in a rest that was as cold as comfortless.
Equal suffering was felt on the same day by 56 sappers and 104 men of the infantry dispersed in the trenches on the Inkermann ridge. The latter attended in chief to the removal of the snow, which heaped up in pyramids to the crests of the works, choked every angle of the batteries. The former tore down the walls of a damaged magazine, revetted embrasures, and heightened the parapets. In these services their exertions were much impeded by the storm, and when withdrawn, after six hours’ exposure and labour, they waded to the camp like so many icebergs.
The night of the 25th opened very mildly. Lieutenant De Vere was the officer of engineers on duty on the right attack. He had under him a sergeant and four sappers who superintended forty-eight Turks, as also forty men of the line during the first relief, and thirty the second. The former relief worked five hours; the latter four; the sappers and Turks were on duty the whole period. Sturdy attempts were made to improve some of the slopes in the second parallel, but with a return altogether incommensurate with the labour bestowed, for the frost had so firm a hold of the ground that the pickaxes flew from it as from a rock. Beyond bringing up some hurters for platforms and clearing the drains in the 21-gun battery and boyau leading to the work in advance, very little was effected. By degrees the night fell peculiarly dark, increasing in blackness, till, at one time, it was suffocatingly dense. A man could scarcely discern his uplifted hand. While this phenomenon brooded over the trenches, the cold was intense; it nipt deeply, and the feeling was quite as painful as if the skin were peeling from the face. Work was out of the question. It was as much as the men could do to save themselves from frostbite and numbness, by chafing the face and hands and briskly exercising the lower limbs. In this way the party continued until relieved at four o’clock in the morning, at which hour all were fatigued and worn by their exertions to keep the vital stream within them from curdling.
Up to the 3rd February, the staple work in the trenches was the removal of snow, and then followed an interval during which the men were mid-leg in mud. To remove this obstruction the draining was improved and otherwise facilitated by making additional openings in the parapets to carry off the water and convey it by natural channels down the slopes of the hills into the ravines. These impediments, though they greatly interfered with the general progress, did not slacken the exertions of the sappers, who were everywhere seen building magazines, making traverses, blasting rock, and fulfilling the multifarious details essential to constitute the batteries and their field appurtenances, efficient and complete. So far it was found impracticable to do more than keep the current constructions in tolerable repair. To advance was out of the question. Some French officers of engineers who had observed, from the beginning, the firm and laborious activity of the sappers, spoke of them with admiration. “Des braves soldats, et des bon sapeurs et travailleurs,” was their constant commendation.[[169]]
The first company, 101 strong, under the command of Captain J. M. F. Browne of the engineers, landed at Balaklava on the 7th, where it was retained for engineer services, chiefly in the removal and erection of the huts which had already arrived in great numbers. Its employment at that port was considered sufficient for its wants, and the detachments hitherto cantoned there were recalled to their companies at the siege. Such however was the demand for sappers in front, that the company itself was soon moved to the camp for trench duty.
Corporal James Hawes and private William Pettit had been sent to Lord Lucan’s division to build stabling for the horses. It was intended that Lieut. Lennox should superintend the service, but such was the pressure in front for engineer officers he was removed the next day, and Major Hall of the Bengal engineers, was made responsible for its execution. The sappers commenced work on the 9th December, 1854, and finished on the 11th February following.[[170]] Daily the corporal had under him eighteen troopers—carpenters, masons, and bricklayers, and a force of Turks, for a fortnight, sometimes as many as 200, digging foundations and bringing up stones from an old wall which enclosed a large building—a well—to-do farm-house and grounds—known as Lord Lucan’s depôt. Anxious for its speedy erection Lord Lucan was constantly moving among the workmen, and encouraging the corporal in his exertions and supervision. Wood for a time was with difficulty procured, but when ready, it was brought from Balaklava by the ablest of the cavalry horses, the timbers and planks being slung on both sides of their saddles with the ends trailing through the mud and snow. The first stable constructed was that for the depôt near Kadikoi. It was completed about the 20th December; the stabling then swept in a curve round the slope of the hill, the foot of which run into the basin where the famous battle of Balaklava was fought, and terminated at the road leading towards the Sebastopol camp. The length of stabling and the number of horses hutted when the work was finished were as follows:—
| Length of Stabling | Number of | |
| occupied by | Horses | |
| each Regiment. | accommodated. | |
| Feet. | ||
| Lord Lucan’s depôt | 430 | 106 |
| 6th Inniskillings | 330 | 92 |
| 2nd Greys | 455 | 130 |
| 5th Dragoon Guards | 270 | 78 |
| 1st Royal Dragoons | 390 | 108 |
| 11th Hussars | 90 | 26 |
| 4th Light Dragoons | 120 | 28 |
| 13th Light Dragoons | 153 | 34 |
| 8th Hussars | 129 | 26 |
| 4th Dragoon Guards | 488 | 122 |
| 2855 | 750 | |
This quantity of stabling was about 150 yards less than half-a-mile long. The regiments were brigaded in the above order; the depôt being on the right; the 4th Dragoon Guards on the left. The stabling was not turned out of hand in this consecutive manner; but after the depôt for the sick horses was finished, the hutting for the cavalry was commenced simultaneously for each regiment in proportion to the number of artificers each could furnish. As the work progressed—not waiting for the actual completion of each hut—horses were daily added to the general number accommodated, protected at night by loosely boarding up the open ends to screen the animals from the frost and snow drift. In this way sometimes eleven, sometimes twelve horses were every day picketed under cover. Considering the small force of mechanics employed, the extreme cold of the season, and the dread frost which pinched the men as they laboured, the construction of the stabling was really a masterpiece of rapidity; and Lord Lucan who had just then been recalled, was so well satisfied of the thorough zeal and exertions of corporal Hawes, that one of his Lordship’s last acts before leaving the Crimea, was to send for him on shipboard, and present him, in writing, a testimonial which spoke of the corporal’s qualities and his Lordship’s admiration of them.