On the 13th February, an 8-gun battery, No. 9, was commenced in rear of the right advanced parallel. This was occasioned by the intended occupation of the Mamelon as an emplacement for a battery to be used by the French against the Malakoff. Scarce in linesmen, and Turkish co-operation having dwindled to a few files, the allies undertook to rear the work. Guided by the sappers to the site, 200 Zouaves broke ground, and the cover obtained by them in the night was excellent. Their recklessness of toil displayed a strong contrast to the conduct of the English working party who, disregarding the orders of the officer in charge, did little, on relieving the French, to add to the extension of the works. The duty of the latter simply included the carrying of gabions, which, “chiefly by the exertions of the sappers,” were lodged in front of the battery as a temporary screen to the men shovelling in front of the parapet. Without this screen the workmen could not have stood their ground in the day-time.
Next morning, lance-corporal William J. Lendrim was selected as the sapper superintendent of the battery by Lieutenant Anderson, R.E., who directed the service. One hundred and fifty chasseurs were told off to it. A vigorous firing on the work for more than an hour knocked over several of the gabions, and to fill up the breaches was a species of forlorn hope, as two of the Frenchmen were killed and four others wounded in the trench. Corporal Lendrim, an intrepid and skilful man, accustomed to lead, zealously pushed on from gap to gap, and by his exertions every gabion was firmly replaced. The French officer in charge of the chasseurs witnessed with admiration the corporal’s “coolness and good example,” and applauded them to the British engineer.
There were other obstacles to contend with in the construction of this battery from the presence of rock, the stubborness of which required the aid of sappers to blast it; and on the 15th it is recorded, “that considering the darkness of the night, they worked very satisfactorily in mining.” On the 19th the initial part of the battery being completed, the French were withdrawn, taking with them an enviable character for their well-directed efforts and good behaviour. For the sappers were reserved the dress and finish of the battery, the formation of the embrasures, the construction of the magazines, and the general drainage; and as time wore on, when fitted up with its armament, it played an active part in the subsequent siege.
Already the right attack had finished its second line of trenches. The approaches and cuttings between the parallels, bore, in their ensemble, the appearance of a leaning tower with a battlemented crown. The left attack broke ground, on the 14th of February, for its third parallel. Approached by regular zigzags, the works exhibited none of that intricacy which, on the right was unavoidable, from the ever changing enfilade of the enemy’s constructions.
When it was decided the army was to winter in the Crimea, no delay occurred in obtaining wood for housing the troops. Bell tents were considered unsuited to a region subject to heavy storms of rain and snow and high freezing winds. Accordingly on the 9th November, 1854, Lieutenant De Vere and four sappers were sent to Sinope to procure boards and scantling for huts. Timber grew in abundance along the shores of the Black Sea, and quantities of it were shipped for Balaklava. As the troops were absorbed in trench and other duties, and hired labour could not be had, there existed insuperable difficulties to constructing the huts. When this was known at home the Government entered into contracts to provide a large number of wooden buildings cut into planks and complete in fitments, which, with printed instructions and a few sappers conversant with the mode of putting them together, might readily be erected by unskilled workmen. Thirteen sapper carpenters were selected for the service, who, for a time, were stationed at Portsmouth and Southampton; and after making themselves acquainted with all the details of the structures, embarked singly or in twos, in some of the vessels which conveyed the prepared timbers to the Crimea. The first parties left about the 5th December, 1854; the last arrived at Balaklava on the 22nd February following; and those men were distributed through the camp to aid the building of the huts, which, from the utter failure of the means of transport and the want of strength in the men to bear them to the front, progressed at so tardy a rate, that the spring was far advanced before the whole of the troops were hutted.[[171]]
On the 27th February, the sappers had laid some platforms, opened embrasures, and drained a portion of the magazine in the 8-gun battery on the right attack, when some accurate firing into it, killed one man and wounded six others, two of whom were sappers. These were privates David Cuthbert severely in the right arm by the explosion of a shell, and Thomas Gilchrist slightly in the left hand by a rifle bullet. The majority of the line quitted and several hours’ progress in the work were lost in consequence. The sapper brigades in no degree deterred by the casualties, continued, with their usual good luck, to exert themselves at the revetments without further accident.
Many portions of the right being enfiladed by the enemy’s riflemen posted on the spur leading to the Mamelon, a new trace was adopted to counterbalance its effects. It was begun on the night of the 27th, and before the morning seventy yards of ground were opened, and a dead mound of earth more than four feet high faced the enemy. With the same object parapets were heightened and those in advance thickened, whilst a zigzag leading to the advanced parallel was changed in its direction. In this zigzag, to suit the changed character of the trench, the parapet close to the well—for there were wells in the excavations—was pulled down and a drain built through it. Stones also were placed at easy distances, as in an Irish bog or shallow stream, to enable the men going for water to keep their feet dry and prevent the destruction of the sewer.
In the night of the 2nd March the sapper brigades made a road for the passage of ordnance into the eight-gun battery, and two were brought in and mounted by the artillery. At daybreak the opening was blinded with gabions and fascines, and continued so masked till the time for passing the remaining armament into the battery. Next night, with a line party, they commenced in front of the third parallel on the left attack an elevated sand-bag battery, technically termed No. 7, for six guns. Captain Hassard directed the work. The approach to it was by flying sap. About 10,000 sand-bags were laid during the darkness on open ground without shelter. The cover exceeded five feet, and its thickness at bottom six feet. Earth was thrown among the layers of bags by a strong force of shovellers from the outside. The soil was of a clayey nature, and made the work compact. Three traverses were built and two magazines well advanced. The embrasures, formed as the work proceeded, were blinded just before the relief, so that at daylight the battery seemed like a common mound only. It, however, told its tale to the enemy. The first relief gave 165 men of the line, but only 90 for the second. The number of sappers in the battery were about 120. The 17th, 57th, and Rifles worked very well, but the contingents from other regiments left with discredit. “The sappers worked admirably throughout the night without being relieved.” One regiment in the following night, though remonstrated with by General Barnard, laboured very indifferently. By the 7th the parapet of the battery had attained an average width of 16 feet, and the right epaulment had risen to an altitude which afforded excellent cover to the sappers constructing the magazines during the day.
Four days after was commenced No. 8 battery of the same attack for eight guns. The strength of the sappers employed at it varied each relief, but at one time there were 40 of the corps engaged in its construction. It was traced by Major Bent and Lieutenant Graham on a shoulder of the right of the third parallel. Lance-corporal George H. Collins, a very apt sapper, was very ready in measuring the distances, and afterwards in distributing and superintending the working party. When finished, the battery was an excellent field structure, and seemed furbished up like a model for the inspection of the curious. Its slopes, levels, and angles were true, its magazines well built and strong, and the genouillères were revetted in a way to admit the guns being run well up the embrasures, the cheeks of which were protected by hide bags. This, as well as No. 7 battery, were completed by the mutual co-operation of the line and sappers, the latter taking those portions which demanded art and dexterity. The rolling of heavy ordnance into these batteries on ponderous carriages, down narrow trenches deep in mud and mended with fascines and stones, was a very difficult operation. Now and then the ropes broke, and the strong iron hooks which connected them to the wheels of the carriage, yielding their tension to the strain, became straightened like bars, and jerked from the eyes in which they were locked. To make sure of the cut through which to pass the gun and its carriage in the dark was a masterpiece of dexterity; and in one instance a 68-pounder was pulled so wide of the mark that the sappers were obliged to enlarge the gap in the parapet. This was a far easier expedient than backing the gun to make another run for the opening. It took about eighty artillerymen, and no end of assistants, to man the drag-ropes and pass the great siege gun in question to its platform in No. 7 battery.
Meanwhile the brigades on the right attack were no less zealously occupied in furthering the general works. Among a wearying number of incidental services, they made magazines, platforms, and sand-bag traverses. They also formed rifle-pits on a knoll 130 yards in advance of the right mortar-battery, where, the ground being rocky, protection for the light troops was procured by stones and sand-bags built on the crest of the pit. On the night of the tenth the sappers toiled for ten hours unrelieved, and quitted the works with the commendation of their officers for having worked “remarkably well.”