242. To this company belonged private James Gordon, who lost an eye by accident in mining for the foundation of the palace, and was discharged at Woolwich 30th September, 1820, with a pension of 9d. a-day. Throughout his service of nine years he was a zealous and exemplary soldier, and bore about him the stamp and evidences of a loftier origin than his humble station gave reason to expect. Singular events in life sometimes occur that make contrasts at times appear almost fabulous. “The soldier turned peer,” has hitherto been the player’s jest, but it has at last become a veritable reality, for in September, 1848, this James Gordon, the private soldier, succeeded, as heir to his grandfather, to the titles of Viscount Kenmure and Lord Lochinvar.
243. Was an excellent clerk, and became in time a quartermaster-sergeant. After his discharge from the corps in 1843, he filled, for about ten years, important offices under the Surveyor-General of Prisons, and died while steward of Dartmoor Prison, in February, 1853, from a cold caught in that bleak quarter. The season was a peculiarly bitter and stormy one, during which three soldiers of the line, on escort duty, in crossing Dartmoor Heath, perished in the snow.
244. Captain Kater, in his account of the operations published in the ‘Philosophical Transactions,’ 1828, p. 153, notices, by mistake, this party as belonging to the royal artillery. There were, it is true, two gunners of the regiment present, but they were employed as servants to the officers.
245. Such was the sense entertained of his services, that Sir Frederick Adam, the Lord High Commissioner, after the detachment had reached Malta, recalled him to Corfu to superintend the civil works on the island. His position thus became anomalous, and, as far as military law and usage are concerned, unexampled for privilege and emolument. Besides his regimental pay, he received an allowance of 3s. 3d. a-day working pay, (afterwards increased to 4s. 3d. a-day,) with a fine residence and free rations for his wife, family, and a servant. He had also a horse and boats at his command, was relieved from the performance of regimental duty, and was permitted at all times to wear plain clothes. Throughout the building of the palace, the Villa of Cardachio, and other important civil buildings, he was the clerk of the works, and Sir Frederic Adam took every occasion of applauding his talents and exertions. In April, 1834, after removal to Woolwich, sergeant Lawson was appointed clerk of works at Sierra Leone, where, after a brief period of service, during which he was bereaved of his wife, he died, leaving nine orphans to lament his loss. His eldest son was nominated to the appointment as the fittest person in the colony to discharge its professional duties, but the youth fell a sacrifice to the climate four days after his father’s decease. The eight remaining orphans were generously cared for by Sir Frederic Mulcaster, the inspector-general of fortifications and the executive of the corps at the Ordnance Office, who obtained from the officers of royal engineers and the civil gentlemen of the department sufficient means to free them from that distress, to which the absence of this benevolent support would have inevitably reduced them.
246. The remains of all were interred with unusual respectability, and the spots where they lie have been marked by neat tomb-stones—a graceful tribute from the survivors to the memory of the departed.
247. Smith, afterwards a sergeant, was a first-rate mason and foreman, and during his service of thirty two years, twenty-five of which were abroad, his abilities, experience, and precision were found of great benefit to the department. At Corfu, Vido, and Zante, he was entrusted with very important duties. Subsequently to his discharge in 1842 on a pension of 2s. 3½d. a-day, he superintended, on the part of the Admiralty, the building of the royal marine barracks at Woolwich by contract, and his vigilance prevented the employment of any of those artifices so commonly resorted to by contractors. He afterwards superintended for the Duke of Buckingham the building of a circular redoubt, partly of stone, for six guns, at his Grace’s ducal residence at Stowe: and in the inscription on one of the piers, his name is thus associated with the work:—
248. Pasley’s ‘Narrative of Operations with the New Pontoons,’ 1824. Sir James Colleton’s ‘Buoy Pontoons.’
249. Shorter was afterwards stationed for fourteen years at Corfu. For seven of his twenty-seven years' service he filled the office of quartermaster-sergeant, and was honoured with an annuity and medal for his meritorious conduct. He retired from the sappers on being appointed a Yeoman of the Queen’s Guard, and was the first non-commissioned officer of the corps who received a nomination to that ancient company. While he was all that could be desired in his corps in respect to efficiency and intelligence, in private life he was a thorough humourist, and the most simple incident, with scarcely an element for merriment in it, became by his droll inventorial recital, a subject of the richest amusement.
250. ‘Report Army and Ordnance Expenditure,’ Minutes of Evidence, p. 617. ‘Naval and Military Gazette.’ Pasley’s ‘Mil. Policy,’ Introd., p. 37, 4th edit.
251. ‘Prof. Papers,’ iv.; preface, pp. xiv. xvii.
252. ‘Morning Herald,’ June 5, 1826.
253. On the removal of the fifteenth company to Canada in March, the Portsmouth station was without a company until November, 1827, when the eleventh company was sent there from Chatham.
254. Yolland’s ‘Lough Foyle Base,’ p. 25-27.
255. Ibid., p. 28.
256. ‘Second Report Ordnance Estimates,’ 1828, printed 12th June, 1828, p. 71, 72.
257. Corporal Daniel Brown.
258. ‘Memoir of a Practice in Mining at Quebec.’
259. ‘Quebec Mercury,’ February, 1828.
260. Was the principal military foreman, and had under his charge from 100 to 200 masons, with their labourers. In the arrangement and management of this working force he displayed much tact and judgment, and his work was always laid out and executed with exactness and success. For his services he received a gratuity and medal and a pension of 1s. 10½d. a-day in April, 1834. He was soon afterwards appointed foreman of masons in Canada, where he died.
262. Joseph Hare had formerly been a sergeant in the corps, and on his discharge in October, 1822, was appointed foreman of masons at Quebec.
263. ‘Second Report Ordnance Est.,’ 1828, printed 12th June, 1828, p. 25.
265. ‘United Service Journal,’ i. 1831, p. 235.
266. Martin’s ‘British Colonies,’ v. p. 79.
267. Was educated for a Baptist minister; but an introduction to Dr. Olinthus Gregory failing to realize his hopes, he enlisted in the corps in 1828. His intelligence caused him to be chosen for the two surveys of Ascension. He afterwards served at Bermuda, and at Halifax, Nova Scotia. At the former station he was wounded by the accidental firing of a mine whilst blasting rock, and submitted to the amputation of portions of his fingers with stoical composure. Wherever he went he took with him a small but valuable library, and was well read in the latest issues from the press. Byron, Carlyle, and some abstruse German writers, were his favourite authors. No man in his condition of life was, perhaps, as conversant with the roots and eccentricities of the English language as Beal, and his mental endowments rendered him capable of grasping any subject, however deep, and turning it to profit both in his duties and in his daily intercourse with men. Late in his service he attained proficiency as a draughtsman, and later still, an enterprising engineer in London submitted a plan for a system of sewers in the metropolis, which was accompanied by a report drawn up by this sergeant. He left the corps in April, 1849, with a pension of 2s.; and the knowledge and experience he had acquired by application and travel, are now being employed, with advantage to his interests, in one of the settlements on the Rideau Canal in Canada.
268. ‘Account of the fatal Hurricane at Barbadoes in 1831,’ p. 89.
269. Opposite the General Hospital, a monumental tomb, erected by his surviving comrades, marks the spot where the mangled remains of poor Shambrook were interred. Ibid., p. 95.
270. Ibid., p. 94.
271. Ibid., p. 97.
272. ‘Prof. Papers, Royal Engineers,’ ii. p. 36. ‘United Service Journal,’ iii. 1838, p. 37.
273. ‘United Service Journal,’ ii. 1839, p. 183, 184.
275. ‘Prof. Papers, Royal Engineers,’ v. p. 157.
276. ‘Select Report Ordnance Est.,’ printed 12th June, 1828, p. 82.
277. ‘Prof. Papers, Royal Engineers,’ i. p. 86.
278. Most of these men received 100 acres of land each as a reward for their services and good conduct, and several were provided with appointments on the canal.
279. Corporal Reed, when returning home an invalid from the Mauritius, was wrecked on the 17th July, 1836, in the barque ‘Doncaster,’ on the reef L’Agulhas, 70 miles S.E. of the Cape of Good Hope, and perished with his wife and family of four children.
280. One quartermaster-sergeant was now reduced, and Francis Allen, who held the rank for twenty-two years, was discharged in October, 1833, and pensioned at 2s. 8½d. a-day, having completed a service of more than forty years. One of his sons, formerly in the corps, is foreman of works at Alderney, and another, until recently, was clerk of works in the royal engineer department, London district.
281. Had served upwards of twenty-two years in the corps; and was a shrewd man and a skilful carpenter and overseer. He was appointed in October, 1836, to Guernsey, where he died in February, 1854. His eldest son, a very promising young man, is now foreman of works in the department at the Tower.
282. Joined the corps a lad, and by perseverance made himself competent for higher duty. To smartness in person he united much activity of body, and in September, 1843, was advanced to the civil branch, first to Corfu and then to Gibraltar; where, in the excess of his zeal on the works, he fell from his horse by a stroke of the sun, and sustained an injury in the head. He is now at Dublin, a lunatic, passing away his life on a retirement of 32l. a-year. He served seventeen years in the sappers.
283. Was an excellent mason and very efficient as a foreman. He had been on a mission to Constantinople, and received from Sultan Mahmoud II. a gold medal for his services. After a service of twenty-one years in the corps, he was, in June, 1844, appointed to Gibraltar, where he fell into habits of excessive intemperance and committed suicide in 1852.
284. As master mason at Vido he constructed the works with remarkable ability. He also superintended the erection of the half-moon battery in the citadel and the defensive buildings at Fort Neuf. Colonel Hassard said, on his leaving, that he hardly expected a man of equal talent to fill his place: and it may be observed that he could speak with fluency the different languages of the civil workmen at Corfu. By Colonel Hassard he was recommended to visit Rome and other places for artistic improvement, but the usages of the service did not permit the concession of this favour. In 1837 he finished the erection of the Longona cistern at Paxo, which relieved the inhabitants from the necessity of taking long journeys to procure supplies. The work was very creditable to him, and gained for him the eulogy and good will of the whole island. To commemorate its completion a procession of the functionaries and élite of Paxo took place, and Wood, the great object of attraction, was warmly greeted by the grateful populace. He became foremanforeman of works in November, 1844, first at Cephalonia, and next at Corfu. His service in the corps was over twenty-three years.
285. He gained his promotion very rapidly, for he was in all respects a very clever artificer and foreman. In the works of the department at Woolwich he was found a great acquisition, and after serving for a few years at Bermuda, where his usefulness was greatly appreciated, he was discharged in May, 1845, and appointed to Canada. There he passed seven years, and is now serving at Gibraltar.
286. A good mason, and bore an unblameable character. After twenty years' service, chiefly at Halifax and Corfu, he was appointed to Malta in April, 1847, where he is still serving with efficiency and credit.
287. When he joined the corps a lad, in 1826, he could scarcely write, but by diligent application he soon exhibited talents which in after years caused him to be selected for important duties. Promotion he received rapidly, and for his intelligence and ingenuity at Sandhurst in 1839 he was honourably noticed in the ‘United Service Journal,’ ii. 1839, p. 420. For many years he served at Gibraltar and the Cape of Good Hope, became a fair draftsman and architect, and in July, 1848, after a service of twenty-two years, was appointed foreman of works, first at the Cape, and then at Woolwich. He is now clerk of works at Shoeburyness.
288. Was a superior mason, and trained before enlistment as an overseer. Most of his military service—nineteen years—was spent on the surveys of Great Britain and Ireland, in which he had made himself so proficient a surveyor and mathematician, that he was one of three non-commissioned officers sent to the royal observatory at Greenwich to receive instructions in the mode of making astronomical observations. This was with the view to his employment on the boundary survey in America, in which he afterwards served for a season with approbation. Colonel Estcourt wrote of him,—“He is intelligent, well educated, and efficient for almost any duty.” These acquirements, coupled with his good conduct, gained for him the vacant foremancy at Zante, in September, 1848; but, it must be added, he commenced the duty in dishonour by unwarrantably drawing a bill on the Assistant Adjutant-General of the royal engineers, and then having run a career of dissipation that nothing could check, was justly dismissed in disgrace in July, 1849.
289. Joined the corps from the military asylum at Chelsea. Until the Russian war broke out he had not been noticed for any particular aptitude or efficiency. When at Constantinople, thrown by circumstances into boundless difficulties consequent on the frightful pressure for hospital accommodation, his services were invaluable. “I have no hesitation,” wrote Captain E. C. A. Gordon, 20th August, 1855, “in saying, that I believe the success of the works that were executed was owing, in a great measure, to his excessive and untiring zeal and activity.” This recommendation was the occasion of his appointment at Scutari, from whence, after the return of peace, he was removed to the engineer department at Devonport.
290. Entered the corps a boy from Chelsea school. With a fair share of common sense, he made the best of his chances as a military foreman at the Cape of Good Hope, where he had served for many years. The recollection of his usefulness at Natal, and in other districts of the frontier, led to his being appointed civil foreman of works in that colony. In 1842, Deary fought in the actions against the insurgent Boers at Natal.
291. ‘United Service Journal,’ iii. 1834, p. 561, and ii. 1835, p. 277, 278.
292. Forbes’s Pamphlet, ‘National Defences,’ 1852.
293. The father of the sergeant-major, who also held that rank in the corps, died of fever at Walcheren in 1809, and, as soon as his son was old enough, he was enlisted into the sappers. His age on joining was only eight years! For a few years he was stationed at Dover, but the chief of his career was passed at Chatham, where, under Sir Charles Pasley, he received that instruction in field fortification and drawing which made his services at Sandhurst so important and successful. Here it should also be noticed that he kept his detachments in the best order; and by their steadiness and willing exertions, they earned for themselves a character which has greatly raised the corps in public estimation.
294. The names of the succeeding acting-adjutants at Woolwich will be found in the Appendix III.
295. Chesney’s ‘Expedition to the Euphrates,’ Pref. x.
296. Chesney’s ‘Observations on Fire-arms,’ p. 197.
297. On the completion of the service, the expedition was favoured with a few days' location at Damascus, where the party removed their beards and moustaches, and for the first time since the commencement of the enterprise, had the advantage of attending church for religious worship.
298. Pensioned in May, 1843, and appointed assistant lighthouse keeper at Europa Point, Gibraltar, under the Trinity Board of London.
299. Greenhill was an intelligent man, pleasantly eccentric, and fond of antiquities. While with the expedition he made a collection of silver coins of remote times, which, with laudable feelings of attachment to his native place, he presented to the Perth Museum. His hair was as white as silver, but his beard, full and flowing, was as black as ebony. To the Arabs he was quite a phenomenon, but the singularity which made him so, did not save him, on one occasion, from being rudely seized by a horde of banditti, and plundered, with almost fabulous dexterity, of the gilt buttons on his frock coat. They had nearly finished their work, when Greenhill tore himself from their grasp, but finding that a button still remained on the cuff, he audaciously pulled off the frock and threw it at them. Suspecting that their work was incomplete the Arabs pounced on the coat, and tearing off the remaining button scampered away to the hills again. When, some years later, the Niger expedition was forming, Greenhill volunteered to accompany it. He had a notion that the service would be one of suffering and vicissitude, and the better to inure himself to its contemplated hardships he submitted his body to rigorous experiments of exposure and self-denial, which, inducing erysipelas, caused his premature decease in October, 1840.
300. Pages 51 and 57, notes, 1st part, 2nd edit. It may be tolerated to mention the instances in which Lanyon figured, to deserve the record. In October, 1828, he finished a parallel in very easy soil of 262 cubic feet in 2 hours and 41 minutes, whilst an able-bodied sapper, unskilful at the pickaxe and the shovel, only completed the same content of excavation in 8 hours and 4 minutes! Thirty men were employed at the same time at similar tasks, the result of whose labours showed that for each man, strong and trained, it required to execute the work an average period of 4 hours and 54 minutes. The other instance refers to his completing the first task of a parallel, nearly 109 cubic feet, in easy soil in 16 minutes. In the Peninsula sieges, no more than 42 cubic feet of excavation appears to have been excavated by each individual of the military working parties as his first night’s work; but at the rate which rendered Lanyon celebrated, an active workman in these sieges ought to have finished his first night’s task in seven minutes! The comparison makes the difference so excessive, that credulity has scarcely sufficient tension to accredit it; but coming from an authority so proverbial for his accuracy, there is no alternative but to wonder at the achievements of the man who so signalized himself as a sapper; and to add, with the Colonel, the expression of mortification, “that the exertions of the British army should have fallen so miserably short of their brilliant exploits in the field.”
301. ‘United Service Journal,’ ii. 1837, p. 279.
302. Lanyon was afterwards promoted to be a colour-sergeant, and passed a few years in Canada during the revolt. On his return, his health, shattered by the exertions of his laborious life, caused him to leave the corps. Obtaining a situation as surveyor on the Trent and Mersey canal under Mr. Forbes, his former fellow labourer, he devoted himself to his new duties with his accustomed zeal: but in a few short months his powerful frame broke up, and he died at Lawton in Cheshire, in June, 1846. The integrity of his conduct and the utility of his services induced the directors of the company to honour his remains by the erection of a tomb to his memory. Here it would be proper to notice, he was one of those brave and humane miners who, in the ‘Cambria,’ bound for Vera Cruz, assisted to rescue the crew and passengers from the burning ‘Kent’ East Indiaman, in the Bay of Biscay, in February, 1825. The souls saved were 551, including 301 officers and men, 66 women, and 45 children of the 31st regiment.
303. ‘Grey’s Travels,’ 1841, i. p. 35.
304. Ibid., 1841, i. p 67-71.
305. ‘Grey’s Travels,’ 1841, i. p. 71-73.
306. Ibid., i. p. 73-76.
307. Ibid., i. p. 79.
308. ‘Grey’s Travels,’ 1841, i. p. 78.
309. Ibid., i. p. 82-91.
310. Ibid., i. p. 93-107.
311. ‘Grey’s Travels,’ 1841, i. p. 248.
312. Ibid., i. p. 93-107.
313. ‘Grey’s Travels,’ i. p. 121-139.
314. Ibid., i. p. 136-138.
315. ‘Grey’s Travels,’ i. p. 144.
316. ‘Grey’s Travels,’ i. p. 154.
317. Ibid., i. p. 153.
318. Ibid., i. p. 158.
319. ‘Grey’s Travels,’ i. p. 209.
320. Auger accompanied Captain Grey on one occasion to examine a sandstone ridge in the hope of finding egress from it. After proceeding some distance the corporal discovered a cave, in which was an intaglio face and head cut in the rock, of rather superior workmanship for an untutored savage; and Captain Grey has distinguished the work by giving a drawing of it in his Travels. Vol. i. p. 206.
Private Mustard, who had been at the Cape of Good Hope, brought his experience to bear upon the present service. He discovered the spoor of a large quadruped with a divided hoof. He had seen like impressions at the Cape. Captain Grey conceiving that Mustard had made some mistake, paid no attention to his report, until he afterwards saw traces of the animal himself. On one occasion the Captain followed its track for a mile and a half, when it was lost in rocky ground. The footmarks were larger than those of a buffalo, and it was apparently more bulky, for where it had passed through the brushwood, shrubs in its way of considerable size, had been crushed aside or broken down. The animal has not yet been seen. Its existence is, however, asserted, from the peculiarity of the spoor. Vol. i. p. 242, ‘Grey’s Travels.’
321. The senior of whom was second-corporal John Down, afterwards sergeant. In September, 1835, while pontooning in the Medway at Halling, he plunged into the river and saved from drowning, by means of an oar, private F. Adams of the corps. He also relieved from a very precarious situation lance-corporal Woodhead, of the Honourable East India Company’s sappers, who had jumped in to assist private Adams. For his courage and humanity the Royal Humane Society granted Down a pecuniary reward, and his officers gave him a military hold-all, containing the usual articles, chiefly of silver, bearing on a silver plate this inscription—“Presented by his officers to private John Down for his gallant conduct in rescuing a comrade from drowning.” This non-commissioned officer served two stations at Gibraltar and Bermuda, and being pensioned at 1s. 9d. in October, 1849, retired to Chatham, where he is now filling the humble but sufficient situation of pump-master to the Barracks at Brompton.
322. ‘United Service Journal,’ iii. 1838, p. 45, 274.
323. Ibid., iii. p. 41, 42.
324. ‘United Service Journal,’ iii. 1838, p. 45.
325. Ibid., iii. p. 40, 41.
326. ‘United Service Journal,’ iii. 1838, p. 271-274.
327. The disbandment of this company was the last in the annihilation of the corps. In that month it disappeared from the muster-rolls of the army.
328. ‘Grey’s Travels,’ i. p. 292-309.
329. Ibid., i. p. 310-328.
330. ‘Grey’s Travels,’ i. p. 329-344.
331. Ibid., i. p. 345-351.
332. Ibid., i. p. 351-353.
333. Ibid., i. p. 351-379.
334. ‘Grey’s Travels,’ i. p. 379-391.
335. ‘Grey’s Travels,’ i. p. 391-396.
336. ‘Grey’s Travels,’ i. p. 396-412.
337. ‘Grey’s Travels,’ ii. p. 6.
338. Ibid., ii. p. 1-31.
339. Ibid., ii. p. 31-37.
340. Ibid., ii. p. 31-33.
341. ‘Grey’s Travels,’ ii. p. 37.
342. Ibid., ii. p. 40-44.
343. Ibid., ii. p. 45-52.
344. ‘Grey’s Travels,’ ii. p. 54-72.
345. ‘Grey’s Travels,’ ii. p. 77-81.
346. Ibid., ii. p. 81-87.
347. Lady Thomas, the mother of the chief, heard of these thoughtful attentions exercised under such trying circumstances, and on the traveller being introduced to her, she acknowledged his kindness with no little emotion, and marked her grateful appreciation of it by a suitable gift.
348. ‘Grey’s Travels,’ ii. p. 87.
349. Ibid., ii. p. 88-97.
350. Both received 1s. a-day each working pay, and for their good and enterprising conduct a gratuity of 10l. from the Secretary of State for the Colonies.
351. Broken down by the service Auger felt it necessary to seek repose in civil life. When sufficiently restored he was engaged to hold a responsible situation in the Pimlico wheel factory, by Octavius Smith, Esq., of Thames Bank, the father of poor Mr. Frederick Smith, who was one of the expedition. This young gentleman offered a noble example of courage, patience, and resignation, but his delicate and shattered constitution not giving him strength to keep up in the forced marches of his chief, he was left, in the painful separation on the 10th April, with the slow marchers under Dr. Walker, and perished in the bush from want and exhaustion, at the tender age of nineteen.
Captain, now Sir George Grey, on visiting England in 1854, most kindly sought for Auger. Naturally the meeting awakened reminiscences of the New Holland struggles; and the chief, at parting, presented his corporal with an elegant silver teapot and stand, bearing this simple but expressive inscription:—“Sir George Grey to his old follower, Richard Auger, August, 1854.”
352. ‘South Australian Register,’ August 24, 1844.
353. ‘Limerick Chronicle,’ 25th May, 1839.
354. ‘United Service Journal,’ ii. 1839, p. 420.
355. Several of those who quitted obtained ready employment on these surveys, and their maps in all cases were of the first class. Mr. Chadwick, in his report to the Poor-Law Commissioners, compared the “non-efficiency of persons appointed to make surveys under the Tithe Commutation and Parochial Assessment Acts, with those executed by privates and non-commissioned officers of the sappers and miners. Out of 1,700 first-class maps, not more than one-half displayed qualifications for the execution of public surveys without superintendence. Amongst the most satisfactory surveys were those executed by a retired sergeant of the corps”—Alexander Doull.—‘British Almanac and Companion,’ 1843, p. 38.