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.

From the laborious nature of the duties in the trenches, the sappers were absolutely ragged, and as the frost had set in, late in December, with unusual rigour, it is surprising they possessed stamina and spirit enough to bear up against the exposure to which they were subjected. Nevertheless the sickness was trifling compared with the appalling details of casualties reported in other corps; for on the 1st January, out of a strength of 639 non-commissioned officers and men, only ninety-two were in the field hospitals and at Scutari. Diarrhœa, fever, and frostbite were, however, very prevalent during the month, and the increase in the sick was considerable. In that period no less a number than 273 had been under treatment, exclusive of the invalids sent to the hospitals on the Bosphorus. The number available for the siege, including the sick present, was 519. The remainder were detached to Balaklava, the Monastery of St. George, Gallipoli, Scutari, Constantinople, and Bucharest.

As soon as it was determined to provide the troops with winter clothing, an ample supply was furnished for the sappers and miners at an expense of 4,260l., which enabled the following articles to be issued to each man:—

• 2 pairs of worsted stockings.
• 2 pairs of woollen drawers.
• 2 pairs of woollen mitts.
• 2 woollen guernseys.
• 1 woollen neck-comforter.
• 1 blanket-cover.
• 1 railway-wrapper.
• 1 fur cap.
• 1 overcoat.
• 1 pair of long boots.

All the articles were excellent in quality, strong, warm, and adapted to the Crimean climate. Previous to the supply arriving, the sappers, to a certain extent, were furnished with buffalo skins for beds, heavy Turkish gregos with hoods for trench duty, rugs, Jerseys, &c.

Driven for men to send to the war, some of the stations by degrees were either wholly denuded of their forces or considerably reduced. The half company at Hong Kong was first removed, landing at Woolwich on the 3rd January. During its service in China its character was so uniformly exemplary that Sir John Burgoyne complimented the men in a general order. On embarking for England Captain Whittingham, the commanding royal engineer, made a flattering report of their conduct. “The proofs,” he wrote, “are patent in the few deaths, in the few cases of intermittent or other climatal diseases, and in the absolute cessation of courts-martial, although the ratio of exposure to a tropical sun—the engendering cause of disease and drunkenness—has been far greater than those of other troops and has almost exhausted the stamina of the men.” “Their extreme good conduct” was also the subject of a report from Lieutenant and Adjutant Lloyd, 59th regiment, who commanded the troops on board. A few years ago three privates superintended under the colonial clerk of works the erection of the Government offices. From December, 1852, three other men were employed under Mr. Cleverley, the surveyor-general, as overseers in building the Government-house; and on quitting the island, he testified to the very great benefit that had been derived from their supervision of the works. For more than eleven years a small force of the corps had served in China, the first party having landed in October, 1843. The total number which had been sent there amounted to 113, of whom 33 died, 27 were invalided, 1 was discharged in the colony and died, 7 deserted, 23 returned to England by reliefs, and 22 reached home on the final removal of the detachment from Hong Kong.

The small party at Spike Island was withdrawn the same month. Four months later the Melbourne detachment returned to England; then followed the seventeenth company from the Cape in July; and gradually Gibraltar, Corfu, and Bermuda were left with only invalid nuclei unfitted for the stern vicissitudes of campaigning but able for the works of the stations. A detachment of unmarried men was also ordered from the remote settlement of the Swan River, but arrived too late to share in the glories of the siege. This shearing, however, furnished but a unit of accessible sappers—for it brought to this country a number of men who required to be physically renewed before sending them on a hard service, where the trials of weather alone were likely to break them up without subjecting them to the severities of the trenches.

Two sapper divers landed at Balaklava from the ‘Robert Lowe,’ on the 4th January, under the command of Captain De Moleyns, having in charge Mr. Rendel’s loaded cylinders to be applied for blasting the sunken ships at the mouth of the harbour.^[165]

The small detachment under Major Bent, of the engineers, joined at the camp about this time from Bucharest, marching with the Turkish army; and the following dispatch from his Highness Omar Pasha, so complimentary to its efficiency, was communicated by Lord Raglan to the Minister of War:—

This encomiastic testimonial was apparently insufficient to mark the appreciation of their military services, and decorations were added to commemorate the campaign. In the brigade orders of the 23rd July, 1855, the Sultan’s gift was thus alluded to:—“The Turkish government having awarded a certain number of medals to the officers of royal engineers and the royal sappers and miners who were engaged in the campaign of 1854 on the Danube, the Major-General commanding has much pleasure in publishing the following extract from a letter addressed by his Highness Omar Pasha to Lieut.-Colonel Simmons, Her Majesty’s Commissioner with the Turkish forces.”

“I beg you will distribute these medals amongst the officers and men according to the accompanying list, as a mark of the great satisfaction my Sovereign has always experienced from the manner in which they conducted themselves whilst sharing the dangers and fatigues of the campaign of 1854 against our common enemy.”

The non-commissioned officers and men who received the medals were—

These sixteen sappers were the only British soldiers honoured with the distinction.

There existed an intention for a time of attacking the enemy across the Tchernaya; but as the bridge which spanned it, stript of its planking, was impassable, it was necessary, before providing an expedient for the passage of the troops, to ascertain the characteristics of the river and take its soundings. A portion of the seventh company had constructed a raft of four common sized beer barrels, lashed together in pairs and overlaid with an ordinary superstructure of balks and chesses. Early in January, in the dusk of the evening, twelve sappers under Lieutenant Drake, R.E., left the Inkermann camp with the small float, carried shoulder high by four men at a spell. Though the moon had risen, it was heavily beclouded, and the party was covered from Russian observation by the hills which, on either side of the winding road, rose sometimes sloping, sometimes abruptly, to their summits. The stream was nearly two miles away, and the carriage of the raft, over a broken country, where every step was fraught with danger and the supports distant, was no light enterprise. At length the bank was reached. It was then dark; but an occasional gleam of the moon, lit up the men and threw a pale streak across the water, which though it assisted to add a pleasing feature to the picture, was altogether unsuited to the secrecy of the service. Another long black cloud now spread itself over the meek orb, and no sooner was the little raft launched, than Lieutenant Drake, followed by corporal Ramsay, leaped upon it, and booming out took the required soundings and measured the breadth of the river. This done Lieutenant Drake landed on the opposite side and went forward to reconnoitre. Not long had he been away when one of the leaky barrels, becoming filled with water, drew the head of the float under the stream. Feeling that in all probability the whole raft would sink, Ramsay called lustily for Lieutenant Drake to return. If he came instantly there was a chance of recrossing in safety. Ramsay’s voice was powerful; and ringing among the hills and over the quiet stream, it was loud enough to collect a swarm of Russians at the spot, but none fortunately were seen. Lieutenant Drake, hearing the summons, quickly reappeared, and bounding from the bank to the sinking raft it capsized, pitching both into the river among the piles of the old bridge. It was excessively cold, snow was on the ground, and the water—though not iced over—was freezing. The officer swam ashore, but Ramsay, entangled among the guys of the raft could not strike out. On gaining the bank Lieutenant Drake asked whether his partner in adversity wanted help, and was about to re-enter the river to afford it, when the party hauled on the ropes, and Ramsay holding on with a benumbed grip to the raft, was pulled to land. Theirs was a miserable march to camp, but cold and frozen as they were, their unfailing spirits sustained them, and the corporal was more than compensated for his mishap by the reception he met with from a subaltern of the corps, who throwing aside the conventionalities which separate the soldier from the officer, gave him a place in his tent and entertained him hospitably. Three months after, this non-commissioned officer was killed at the Inkermann light-house battery.

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:—

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.

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.”

Next day the trenches were visited by Major-General Jones in company with Generals Niel and Bizot of the French engineers. It was then determined to open a new approach on the right of the advanced mortar-battery in the third parallel to run into the middle ravine, and there connect with the French parallel from the Inkermann attack. In the following night the work was commenced with a force of 28 superintending sappers, some of whom were early dismissed from day duty to keep their energies intact for the new work. The line furnished two reliefs of 285 and 211 men, for each of which the duration of work was about five and a half hours, but for the sappers eleven. As if by the touch of a magician’s wand, though the night was excessively dark, 444 gabions were lodged along the outstretched arm of the parallel. The sappers led the way, leaving the line to seek the cover; and in this also the former afforded active assistance when they had completed the deposition of the gabions. In some parts the cover was very inadequate, owing to the rocky nature of the ground, and the work was somewhat interrupted by an alarm which drove the working parties to their arms. With all this obstruction the progress was surprising, and corporal Alexander Ramsay of the corps—a man of cultivated ideas and daring demeanour—was particularly useful during the night in leading and instructing the men. Two other corporals—William Wilson and Kester Knight—displayed so much “zeal and capacity” in the operations that, noticed by Lieutenant-Colonel Tylden, they were promoted to be sergeants, and a like advancement would have been conferred on corporal Ramsay, but he early fell an example of bravery and devotion.

Before commencing the work, Majors Gordon and Tylden went out to trace it, taking with them lance-corporal Evans^[172] and private William Harvey, as also a man of the 34th as a sentry. Having gone as far as they intended, the Majors went away alone to reconnoitre, leaving the men lying on the alert at the end of the tape. In a few minutes the officers returned, and all went forward some distance to a semi-circular rifle-screen built of loose stones about six feet high. This was to be destroyed with all possible haste and the utmost quietness. Pushing into the screen, the sappers disintegrated the stones and handed them to the officers outside, who laid them gently on the ground. Not one was permitted to drop. So went on the demolition till about three feet of the wall had been taken down, when, some Russians having crept up to occupy the screen, and finding from the grating of the stones, which they could distinctly hear, that strangers were present, fired a volley and killed the sentry, who was shot in three places. At the instant, the unarmed sappers vaulted over the masonry, but Harvey having leaped against Major Tylden, both rolled into a stony hollow which had been broken by quarrying. Beyond a bruise or two they felt no inconvenience from the fall. Quickly regaining their feet, they bounded swiftly onwards with Major Gordon and the corporal, and returned to the trenches followed by a stream of fire which miraculously missed them. Of Harvey the official record runs thus:—“He has done good service on different occasions, particularly in assisting to trace works near the enemy’s sentries.”

In the succeeding night the ground was further opened for 200 yards, but a sortie obstructed the operation; and on the return of the Russians they coolly bore away with them, as trophies of their boldness, between forty and fifty unwieldy gabions to embody in their own defences. On the 13th the enemy’s fire on the extended parallel was so annoying the linesmen were withdrawn, leaving two brigades of sappers to continue the work, but they, too, were eventually recalled to save them from unnecessary danger. Night after night the work on this long lean arm of the parallel was pushed forward, and as much accomplished in daylight as the Russian fire permitted. Much blasting was required to deepen and widen the trench, and on several occasions none but sappers could be allotted for the work. Once, when so disposed—the sappers being concealed behind a bend of the revetment—some Russian riflemen stole up in daylight to the head of the trench and rolled from the trace several baskets, which they bore away as far as they were able. Nothing could have been more tantalizing than this audacious proceeding, but there was no help for it, as the sappers were unarmed. Gabions being scarce, cover was obtained by building strong stone rubble walls. With entire success and without material loss, though close to the enemy’s riflemen and exposed to shot, shells, and grape, the Anglo-French parallels were connected on the 17th March.

A few days prior to the union of the international trenches, Captain Craigie of the Engineers was killed. He was returning with his sappers from the 21-gun battery, and had reached the middle ravine, when a shell from the Malakoff burst in the air, and a splinter striking him in the back he fell dead. He was preceded by his bugler—Armstrong—and followed by corporals Kester Knight and John Rowley. When the shell burst, the two non-commissioned officers, seeing the splinter coming, moved on either side, and it passed between their heads, fatally alighting on the Captain. His party carried his body to the camp, and he was mourned by the men as an officer whose kindness had been shown to them in a thousand inobtrusive ways. Just before he dropped he had been conversing with his non-commissioned officers on the best mode of avoiding an exploded shell, but a bursting missile defies all theory and experience, and makes the escape of life depend not on the adroitness of poor humanity, but the will of Providence. The fourth company, which the captain had commanded for several years, and over whose interests he had watched as a friend and father, erected a small monumental cross to his memory at the spot where his remains were interred.^[173]

Private Henry Masters was wounded on the 14th.

Sir John Burgoyne, who held a consultative appointment, and shared in degree with Lord Raglan the responsibility of the siege, was, though an aged General, ever present to direct the various works, and on resigning his connection with the army, he issued the following parting address to the corps:—