Statistics—Andrew Anderson—Misconduct of the sappers—Non-commissioned officers and men who received honours, appointments, or commissions for their gallantry or useful services—Sergeant Samuel Cole—Field electric telegraph—Private Fox taken prisoner—Exploring the batteries for machines and electric wires—Commence batteries near Fort Paul—Sappers removed to the Karabelnaia—Reinforcements from Gibraltar and England—Driver troop to Scutari—Sapper quarters in the docks—Huts—Companies attached to divisions of the army—Expedition to Kinbourn—Marshal Pelissier’s acknowledgment of services of the sappers attached to it—Sir William Codrington assumes the command of the army—Explosion of the great French magazine—Exertions of tenth company in arresting the fire—Gallantry in preserving the Inkermann magazine mill—And removing live shells from the vicinity of the flames—Construction of a magazine for small-arm ammunition—Stone bridge over the middle ravine—Barrel causeway across its swampy bottom—Another reinforcement from England.

The siege concluded, it may not be amiss to afford a statistical recapitulation of matters connected with the contest which concern the royal sappers and miners. From the commencement of the campaign nine companies were sent to Turkey and the Crimea, as also small parties for especial services. Some of the companies served for a period in the unhealthy region of Varna, and detachments were employed on the Danube, at Bucharest, and in Circassia. The united sapper force despatched to the East up to the 9th September, 1855, counted a total of 935 non-commissioned officers, privates, and buglers. Of this number 887 reached the Crimea, the remainder being retained in Bulgaria, Scutari, and Gallipoli for particular services, or on account of sickness which invalided them to England.

The casualties were as follows:—

Those invalided amounted to 119 non-commissioned officers and men, of whom 4 died in this country and many were discharged, one of whom, private A. McConnell, had lost his feet from frost-bite. Out of a force of 935 of all ranks there were therefore 445 casualties.

None of the corps were killed or wounded at the Alma, Balaklava, or Inkermann. With the exception of a proportion of those who died from cholera, all the rest of the casualties occurred in the Crimea. Nearly all the men that were wounded were struck, strangely enough, on the right side. The men drowned were wrecked in the Black Sea during the storm of the 14th November, 1854. Private James Deacon was frozen to death; corporal Thomas Leonard, lance-corporal Joseph Gordon, and privates Jonas Cole and John Porter died from frost-bite; those found dead were privates A. Anderson^[198] and John C. Guy; and those missing were privates Thomas Callaghan, John G. Williams and James Thomas. The two former were lost after the battle of the Alma. Suffering from cholera and unable to march—one on the banks of that stream and the other on the Katcha—they were left behind to embark for Scutari, and most probably perished in some miserable nook on the Kalamitean shore. Thomas was sent an invalid from the camp to Balaklava on the 2nd November, 1854, and is supposed to have been nipped by the frost, and died away from the track of men from cold and exhaustion. A strict but fruitless search was set afoot to ascertain their unhappy fate.

Four privates of the corps deserted from its ranks in the Crimea, but none of them entered the service of the enemy. Intrusted as the sappers were with important duties, and its privates even invested with authority in the trenches, it may occasion surprise that the self-respect arising from these circumstances did not check them from the commission of gross delinquencies. Like their brothers in arms, too many of them fell by similar temptations, and the inordinate use of strong drinks—an habitual and disgusting practice with several—subjected a large catalogue of offenders to that description of disgrace which the enlightened humanity of the country had, after years of agitation, reduced to a few stripes. It was found one of the chief difficulties of command to arrest the pitch to which the vice had risen, and Colonel Gordon tried the effect of a monthly exposé. After showing that for three months ending 30th November out of an average force of 687 non-commissioned officers and men no less than 11 in every 100 per month had been awarded punishments of various kinds, he thus wrote in his orders of the 3rd December, 1855:—“Such a record would bring shame on any corps on home service. In the field it brings positive disgrace on the royal sappers and miners. Till the flood of drunkenness has abated,” continued the Colonel, “and there remains no longer a necessity of recording our disgrace as a means of helping to remove it, a similar return to the above will be published monthly.” And what was the result? The habit of intoxication still went on; and in March, 1856, when the last account was published, the number of instances of drunkenness out of a strength of 766 of all ranks had swelled to 16 in every 100 men per month, or 4 daily, on the whole strength. A public charge like this it would have been unjust to suppress; and though the light it affords is rather a lurid one, it may still serve as a beacon to avoid, in future, the shoals of excess, and lead to the improvement which the stern confessions of history are intended to effect. Though the truth is stated, there is no ground for supposing that the corps was more addicted to intemperance than other troops. Its offences had been recorded with almost conscientious scrupulousness; and if in other regiments the same strictness has been followed, a comparison, could such be instituted, would not yield a result unfavourable to the sappers.

As a rider to these frailties, let it be repeated how heroic was the general demeanour of the men in the batteries and trenches. In the order alluded to occur these sentiments:—“Colonel Gordon has great satisfaction in knowing there are plenty of men who have nobly done their duty in the field, and who have conducted themselves well amidst the prevailing drunkenness.... Great is their merit. Their good example is more than ever required, and Colonel Gordon thanks them; and he begs them to persevere in upholding the reputation of the corps.” These pages testify to many individual cases. Not a few were rewarded with pecuniary grants; many received promotion, and a chosen number received medals and honours for their gallant services before Sebastopol.

Those upon whom were bestowed medals for “distinguished service in the field,” accompanied by gratuities, were:—

Those who obtained the French military war medal “for valour and discipline,” were:—

The non-commissioned officers created Knights of the Imperial Order of the Legion of Honour of France by the Emperor Napoleon III., as a mark of His Imperial Majesty’s approbation of their distinguished services before the enemy during the war, were:—

Those decorated by Her Majesty with the Victoria Cross for acts of bravery performed by them before the enemy, were:—

Noted for their care and intelligence in the discharge of difficult and trying duty, the following non-commissioned officers, recommended by Sir Harry Jones, were appointed by Lord Panmure to be conductors of engineer stores, with the salaries affixed to their names.

To hold these non-combatant situations, they were, so to speak, seconded, and retained possession of their regimental allowances; but when no longer required for the appointments, they fell back into their old ranks in the corps.

Sergeant William Sargent, who from the first had been employed as a military foreman, in carrying out the works at Constantinople and other places on the Bosphorus, was discharged from the sappers, and confirmed as a civil foreman of works in the royal engineer department.

And to this list must be added the names of non-commissioned officers who were commissioned by Her Majesty into the Land Transport Corps. They were—

When the honour was conferred on the first two sergeants, Colonel Gordon of the engineers thus alluded to it in his brigade orders of the 1st December, 1855, “These are the first non-commissioned officers of sappers who have been rewarded with commissions for their good and distinguished conduct in the field. Having contributed by good conduct and gallant bearing to raise the reputation of the corps of royal sappers and miners, they carry with them to the honourable positions to which they have been raised, the best wishes of Colonel Gordon and of all the corps under his command.”

The roll of non-commissioned officers and men who deserved substantial appreciation for their merits might have been extended ad infinitum, but the distinctions offered by the Government and the French Emperor were confined to the limits which these few paragraphs detail.

Here may be a fit place to allude to an institution of the war, suggested by Major-General Wylde, which was found an important auxiliary to the army. The field electric telegraph, used for the first time in any campaign, came first into operation a few months after the great storm of November, 1854, and was placed under the direction of Lieutenant Stopford. From him it passed, in the early summer, to Captain F. Du Cane, and in September, 1855, to Lieutenant Fisher, Captain Du Cane having been compelled to relinquish it on account of ill health.

By degrees the ramification of the lines extended to eight stations, each connected with the other by under-ground wires, laid in furrows about eighteen inches deep, and afterwards covered up. The several lines made up an aggregate length of nearly 24 miles of current. The stations were at Head-quarters, Kasatch, the Monastery, Engineer park, Right attack, Light division, Kadikoi, and Balaklava. Various obstacles occurred to delay the establishment of the stations, such as snow storms, hard frosts, and heavy rains; the failure of the plough to dig the trenches in which to deposit the wires, and the consequent resort to the employment of working parties, already weakened by overwork, insufficient diet, a dreadful winter, and unnumbered hardships and trials. These, however, at length, were to some extent overcome; and the first telegraphic communication was opened between Lord Raglan’s head-quarters and Kadikoi, a distance of three miles, on the 7th March. Other stations opened in quick succession, and that formed in one of the caves between the two first parallels of the right and left attacks commenced work on the 8th April, 1855.

The offices were the purest make-shifts—the strongest contrasts possible to the stately establishments of home. Those of the engineer park and light division were in bell tents; that near St. George’s Monastery was at an inn which, when the monks were the occupants of that isolated cloister, formed a sort of refectory for those abstemious celibates. Four others were in huts, and the last was in a small cave in the Woronzoff ravine, partially protected from a daily fire by a traverse of sand-bags. Private East, both night and day, in storm, rain, and wasting heat, occupied alone that dismal recess, sleeping, when he could get the chance, on a shelf of rock. So used indeed had he become to it that few men in camp were more indifferent to comfort, few less disposed to cavil with disadvantages and hardships than he.

Until the beginning of August the telegraph was exclusively worked by sappers selected from the companies in the Crimea, who were taught the use of the instruments and signals by corporal Peter Fraser—a pupil of the establishment at Lothbury. The instruction was necessarily hurried, but the men proved to be so quick and intelligent that they were ready to commence their novel duties when the first station was opened. As manipulators most of them were very good, particularly the buglers, two of whom, John Filkin and William Algar, could read sixteen and a half words in a minute! From the single needle instrument, which was used at all the stations, this was regarded as a feat in telegraphy, and probably the best manipulator in London would scarcely come up to this test of sharpness of sight and fleetness of reading.

Two sappers generally were attached to each station, but two or three corporals and as many buglers attended to the necessities of head-quarters. Each office had a single needle instrument, alarm, and batteries, besides a supply of zinc-plates, acids, &c. The duties of the sappers comprised the manipulation of the instruments, attending to the batteries, sending, receiving, and writing all messages and despatches; recording such as required to be noted, and filing others. Though carried on amid the excitements and turmoil inseparable from war, and the pressure arising from haste and a variety of complicated contingencies and emergencies, the details of the system, including the registry, check, and examination, were, all things considered, very complete. Two orderlies from regiments of the line were allotted to each station to take the messages to their destination; at the head-quarters there were three.

The messages were on every class of subject from the affectionate inquiries of anxious parents and friends to the stern orders for bombardment or assault. Nothing that was required to be communicated rapidly—from those who had authoritative access to the offices—was conveyed by any other agency than the field telegraph. All despatches to and from the Commander-in-chief on matters in which secrecy was essential were in numeral cypher; all else were couched in brief but expressive English. An exposition of all the vouchers and messages which passed in and out of the different offices would form a curious episode in the history of the war. In August, 1855, one of the months of the siege in which the cannonading was the hottest, the number of messages received at head-quarters was 464, and the number sent 402, being an average respectively of 15 and 13 a-day. The station in the caves of the Woronzoff ravine, which opened on the 8th April, 1855, received, up to the conclusion of the siege, 160 messages, or one a-day. To keep on perpetual watch for this singular dispatch was enough to wear out the most exemplary patience; and when to this tiresome experience was added the miseries of a dank vapoury hole in winter and a broiling furnace in summer, it may occasion but little wonder that the occupant of the cave was not very remarkable for sobriety. Sergeant Anderson, the senior non-commissioned officer at the instruments, was stationed at St. George’s Monastery. He received the despatches from England through the submarine line from Varna, and telegraphed them to head-quarters. In like manner he received those from Lord Raglan and the staff, and also the Sardinian Commander-in-chief, through the head-quarter office, and conveyed them to the submarine line for communication by way of Varna to England and elsewhere. Corporal Fraser, the chief telegraphist, was in charge of the manipulators at the head-quarter office. The extra allowances paid to the sappers for this duty ranged from 1s. to 5s. a-day. Those who received the last rate in succession were sergeants Anderson and Montgomery and corporal Fraser.

Every day the sappers were at the instruments, and each, turn about, continued at work throughout the night. It was, however, permitted to the men on night duty to snatch, if they could, any intervals which might offer for rest; and so rolling themselves up in their blankets they commenced a series of forty winks in front of their apparatus. No dependence could be placed on a single minute for tranquillity; for in all probability just as the sapper had made himself as comfortable as his limited means allowed, and he was beginning to close his drowsy lids in grateful unconsciousness, he was again forced to his seat by the alarm bell, which continued its shrill noise until the disturbed manipulator communicated with the station from whence the ringing originated. This however was barely regarded as a hardship; but it really amounted to one when the sappers who had been relieved from duty were driven from their slumbers to assist their comrades. Delays were inadmissible, and no inconvenience, circumstance, or right of remission from labour, could be pleaded as an excuse to stave off applications which pressed for communication. Disturbances like this occurred as many as three or four times in a night, and to shake oneself from sleep when nature was well nigh spent for the want of it, demanded a strength of effort and purpose which few men would be willing to exercise. And yet the operators were seldom indisposed to give their services however unreasonable or litigious were the calls for them. What with constant watching, the irritating interruptions of sleep, the tedious care to prevent error, coupled with the anxieties which each felt for the success of a new and rather tender undertaking, it is somewhat remarkable that none of the sappers broke down from their vigils and overwork.

It not unfrequently happened that the gutta-percha covered wire which carried the electric stream from station to station became broken. The causes were various and even curious. Digging in the neighbourhood to find roots for fuel, or by traffic, was a common cause of interruption; burying horses’ offal, &c. was another. Often the line was cut by designing men, who, having abstracted a few yards of it, withdrew the wire from its covering and used the hollow gutta-percha tubing for pipe stems! Once the current was stopped on the Kazatch line by the industry of an insidious field mouse. With great difficulty the site of the disconnection was detected, when baring the line, it was found that the wire, which passed through a nest of mice, was bitten in two by the matron of the haunt. Occasionally accidents to the line took place during bombardments by round shot and splinters of shells. Not without some trouble were the lines repaired. Two interesting instances have already appeared in the narrative.

From August the telegraph was mutually worked by civilians and sappers. The Government having sent out a civil superintendent and ten civil telegraph clerks to the Crimea, they were added to the staff under Captain Du Cane, who distributed them to the several stations—one sapper and one civilian to each. The men whose services were thus dispensed with, and who had assisted to give efficiency by their care and attention to a delicate experiment, were sent into the trenches. It was a needless arrangement this, for the sappers at the time were performing the duty with every satisfaction. Whatever may have induced the incorporation of the civil element with an undertaking that had been organized and carried out as a military duty, it is enough to show the interest with which this scientific appendage to the army was held by the Ministry at home; and whatever success may have resulted from the combination of the two elements in working the field telegraph, is due equally to the intelligence and efficiency of each, but more so to the officers whose anxious superintendence and incessant watchfulness, gave vigour and all but perfection to the system they devised and directed. In time the entire charge of the field telegraph was confined to the sappers, and the civilians on being removed joined the submarine branch.

The officers who commanded the sappers on this duty have thus spoken of their aptitude and labours:—

Lieutenant Stopford writes: “The sappers showed great quickness in learning the use of the instrument, although not one of the men, except corporal Fraser, had any knowledge or indeed had seen the single needle instrument before; therefore to him is due the credit of teaching all the manipulators. Sergeant Anderson was in charge of the telegraph party and one of the first to learn the use and working of the instrument.” When reporting upon the operations generally, Captain Du Cane commended them for their exertions in these words: “I consider great credit is due to the sappers for the prompt manner in which the repairs”—to the wires—“were executed.” Elsewhere in his report he mentioned, “that the sappers evinced considerable intelligence in working the telegraph, and although in one or two instances misconduct occurred, yet on the whole they discharged their duties in a satisfactory and efficient manner.” “The working of the telegraph,” says Lieutenant Fisher, “was done in the most satisfactory manner by men of the royal sappers and miners, many of whom, more especially the buglers (four), showed a very great aptitude for learning the manipulatory process. Fifteen of the corps had been wholly initiated in the art, and,” continues the officer, “from the great pains taken by corporal Peter Fraser in their instruction many of the men and boys have become excellent telegraphists.”

Early in the morning of the 9th two sappers actuated by an inquisitive feeling approached within a short distance of Fort Nicholas, which was still in possession of the enemy. One was a bugler, the other a private. The latter had armed himself with a Russian musket. Having satisfied their curiosity they were waiting a chance conveyance to take them over to the English side of the dock-yard creek. Private George Fox descrying a well-laden boat in the distance went in its direction. It pulled towards him, and the sailors stepping to land courteously gave him a place among them. They turned out to be Russians, and Fox was thus a prisoner of war. After seeing the boat push off and waiting about an hour the bugler returned to camp. Rejoining the corps by exchange on the 26th January, 1856, Fox went into hospital five days after and died on the 14th February. Worthless as a man from his dissipated habits, Colonel Gordon however placed it on record that he “was a most valuable sapper in the trenches.” He was the only sapper taken prisoner during the war.

After the troops had occupied the Redan, small parties under Major Montagu and Lieutenant Lennox of the engineers, and Captain Penn of the royal artillery, were employed in examining the ground for explosive machines and searching for galvanic wires leading to magazines. Several were discovered in different places where it was expected the assailants would enter in storming the works.

Detachments of sappers, assisted by working parties and sailors, commenced on the evening of the 11th the construction of a battery for two ninety-five cwt. guns on the right of St. Paul’s battery. Some little progress had been made in rearing it, when the work was abandoned. A fortnight later a more extensive battery near the ruins of Fort Paul was begun, for ten guns to sustain a contest with Fort Sivernaia on the opposite side of the harbour. It was built in a bakery, the rear wall having been thrown down, leaving the under portion of it as a parapet, while the front wall, retained as a mask which a few shots would have crumbled into ruins, concealed the nature of the battery from the enemy. The firing from the northern works was nevertheless pretty brisk, but harmless, and the work proceeded steadily. Other objects, however, being determined on, the battery, though its embrasures were partly cut and revetted, was never armed.

In the meantime the eighth company and a detachment of the 3rd Buffs moved into the Karabelnaia to be employed in the destruction of the docks, and were quartered in the storehouses of the dockyard, which being exposed to the Russian fire from across the water, was occasionally visited by the intrusion of shot. Two or three of these missiles plunged into the barrack-room but providentially not a man was injured by them.

Demands for men became so urgent as the siege progressed, that, while waiting for reinforcements from England, Gibraltar was called upon to furnish as many sappers as possible from its effective rolls. Accordingly on the 29th August, 48 men under Lieutenant Cumberland embarked on board the ‘Orinoco,’ and landed at Sebastopol six days after its fall.

Under Lieutenant Edwards, 51 non-commissioned officers and men from Chatham arrived at Balaklava in the ‘Adelaide’ on the 18th September; and then followed on the 5th October, the disembarkation at Scutari of the twenty-third company—93 strong—under Captain Siborne. This was the driver troop, a community of little jockeys, light in weight and sprightly in action, whose antecedents as ostlers, cabbies, grooms, and carters, rendered them so ductile in military equestrianism that, when inspected at Woolwich on the 17th August by Sir John Burgoyne, he pronounced their evolutions and the management of their horses to be very commendable. Captain Siborne had the merit of achieving this proficiency, as his adjutant did not join the troop until its arrival at Scutari. Eighty-eight horses were sent out in the ‘Assistance’ steamer with the company, nine of which were killed before the landing of the drivers. The stations of the troop were at Haida Pasha, Kulalee, and Scutari. The total force despatched to the East up to this time counted 1,127 non-commissioned officers and men.

Late in September the eighth company was removed from the docks. A month later the eleventh company was sent to the Karabelnaia, and took possession of the same store for a barrack. It was a cold and cheerless fabric, built on the wharf of the creek. At this time the fire upon it was considerably diminished. Two or three companies of the 18th regiment deputed to work with the sappers occupied quarters in the same range. These were the only troops except the allies quartered, at one time, in the dockyard. The French miners were cantoned in stores at the West end—the English sappers at the East. In the selection of barracks there was no occasion for national jealousies or bickerings, for neither district was a Belgravia; that of the French only possessing the designation without its style or a tithe of its comfort.

Working from the experience of the previous winter the Government entered into contracts in the summer for the immediate provision of materials for hutting the army in the Crimea. For a supply of such magnitude a forest was scarcely sufficient, and no less than thirty-four vessels of good tonnage were freighted with the residences. Between the 31st August and 10th October, all the ships were at sea, accompanied by 67 non-commissioned officers and men, chiefly carpenters, in charge. In the ‘Cochrane’ only one sapper had embarked, but in all the rest two each. The first vessels arrived on the 13th October luckily when the pressure in front had ceased, and then followed others in quick succession. Second corporal R. Lewis was appointed under the authority of a general order issuer of huts with an allowance of 2s. 6d. a-day from the 20th October. Two of the hutmen did not arrive until about the 31st December.

Between the erection of the huts and the demolition of the docks, the business of the sappers was principally divided. There were besides many other services which claimed their attention, such as dismantling the trenches and batteries, mending the roads, repairing hospitals, wharves, piers, waggons, &c., and surveying. A company was attached to each infantry division^[201] of the army to attend to its exigencies. It was not however removed from its original hutting ground, except when the requirements of the division rendered it desirable. As this arrangement necessarily limited the command of the chief engineers in the direction of the energies of the sappers so far as any work not a divisional one was concerned, an explanatory instruction soon after followed.^[202] Each company was considered as under the orders of the general commanding the division, and to preserve that command, the sappers when wanted for a public duty, were obtained for its performance on the authority of the commander of the forces communicated to the general officers of the respective divisions. In this way there was no check to the fullest employment of the corps, and the identification of particular companies with particular divisions was not without advantage.

With the allied expedition sent to attack Kinbourn in October there were sixty non-commissioned officers and men of the corps under Major Bent of the engineers. The British contingent was commanded by Brigadier-General the Hon. A. Spencer. On the 15th the disembarkation took place on a tongue of land stretching into the sea; and the troops were halted at a spot, which from its broken features and the presence of small patches of morass in its front, rendered it acceptable for a defensive position. Encamped on salient hillocks, the regiments were concealed from Russian observation by spreading their canvas on the reverse of the declivities. The line, traced by Major Bent and a French engineer, took advantage of the abounding irregularities of the ground, and was closed on the left by a species of hornwork with its two salients rising from the summits of two small mounds, and its flanks resting on the Licame sea. Into this “keep” it was intended, in the event of any mischance, that the troops should retire and hold it by intrepid fighting till the last man had returned to the ships. On the right of the line two small detached works were also traced on commanding heights to flank the front of the position and to be defended by pickets. In the night of the 15th the intrenchments commenced by each regiment throwing up the necessary cover in its immediate front. The “keep” and the outworks were also advanced; and wells, which produced excellent water at a depth of seven feet, were also sunk. Under the superintendence of the royal engineers and the company of sappers, the field defences, adequate for the protection of kneeling musketeers, were finished on the 17th. The excavation was six feet wide and three deep in which a banquette was formed three feet broad. When the land arrangements were perfected, the allied fleet opened a sharp fire on the old masonry fort and its two sand redoubts, mounting respectively 60, 11, and 9 pieces of artillery. A block of buildings in the fortress was speedily in flames, the old ramparts fell down, many guns were destroyed, and the carriages upon which they were mounted were shivered and disabled. To an attack so irresistibly conducted, the garrison about 1,200 strong soon capitulated with the loss of 60 killed and wounded, while the casualties in the Anglo-French fleet were insignificant. On the 20th the troops, none of whom took part in the fight, moved to the village; and on the following day, when the main body of the expedition marched to enforce a reconnaissance of the country, Major Bent, left in charge of the camp, set to work to repair the damaged barracks. At this and kindred services in which the skill of artificers was needed, the sappers laboured in unison with the French, and were warmly complimented for their “intelligence, zeal, and activity,” by the French general in chief. Major Bent and his company embarked on board the ‘Indian’ on the 29th October, anchored at Kazatch 2nd November, and soon after landed to share in the general employments of the camp. Their return to Sebastopol was followed by a communication from Marshal Pélissier, a copy of which is added, acknowledging the co-operation of the English with the French sappers in the restorations at Kinbourn.

General Sir James Simpson, who had commanded the army since the death of Lord Raglan, resigned his high office on the 11th, and was succeeded by General Sir William Codrington.

The great French magazine on the brow of the Ravin du Carénage blew up on the 15th November. For miles the ground was convulsed by the explosion as if an earthquake had shaken the land, and in the vicinity of the devastation hill and ravine were covered with the black dust of the gunpowder as if the area were the approach to another Erebus. Shot, carcases, rockets, and shells, with their myriad splinters, fell in a terrible shower breaking up tents, collapsing stables, throwing into ruins store-sheds and hospitals, burning huts and siege materials, and striking down men at a considerable distance from the scene. The number of officers and soldiers killed and wounded were as many as might have occurred in a sharp action. Bugles were sounded to form a general parade, and the troops drawn aside to a neighbouring height looked on in bewildered amazement. The only two of the corps present at the moment of the catastrophe were Lieutenant Brine and sergeant Jarvis, who were inspecting work done at the stables of Captain Travers’ small-arm ammunition brigade. That grave explosion blew down the stables and also those of the Y battery, and let loose some four hundred horses which ran wildly over the hills. As soon as the nature of the disaster had been ascertained, Lieutenant Brine sent his sergeant for the tenth company. It soon arrived with picks, shovels, hooks, &c.; and, wrote Lieutenant-Colonel Lloyd, “rendered valuable service.” The army was then away, and the little band of sappers set to work under the eye of Sir William Codrington to arrest the conflagration. The powder mill at Inkermann was between two fires, and had been greatly injured by the concussion. But little danger was apprehended from the one on the valley side of it, because the ravine intervened; but some burning shells having penetrated a number of old French huts beyond the magazine, the little settlement was soon in flames, and as the wind was blowing in the direction of the mill it was a matter of first moment to stay the spread of the conflagration and render the magazine safe. To these duties the greater portion of the company was detailed. By digging a trench around the burning locality and throwing the excavated earth on the fire it thus became isolated, and the flames were gradually reduced by tearing down the planking and beams and removing them to a distance. Strong parties of the line, sent from the heights, working by reliefs, also assisted to extinguish the burning mass, and succeeded in preventing a repetition of the calamity.

Meanwhile the powder mill, on which all eyes were fixed, was scaled by some gallant fellows risking a jeopardy it was exciting to witness. Lieutenant Brine, who was directed to superintend the arrangements for subduing the fire, and to devise means for succouring the magazine, ordered sergeant Jarvis and corporal Osment to ascend it. Without hesitation they did so, followed by other sappers and Major Grant of the artillery and Lieutenant Hope 7th Fusiliers. Sparks were falling on them like pyrotechnic rain, and shells and rockets were still bursting, throwing their splinters and burning fragments in that perilous direction. With wet blankets handed to them from below they “promptly” covered the roof of the magazine and only gave up the task when the officers were convinced that further exertions were unnecessary. Of the brave and ready conduct of corporal Osment, Major Grant reported most highly to Lieutenant Brine, and he was therefore selected to protect the entrance to the magazine which, facing the flames, was most likely to take fire and yield to unforeseen disaster. At once he covered it with wet blankets suspended from posts, and building against it a wall of sand-bags, further protected it in front by a sand-bag traverse. This done, all alarm was finally allayed by Lieutenant Brine reporting to Sir William Codrington the perfect security of the mill.

When the magazine blew up, some of the company were working at a stone bridge in the ravine about 300 yards distant, and escaped without injury, while several of the line who were assisting, were killed and wounded. The party joined the company as soon as it was perceived to be mustered for duty in front of the huts of the 33rd regiment. Sir William Codrington observing the fire sweeping on to the right of the siege train, asked for volunteers to extinguish it. Several daring fellows answered the call and were soon in the heart of the flames tearing down the burning tents; but as this service did not seem to be of much profit in the presence of more imminent danger, an artillery officer enlisted their exertions to remove many box loads of live shells which, packed in the park of the siege train, were imminently exposed; so much so that while bearing them away, one after another ignited and burst, knocking down men, mules and horses, killing some and wounding others. To some excavated hollows where there had been an encampment, about 150 yards off, the shells were taken and buried. The French and soldiers of all corps assisted in the removal; those of the sappers who most distinguished themselves were sergeant James, corporal Enwright, privates William Church, John Burt, and others.

The explosion led to the construction of a very strong magazine on the plateau in rear of the land transport corps with the light division. It was sunk partly in rock six feet deep, and was 24 feet by 12 feet in the clear. The interior was walled with rubble stone, and splinter proofs ten inches square formed the roof, above which was a covering of earth between five and six feet deep. It was made to contain, if necessary, more than a thousand barrels of small-arm ammunition. Masons and carpenters of the tenth company built it assisted by parties from the 97th regiment, under Lieutenants Brine, R.E., and Hudson, 97th. It was completed on the 14th December, and being a somewhat showy structure of its class, the little details connected with its erection were inscribed on a slab built into the work.

When in command of the light division, Sir William Codrington desirous of adding facilities to the movement of the troops, directed a bridge to be thrown across the middle ravine to connect with the main road. The tenth company, with the assistance of infantry detachments, built it in November under the superintendence of Lieutenant Brine, R.E., who commanded the company. Sergeant Jarvis was his foreman, and corporal Rylatt his principal artificer. The bridge was of stone having one arch of nearly twenty feet span and a roadway of seventeen and a half feet, approached at each end by a long causeway with a gentle descent from the road. The foundations were of ragstone collected in the vicinity, and the piers, of great apparent strength, were formed of white stone from the Redan. The planking was secured to ten baulks, each 24 feet long and 10 inches square, taken from the white barracks in the Karabelnaia. A stout wooden handrail lined both sides of the bridge for convenience and finish. No mortar was used to give solidity to the masonry; and though the rains and melted snows, rushing down the slopes of the ravine, beat with violence against the rubble piers, the bridge stood as firm as a rock, while other temporary structures of the kind were carried away by the flood. On a stone let into one of the piers of this neat specimen of military engineering, was cut this inscription—