an annual subscription from the officers of engineers managed by a
committee, of which the assistant adjutant-general is president. Though
never recognised, a brass band had been in existence for many years, but
when the new order of things was sanctioned, a reed band was established
as more in keeping with the refinements of a distinguished corps. The
accomplished features of an operatic orchestra were also introduced
combined with the sacred musical accessories of the church; and the bald
services of a garrison chapel which, until the arrival of the
head-quarters at Chatham, was conducted without singing, has recently
been varied and made additionally grateful by the use of chants,
glorias, psalms, &c.[134]
The costume of the band, approved by Prince Albert, is perhaps the
handsomest in the service though the contrasts are extreme. A black
bear-skin head-dress, scarlet cloth trousers, and white cloth tunic
constitute the uniform. The first is free of embellishment and without
feather or plume, but has a gilt curb chain for the chin. The trousers
have a stripe of gold lace five-eighths of an inch broad down the outer
seams, a distinction never before, it is believed, conferred on any band
in the service. After the Hungarian fashion, but less picturesque, the
tunic is tastefully trimmed with gold lace, gold traceries, and gold
square untwisted cords for the shoulders. All the lacing is half an inch
wide and the tracing is worked with Russian braid. Cut on the model of
the corps’ tunic, except that the skirts have no slashes and the fronts
are curved, its facings and edgings, of silk plush, are of a bright
blue, and agreeably harmonize with the white cloth, giving it an
appearance of ultra delicacy. Let but a storm soak it, and its elegance
departs. The collar is laced all round and traced on the inner edges,
enlivened by eyes in the angles, and a crowsfoot at the centre. The
cuffs are similarly laced, and traced on both edges with a series of
eyes and finished with crowsfeet. Down the front edges and back seams to
the bottoms of the skirts both in front and rear, the lace again occurs
traced in and out and figured at the terminations with a play of
artistic fancy developed into highly florid crowsfeet. Simpler
configurations crown the lacing of the back seams, which is relieved at
the waist by ornithological devices resembling, with greater truth, a
sprig of shamrock than the object to which the tailors have so strangely
likened them. Down each breast are five bars compressed in length as
they reach the waist, traced on both edges, having eyes at the corners
and terminating at the points, with the ever-present crowsfeet. Except
the two shoulder buttons, the tunic possesses no adornment of this kind,
the fronts being closed by hooks and eyes.
The waist-belt is of white patent leather; the plate the same as that
worn by the staff sergeants, the sword has for its hilt an ornamental
Maltese cross bearing the device of a buglehorn, and sheathed in a black
leather scabbard with brasses ornamentally shaped. It is shorter than
the one worn by the buglers. The forage cap is similar to the sergeants;
but the jacket and trousers are like the drill dress of the privates
with an addition to the jacket of twisted gold shoulder cords, blue
cloth edgings, and blue cloth piping down the hind arms and back seams
terminating with blue cloth cushions as substitutes for buttons.
A very pleasing uniform has been adopted for the bandmaster, of scarlet
cloth without breast bars. In all other essential particulars it is
laced, traced, and figured like the tunics of the musicians. The facings
and edgings are of garter blue silk velvet. The collar is traced with a
series of eyes on the inner edges of the lace; and the shoulder-cords
trebly twisted are ornamented with embroidered grenades. The trousers,
for bandmaster and bugle-major, are of dark Oxford mixture with a stripe
of rich gold lace, one inch and three quarters wide, down each outer
seam. In undress is worn a dark-blue cloth surtout, single-breasted,
hooked up to the neck, with upright rounded collar, and five loops two
inches wide of mohair braid down the front, which are further ornamented
by the addition of a row of netted barrels, and flys. All the rest of
the trimming is similar to that on the surtout of the quartermasters.
The forage cap and trousers are also similar, but the accoutrements of
the bandmaster with one exception correspond with those of the staff
sergeants.
Instead of a sword he wears an elegant scimitar, short and light, in a
brass scabbard, the hilt being composed of masks and foliage of the
“cinque-cento” period. The curve of the gripe issues in a lion’s head,
with ring attached, bearing a flowing treble twisted fretwork chain
united to a ring at the guard.
Considered advisable to add to the system of instruction at Chatham the
art of photography, four non-commissioned officers were sent to
Kensington Palace on the 6th March to learn the process; and after being
taught at Gore House by Mr. Thurston Thompson, returned to Chatham on
the 5th May; since which date photography has formed an interesting item
in the instructional proceedings of the establishment.
Akin with this is the system introduced by Captain Du Cane on his return
from the Crimea for teaching non-commissioned officers and men the
method of using the electric telegraph for military purposes. So
successfully had the schooling of the men in this department of field
usefulness been conducted, that in June a small force of sapper
telegraphists was sent to Aldershot to establish the field telegraph.
Three stations were soon in action, one at each of the camps, and one at
Farnborough close to the electric telegraph company’s office. Double
needle instruments were used at each of the stations and double wires
connected with them stretched over the roofs of the huts and borne over
the open spaces by poles rising between twenty and thirty feet high. A
non-commissioned officer or more acted at each station and two always at
Farnborough. Line orderlies attended the sappers to carry the messages.
Purfleet, attached from time immemorial to the Woolwich district, was,
under the new order of things, combined with the created district of
Waltham, and the small party of six sappers, which for many years had
been employed in the Ordnance repairs at the station, was removed to
Woolwich in May.
To add to the military efficiency of the corps, one sergeant and eight
rank and file, commanded by Lieutenant G. R. Lempriere, were sent to
Hythe in May to learn under Colonel Hay the approved method of rifle
practice and judging distances. Their success was looked upon as very
satisfactory. Though less time at drill than other detachments they
stood well in the comparison, and one of their number, lance-corporal
John Yelland, bore away the prize pen and certificate awarded by Colonel
Hay. He was the best shot out of 164 men of different regiments who had
for some months been contending for the honour. The sappers returned to
Chatham on the 5th August, and the information obtained at Hythe has
become one of the leading features of instruction at the royal engineer
establishment. Lieutenant Lempriere is the instructor; and some of the
men who have passed through his hands have proved themselves better
shots and better in judging distances than the Hythe prizeman.
-----
Footnote 128:
Under an officer, he has charge of the preparation of the 10·56 feet
plans of Plymouth, Stonehouse, and Devonport, and of the office for
the examination of plans and documents antecedent to the engraving of
the work.
Footnote 129:
He also assisted Captain Fowke, R.E., in testing the comparative
qualities of various woods, products of New South Wales, British
Guiana, and Jamaica, which had been exhibited at the Palais de
l’Industrie. “In conducting and registering these experiments,” wrote
Captain Fowke, “I was assisted by corporal James Mack, of the royal
sappers and miners, who displayed the greatest zeal, intelligence, and
ability throughout.”—‘Reports on the Paris Universal Exhibition.’ Part
i. 1856, p. 407.
Footnote 130:
Of the connection of the sappers with a service so interesting, the
following anecdote is an illustration. A “foreigner of distinction”
paid a visit to the Palais de l’Industrie. With Captain Fowke he
rambled over the courts, and while the Captain was explaining to him,
among other matters, his experiments on the strength of woods, they
reached the spot where corporal Mack, in the Captain’s temporary
absence, was carrying them on with all the intelligence of a
scientific man. A little further on was another sapper. This was
sergeant Jenkins, who, for the visitor’s information, cleverly
expatiated on some philosophical apparatus in his charge. A red-coat
in the building was an object of decided attraction, and the foreigner
looked with no little satisfaction at corporal Clabby, who was then
making a minute and accurate survey of the position of the cases and
objects in the Exhibition. He had scarcely withdrawn his attention
from the draughtsman, when a fourth sapper in the person of corporal
Key, the indefatigable overseer, came in for a share of the
foreigner’s approbation, and he expressed to Captain Fowke his
amazement that so many difficult and important duties could, with such
efficient results, be intrusted to them. But the measure of his
astonishment was not yet full. There was a magnificent organ, built by
Bevington and Son, of Greek-street, Soho, in the Palais, which had
gained the first-class prize, on which, while the distinguished
foreigner was taking his tour, an amateur with a small body and a
young and pleasing countenance was performing. Drawn by the power and
grandeur of its tones, the Captain and his friend repaired to the
compartment where it had a locâle, but on turning the corner, instead
of finding, as was expected, a “Maestro,” or “un professeur anglais,”
seated before the instrument disporting himself with the hauteur of a
musical genius, the foreigner was struck by seeing another sapper,
complacently playing with the proficiency and grace of a modest
professional. “Mon Dieu!” he cried, as if the varied employments of
the British sappers were too exuberant to merit a less startling
exclamation, “Encore un sapeur du genie!” And the foreigner went away
with a most excited opinion of the talents and attainments of the
corps, of which the men above named were the creditable
representatives. The military Mozart on this occasion, who strangely
enough was named after that “divine composer,” was Ludovico Amedius
Woolfgang Hart!—a name due less to his English than his German
extraction. As young Hart had opportunity, he applied himself to the
great organ with its three rows of keys, pedals, and accessory
movements, containing also eighteen hundred and eleven pipes and
forty-two stops. His performances comprised selections from Handel’s
Messiah, Haydn’s Creation, and other oratorios. Once when Her Majesty
was passing through the English department he took his place at the
instrument, and made the Palais swell with “God save the Queen;” and
on another eventful day, when the Emperor of the French was visiting
the Exposition, he struck up the national anthem of France—“Partant
pour le Syrie.”
Footnote 131:
The first time the Emperor visited the portion of the gallery allotted
to Great Britain, he condescended to scan the survey contributions. As
he approached the compartment, sergeant Jenkins saluted him. In return
the Emperor took off his hat and bowed; and, as if to make the
sergeant feel perfectly at home in his presence, smiled and seemed in
delightful humour. After glancing at the six-inch map of Edinburgh,
over which was written in conspicuous letters, “Ordnance survey of
Scotland,” His Majesty exclaimed, “Ordnance survey of Scotland! but
where is the map of England?” Jenkins explained that he had several
specimens of the one-inch map of England, and invited the illustrious
Monarch to inspect them. “O! certainly;” and His Majesty graciously
accompanied the sergeant to the interior of the little court taken up
by the survey specimens, where, in a measure, His Majesty was isolated
from the crowd, which, with straining curiosity and awe, followed the
imperial footsteps. When examining the one-inch map of North Wales,
the Emperor traced his finger over the neighbourhood of Snowdon, and
observed, “the shading of the hills is beautifully executed.” The
sergeant then directed the Emperor’s attention to the plan of St.
Andrews on the five-feet scale—a map very much commended for its
finish by all the eminent engineers who had examined it. His Majesty
appeared highly pleased with it, and then succeeded a string of
questions which the sergeant—a stranger to the parasitical language of
the courtier—answered with the honest pertinence and refinement of a
man of good common sense. Among the interrogatories was one in which
the Emperor enquired,—“Has the whole of England been surveyed on the
six-inch scale?” In looking at the great theodolite, the Emperor
evinced unequivocal interest; more so, when the sergeant informed him
it had been in use above sixty years, and had operated on the summits
of the highest mountains and most of the important trigonometrical
stations in England, Scotland, and Ireland. Of its action, adjustment,
and peculiarities the Emperor asked several questions, and called a
scientific attendant, to whom His Majesty explained, in French, what
the sergeant had communicated to him. The Emperor then examined the
models of Arthur’s seat and the Merrick hills, and also that of the
zenith sector, with all of which His Majesty was well satisfied.
Surrounded by a vast assembly, with heads uncovered and in breathless
admiration of the magnanimity of the incident, thus was passed an
interview of about a quarter of an hour, between the Emperor of the
French and a British soldier!
Footnote 132:
Of the party, Clabby, Hart, and Kelly only were at the fire. They
attached themselves to the engine nearest the building; so close was
it, that Kelly was struck on the shoulder with a piece of burning
timber. At one time the pipe burst, spirting the water over the
workmen. One of the Zouaves was up to his knees in water trying to
mend the fracture, when corporal Clabby went to his assistance, and
taking the handkerchief from his neck bound it round the pipe, and
partially removed the annoyance. This little act, so gracefully and
promptly performed, met with a shout of applause from the multitude,
and before the ringing of the acclamations had subsided, an officer
from the Marshal of the “Garde de Paris” made a note of their names;
with what object, perhaps, the future may tell.
Footnote 133:
The ancestry of the Bradfords can be traced, traditionally, to a very
remote period. It commenced, as far as the family information extends,
with Ranulph de Broade Forde—since contracted into Bradford—who in
1191 served under Richard I. in the Holy War, and fought at the siege
of Ascalon in the third crusade. Apparently, the patronymic of the
Broade Fordes was derived from a fortress held by Ranulph as the heir
of his race, which defended a ford at the confluence of two streams
important in border warfare on the marches of Wales.
Without attempting to renew the links in the broken chain of
genealogical succession, it seems that in the direct line from Ranulph
sprang John Bradford, who was born at Manchester about 1522. At an
early age, under Sir John Harington, Knight of Exton in Rutland,
“treasurer of the King’s camps and buildings,” and chief engineer at
Boulogne, he served as paymaster at the siege of Montreuil in 1544.
Three years later he was a student of common law at the Inner Temple,
where he became a convert to Protestantism; and relinquishing, in
1548, his secular intentions, became a student at Cambridge, and soon
after a Fellow of Pembroke College. Ridley, Bishop of London, ordained
him deacon in 1550, and next year he was installed as a prebendary of
St. Paul’s, and appointed one of the six chaplains of Edward VI. to
preach in the distant parts of the kingdom. In 1553, a month after the
king’s death, and the accession of Queen Mary, Bradford was a State
prisoner. The truthfulness of his preaching, his great popularity as a
minister, and Christian firmness in promoting the reformed doctrines,
did not suit the religious régime which, under the bigoted intolerance
of the Queen, had commenced to disturb the fabric of the reformation.
On a trumped-up charge of sedition and heresy he suffered two years
incarceration in the Tower and King’s Bench, and, at length, refusing
to retract his pious convictions, was martyred, by burning, at
Smithfield, 1st July, 1555.
From a brother of this “champion of the faith” lineally descended the
Rev. Edward Bradford, rector of Buckland Filleigh.
John, a son of the rector, married Gertrude Coham, of Coham.
Considerable landed property was held by the family from the Earl of
Oxford and his successors, the Lords Clinton; but the estates having
been placed in chancery, leases without the possibility of renewing
them, and an extensive fire having consumed a great part of the
market-town of Sheepwash, laid the foundation of a series of
calamities from which the family have never recovered.
Among the offspring of John, were John, William, and Michael. The two
first were surgeons in the royal navy, William perished in the
foundering of the “Royal George” at Spithead, June, 1782. Michael was
likely to have retrieved the fortunes of the family by his success as
a surgeon, but he died young, leaving, among other children—
Michael, an orphan of four years of age. There was enough for the son
when he arrived at man’s estate to pass comfortably through life, and
he married well. His wife was Mary Tamlyn, daughter of Bamfylde
Tamlyn, by Mary, second daughter of Richard Somers, Esq., of
Northtawton, Devon, and sister of the wife of Robert Harrington, Esq.,
of Worden. The father of Bamfylde Tamlyn, was the Rev. Gregory Tamlyn,
rector of Bradford. In the Will of John Bamfylde of Arlington, the
relationship of Rector Tamlyn with the family is acknowledged in a
passage which affectionately styles him “my beloved cousin.” The
pedigree of the Bamfyldes is of undoubted antiquity, and this branch
of it is a shoot from the stem to which cling the Baronets and Lords
of Poltimore. Young Michael, who had increased by his marriage, his
pecuniary competence and standing in society, was not remarkable for
the economy of his pursuits. He was fond of sporting in all its
phases, and indulged in other expensive habits, which ended in his
ruin.
From this marriage sprang five sons and a daughter. Michael the
quartermaster is the second son. He is thus a collateral descendant of
Bradford the martyr, and a “poor relation” of a few families of repute
and distinction at the present day.
Footnote 134:
Mr. William G. Collins was appointed master 1st August, 1856. He
joined the royal artillery band at ten years of age. When he had
established his name as a performer, he turned his attention to
composition, and was instructed as a theoretical musician by James
Harris, Esq. Mus. Bac. of Oxon. When quite a young man he was promoted
to be master of the band on the recommendation of Sir Henry Bishop and
the President of the Royal Academy of Music—Cipriani Potter.
Subsequently he held a similar situation in the Royal Bucks Militia
Band, which, from his peculiar fitness and attainments, became one of
the best bands among the regular troops or militia in the kingdom. On
the disembodiment of the regiment, his engagement with Lord Carington
having ceased, his well-known reputation led to his instant
appointment as master of the Royal Engineer Band.
1854.
BOMARSUND—TURKEY—BULGARIA—WALLACHIA.
War with Russia—Detachment attached to Baltic fleet—Second company to
the Aland Islands—Landing—Brigadier—General Jones—Preliminary
services—Operations—Fort Nottich attacked—Adventure at Fort Tzee and
escape from it—Bomarsund captured—Destruction of the forts—Conduct of
the company—Sickness; it returns to England—Detachment to
Turkey—Augmentation to the corps—Seventh company withdrawn from Hurst
Castle—Eleventh and seventh companies to Turkey—Odessa—Services of the
first detachment in Turkey—Corporal Cray—Gallipoli; Boulair;
Ibridgi—Commendation by Sir George Brown—Tenth and eighth companies to
Scutari—Redoubt Kaleh—Works there—Circassia—Working-pay—Companies
attached to divisions of the army—Buyuk Tchekmedjie—First
detachment to Varna—Followed by the tenth company—Also by the
eleventh—Complimentary order for services of the latter—Contrast
between the French and English sappers—Works at Varna—Also at
Devno—Encampments at Aladyn and Varna—Works at Gallipoli and
Boulair—Eighth company to Varna—Gallantry of corporal Swann and
private Anderson—Sappers join at Varna from the fleet—Coast of
Circassia—Photographers—Detachment to Rustchuk—Trestle bridge at
Slobedzie—Bridge of boats over the Danube—Return to Varna of a portion
of the sappers from Rustchuk—Misconduct of the detachment; also of the
seventh company—Spirited conduct of corporal Cray—Major Bent and party
of sappers to Bucharest—Private Anderson and the Austrian
Dragoons—Fourth company to Varna—The Somerset Fund—The Central
Association.
To obtain a religious protectorate in Turkey, Russia menaced the
independence of the Sultan, which led to a long diplomatic negotiation
between the Western powers and the Czar; but as the Emperor Nicholas
persisted in interfering with the rule of the Sultan, and attempted to
enforce his pretensions by occupying with a belligerent army the
Danubian principalities, Great Britain and France declared war against
Russia. Measures were instantly taken to give effect to the declaration
by despatching powerful expeditions to the East and the Baltic.
To the Baltic fleet were attached, on the 9th March, one sergeant and
nineteen rank and file of the second company, under the command of
Lieutenant Nugent of the engineers, which embarked at Portsmouth on
board the ‘Duke of Wellington,’ flag-ship of Vice-Admiral Sir Charles
Napier, and accompanied it in its reconnaissance of the Baltic Sea and
the Gulf of Finland as far up as Cronstadt. The object of sending the
party with the fleet was, that it might take the lead of the seamen and
marines in any escalading operations ashore; but the nature of the
service was such that no occasion offered for resorting to the
expedient. During the time that the cholera was rife in the fleet,
several of the detachment were seized with the malady, and three died.
When it was resolved to make a descent upon the Aland Islands, a
division of the French army was despatched from Calais to carry out the
enterprise. The second company, of eighty strong, under Captain F. W.
King, royal engineers, was added to the force, and sailing from Deptford
in the ‘Julia’ transport on the 15th July, with every conceivable
engineering requirement, arrived at Calais on the 17th, and took on
board 225 officers, non-commissioned officers, and rank and file of the
51st infantry of the line. The sappers were the only troops that
accompanied the French contingent.
Before daylight on the 8th August, the second company, 600 of the royal
marines, and 2000 French troops landed at a small cove a few miles N.E.
of Bomarsund, and taking a winding route by the village of Monkstetta,
encamped about 1,200 yards from Fort Tzee, sheltered by a hill on which
the breaching battery was afterwards constructed. The advance of the van
was formed by the sappers from the flag-ship, carrying besides their
carbines an assortment of bill-hooks, hand-saws, axes, and hatchets, and
the column was closed in rear by the second company under Captain King.
The British operations were wholly carried out under the direction of
Brigadier-General Jones, R.E., an officer of matured judgment and
experience, gained by hard service in the Peninsular War, and by some
forty years of after study and experiment. He was assisted by Captain H.
St. George Ord, and four other officers of the corps.