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:—
Length of Stabling Number of
occupied by Horses
each Regiment. accommodated.
Feet.
Lord Lucan’s depôt 430 106
6th Inniskillings 330 92
2nd Greys 455 130
5th Dragoon Guards 270 78
1st Royal Dragoons 390 108
11th Hussars 90 26
4th Light Dragoons 120 28
13th Light Dragoons 153 34
8th Hussars 129 26
4th Dragoon Guards 488 122
——— ———
2855 750
——— ———
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.”