succeeding engineer as he took possession of the trenches—exhibited some
points of needy refinement; for it not only possessed a door and a
glazed sash, but a stove with a pipe leading through the splinter proof
roof which boasted a covering of asphalted felt! From a sunken
foundation the hut rose up under a broad parapet in the first parallel
between Nos. 1 and 2 batteries, and was built chiefly of sand-bags with
an interior nearly ten feet square fitted with the bare conveniences of
seats and a desk—all, however, sufficiently rough to identify the
structure with the rigours of a stern siege. In the area in front of the
hut was a sort of engineer depôt from whence the tools and materials
were distributed to the working parties.
Meanwhile the sappers in small batches or in ones and twos were lost
among the military operatives, distinguished by the badge of a piece of
tracing tape around their caps. Usually in the 21-gun battery were found
the greatest number and half a brigade or so of selected men could be
counted in each of the new batteries on the right attack. These run from
10 to 14. On Greenhill the works also claimed a share of sapper labour,
but in the batteries numbered 10 and 11 on the left, the parties, as far
as strength was concerned, were more ostentatious.
To be a little precise, let a survey of their engagements be undertaken.
Look first among the embrasures, and there, ant-like, is seen an
isolated red-coat coolly pegging up hides or fixing gabions, while two
or three carpenters, with upturned sleeves, are discovered crouching
low, fixing platforms or renewing sleepers and fighting bolts. Go next
to the caves and call—“Sapper?” One immediately emerges from its
murkiness, spade in hand, with begrimed face and dishevelled beard, to
show the quality of his exertions. Step to the saps right and left, and
in each on bended knee with whirling pick and cap well down is traced
the sapper. To his sturdy efforts the earth yields and the gabion soon
is filled. Watch him as he goes ahead with cautious crawl and daringly
places another basket on the line. How many rifle balls, how many shots
fly past, few can tell; but on he urges as if nothing had occurred, and
perhaps the next discharge kills him. Steal now along the trench to its
advanced limit, and there is seen a group of busy miners black with
gunpowder in shallow depths, blasting the rock to deepen the approach
and strengthen the cover. How well they know their art. Not a head is
seen above the young parapet and scarcely that of a hammer; but when a
strong blow is required, up it goes and the sun sparkling on the
burnished steel gives a mark to the enemy. Bullets from the screens are
quickly fired and an occasional shot trundles in among them, but
undauntedly they proceed, watchful as dogs, till at last the mine
explodes. A volume of vapour affords another indication of their
activity to the enemy. Shot and shell plunge on and tear up the ground,
but the miners have flown to a distance and quietly await the cessation
of the fire to resume their tasks. Walk over to the sailors’ battery
where surely none but seamen may be seen. There, in truth, the blue
jackets are in droves with their droll sayings and unsteady gait; but
press forward. “Is that a marine?” “No, it’s a sapper trimming the
parapet.” There, too, is another tricing up the flaccid cheeks of an
embrasure; and beyond is a third giving position to platforms for
sea-service mortars or naval guns. Go round that traverse: the universal
man is there completing it; another is strengthening the parapet;
another repairing the merlon; a fourth is in the right epaulment; a
fifth in the left; a sixth is elsewhere constructing loopholes with
barrels; others are revetting the works with tubs, casks, gabions, and
hide-bags, while a couple of broad-backed miners are burrowing
underground and driving a tunnel into the jaws of some convenient
cavern. The tour is incomplete without a visit to the pits. Come with
the night relief and see them. Jump into that screen; there again is the
sapper enlarging loopholes or picking the rock to sink the pit. Plunge
into the next one: there too is the military Tonson improving the cover
with stones while the eager riflemen jostle him as they press forward to
get a chance shot at some unwary Russian. Enter now the 21-gun battery
where four magazines are rebuilding. The sappers are quite at home
raising the frames by the sickly beams of a feeble siege lamp; but look,
a flying stone has just broken the horn and the wind has extinguished
the flame. Yet, undiscouraged, the sappers work away by feeling the
points and bases of their timbers. Go where you will, in battery,
trench, or mine, a sapper is the centre of each party toiling at his
hazardous vocation through the long dark night. Daylight has returned.
“What can that moaning noise be?” A 13-inch shell has dashed against a
magazine and blown it up! The gunners are maimed, suffocated, or killed!
and the timbers are either carried away or left charred and tottering on
the rock. Run and see the effect. The magazine is a ruin, the ground
smokes and burns, and the dead and mutilated are being borne away; but
there again are the sappers tearing through the smouldering frames and
fallen planks, examining the extent of the disaster and preparing for
the restoration. “These men tho’ few in number seem everywhere and in
everything. What can be their motto?” “Ubique quo fas et gloria ducunt!”
“That accounts for it.”
At midnight on the 2nd May, a sapper was putting a new face to the
embrasure of the flank gun in No. 8 battery, on the left attack, when a
round shot ploughed the crest of the parapet on its right flank and
struck down Lieutenant Carter of the engineers, killing at the same
moment Lieutenant Curtis of the 46th regiment. The flying sand
bespattered the workman but he was else unhurt. Quitting the embrasure,
he sought by his attention to lighten, if possible, the mortal throes of
his officer. In a few moments all was over, and the sapper, with grave
sympathy, bore away the body of that brave young man to the camp.
With the morning relief of the 3rd, 60 sappers were sent to the
trenches, who in addition to the duty of overseers laid platforms in No.
14 and the 21-gun batteries. Sergeant Philip Morant, while
superintending on the right, was slightly wounded in the shoulder by a
rifle bullet, which, being almost spent, bounded back after delivering
the blow. This was his first day in the trenches. No. 1 battery on the
left attack, which was much cut up, was completely renovated by thirteen
sappers; and four miners performed good service in blasting a
communication to the ammunition caves. In the ensuing night the advance
boyau to rifle-pit on the right attack was prolonged and strengthened,
and a strong party of the corps worked with acknowledged energy in
constructing No. 12 mortar battery on the left. Some also were with a
line party adding solidity to the broad parapet of No. 8 battery, who,
however, were subsequently removed, as the clear moon, shining in a
cerulean sky, exposed the men to an annoying fire of grape from the
Redan. Two nights later, there were forty-three of the corps in the
trenches; twenty being scattered in the right works, and twenty-three in
the left. A sortie on the left sap of the Gordon attack interrupted the
operations, but the enemy was driven back without effecting any serious
detriment to the works. A heavy fire of shells was also directed against
the 21-gun battery, and though the casualties for the night amounted to
4 killed, 18 wounded, and 2 missing, none of the sappers were touched.
At the time of the attack eight rank and file of the corps were in No.
14 battery repairing embrasures, 1 in the second parallel making
loop-holes and patching up the parapet, 2 in No. 8 battery replacing
dislodged sand-bags, and 2 in the 21-gun battery filling up the chasms
in the fourteenth embrasure and altering the features of the twentieth.
About an hour after midnight on the 8th, sergeant Drew had dismissed a
working party under charge of second-corporal Fraser employed in forming
rifle-pits in advance of the third parallel. Retiring together, they
resolved to visit the caves known by the name of the “Ovens,” then the
post of the advanced picquet, to see a communication, which had been
much talked of by the sappers, cut through the solid rock by private
Simon Williams, by which an unexposed track was open from cave to cave.
They were dressed at the time in Mackintoshes, fur caps, and long boots.
The officer in charge of the picquet at the “Ovens,” apparently unaware
that works were in progress in his front, was struck with the intrusion
of the visitors and captured them as spies. Speaking good English was no
proof they were not Russians, and accordingly they were sent to the
field-officer of the trenches, Lord West, under a strong sergeant’s
escort. Trying to guide it by a nearer way than the one it was taking,
was received as a certain indication of their character, for the guard
fancied “the spies” were planning to beguile them into Sebastopol.
Indeed they had some misgiving that the two sappers were a couple of
clever desperadoes, ready for any cruel work that their evil natures
might prompt them to perpetrate. The escort therefore marched, brimful
of caution, with the prisoners, and were only too glad, on reaching the
goal, to be rid of such a pair of suspicious adventurers. On being
confronted with his lordship, he asked them many searching queries, to
which they gave remarkably accurate replies; but the question of their
identity was at length settled by Captain Armit, the engineer officer on
duty for the night who had just returned from the rifle-pits by another
route. Of course they were at once released, and many a good laugh was
enjoyed at the pardonable blunder of capturing two honest sappers as
Russian spies.
Water in the trenches had now become scarce; indeed, the cisterns in the
21-gun battery, formed of barrels, were dry. This gave rise to the
prudent precaution of sending the working parties to the lines with full
canteens. New wells were immediately sunk by the sappers in the quarries
of the 21-gun battery, and cans, barrels, and metal powder cases
deposited in promising spots along the parallels, to allure the springs
to the desired outlets. Very limited was the area for exploring, and the
water therefore was never sufficiently plentiful to relieve the workmen
from the necessity of filling their water-bottles prior to entering the
batteries. About a fortnight later, the well in the second parallel on
the right attack yielded a fair supply. It was a sort of pool of Siloam
for the weary and thirsty, and to shield them from casualty in their
pilgrimage to it, the assiduous efforts of 4 sappers and 20 linesmen
threw up a parapet with sufficient altitude, to afford them convenient
shelter.
During the darkness of the 9th, a sortie was made by the Russians which
was gallantly repulsed by the guard of the trenches on the right. The
Russians left many dead on the field, while the casualties among the
besiegers did not exceed 13 wounded. There were 20 sappers in the right
works at the time, who, as soon as the sortie terminated, were doubled
up to the left advance saps, and before the coming relief, replaced the
gabions and sand-bags which had been capsized and plugged up all the
gaps and shot-holes in the parapets. That night a new communication was
begun from the second parallel to the right advanced trench. Eight
sappers were employed in heading the sap and lodging the gabions, of
which no less than 150 were firmly fixed; and the cover obtained was
such that the exertions of the workmen were justly praised. The work was
on the slope of a hill exposed to an oblique fire; and though difficult
to form the parapet at the extremity from the presence of rock, it
yielded at length to perseverance which was as constant as intrepid.
The tenth company under Lieutenant-Colonel Gordon and Major Stanton of
the engineers, were afloat in the ‘William Jackson,’ with the expedition
to the Sea of Azof from the 3rd to the 8th of May. Without attempting
operations, the troops were suddenly recalled, and landing at Balaklava
on the 8th, the sapper contingent marched two days later to their old
places in the trenches.
Rain set in on the night of the 10th and turned the lines into wet
ditches. Working parties, furnished as usual, persevered in vain to make
way against the drenching storm and the strong wind that blew. Every
step buried them over their shoe-tops. Returning to camp, wet and
miserable, with soaked beards swabbing their breasts, not a few seemed
by their bemired appearance, as if some catastrophe had rolled them in a
marsh. Throughout the day of the 11th the rain continued to pour; the
mud had much increased, and sheets of water stood in the batteries and
parallels at places where hollows or uneven ground favoured such
accumulations. The soles of the embrasures were ankle deep, and seams
were made in the merlons and roofs of the magazines by the wearing flow
of the rain. The sappers and working parties again held their places in
the batteries, for nothing excused them as long as there was a chance of
making progress, however trivial. Much was attempted, but little
succeeded beyond replacing some overturned gabions and patching up rifts
in some of the more important constructions. Sergeant Kester Knight, and
a small force of carpenters on the right attack, toiled with exemplary
zeal at one of the magazines of No. 14 battery; but their progress was
at length interrupted by a considerable portion of the timber prepared
for the work having been abstracted. Some of the beef barrels, likewise,
wanted for revetments in other parts of the trenches, were unhooped, and
the staves captured for camp uses by the working party. Strange that men
should sacrifice to personal objects the very means provided to give
efficiency and success to the operations for defending them!
On the night of the 11th no working party was provided the weather being
fearfully stormy. There were, however, 24 sappers, heavily clothed in
long boots, overcoats, and waterproofs, dispersed in the right trenches
under Lieutenant Graves of the engineers, who worked through the
darkness unsheltered from the rain. One brigade was extended in the new
communication on the right, in front of No. 8 mortar battery, blasting
the rock and building the loosened boulders into the parapet; another
brigade was in No. 14 battery, attending to the magazines and embrasures
and clearing the choked-up channels for the passage of the water into
the ravine. Eight carpenters were engaged for awhile in laying platforms
in No. 12 battery, but the rain fell with such heaviness, that the
spaces prepared to receive the sleepers were soon inundated. In this
extremity the men made furrows in the sloughy ground, and thus drained
the sites to permit them, when the storm should abate, to resume their
tasks.
Nothing, it would seem, was enough to induce the Russians to seek
repose; rather, indeed, the presence of storms, the more angry the
better, whetted their spirit for activity and assault. Two hours before
midnight they opened a sharp fire of musketry, accompanied by a
cannonading of shells upon our works, which was stoutly met by incessant
volleys from the guard of the trenches and five guns in the 21-gun
battery. On the left attack, where Captain Hassard was on duty, there
were only four sappers to carry out his orders. But little could be
expected from such initial means in such a supremely dismal night. In
about two hours, however, under a constant torrent, they altered the
flank embrasure of No. 8 battery, to enable its gun to play into the
extreme Russian rifle-pit on the right. Just as they had finished,
corporal Thomas Kirkwood, who had subordinate charge of the party, heard
the bustle of an approaching sortie. Communicating the intelligence to
his officer, Captain Hassard flew through the zig-zags and parallels and
had the guard of the trenches in readiness to meet it. This was barely
accomplished when the enemy tore up the hill from the rifle-screens in
the Woronzoff ravine. Now they were near the parapet, and about to enter
at its most accessible points; but so close and prompt was the
resistance they received from the works that a hasty retreat was the
consequence. Light balls, thrown from a Cohorn mortar in No. 7 battery,
discovered a second column pressing to the centre of the advanced
parallel. A few, more daring than the rest, even jumped into the
trenches; but the vigour of the besiegers pushed back the assault with
severe loss to the enemy. No. 1 battery opened on the quarries, No. 2 on
the Redan, and some effective rounds were fired from the flank gun of
No. 8 battery by Captain Collingwood Dickson of the artillery. The loss
sustained by the British was 1 officer and 5 men killed; 1 officer and
about 30 men wounded. The four sappers being unarmed, were withdrawn to
preserve them from danger.
Where sand-bag revetments had been used, the havoc committed by the
tempest was general. Want of slope was the cause. Being early
constructions, they had not shared in the improvements which experience
had subsequently introduced. Some of the works, loosened by degrees,
fell down and encumbered the trench. The surgeon’s hut was a ruin.
Sixty-four sappers were appointed to the trenches on the 12th May, to
make good the damages. In a day or two the medical quarter in No. 2
battery on the left was rebuilt by 17 sappers; the huts for the generals
were repaired and strengthened; the embrasures and magazines mended, and
all the revetments strongly bolstered up and properly battered. The
draining, moreover, was enlarged and considerable advancement made in
all the details of the new batteries. Blasting rock on the left was a
special feature in the day’s labour. Twelve sappers were employed in the
duty in No. 11 battery, and in front of the inner ammunition cave, from
which they also constructed a ladder to the shaft leading to the trench
above.
Showers were frequent during the day and heavier in the following night.
No working party was provided, but 20 sappers under Lieutenant Drake,
who seemed to be invulnerable against inclemency, were far away in
advance draining the approach to the right rifle-pit in the Gordon
attack. Against the darkness and rain they endured with commendable
resolution, and though restricted by the storm in their exertions,
nevertheless afforded an instalment of relief to the screen. A few of
the most energetic and skilful also rebuilt, in the 21-gun battery, an
embrasure which had been washed down by the rain.
So went on the works to the 15th, when private Reuben Wiles, one of a
few miners employed in cutting rock at the caves on the left attack, in
connection with the left boyau, was wounded. During the preceding night,
the heavy firing from the Creek batteries had upset several of the
gabions and made a wide breach in the parapet. It was when passing this
gap, bearing gunpowder and fuses for blasting purposes, that a round
shot, striking the broken angle of the trench, tore away a sand-bag, and
threw it full at the chest of the miner. Wiles, who was knocked down by
the blow, was also covered with a shower of stones; which, besides
bruising him in different places, made a gash across his nose, contused
one of his eyes, and wounded him in the right knee. A similar accident,
the following night, wounded private Edward R. Hodgkinson severely in
the head.
-----
Footnote 180:
Some young officers—sportive yet enterprising—hearing of the nearness
of the Russians to our works, paid a visit to the lodgment, bringing
with them loaded soda-water bottles prepared with fuzes. As occasion
served they lighted these improviséd grenades, and threw them among
the enemy’s riflemen in the pit. The effect was to increase the fire
on the sappers and retard the work. In self-defence the sergeant was
compelled to report the annoyance, and the General of the trenches
gave orders that none should enter the pits except on duty.
A Polish refugee, belonging to a fusilier regiment, also came to the
screen under the auspices of the young officers aforesaid. A hole was
made for him to speak through, and addressing the Russians in their
own language, his jargon was discourteously treated with laughter and
a few angry shots. Renewing the interview the fusilier, after saying
some extravagant things to induce the riflemen to desert, concluded by
intimating “they were great fools to remain where they were.” Another
volley was the result of this candid but indiscreet communication; and
of course the Pole was forthwith expelled from the trench.
Footnote 181:
This suggests the mention of a brief conversation which occurred one
day between Colonel Shadforth and lance-corporal Jenkins. “How is it,”
asked the Colonel, “that so few sappers die?” “They hav’nt time,”
replied the corporal; “there’s too much work for them to do in the
trenches!” A stiff glass of grog from the officer’s canteen was the
result of Jenkins’s rejoinder, which would have been strictly true,
had the question been asked with respect to the primitive state of the
sapper camp.
Footnote 182:
Sir John Burgoyne in letter to the ‘Times,’ May, 1855.
Footnote 183:
The means taken to preserve the engineer mules was referred to in the
Second Report of Sir John McNeill and Colonel Tulloch to the War
Minister, as an instance of what other troops might have done had they
exercised common “promptitude or ingenuity.” It afterwards became a
vexed question, and a Court of Enquiry, conducted by seven
distinguished General Officers, sat for many weeks at Chelsea
Hospital, to ascertain, among other matters, whether any blame was
fairly attributable to the officers in chief command for neglecting
the use of expedients to save the horses. The enquiry terminated fully
exculpating the officers.
1855.
16th May-7th June.
SIEGE OF SEBASTOPOL.
The batteries—Stoical tranquillity in blasting rock—Round-hill or fourth
parallel—State of the works—Siege materials and expedients—Corporal
William Swann—Expedition to Kertch—Second international
communication—No. 15 battery on the right—Rope mantlets—Hospital
caves—Companies reviewed by General Jones—French officers’ opinion of
the corps—Repairing right rifle pit—Arrival of ninth company—Progress
of the works—Third bombardment—Bravery in the embrasures—Corporal
Stanton in the batteries of the second parallel on the right
attack—Casualties—First appearance of ninth company in the
trenches—The sailors—Voluntary resolution of Corporal Lockwood and his
sappers—The engineers—Inobtrusive devotion in an embrasure—Adam
McKechnie—Death of Captain Dawson—Selection of old sappers for front
duty; their sterling exertions—Labours in the batteries;
platforms—Magazine blown up—Russian plan of extending their
trenches—Capture of the quarries and white works—-The lodgment—Death
of Lieutenant Lowry; bravery of corporal Stanton—Casualties—Lord
Raglan’s approbation of the sappers—Infernal machines in the quarries.
By the 16th May all the batteries as far as No. 14 on the right, and
Nos. 10 and 11 on the left, were finished and provided with pieces of
heavy artillery. No. 14, founded on a bed of rock, was strongly built in
the centre of the second parallel, and the cheeks of its embrasures,
formed in the ordinary way with gabions and sand-bags, were lined with
hide-bags. No. 10 was partly revetted with stones; and No. 11, from the
hard nature of the ground, occasioned considerable difficulty in its
construction, inasmuch as mining—a tedious operation under fire—was
constantly resorted to to procure cover. It was chiefly revetted with
casks and gabions. The two latter batteries were also built in the
second parallel, the former to fight the barrack battery, and the
latter, rising from a trench which run out at right angles from a
backward bend of the parallel to the crest of a precipitous cliff, raked
the Picket-House ravine and the cemetery, and plunged its shells into
the works at the dock-yard creek.