Michael D.Heath-Caldwell M.Arch.

1855

Stamford Caldwell of Linley Wood - aged 68/69

Anne Marsh-Caldwell (ne Caldwell) - at Eastbury - age 63/64

Captain Leopold G. Heath C.B. -  on board HMS 'Sanpariel' - Black Sea - aged 37/38

Mary Emma Heath (ne Marsh) - Therapia - age 28/29

Arthur Raymond Heath - at Therapia - age 0/1

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Heath - 1748   Heath - 1750   Heath - 1752   Heath - 1753  Heath - 1754

Heath - 1756   Heath - 1758   Heath - 1760   Heath - 1767  Heath - 1771

Heath - 1774   Heath - 1775   Heath - 1777   Heath - 1778  Heath - 1779

Heath - 1782   Heath - 1788   Heath - 1790   Heath - 1814  Heath - 1819

Heath - 1823   Heath - 1834   Heath - 1839   Heath - 1840  Heath - 1842

Heath - 1847   Heath - 1848   Heath - 1849   Heath - 1850  Heath - 1851

Heath - 1852   Heath - 1853   Heath - 1854   Heath - 1855

Globe

Saturday 6 January 1855

Admiralty, Jan 4. 

In consideration of the attack on the forts of Sabastopol on the 17th October, 1854, the following naval promotions have taken place, dated Nov. 13:-

Commanders to be Captains - John James Bartholomew, Edward Frere, Leopold George Heath, Henry Downing Rogers.

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Letter No.30.H.M.S. “Sanspareil”
Balaklava,

Friday 19th January 1855.

How you must all be wondering and puzzling what the appointment is which I expect. Whatever it may be, it has been offered in such handsome terms that I could not help accepting , however tempting prospects of Moorhurst may be. Now I may as well tell you; don’t you think so? I don’t know how much a year it is, nor any details of that sort. I have been very busy lately building a shed to hold two hundred and fifty mules expected from Alicant. I anticipate it will be the only thing that is not “too late,” as Lord Grey said. – The perhaps the appointment is “Carpenter to the Forces”?

A man has this moment left me who came to get help in making sledges; he was sent down expressly to superintend them, but the frost left us last night, and a boat would be better conveyance to the camp now than a sledge; sledges are clearly “too late” for this frost – however, they may come in again. The cold has been very severe, and many men have been frost-bitten and lost their toes. Thermometer all one day at 22 deg., and down one night to 17 deg. Fahrenheit.

Large working parties from different regiments are erecting stores for the Commissariat and additional huts for hospitals, and altogether there is a good deal of energy at work. Want of mules, railroad or transport of some description is the great want, almost the only one. The system of having the beasts under the Commissariat is a bad one, and I hope to persuade Lord Raglan to being a new and better system with the two hundred and fifty expected mules. – “Then it must be Stable Keeper?”

Letter 31.H.M.S. “Sanspareil.”Balaklava,

Tuesday 23rd January 1855.
I suppose a letter with nothing in it is still better than none at all. I am expecting Admiral Boxer in about two days, and I shall then be off to Malta as fast as the “Sanspareil’s” rickety engines will take me. There I am to have ten days’ leave of absence, after which, if the Admiralty approves of Sir Edmund Lyons’s suggestion, I shall be turned back eastward, and Mary will trudge on to England.

I shall leave with the satisfaction of having been the cause of a great improvement in what is now in the greatest disorder of any department connected with the army. I told you I was building stabling for mules; I have now succeeded in getting a cavalry officer and dismounted cavalry soldiers to attend to the grooming, feeding, and stabling department, and by a letter I received yesterday from Lord Raglan I find the example is going to be followed up, and stabling is to be built immediately for some buffaloes that are expected.

Sick still pour down upon Balaklava; eight hundred a week are sent away to Scutari, etc. the weather is again mild, but the melting of eighteen inches of snow has made the plain deeper in mud than ever. Some of my mules are to be lent to carry up huts, which they will do at the rate of seven or eight a day; there seems no other chance of getting them up in any numbers. The loan of these animals has been wrung out of Mr. Filder with great difficulty, and it would seem that under the present system you must send out horses as well as fireplaces with each hut. 

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Weekly Chronicle (London)
Saturday 27 January 1855

Russian Prizes.

On Thursday notice was given at the Royal Exchange that, if cause isnot shown to the contrary, the Court of Admiralty will proceed to adjudicate and pronounce condemnation of the following ships, with the merchandise laden therein at the time of their capture, as belonging to the enemies of Great Britain, and as lawful prizes to the captors:-

The Sfiator Constantine, Feidor Pubranof,master, captured by her Majesty's ship Retribution, Captain the Hon. James Robert Drummond; the Niger, Leopold George Heath, commander; and the French ship of war, Descartes, which ship has been taken to Varna.

A brig, name unknown, captured by her Majesty's ship Firebrand, Hyde Parker Esq., commander, and taken to Constantinople. 

The Sfiator Nicolai, Kiela Taranento, master, captured by her Majesty's ship, Retribution, Captain the Hon. James Robert Drummond; the Niger, Leopold George Heath Esq., commander, and the French ship of war, Descartes. Taken to Varna.

The Sfiator Constantius, Ossip Laurenou, master, captured by her Majesty's ships, Niger, Leopld George Heath Esq., the Retribution, the Hon. James Robert Drummond,a nd French ship of war, Descartes. Taken to Varna. 

The Sfiator Pietro e Paolo, Ivan Sidelca, master, captured by her Majesty's ships Retribution, Niger, and French ship Descartes. Taken to Varna.

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Sir Leopold Heath's correspondence continues...

Letter 32.

H.M.S. “Sanspareil.”Khersonese,

Saturday 3rd February 1855.
Here I am at last fairly clear of Balaklava and fairly started, if not on my homeward voyage, at all events on one of relaxation and pleasure. I think I am leaving just in time, for although I feel in as good health as I ever did in my life there is yet something wrong, for a chip of my knuckle which should have healed in four or five days has been now five weeks unhealed, and not only that but has spread into a nasty looking wound; and the same thing has happened to the knuckle of one of my toes, on the top of which a boot had rubbed a hole.

Change of air is the grand remedy in such cases, and although I only arrived here yesterday I fancy there is an improvement already.

I don’t think I have written to you for ten days or so. The events during that time have not been very grand or exciting, but on the whole I think matters are improving. I have told you all about my mules, as I have got to call them; they are comfortably housed, and their stabling and grooming, feeding, etc., is under a cavalry officer with a staff of sergeants etc. this is not only a good move in itself, but it has produced fruit in causing the same accommodation to be provided beforehand for a hundred and eight big buffaloes just arrived.

The railroad ships have begun to come, and the first batch of navvies had cleared the ground for their house before I came away yesterday. They expect in three weeks to have a single line of rails laid as far as the crest of the great plateau on which the army is encamped.

Three days ago I took leave of Lord Raglan. Being so far on the road I went on to the French entrenchments, and it may be interesting to you to know that I road a horse called St.Arnaud, a present from the late French Commander-in-chief to Lord Raglan.

The French have seven and a half miles of zigzags and parallels, the principal portion of them forming two sets of approaches of this description. I suppose you know the general principle as well as I do – it is that when one parallel is made (which serves as cover for the besieging troops) advancing zigzags are made towards the front, but zigzagged at such angles that people behind them are still under cover. After advancing by these means a certain distance, another parallel is formed for the same purpose as the first, and then another advance, and so on. I went up to their furthest, or third parallel, which is only a hundred and ten yards from the top of the Russian flag staff battery.

The top of the parapet is formed of bags filled with earth, and at intervals small holes are left for the double purpose of spying and shooting with rifles at the enemy. The first curious thing I saw, and one which was a good example of the sort of life soldiers in such circumstances are accustomed to, was a party of Frenchmen, under an officer, who were employed in improving the trenches. They were standing looking at a broken iron water pipe which ran (when unbroken) through their ground, and they told me they had just been saved the hard work of destroying it themselves by a lucky cannon shot, which had fallen on it and broken it for them without touching one of their party.

It was very curious to look at the enemy’s guns within almost a stone’s throw of them, but I confess the peculiar twang of Minie rifle balls passing, as far as one could guess, within a foot of one’s head was – although very exciting – not very pleasant. The Russians posted for this express purpose are excellent marksmen, and as they probably fired on seeing the tip of one’s cap, or something moving, the chances are that the balls did not really pass much more than a foot from one.

There are two mines made by the French; one is completed, and reaches beneath the Russian work; the other, into which I went, has twenty yards further to go. It is a passage about four feet square, the ventilation is kept up by means of a rotatory fan at the mouth. The men working at the further end sit down and dig out with crow bars; others, also sitting down, shovel what is thus removed into four-wheeled trucks, which are driven along on a wooden railway to the mouth, whence the stuff is drawn up in buckets.

It was very hot up at the further end, and I should think on a frosty night there would be plenty of volunteers for the work. I think I have somewhere read of mines and counter mines having met, and I could imagine the desperation of such a combat with crowbars as would then take place.

I am glad to have been within twenty yards of Sebastopol. This third parallel, being the nearest to the Russian works, is of course the one most the object of attack by the Russian sorties, and many sanguinary fights have there taken place. In one of them the Russians succeeded in carrying off three small mortars, which had been used with very small charges to throw shells just the one hundred and eight yards over the Russian parapets.

Catching a Russian is I see almost like snaring a hare, for the French have all along the inner side of this parallel, at about three feet down from the top, driven short stakes at intervals of three or four yards, between these stakes they have stretched an iron wire, and it is hoped that when next the Russians succeed in clearing the top of the parapet their feet will catch in the wire, and they will tumble head foremost on the bayonets of the defenders. This device has only quite recently been adopted, and no assault has since been made to test its utility.

I should think there were fifteen hundred men guarding the third parallel, all looking jolly enough. The mail had just arrived,  and the officers in groups were discussing Le Presse or the Moniteur, and asked us with some eagerness what we thought of the prospects of peace. I wanted to gather their sentiments on the subject, but came to no conclusion; the most common feeling seemed one rather of indifference. Just what one might expect from people with a knowledge of the hardships of such a campaign and a distant glimmering of a speedy return to the comforts of La Belle France on one side, and on the other with a soldier’s anxiety to take by force of arms the proud fortress that had so long and so successfully resisted them.

This expedition to the French lines took up the whole day, and no time was left for going over to the English, and taking a last look at the few acquaintances and people in whom I am interested amongst them. Richard Crofton has a brother here in the Engineers; I have not seen him since he landed, but I then had the satisfaction of supplying him with a frame work and canvas bedstead, to keep him off the wet ground.

Fitzroy, now Captain Fitzroy, I saw a fortnight ago, looking very well. A few Malta acquaintances I should like to have seen, to report their appearance to their wives on my arrival at Malta.

Admiral Boxer arrived on the 31st, and from the short talk I had with him I am afraid instead of “putting things to rights,” which he conceives is his mission, he will make a very pretty hotchpotch. He says his orders are “to command at Balaklava,” and his idea of doing that seems to be an interference at once (without waiting for gaining local experience of any sort) with every department\, whether naval or military, which he finds established in the neighbourhood. As his plan and mine are the direct opposites of one another, one of us must be very wrong.

I joined the Admiral here on the evening of the 1st. He takes a hundred men from this ship to man the “Royal Albert,” which came out only partially manned. Discharging these men, taking in old stores, invalids, etc., will detain me until this afternoon, and then, wind and weather permitting, I am off for the Bosphorus and Malta. There I expect to be stopped by electric telegraph, and after ten days’ leave of absence to return – I suppose I may now let out my secret to the family, but to the family only – “Principal Agent of Transports, vice Christie superseded.”

The Admiral this evening showed me his letter on the subject to the Admiralty. I am too modest to repeat his eulogies of myself, but they were so strong that I think the appointment next thing to certain. His praises of Christie in all respects but fitness for this particular work were equally strong, and if the latter is dismissed his fall will, I am very glad to say, be as gentle a one as possible. The post is a very important one and a good deal beyond my standing. I look on it as not much below that of a Junior Flag Officer. I have some doubt whether my business habits are equal to the duties, but the responsibility of selecting has been the Admiral’s, and I can only do my best.

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Private and Confidential.

H.M.S. “Agamemnon,” 

Monday 15th January 1855.
My dear Heath,I may tell you in strictest confidence that I have to propose to the Admiralty a successor to Christie. It is at this juncture a post of the highest importance, and whoever may be appointed by the Admiralty may consider it a signal proff of the confidence of the Board. Now I know no man so fit for it as you are. Shall I propose you?

A more honourable and responsible appointment could not be given to you, in which you sea-time would be going on, and you would be establishing a claim to almost any appointment within the gift of the Board.

Captain Christie is borne as supernumerary in the “Fisgard,” in order that his time may count.

I send this and two accompanying notes through headquarters, and the dragoon will wait for your answers to the other two. This, you may possibly (though I hope not) wish to have a night to reflect upon, but  in any case let me have your answer to this tomorrow.

Yours,E. Lyons

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H.M.S. “Agamemnon,”

Monday 15th January 1855.
My dear Heath,I hear that the roads may be impassable, so I send the “Arrow” round for your answer to my proposal of yesterday, and I do hope it may be an affirmative one. My letter to the Admiralty must go at 7 a.m. tomorrow, so I shall like to have your answer as soon as may be.

If you say “Yes,” I will write to the Admiralty to stop you at Malta by telegraph via Marseilles. Take into consideration that you will be really rendering your country great service at a critical moment of need. You need have no delicacy about Christie, for if you are not appointed some one else will be.

E.L. 

H.M.S. “Sanspareil.”Balaklava,January 14th, 1855.
My dear Sir Edmund Lyons, I cannot tell you how flattered I felt on receiving your offer this afternoon, but I am glad you gave me a few hours for consideration, as I might otherwise have thought I had been led by those feelings without having allowed reason to step in for her share in the discussion.

The more I think of it the more I see that however doubtful I may be of doing much better than my predecessor, however much I may hesitate about going out of the regular working line of the service, and however much I may regret the putting off of domestic arrangements, still the appointment is so far beyond my standing, so far more important than any I could hope to hold, that I cannot help seeing that I should be mad not to accept your offer.

I now do so with much gratitude, and much pride at having been selected by you.
Yours sincerely,

L.G. Heath.

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Letter from Lord Raglan

Saturday 20th January 1855

My dear Captain Heath,

Many thanks for you letter of today.The mules were certainly bought on the suggestion of Mr Filder and he does not like to give up what he considers his property for the discharge of a particular branch of the publick service; but I think I shall be able to make a satisfactory arrangement.

I have informed Hamilton[?] that you have now [cover?] for eighty will have ninety more tomorrow and will complete the accommodation for the whole number in two or three days more.

I have desired Lt Hall and Captain Heath to visit the [necessary Cairne?] and fix upon an eligible spot for a hut hospital. If they find one it would not be difficult to convey huts [the?] short distance. Should this arrangement be made could the Admiral render carpenters from the ships?

Yours faithfully,Raglan.

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Letter No. 33.

Written apparently in February, 1855.

L.G.H.

I think I may as well wind up this series of journal letters by a sort of review of the campaign, premising that the opinions I shall advance are given and were formed, most of them, after the events which I criticise took place. This would not be fair if I were a rival General, or at all professed to have been able at the time to manage matters better than they were managed; but as a looker-on, and a writer in a small way of history, it is, I think, quite legitimate.

Prince Napoleon, the General of Division, now gone home, is said to have described the campaign in these terms – “The conception of an attack on Nicholas’s stronghold was ‘une audace,’ the landing was ‘une audace,’ the battle of Alma was ‘une audace,’ and so was the march on Balaklava, and the sitting down on the heights south of Sebastopol; but there it stopped, and the one ‘audace’ which might have gloriously finished the campaign was wanting.”

I agree with him to a great extent, but I think the great original mistake was fighting the battle of Alma in the afternoon instead of the forenoon. We were the aggressors, and could choose our own time; we had a skirmish the previous evening and knew that the enemy was in force, and I think we chose our position for encamping that night too far off. I don’t know if there is any fixed military maxim on the subject, but it seems clear to me that it is the interest of the aggressor to have as much of the day before him as possible, to improve his victory if he gains it; and that of the attacked to put off his opponent, and delay him as much as possible, for the opposite reason.

What were the results of the Alma? What might they have been if the victorious troops had marched on but five or six miles in pursuit? What we did was to gain a great victory, and take what was then one of the outposts of Sebastopol; and in doing so we gained more than the actual victory in the prestige which was attached to it. This advantage which we gained is, I consider, the measure of what we lost by not following up our advantage.

All reports agree in stating that on reaching their baggage the Russian army was in perfect confusion, and that the whole of their artillery was left for two days unguarded on the banks of the next river, the Katcha. A few hours’ pursuit would have turned the Russian retreat into a Russian rout.

But even if we were obliged to halt that night on the field of battle, would Napoleon or Wellington have remained (I forget how many days) for the sake of the wounded? Would not either of them have pushed on with the main body of the army, leaving a division of soldiers and a division of the fleet to look after the sufferers? Advancing leisurely as we did the road was found strewed with debris of all sorts, showing plainly what would have happened with more energy on our side.

Many people here, and I believe Sir Edmund Lyons amongst them, blame the march round to the south. I am quite of the contrary opinion and think that the saving point for the military reputation of the Allied Generals. That much having been successful, it seems now clear that an immediate attack on the town would also have been successful, and that it might have been foreseen that all subsequent making and arming of earthworks by ourselves, drawing out material from a port seven miles distant, must be overmatched by similar works with guns drawn from the immediate neighbourhood.

I think an opinion I once heard set forth that Sir John Burgoyne considered himself a lecturer on practical siege making for the benefit of the young Engineers, with a real Sebastopol for his black board and an allied army for his chalk and long stick, is not far from the true statement of the case. He is said to be seventy-four, and therefore naturally wedded to old opinions and old prescriptive routine, and he has, without doubt, great influence with Lord Raglan.

Sir Edmund Lyons says Sir John’s sole reason for objecting to an immediate attack was the existence of a wretched round tower with four guns on its top; but yet he allowed earthworks to grow at night and day, not only round that tower, in rows two and three deep, but also round what was then an almost entirely open and defenceless town, without the slightest attempt at annoying the workemen – saying only that “all he saw could be knocked down in twenty-four hours.” He said this to me on the beach  at Balaklava, and a swell French officer standing by his side added “un coup de pied suffit.”

I do not think we fired a single shot from the 26th September until our batteries opened on the 17th October. I forgot to mention that the round tower is not a round tower at all, it is round towards Balaklava, but only a semi-circle, and is or rather was open in the rear. What a reward this discovery would have been to one more “audace!”

The bombardment began on the 17th October, the fleets were to take part in it, and it had been arranged that the French start in from Kamiesh should form in succession in a line for the attack of the forts on the south side, and that the English, commencing from what we call the Wasp Battery, should form in succession round Constantine and attack the northern defences. This plan seemed to me good, but at the last moment Admiral Hamelin persuaded Admiral Dundas not to come down from the northward, but to consider himself part of the French fleet and to form in succession on the leading French ship.

The only reason I can conceive for this change was that Hamelin thought there would probably be a gap between the two fleets if the original plan were carried out, and that his leading ship would be singled out for a sort of cross fire from both sides of the harbour.

The French plan was adopted with the exception of the “Albion,” “Arethusa,” “Argamemnon,” “London,” and “Sanspareil,” the three last of which are the only ships that did any real good, for all the French were either much too far off or much too late in action. Some ships were not half an hour in action. I don’t think that, however conducted, the naval attack could have been very successful, except as a powerful diversion; but the distance at which the French ships and the English which formed on them were brought into action will be a fair subject of criticism for the historian of the Crimean campaign.

The battle of Inkerman would probably not have been fought if our right had been properly secured, and the reason that it was not properly secured was that we had undertaken a large portion of the offensive line that our small force could fairly cover. What the real reason of this was I cannot say, but suppose it must have been either ignorance as to what could be done with a given number of troops, or too much good nature and bonhomie in Lord Raglan.

I do not think, with others, that he should have insisted on keeping his original station – viz., the left of the line – because as we took and kept Balaklava as the base of our operations, I think the right of the position naturally fell to us.

Our sanitary measures have from the first been neglected. The Russians were in no position to attack us when we first came round, we had no trenches to guard, our commissariat horses were still alive, the roads were still good, and yet not a tent did we send to the front for at least ten days, and much sickness was the consequence. No roads were made, no attempt to store provisions in front, no piles of firewood collected, no regimental cook houses established; each man did for himself, and three or four times the necessary fuel was used.

Houses were pulled down, which now would have been invaluable as hospitals or storehouses; not a single precautionary measure was taken with a view to a possible failure  in immediately occupying Sebastopol. Lord Raglan is said to have had permission to order all the Mediterranean garrison to his support; none were sent for until a fortnight after the necessity for them had become a public topic of conversation. I believe Sir Sidney Herbert was quite right in saying that Lord Raglan’s demands had always been forestalled by the  supplies from England. 

Now for Mr Filder. His great fault has been want of foresight, and bad calculation as to the number of horses required; to which may be added a total want of even an attempt at taking care of the animals he did provide.

When the roads became so bad that carts had to be given up, he allowed his bullocks to be killed and eaten; when the roads had again hardened not a dozen bullocks were forthcoming.  A cargo of horses arriving today and numbering three hundred would be sure to be reduced to one hundred and fifty in ten days time. When the poor beasts had travelled six or seven miles, heavily laden, on wretched roads, and returned the same distance , they were turned out into an open yard, eighteen inches deep in mud, off which mud they ate their barley and chopped straw.

There were no stable keepers separate from the drivers, and the latter, being as tired after their day’s work as the beasts themselves, acted upon a principle which a campaigning life tends much to foster, that of looking after No.1 first.

Regimental management must have had much to do with our misfortunes, how else can one account for regiments like the  - - -  going bodily to hospital  or the grave, whilst others, like the 75th, have not a large proportional sick list than the “Sanspareil.” But want of roads and want of mules have been by far our greatest enemies.

Letter No.34.

Malta,

Tuesday 27th February 1855.
I arrived here on the 23rd, after a long passage of fourteen days from Constantinople, steaming almost the whole way against light westerly winds, but detained at anchor four days out of the fourteen by a strong foul wind. The “Malacca,” a new experimental corvette, took the same time for her journey, and so the “Sanspareil” must not be complained of too much.

On arrival here I found a notification of my commission having been sent to Sir Edmund Lyons, and I found on an interview with the hospital doctor (to whom I went as the highest authority) that he thought it would require six weeks to set up my health again. However, I feel sure he overrates my illness, and underrates the benefit of change of scene, change of occupation, and change of air. I expect to be on my return in about a fortnight from the date of my arrival, that will be on about the 10th March.

I don’t know whether I told you Sir Edmund had agreed to a suggestion from me that I should live on board a small steam man-of-war, instead of shifting about from transport to transport, as Christie had done in a rather undignified manner. The “Triton” is here under repair and will suit me very well; but address all my letters, “Captain Heath, R.N., Principal Agent of Transports, Balaklava.” Your intimation of the amount of my pay rather pulls down my notion of the dignity of my office, for the one may be supposed a measure of the other. I presume it was settled before the business assumed its present gigantic dimensions. 

You ask for a history of the coffee-roasting. I cannot remember exact dates, but somewhere in the end of November or beginning of December I directed an experimental roasting machine to be made by the “Sanspareil” engineers out of empty oil barrels, and this was worked by “Sanspareil” men, burning wood as their fuel, and it roasted in one day sufficient for one-third of the army. I then made two more machines, and turned the three over to the army to work for themselves. They burnt charcoal instead of wood, which of itself was one reason for its roasting more slowly. But besides that, soldiers don’t work like sailors, and I seldom found on my visits to the roasting-shed that the whole three machines were at work; then the charcoal made the men ill, and alterations had to be made in the building.

In the meantime the “Sanspareil’s” engineers had undertaken the reventing of the guns in the batteries, and not liking to break them off from there until they had finished, it was some time before more machines were made; but a fortnight before I came away there were six machines made and at work, which did the whole allowance.

During the last fortnight, also, a commissariat vessel brought in roasted coffee, and therefore, if from any circumstances there should not have been enough roasted by the machines on any day, the difficiency could be made up from this cargo. There must have been one-third of the coffee roasted during the month of December and more than a half during January, and there is no excuse whatever for the whole allowance henceforward not being issued roasted.

You ask about the numbers of the British army. I send you an official document which will tell you all about them. I think it is dated 26th January, and there were at that date nearly three thousand men on board ships at Balaklava, waiting for fine weather to disembark, who are exclusive of the return. The marines, about fourteen hundred, and seamen, about nine hundred, are also to be added.

I can tell you nothing about the French camp, except that as far as I could judge from my ride through a portion of it when I visited their lines, they did not seem to have so many houses or huts as we have. I shall not be surprised if this Commission, which I see is to investigate the past state of affairs out here, comes to the conclusion that the main point, in which the French differ from us, is in having an organised land transport service, such as we are now beginning to form.

I put all, or almost all, our misfortunes down to the utter neglect of our horses and mules. The deficient supply of fodder for any larger number than that which we have had would have made us just as badly off if we had had ever so many, but that could of course have been remedied. 

Mary returns to England by the first good opportunity after I leave. Her sister goes with her. All your brotherly and sisterly and motherly invitations have been discussed by us very fully, and we have come to the determination that Eastbury is her proper place, but that she is to spend such lengthy periods with you in turn as shall suffice for her to know you all thoroughly, and you her, and for her to become a regular Heath.


Letter No.35

Balaklava

In great haste

Monday 12th March 1855.
I have only this morning read Stafford’s telling and eloquent speech, as reported in the Herald. It confirms my opinion of his having been kind to the sick, perhaps from real kindliness of heart, but of his having taken the journey to get up political capital in the shape of grievances.

The case in which he refers to me – viz., the “Candia” having arrived in Balaklava with medical comforts on board and having been told to carry them to Sulina, etc., etc. – is a regular bit of humbug. He represents it as an instance of mismanagement. The fact of the things being there is true, and of Captain Field having offered to give them up to any officer with a commission is true. He did so in a letter to me.

I wrote to the principal medical officer, and was told that they had held a board on board the ship and had decided that the particular things in question were more wanted at Scutari than at Balaklava, and that they were therefore to be sent back.

Could anything else have been done, and would not the Balaklava folks have been to blame if they had done otherwise? Don’t believe even half what you hear from “Eye-witnesses” if Members of Parliament.

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Letter No.36.

Balaklava,

Friday 30th March 1855.
I see your letter cost you 8d. – I suppose on account of the direction to me as Agent of Transports. Nevertheless be so good as to continue the same extravagant address, because I get the letters a day or two sooner than I should if they were addressed to H.M.S. “Triton.” The said “Triton” has not yet arrived, and in the meantime I am living on board the “City of London.” I suppose I must, on account of Stafford’s kindly acts towards myself, relax in my hatred of his political profligacy.

As you say, this letter is not likely to reach you in time to influence your proceedings, but I am quite content that the line to be adopted should depend on your judgment, and it is a great satisfaction to me to know that you are on the qui vive looking out for me. I should say that as long as I am not attacked I should not move at all. There is no doubt, as you say, a wonderful jumble of dates, and a still more wonderful jumble of names and duties.

Many of the things, for which if they did occur I should have been blamed, Christie is attacked for – the dead bullocks, the floating wood and hay, for instance, were all in my department, but by special arrangement with Christie his hospital ships were to look out for the first-named. I don’t plead guilty to any of these things, but perhaps the dead bullocks should have been towed out of the harbour more frequently than they were; but, as I say, Christie had specifically taken over that work. the floating hay was collected as long as there was any fit for collecting.

The suggestion was made to Lord Raglan that the wood should be collected for the use of the army. The answer was – “Much obliged, but we have no means of carrying it to the front.” Nevertheless all the time I was there I had an enormous pile, from which any soldier who liked was at liberty to help himself (provided he did not live in Balaklava) and from whence many gun platforms were sawed by the sappers and miners.

The berthing of the ships was, I believe, as perfect as possible. I was responsible for the system, and Powell (whom, however, I had at first to teach and instruct to a certain extent) was responsible to me for carrying it out. I believe the best evidence that the harbour was not quite the chaos of “Our Own Correspondent” – that at all events some attempt was made at regularity – will be found in the official document headed, I think, “Information respecting Balaklava Harbour,” which I drew up for Admiral Boxer’s information, and which was forwarded by Sir Edmund Lyons to the Admiralty.* It is an official document, and drawn up without any other idea than that of giving my successor all the information in my power.

Mary has the circular I sent round to the Merchant Captains about The Times criticisms and the answers I received.* I write by this mail to tell her to send them to you at once. I observed in Galignani’s report of (I think) MR. Clay’s evidence that “the Harbour Masters were active,” etc., which The Times of course leaves out.*Vide next page* Vide Page 143.

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Leopold's memorandum

.M.S. “Sanspareil,”Balaklava,

January, 1855.
Memorandum Respecting Balaklava Harbour.

Drawn up for the Information of Admiral Boxer.

Piloting and Berthing.

It is of the utmost importance that no sailing vessel should, during the winter months, remain at anchor outside the harbour. Captain Christie has established a signal post on the Eastern cliff, whence information is given respecting ships in the offing. From this post Marriott’s signals are used to the ships outside, and a local code transmits the information received to Captain Christie, and to the Senior Officer in the harbour.

Commander Powell of the “Vesuvius,” assisted by Mr. Reid, Master of that ship, has the entire direction of the piloting of vessels in and out of harbour, and of appointing them their berths. 
For this purpose the three tug vessels “Circassia,” “Varna,” and “Shark,” being the smallest and handiest, are in general use.

The “Minna” and “Brenda” are never used for towing, but they go alongside of vessels outside when the water is smooth, and bring in troops. Each of these two vessels will carry seven hundred or eight hundred men, or from sixty to eighty horses.

There are four troop boats and five heavy lighters belonging to the harbour, they are in charge of the Senior Officer. There is also one double boat with a platform over it, but it is not in good repair, and is generally used as a floating wharf. 

To ensure clear anchors and close stowage of the vessels in port, it is absolutely necessary that the piloting and berthing should be in the hands of an experienced Officer, and the he should not be diverted from these duties.

Wharfage.
The berths opposite the first open space on the Eastern side after entering the harbour are kept as much as possible for the cattle ships; the smaller ones can land their cargoes (with the assistance of light brows) directly on to the wharf, the larger ones can do so with the assistance of the double boat or floating wharf. This saves much time as the cattle walk on shore.
The next landing place is Ordnance Wharf, where shot and some descriptions of ordnance stores are usually landed. From thence up to the head of the harbour are a number of small projecting landing places, variously appropriated by the Commissariat to the different articles of provisions. Bread, rum, meat, etc., have each a place appointed to them.
The last wharf at the end of the town is solely for embarking sick. Opposite to it is a canvas building for their reception, if they should be detained whilst waiting for boats.
On the Western side of the harbour is a small plot of ground enclosed by rocks, which is the Navy Dockyard and useful for hauling up boats, storing driftwood, etc. The Engineers have a sawpit there, and are working up the large driftwood into sleepers for gun platforms.
The tugs and small steamers can go alongside the next – called the Vesuvius Wharf. All troops are disembarked there.

Sheers are erected at Diamond Wharf, and here all the guns are landed, but the water is shoal and as the large lighters cannot get up they must always be put into troop or paddle-box boats. Shells and powder are also landed here, and hay and chopped straw close to it.

General Duties.
As a rule the transports land as much provisions as the Commissariat require, without assistance in men from the Royal Navy, but when more help is required a special application is made.
Mr. Drake, A.C. General, is the Officer in charge of the provision department of the Commissariat, and it is with this gentleman that the Navy have principally to communicate.
The landing of ordnance stores is almost entirely done by the Navy, also that of horses and cattle when the vessels cannot be taken alongside a wharf. The landing of hay generally requires help, both in men and boats.

Small working parties are constantly required for improvements in the harbour, building piers, etc., and boats’ crews to assist the larger vessels with hawsers when coming in or going out of harbour.
A boarding book is kept from which the length of time a vessel has been in harbour can be ascertained. There is a tendency amongst the private traders to turn their ships into retail shops, and to prevent this, notice should be given to them on arriving that they will not be allowed to remain in harbour a certain day.
On the arrival of such a vessel her Master is required to sign a notice that the sale of spirits or wine except to Officers is forbidden, also a notice enjoining the utmost caution against fire; also a notice to colliers forbidding the sale of coal; and one to steamers requiring them to land all cinders on the beach to harden the roads – of all of which notices I attach copies.

Every vessel on arriving should immediately send its invoice of cargo to the department to which they are consigned, and will receive thence directions for their disposal. The Commissary-General receives the Commissariat goods. Mr. Young, Commissary of ordnance  stores, and Major Mackenzie, D.A.Q.M. General , the Quarter-Master General’s stores. All packages for the Navy should be brought on board the Senior Officer’s ship, and all for the Army should go to the private parcel office, to which an officer under Major Mackenzie has been appointed.

The “Sir Robert Sale,” No.88, is a depot ship for provisions, etc., for the Naval Brigade, her own master and crew are on board her, and Mr. Brown, Acting-Paymaster, has charge of the provisions, etc. He victuals the Naval Brigade, and supplies clothing and monthly money both to them and the Marines. Mr. Churcher Clark has charge of the medical stores. 

Correspondence.

The boat signals will communicate information through successive stations to and from Head Quarters. There is regular communication between Major Mackenzie and Head Quarters by means of mounted orderlies, and letters addressed to the care of Colonel Steele, Military Secretary, can be sent by that route to the Naval Commander-in-Chief at Karatch Bay.

Government Stores.

A voltaic battery with apparatus for destroying sunken ships is on board the “Queen of the South,” and large cylinders of a similar description are on board the “Ottawa.” The “Ardent’s” anchor and chain have been recovered near the entrance of the harbour, and are used as a stern mooring for ships berthed in that neighbourhood, and there is a large anchor belonging to the “Hydaspes” in use at present as a quarter mooring for the “Sanspareil.”L.G.Heath,Captain H.M.S. “Sanspareil.”And Harbour Master.

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Letter No.37.

Balaklava,

April, 1855.
This is a very frightfully large sized sheet of paper for a man who intends to send a full one once a week. I must hope for the capture of Sebastopol or peace; in the one case my sheet will be easily filled, in the other I shall not have to fill it. It is nearly two months since I left, and fine weather and lots of hard work have, during that time, made a great change in the village of Balaklava. A great number of the stone houses, which had been appropriated as hospitals for the unfortunate Turks have been pulled down altogether, and turned into macadamization for the streets; for the stone houses wooden huts have been substituted. We, of course, do not expect again to have the country ankle deep in mud, and therefore, these improvements (which would be great and invaluable for a next winter’s campaign) must, I am afraid, be classed with the very large number of “too lates” already in the field. The new macadamization is a present rather a nuisance than otherwise. 

The railroad progresses, but at a slow rate. The four miles to which it now extends have been made under most favourable circumstances of weather, but yet it has taken two months to complete it, instead of seventeen days as we expected when I left on the 1st February. I don’t complain of the navvies, but if Sir John Burgoyne had been the master hand, instead of Messrs. Peto and Co., “Our Own Correspondents” would have been by this time hard at work writing him down. 

Talking of “Our Own Correspondents,” I dined last night with Sir Colin Campbell, and there saw a most delightful correspondence. “Our Own Correspondent” wrote to Colonel Harding, Commandant of the town, stating that he had been chased close to the French lines by Cossacks, and that having escaped them he made his way into Balaklava without once being challenged by a sentry. The letter was officially forwarded to Sir Colin Campbell, who commands the Balaklava district, and he turned it over to be answered by Stirling (known to Douglas[Heath]) the Adjutant-General. The answer is most delightfully satirical, and ends with something of this sort  - “You state that the gentlemen in question is the correspondent of The Times; this gives a clue to the extraordinary exaggerations which appear in the newspaper relative to the events of the war.”

General Vinois, who is Sir Colin’s French neighbour, dined with us. He was present at the armistice and talked with a Russian General who said they were all very sick of it, and anxious for peace; they regretted the bon vin de France and were very short of cigars. A young sailor officer was just married to a “nice little English woman” and had to fight against her countrymen, and more-over was turned into a fantassin, neither of which arrangements did he approve of.

The general appearance of everyone is wonderfully improved. There are garrison, or rather, I believe, divisional races, both of horses and men, and I am sorry to say the English have beaten the French in running(!) – which I should not have expected. Balaklava is surrounded with huts. There is a convalescent hospital on the neighbouring heights; it consists of a series of huts containing eighteen men each, and a strong symptom of prevailing good spirits is that many of them have little gardens in front filled with transplanted wild flowers.

Another striking change is that soldiers now universally salute the officers they meet – a thing never thought of when they could but just move their legs along, and had no energy left for lifting their hands to their caps. Instead of forty or fifty miserable looking mules, with no masters, there are now seventeen hundred, well looked after and cared for; they are under Colonel McMurdo, the head of the newly-established land transport corps.

Then there is the railway, most useful already with it great big English cart horses, and I don’t know that I have seen anything within the last two years that has so reminded me of Old England as meeting a team of these animals, with the chain traces, swingle-tree (or whatever it is called) thrown over their backs, returning to their stables, a navvy mounted sideways on the back of each, with a short pipe in his mouth and a long carter’s whip over his shoulder. 

There is little doubt but that the guns will open this week, and that in all probability the bombardment will be followed by an assault; with what results remains to be seen. I hear various opinions, but sanguine on the whole, there is no doubt that the Russians have lost no time, and that their ditches are both wide and deep, and it is probable that when they are passed, mines will be sprung, which will lose us men from our advanced parties, but which will make the ground the easier for those who follow. We are preparing floating hospitals for the wounded, who will not be sent away until the critical period for their wounds is passed. This day week I hope to write to you of Victory; and this day month you to me of consequent Peace. Nous verrons.

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Letter No.38.

Finished, Balaklava

Tuesday 10th April 1855
I think I described in lasts week’s letter my general impressions on returning to Balaklava after nearly two month’s absence. I have since then had  my hands pretty full, for as Captain Christie expected to have to face an inquiry on his conduct on his arrival in England, he naturally wished to take his secretary with him, and the obtaining a successor has been a longer process than I anticipated.

The first to whom I offered the berth was the “Sanspareil’s” clerk, but being now senior clerk in the Admiral’s office he will get the first death vacancy as a paymaster, and I think wisely prefers that prospect to a mere temporary gain in income.

The second one turns out to be too young to be eligible for the appointment. The third, who is appointed (Mr Arlidge), was paymaster of the “Carodoc,” and has had to settle all his own accounts with his successor before coming to me. I believe I shall have him tomorrow. He seems a very nice gentlemanly fellow which is a great points as I intend to make him my messmate; he is also said to be very hard working, which is another great point. I have had not only to write my own letters, but also to copy them into a book, and I have had to make out returns of the present employment of the transports. These were left me in a form according to the numbers of the transports. I have collected them under separate heads, so that my return gives a synoptic view of how many are employed on this duty, and how many on that. Then there is a daily report of cargo discharged by each transport which I have set going; and there is moreover a certain amount of personal visiting, etc. – all of which has employed me pretty continuously. When I catch Mr. Arlidge I shall be able to turn over the clerical work to him and take more to the active part.

I have had a fight a little with Admiral Boxer to place myself on the footing prescribed by my instructions; but I think that is all over and that we now understand one another. He is a most hard-working, zealous man, but without the slightest approach to method, and some of his work has in consequence to be done over again. If he wants a ship cleared for any particular purpose he will put all her cargo on the beach, without the slightest care as to whose charge it is to go into. I can quite conceive the confusion as to stores etc. in the Bosphorus during his reign, from hearing him report to someone, who came from Sir Edmund Lyons to inquire, that there were only four hundred tons of coal in the harbour, when I myself (who have nothing to do with the colliers but only with the transports) know of upwards of eight hundred tons. 

During the last few days a portion of the Turkish army at Eupatoria has been brought up to the camp via Kamiesh. I at first heard that ten thousand were to come, but I hear today the number is to be increased to twenty-five thousand. This would seem to imply that the notion of investing north side was abandoned, and that a great push is to be made, perhaps simultaneously, on the town and on Lyrandi. Deserters told us that an attack was to be made on Balaklava on Easter Day, but that has passed with no such occurrence. The officer commanding the cavalry picquet, however, had his eyes so sharpened by the report, that he sent up a daylight to head quarters to say he saw some guns mounted on what we used to call No.3 Redoubt, opposite Balaklava. They turned out to be dark marks on the side of the hill!

Our fire opened in earnest this morning at daybreak (April 9th) , and at the same time, or rather a few hours, previous, the rain, which has been absent for six weeks, began to come down, and it is rather advantageous to us than otherwise, as it prevents Liprandi from making an attack on our end of the line, if he were so inclined. We have had but few people in from the front, but they all say that our fire is three or one superior to the Russians. I don’t myself see why the Russians should fire at all; their object is to hold their own, and I think they would do that most effectually by keeping under cover, and working at repairing damages during the night with undiminished forces.

April 10th. – I have waited so long in hopes of getting some authentic news for you from the front that I have hardly time to finish my page. The latest account is that we have got the south side, but you must not make sure until you see the newspaper, for this is a shocking place for gossip.
Two o’clock. – Nothing new. The firing going on with no material result as yet. Russian fire rather stronger than yesterday.


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Letter No.39

Saturday 12th April 1855 - Balaklava
Your letter of March 29th has just arrived, and almost simultaneously with it the news that Captain Crofton, R.E.*, a brother of Richard in the Artillery, has lost his leg, and as I shall go to the front tomorrow morning to see what I can do for him, (he shortly died of his wounds) I had better answer you at once, rather than risk missing the mail which is made up here tomorrow evening.

I read all the evidence before the Committee as reported in the Evening Mail, and therefore, I suppose, as reported in The Times. But you see the Herald, which I do not, and I was quite unaware that it’s abuse of me still continued. We have learnt much during the war as to our commissariat, etc., but if we ever make such another war without gagging “Our Own Correspondents” at the very beginning, we shall make a greater mistake than any we have made on this occasion.

I have within the last week met Sir John McNeil and also two other members of the Sanitary Commission. The latter both expressed their surprise at the difference between what they found and what they expected to find. The former is carrying on his investigation very quietly, and apparently very temperately, but I find him as open to a gobe-mouche story as any of the Correspondents.

On his arrival here about a month ago Admiral Boxer,* who has usurped Christie’s functions, ordered by Sir John McNeil to be received on board an empty steamer called the “Gottenberg,” a steamer whose hire cost £50 a day. This was the common topic of conversation, and I suppose it came to Boxer’s ears, because a few days after my arrival (taking Christie’s place) he took measures for transferring Sir John to a depot ship, and the “Gottenberg” was ordered by me to England, where she and vessels of her class were much wanted.

Down comes a note from General Airey to know – “Why the ‘Gottenberg,’ which costs less than the ‘Oscar’ should be ordered home when the ‘Oscar’ is not?” I answer – “They are both of 50s. a ton, but one is large than the other, one is empty and the other is full, and moreover the ‘Gottenberg,’ like the ‘Oscar,’ is hired for six months; she goes home to bring our another cargo, and if she costs twice as much as the other it would make no difference, for whether lying here doing nothing or loading with a fresh cargo at Portsmouth she receives the same pay.” It turned out that General Airey’s query was founded on Sir John McNeil’s representation, which was founded on the statement of the master of the “Gottenberg.” I taxed Sir John with it, and pointed out it was just the sort of information on which “Our Own Correspondents’” “facts” were founded, which he admitted, but took credit to himself for sifting to the bottom at once.

There are two “Arabias,” the one you heard of in England is not my friend – yours was only once, that I remember, in Balaklava; the other is a sailing ship, and has been here a good deal. I think you have best advanced my interests by doing nothing. As to the “Candia,” you are quit mistaken in supposing there was a shipload of medical comforts; it was merely the surplus of a supply put on board for the use of the body of troops brought from Marseilles to Kamiesh, and was very insignificant in quantity. I never took any of it; Peel may have done so in the “Diamond” – for I see Stafford makes rather a hash in his speech between our names and our ships.

As far as I have seen of the evidence before the Sebastopol Committee it strikes me as the most wonderful jumble of gossip and second editions of newspaper correspondence that has ever been gathered together before so solemn a tribunal. The witnesses have first read The Times, and then (so weak is poor human nature) they have digested it until it has become (like other food) part and parcel of themselves, and they have given it to the Committee as their own opinion. The Times then turns round and says, “ See how true our reports have been.”

As to “Mr King versus Captain Heath,” I am inclined to let all alone until the capture of Sebastopol – which may take place tomorrow – or the Vienna conferences send me to England. Just think with what force I shall come down on the Duke – “Having been absent serving under the distinguished officer, Sir Edmund Lyons, in the Crimean war, advantage has been taken by those who live at home at ease to oust me from certain privileges, etc., etc.”

I am very grateful to you all for going to Portsmouth to meet Mary. It will smooth her way very much, for even when she left me she was a little frightened at the thoughts of meeting you all, and your brotherly kindness will reassure her. 

P.S. – I asked this evening the name of the Herald’s correspondent. It is Wood, and that is all I know about him. 

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Wednesday 18 April 1855
London Evening Standard

Seige of Sebastopol - (From the Morning Herald) (From our Special Correspondent.) English Camp, Heights of Sebastopol, March 31
General Memorandum "Orient, Balaklava, March 29 1855"

"The Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty having been pleased to appoint Captain Leopold Heath, Royal navy, to supersede me as principal agent of transports, I hereby inform you thereof, and you will follow and obey the orders of that officer from and after the 31st instant." - P. Christie, Captain and Principal Agent. 
 

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File PB110019

Letter from AMC to Stamford, from Eastbury.

Mentions death of Sir Hyde Parker 26 May 1854

22^nd April [1855?]

Dearest Stamford,

I now sit down in peace and comfort to answer, [seriative?] your interesting letter. I am sure if you knew the pleasure these letters give me you would never regret the trouble of writing them. Nothing can be more interesting to me than to receive this confidence, which, rely upon it, shall never be abused. And first I must thank you again for the cheque, “and with words of such a sweet perfume as made the gift more rich.” Surely never was present more kindly intended or more friendly made.

Rose gives me a delightful account of her health. (all on Malta) She says she feels as if she never knew before what it was to feel quite vigorous and well. And Fanny says she looks better than ever she did in her life. She makes herself very busy helping to teach Amy, who is beginning to play prettily and get on with French &c. And other “inflammatory branches of learning.” Rose’s enjoyment of the fine [sands?] and lovely skies and waters of Malta is extreme.

Next for poor Sir Hyde, no certainly, he left nothing to us. Such an idea was not likely to enter into his head. He had far too many claimants near at hand. And I fear had hurt his fortune very much by Railway [speculations?] which have injured such numbers, his county railway, being the “Eastern Counties.” His being one among the worst of them.

He had lost too in mining I believe. The estate went with Melford Hall to the present Sir William Parker, who had a common grandfather with our Sir Hyde, namely the old Admiral Sir Hyde Park, who took the Spanish Galleon, the Santissima Trinidada and afterwards sailing to the Cape on some fresh expedition was lost with all his crew, nothing being ever heard of the vessel more.

At Melford Hall there are some pieces of China of extraordinary value, which were part of the spoils of the Santissima Trinidad. And I remember one day going with Sir Hyde into a closet, where he kept his tea, about which he was very particular. I mean the tea, and it was quite full of curious and odd [mollers?] I suppose from the same source.

I do not hear that he has left anything except to is sister Mrs Eyres and her children, who are all now grown men and women, with children, grown men and women many of them too. As you say, the secrecy people make about Wills seems ridiculous enough, when any one can read a Will for as shilling. But people rely upon nobody thinking it worth while to do it except for some special purpose. And I think one justly dislikes giving people the power more than one can help, to discuss ones affairs.

Poor dear Sir Hyde! I think of him so much. And then it is natural to wish to know how a man one was interested in has disposed of his property. So I give you these particulars thinking it may interest you for the sake of one, so dear a friend of your friend and brother, and who I believe you like for his own sake.

Poor dear Sir Hyde, many were his faults and those all the world can see, but he had a heart of gold, a fine intellect and the strongest and deepest affections. But his qualities were known only to those who understood him well. Those who did, but they were few, valued him most highly. I have felt much anxiety on his account, poor dear fellow. His state of mind was a subject of most serious feeling to me.

After his illness he never came here again. Always saying he should come when he was better. I think I was the only person in the world that could have ventured to touch upon the awful important subject. He and Arthur and I, had talked so confidentially of these most intimate things, but I would not venture upon them by letter and latterly, poor man, he was so blind, that all correspondence passed through his manservant who read his letters to him and wrote the answer at his dictation so that he was in a manner cut off from us all.

In spite of his impatient temper, one of his faults, I am told he bore his sufferings which were very great, water on the chest, disease of the kidneys and his blindness with undeviating patience. One would fair hope he drew this from the right source. I am assured that he never neglected private prayer and he went to Church, which things with a man like him would not, if done at all, be matters of form. I am sure if my prayers would have availed he had them,

I feel it an additional blank now they are both gone. So many happy happy hours as we three have spent together but you will be [learned?] of the subject. I will go to the next. I am sure nothing could be further from Louisa’s intention than to compare Kitlands and Linley Wood to the disparagement of dear Linley Wood. In fact the places are so different that there is no comparison to make between them.

The Heaths think no place no earth to be compared to Kitlands, but we prefer Linley Wood a thousand times. Those views of the woods! However, one is glad little Arthur stands a good chance of having so pretty a place added to his fathers portion of the old Serjeants estate, which is, Leo I mean,

I believe the largest of the three into which he, the Serjeant, divided it. Kitlands is entailed upon Leo’s son, in case Douglas leaves no heir and he is not likely to marry. He says so. And he looks so XXXXX

I am so sorry to find by your letter, that the subject of your own dispositions still plagues you so much, but I can quite enter into your feelings. It is a very serious anxiety to a conscientious man. In every circumstance, where there is, as in yours, perfect unfettered free will to be exercised. I thought when we left you, though in total ignorance of what you had settled in your own mind, that you had fixed your plan. 

But that seems not to be quite the case. When I spoke of diffusion I guarded myself, by saying “as far as consistent with one object.” By which I meant the keeping the estate together, which is natural, reading from your letter, after what passed you should consider a sacred duty to him, as well as a very [page 4] natural desire of your own to do.

I thought from what you said you intended to select one as to succeed you from among those nearest to you. And in case of that individual dying without heirs, yourself to entail the estate upon the one among the little children that you wished to enjoy it. I do not see why you should not do that to any extent. Failing one, to name a successor and so on. I believe this is the commonest thing in the world. And done every day.

But if I may venture to suggest one thing, It struck me many years ago, when you were talking upon this subject, as if you had almost a morbid anxiety about the way the estate might be treated by a successor. I think such anxieties are, perhaps, more natural than sound. When we have left the world and can no longer shape our path to circumstances, it is perhaps not well to endeavour too much to direct it. One must have faith in the honour and good sense of those whom one has selected to succeed us.

And I think it wise to leave them at as much liberty as is compatible with an entail. I should never trouble my head if I were you, with guardians of the estate, restrictions or so on. One never knows in this worlds changes, and in this worlds bothers of law questions, what injury one may be doing through a too anxious endeavour to do best.

I likewise thought, and still think, that the estate is amply sufficient and much more to be a most valuable inheritance as it stands, for any one and quite enough to render the condition of taking the name [Caldwell], a perfectly reasonable one. I perhaps mistook you but I thought you felt anxious lest the estate should not be sufficient to keep itself up.

To me, who am accustomed to make a small income do so much, it appeared to me as if there was abundance for that purpose in the land itself. And therefore certainly, as I said, if I were charged with the dispersing of a talent like that which is laid upon you, I should, after that one object was reasonably provided for, think much of the greater, the almost infinite good I might be the author of through diffusion.

But I only speak my own feelings upon the subject. As I said before, God, for his wise purposes, gives to equally honest minds such different (page 5) views of these things. I do, indeed, rejoice at the tolerable account you are able to give me of your own health. I believe the composure with which you submit to the lesser, and the fortitude with which you bear the heavier evils of uncertain health mainly contributes to the keeping you as well as with your constitution it is reasonable to expect.

But I have the happiness to know that you rest upon the only true rock, alas! Poor dear Sir Hyde had no mother like ours to sew that good seed early in his breast. Which is the nourishment and consolation of advancing years. Though I have heard him say, too, that he owed everything to his mother, but it could not have been a mother like ours. This subject I am sure you will feel is in strict confidence between us. I think of you often and good grateful sense of the divine mercies and your paternal acquiescence in his will. And it is a great happiness to me.

Poor dear Frank Holland, it was impossible not to smile. You hit of his character so well. We see however, scarcely anything of him now. I could make you laugh if it were quite fair at some of his love proceedings. [words scribbled out] I scratch that bit out as, perhaps, not quite fair.

The Archdeacon Lyal is the one who married the second Miss Brandreth. He was chaplain to St.Thomas’s hospital when they married. And I used to go and see her in the Hospital. He has made his way in the world as everything I believe connected with Brandreth does. Frank’s wife is his niece and one of a large family of children. Not mothered by at Brandreth. And not very thriving I believe. She seems a sensible girl herself.

I have not the other vol. of the Scotch songs. I had only one and I gave it to you, thinking your love for such things made you best worthy to possess it. I don’t know where the vol. you mention went to. Is not the lovely song you speak of Allan Ramsays. If so you have his poems in your library.

Here is a volume indeed. But I have such pleasure in writing our my heart to you. Alas! All else are gone to whom I could write or speak so openly. I hope I have not tired you to death. And my hand shakes today and the pens won’t write and they ought. Forgive all mistakes or imperfections of expression.

Every your dear Stamfords loving sister,

A.M.

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Wednesday 18 April 1855
London Evening Standard
Seige of Sebastopol - (From the Morning Herald) (From our Special Correspondent.) English Camp, Heights of Sebastopol, March 31
General Memorandum "Orient, Balaklava, March 29 1855"
"The Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty having been pleased to appoint Captain Leopold Heath, Royal navy, to supersede me as principal agent of transports, I hereby inform you thereof, and you will follow and obey the orders of that officer from and after the 31st instant." - P. Christie, Captain and Principal Agent. 
 

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Tuesday 1 May 1855
Morning Advertiser
Promotions in the Army and Navy.

The assertions which have been made in our columns respecting the conduct of Admiral Boxer at Constantinople, and Captain Leopold Heath at Balaklava, and still more the unhesitating manner in which we have stated that each of these officers has been promoted by Sir James Graham, in consequence of his inefficiency, must have astonished our readers; but, incredible as these facts appeared, they are confirmed to the letter by the evidence given before the Sebastopol Committee by Capt. Milne, one of Sir James Graham's colleagues and a Lord of the Admiralty. That gallant officer admits that Admiral Boxer was removed from the control of the transports at Constantinople to the situation of Harbour Master at Balaclava, because he did not give satisfaction in the former post. And he adds that it was also Sir James Graham who rewarded Captain Heath's failure as Harbour-Master of Balaclava, by making him Inspector of Transports at that port!

It is rare that Ministerial delinquency is so palpably and so speedily brought home to it's author and after such an exposure we are not surprised Sir James Graham is seriously ill. With the fear of a cross-examination by Mr Roebuck's Committee before his eyes, we should be very much surprised to hear of his immediate recovery...
 

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Translation of the Facsimile of Sir Edmund Lyons’s Letter“

Royal Albert,” Off Sebastopol

Wednesday 2nd May 1855

My dear Heath,

I think it very desirable to take the “Witley Park” with me in order that I may have the advantage of the local knowledge of her Commander, so you may take out of her and put into her whatever you may consider best between this and Friday evening, when I hope the French may have embarked all their troops, etc., etc.

I am not without hopes of getting way tomorrow evening, but even in that case the next evening would do for the departure of the “Witley Park” if it should be found convenient to retain her.

We are told that there are rockets in the “Orient.” If so we should like to have them. I am going to Head Quarters and intend to remain there until half-past four or a quarter to five o’clock.Whatever you do look out and send all the brows and gang-boards for the paddle-box boats that you can find, and the steamer should tow round five or the Malta flat bottom boats.

Yours faithfully,

Edmund Lyons.

The vessels will all be off the harbour at daylight tomorrow morning and send in their paddle-box boats for the troops. 


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Leopold Heath's letters continue...

Saturday 5th May 1855.

The Telegraph is now working sixteen hours between this and London, but only for the Government. I have not left myself a minute’s time even to thank you for your zeal in my service. The biggest “one” I have read in the evidence, as far as I am concerned, is told by the Master of the “Andes.” He said he “managed somehow to get into this harbour and had no assistance whatever.” It so happened that having taken a ship out I went on board the “Andes” outside the harbour myself, and whilst waiting for a tug I breakfasted with the Captain and then brought his vessel in. He was particularly civil, for when finally placed in safety he said “ I am sure, Sir, I am very grateful to you for bringing me in, I don’t know how I should have managed without you, I had no idea the place was so small and so crowded.”

The Captain of the “Himalaya” comes next. He was suddenly ordered to Varna on an emergency, having some charcoal on board him. He was to have returned from Varna immediately, but his engine broke down and he was obliged to go to Constantinople, instead of returning with what he had been sent for and the charcoal. All this part he leaves out in his evidence and gives the Committee to understand he was ordered with the charcoal to Varna and thence to Constantinople.

File PB1010119

Letter from Posy to Stamford from Malta at time of Crimea War, about 1855 as Richard Crofton born 1854.

Fort St. Angelo

Sunday May 6^th

My dear Uncle Caldwell

Last mail from England brought me a letter from Mama, in which she sends me word of the very kind and handsome present of £25 you have sent me, and for which pray accept my warmest and best thanks; it was so very kind of you to think of and remember me, but I find it impossible to offer the dear Croftons anything for my board, as they kindly say having asked me for their guest they could not think of receiving anything towards it. What my dear Uncle, under these circumstances would you wish me to employ your gracious gift upon? Perhaps you would kindly send me a word through Louisa.

We are at present in a most uncertain state as to our movements as it is on the cards we may be ordered off this week! Or the Croftons may stay here till Richard gets his promotion but as Richard wishes you to know all about it I will tell you what has brought us into this enviable(!) situation. I assure you I go to bed every night with the dread of waking every morning to the intelligence that we must pack up and be off in 24 hours!

Sometime ago, about a month, news reached the Sergeant Major, these non commissioned officers always have the first news. That Captain Inglefields company now at Woolwich was under order to relieve Captain Croftons company at Malta. Richard, hearing this, said in joke to some of the officers, If anyone will give me £100 I am your man for an exchange!

To his surprise a few days after Captain Childs commanding another company here, came and asked him if he was serious in his offer, for that if so he should be glad to make the exchange on those terms. So Richard and Fanny consulted together and under the circumstances thought it would not be right to refuse so large a sum. The quarters they are in here are the best, most airy and consequently the healthiest in Malta, and they are house rent free, which of course, they would not be at Woolwich.

The duty at Woolwich would be rather of a trying nature to Richard, out late at night etc. On the other hand there was the summer here. However, as I said, after weighing all things, they agreed to make the exchange if it could be effected before Captain Inglefields company arrived, or at all events before Richard's company must leave. No positive news has yet reached the authorities here that Captain Inglefields company has started, but they have been medically inspected which is always done just before they start.

Next Sunday Richard hopes to hear whether his exchange has been granted or not. But before then the company may arrive and R receive orders to embark without delay, though it is more probable the vessel will go on and drop the companies at [Corfu?] which [all, are?] going on there and then pick up this here.

I think the chances are now becoming in favour of the Croftons remaining here, much as they wish to come to England and great as the sacrifice has been I think they are quite right under the circumstances. Richard hopes to be Colonel in a year, or 2 years at outside, as he has only 12 above him now and a Brevet is expected at the time of the Review.

If the Croftons stay I shall not return till early in June when I bring Baby with me who we are to take care of for the summer. He has been so delicate, dear little winsome fellow, that they are afraid of the summer for him. I wish you could see your little friend Amy. She is growing a fine child and I hope will grow up pretty. Her eyes are very fine and her hair magnificent. She is decidedly a clever child and most remarkably sensible.

Duke, I think, you would like, he is one of those open, winning natures that make everyone like them and very intelligent. Dicky, as I said, is the most winsome of baby boys: I wish you could see this happy menage, where every one is happy in each other and their duty. Sergeant Dunn, Rs Sergeant, the other day said, I hear sir, you are going to leave us to which Richard answered, Yes, I am sorry to leave you all. Well, sir, said the Sergeant most emphatically in military phrase, All I can say is that there's not a man now left to sight that does not regret you. We were all saying so last night. Of course this pleased the good Captain and I am not surprised at his mens' regrets.

Fanny is looking very well. You would be surprised to see how elegantly and comfortably she conducts her household and they never owe a 6d, but then she says it is your kind gift which has enabled them to feel easy. Her quarters here border on the magnificent. St.Angelo is the oldest part of Malta, built by Lisle Adam when first the knights came here, standing on a high promontory of sandstone rock with 5 tiers of batteries, one below another to the sea.

Her drawing room which is 40 feet long and 30ft high has a large window at one end in the recess made by the immense thickness of the walls. It looks out upon No.5 battery, some 400ft long with a look out house at the end whose balcony hanging over the batteries below. You look over the clear waters of the harbour which is filled with craft of all sorts from the huge Royal Albert and Hannibal 3 deckers through every grade of H.M.S. to the gun and [nintu?] boats, which lie on the water. Black, shapeless, awkward looking masses with a certain unmistakable sinister look about them, which makes you instinctively shrink from them as you would from a evil countenance.

The huge mercantile fleet of monstrous Steam Transports giving one a better idea of Englands greatness than London itself. Particularly when you find some with the French and some with the Sardinian flag, floating from the main, telling that those nations have to honour their means of transport from us. These innumerable sailing craft of all nations. Light felucca sails from Sicily[Iceiily?] and Gozo boats, a curious cross between the old Spanish galleon and a Chinese junk. Very small of course and smaller still the same shape innumerable boats plying in all directions with all sorts of freights. Here Italian legion soldiers in their bright scarlet coats made owing to some careless mistake in the clothing department, of Sergeants cloth. Their shako with its plum of black cocks feathers nodding in front, or a freight of Hipelanders[?] whose much abused costume after all looks more manly and warlike than any. A boat full of women in their black sill Faldettes looking like [Inseline?] nuns till they turn around and a bright ribbon under their collar fastened by an expense [?] broach undeceives you, or a cargo of priests in long black robes and shovel hats, a most sinister looking set they are, the wolves of the block, one cannot help feeling, except where a sleek fox has got in or strong truculent-idle monks in their brown cloth garment and [comb?] shaven heads and brawny arms one longs to set to dig a [dike, drain?] instead of begging from house to house for broken victuals they pour into a huge bag and skiving away.

These boats are the Captains [gigs?] looking so light and elegant, well across this harbour you look to sparkling Valetta with its flat roofed stone houses, its narrow streets climbing up the sides of its high promontory with their carved stone supports to the covered balconies that hang out from their fronts. On one side of our battery, the left, is a garden covered with mesembiranthemum and the old chapel, now an ordinance store, there is a granite pillar brought by the knights from Rhodes and Isle Adams monument, his body now lies in the fine Church of San Giovanniin Valetta.

Duke would explain to you the use of all the curious things that are part of an ordinance store as well as the oldest gunner, on the right 12 32 pounders point threateningly to the mouth of the harbour, but they only pour out 24lbs powder in flash and smoke, when a salute of 21 guns is ordered.

On each side of the harbour mouth, like dragons crouching on their promontory tops are Fort St Elmo and Ricasoli ready to pour out a stream of fire and shot on anyone who comes near without welcome. Turn round and look up the great harbour with its men of war and steamers and your eye rest on the high hills of the country beyond, which looks bright and green now, with rich [patilies?] of crimson from the sulla fields in full bloom, then Isla Point crowded with houses and crowned with its two Lombardi Venetian Churches separates the merchant creek which you cannot see with its crowds of shipping from Admiralty Creek, where only small men-of-war lay and which is bordered by the Admiralty, Victualling yards etc and ends in the new dock, where even Royal Alberts can get repaired when it screw takes it into its head to rare[?] out like silver paper, the strong copper casing of the shaft and work such a hole that the water comes rushing in 50 tons a minute and the fine ship is only saved by running her on a soft sand bank as, no doubt, you saw.

Then we have two small [span, open?] gardens with high walls all round and a pepper tree which, till an envious gale tore off its head, was the finest and largest tree on the island and a cool basin of water with gold fish in it, and maidens hair drooping over it and fountains that can be played rising up at the feet of a well sculptured black Narcissus.

And over the arch Isle Adams arms painted with the date 1523 and you think how nice it will be to sit here in the hot weather when your happy dreams are put to flight by the word mosquito. Geraniums have been flowering here ever since I came and now are brilliant.

A flight of steps under an arch lead you to a balcony from which you step by a glass door into the drawing room and from which you over look Isla and the country which looks brown here because you are looking against the falls of the terraced fields which faces are all of stone, which in course of years will crumble to earth and add a little more of this desirable ingredient to the rocky island.

We have a lobby and a fine dining room. Their bed Isle Adam died in a dressing room I inhabit and rooms for the baby and nurse below us are the mens quarters, about 100 [800?] and a better and more orderly set could not be found.

Mr King, the Lieutenants quarters, are on the battery detached from us, so you see, out quarters are charming. I must tell you though, that Richard finds on calculation, he will not pocket a great deal by his exchange, he fears, as there is the expense of Babys going home. However, in spite of this, they have done well.

Then, if you go into Valetta after crossing the harbour in one of these boats and land at Nix Mangiere steps, so called from the beggars who site there whining out Nix mangiere. After toiling up the steps you get to the Marina gate crossing the drawbridge you are refreshed after the villainous smells of Nix Mangiere with a delicious breeze of orange perfume rising from the trees growing in the moat below.

There is always a bustle and turmoil at this gate. Groups of Titanic Jack Tars, soldiers of every conceivable uniform from the fine soldier-like respectable gunner, the Army Work Corps who get their b/a day and behave irreproachably, through every species of line of white, blues, green and black [facings?] to Marines and land transport caps. The last a rough set enough.

Then there is the Italian legion in their bright scarlet or sober grey according to their regiment, and who, alas, are too active with their knives and killed the A.D.C. of the Police, a most respectable man, last night, in a wine shop quarrel. These dreadful wine shops are the destruction of the soldiers and sailors. Then shouting and yelling come rolling down the steep gate way a commissariat mule cart whose driver finds all this noise necessary to get his freight through the gate.

A group of fat, well dressed priests, a set of Arabs in their white Bouruns[?] or a richly dressed Tunisian. Greeks and Turks, Faldetted women, English, French, Italian officers, Army and Navy, all these are seen about the streets. You climb up a flight more of steps. The shop people playing their trades outside their doors and at last reach the crest of the hill and may turn into San Biroauui Church, paved with the tomb stones of the knights with the arms emblazoned on them in polished marble. The walls richly carved and gilt and parts hung with crimson damask, and if you go in to a service, if you are of my mind, you come out devoutly thanking God you have been brought up a protestant.

But there is certainly a degree of artistic fascination about it, if you go in, in the gloaming and see groups of women kneeling in their black fladettes. Men dotted here and there. Perhaps 2 or 3 soldiers will come in, kneel down and run through a prayer looking about them all the time.

There are a great number of churches and priests to match. The shops do not equal those of an English country town by many degrees. The jewellery strikes you most and the quantity the people wear but then their fortunes are in their gold buttons, chains, carriage broaches, bracelets.

I think Malta country is well described by one of our acquaintances here, as looking like a huge ruined city, which in spots, here and there, has been rebuilt. There are so many Casals or villages, each with at least one handsome church, with large stone figures in the Piazza before it. These large images of saints give a very rich look, especially to the streets in the towns, whose corners have mostly one, which the faithful are in an inscription urged to pray to on the promise of an indulgence of so many days.

The society here is, of course, one may say, exclusive military and naval. We go out very little and ball rooms, though very brilliant, here from the uniforms, are not places to [judge?] of society in. or is should say, nothing well could be more vapid than it is. But I hear people who do go out and can judge complain very much of it.

We are out of the daily whirl and rush of European life and interest, and become extremely local. There are some 1000 officers here, the mass of those one never sees in society. The Croftons are in the best set, of course. The little we do go out, dancing and picnics are the great amusement. I have seen[?] and known some of the distinguished men of the war.

Captain [Mends?] for instance who all say planned the whole of the transporting of the troops to the Crimea and who is, to my mind, a delightful person. Captain Osborne, a fat, red faced man. Not ones ideal of a clever, active, heroic officer, such as he was in the sea of [Agoft?] Colonel Maulevener[?] the bravest of the brave. Major Strange[?] of the R.A. who worked his guns so well on the Malakoff that as it is now acknowledged he mainly contributed to the sweep of that attack.

Then there is Admiral Renaud [Penand?], and staff come to superintend the passing on of the French troops home. (of Baltic celebrity). They had, last Friday, M. de Rousiu, the charming Flag Captain, informed us, sent home 15,000 and since then 2 or 3 line of battle ships (French) have come in crowded.

We may have sent home as many hundred, but steamers are fast arriving and flying on to the Crimea now. You will be glad to hear that it is now the universal opinion of all competent judges amongst ourselves and especially amongst our allies, that never did the prestige of Englands power stand so high. Friends and foes stand aghast, when they are nearly [Page 4] ruined by the war to find that we have not apparently felt it.

Those who have really been fighting, getting to consider themselves paid butchers as a distinguished officer said to me, seem really to rejoice in peace. Of course those who have seen nothing and [know?] nothing look only at the winnings and wish there was a chance of their sharing in them.

The Navy naturally feeling they have done little or nothing and are invisible long to go at some one or thing. These gun boats are making fortifications tremble and how they are now to be built to resist them and with what receipt of metal they are to be defended is the great question at all events 68lbs instead of 32lb is to be placed here.

The works are immense. They say it would take 60,000 men properly to man them. As long as we command the sea we are safe enough. 12 regiments are to be left here, I believe, and an additional force of Artillery. Of course people speculate on a war with America though it is not believed in. However, some regiments here are under orders for Canada.

Now my dear Uncle Caldwell, I hope you will not be quite tired out with this long letter. Allow me again to thank you for your kind present for whose destiny I wait your directions and pray believe how truly grateful I am to you for it.

I hope you are pretty well yourself. Dear Linley will be in all its beauty now, after all I am convinced that there is nothing like England to the English and I am looking forward with no little pleasure to being there again, sorry as I shall be to leave my dear kind hosts and happy as I have been here.

I know I shall often look back perhaps with regret, to the blue sky, clear waters, sparkling sunbeams of the day and brilliant star spangled nights of Malta.

Believe me my dear Uncle, your very affectionate niece,

Rose Marsh [Posy]

 

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Letter No.41

H.M.S. “Triton,”Finished, Balaklava,

Monday 7th May 1855.

It is no use making excuses for the past, and I suppose my best plan is to behave better in future and write more regularly. But, besides the pressure of business, I may also plead that when one knows the electric telegraph carries its news to you in sixteen hours, one feels that an historical or political journal, like that which I have been in the habit of writing to you, must have lost a good deal of its interest by the time it reaches you.

By dint of hard work we got an expedition off on Thursday evening, the 3rd instant; it consisted of about two thousand Infantry, besides some Marines from the fleet who were to land, six guns with their Artillerymen, and fifty Cavalry. The baggage horses for this force consisted of about six hundred and forty, and I believe if the expedition had not been much hurried still more would have come.

Colonel McMurdo, the Director of Land Transport, told me he had put in as many carts as possible in order to save putting in horses. He had eighty-three carts. If two thousand five hundred men require the attendance of so much transport, one cannot be surprised that it is estimated that this army of thirty thousand English must have twenty-six thousand baggage animal before it can safely leave the coast. This gives a plainer idea of the gigantic expenses attendant on a state of war and the difficulty of assuring success than anything I ever heard of.

What a fine field for Cossack enterprise would such a train of animals afford. These twenty-six thousand beasts would require ten thousand cavalry to protect them, I should think! Sir Charles Trevelyan was certainly right in saying Admiral Boxer had not the administrative faculty. I found passive disobedience the only plan to adopt; and when a satisfactory arrangement had once been made I merely ignored all his attempts to disarrange it.

We had some very desperate skirmishes during the day on the subject of this embarkation, and at one time he almost succeeded in driving one of my ships out of the harbour with only half  a cargo, but I brought up all my reserves and carried the day. He certainly bears no malice, or else forgets what has happened, for although he must have been much annoyed at my resistance to him we are now the best of friends. 

Sunday 6th May 1855

Conceive my astonishment this morning at seeing the whole fleet returned. It seems that a thick fog prevailed on Friday and the ships had all separated, but that at daylight on the Saturday morning, every one was at the appointed rendezvous a few miles from Cape Takli (near Kertch), on a beautiful calm day, most favourable for landing. The signal was made from the “Royal Albert” for all Captains, and Sir Edmund read a copy of a letter received by the French Commander from General Canrobert, stating that he had received a telegraphic despatch from Paris dated May 3rd, and the French were positively to return immediately. The English alone were not strong enough to undertake the thing by themselves, and moreover a number of the French troops were on board the English line of battle ships. So here they are back again. It is said that the French force was short by a battery of Artillery and fifteen hundred Infantry of what they had promised. The strangest part of the business is that Canrobert does not seem to have communicated this despatch to Lord Raglan.

Tuesday 7th May 1855

There is nothing to add to the above. Canrobert has spoiled one of the most promising coups that could have been.*(Vide page 201)  The Kertch forts taken, our ships could have held the Straits, and our steam gun boats once inside would, I suppose, have been more than a match for anything there, and the Sea of Azov, which I fancy is the high road by which Sebastopol’s provisions principally travel, would have been ours. However, there is an end to it, and I suppose the entente cordiale will suffer.

We have been regularly sauntering over the whole business of landing the force. It is such disheartening work – everything was promising, weather calm, a capital chart made by Spratt of the “Spitfire,” the Russians alarmed by a demonstration previously made at Loujah and Anapa, etc., etc.

Some of the Sardinians have arrived at Constantinople, but wait there for General Marmora. It is a good thing to have got even a portion of them, as it fixes them politically. Another regiment of cavalry arrived, the 12th Lancers from India, and remount horses for the Artillery are pouring in. Provisions and stores of all kinds are abundant, and the new advanced batteries with much heavier guns than the last time are nearly ready for opening.

I wish you would send Louis Napoleon out to us, and then I think the business might be settled as far as the south side is concerned. That done, and the fine weather allowing us to use the beach, the north side might be regularly invested.

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First Expedition to Kertch

(Vide Letter No.41)

My dear Heath,

I am sorry since I received Sir Charles Wood’s last letter that we have sent anything home lately excepting the “Simla” and “Jason.” We must not send anything more without an absolute necessity for so doing.I can assure you that I am very sensible of the exertions you must have made to equip the expedition so quickly and so well, and I am much obliged to you for it.

Yours faithfully,

E. Lyons.R.A.,

May 7th, 1855

How is war to be carried on if it depends upon Canrobert’s interpretation of telegraphic messages?

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Letter No.42

Balaklava,

Wednesday 8th May 1855

I shall be very glad to get the Sebastopol Blue Book. The dead cows were naturally my business, as I had charge of the harbour, but I agreed with Christie that he should look after them, and I pressed on him that he should make the hospital ships take the whole business of removing them in regular weekly turns. However, he preferred that every ship should tow out those that were near her, and, as what is everybody’s business never is done by anyone, so every ship trusted to the animals drifting away from them before being found out.

Commander Gordon might prove how frequently boats were out collecting wood, and Dacres might clearly place the blame of more not having been collected on Lord Raglan’s shoulders, for he officially declined it when Dacres officially offered to collect it. I thought I had mentioned before that it was on the 11th and not the 13th I was called in by Dacres to help him in the harbour work. 

Letter No.43.

Balaklava,

Saturday 26th May 1855.
The great event of the day is our change of masters – Pellissier vice Canrobert. Everyone is in spirits about it, and glad to get an energetic man as Commander-in-Chief to do something with the two hundred thousand troops there must now be under him in the Crimea. The strange part of the business is that Canrobert, instead of retiring to his country house, remains out as General of Division under Bosquet, who commands a Corps d’Armee. One cannot conceive the possibility of Lord Raglan changing places with Sir G. Browne, or Sir Edmund Lyons with Admiral Boxer!

Greater energy is already shown. The Kertch expedition revived was the first thing -  I got intimation of it on Sunday evening the 20th, we got it officially the next day and started most of them off on Tuesday evening, and by dint of working all night the last left us on Wednesday morning at 7 o’clock. Three thousand Infantry, six guns, fifty Cavalry, and one thousand horses (which includes Artillery, Cavalry and everything) was the English contingent. Five thousand Turks, and seven thousand French embarked from Kamiesh.*(Vide Page 206) I reckon Sir Edmund Lyons and Sir George Browne worth one or two thousand more but I don’t know who is in command of the expedition. The weather has been very favourable and we expect today to hear of their having landed.

Yesterday at daylight an advance was made by about twenty-five thousand French and Turks to the ground where the battle of Balaklava was fought, in front of Balaklava as far as the Tchernaya. They are regularly encamped and intend to live there. Whether this movement is made merely to make room for newcomers, or whether it is to feel the way for a future advance, I don’t know, I rode out last night to the new lines, every one looked free, and it was pleasant even to me to gallop over a grassy plain that I have only been able to look at for so long.

The wild flowers around Balaklava are more beautiful than any I have ever seen, and the new ground is covered with them. You know I am not learned in their names, so I can only tell you that their colours are of the same brilliant and varied hues, and some of them very beautiful and delicate in shape. There are some thistles so elegant in form that the most hungry donkey would pause to admire before he stooped to eat! – I don’t think even a country gentleman with his spud could help sparing them.

Our remounts of Artillery and Cavalry are coming out fast; Sardinians are pouring in; ordnance stores of all sorts, powder, shot, shell, etc., are daily arriving. The troops are fed in the most luxurious manner, except in the article of beef, which is the most wretchedly lean miserable –looking stuff conceivable.  I suppose as the season advances bullocks will get fat. Fresh bread has been brought from Constantinople for some time; a bakery is now established at Kadikoi, and another has been sent out fitted in a small ship.

Mr Soyer is busy organising kitchens. I have seen a good deal of him; he is exceedingly egotistical, but has all the marks of a great man in his own line. His conversation is all about his work, he soars beyond mere sauces and ragouts, but goes into the expense of different markets and different sorts of food, and examines whether fresh vegetables from Constantinople are or are not better than compressed ones from France. He has given me a recipe for making ship’s beef and pork delicious, and says if he could have had his way it would (five or six years ago) have been preserved with far less salt than at present, and would not have cost a bit more or been more liable to decay. There is a little cholera in the camp and there have been a few cases here, but it does not increase.

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Saturday 12 May 1854
Newcastle Journal

There are it is commonly asserted but few men, whether good or bad, who are not courageous, and it must be admitted that the late First Lord of the Admiralty gave proof of pre-eminent bravery when shortly before leaving office he secretly transferred the disgraced Harbour Master of Balaclava to a better post at the same place.

Whether are any ties, Russian or ministerial, which bind Captain Heath to office or to Sir James Graham, we do not know, but his re-appointment is not an instance of a round man being squeezed into a square hole or a square man into a round one, but of something far more abominable, namely of an officer whose inexplicable mismanagement has been mainly instrumental in destroying the lives of nearly all our horses and of many of our brave men, being in consequence of his guilt, or his incapacity, promoted to a better post. 

After repeated denials, it was at last proved to the dissatisfaction of the most sceptical that the mismanagement and confusion alleged to exist in the port of Balaclava were by no means exaggerated, and although the harbour-master was faintly praised by Sir Edmund Lyons, had the honour of being defended by Admiral Berkeley, and resorted to an unprecedented step on the part of a naval officer by personally, and in most instances in vain, soliciting the masters of transports to sign a certificate of his good management, it nevertheless remained on record against him that he had suffered the carcasses of horses and camels to float about the harbour for weeks when a few hours labour would have removed them - that he caused the loss of the "Prince" and other transports lost in the great November storm, by ordering them in spite of repeated protests to their dangerous and fatal anchorage, - that both before and after the gale he compelled the ships in the harbour to take up unsafe positions, - and that he had so systematically placed one or more steamers alongside and touching each of the powder ships, that the most urgent remonstrances were made not only to himself but even to Lord Raglan. 

It may regularly be imagined that representations poured in upon the Admiralty, not only describing the filthy, disorderly, and dangerous conditions of the harbour at Balaclava, but also demanding the removal of Captain Heath.

Under these circumstances, Sir James Graham foresaw that the national indignation would, if opposed, be converted to fury, and he, feared lest it might even forget the respect due to the person of a Cabinet Minister; he therefore thought it prudent to bow to the storm and he officially announced that not only the obnoxious harbour master, but also the principal agent for transports, against whom no accusations had been made, were displaced.

The latter officer, Captain Christie, immediately started for England, possibly to protest against the injustice done him, but, on reaching Malta soon after the committee of inquiry had become inevitable, he was met there by Admiralty dispatches which commanded his immediate return to the Crimea, in order, according to the official statement made in the House of Commons, that he might be put on his trial before a Court Martial.

As no charges have been made public against him, it may fairly be presumed that Sir James Graham wished to prevent him from coming to England, lest he should be called upon to give evidence before the Roebuck Committee.

This inference will not be thought unjust by those who bear in mind that the guilty Captain Heath whose removal was announced by Sir James Graham, has been neither disgraced nor recalled, but merely transferred from the office of harbour master to that of principal agent for transports, the post lately held by the innocent Captain Christie, - and it is clear that the right honourable baronet has good reason for keeping Captain Christie out of the way, since the blackest malice could not invent a tale so damaging to him, as the simple statement of facts which Captain Christie would be called upon to narrate to the committee of inquiry.

The startling revelations respecting the conduct of Admiral Boxer at Constantinople, the Capt. Leopold Heath at Balaklava, and the promotion of those officers by Sir James Graham in consequence of their inefficiency, may appear incredible to many of our readers. But they are confirmed to the letter by the evidence given before the Sebastopol Committee by Capt. Milne, Sir James Graham's colleague, and the Lord of the Admiralty who has had most to do with the transport of stores to the East. 

He expressly stated to the Committee that Admiral Boxer was removed, in consequence of his not giving satisfaction as Inspector of Transports at Constantinople, to the post of Harbour-Master at Balaklava, by Sir James Graham, who also, according to his evidence, rewarded Capt. Heath's mismanagement as Harbour-Master at Balaklava by giving him the better post of Inspector of Transports at that port. After this exposure, we are not surprised to hear the Sir James Graham is seriously ill, and, with the dread of a cross-examination by the Roebuck Committee before his eyes, we cannot expect to hear of his speedy recovery. 

It may be a breach of "decorum" to charge a public man with iniquity, but it must be willful blindness or conscious participation which can venture to deny that not only four corruption and baser trickery, but even punishable crime has prevailed amongst the ministers of Queen Victoria during the past two years. 

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Tuesday 22 May 1855
Morning Advertiser

Mr Layard and Sir James Graham
( Though the following article, from the pen of a very able writer, only reached us in time for insertion in today's Morning Advertiser, it is right to state, that it was written before the appearance of Mr Layard's letter in yesterday's times)

The wonderful history of mismanagement at Balaclava has ended in a painful tragedy. An officer who was not responsible for the conditions of the harbour, has died of a broken heart, in consequence of unfounded charges officially made against him, in a matter wherein he had neither part nor authority. 
In the beginning of February last, such repeated and urgent accusations, supported by evidence which could not be disregarded, were brought against Captain Leopold Heath the Harbour Master of Balaklava, that Sir James Graham was compelled to remove him. 

He accordingly gave him a better post at the same place, superseding for that purpose Captain Christie, the Superintendent of Transports - an officer against whom no charges had been brought. 
Captain Christie was coming at once to England in order to clear himself from the slur cast upon him by Sir James Graham, but that able tactician saw the danger to which he would be exposed, if Captain Christie appeared before the Roebuck Committee, and told them that he had possessed no authority whatever over the harbour, but that the responsible officer had been promoted as a reward for his mismanagement.

Sir James, therefore, sent despatches, not only to the Crimea, but even to Malta, to prevent Captain Christie from returning to England, and to order him to be tried by court-martial at Balaklava on certain charges which he specified. 

Some six weeks ago we denounced this sort of baseness and tyranny, but we little thought that Sir James Graham would himself admit that our charges against him were true to the letter.
Superseded and disgraced, and then cut off from the opportunity of clearing himself before the Sebastopol Committee, Captain Christie's agony of mind has produced brain-fever and death...

One other point, and we have done with him. The only person who had brought a public and tangible charge against Captain Christie was a member of the Government. on the 20th of April, Sir Charles Trevelyan having stated to the Roebuck Committee that there was a want of arrangement and organisation in Balaklava Harbour, was asked, "Who was answerable for that?" He replied, "The Admiralty principally, and Captain Heath immediately. The Admiralty is responsible for his appointment." If the Hon. Baronet who tried to make us believe that he had Captain Christie's interests and honour at heart, had been anxious to clear the character of that gallant gentleman, would he not have taken immediate steps to refute this public and unfounded accusation made with official authority by his own colleague? it would have been easy to cause Sir Charles Trevelyan to correct his mistake, and to declare that Captain Chrisite had neither the power nor authority in the harbour in question. 
 

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Saturday 26 May 1855
Newcastle Journal

... as above...

"The Admiralty principally, and Captain Christie immediately. The Admiralty is responsible for his appointment."

Now, Sir James wishes to make us believe that it was out of regard for the gallant gentleman that he put him on his trial, but if had felt any interest about him, would he not have taken immediate steps to counteract this unfounded accusation made with official authority by his own colleague?

He could in a moment have explained to Sir Charles Trevelyan that Captain Christie had no authority in or over the Harbour of Balaklava, and that gentleman would not have lost a moment in correcting the serious mistake into which he had fallen. But such a step would have brought up the name of Captain Leopold Heath and have led to inquiries into his mismanagement and his promotion.
 

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Second Expedition to Kertch

R.A. Strait of Kertch,

Saturday 2nd June 1855

My dear Heath,

I am very much gratified by your hearty congratulations, and so will Jack* be I am very sure. His success has been very great. In four days two hundred and forty-seven vessels employed in carrying supplies to the Crimea captured and destroyed. – Four steamers of war under the command of Rear Admiral Woolf run in here, burnt to the water’s edge and destroyed the enemy. Arabat’s principal powder magazine blown up. Two immense magazines of corn and flour destroyed  by the squadron at Bormarsand and Gonithreiste, containing two months rations for a hundred thousand men.

I have sent him two ship’s launches to enable him to do as much damage as possible to the enemy in the neighbourhood of Taganrog. Here we find more than a hundred guns, many of them of heavy calibre and beautifully cast. The day of our approach the enemy destroyed here a large magazine of corn and flour, which, taken together with what was destroyed in the Sea of Azof, comprised four months rations for a hundred thousand men.

The firing cases of combustibles in the passages and entrances broken in the Forts with the connecting wires attached; and in the dockyard are fifty-seven more cases quite ready to be sunk. The enemy fired upon our shops, not believing that we had a soldier to spare from the siege.I am very glad that you have transports to send for Vivian’s and Beaton’s troops. What a blessing that the fire was put out in the “Manilla.”

Yours faithfully,

E. Lyons.

* “Jack” was Sir Edmund’s sailor son. He commanded the “Miranda,” and shorty after this successful raid he was sent in to one of our naval night alerts off Sebastopol, where his leg was shot off, and he died, regretted by all who knew him, in the hospital at Constantinople. 


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Saturday 23 June 1855
Leeds Intelligencer
Literary Intelligence - The third and fourth volumes of Mr Macaulay's "History of England," are expected to appear in the course of the present year. - The concluding volumes of "Moore's Life," edited by Lord John Russell, are in the press, and will be published very shortly.  - Lord Brougham's "Ananlytical view of Newton's Principia," is in the press.  - The first portion of the long-announced edition of Bacon's Works, edited by Mr Spedding, Mr Leslie Ellis, and Mr Douglas Heath, comprising "The Philisophical Works," is now in the hands of the printers, it is expected that the publication will commence towards the end of the present year.  - - -
 

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Letter No.44.

Balaklava,

Finished, Saturday 14th July 1855.
What with writing to Admiralty, Transport Board, Admirals, General, and wife, brothers and sisters have certainly been neglected. I don’t think I even added a page to the book of journals on the sad 18th June, nor have I mentioned the death of Admiral Boxer of cholera, or that Lord Raglan died on the 28th June of acute diarrhoea, aggravated probably by grief for the ill-success of the 18th.

Lord Raglan was a perfect specimen of the English gentleman, and a high-minded chivalrous soldier; his rank and courteous bearing did much to maintain the entente cordiale. General Simpson, the Chief of the Staff, became the new Commander-in-Chief.

The events of the 18th June are never spoken of without an accompanying holding up of hands, and an exclamation that “there never was so ill-managed a business.” There are complaints of the want of instruction as to what was intended; want of proper directions to the covering parties and reserves; want of numbers in the assaulting columns; and the absence of all feints or attempts at diversions. That the last would have been useful is evident from the fact (of which I believe there is no doubt) that General Eyres would, if supported, have had the Flagstaff Battery and all that part of the town. He did not go (whether by accident or design I don’t know) to the place to which he was intended to go, and found his way in where a way was not suspected; but, however good the arrangements might have been, I fancy success would have ben impossible, for our assaulting columns had to cross seven or eight hundred yards of ground open to crossfire of grape shot from numerous flanking batteries. Drop the curtain!

Since the 18th enormous quantities of ammunition have been sent up to the front. We have advanced a certain distance towards the Malakoff, and they have nearly completed a battery at the head of the careering creek, from which wonders are expected. 

The few criticisms I have heard on the new Commander-in-Chief are all favourable, but today it is reported that the electric telegraph has named some one to succeed him. Admiral Freemantle has not yet appeared, although some letters and newspapers have arrived to his address, nor have I heard a line on the subject from Sir Edmund. Hamilton has gone away on three weeks’ leave of absence, and I am left alone in my glory.

I shall find out what my real position in the regular service is, for I find Hamilton has left orders with his senior lieutenant to consider himself the Senior Officer of H.M. Ships. I have made myself so for the present, and referred to Sir Edmund.*

The railroad people are all adrift and are about to return to England, I don’t think they prove much for the Administrative Reformers. The men are very discontented and disorganised. One waggon goes about with – “The driver of this ain’t ‘ad no wages for six months and not much wittals.” There road itself is likely to be very shakey in the winter, and I hope for the harbour of Sebastopol, or else that large stores shall be made beforehand up in front – at which there is as yet not attempt, and July is drawing on.

Those knowing French are said to have persuaded Omar Pasha and ourselves to come out of the Baidar valley, “Being too far in the advance and being unhealthy,” and as soon as the ground was clear their own cavalry marched in and are heaping up immense supplies of forage. The story is so characteristic that it is a pity I cannot say I think there is no exaggeration in it.

I have no domestic news. I have got a turtle swimming about, tied to the ship, waiting to adorn my dinner to the new Admiral when he comes. My farmyard does not prosper; the hens give me no eggs. My new horse is splendid, but I cannot sell the old one; prices are much fallen.*Sir Edmund decided that having no pendant flying I could not take military command, and Sir Houston Stewart agreed with him.

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R.A., June 7th, 1855

My dear Heath,

I am much shocked at the sudden death of poor Admiral Boxer; but it is a comfort to me to feel that I may have sweetened the last days of his life by promising his son.I have written to Sir Charles Wood to say that, in my opinion, it would be a mistake to appoint anyone senior to you to Balaklava.

Yours sincerely,

E.Lyons.


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Morning Advertiser

Wednesday 11 July 1855

The Queen has graciously pleased to give orders for hte appointment of the following officers of her Majesty's Land and Naval Forces to be Ordinary Members of the Military Divisions of the first, second and third classes of the most honourable Order of the Bath respectively:-to be Companions...

Captain Leopold George Heath RN.

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Letter No.45.

Finished, Balaklava,

Tuesday 11th September 1855.
Had I begun my journal on the day of the final attack on Sebastopol (the 8th September) I should have written in a very melancholy mood, and even now that success has crowned the Allied Arms, and that the great prize which has cost so much has become ours, my rejoicing is very very much sobered by the dark cloud which obscures the glories of Alma and Inkerman. However, I had better begin at the beginning. The bombardment was much heavier than usual for a day or two before the 8th, but it was taken up only occasionally and was not continuous.

On the 7th the order was confidentially issued that an attack was to be made on the 8th, and as I heard of it I went to the front to see it. Noon was the appointed hour for the French to attack the Malakoff, and so soon as they had obtained un success assure they were to show an English ensign from the Mamelon and we were to attack the Redan. The day was very windy, so much so that the fleet which was to have helped could not move from their anchors, and it was very dusty, which rather prevented our seeing well, for the wind was in our faces. I went first to Cathcart’s hill, but at half past eleven crossed over to the next hill on the right, whence I saw more of the Malakoff but rather less of the Redan. Almost precisely at noon the French moved out and entered the Malakoff without a check, and from the first moment of their advance one continuous stream of men was poured in for a full half hour or more.

They seem to have taken the Russians quite by surprise, for as far as I can hear there was next to no resistance made to them at that point, which being the highest spot in the place was the key to the whole thing. In the rear of the Malakoff were the ruined huts of part of the town, to which such Russians as were in the place retreated, and where fresh bodies joined them, and sheltered by these ruins they continued the whole afternoon to try and regain their loss, but without success. The French were also engaged until night in attempting what is called the Little Redan, which is to the right (as we look at it) of the Malakoff; but there they were unsuccessful, and of that attack I saw nothing and have not heard much, but the musketry firing was very heavy the whole afternoon.

The signal was made from the Mamelon almost immediately after the French attack began, and our assaulting party went out of the trenches well enough, but although they got into the Redan and were followed by the supports as far as the parapet, the men would go no further and allowed themselves to be driven back again by (I am told) not more than two hundred Russians, who chased them out and pelted them down the parapet with stones.

Sir William Codrington and General Markham commanded the assault, and the latter is said to have positively refused to send on the reserves. It must have required some courage to refuse, but I think General Markham was quite right in doing so. After lying about under the cover of the parapet and in the ditch for perhaps an hour, the survivors of the assaulting party and supports made their way back as best they could to the trenches, and thus ended the 8th September.

During the night some of the men from the advanced trenches were bringing in the wounded, and gradually got nearer and nearer to the Redan, which seeming unusually quiet they at last looked at an embrasure and found the place evacuated. A succession of explosions in the town and a number of fires confirmed the good news, and at daylight the mastheads only of the line of battle ships were to be seen above the water, and the floating bridge was cut in two, whether by accident or design we do not know.

I rode up in the middle of the day and, providing myself with a pass from head quarters, took a walk in Sebastopol. Five squadrons of cavalry had been sent out to prevent anyone going in without passes, but by bye-ways which were unknown to the dragoons, but which to those who had spent the last few months in the trenches were beaten tracks, all sorts of French, Sardinians, and English got it, and there could not have been few than five thousand there when I arrived. I went in by the ravine leading into Dockyard Creek, and walked up a road to the left of the parallel to it, getting thus into the heart of the best part of the town.

Between the Dockyard Creek and the sea is another smaller creek called in the maps Artillery Creek. This creek is the mouth of a valley which divides that part of the town into two ridges, so that standing, as I did, on the edge of the higher ridge of the two I could see at one view the greater part of that quarter of the town, and although I looked very carefully I did not see a single roof without a shot hole in it, whilst many were entirely destroyed. Pieces of shells cover the paths in all directions, and I think the total loss suffered by the Russians from beginning to end must have been something unthought of hitherto. There are no really good houses, and the only public building I saw of any pretensions was a stone imitation of the Temple of Theseus at Athens. The other houses are all plastered, and the doors and windows flimsy and thin. 

There was not a house to be seen without its English, or more generally French, ransackers, but there was little left for plunderers beyond a few tables, chairs and wardrobes, some of which were carried off, but most of them wantonly broken up and destroyed for amusement. A splendid brass bell took the fancy of the French, and as one Zouave got tired of pulling at it another succeeded him.

They discovered what seem to have been an hotel or club-house with a large store of drinkables, which had the effect of making the mob more noisy whilst I was coming out than when I first went in. I brought away some seeds which I took from some flowers in a garden attached to what we have always called the Admiralty, and also the drawings for building a boat which I found with a great many others of the same sort in a house which must have been that of the Surveyor of the Navy. Fort Paul blew up whilst it was in the town, and several minor explosions took place, at which several plunderers were burnt. I retraced my steps after this, and going round the head of Dockyard Creek climbed up a steep hill into the Redan.

You probably know that the Redan is built on the crest of a spur, on which same spur is our right attack, or twenty-one gun battery. I cannot describe to you the state of the ground behind the parapet; it was dimpled all over by the bursting of our shells – there did not seem over the whole space to be a single square yard untouched. The parapet was enormously thick, and the guns were all or nearly all mounted and in good order, which I was surprised to see, for we have heard so much of their guns being continually dismounted that I expected to see a complete wreck.

I have heard it given as a reason for our discomfiture on the 8th that another line of works faced our assaulting party as soon as they had surmounted the parapet. There was nothing of the sort. The ditch may originally have been deep, but the constant fire on the parapet has crumbled it away, and there is now nothing for an assailant to do but to go down about four feet into the ditch and then climb up, or rather scramble up, a parapet no steeper than a steep hill. No ladders are requisite. There is nothing behind the parapet at the angle which was assaulted, but there is a massive longitudinal traverse built parallel to the parapet immediately behind the guns on each face of the angle – intended, I presume, to save the gunners from the bursting of shells behind them. I had not time to go on further, but hope to get another day to see the dockyard and the Malakoff.

The evacuation has been well managed. I don’t hear of any prisoners, except those taken by the French on the 8th, nor of any stores of provisions having been found; indeed, I have heard of nothing but anchors, guns, and shot, of which there are still large numbers quite new and untouched. An allied commission is to take account of the public property, and the police of the town is given over to the French.

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Letter No.46.

Finished, Balaklava,

Friday 14th September 1855.
Wonders will never cease, and here is the latest in the shape of a second journal letter in one week. But Sebastopol does not fall every day, and my last was written too much in a shamefaced spirit to be allowed to remain alone.

I went yesterday to head quarters intended to get a pass, but finding Sir Edmund, Sir Houston, etc., etc., all collected there and about to visit the same places I wished to see, viz., the Malakoff and the dockyard, I joined their party. As might, however, have been expected, when Admirals Bruat and Lyons were in a carriage we equestrians managed to miss them, and Sir Houston and myself were left to ourselves.

We entered the town through the net work of trenches (a roadway having been filled up already) opposite the valley which terminates in Artillery Creek and close to the Russian left of Flagstaff Battery, or the Bastion du Mat. Thence we went rambling through the same part of the town which I had visited the previous time, then round the head of Dockyard Creek, in rear of the Redan into the Malakoff.

Here it was lucky I was with the Admiral, for no one was admitted under the rank of a General Officer, and the visit was well worth the trouble. Todleben should have been a railway contractor. The dream of moving such masses of earth as are piled up in all directions, to shelter the soldiers as much as possible from shells, and of digging such ditches and forming so massive a parapet, could hardly have entered any one’s head but that of a Brassy or Peto. The site is quite wonderful, and the more so from the knowledge that it was all done (as I heard a French Officer remark) sous notre nez. The remains of the original White Tower are piled round with earth, and some sixty Russians with an Officer held it and kept all assailants at bay for two hours after the place had been taken. There was but one small door and two or three loopholes from which they shot down all who came near. They ultimately surrendered, otherwise I suppose Pellissier might have tried his old plan upon them. 

The French got in to the Malakoff by surprise, and indeed as their advanced trench was quite close up to the ditch they always had that chance open to them, for the continual shelling, with small mortars firing small charges, must have made it quite impossible to keep anything like a mass of troops always there ready to repel an assault – and it strikes me that this faculty of working close up to a fortification, and then choosing your own time for an assault, is the real reason that a fortress even such as the Malakoff must eventually fall.

There is a clever article in the Edinburgh Review on Modern Fortification, but the author has left out this fact in his discussion. Although I am very sore, not so much at our own repulse as at the reason of it, there seems no doubt that our attack did good service, and I have heard it stated that Pellissier said, “But for the diversion you made, and the mass of troops the Russians were in consequence obliged to keep in the Redan all the afternoon for fear of a renewal of the assault, I could not have held my ground.” The French were themselves repulsed with great loss at the Little Redan.

From the Malakoff I went to the Mamelon, and then to the dockyard, through a mass of ruins. In this quarter of the town, as in that which I described in my last, not a house can be seen untouched. The fine storehouses which line the Dockyard Creek are the most untouched; these had been turned into hospitals and I am told that a Russian steamer with a flag of truce carried off all that were alive and that there were left only three or four hundred dead – whom we had to bury; the process was going on while I passed.

The famous docks disappointed me much – judging by the eye I don’t think anything larger than a small frigate could get in. There is but one entrance to five docks; the breadth of that entrance of course governs the others. You probably know that to save immense excavations these docks are built above the level of the harbour and are filled with fresh water from the Tchernaya. They are now empty, perhaps the garrison have been living on the water. I believe no stores of any consequence have been found in the place, so that when our prize money is divided amongst two hundred thousand men none of us will get much, unless we sell the docks to a joint stock company under the new Limited Liability Act!

A Joint Commission has been appointed to look after and take a list of the property – Drummond is our naval commissioner. The Russians are working away at more earth works on the north side, we fire a few shells to disturb them. It is the general opinion that neither the English nor the French armies would make another trench to save their lives; the rejoicing at having done with them for the present is universal.

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Isle of Wight Observer

Saturday 29 September 1855

The Fashionable List

Brading - Vicarage

Rev D.I. & Mrs Heath

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Thursday 11 October 1855
Bradford Observer

The Times published the following intelligence from Messina:-

"Letters from Malta mention that on the arrival at Messina on the 19th of September of Her Majesties Sloop Medusa for the purpose of landing 123 Sicilian muleteers, whose period of service in the Crimea had expired, she was, under the pretext of quarantine by reason of the death from cholera, at Malta within the precincts of the Lazaretto of a few French soldiers, kept some hours under observation, allowed to communicate with the shore.

Later some person and authority came on board to convey, as he asserted, these men to the Lazaretto, which however, eventually resulted in conveyance to the common goal. On this fact becoming known to Captain Heath, commanding the steamer, he proceeded to inquire the reason for this proceeding and failing in getting to any other answer then that it was by an express order from the Minister of Police at Naples he demanded that the Muleteer be immediately delivered up to him to be reconveyed to Malta,  since he was persuaded Her Majesty would never permit ships of her Navy should be made a vehicle for delivering over to the tyrannical power of the Neapolitan government men whose only crime had been that of seeking bread for their starving wives and children.

This application seems to have made some impression, for, after a telegraphic communication with Naples the men were set at liberty, and, in evidence of it, repaired in person on board the Medusa, to make know the fact to Captain Heath. Subsequent letters from Messina, however, report that after the steamer's departure, most, if not all of those poor muleteers had, on some frivolous pretext or other, being arrested by the police and thrown into the already over-teeming state dungeons of Naples