527 
OBSERVATIONS ON MR. KINGLAKE’S NARRATIVE OF THE 
BOMBARDMENT OF SEBASTOPOL IN APRIL, 1855. 
BY 
COLONEL F. A. WHINYATES, late R.H.A. 
AS many officers of tlie Royal Artillery who served in the left attack 
before Sebastopol feel unwilling that erroneous statements respecting 
their work during the great siege should be handed down without 
comment to posterity, the following remarks are put forward to draw 
attention to the discrepancies between Mr. Kinglake's narrative 
of the events on April 13th and 14th, 1855, (.Invasion of the Crimea , 
Vol. VII, Chapter VI, Sec. VI.) and that published in the Proceedings, 
R.A.I. in October last. 
The differences which obtain in the details given in these two ac¬ 
counts may be attributed to the circumstance, that while one is based 
upon public and private records made at the time, Mr. Kinglake's 
is chiefly founded on individual recollection after a lapse of upwards 
of thirty years. (Appendix, Kinglake’s Crimea , Vol, VII, page 367). 
Now memory, especially with respect to numbers, is notoriously trea¬ 
cherous, seldom trustworthy or to be relied on, and is inferior in all 
points to evidence furnished by contemporary documents. It is also 
probable that being a civilian, Mr. Kinglake has misinterpreted some of 
the information he was given, and he has certainly fallen into con¬ 
siderable error as regards some of the figures he quotes. It is easy to 
point out some of these mistakes. 
In Vol. VII, page 152, Mr. Kinglake states that on the morning of 
April 13th, 1855, No. 7 battery was manned by three officers and 
65 men. Now the battery was armed with four 32-prs. the de¬ 
tachments for which at six men per gun 1 would be 24 men, 
which with two laboratory men makes a total of 26 men. It 
seems as though Mr. Kinglake by mistake has quoted the numbers en¬ 
gaged in Nos. 7 and 8 Batteries on the following day, when the gun 
crews for the eleven 32-prs. in those batteries, with four labora¬ 
tory men, would amount to 70 men with four officers. 
That the smaller number of men as stated for No. 7 on the 13th is 
correct, is fully established by the fact that the strength of the whole 
left attack reliefs on April 14th, when both No. 7 and 8 were in action, 
1 See Artillery operations by B.A, and Naval Brigade before Sebastopol, 1854-5; by Major 
W. E. M. Reilly, c.b., Brigade Major, Siege Train. 
10. VOL. XXV. 
