In September and October trials of the pontoons, invented respectively by Sir James Colleton and Lieutenant-Colonel Pasley, were made in the open part of the Medway near the Gunwharf, and at Rochester Bridge—on the 9th and 10th September, in the presence of a committee of seven officers of the royal artillery and royal engineers, Lieut.-General Cuppage, R.A., being the president; and on the 1st October in the presence of his Royal Highness the Duke of York. One or other of the rival systems was to supersede the use of the old English tin pontoons. To work the buoy pontoons of Sir James Colleton, seamen were lent from H.M.S. ‘Prince Regent.’ The third and sixth companies were employed with Colonel Pasley’s decked canoes. The manœuvres were exceedingly laborious, and the men were exposed a greater part of each day to very heavy rains. They not only, however, did everything to the satisfaction of his Royal Highness and of the officers composing the committee, but several distinguished naval officers declared it was impossible that any operations with boats could have been better or more quickly performed.[248] ----- Footnote 248: Pasley’s ‘Narrative of Operations with the New Pontoons,’ 1824. Sir James Colleton’s ‘Buoy Pontoons.’ ----- From early in November to the 21st January, 1825, a party of ten privates with second-corporal Robert Shorter, was employed at Sheerness under the command of Lieutenant E. W. Durnford, R.E., in boring to ascertain the nature of the strata with a view to determine its practicability for building some permanent works of defence. The borings were carried on at all the salient points of the contemplated fortifications, ranging in depth from thirty to sixty feet. Borings were also made on the Isle of Grain, and the men of the party were occasionally employed at their trades in the engineer department. Corporal Shorter registered the daily progress and results of the operation;[249] but, although the intended works were never undertaken, the borings were not without interest in adding their quota of information to the cumulative discoveries of geological research. ----- Footnote 249: Shorter was afterwards stationed for fourteen years at Corfu. For seven of his twenty-seven years' service he filled the office of quartermaster-sergeant, and was honoured with an annuity and medal for his meritorious conduct. He retired from the sappers on being appointed a Yeoman of the Queen’s Guard, and was the first non-commissioned officer of the corps who received a nomination to that ancient company. While he was all that could be desired in his corps in respect to efficiency and intelligence, in private life he was a thorough humourist, and the most simple incident, with scarcely an element for merriment in it, became by his droll inventorial recital, a subject of the richest amusement. -----