When it was decided the army was to winter in the Crimea, no delay occurred in obtaining wood for housing the troops. Bell tents were considered unsuited to a region subject to heavy storms of rain and snow and high freezing winds. Accordingly on the 9th November, 1854, Lieutenant De Vere and four sappers were sent to Sinope to procure boards and scantling for huts. Timber grew in abundance along the shores of the Black Sea, and quantities of it were shipped for Balaklava. As the troops were absorbed in trench and other duties, and hired labour could not be had, there existed insuperable difficulties to constructing the huts. When this was known at home the Government entered into contracts to provide a large number of wooden buildings cut into planks and complete in fitments, which, with printed instructions and a few sappers conversant with the mode of putting them together, might readily be erected by unskilled workmen. Thirteen sapper carpenters were selected for the service, who, for a time, were stationed at Portsmouth and Southampton; and after making themselves acquainted with all the details of the structures, embarked singly or in twos, in some of the vessels which conveyed the prepared timbers to the Crimea. The first parties left about the 5th December, 1854; the last arrived at Balaklava on the 22nd February following; and those men were distributed through the camp to aid the building of the huts, which, from the utter failure of the means of transport and the want of strength in the men to bear them to the front, progressed at so tardy a rate, that the spring was far advanced before the whole of the troops were hutted.[171] On the 27th February, the sappers had laid some platforms, opened embrasures, and drained a portion of the magazine in the 8-gun battery on the right attack, when some accurate firing into it, killed one man and wounded six others, two of whom were sappers. These were privates David Cuthbert severely in the right arm by the explosion of a shell, and Thomas Gilchrist slightly in the left hand by a rifle bullet. The majority of the line quitted and several hours’ progress in the work were lost in consequence. The sapper brigades in no degree deterred by the casualties, continued, with their usual good luck, to exert themselves at the revetments without further accident.