Battery No. 11 for seven guns was begun in the night of the 27th on a rocky eminence, somewhat isolated though imposing, to the left of the second parallel. Ground was broken by 300 of the line and 50 seamen with as many sappers as could be taken out of 35 detailed that night for the trenches of the left attack. Captain Porter had the direction of the work. All his arrangements were so admirably carried out, that the parapet—256 long—was risen to a height of six feet, and the two right gun portions and epaulment, worked as a half sunken battery, had a parapet nearly twelve feet thick revetted with sand-bags. Nor was this all; the remaining portion of the battery, shaped after the elevated form, was revetted partly with casks and partly with gabions, and obtained a thickness varying from seven to nine feet. Receiving no little access of spirit from the joyous exertions of the happy sailors, the men worked hard and excellently, but at the period of relief they left the battery jaded and exhausted. Sergeant Jarvis, and lance-corporals Hanson, J. T. Collins, and Jenkins of the sappers, acquired the credit of having laboured splendidly, which was recorded to their honour in the orders of Major-General Jones. A constant and irritating fire was directed against the workmen the greater part of the night, but the result when summed up, was one slight wound, and the smashing of six stands of arms. A few nights later Captain Armit gave orders for the earth of the battery to be thrown well to the front. With a manner less absolute than persuasive, Sergeant Drew, who was in charge, requested the workmen to go on the parapet for the purpose, but they refused, alleging, “it was sappers’ work.” The moon was shining bright in the rear, baring the battery to Russian fire and rendering the duty anything but inviting. Taking Rowland Hill’s plan of doing the work himself when his servants quarrelled about their legitimate portions, the sergeant laid aside his jacket and pushing on the merlon toiled away like a navvy. Distributed to various details of the battery, the sappers hearing that the working party had declined to assist, left their several tasks and joined the sergeant. This was more than a brave rifleman could well bear, and with an example that none of the workmen cared to imitate, he attempted to take his place with the shovellers; but a sapper who happened to be below, altogether averse to accepting any services which seemed to spring from other considerations than duty, pulled the rifleman down, observing, in tones of sarcastic resentment, “that, as the work was, according to the opinions of the party, purely sappers’ work, none but sappers ought to share in the credit of its execution.” The strengthening of the merlon, therefore, that night, with heavy discharges of shot and some shell directed against it, was wholly carried out by sergeant Drew and his sappers.