His father served under the Duke of Wellington in the march to Paris
after the battle of Waterloo, in India, and in South Africa, and the
notes and sketches he there made upon expeditions into the interior
were made use of by his son fifty years later, when reporting on
the Bechuana and Griqua territories in 1876. He saw active service
during a second tour in India, in China, and in the Crimean war,
and was several times wounded. He retired after holding the command
of the Infantry Brigade at Malta for five years, and was created a
Knight Commander of the Bath. He had a natural turn for science,
mathematics, and adventure, which, together with his love of
soldiering, was inherited by his son Charles.
EARLY SERVICE--GIBRALTAR AND CHATHAM
Lieut.-General Sir Charles Warren was born at Bangor, North Wales,
on 7th February 1840. His early education took place at the Grammar
Schools of Bridgnorth and Wem, and at Cheltenham College. He then
entered the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, and from that
passed through the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich and received
a commission as lieutenant in the Royal Engineers on 23rd December
1857. After the usual course of professional instruction at Chatham,
Warren went to Gibraltar, where he spent seven years, and, in
addition to the ordinary duties of an Engineer subaltern--looking
after his men and constructing or improving fortifications and
barrack buildings--he was employed on a trigonometrical survey of
the Rock, which he completed on a large scale. He constructed two
models of the famous fortress, one of which is now at the Rotunda
at Woolwich, and the other at Gibraltar. He was also engaged for
some months in rendering the eastern face of the Rock inaccessible
by scarping or building up any places that might lend a foothold to
an enemy. He was selected in 1865 to assist Professor Ramsay in a
geological survey of Gibraltar, but it fell through. While at this
station he invented a fitment to gun carriages to supersede the truck
levers of the Service; an invention objected to at the time because
it was made of iron, but subsequently adopted into the Service.
In 1864 Lieut. Warren married Fanny Margaretta Haydon, a daughter
of the late Samuel Haydon, Esq., of Guildford. On the completion of
his term of service at Gibraltar he returned to England in 1865, was
appointed Assistant Instructor in Surveying at the School of Military
Engineering at Chatham, and a year later his services were lent by
the War Office to the Palestine Exploration Fund.
JERUSALEM, 1867 TO 1870
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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