Cap badge of the Royal Engineers, c1937-c1952.
NAM. 1985-06-118-3Introduction
Although British armies have included engineers since medieval times, they were first constituted as a corps in 1717. That year saw the establishment of an officer-only Corps of Engineers, which gained its 'Royal' prefix 70 years later to become the Corps of Royal Engineers. Other ranks were supplied by contracted civilian workers then, from 1787, by members of the Corps of Royal Military Artificers.
Set up and initially commanded by the Board of Ordnance, the Corps of Engineers transferred to direct army control in 1855 when the Board was abolished. In 1856 the Engineers and Military Artificers were merged into a single corps. By this time both separate corps had already been widely active in the American Revolutionary, French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, both overseas and in fortifying Britain's vulnerable south coast.
The commander of Rorke’s Drift in 1879 was John Chard, a lieutenant in the Royal Engineers.
NAM. 1963-10-233-1The unit has also seen varied service in civil construction, from the building of railway, telegraph and irrigation networks in Canada and India, via the erection of the giant Egyptian statuary at the British Museum, to the construction of the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in south-west London and a gate at the reconstructed ancient Roman fort at Lunt near Coventry.
Work on the V&A accelerated the unit's interest in photography, with members of the unit going on to document not only military campaigns but also archaeological excavations and survey expeditions in locations as varied as Turkey, the Arctic, Palestine, Panama, India, Singapore, China, and Russia. Members of the Corps such as Lieutenant Robert Murdoch Smith, first excavator of Cyrene, were also active in excavation themselves. Other notable Royal Engineer officers included Charles Gordon, Lord Kitchener and John Chard, the commander at Rorke's Drift.
In the 20th century the Engineers were also involved in the beginnings of British military aviation, running the Army's School of Ballooning and in 1911 forming an Air Battalion that provided part of the basis for the Royal Flying Corps a year later. Technological innovation also marked their involvement in the two World Wars and Cold War, with an expansion into tunnelling, trench-building, forestry, quarrying, gas warfare, inland water transport, aerial survey and camouflage in the First and bomb disposal, mine clearance, bridging, airfield construction and the range of tanks adapted for battlefield engineering known as AVREs (Armoured Vehicle Royal Engineers) or 'Funnies' in the Second.
Other inventions associated with the unit include the Bailey bridge and the Nissen hut, whilst the unit also provided most of the Army's contribution to the UK's atomic weapons development programme. A Royal Engineer was only the third recipient of the George Cross, in 1941.
Key facts
Motto:
- 'Ubique' (meaning 'Everywhere' - awarded in 1832 as the unit has been involved in all the British Army's combat theatres)
Nicknames:
- The Sappers (other ranks in the corps are known as 'sappers', not privates, after the ‘saps’ or trenches dug by them right up to the Victorian period)
- The Mudlarks
- The Measurers
- The Mounted Brick-layers
Titles to date:
- Corps of Engineers
- Corps of Royal Engineers
- Corps of Royal Military Artificers
- Corps of Royal Sappers and Miners
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