2-914-120 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Navvies embarking at the Birkenhead Docks, 1854. Manual labourers leaving Britain for the seat of war in the Crimea. '...the ranks of the nomadic army of shovellers are continually recruited from the strongest and most enterprising of the peasantry in the districts in which canals or railroads are made....The party dispatched to the Crimea includes every kind of workmen; not only those who handle the shovel and the pick, and not only with the wheelbarrows, but carpenters, smiths, plate-layers, well-sinkers, &c...It has been stated that the Crimean Navvies are to be armed. This is a mistake - they are too valuable and expensive to be put in the way of shot, if it can be avoided...the whole body of men will eventually amount to four hundred. The first batch has sailed, the rest will follow in the course of next week, and the tools have already been dispatched by a swift steamer'. From "Illustrated London News", 1854.