Note 390 — 1841.

Sergeant March was two seasons at Spitbead. Many of the sketches of the wreck were executed by him with the assistance of the camera lucida, kindly lent for the purpose by the late Captain Basil Hall, R.N., from whom he received much useful instruction. Almost the whole of his service has been passed in the professional office of the director of the royal engineer establishment at Chatham, in which, either as a draughtsman or a confidential leading clerk, he has always been found, from his attainments and constitutional energy of mind and body, efficient and valuable. From time to time he has drawn the plates forming the architectural course of the study of the junior officers of the corps and the East India Company’s engineers, and also the plans and other drawings and projects comprised in the military branch of the course. He is an excellent colourist, and has a good conception of light and shade. As an artist in water-colours, he possesses undoubted talent and merit. Sergeant March is moreover an intellectual man and well informed. His controversial letters in reply to the calumnious attacks on the royal engineer establishment at Chatham have been remarked for their honesty and boldness; and his series of communications in the ‘United Service Gazette,’ in answer to the forcible animadversions of the celebrated ‘Emeritus’ in the ‘Times,’ concerning Ordnance finance, were not only well and truthfully written, but deserve for their vigour and appositeness as prominent a place in the columns of the ‘Times,’ as the communications of the more favoured ‘Emeritus.’ This non-commissioned officer is now quartermaster-sergeant of the corps at Chatham.