Crossing the river Adour in February 1814 required the construction of the largest boat bridge of the war. Over forty large local boats were used, held in place by five 13in cables. These were secured at one end by connecting them to a number of siege gun barrels and tightened using a capstan and pulley arrangement on the other bank. The design of this bridge bears striking similarities to the ones at Alcantara and Almaraz and must be attributed to Sturgeon and Todd.

Pontoon Trains

For the first part of the war, the Allies had very little mobile bridging equipment. Their only pontoon train was lost to the French when Badajoz was captured in March 1811. It is unlikely to be coincidence that Wellington wrote home on 31 March asking for a full pontoon train to be shipped out to the Peninsula. He was now commanding forces operating in two different theatres and it was essential that reliable communications were maintained between these two forces. Probably based on their excellent work over the past few weeks, on 18 April Wellington asked for two more companies of Royal Staff Corps to be sent out and noting that as ‘there are no people of the description of pontooneers belonging to the service, I beg that ten warrant artificers may be sent with the pontoons … who will be employed to superintend the persons who must be hired in Portugal to attend them [the pontoons]’.⁴