The Corps

This archive has carried Robert D'Arcy's career on the authority of Connolly's Roll of Officers of the Corps of Royal Engineers — a book printed in 1898. Every step of it can now be cited to the London Gazette instead, with issue and page, and it begins two years earlier than anything else here.

Forty-nine years from a practitioner engineer's commission to a major-general's grave.

And a post, not just a rank.

The Kentish Gazette of 14 May 1805, reporting the death of his son, calls him “COL. D'ARCY, CHIEF ENGINEER OF CHATHAM LINES”. The Chatham Lines were the bastioned fortifications thrown up to defend the dockyard and the Medway — the largest engineering work in Kent. Every other record of Robert D'Arcy gives a rank. This one gives him a job. documented

The cornet of the 17th Light Dragoons

One entry was discarded. A Robert D'Arcy is gazetted CORNET BY PURCHASE in the 17th Regiment of Light Dragoons on 19 May 1804, described as “Gent”, vice Harris. That is a young man buying his first commission in a cavalry regiment in 1804 — while this Robert D'Arcy had been a major since 1802 and was a lieutenant-colonel by the following March. Same name, different man, and the sort of thing that quietly wrecks a career chronology if nobody looks at the rank.

The Corps wrote its own history, and he is in it five times

Whitworth Porter's History of the Corps of Royal Engineers was published in 1889 from the Corps' own records. This archive had never opened it. Robert D'Arcy is named at Minorca, in a station list, at Copenhagen, at Walcheren and in the index — which is Porter's own statement that they are one man. documented

D'Arcy, Robert, at second siege of Minorca, 209, 216 ; Copenhagen, 243 ; Walcheren, 248

His whole service, printed while he was alive

The Royal Military Calendar was the army's own published record of its serving officers. The third edition of 1820 carries him under the Major-Generals, entry 607, with every rank and every date.

Printed in his lifetime, seven years before he died, from the army's own returns. It confirms 17 JANUARY 1776 outright — the date this archive worked out yesterday from a chain of ditto marks in the Army List of 1781, and had printed wrongly as 1778 on its own career page until then. Two independent routes to the same day.

Two ranks this archive did not have

FIRST LIEUTENANT, 1 October 1784, and CAPTAIN, 15 August 1793. Both fall inside the years this page once described as a blank, and the second of them lands between the Barbados christenings and the majority of 1802.

And one date that does not agree

This archive gives his lieutenant-colonelcy as 1 MARCH 1805, cited to the Ordnance Office notice in the London Gazette, issue 15789 page 351, promoted vice Nepean. The Royal Military Calendar gives 1 MARCH 1803 — same day, same month, two years apart. Everything else lines up as you would expect a gazette to lag a commission by days: the Calendar has Major on 29 April 1802 where the Gazette announced 11 May, and Colonel in the Royal Engineers on 21 July 1813 where the Ordnance Office notice is dated the 19th.

What it does not say

Nothing about where he came from. The Calendar prints parentage and schooling when it has them — the very next entry, Major-General George Bridges, opens “After the usual course of instruction at Woolwich Academy” — and for Robert D'Arcy it prints none. The oldest question in this archive, who his parents were, is not answered here, and the silence is from the army's own book. a null from the best-placed source

The claim about his birth →

Read 15 September 2026 in the free full text of the 1820 third edition on the Internet Archive.

The 1778 Army List has him, and corroborates Porter

The printed Army Lists are free and out of copyright. The list of 1778 carries the whole establishment of the Corps of Engineers, rank by rank, and in the junior grade it has him by name.

It is a contemporary printed source for the rank this archive has carried on the authority of a commission register, and it puts him in a seniority run with twelve named contemporaries.

And it independently corroborates the Minorca roster

Porter, writing in 1889, names the engineers at the siege of Fort St Philip's in 1781: Captain GILBERT TOWNSHEND and Lieutenants ROBERT D'ARCY, W. JOHNSTON, J. R. DOUGLAS, C. SHIPLEY and J. FIDDES. Every one of those six is in the 1778 establishment — Townshend among the Engineers Extraordinary and Captains; Shipley, Douglas and Johnston among the Sub-Engineers and Lieutenants; D'Arcy and Fiddes among the Practitioner Engineers. A list printed three years before the siege, and a history written a century after it, describing the same men in the same corps. two independent sources agreeing

And then the 1781 list settles the date

This archive has printed two dates for that commission. The timeline and four other pages say 1776, on Connolly's Roll. This page's career table said 1778, on a commercial index of the commission registers, and called it “his first commission, and now the earliest record of him anywhere in this archive”. Two contemporary printed Army Lists and a nineteenth-century roll of the Corps now agree on 17 January 1776, so the career table was wrong and the timeline was right. Corrected 15 September 2026.

And the question it does NOT settle

This archive prints two dates for his first commission: 1776, from Connolly's Roll, on the timeline and elsewhere; and 1778, from the British Army Lists and Commission Registers, on this page. The obvious test is whether he appears in the printed lists of 1775 and 1776. He does not — and that proves nothing at all. The men listed beside him in 1778 are not there either: FIDDES, HOCKINGS, HUMFREY and SLACK return nought occurrences in both earlier volumes. Those lists do not print the Practitioner Engineer grade. The absence is the book's, not the man's.

Read 15 September 2026 in the free full text of the Army Lists for 1775, 1776, 1778 and 1781 on the Internet Archive.

And the reason he nearly faced a court-martial

On the night of 13 August 1809, storming a fleche on the western dyke at Flushing, Colonel Fyers — the Commanding Royal Engineer — was shot in the chest by a musket ball from a hundred yards. It passed first through some inches of sand on the parapet, which is the only reason it was not fatal. Wounded, he ordered that the senior engineer in the trenches deliver him a written report every morning.

“After all the preliminary arrangements for a court-martial had been gone through, Colonel D'Arcy thought better of it, made his apologies, was released, and ever after furnished his report.”

One date it does NOT quite corroborate

Fyers's Brigade-Major calls him “an old man beyond sixty” in August 1809. This archive's own best evidence for his age is the Chatham burial register, which gives him as 76 at his death in May 1827 and so puts his birth about 1750–51 — the source the tree's “1751” has always come from. A man born in 1750 or 1751 was FIFTY-EIGHT OR FIFTY-NINE in August 1809, not beyond sixty. The two do not agree, and the register is much the better witness: it was written by a clerk with a date in front of him, while “an old man beyond sixty” is an aside in an anecdote recalled years later by a man complaining about him. It is recorded because it is the only physical description of him this archive has, and because a source that is slightly wrong about an age can still be right about an arrest. an aside, not a birth record — and it misses the register by a year or two

Read 14 September 2026 in the full text of the 1889 edition on the Internet Archive, which is out of copyright and downloads freely.

The career, year by year, out of the printed lists

This page used to draw a line between three dots — 1778, 1781 and the Royal Military Calendar of 1820. The Army Lists are annual, out of copyright and free in full text, so the dots can be joined. Three more editions were read on 15 September and they change what this archive can say about the shape of his service.

The Gazette is silent, and the silence has a date

The London Gazette is free, needs no account, and is the official record of every commission the Crown signed. Searched on 15 September for both spellings across 1770–1830, it does not name this Robert D'Arcy once. That is worth something only because the search was controlled first.

What the control showed

One thing it did give, exactly dated

This page calls him an officer of the Corps of Engineers, which is right for 1776 and wrong for the end of his career. He was commissioned into the Corps of Engineers and the corps became the Royal Engineers under him, by warrant, in April 1787 — eleven years in.

And his son went to the guns, not the sappers.

Joseph D'Arcy — baptised at Portsea in March 1780, son of Robert and Jean — appears in FindMyPast's British Army, Royal Artillery Officers 1716-1899 from 1795, in the Army List of 1798, in the Commission Registers in 1802, 1803 and 1826, among the officer promotions of 1803, 1804 and 1806, and in the Army Lists of 1840, 1841, 1843 and 1844.

How it ended → · Where he is buried → · His marriage at Portsea → · The claim about his birth →

The Army Lists, walked at last

FindMyPast's British Army Lists & Commission Registers 1661-1826 was on this archive's list for a week as «probably not walkable». It is. Searched on 20 September, it returns three entries for Robert D'Arcy and a whole cohort of officers sharing his surname.

documented