Beaumont served in the Royal Engineers and was a contemporary of
General Charles George Gordon; his name appeared directly before Gordon's in the Army Lists from the date of their first commissioning on 23 June 1852. As a
lieutenant, Beaumont saw service during the
Crimean War, and was one of only a small number of British officers who served with
Turkish forces along the
Danube, serving with the (local) rank of
Captain in the Turkish Contingent Engineers, for which service he was awarded the
Turkish Crimean War medal rather than the
British Crimean War Medal. In 1858, Beaumont again saw action in the
Indian Mutiny, during which he served on the staff of the Royal Engineers, distinguishing himself on 14 March 1858 at
Lucknow and being awarded the
Indian Mutiny Medal with clasp. Promoted to captain in 1866, Beaumont in conjunction with Captain F.E. Grover made efforts to get
ballooning adopted by the British Army, Beaumont having witnessed the use of balloons in the
American Civil War. Beaumont was promoted to
major in 1872, and in 1873 was placed in charge of
railways at the Royal Arsenal,
Woolwich. While in the post he worked on methods for generating
hydrogen for balloon experiments and was described by his contemporaries as "a man of remarkably inventive talent." In 1875, Beaumont filed a patent for a pneumatic tunnelling machine which could cut through chalk at the rate of 200 yards per week. After further development of this design with
Captain Thomas English, two Beaumont-English tunnelling machines were adopted for use by
Edward Watkin in his attempt to dig a
Channel Tunnel in 1880. By the time the project was stopped in early 1882, the two machines had successfully bored over 3,000 yards under the Channel without difficulty. In 1868, Beaumont was elected one of the two
Liberal Members of Parliament for
South Durham, a seat he held until 1880. Beaumont retired from the Army shortly after his promotion to Colonel in 1877, and died on 20 August 1899. ==See also==