EVENTFUL LIFE ENDED

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21134, 9 April 1934, Page 13

EVENTFUL LIFE ENDED

i . «, | DEATH OF MR J. A. CRAWFORD i A CRIMEAN VETERAN I [THE PRESS Special Servlco.J i DUNEDIN. April 7. To hear the thunder of the guns at I Sebastopol, to sail under the King's ensign, to take part in the wild excitement of half a dozen gold rushes, and then to spend 70 years in a lonely mining township—such were the experiences of Mr James Archer Crawford, who died at Naseby on Saturday, a few days after his hundred and fourth birthday. One of the oldest residents of tne Dominion, he was successively sailor, miner, and world wanderer. He had braved the Crimean winters, sweltered under Australian suns, been wounded by a Russian swordsman, waylaid by a gang of bushrangers, and had missed a fortune by the barest of chances. Mr Crawford was born in 1830 in the little village of Carnoustie, near Dundee, where his father was the stationmaster. He came of a family noted for longevity. Of its members I his father lived to be 99. and his grandfather 105. When 13 or 14 years of age he was articled as an apprentice on the sailing ship William of Dundee, but he ran away and joined the navy. There followed years of I life in the service of the Queen. The outbreak of the Crimean War found j him a sailor on board H.M.S. Trafalgar, which was ordered to Malta, and | then to the Black Sea. In the next year or two he saw a good deal of active service, of which he carried one memento in the shape of a scar from a wound received when he was run through the leg by a uussian during a boat encounter off Sebastapol. Siege of Sebastapol Mr Crawford took pari in the siege of that town, and had Sebastapol and Crimean medals, together with one given him by the lurks. Of these medals Mr Crawford was justly proud, but he was prouder still that on one occasion he was able to render slight service to the sailors' and soldiers' friend, Florence Nightingale. The great nurse had been invited on board the Trafalgar when the man-of-war was lying at Constantinople, and as sne was coming up the gangway she nearly lost her balance owing to I the motion of the vessel in the choppy sea. The young sailor had been

stationed on the gangway lor just such an emergency, and springing forward he took her by the hand and steadied her until she had reached the deck above. Shortly after the Crimean War ended Mr Crawford returned to Scotland and then came out to Australia, where he followed the gold rushes, and on one occasion was captured and robbed by a gang of bushrangers, who gave him back a half-crown with which to make his way to Melbourne. Mr Crawford arrived in Otago in 1861, and again followed mining with the customary ups and down of those days. "While visiting Dunedin in the early 'sixties he was offered a quarter-acre section where the Grand Hotel now stands, for £2O, but he refused to buy, and lived 1o realise that he missed a good opportunity. About 1876 he was married, and for 58 years he and Mrs Crawford lived in their cottage on the outskirts of Naseby. Mrs Crawford survives him.