VETERAN OF CRIMEA

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIV, Issue 110, 9 April 1934, Page 8

VETERAN OF CRIMEA

END OF ADVENTUROUS LIFE. DUNEDIN, April 7. To hear the thunder of the guns at Sebastopol; to sail the seven seas under the King’s ensign ; to take part in tho wild excitement of half a dozen gold rushes, and then to spend 70 years in a little lonely mining township ; such is the epitome of the career of James Archer Crawford, who died at Nascby on Saturday a few days after bis 104th birthday. One of the oldest residents of the Dominion, he has been successively sailor, miner and world wanderer. He had braved the Crimean winters, sweltered under Australian suns, had 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 stationmaster. He came of a family noted for the longevity of its members, his father living to be 99 years of age and his grandfather 105. When 13 or 14 years of age Mr Crawford was articled as an apprentice on the sailing ship William of Dundee, but he ran away and joined the navy. There followed years of life in the service of the Queen. The outbreak of the Crimean War found 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 still carried one memento in the shape of a scar from a wound received when he was run through the leg by a Russian during tlie encounter of Sebastopol. He took part in the siege of that town, and had the Sebastopol and Crimean medals, together with one given him by the Turks. Of these medals the old naval man was justly proud, hut lie 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-o’-war was lying at Constantinople, and as she was coming up the gangway which hung over the side she nearly lost her balance owing to the motion of the vessel in a choppy sea. The young Scottish sailor had been stationed on the gangway for just such an emergency, ana, springing forward, he took her by the hand and steadied her until she bad reached the deck above. Shortly after the Crimean Wa.r ended he returned to Scotland and then went 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 half a crown with which to make lfis wav to Melbourne. Mr'Crawford arrived in Otago in 1861 and again followed mining pursuits’, with the customary ups and downs of those days. While visiting Dunedin in the early ’sixties he was offered a quarter-acre section "here the Grand Hotel now stands for £2O, hut he refused to buy and lived to realise that he had missed a glorious opportunity. About 18i6 he married, and for 58 years he and Mrs Cranford had lived happily in their cottage on the outskirts of Naseby. The "Re with whom he has gone down the years hand in hand is left to mourn her loss. _____