TOPIC:

I have had Ernest Crallan's Zulu War medal in my collection for the past 14 years, but it will soon be leaving for a new home, together with a replacement (name erased) QSA, and associated papers. I have revised the short biography of Crallan that will accompany the other items, and I decided to post it here because of Crallan's service with Brabant's Horse during the Boer War.

ERNEST CHARLES HAMAR CRALLAN
Sub-Inspector, Natal Mounted Police.
S A Medal 1877 – 79 (No clasp).
Captain, ‘E’ Squadron, Brabant’s Horse. Killed in action.
Queen’s South Africa Medal (Cape Colony). Name erased replacement.

Ernest Charles Hamar Crallan was born in about 1858, the son of Thomas Edward Crallan and Margaret Crallan. His father was a church minister who served in Hayward’s Heath, Sussex, and Emsworth, Hampshire.

Crallan enlisted in the Natal Mounted Police (NMP) in Pietermaritzburg on 18/04/1874, a little over a month after the NMP was established by Major (later Major-General Sir John) Dartnell. His service number was 19.

Holt (1913: 23-24) records that, “The first useful work done by the [NMP] began on the 6th of May 1874 when a detachment of sixteen men left Maritzburg on their sorry steeds to do or die in the Weenen County.” Crallan was one of these men. Apart from their “sorry steeds”, these early members of the NMP were fitted with most unsuitable uniforms and obsolete weapons. Nevertheless, matters improved and the NMP soon transformed into the well equipped, well trained and disciplined force that made it renowned in the years ahead.

By 1879, Crallan was a Sergeant and he served throughout the Anglo-Zulu War. Since his duties did not take him across the border into Zululand, he was awarded the South Africa Medal 1877 – 79 without a clasp.

Crallan was promoted to Sub-Inspector on 27/4/1882. During 1883 and 1884, he was based at Fort Pine near Dundee. Three of his reports from this area are preserved in the S A National Archives Repository in Pietermaritzburg. One reported a suspected case of smallpox on a nearby farm.

Crallan resigned from the NMP in 1888, and he settled in Johannesburg in the Transvaal Republic, where he ran a canteen. He left Johannesburg for Alice in the Cape Colony after the Jameson Raid in 1896, perhaps because of his involvement with, or support for the rebels.

The Cape Town Repository of the S A National Archives includes several files concerning Crallan’s life in the Cape Colony.

In September 1896, he raised a bond with the Standard Bank in Alice for the purchase of the following extensive property:
Three subdivisions of Lot 92, as well as Lots 93 and 94.

In 1897, he had a legal confrontation with the Alice Municipality concerning “night soil” removal from his premises. He won the first round in the local Magistrate’s Court, but lost the second in the Supreme Court, Cape Town, where he was ordered to pay £5 and costs to the Municipality.

After the outbreak of the Anglo-Boer War in October, Brabant’s Horse, one of the many irregular units raised locally during this war, was raised in the districts of Queenstown and Dordrecht in the eastern Cape by Brigadier E Y Brabant, a Colonial soldier. The regiment reached a strength of 600, and was made up mainly of local men, although there were also many from other Colonies. Crallen joined Brabant’s Horse. He was evidently highly regarded because of his previous experience in the NMP, and because of his standing in the local community, and he was appointed as a Captain in charge of the regiment’s ‘E’ Squadron.

By December, the regiment was occupying positions is support of the attack on Stormberg by the British under Lieutenant-General W F Gatacre. The British were defeated and forced to withdraw. Skirmishes in the vicinity of Dordrecht continued into 1900. In one such engagement on 16 February at Bird’s River near Dordrecht, Crallan and several of his men were killed in action. They were buried on the farm ‘Koffiefontein’, and their graves are in a small walled cemetery that is still well cared for. Crallan’s grave has on it an impressive marble monument, which is topped by a cross on three inscribed slabs. He was 46 years old when he died.

Crallan was survived by his wife, Edith Minnie Crallan, and three daughters:
Beatrice Flora, Edith May, and Dorothy Frances.

On 20 February after a visit to the site of his death, General Gatacre wrote a letter to Mrs Crallan and told her details of the action that had taken place. He wrote:
“Your husband was leading his men and reached the koppie one of the first & as each man came up he showed him his place. It was when all but one or two had reached the place that he was shot through the temple and died almost instantly. He was buried close to where he fell near the remaining killed. With regard to the horses I have asked Genl Brabant to send them here and we will send them on and also the things belonging to him, with his servant.”

In 1911, Crallan’s QSA with the single clasp ‘Cape Colony’ was sent to his widow, who had remarried, and who was then Mrs E M Collins living in Rosettenville, Johannesburg. This medal is now missing, and a name erased QSA with a ‘Cape Colony’ clasp is kept with Crallan’s Zulu War medal, and associated papers.

REFERENCE

Holt, H P. 1913. The Mounted Police of Natal. London: John Murray.

Brett Hendey
20/6/2016

Good heavens Brett, what a truly magnificent pair!

Frank
Crallan's Zulu War medal is far from being the 'best' single medal in my collection, but I have always liked it. My great-grandfather, Albert Elkington, enlisted in the Natal Mounted Police on 14/4/1874 and was No. 18, while Crallan enlisted four days later and was No. 19. They must have shared the discomforts and embarrassments of being members of the NMP in those early days, and perhaps they were even friends.
Regards
Brett

Hello Brett,
Yes, they must have known each other, perhaps actually quite well, but, that is a very good South Africa War Medal, I should be delighted to have it in my collection, it is a pity about the QSA, I note it is erased, I wonder if the original is still extant today, it may well have been a nicely engraved example.
Regards Frank

Frank
From the very earliest days of the NMP, Major Dartnell ensured that no riff-raff were enrolled. Only 12 of the first 20 applicants were accepted. He classed these men as follows:
1. "Young men of respectable families in England who have been in the colony a short time ......"
2. "Colonial men who have led unsettled lives ........"
3. "Ex-soldiers and ex-sailors and loafers of divers sorts ......."
(Quotes from Holt's 1913 history.)

Crallan and Elkington both belonged in the first category, but they were clearly very different men. Crallan was one of the earliest commissioned officers in the NMP, and in his second military adventure in 1899 he started (and ended) as a Captain. By contrast, Elkington went from being a NMP Trooper to become a Gaoler, and later a transport rider.

I did keep an eye out for Crallan's missing QSA, but the closest to it was the advertisement for the QSA of another man killed in the same action and who shares the same small cemetery with his CO.

Regards
Brett