Colonial Despatches

William Cuthbert Elphinstone-Holloway, officer and engineer, was born on 1 May 1787. After attending the Royal Military Academy, Holloway joined the Royal Engineers as a second lieutenant on 1 January 1804. In 1810 he was sent to Spain to fight Napoleon's armies. In 1812, now a captain, he participated in the capture of Badajoz, and was seriously wounded and subsequently mentioned in dispatches by the Duke of Wellington.1

The government gave Holloway a wound pension and he spent the next six years in Britain. In 1818 he was sent to the Cape of Good Hope in time to serve in the Cape Frontier War of 1819. Afterword he conducted military surveys before going home in 1831.2

His wife was the daughter of Captain Thomas Elphinstone RN, the source of his hyphenated last name, which he grafted to his own through his marriage in February 1825. After serving in Ireland, Holloway was promoted to colonel in November 1841 and appointed CRE (Commanding Royal Engineers) in Canada from 1843 to 1849. Holloway died at Plymouth Citadel, Devon, on 4 September 1850.3

• 1. R. H. Vetch, Holloway, Sir Charles, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
• 2. Ibid.
• 3. Ibid.