LIVES OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE
The E.J. Boys Archive

About this page

About sixty men of the Light Brigade were taken prisoner by the Russians at Balaklava on the 25th of October 1854, many of them wounded or unhorsed in the Charge. A handful more were taken before or after. Those who survived were exchanged in October 1855 and rejoined their regiments in the Crimea in the last days of that month.

This page brings together, in one place, what the site holds about them: their own accounts and letters, other records, the men who died in captivity, the doubtful cases, and a table of all the names. It is a working page: it will grow as accounts are transcribed and checked.

The list of names follows the site’s Light Brigade prisoners of the Russians, based on the Nominal Roll of Prisoners of War of the 4th of May 1855 as printed in Reynolds’s Newspaper, 3rd of June 1855.

In their own words: memoirs and letters

— 1177, Private James Wightman, 17th Lancers. His own account, “Balaclava and the Russian Captivity”, published in The Nineteenth Century, May 1892, transcribed in full. The fullest account by a private soldier: the Charge, capture, the march inland and life as a prisoner.

— 1584, Private Nathan Henry, 11th Hussars. His memoir, A Chequered Life: capture after his horse was killed, the long marches and harsh treatment, and the British people he met living in Russia. A timeline page sets his account against Newman’s and notes some puzzles (e.g. he says nothing of Kharkov).

— 1277, Private Robert Farquharson, 4th Light Dragoons. Taken after three horses had been shot under him. His Reminiscences are quoted on his page and on other 4th Light Dragoons pages (e.g. Bolton).

— Cornet John Chadwick, 17th Lancers. Wounded and captured after his horse was killed. Letter to his brother from Karkoff, 2 April 1855, after the march from Simferopol; the text on his page was checked against the Wells Journal, 12 May 1855, on 9 October 2026. The letter on its own page. (Letters between Cardigan and Kinglake about Chadwick’s account of the Charge, transcribed by David Kelsey, are also on his page.)

— 1060, Private John Bevin, 8th Hussars. Letter to his mother from Simpheropol, 26 November 1854, sent to the Times by “G.” and reprinted as “English Prisoners in Russia”, Westmorland Gazette, 17 February 1855 (also Notts Guardian, 15 February 1855); the text on his page was checked against the Westmorland Gazette on 9 October 2026. The letter on its own page.

— 1484, Private Henry Parker, 11th Hussars. Letter to his father, a Windsor tailor, printed in The Field, 23 December 1854; a longer version in Anthony Dawson, Letters, 2014, p. 161. Not yet checked against an original.

— 597, Private Thomas Perry, 8th Hussars. Letter to his mother and sisters in Reading, written from Simferopol in December 1854 (reprinted in Anthony Dawson, Letters, 2014, pp. 161–2), very direct about his wounds. Not yet checked against an original.

— 1051, Corporal James Hall, 17th Lancers. Letter to his father, Staff Sergeant Thomas Hall. Hall was listed in the London Gazette as killed, not as a prisoner. Text from Dawson, Letters, 2014, pp. 160–1. Not yet checked against an original.

Other accounts and records

— Cornet George Clowes, 8th Hussars. Wounded and captured. His route as a prisoner: Sevastopol, Simferopol and Ekaterinoslav to Riazan, arriving 25 May 1855; released and back via Kursk, Kharkov, Poltava, Odessa and Constantinople (Newry Telegraph, 20 March 1855, and other sources on his page).

— 1540, Private Thomas Lucas, 4th Light Dragoons. Questioned by General Liprandi on the evening of the Charge. In the compilation Accounts of the Charge: 4th Light Dragoons, which has other prisoners’ testimony too. Lucas lost his left hand.

— 1292, Corporal Joseph Armstrong, 4th Light Dragoons. His page has the details of the courts-martial held on the returned prisoners of war.

— 868, Private James Bolton, 4th Light Dragoons. His statement, made on his return; quotes Farquharson’s Reminiscences.

— 1580, Private William Sheppard, 11th Hussars. Horse Guards letter of 30 June 1855 about two cavalry prisoners. Two further pages from his family’s research.

— 762, Troop Sergeant Major John Linkon (Lincoln), 13th Light Dragoons. Exchanged; at the Scutari depot from November 1855, then tried by a Garrison Court Martial.

— 1295, Trumpeter Hugh Crawford, and 635, Private Samuel Parkes, 4th Light Dragoons. Parkes, Lord George Paget’s orderly, saved the dismounted Crawford’s life and won the Victoria Cross; both were taken prisoner. See also Parkes’s page.

— 1617, Private John Dryden, 11th Hussars. Severely wounded (“27 wounds”); exchanged at Odessa and rejoined in the Crimea on 28 October 1855.

— 1177, Sergeant Henry Alderson, 13th Light Dragoons. Taken on patrol on 12/13 October 1854, before the Charge; rejoined on 26 October 1855.

Died in captivity

— 831, Troop Sergeant Major William Fowler, 4th Light Dragoons. Died in captivity “of wounds and dysentery” in November 1854. Wightman writes of him.

— 969, Private Robert Edge, 17th Lancers. Wounded and captured; died probably shortly afterwards.

— 830, Private William Bainton, 13th Light Dragoons. Did not return in October 1855; almost certainly died a prisoner.

— 1462, Private John Lymbrey, 4th Light Dragoons. Evidence that he was taken on 10 November 1854; presumably died soon after.

Doubtful cases, escapes and aliases

— Lieutenant John Fitzgibbon, 8th Hussars. At first thought captured; probably died on the field.

— Cornet George Wombwell and Captain William Morris, 17th Lancers. Both captured and both escaped the same day.

— William Spring / William Pilkington, 11th Hussars. Possibly one man under two names; said to have been a deserter from the 17th Lancers.

— 1078, Private Henry Young, 17th Lancers. On the Nominal Roll; possibly an alias of Lewis Esquilant.

— 1433, Private John Johnson, 4th Light Dragoons. Posted missing on 26 September 1854, “taken prisoner-of-war by the Russians”: before Balaklava.

The prisoners

All 66 names on the site’s list, with the notes from that list. The last column is a rough guide to how much the man’s own page says about his captivity.

Gaps and next steps

1. Men with no page yet: William Pilkington. (George Smith, 13th Light Dragoons, and James McNeil, 4th Light Dragoons, do have pages: 1106 and 1339.)

2. Pages that said little about captivity: on 9 October 2026 material from elsewhere on the site was added to the pages of George Cooper (Wightman: the fight near Odessa), Patrick Horan (Voronezh clothing return), William Howarth, George Linser and William Kirk (Captain Montague’s return of prisoners who died, London Gazette, 1 June 1855; Kirk also from Wightman). William Morris’s page already tells of his capture and escape. Nothing more found yet for John Johnson, George Liles, William Thomas or Edward Turner.

3. The letters: Chadwick’s and Bevin’s texts have been checked against the printed newspapers, and each letter now has a page of its own. Parker’s, Perry’s and Hall’s still need checking against an original (scans of the newspaper printings, or of Dawson’s sources). Then they too could have pages of their own.

4. Deserters to the Russians: still to be listed. (The older working copy pows.html had a heading for them but no names; it and two other old copies of the prisoners list were retired on 9 October 2026, after checking that nothing in them was missing from the master list.)

5. The route and the camps: a map of the marches (Simferopol, Ekaterinoslav, Kharkov, Riazan, Odessa) drawn from the accounts.