William Evan Allan
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William Evan Crawford Allan (July 24, 1899 – October 18, 2005) was one of Australia’s last living World War I veterans. Moreover, he was the last Australian to have seen action overseas. He was a career Navy man, serving in the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) from 1914-1948, also seeing service in World War II.
Allan was born in Bega in the then British colony of New South Wales, eighteen months before the Commonwealth of Australia came into being.
He joined the RAN in March 1914 at he age of fourteen as an ordinary seaman second class. When war was declared on August 14, 1914, he was 15 and serving on the Tingira, which was the Australian Navy’s training ship docked in Rose Bay, Sydney. He served on board the HMAS Encounter till the end of the war and became an able seaman in 1915. When he was eighteen he survived the Spanish flu pandemic that killed over fifty of his shipmates on the Beramba’s voyage between Cape Town and Sierra Leone.
Between the world wars, Allan almost drowned after falling overboard in the North Atlantic — and would have done so had his captain not braved the precipitous storm, turned the ship around, and rescued him with the help of a life preserver and a rope ladder. In 1932 he was promoted to Chief Petty Officer.
Allan went on to serve on HMAS Adelaide in World War II, sailing in convoy with HMS Repulse and also HMS Hood. He retired from the Navy in 30 October 1947 after serving thirty-four years, being granted his war service rank of Lieutenant prior to discharge.
He met his wife, Ita Blakely, while his ship was docked in Vancouver, Canada, in 1924, and he continued to write to her until his ship returned to Vancouver in 1941. They married on that return trip and sailed to Australia as newlyweds on SS Mariposa via Hawaii — only twelve days before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.
Allan was awarded the 80th Anniversary Armistice Remembrance Medal by the Government of Australia in 1999 and lived in the Melbourne suburb of Essendon until his death at the age of 106.
[edit] References
- Interview with W. E. Allan
- Navy News report of his death and funeral
- Mr Allan's eulogy (Australia Navy website)
- Daily Telegraph (British) obituary
