India General Service 1895-1902, 1 clasp, Relief of Chitral 1895 (4382 Pte. J. Froggett 1st. Bn. K.R. Rifle Corps) ‘r’ of surname officially corrected, good very fine £240-£280

J. Froggett attested for the King’s Royal Rifle Corps, and served with the 1st Battalion in India as part of the Chitral Relief Force, where he was present at the action of the Malakand Pass, 3 April 1895. On 10 December 1896 he sailed from Bombay to Cape Town in the troopship Warren Hastings, and arrived in South Africa on 28 December 1896. Half of the Battalion was dispatched for garrison duties at Wynburg, whilst the other half of the battalion (Comprising A, C, G, and H companies, including Froggett, as a member of G Company) subsequently re-embarked in the Warren Hastings at Cape Town on 6 January 1897, bound for Mauritius.

On board the Warren Hastings were 526 members of the King’s Royal Rifle Corps, 510 members of the 2nd Battalion York and Lancaster Regiment, and 25 members of the 2nd Battalion Middlesex Regimen, together with 20 women, 10 children, and 253 crew, totalling 1,244 people. A good passage was had until the morning of 13 January, when the glass fell and the wind shifted to the south. Despite reduced visibility there was no cause for concern and that night the troops went untroubled to bed. At about 2.20 am on 14 January, a violent shudder was felt throughout the ship, as the Warren Hastings struck a rock off the coast of Réunion. Orders were given for the K.R.R.C. to fall in on the port side and the York and Lancasters on the starboard side. Through the torrential rain the ship’s officers perceived that the vessel was aground and that it was possible to disembark by ropes on to the rocky coast. At 4.15 am the ship began to heel to starboard. Twenty minutes later the electric lights went out. Thus by 5.00 am those men on the starboard side, some in total darkness, were standing knee deep in water. The list gradually increased until the captain himself thought the ship would turn over. Nevertheless the discipline for which the British soldier is famed prevailed, and the disembarkation was accomplished without a single fatality. The only lives lost during the whole episode were those of two natives who ran amok and jumped overboard. One officer present later wrote ‘Personally I look upon the whole business as one of the most creditable things to the British Army which has ever occurred, and without invidious comparison quite as creditable as the Birkenhead, for in the latter, if we are to believe the pictures, the men were at least all on deck, whilst on the Warren Hastings they were between decks, and quite unable to see what was going on.’ After a brief stay on Réunion, Froggett arrived in Mauritius with the rest of his battalion onboard the S.S. Lalpoora on 18 January 1897.

Froggett subsequently served with the 3rd Battalion in South Africa, and was present at operations in the Cape Colony, and at the Relief of Ladysmith (entitled to a Queen’s South Africa Medal with two clasps), before returning home in 1900. He subsequently returned to South Africa on draft to the 1st Battalion in 1902, and qualified for the King’s South Africa Medal with the rare single clasp ‘South Africa 1902’.

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