Charles Holloway (engineer)

Major General Charles Holloway
Holloway is amongst the principal officers recorded in the commemorative painting of the Siege of Gibraltar by George Carter.
Born	17 April 1749
Died	4 January 1827 Devonport
Nationality	British

Sir Charles Holloway (1749–1827) was a major-general in the Royal Engineers. He served at the Great Siege of Gibraltar and returned later as Commanding Royal Engineer when he destroyed the Spanish fortifications (Lines of Contravallation) between Spain and Gibraltar.

Holloway was born to unrecorded parents on 17 April 1749. At the age of fifteen he entered the drawing room of the board of ordnance at the Tower of London - a building that he would later improve. In 1772 he was sent to help the commanding royal engineer with his plans for new fortifications at Portsmouth and where he became a second lieutenant in the royal engineers.

In 1777 Holloway went to Gibraltar and in 1799, in the first year of the Great Siege of Gibraltar, he was staff officer to the chief engineer, Colonel William Green. He was also adjutant of the engineers and of the Soldier Artificer Company. (Holloway was to marry Green's daughter Helen Mary in 1785) On 17 April 1781 he was made brigade major, and when Green became a major-general he was appointed his aide-de-camp in 1782. Another aide-de-camp was George Koehler who invented a new tilting gun and would serve with Holloway later. In 1783 he became lieutenant but he was also severely wounded by shrapnel from a mortar boat. During the siege he kept a diary. On 7 June 1783 the governor, Sir George Augustus Eliott, afterwards Lord Heathfield, thanked him publicly for his services during the siege. Eliott, Holloway, Koehler, George Mackenzie, Thomas Trigge and William Green are amongst those recorded as the principal officers serving in the siege who were painted by George Carter for the City of London. The National Portrait Gallery have an oil sketch but the final painting is at the National Army Museum.