Souvenir Saturday: Captain George Brown of the Priscilla

This photograph shows Captain George Brown and his wife Frances ca 1870.

Brown commanded the clipper barque Priscilla which brought my great great grandfather, Thomas Gadsden, to Natal in June 1863. The Priscilla, one of the earliest of the White Cross clippers (others were the Silvery Wave, the Verulam, Isabella Hartley and Burton Stather) was a frequent visitor to the Colony during the 1860s and 70s.

Advertisements in The Natal Mercury reveal that the Priscilla in November 1863 made the fastest passage then on record from Natal to England, i.e. 52 days.

The card mount mentions C Bunting & Sons: Bunting, Charles, photographer, 72 Nelson Street, South Bank near Middlesbrough is listed in Bulmer’s Directory 1890. Bunting had a studio there from at least 1884. [Source: The Cleveland, North Yorkshire and South Durham Family History Society.]

SOUTH BANK, formerly called Tees Tilery, is a rapidly increasing and populous market town in this township, having a station on the Darlington and Saltburn line of the North Eastern railway, and is distant three miles from Middlesbrough. (Bulmer's History and Directory of North Yorkshire (1890).

The Natal Mercury, 12 April 1861