Souvenir Saturday: Miss Bell

Of all the most tantalising items there can be nothing to beat an unidentified, or mis-identified, photograph. A handwritten note on the back of the above photo claims that the winsome young lady is Miss Bell, 'a sister of Captain William Bell'. 

This is hardly likely, as her costume tells us she is of a much later generation than Captain Bell's (he was born in 1807). There is, however, some family resemblance, reinforced by a companion photograph showing a Mr Bell who certainly could be a close relative of the Captain, though again of a later date.

For the moment, Miss Bell remains a mystery lady. The 1871 Census for Drumburgh, Bowness-on-Solway, shows Thomas Bell (the Captain's father), a widower aged 87, and blind. The other occupants of the house are Elizabeth, granddaughter, aged 38, unmarried, and a grandson, John. It was tempting to consider this Elizabeth as a contender for the Miss Bell in the photo portrait, but the date and age simply do not fit. Back to the drawing board ...

Mariners: The First Rung of the Ladder

Map showing Bowness-on-Solway, Glasson, Easton and Drumburgh:
places along the shores of the Solway Firth associated with William Bell and family

Merchant mariners of the 19^th c often had the sea in their blood, i.e. they came of seafaring communities and families. This was not an invariable rule, of course. William Bell’s father wasn’t a mariner but a labourer, still working as such in the Bowness-on-Solway area of Cumberland in 1841.

The mouth of the Annan and Solway Firth, Skiddaw in the Distance:
engraving by Wm Miller after C Stanfield

Bell family information, an unreliable source, would have it that William ‘ran away to sea at an early age’. There was no need for him to do so. The sea was ever-present throughout his childhood; the salty tang pervaded the low-lying shores of the Solway Firth and church registers recorded documentary evidence of maritime occupations for the majority of the neighbourhood’s breadwinners – many of whom had the surname Bell.

Solway Firth, Cumberland

Bell’s parents may not have had the wherewithal required to start William off on the first rung of the maritime ladder but it’s likely that some family member or contact was either in shipbuilding or shipowning or both in some degree (there was an extremely successful shipbuilder named William Bell operating in Bowness at the time though his relationship to young William hasn’t been established) and would be able to put in a good word for the boy when it came time for him to be apprenticed – in William’s case probably around 1820.

For this is how most mariners began their career: being indentured like any other apprentice to a trade, contracted to work for a period of seven years usually starting at the age of 12 to 15 and emerging qualified to earn a living as a seaman. During that time the apprentice would live, eat and sleep anything and everything to do with ships, including building them and sailing them, in theory and in practice – ‘learning the ropes’ has come down to us as an expression from this world and for the seafaring apprentice it covered much more than its literal meaning.

Becoming a mariner was a hands-on process: one learned by experience and had hard knocks along the way. Training was much the same for future masters as it was for the average AB (Able Seaman). The sea was a great leveller as a man, regardless of his origins, could ascend through the ranks based on his own practical ability and intelligence. 

In the early 19^th c, then, apprenticeship was an accepted form of maritime education; later, the numbers dropped. We’ve seen that this route was taken by William Falconer and he provides an example of a boy apprenticed to his father who was a master mariner.* Such an arrangement frequently would have been informal, with no indenture papers kept. Despite intensive searches, no apprenticeship record has emerged for William Bell, who was indentured to Ritson of Ritson’s shipbuilding company, Maryport. This fact is known purely by accident – a brief but welcome reference in a Cumberland newspaper.**

Maryport Pier as Bell might have known it:
perhaps he stood watching from the sea wall much like the boys in this picture

A well-known maritime researcher working regularly at The National Archives, UK, states that though the impression is given that there are 10% of indenture records surviving, the actual proportion is much smaller. 

In any case, if your mariner’s career pre-dates 1835, records are scarce because the government wasn’t particularly concerned with individual merchant seafarers. There are sources of various kinds, mostly kept for reasons other than the mariners’ activities per se, e.g. customs books, port books, High Court of Admiralty records etc, but these are diffuse, not easy to research and often not that useful for family historians. Occasionally a rewarding nugget comes to light.

*  http://molegenealogy.blogspot.com/search?q=william+falconer

**  spotted by Marion Abbott

Acknowledgement:

Derek Ellwood

Check that Memorial Inscription

Even when carved in stone, family information may be suspect. It's worth checking MI dates and names against primary sources.

After establishing William Bell's place of origin I visited the parish of Bowness-on-Solway and found St Michael's Church where Bell had been baptised and where various other Bell events had taken place. I'd heard there was a memorial stone in the churchyard of St Michael's, commemorating members of the Bell family. I searched for and eventually found this stone, in a reasonable state of preservation. The inscription read as follows:

Erected to the Memory of Elizabeth Bell of Drumburgh who died Feb 27 1867 aged 82 years Thomas Bell, who died Decr 10th 1872, aged 88 years Also their son William who died at Port Natal South Africa, April 3rd 1869 Aged 63 years Also their son John who died at Port Carlisle Decr 17th 1880 aged 63 years Also Elizabeth Bell of Drumburgh Who died December 4th 1906 aged 81 years.’

Elizabeth and Thomas Bell were William Bell's parents. William is mentioned as having died at Port Natal - a useful detail to find in a memorial inscription - but the date of his death should be April 10 1869.

The existence of a brother named John, who apparently died at Port Carlisle in 1880, was news to me. So far the identity of the last-mentioned Elizabeth Bell of Drumburgh remains uncertain.

Finding the stone wasn't the end of the journey, though, as the details shown in the inscription had to be checked. Next stop was Cumbria Record Office, then in the Castle at Carlisle, where I discovered that Bowness parish records began in 1642. The number of Bell families in the area were legion and hours of research were needed to identify the 'right' Bells. It's probable that links between these families will emerge as the search continues.
 


St Michael's Church, Bowness-on-Solway. Bell memorial stone in foreground left.

The parish of Bowness stands on the Solway Firth at the western end of Hadrian's Wall: border country, with Carlisle inland to the east. St Michael's Church is about four miles from Drumburgh, where some Bell family members lived at various dates, and not far from Glasson, Easton and other hamlets associated with the family.

 

Fact & Fiction in Family History Research

Family historians are constantly warned about the dangers of inaccurate data appearing on genealogy websites and it’s certainly wise to check facts given on internet against original material wherever possible.
However, don’t believe everything you read in printed sources, either. Even apparently authoritative publications may include inaccuracies. Take these as gospel and your family history narrative could be a mine-field of perpetuated errors.

When I began my research (in pre-internet days) into my great great grandfather, Captain William Bell, I found several references in published works which described him as a Scotsman, born in Dumfries. The truth (which took years to establish) is that Bell was born (1807) in the parish of Bowness-on-Solway, Cumberland, England. His parents, Thomas and Elizabeth Bell, were then living in the village of Glasson, in that parish. Their son William was baptized at the Bowness parish church, St Michael’s, as proved by the register entry. The Bells had been in the same district for several generations.

Despite my efforts to put matters right, there are still pockets of resistance regarding Bell’s true birthplace. But how did the confusion arise? It’s impossible to be certain, though there is a reference to another completely unrelated William Bell in Cape records who was born – you guessed it – in Dumfries! A simple case of mistaken identity?

In later years members of the Bell family lived in the village of Drumburgh - not far from Glasson where William Bell was born. The locals, as I discovered when I visited the area in 1991, pronounce Drumburgh as 'Dumbruff' (or that is as close I can get, phonetically). Was this obscure hamlet muddled with the better-known place-name of Dumfries? It requires a stretch of the imagination. The entry for William Douglas Bell which appears in a volume of South African Biographies gives his birthplace as Drumburgh, 'before 1822' (Bell was born in 1807 in Glasson). The same source mentions his parents' names as William and Elizabeth Bell: they were actually Thomas Head Bell and Elizabeth (nee Millican).

Another controversial point is the Captain's middle name, frequently given as Douglas. At what stage of his career this was added is not clear. His baptismal entry simply states William. This isn't particularly unusual: the parents may not have decided at that point whether to give the child any middle names. When Bell married Mary Ann Caithness at Algoa Bay (Port Elizabeth) on 28 June 1838 he was plain 'William Bell, Bachelor'. By the 1840s he begins to appear in records as William Douglas Bell and, to confuse historians further, names his first son William Douglas Bell. This choice may have caused difficulties during the Captain's lifetime, as in most sources the son's forenames are given in a different order: Douglas William Bell. The significance of the name Douglas has yet to be explained.

After Captain Bell's services during the conflict at Port Natal in 1842, he is said to have been offered, by Queen Victoria through the Governor of Natal, a grant of land on the Berea, which Bell declined because he was a seafaring man. Instead, he accepted a pair of gold epaulettes to wear on his 'uniform on special occasions'.

This is the stuff of family legend but regrettably, despite the fact that it's mentioned in the volume of biographies mentioned above, there is no documentary evidence to support the story*. Bell was a merchant mariner before he became Port Captain at Natal; he never served in the Royal Navy and would not have been entitled to wear naval uniform. It's probable that the double-breasted frock coat (as seen in the best-known photograph of Bell), trimmed with braid on the sleeves as well as epaulettes (ornamental shoulder-pieces), was made to Captain Bell's own design when he was in office as Port Captain. The anchor shown in the photograph is real enough, as is the brass Dolland telescope tucked under Bell's arm. Until comparatively recently the telescope was in the possession of one of Bell's descendants

Captain Bell's life was sufficiently action-packed and unusual to make any mythical embellishments unnecessary. There's no harm in acknowledging the fiction as long as there's no pretence that it is fact.

*Reported in The Natal Mercury, April 9 1927, in an article on John Chalsty, 'last of Captain Bell's men'.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Photographic portrait of Bell: colour version by Hartmut Jager.