Caithness and HMS Calcutta 1803 at the Cape

Action at sea: French Revolutionary Wars by Louis Philippe Crepin

In August 1803 James Caithness joined HMS Calcutta and a new chapter opened in his career. He was about to visit Australia and circumnavigate the world, an adventure beyond his wildest dreams.

Calcutta was an ex-East Indiaman bought by the navy in 1795, converted into a 56-gun fourth rate and used as an armed transport with the famous Captain Bligh in command. By the end of 1802 the ship had been refitted to carry convicts to New South Wales, under Captain Daniel Woodriff. She sailed from Spithead on 28 April 1803, in company with another vessel, Ocean, with 308 convicts as well as civil personnel, a detachment of marines and a crew of 150. The intention was to found a settlement.

Calcutta arrived at Rio de Janeiro on 19 July and the Cape of Good Hope on 13 August, 1803. Remarkably, a contemporary diary by Robert Knopwood reveals that HMS Calcutta, being short of crew, took on seven men at Simon’s Bay (Simonstown, Cape) on 16 August.*Musters for the vessel confirm

that James Caithness was one of the seven added to the complement.

Page from Knopwood diary: 'HM Ship Calcutta at Anchor in Simon's Bay ... 13 (August)
at 9 Saluted the Battery with 11 Guns which was returned ... found an English whaler and two ships riding in the Bay under Dutch colours** ... 16  AM Received 842 lb of fresh beef and 400 lb of soft bread. 
Received 7 British Seamen/Volunteers ...'

James Caithness listed on muster of HMS Calcutta 1803

Further research should establish when he was discharged from HMS Mars and give a clue as to why he turned up at Simon’s Bay in August 1803.

 

Map of the Colony of Good Hope, c 1800

Interestingly, HMS Mars, after refitting at the Hamoaze anchorage, Plymouth, at the end of February 1803, was involved in the fruitless pursuit of some foreign ships supposedly headed for the Cape of Good Hope under the Dutch Admiral de Winter.

*  The diary of the Reverend Robert Knopwood, 1803-1838 : first chaplain of Van Diemen's Land edited by Mary Nicholls

** By the Treaty of Amiens 1802 between England and France, the Cape Colony was returned to the Netherlands and came under the rule of the Batavian Republic from February 1803 to 1806 when the 2^nd British Occupation of the Cape commenced. It’s likely that the presence of Dutch ships at Simon’s Bay came as a surprise to those on board HMS Calcutta.

Acknowledgement:

Tom Sheldon

Child Emigrants to the Cape Colony Part 2

Aims of the CFS

The Children’s Friend Society’s intention was to provide agricultural and other employment to pauper children between the ages of eight and sixteen, estimating that in London in 1830 there were not less than 15 000 juveniles who were totally destitute.

Initially, sending the children overseas wasn’t envisaged and Brenton himself was not in favour of that concept. His aim was to remove the children from their disadvantaged backgrounds, to rehabilitate them, provide them with training, and subsequently to indenture them in various occupations until they were able to become industrious, self-supporting citizens in their own country.

Circumstances altered the case. A labour surplus in Britain meant that the CFS had difficulty placing their charges in suitable situations. At the same time, the abolition of slavery in the British colonies in 1833 brought about an acute labour shortage at the Cape of Good Hope. Sending the children to the Cape appeared to be a solution to these problems. It was also in the interests of Empire to increase the British population of the Colony.

Action

In October 1832 the CFS began advertising in the Graham’s Town Journal for masters at the Cape who might require the services of juvenile emigrants as apprentices. At a meeting of the Society the following January, it was decided that twenty of the children then living at the West Ham asylum should be sent to the Cape on the Charles Kerr. According to reports in The Times, these boys were present at the meeting and ‘all held up their hands in favour of emigrating’ (as if they knew what emigrating meant). Half the cost of sending the group to the Colony would be borne by the Government.

The experiment was successfully carried out and Brenton began approaching the Poor Law guardians in various London parishes to contribute financial aid towards sending their paupers out to the Cape, The Times announcing in March 1833 that the Parish of St Marylebone had advanced £200. Soon afterwards, a second ship, the Maria, left London for Algoa Bay (Port Elizabeth), with another batch of twenty boys.

This pattern continued and public support was indicated by the donations received by the
CFS. By May 1834, 213 boys had been sent to the Cape Colony. In the same year, the Society attracted the attention of the Princess Victoria (she would become Queen in 1837). Under her Royal patronage an institution for female juveniles was established at Chiswick and girls joined the ranks of indentured children being shipped to the Cape.

The young Queen Victoria

Victoria visited the Chiswick asylum and recorded her favourable impression in her journal: ‘it is a most interesting and delightful establishment … it is for poor vagrant girls who are received under the age of fifteen and Miss Murray says that they have never had a girl six months who did not become a perfectly good child. When they have become quite good and can read and write and do work of all kinds necessary for the home they are sent abroad … where they are apprenticed and become excellent servants’.

An example of the 'tough love' of the Victorian era: the pious iron fist in the silken sentimental glove. What is the definition of a 'perfectly good child'? One who is forced by circumstance to submit to the power of those in authority and to be 'sent abroad' regardless of personal wishes?

To be continued

Child Emigrants to the Cape Colony Part 1

On 11 May 1833 the ship Charles Kerr cast anchor in Table Bay after a three-month voyage from Cowes, England. It wasn’t the vessel’s first visit to the Cape of Good Hope, but on this occasion she was carrying human cargo. No, not slaves in the usual sense of the word, but twenty boys sent out by the Children’s Friend Society and destined for employment in the Colony.

Table Bay

We can imagine the excitement mingled with trepidation among the young emigrants at their first view of the beautiful Bay and its shipping, with Cape Town nestling at the foot of the majestic table-topped mountain. Most of the children had never been farther afield than London and its immediate environs. Their lives had begun in narrow streets and mostly in dingy, crowded tenements. Until a short while previously there’d been little likelihood of a change in these circumstances. Now they’d embarked on an adventure, leaving behind familiar faces and places, and crossing the ocean to a distant land.

Between 1833 and 1840, over thirty ships would follow in the wake of the Charles Kerr, bringing further groups of children, girls as well as boys, to the Cape Colony.

How and why did this come about? What destiny awaited them in the Cape and how did they cope with being uprooted and subsequently transplanted in foreign soil? Could your ancestor have been among them?

17th c London

There was actually nothing new in the idea of sending vagrant or pauper children to Britain’s colonies. As early as 1618, 100 juveniles were despatched from England to Virginia, and a second batch soon followed. The children had no say in the matter. Homeless, unprotected by parents or any charitable authorities, they were rounded up in the streets of London and herded into gaols before being shipped off to enforced exile in the American colony. There they would be bound to unknown masters whose treatment of the young apprentices was not subject to official regulation. Few of these child migrants would ever return to the country of their birth. 

This practice, whether sanctioned by government or carried out illegally, continued for two centuries. It was a means of ridding England of an unwanted surplus population, as well as providing much-needed labour in her colonies.

To be continued