NOTES ON THE LOG OF CAPTAIN GEORGE BROWN

 

Notes by Michael Parcell

1)   “The old Jaol” was demolished in 1792.

       2) The two former tiny villages of Eston and Normanby,  which lay very close to each other, are now united by housing development and are now part of Middlesbrough.

       3) Bond Street still exists and is in the very centre of the city.

    4) The Methodist New Connexion also then known as “Kilhamite Methodism” was formed in 1797 by secession from the Wesleyan Methodists by Alexander Kilham who believed that too much power was in the hands of its ministers at the expense of the laity.

      5)  Report in the local newspaper “On Tuesday morning last, Mr. R. Garbutt, merchant, laid the first stone of a new Sunday School, now erecting at this place, Mason Street, inclosed in which (the stone being divided) was deposited, in a lead box, a plate of brass bearing the following inscription ‘ WESLEYAN METHODIST SUNDAY SCHOOL, for the children  of the poor of every Denomination.  THE FIRST STONE LAID  on Tuesday 26^th August A.D. 1817’.  The size of the building within is 50 feet by 50 feet;  and there are two storeys, one intended for the reception of the boys and the other for girls and capable together of containing about 800 children”.

6   6) John Brodrick (26.9.1775 – 23.4.1851) was born in Whitby.  He was a ship builder and owner and lived at No 39 George St, in the best residential area of Hull.

     7)   Latona is a town  in Ontario on the Great Lakes.  I found a report of a vessel of this name, trading between England and Canada which on 16.11.1832 was wrecked by another ship running into her.  All hands were  saved.  I cannot be sure that this is the ship referred to by Capt Brown.

    8) Merimachi.  I think he must mean Miramichi which is a port in New Brunswick on the Canadian Atlantic coast.

    9) George Yard (see picture) is in the centre of Hull by the River Hull.

1110)  The Hull Flax & Cotton Mill was founded in 1836 by Joseph Rylands having left his father’s business in Manchester.  His father’s business was to become one of the largest manufacturing companies in the U.K. but Joseph’s enterprise did not do as well

1111) This was a charity formed in 1817 to provide sailors somewhere to pray.  The first floating chapel (a hulk) in the Thames was provided to “promote their religious instruction, moral reformation and eternal happiness”.  Other floating chapels were established throughout the Colonies.

1112)   Tutmagush is Tatamagoughe a port in Nova Scotia.

1113)   Saint Hilda’s Church was consecrated in 1840, a fine looking building demolished in 1969. (see picture).

1414)  There was a Protestant Church in Malta, the corner stone having been laid by Queen Adelaide, the wife of William IV, in March 1839.  A report tells that Rev. T.N. and Mrs. Hull from Ireland arrived there in 1838.

11 15) The Bethel Flag was first used about 1817.  Hoisting it on arrival at a port became the way of announcing that religious services would be held on board and was used by various  Christian organisations.  Bethel means House of God.

1116)   The Dandie Dinmont was an iron built schooner of 225 tons built in South Shields in 1848.  The owner was George Cammell of Hull.  On a voyage from Newcastle to Memel with a cargo of coal she was wrecked off Borholm on 18.3.1850 after being “put back” because of ice.  Memel is a port in the present day Lithuania in the Baltic. There is a painting (attached) on which is inscribed “To George Cammel  Esq. of Hull.  This print of the iron built clipper schooner Dandie Dinmont respectfully dedicated  by his old servant John Ward.  John Ward of Hull (1797-1849) is described as “the leading marine artist and ship portrait painter in Hull during the first half of the 19^th century”.  

1717)   Bornholm is an island in the Baltic about 20 miles in length belonging to Denmark but about 180 miles to the east of the Danish mainland.

1818) Over 200 lives were lost when the London went down but about 60 were saved.

1919) The Mariners Society was founded in 1839 and is now a charity providing vital financial support  and practical assistance to merchant sailors, fishermen and their dependants in need.  In 2019 the charity distributed £i.4 million in grants.

2220)   Samuel Bullard and David King founded Bullard, King & Co in 1850 with a fleet of sailing ships trading between London and Natal under the flag of the White Cross Line.  In 1860 the first advertisements began to appear in the newspapers regarding the White Cross Line.  The first clipper in the Line to arrive at Natal had been the barque Priscilla – later a regular service was established.  The Priscilla is stated as having made the fastest passage from Natal to England at that time – 52 days in 1863.

2221)  Algoa Bay is in south-east Africa about 500 miles south of Durban.

)    22) Blythe Bros.  Actually Blyth Bros;  founded in 1830 to deal with all matters related to shipping in Mauritius.  Nowadays Ireland Blyth Ltd is the second largest business in Mauritius handling shipping, insurance and providing agency services for the sugar trade.

2 223) Isle de France is the former name for Mauritius which became part of the French Empire in 1715. It became an important base for French naval vessels and because of continuous raids on British shipping the British attacked it in 1811.  It was ceded to Britain in 1814.

2224)  Ira David Sankey (1840-1908) was an American gospel singer and composer of hymns.  He was in partnership with Dwight L. Moody as evangelists and from 1870 held a series of evangelistic crusades in the USA.  In 1873 they visited the U.K. where they achieved fame.

2  25) Mrs Harriet Atwood Newell (1793-1812) was an American missionary.  She married Rev. Samuel Newell in February 1812 and immediately left for Calcutta where the East India Company refused them entry so set sail for Mauritius.  Three weeks before arrival she gave birth to a child who died after five days.  Harriet died in Mauritius in November 1812.

2  26)  Dr Philip Doddridge (1702-1751) was a non-conformist Doctor of Divinity.  During his life he suffered from ill health and was advised to go abroad to recover his strength.  He chose Portugal where he died of tuberculosis in 1751.

2727)  John Scott was Governor of Mauritius from 1856 till 1864.

CAPTAIN GEORGE BROWN (1817 – 1899)

       George Brown was born in the centre of the City of Hull on 4th May 1817 the son of a sea captain who was lost at sea when George was aged 8 when his ship the “Mary Ann Elizabeth” was on a voyage to Sierra Leone.  From an early age he took up the Christian religion in a big way as his “Log” reveals.  His “Log”, or life story, written in old age at the request, it seems, of his family is an extraordinary tale in several ways;  it tells of long voyages, of shipwrecks, gives great detail of his preaching activities in faraway places but says almost nothing about his family.  The “Log” is attached to this chapter.

      He recalls that as his widowed mother had him and his two sisters to support on an income of only £12 a year he had to find work so was apprenticed as a sailor for seven years at the age of thirteen.

      In 1840 he sailed as Able Seaman from Hull to America on the “Elizabeth” with no beer or spirits on board for the crew which, he says, was the first instance of a temperance sailing ship out of Hull. He always believed that the presence of alcohol on board was to be deplored and later in life, when a Master, complained that he was compelled to allow it for the crew and passengers.  The story of this first alcohol free sailing was told to me when I was a child as being something of note but with a different slant as it was said that he, as the Master of the vessel, had been responsible for the event.

      About 1838 he injured his hand while loading a ship in Hull and was forced to stay on shore.  He was introduced to a Captain Thomas Strutt whose vessel, the “Cygnet”, was in the port and who had been looking for a pious young sailor as a crew member.  He made several voyages in her and eventually was put in charge of her by Capt Strutt who was part owner.  On Christmas Day 1841 he married Fanny Strutt, the boss’s daughter at St Hilda’s  Church in Middlesbrough which is where the Strutts lived and where the couple made their home.  His new father-in-law gave them permission to travel as passengers on  their honeymoon to Malta and they sailed off  from Hartlepool two days later.  Fanny was born in 1819 in the tiny fishing village of Flamborough, a remote and out- of- the way spot.  How long the family was there and what Thomas had been doing I do not know, nor can I tell how George and Fanny met and became betrothed.  Originally George had been sailing out of Hull but on joining the Cygnet which was based in the Middlesbrough area he would have spent his time between voyages there.  Having been given command of one of his vessels Capt Strutt must have held him in high regard and a suitable husband for his daughter.  There must also be the matter of his piousness;  he had been preaching in Methodist chapels from a young age which would have impressed the older man who was also a staunch Methodist.   The Census for 1841 was taken in June but there is no record of him so we may assume he was on the high seas. 

      In 1843 they had a son, George Thomas, born in Middlesbrough but the family was soon in Hull where Joseph was born in 1849 followed by William in 1852, Fanny in 1854 and Mary Ann Strutt Brown in 1860  The Census of 1851 describes George as a Mariner but in fact he could have been recorded as a Master Mariner as in January that year he had obtained his Master’s Certificate.  They were living very close to Hull Docks in Mary Ann Buildings at 20, Osborne Street but these houses no longer exist as they probably suffered damage during the War.  At this time young George Thomas was staying with his grandparents Thomas and Frances Strutt in Stockton Street, Middlesbrough. 

      In 1861 he and Fanny are lodgers in a house in Tower Hamlets, London, but the name of the street is illegible. The house must have been a large one as there were 14 occupants consisting of several families and lodgers.  Tower Hamlets is close to the north bank of the River Thames and the Docks so it is possible that Fanny had made her way there to be with her husband while his ship was in port.  By then there would have been a well  established rail service from Hull.  In this year George and Fanny’s  children Joseph, William and Fanny were  with their grandparents in Eston Lane Normanby which is now a part of the conurbation of Middlesbrough.   Their son George Thomas was absent as he had already started his sea-faring life.  It was at about this time that George was persuaded to leave Hull to live closer to his wife’s parents who were becoming elderly. 

      We find Fanny Brown and her daughter Fanny now aged 17 in 1871 living with Thomas and Frances Strutt in the High Street in Eston.   George and his son George Thomas are away at sea;  I do not know where William was but their son Joseph had died in 1867 aged 18 and is buried in the cemetery at Tower Hamlets in London.  I do not know the circumstances of his death but is curious that a few years earlier his parents had been staying there. 

      While on a homebound voyage from Mauritius in 1879 George had a serious illness from a “fever” and on arrival at St Catherine’s Dock, London, now in his sixties, he decided to give up the sea after nearly 50 years.  Thus, in 1881 in his retirement, he and Fanny  are still living in the High Street in Eston but  in the house next door to Fanny’s parents.  The house where Thomas and Frances had occupied seems to have been a large one as several members of their family had been living there;  is it possible that, as both couples were elderly and children and grandchildren had gone their own way, the house had been divided in two.

        Frances Strutt died at Eston on 27th December 1883 aged 87 and Thomas died there on 25th February 1886 aged 92.  They are buried together at Eston.  The 1891 Census tells us that George and Fanny were still in Eston living at No 19 Cleveland Street which was a modest four-roomed house and he is described as a retired master mariner and local preacher.  Captain George Brown died in 1899 aged 82; Fanny Brown died in 1911 aged 92.  They are in the same grave as the Strutts.

      We have seen that George’s son Joseph died in 1857;  son William died aged 55 and is buried in East Ham in London.   I do not know what happened to his daughter Fanny.  George Thomas Brown is the subject of a separate chapter as are the Strutts.  

      In his Log George records his voyages to South Africa.  I have found a William Strutt, Master of the vessel “Dane”, who was engaged in the same trade at the same time in the 1850s.  I do not know who this William is;  Thomas Strutt had a son, Thomas, who became a Master Mariner so perhaps William is another son whom I did not find.  There are very many sea captains in these stories !

Michael Barry Parcell      Summer 2020.    

 

                                                                        

                                                                      Priscilla

The clipper barque Priscilla (Captain George Brown) which brought my own great great grandfather, Thomas Alfred  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.

    

     

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