Mariners: Caithness and the Prairie

Table Bay, Cape of Good Hope: Thomas Bowler

In March 1856 the brigantine (sometimes called schooner) Prairie, 150 tons, American-built, sailed from the Cape of Good Hope bound for Melbourne, with James Ramsey Caithness as master. The vessel was carrying Cape produce including wine, oats, flour and raisins; her crew numbered eleven and there were nine passengers on board. Weather during the voyage was stormy: the boats and watercasks staved, the bulwarks much damaged and the head rail on one side carried away.* 

Running repairs were made by the mariners as best they could but on proceeding to her destination the Prairie met a violent gale off Cape Otway on 26 May, when she was dismasted. This was a perilous situation, making headway impossible, and to save all on board as well as the cargo, Caithness ran the ship ashore at Sisters' Creek - between Rocky Cape and Emu Bay - on 2 June. Although some reports stated the ship was 'little injured' and might be refloated after her cargo had been discharged, this proved over-optimistic. James and some of the crew, who had had to resort to camping on the beach, were taken from the site of the wreck by the Titania and there would have been time to reflect bitterly on another lost ship and the costs thereof. The stranded cargo on the beach near Rocky Cape would be sold at public auction.

The voyage had taken over three months. Meanwhile, back home at the Cape, Eliza Caithness was soldiering on, caring for five boys aged ten and under. Two of these were Eliza and James's sons: Douglas Sturges was nearly a year old and Charles Chance, 4 years. Frederick James (6), Edward Harry (8) and George William (10) were children of James's first marriage. Then there was their older sister, Emily Mary Anne. James jnr, the eldest, by then about 17, had either left home or was thinking about doing so. It can't have been easy for Eliza and the family with the head of the household gone for three months at a time, nor for them to hear the news that the most recent trip had ended badly. 

Events of the preceding few years, particularly the death of his son Alfred in the Flying Dragon debacle, would take their toll on James's well-being. Though he couldn't have known it, at the time of the wreck of the Prairie he had only a brief future ahead of him. In 1858 a daughter, Kate Elizabeth, was added to the household: she was not quite two when her father died. James Ramsey Caithness would sail the seas no more.

Death Notice of James Ramsey Caithness
August 1860 (Cape Archives)

Acknowledgement:
Tom Sheldon

*Loss of the Prairie report in People's Advocate, Launceston, 16 June 1856

Mariners: Caithness Ships and Family

Ships in Stormy Seas

James Ramsey Caithness emerges in these pages as an unlucky mariner: six of the ships he was associated with came to grief in dramatic style. In 1844 it was the schooner Mary in Algoa Bay, in 1848 the brig Lady Leith on Thunderbolt Reef, in 1851 the Diadem at Plettenberg Bay; in 1854 the Sea Gull in Table Bay and in April 1855 the tragic Flying Dragon, ‘consumed by fire’. 

There was one more disaster in 1856, not in South African waters but off Melbourne, when James was in command of the brigantine Prairie - further evidence that he undertook several voyages to Australia.

It was a hazardous business, going down to the sea in ships. The Cape’s deep waters and bays were particularly dangerous, the wind and weather unpredictable. James was fully aware of all the risks yet probably gave no thought to changing his occupation. He was a mariner born and bred.

A considerable family depended on him. He and his first wife, Elizabeth Watson Ridges, had five sons and a daughter. The last-born, Frederick James Ramsey, arrived in August 1850. This boy would never remember his mother who was dead and buried (in ‘Scorey’s Vault’ at St George’s Cathedral, Cape Town) by January 1851. James Ramsey Caithness is described in the burial register as Captain of the brig Diadem; in December of that year this ship was wrecked.  

Within months of Elizabeth’s death, James married again. This was a sensible option for a seafaring widower with a large family, the youngest just a year old. His second wife, Eliza Noyle, brought him a further three children – two sons and a daughter - between 1853 and 1858.

Port Elizabeth (Algoa Bay) in the 1850s was still in its early days though becoming an important town. An indication of the increase in its population – and consequently the amount of mail received – had been the establishment of a proper Post Office in a building for that purpose, with an official postmaster in charge. This structure deserves our attention, for ‘when the Post Office was moved across the Market Square, the [original] building became the abode of Mr Caithness and his sons.’* 

The [first] Post Office was a two-storeyed house which stood in a plot enclosed by a low fence at the foot of Castle Hill ... It was built in the early settler style with whitewashed walls and red-tiled roof flanked by two squat chimneys, whilst at the rear of the building were the usual out-houses and stables ... the rooms downstairs served as the Post Office. On the right hand side of the house was the old tumbled-down jail.

In the intriguing picture below, the main buildings of interest are identified by number:

1850 View of Castle Hill taken from the Market Square. No 2 in this pic is the first Post Office in Port Elizabeth, later the house of Mr Caithness. It is recognizable in the picture below dated 1864. Key: 1. Jail; 2. Post Office; 3. Richards and Impey; 4. Mrs Philips; 5. Mr Heugh; 6. Caesar Andrews; 7. Jailer Sterley's cottages; 8. Rev. F McClelland; 9. Mr Ashkettle; 10. The public well with people drawing up water.

1864 View of the Town Hall (with pillared portico and hatted gentlemen standing at foot of steps), the Obelisk at right; to right of Town Hall is the Market Bell and, beyond that, the 2-storeyed house of Mr Caithness, formerly the Post Office. It has three windows looking out over the Square. Note the absence of houses on the hill behind. The shape of the Caithness house with some minor alterations such as addition of a lean-to verandah (slanting roof with poles holding it up) remains much the same as the building was during its time as a Post Office.

* Port Elizabeth in Bygone Days, J J Redgrave (Wynberg: Rustica Press 1947)

Acknowledgement:
Tom Sheldon for details of Elizabeth Caithness's burial, also on the shipwrecks of Diadem and Prairie.

  

Mariners: Caithness and the Flying Dragon 2

St George's Cathedral, Cape Town 1850
 by Thomas Bowler

Captain James Ramsey Caithness had buried his first wife - the mother of his first six children, Elizabeth Watson b Ridges - in ‘Scorey’s Vault’ at St. George’s, Cape Town, on 23 January 1851. He was based there from that date until at least January 1855 when his second child by his second wife, Eliza Noyle, was born in January 1855. 

This establishes that James was in the area at the time of the Sea Gull incident during the gale of July 1854. According to press reports at that date he was captain of the Sea Gull and about to depart for Australia with emigrants on board. The gale put paid to that voyage, and though the Sea Gull was refloated, the damage she had sustained being found to be less than initially imagined, she was eventually condemned. This meant James was, temporarily, a mariner without a ship and with a wife and eight children depending on him: stressful times.

As we’ve seen, the clipper Flying Dragon was launched with much fanfare on the Australia run, completing her first passage from the Downs to Melbourne in 76 days (some say less), ‘thus fully bearing out the character published of her’. So speedy was this barque that an unknown lady was moved to express her admiration in verse, comparing the Flying Dragon with an American rival clipper, the Sovereign of the Seas.*

How much greater, then, the general shock and horror when it was announced in the Illustrated London News (and other papers) that on 31 July 1854, en route from Ceylon to London, the vessel caught fire at midnight, 200 miles off the Cape of Good Hope and ran into Simon’s Bay near Cape Town in August, ‘burnt to the water’s edge where she was scuttled’.

The ILN eulogized thus: 

The Flying Dragon was built for the Australian trade by Mr J Pyle [sic,] of North Sand, Monkwearmouth, the builder of the Spirit of the Age and other vessels … celebrated for their superior sailing qualities, for Robert Smith, Esq., of Manchester; and made on her  passage out one of the fastest voyages on record … She was classed A 1 at Lloyd’s … built of East India teak … and one of the most perfect advanced models of beauty in ship-building that ever left this country. 

Fire at sea – in this case, 200 miles from shore – is one of the greatest calamities to be visited on any ship and on those who sail in her. It was nothing short of miraculous that there was anything left of the Flying Dragon to be brought into Simon’s Bay and even more astounding that the crew survived to accomplish that feat. However, that is far from the end of the story.

Ship afire

*Lines on The Flying Dragon by a Lady

'From the English Downs to Philip's Port, in seventy-one days she ran,
Whilst the Sovereign took from Liverpool just eighty days and one.
The Sovereign can no longer boast the empire of the sea,
Since the beauteous Flying Dragon has eclipsed her Sovereignty'

Acknowlegement:

Tom Sheldon for his research and assistance