Caithness, James Ernest (1839-1902) 1

Is it a mariner’s life for me?

James Ernest Caithness was born at No.7 George Row, Bermondsey (just south of the River Thames) on 17 May 1839. His father James Ramsey Caithness (1815-60), a Master Mariner, and mother Elizabeth Watson nee Ridges (1815-51) had married the previous year in Southampton.  James had been both born & baptised as James Edward but decided he preferred the middle name Ernest at some point during his life.

There was a strong maritime tradition in his family. His grandfather James Caithness had seen action whilst serving in the Royal Navy against the French in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. His father James Ramsey and his uncle George had received their education at the Lower School of the Royal Hospital Greenwich and joined the Merchant Service rather than the Royal Navy.

The Royal Hospital, Greenwich

James Ramsey Caithness decided to settle in South Africa and in the early 1840’s brought his wife and the young son James Ernest out to join him. They were to have five more children, born in either Cape Town or Port Elizabeth, before his wife Elizabeth Watson died in early 1851. He remarried by the end of the year.

Young James Ernest was to witness the harsh realities of a mariner’s life. His father James Ramsey had his fair share of accidents – through no fault of his own. The worst incident perhaps was in 1855 when one of James Ernest’s brothers, likely to have been Alfred Douglas, was killed during a fire on board the ‘Flying Dragon’ whilst his father was in command (the same ship had also caught fire the previous year under Captain Carter off Simon’s Bay).  James Ramsey Caithness himself died in 1860 ‘after a long and painful illness’ aged 44.

Family oral tradition mentions that James Ernest tried his hand at sheep farming in South Africa. Life at home was apparently hard. His mother and father had died and his widowed step-mother had five step-children and three of her own children to support. James Ernest Caithness disappears for a while and next shows up at his wedding in London in 1877. His life has taken a new direction – Eureka!

Guest Post by Tom Sheldon, 2 x great grandson of James Ernest Caithness

Photo portrait by kind permission of June B-R

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