Mariners: Caithness at Greenwich

A Squall, Southampton Water

The Caithness brothers, James and George, lost their father young. James snr had been discharged from the navy in 1814 after serving during the Napoleonic Wars and by the time his children were born was living in Marchwood, Hampshire earning an income as a waterman and ferryman. His death in 1826 left his widow Ann in an unenviable situation without the family breadwinner and with five children to rear.

However, Ann was a resourceful woman and with the help of influential friends managed to get her two eldest sons James and George into the Lower School at the Royal Hospital, Greenwich, with a view to their being educated towards a seafaring career.

The magnificent group of buildings beside the Thames at Greenwich must be one of the most recognisable sights in the world; the National Maritime Museum has been situated there since 1934. Greenwich’s maritime history, though, goes back much earlier. King William III and Queen Mary II founded the Royal Hospital for Seamen at Greenwich in 1694. Its Royal Charter included provision for the 'Maintenance and Education of the Children of [Royal Naval] Seamen happening to be slain or disabled'. The aim was to create a hospital, to provide support for seamen's widows, education for their children and to improve navigation. 

The Hospital – now the Old Royal Naval College – was built from 1696 to 1751.

Greenwich Royal Hospital

The School began when the Hospital took in ten ‘orphans of the sea’ to be educated in navigation for the merchant service. At first housed in Thomas Weston’s Academy in Greenwich, the Hospital built its own school on King William Walk which was replaced by a larger building in 1782.

In 1798 an orphanage school, The British Endeavour, was founded in Paddington for children whose fathers died in the French Revolutionary War. 

This establishment was granted the Queen’s House, Greenwich, in 1806 and renamed the Royal Naval Asylum, which was later extended to house 800 children (boys and girls). 

By 1821 the Asylum and Hospital School amalgamated as the Royal Hospital Schools.

Greenwich Hospital and Royal Naval Asylum 1820, South Aspect; 
engraved by Henry Wallis from painting by Charles Bentley

Ann Caithness made application for her boys James and George to attend the Lower School in 1827 and surviving records offer a glimpse into their world at the time. 

James and George Caithness would have qualified for admittance
to the Lower School as 'boys whose Fathers have fallen in His Majesty's Service,
whose Mothers are living.'

To be continued …

Acknowledgement:

Tom Sheldon for copies of the Lower School documents

Caithness at Eling, Marchwood and Totton

Caithness family history is closely associated with the environs of Eling, including Marchwood and Totton, in Hampshire.

James Caithness (ca 1786-1826) lived at Marchwood with his wife Ann b Scorey; their five children were baptized at St Mary’s Church, Eling, between 1815 and 1826. During some of those years, James snr was waterman and ferryman at Cracknore Hard. His widow Ann Caithness lived at Totton until her death in 1889.

Ordnance Survey Map 1851 showing Cracknore Hard

Eling (the parish is recorded in the Domesday survey) has a long tradition of shipbuilding and seafaring. New Forest timber – oak and beech in vast quantities – supplied local shipbuilders from the Middle Ages onwards. Oak was used for hulls of ships, beech for masts. During James Cathness’s time, the era of the Napoleonic Wars, ships were being built here for the Royal Navy.

Action at Sea between HMS Hydra and the Furet 27 Feb 1806 

                                   Views of Magazine Lane and Marchwood village

Cracknore Hard Lane today

But there was more to Marchwood than quiet, narrow country lanes. The area was a vital strategic site: in 1812 a depot was constructed for 20,000 barrels of gunpowder. One wonders how the residents of Marchwood felt about living in close proximity to a powder keg; later generations certainly complained.

The threat of French invasion in 1779 and the advent of Napoleon on the European stage brought about reform in the way gunpowder was stored and issued in Britain. Up to that time, powder was kept in old fortifications or more recently constructed vaults in various parts of the country. In 1811 the decision was taken to increase the number of depots and to build more permanent storage. Marchwood was the largest of four new magazines.

Gunpowder at that period was stored in barrels each containing 90 lbs of powder. It was originally intended to store 20, 000 barrels at Marchwood all in one large magazine. Later, three separate magazines were constructed as far apart as possible to minimize the danger of explosion. Each held 6, 800 barrels. A canal was used to move the barrels by barge from magazine to magazine. There were also other buildings which served as receiving and examining rooms, all within a perimeter wall, and put up between 1814 and 1816.

Earth banked blast walls and high walled enclosures protected each building. An office and guard house and a barrack block were built on Magazine Lane, Marchwood. There was a rolling stage, a raised planked barrow way, built out to a landing stage in deep water. A sea wall was added fronting Southampton Water and returning along the Creek.

Old Main Gate: Marchwood Magazine

                                                         

                         

Remains of Marchwood Magazine: part of the vaulted
floor. Water flowed underneath to keep the atmosphere damp *

The depot closed briefly in 1850 but was reopened during the outbreak of the Crimean war and in 1856-57 four new and larger magazines were added. The Royal Naval Armaments Depot, Marchwood, continued in use for the storage of munitions into the 20th century. Stocks of munitions were reduced after World War II and the site was finally decommissioned and closed in 1961.**

Magazine A is the only one of the original magazines at Marchwood to survive; the others were destroyed in 1940. Today the buildings and walls are rare survivals of Georgian military works; though some require restoration they are of historic importance, a tangible reminder of the era when Britain ruled the waves.

  

It’s not impossible that among the tasks James Caithness might have undertaken when he was a waterman at Marchwood was transporting gunpowder. Whether he was involved in such risky business or kept to ferrying passengers, by the look of the contemporary advertisement below, at least he could have popped in to the Ship Inn for a ‘heavy wet’ at the end of a busy day.

*  browse the series of photos at 
   www.flickr.com/photos/r36ariadne/4197741140/in/photostream/

** www.nfdc.gov.uk/index.cfm?articleid=2178

Google Map 
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz3Xo6QO-1_DUfCmkrelLZEtwVwitzlYW5-VBtrsFmMmWxlpM4ntwi1wj57_XYVpy5bdshMvHn1eADhz7SRgMwdocZ0Yj3DBEeJ8HW0ASIVSFxoLQRqLn-RvC91UXlsrS0NnhzsZWab92W/s1600/cracknore-hard.jpg

Acknowledgement:

Tom Sheldon