Tracing a Master Mariner 6

By the 1860s Captain George Henry Caithness was a well-known local figure in the Eastern Cape.

Street scene: Old Uitenhage

Whether he ever lived in one of the nine cottages he bought in Port Elizabeth in 1867, or whether they were simply a property investment, is not recorded but by 1869 he had evidently been residing in Uitenhage for some time. 

According to the Centenary publication, Uitenhage Past and Present, in that year he was on the Board of Commissioners of the town. Uitenhage had been founded in 1804 on the Swartkops River not far inland from its estuary at Algoa Bay, about 28 kms from what would later be Port Elizabeth, and initially formed part of the district of Graaff-Reinet.*

'The Commissioners then in office were
 ... George Caithness' etc

Did George find time to tear himself away from civic duties to attend the wedding of his niece Emily Mary Ann Caithness to Herbert Lee Carige at Christ Church in the parish of Addington, Durban, on 12 December 1863? If so, he would have seen his nephew James Edward/Ernest Caithness who was present. It’s possible that George’s sister Mary Ann Bell nee Caithness and her husband William Bell, the latter still in office as Port Captain at Durban, were among the guests. 

Captain William and Mary Ann Bell

As already noted, in the late 1860s/early 1870s George made at least two trips to England as a passenger on Union Line steamers Cambrian and Northam and in 1873 presented some stones from the diamond diggings to the Hartley Institution (the modern day Southampton University).** He may have been the Caithness who in August 1870 joined Slater’s party to the fields though it’s more likely this was James Edward/Ernest. Seven years later James would marry Eugenie Westmacott in London and settle in India.

In 1875 George’s daughter Caroline Ann married John Loftus and became 4^th Marchioness of Ely. It’s not known whether George attended the wedding in Chelsea, London. 

During the 1880s George Henry Caithness kept a low profile, no doubt enjoying a peaceful retirement in Uitenhage. When his wife Leopoltina Cornelia Frederika died on 10 August 1894 George survived her by only a few months, dying at the Royal Hotel, Uitenhage on 28 December 1894. His Death Notice gives his ‘condition in life’ as Sea Captain.

A brief line appeared in the Colonies and India edition of 9 February 1895:

‘Captain Caithness, one of the oldest inhabitants of Uitenhage, South Africa, died there recently.’

Note: There is a Caithness Road in Port Elizabeth, about 400 metres south of Bakens River; it seems likely this street was named after James Ramsay Caithness since James's Death Notice describes his residence as being on the south side of Bakens River. There's a Caithness Road in Simonstown which may also owe its name to James. If anyone has further information regarding these two streets it would be most welcome.

* The city of Uitenhage was incorporated in the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Municipality together with Port Elizabeth and the town of Despatch in 2001

** www.southampton.ac.uk/archives/exhibitions/University_images.html

Acknowledgement

Tom Sheldon

The Shipwrecked Mariner and the Spanish Ladies 1873

Sturges Bourne Bell was born in Port Natal on 17 July 1852 to Captain William Bell and his wife Mary Ann nee Caithness. Apart from his birth and baptism, records concerning Sturges were scarce.

However, an unusual pair of forenames can be an advantage when tracing an ancestor - especially in that mine of information, contemporary newspapers. So it proved in the case of Sturges Bourne Bell.*

Apparently he stayed with family tradition and became a mariner. In 1873 he turns up as crew member on the collier Beckton sailing from Cardiff to Malta, when on the night of 28 November this screw steamer struck a sunken reef in heavy fog about three miles off the coast of Spain. There was a strong gale whipping up the sea and within minutes it was evident that the ship would soon break up.

The crew launched a lifeboat but it was immediately swamped, with the loss of eleven men. An attempt to launch the jolly-boat also failed. Several seamen including the mate leapt into the waves or were washed off the vessel. Only the captain and Bell were left on deck. Bell managed to get a lifebelt to the captain, who could not swim, but the captain was swept away and Bell then decided to try and make for land, stripping off all his clothing except his shirt.

As he swam he called out for any possible survivors in the water and was answered by the mate, the two men swimming together for some distance. When the mate’s strength began to fail, Bell found him a plank and the mate clung to this but was unable to continue, asking Bell to go and see his wife and five children to tell them how he’d died. Later the mate’s body was washed up, still clasping the plank. The bodies of seven other seamen and that of the ship’s cook followed.

Bell reached the shore alive, though severely bruised and cut from his passage through the reef. He might have bled to death if he hadn’t torn his shirt into strips and bandaged himself as best he could. After four hours in the sea he lay exhausted and helpless on the beach until eventually found by two young women and assisted to the nearest village. The local inhabitants tended his wounds and Bell afterwards spoke warmly of their kindness. When he was sufficiently recovered they sent him on to Corunna where the packet Onward took him on board. Bell was duly landed at Plymouth, the Shipwrecked Mariners’ Society offering him a temporary refuge at the Sailor’s Home.

It had been a dramatic wreck, with over 20 lives lost, Bell being the sole survivor. He seems to have acquitted himself well and his actions in assisting others showed some heroism. Accounts were published in several British newspapers, identifying him as Sturges Bourne Bell, aged 20, from Port Natal. He is variously described in the reports as Ordinary Seaman and Able Seaman.

Crew members listed: Central Press 17 Dec 1873

According to one news column, when Bell left Plymouth he headed for London but at that point he drops out of sight. It hasn’t yet been established whether his family in Natal ever saw him again or heard about the shipwreck and his miraculous escape from the deep.

As Sturges Bourne Bell sailed away from the shores of Spain, perhaps he whistled the old Navy refrain:

‘Farewell and adieu to you, Spanish Ladies,
Farewell and adieu to you, ladies of Spain;
For we've received orders for to sail for old England,
 But we hope in a short time to see you again.’

Spanish ladies: Raquel and Manuela by Sir William Russell Flint

Lloyd's Register entry 1873/74 for the Beckton; here her captain's name
is given as Howley; she was built in Newcastle in 1869, and sailed between
London and Mediterranean ports; it is noted that she was wrecked.

* For more on the origin of his forenames:

molegenealogy.blogspot.com/2013/09/caithness-and-bell-mystery-solved.html

Acknowlegement

Tom Sheldon 

Souvenir Saturday: Caithness at Cracknore Hard

James Caithness the Ferryman

Cracknore Hard 1831 (etching by David Charles Read)

A fine view of the ferry station at Cracknore Hard in Southampton estuary on the south bank of the River Test. From here the ferry would take passengers to West Quay, Southampton.

On 20 August 1815 at the baptism of his son James (Ramsey), James Caithness snr’s occupation is given as ‘waterman’ and his place of abode as Cracknore Hard. By 1820 when his daughter Mary Ann is baptized – like her elder brothers James and George (1818) at St Mary’s Church, Eling, Hampshire – James snr is ‘ferryman’. 

The coastal landscape at Cracknore Hard at that time would have looked much as shown in this etching. James was then an experienced mariner having served on various ships before being discharged from the Royal Navy at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Shockingly, he had also been a prisoner of war in France for nine years.

After surviving for nearly a decade enduring dreadful privations, if contemporary accounts are to be believed, James must have found a welcome sanctuary in the expansive, peaceful stretches of the estuary and the comforts of home and family.

Southampton Water   1831 (etching by David Charles Read)

           

A spacious impression of Southampton Water by the same artist. No doubt James Caithness was familiar with this vista. The broad horizon and low-lying land- and waterscape is reminiscent of Holland. It's also similar to the area alongside the Solway Firth, Cumberland, where William Bell (Mary Ann Caithness's husband-to-be) was learning to be a mariner at the beginning of the second decade of the 19th c.

The Book of Trades or Library of Useful Arts 1811 offers the following:

Watermen are such as row in boats and ply for fares on various rivers. A waterman requires but little to enable him to begin his business, viz. a boat, a pair of oars and a long pole with an iron point and hook at the lower end, the whole of which is not more than twenty pounds. The use of the pole is to push off the boat from land; the hook at one end enables him to draw his boat to shore, or close to another boat.

Acknowledgement:
Tom Sheldon 

Souvenir Saturday : Captain William Bell 1807-1869

Born 2 October 1807 at Glasson, Bowness-on-Solway, Cumberland, and baptized in the parish of St Michael’s, Bell was the son of Thomas Head Bell (1784-1872) and Elizabeth, b Millican or Milliken (1785-1867). His grandparents were William Bell and Barbara Head.

Bell’s baptismal entry does not include the middle name, Douglas, which appears in most of his colonial records.

William Bell married Mary Ann Caithness at Algoa Bay (Port Elizabeth) on 29 June, 1838. By this time he was master of the schooner Conch engaged in coastal trade in Cape waters. In recognition of his services at Natal in 1842 he was appointed Harbour Master at that port in 1844 but relinquished the position when no satisfactory agreement could be reached with the Government as to his duties and salary. He became Port Captain of Natal in 1850 and remained so until his death on 10 April 1869.

During his time Natal was at the height of her settler era and Bell oversaw ship arrivals and departures; many of his handwritten passenger lists survive as archival records. Between 1850 and 1863 he witnessed and compiled reports on over fifteen shipwrecks within and outside the Bay and as a member of the Natal Harbour Board was closely involved in the investigations into their causes. He was a member of the committee which reported to the Natal Legislative Council on the continued efforts to improve the harbour, as well as accompanying Dr Sutherland, the Government Geologist and Surveyor-General, on an expedition along the North Coast to find and chart suitable harbours or landing places.

Bell and Mary Ann had twelve children, whose descendants are now spread across the globe. 

Bell's mariner's telescope, seen under his arm in the photo portrait,
was of brass, by Dolland.

Ships and Mariners: 19th c Cape and Natal 10 Falconer

William Falconer 1812-1877

William Falconer, an interesting Master Mariner in his own right, acquires further importance through his marriage to James Scorey’s step-daughter, Ann, on 24 June 1841 at Port Elizabeth. The ceremony took place ‘at the house of Captain Scorey’.* 

Ann Falconer 1823 -1891, step-daughter
 of James Scorey,
wife of William Falconer

The network of colonial connections becomes ever more intricate: among the witnesses at the Falconer/Scorey wedding was William Smith, who with his wife Mary Ann Frances b Mallors had been present at William Bell’s marriage to Mary Ann Caithness in June 1838. The Smiths’ son would later marry Maria Sisson Falconer. James Tobias Mallors was yet another Master Mariner.

Ann Scorey, previously Robinson, ca 1793-1843;
wife of Capt James Scorey, and mother of Ann
Falconer.

To be continued ...

*See a copy of the marriage record and other details at:
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~haydencowan/Falconer/Falconer%20William/Captain%20William%20Falconer%201812%20and%20family.pdf 

http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=haydencowan&id=I1339

Acknowledgement:

Lorna Cowan

Descendants of Captain William Bell (1807-1869)

After a lifetime of researching my ancestry it remains a thrill to hear from distant cousins. In this case, the distance is merely a matter of geography: Sheila, now living in Texas, is my third cousin; we share a great great grandfather in the person of Captain William BELL (1807-1869). [For further details about Captain Bell see post on this blog: Saturday April 10 2010, Remembering a Mariner.]

Sheila's great grandmother, Sarah Scott BELL b 1847, was the sixth child of Capt Bell and his wife Mary Ann (nee CAITHNESS). Sarah, who was in her early twenties when her father died, married Charles George PAY in 1874.

The PAY family were Byrne settlers to Natal. George and Elizabeth Ann Pay, with their children Charles George and Edward R E (the latter born during the voyage), arrived at Port Natal on the Edward on 24 March 1850. This ship of 680 tons carried 250 emigrants among whom were some now well-known names: ACUTT, PIGG, FEILDEN, DACOMB, TYZACK, BASELEY.

Sarah and Charles George Pay's children were:

Ernest Bell Pay m Charlotte Caroline East
Violet Amy Pay m David Stanislaus O'Donovan
Natalia Beatrice Pay m William Percy Radcliffe

Ernest Bell Pay, pictured above in a carte de visite by H Kisch, had a son Victor Edwin Pay who married Violet Dorothy Moffatt. Victor and Violet had two daughters, Stella and Sheila.