Merchant Navy records: Wreck, Rescue & Racism

My son in law's great grandfather, Leonard Harold Glenister, 1904-1995, was a merchant seaman. So when Find My Past released their new collection of Merchant Navy records last week I looked him up.

The records are index cards created by the Registrar General of Shipping and Seamen for all those serving on British merchant navy vessels from 1918 to 1941. The front of each card contains biographical information plus a description and, if you are lucky, there is a photograph on the back, together with details of ships on which the person served.

I duly found a card for him, covering the period 1918 to 1921. He joined the merchant service as a "Deck Boy" in 1918, aged 14.  He was only 4 foot 7 inches in height, with light brown hair and grey eyes. He looked very solemn and worried in his photograph.

Find My Past have included a helpful link to the Crew List Index Project, to identify the names of ships from the official numbers used on the index cards. From CLIP I learned that Leonard's first ship, which he joined on 23 January 1919, was the SS Zealandic. Constructed by Harland and Wolff in Belfast, she was launched in 1911 and owned by the White Star Line, of Titanic fame. Her home port was Liverpool. In 1917 she was commandeered by the Royal Navy for the transportation of troops and was still being used for that purpose when Leonard joined her, sailing between Liverpool and Wellington in New Zealand. Troops returning home were carried in one direction and meat from New Zealand in the other.

On 13 January 1920, Leonard moved to his second ship, SS Athenic, also owned by the White Star Line. She was a passenger liner, built in Belfast by Harland and Wolff and launched in 1901. She carried 121 passengers in first class, 117 second class and 450 third class. The ship was equipped with electric lighting and cooling chambers for the transport of frozen lamb. Like the Zealandic, she sailed on the New Zealand route.

Leonard Glenister's voyage on the Athenic turned out to be rather eventful. I have pieced together the following account of what happened from  newspaper reports in the United States and New Zealand.

On her outward journey from London to Wellington, via the Panama Canal, the Athenic was carrying 500 homebound New Zealand soldiers. On 2 February they were docked in Newport News, Virginia, where an influenza epidemic was raging. The soldiers were forbidden to go ashore but 50 of them defied the order. Their commanding officer promptly reported them to the local police and they were arrested as deserters. According to the newspaper report, "They resented the charge of being deserters, but were herded back to their ship without difficulty after a brief stay in the police station". Athenic was due to sail the following day but was kept in port for a further three days by a fierce storm which brought 50 mph winds and huge waves.

The return journey was even more dramatic. On Sunday 2 May 1920, an American steamer, the SS Munamar, on a voyage from Antilla, Cuba to New York, ran aground on a reef off San Salvador Island in the Bahamas. The ship was in a very dangerous position and taking on water fast, so the passengers were all put into the lifeboats. Athenic was in the vicinity and received Munamar's SOS call about 9pm. The first Athenic's passengers knew of the incident was when her engines suddenly stopped. It was too dark to effect a rescue but fortunately it was a calm night, so the Munamar's passengers sat in their lifeboats, whilst the Athenic circled, waiting for dawn. At daybreak on 3 May the 83 passengers from the Munamar were rescued, and their baggage and the mails salvaged from the stranded ship. The whole operation took about two hours.

Athenic had a full passenger list and no empty berths, so the Captain ordered beds to be made up in the public rooms for the new arrivals. Unfortunately, this led to an ugly display of racism. 30 of the rescued passengers were black and the other Munamar passengers objected strongly to sharing accommodation with them. They "made a great many complaints" but the Captain of the Athenic stood firm. No doubt all concerned were very relieved when the Athenic landed the Munamar's passengers at Newport News, three days later. From there they made their way to New York by train.

The Munamar was eventually floated off the reef, after 2,000 bags of sugar from her cargo were thrown overboard, and taken to a dry dock in Jacksonville, Florida, for repairs. She then returned to service between Cuba and New York. Some time later, Captain Crossland of the Athenic was given a gold watch by President Warren Harding, in recognition of his ship's rescue efforts.

John McCarthy: A taciturn giant in Canada

Last November I took out a subscription to the US newspaper website Genealogy Bank. I did so as part of my search for Captain John Winn. I haven't found him yet but the subscription has paid for itself in an unexpected way. It seems US newspapers in the early 20th century were fascinated by the workings of Scotland Yard and I have found many articles which mention my great grandfather, John McCarthy.

 

 

Last night I came across a real gem - an article written following John McCarthy's appointment as Superintendent in charge of CID at Scotland Yard in 1912. It appeared in The Times-Picayune of New Orleans, dated 18 October 1912, in a gossip column with the extraordinary title: "Gossip Of Europe. Marquise De Fontenoy's Budget of Old World Celebrities".

After paying tribute to John McCarthy's predecessor in the job, Superintendent Froest, the article goes on to describe the new appointee:

 

 

I shall have to ask my mother, who lived with him as a child, whether he was really "a giant in stature and strength" and "exceedingly silent and taciturn". The latter seems an unlikely description of any Irishman.

The information about John McCarthy accompanying the Prince of Wales (later George V) on a tour of Canada was new to me. It adds yet another dimension to my family's relationship with the country of which I have recently become a citizen.

 

 

Good old Wikipedia provided me with a detailed itinerary, in an article on Royal tours of Canada:

As modern modes of transportations allowed for easier travel across the oceans, more of the Royal Family came to tour the King's northern Dominion. The first since Queen Victoria's death was the son of the reigning king, Prince George (later King George V) and his wife, the Duchess of Cornwall and York, who arrived in Canada in 1901. The royal party – which consisted of 22 people, including the Duchess' brother Prince Alexander of Teck – landed at Quebec City on 16 September, from where the group then travelled to Montreal – where separate Francophone and Anglophone welcoming committees caused confusion – and then on to Ottawa, where the Duke watched the lacrosse final for the Minto Cup, which he enjoyed so much he kept the ball that was used. They then shot the timber slide at the Chaudière River, watched canoe races, and picnicked in Rockcliffe woods, near Ottawa. They passed through Ontario, creating "incredible excitement seldom seen since the visit of his father in 1860." Amongst other duties, the Prince dedicated the Alexandra Bridge in Ottawa, in honour of Queen Alexandra.

The Duke and Duchess moved on to Manitoba where the former opened the new science building at the University of Manitoba, and then to Regina in the Northwest Territories. In Calgary, they met with First Nations chiefs and viewed exhibitions. Westward, they ended up in Vancouver and Victoria, to turn back again towards Banff, where the Duchess went to Tunnel Mountain and Lake Louise while the Duke went to Poplar Point. After passing back through Regina, they reunited in Toronto, welcomed by the Mendelssohn Choir, and attended concerts at Massey Hall. It was then around southern Ontario and back to Montreal again, where the Duke opened the newly rebuilt Victoria Bridge. The tour ended with a trip through Saint John, Halifax, and then out of Canada to the then still separate Newfoundland.

I also found on YouTube an old film of the royal party in Montreal and Quebec. Unfortunately, I cannot spot John McCarthy in any of the footage but, no doubt, an important part of being a royal bodyguard is to be discreet and keep out of the limelight.

 

John McCarthy's youngest daughter, Sheila, was born on 30 September 1901, whilst he was away in Canada with the royal couple. I don't suppose that made him very popular with his wife, my great grandmother, Agnes McCarthy nee Fritz. Sheila was given the second name Mary - hardly surprising in a good Catholic family - but I wonder whether it may also have been in honour of Princess Mary, with whom he was travelling when the baby was born.

Fearless Females: A Mother

In honour of National Women’s History Month, Lisa Alzo of The Accidental Genealogist has created  Fearless Females: 31 Blogging Prompts to Celebrate Women’s History Month.

March 25 — Tell how a female ancestor interacted with her children. Was she loving or supportive? A disciplinarian? A bit of both?

This is a poem which Rev Frederick William Davis wrote about his mother (and my direct ancestor) Charlotte Davis, nee Aves, the wife of Rev Frederick Davis. She died of tuberculosis, aged 40, in 1858, when Frederick William was 15 years old.

I don't know when the poem was written but it was published in the women's magazine "Hearth & Home" on 30 September 1897, almost 40 years after Charlotte's death. I think it answers all of the questions in Lisa's blogging prompt.

 

Waitangi Day - Thomas Bluett, Wellington, 1841

February 6th is Waitangi Day, New Zealand's national day, which commemorates the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi on 6 February 1840. To mark the day, the Auckland Research Centre have issued an invitation to blog about New Zealand ancestors.

 

 

My 3x great grandfather, Thomas Bluett, was born around 1819. On 4 December 1836 he married Mary Langley at St Mary, Lambeth, Surrey. Mary had been born in Ireland around 1813, the daughter of Thomas Langley. Thomas and Mary had two known children. Their first child was a son, Thomas, whose birth has not yet been traced. Their second was a daughter, Mary Ann, who was born at 34 Little Pulteney Street, Westminster, on 3 March 1839. It is through her that I am descended. Mary Ann's birth certificate states that Thomas was a printer and we know from other sources that, at this time, he was employed as a lithographic printer by Day and Haghe of London, the country's leading lithographic printing firm.

 

 

On 17 September 1840, Thomas Bluett's name was entered in the New Zealand Company's register of emigrant labourers applying for free passage to New Zealand. He gave his age as 21 and his occupation as smith and bellhanger. Thomas was said to be married, with a wife aged 25, boy aged three and a girl aged eleven months, and the family were living at 50 St Clement's Lane, Strand, London.

On 27 September 1840, there was another Bluett application. Adam Bluett was registered as a smith, living at 18 Union Place, Sloane Square, Chelsea. He was aged 30, with a wife aged 29, boy aged 12 and girl aged 10. On 20 October 1840, there were two further applications. Another Adam Bluett, differentiated from the first by the designation senior, was a locksmith and bell hanger, resident at 50 St Clement's Lane, Strand. He was married, aged 40, with a wife aged 38. Immediately after him in the register came an application from Peter Langley, an unmarried labourer, aged 21 and also resident at 50 St Clement's Lane.

 

 

After seven years' research, the relationship between these various groups of people is still unclear but, from the coincidence of names, occupations and addresses, it can hardly be doubted that there is one. Some of the information given in the applications is false - Thomas' occupation and Mary Ann's age were probably altered in order to qualify for free passage - but much has been proved accurate from other sources.

Thomas Bluett and his family were originally booked to sail on the Lady Nugent, which left England on 21 October 1840, but they delayed their departure, presumably in order to travel on the same ship as the others. At some point Adam Bluett junior and his family decided not to travel. He and his wife, Catherine (nee Sweeney), plus Adam's two children from a previous marriage, William and Betsy, can be found in the 1841 census living in Henrietta Street, Marylebone. So it was a party of seven which finally set sail on the barque Olympus from Gravesend on 9 December 1840, as steerage passengers bound for New Zealand. The passenger list notes that Thomas Bluett acted as cook for the voyage.

The Olympus arrived at Port Nicholson (the harbour of Wellington) on 20 April 1841. Thomas Bluett lost no time in getting to work but not as a smith and bellhanger. For he had brought with him in the hold of the Olympus the first lithographic printing press to reach New Zealand. Moreover, one of the cabin passengers on the Olympus was a lithographic artist, Jacob William Jones. It seems highly improbable that this was a coincidence. On 1 May 1841, the New Zealand Gazette announced:

 

 

On 29 May, Jones and Bluett produced a chart of Port Nicholson, the first printed map in New Zealand:

 

 

By 12 June they had added a plan of Wadestown and a view of Lambton Harbour & Mount Victoria from Tinakore:

 

 

By 17 July the Gazette was selling their plans of the town:

 

 

But then it all began to go wrong. 16 September 1841 saw the publication in Wellington of the first, and only surviving, edition of an extraordinary newspaper, the Victoria Times. It was a lithographic print of a handwritten original and the publisher was Thomas Bluett, whose address was given as the Lithographic Printing Office, Wellington Terrace.

 

 

As was the custom, the first page consisted of advertisements, including one promoting Thomas Bluett's lithographic services on "very moderate" terms and another seeking "a steady and respectable lad as an apprentice to the lithographic business". The second and third pages were devoted to an editorial in the form of an extended diatribe against the Gazette. The fourth page reprinted the Jones and Bluett plan of Wellington:

 

 

From the plan, it can be seen that the Lithographic Printing Office was situated on land owned by Jacob William Jones. But, having alienated the Gazette, which had previously sold - and praised - his lithographic prints, Thomas now went on to alienate his collaborator and patron. The last mention of Thomas in New Zealand is an advertisement which appeared in the Gazette on 10 and 13 November 1841:

 

 

By the end of the year, Thomas Bluett and his family had left New Zealand for Australia. Their many adventures thereafter, culminating in Thomas' headline-making death back in London in 1846, must be the subject of future blog posts.

As for their travelling companions on the Olympus, I can find no reference at all to them in New Zealand following their arrival. Peter Langley simply vanishes without trace but Adam Bluett senior and his wife, another Catherine, reappear in England. On 16 August 1849 they were convicted at the Wiltshire County Assizes of uttering counterfeit coin and each sentenced to one year's imprisonment. Adam died in the Workhouse in the parish of St Giles, London, and was buried in Victoria Park Cemetery, Hackney, on 27 December 1858, aged 59.

Googling for Grandma - Old News is Good News

Newspapers are my favourite sources. They put flesh on the bones of our ancestors, turning dry and dusty genealogy into living, breathing family history. They cover all aspects of society and all areas of the globe and you are as likely to find a dustman as a duke in their pages.

Newspapers find their stories wherever there is human interest. With far less access to information than today, newspapers in the past frequently copied material from each other, and this practice crossed international boundaries. So although my family history is focused on the British Isles, I have found gems of information in papers in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States. In the case of newspapers, it really does pay to "search outside the box" - and this is where Google comes in.

In 2008 Google launched an initiative to digitise historic news archives and make them searchable and accessible online. Content is drawn from global media such as the BBC, Guardian, Time Magazine and the New York Times but also from hundreds of small local publications. The period covered by each news archive varies - some only cover recent years, whilst the New York Times goes all the way back to 1851 - but all this information can be accessed in one place using Google News Archive Search.

I have had particularly good results when searching for my policeman great grandfather, John McCarthy. His promotion to be head of the CID got a good deal of coverage. My favourite is this article from a Newfoundland newspaper, the Harbor Grace Standard, dated 21 August 1912. The details are delightful:

Nobody who has met John McCarthy grudges him his promotion. He is a man without enemies, unless they be some of those desperate international criminals whom he has tracked down and arrested ... this jolly looking man with something of the farmer squire about his appearance ... Tall and broad shouldered he is built on a generous frame above the average in physique. He has the twinkling blue eyes of the Irishman ... Latterly he was busy with the suffragette agitations, and such was his charm of manner and courtesy that the women agreed that it was a pleasure to be arrested by Mr McCarthy.

But I learned from another newspaper that John had been tempted to jump ship at an earlier stage in his career. The St John Sun of New Brunswick reported on 1 April 1907:

During a visit to England, King Alfonso XIII was apparently so impressed by Scotland Yard detectives that he decided to revolutionise Spanish police methods. John McCarthy was offered the job of heading the new CID in Madrid, on a salary of $5,000 a year plus expenses. According to the newspaper, he was reluctantly obliged to decline the offer because he had been specially chosen to protect King Edward VII.

Of course, these articles concern a man in a prominent position in public life but I have had equal success finding information about more obscure family members. My great grandfather's brother, Clement Lawrence Scott Davis, disappears from the English records after the 1871 census. A handwritten family tree records that he ended up in the Nokomai region of New Zealand, prospecting for gold. The Google News Archive includes material from Papers Past in New Zealand and a search on Davis and Nokomai turned up an article he had written for the Otago Witness in 1886, describing a prospecting expedition:

Shortly after writing this, Clement disappeared on another prospecting trip in the mountains. A young man in his 30s, he left no family, no photographs and few details of his life have come down to us. This lengthy newspaper article is the only link we have to the man and his personality.

Black Sheep Sunday - Rev Frederick Davis

Black sheep embarrass the family whilst they are alive but they make wonderful ancestors. Brushes with the law, financial peccadilloes and sex scandals are the lifeblood of newspapers. Ancestors who got into serious trouble usually got plenty of column inches and those old newspaper articles are gold dust for the family historian.

 

 

My favourite black sheep ancestor is my 2x great-grandfather, Rev Frederick Davis. Not just a bad boy but a clergyman to boot - some years ago a cousin christened him "the pervy vicar" and I'm afraid the naughty nickname has stuck.

 

Frederick was born in Lambeth, Surrey, in 1821. One family story suggests that his father was wealthy but disowned him after an argument. Frederick was certainly well educated but struggled for the rest of his life to establish a financially secure career.

 

At first he worked as a warehouseman. In 1842 he married a schoolmistress, Charlotte Aves, and by 1848 Frederick had also become a schoolmaster, following teacher training at the Church of England National Society's Training Institution in Westminster.

 

Frederick and Charlotte worked as a husband and wife team in a succession of church schools in East London, Essex, Staffordshire and Worcestershire. By 1858 they were running the parish school in St Columb Major,  Cornwall, when tragedy struck. Charlotte died of tuberculosis, aged 40, leaving Frederick with eight children aged two to fifteen.

 

Headstone on the grave of Charlotte Davis, Colan, Cornwall

 

With Charlotte's death the family lost stability. Frederick initially put his daughters into an orphanage run by Anglican nuns at Wymering, near Portsmouth. By 1862 he had moved to Torquay in Devon where, for the first time, he set up his own private school rather than being employed by the Church. On the recommendation of clerical friends, he was also ordained deacon by the Bishop of Exeter and appointed curate of St John's, Torquay.

 

This proved disastrous. The curacy was poorly paid but so busy as to prevent him running his school properly. He lost pupils, fell out with the vicar and, within six months found himself in precarious financial circumstances. Although supposed to remain in the diocese until he was ordained priest, Frederick petitioned the Bishop to allow him to leave his curacy and move to Northfleet in Kent, to take over a private preparatory school based in the old Manor House.

 

The Manor House, Northfleet, Kent

 

Frederick rebranded the school as Northfleet Grammar School, later the Collegiate School, and advertised his willingness to coach young men for entry to the Universities and the armed forces. Some pupils came (two of them later married two of his daughters) but the school struggled and Frederick supplemented his income by covering for clergy absences in various Kent parishes, not telling them that he was only in deacon's orders.

 

In 1874 the churchwarden of one of those parishes wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury about Frederick:

Having been prompted to make enquiry concerning his private character in consequence of his having most persistently and impudently attempted to extort more money (to the extent of 4 guineas) than he was entitled to according to my agreement with him, I have ascertained from a most reliable source that he is inhibited by the Bishop of Rochester from doing duty in his diocese.

... Dr Claughton would not have inhibited him, unless there were good and weighty reasons for so doing. I have heard what those reasons are, but would rather not commit them to writing as they are of a most serious and damaging nature. No doubt if Your Grace orders inquiry to be made in the neighbourhood in which he lives quite sufficient cause will be found, to induce Your Grace to take immediate steps to prevent the possibility of his ever performing the duty of a clergyman of the Church of England again.

Archibald Campbell Tait, 1811-1882
Archbishop of Canterbury

The Bishop of Rochester added his own disapprobation:

I have not actually inhibited Mr Davis ... but I do not approve of him. He behaves extremely ill to the Clergyman of his Parish.

Thomas Legh Claughton, 1808-1892
Bishop of Rochester

 

By 1875 Frederick had given up his school in favour of running a home for six wealthy dipsomaniacs (alcoholics). Following complaints that a lady was being detained against her will, the Lunacy Commissioners paid a visit and discovered that one of his patients was mentally ill. In the summer of 1877 he was prosecuted for running an unlicensed lunatic asylum and fined £50.

 

The Archbishop had reluctantly allowed Frederick to continue officiating in neighbouring parishes. On Sunday 16 December 1877 he was returning from taking services when, on a train between Strood and Gravesend, he was alleged to have indecently assaulted a 17 year old servant girl called Rosina Webb. When the case came up for trial in January 1878 Frederick did not appear. Instead, one of his sons wrote a letter maintaining his father's innocence but saying that, as he feared his word would not be believed, he had gone abroad.

 

A warrant was issued for Frederick's arrest and an advertisement in the Police Gazette gives us a description of the man, for whom no known photograph exists:

 

The Police Gazette, 4 February 1878

 

When Frederick fled abroad he left behind him a second wife. Her existence only came to light because her birth and death dates, minus a name, were recorded on a family gravestone in Northfleet churchyard. The gravestone was destroyed in the 1960s but, thankfully, it had been carefully transcribed by an antiquarian in the 1900s. The death date led to the discovery of the name Harriet Davis in the Northfleet burial registers. Her death certificate revealed that she was the wife of Frederick Davis and that she had died of apoplexy in October 1878, aged 60. No record of their marriage has yet been found.

 

Frederick went first to Bruges in Belgium before settling in Dinard on the coast of Brittany in France. Both places had substantial numbers of affluent English residents, so Frederick was probably able to earn a living as a tutor. There was an Anglican church at Dinard and the incumbent, Rev Anthony Francis Thomson, was the father of one of Frederick's old pupils, Anthony Standidge Thomson, later to be his son-in-law. Frederick lived in the pretty seaside resort -  no doubt helping out with services - until his death in 1883.

 

The Quay at Dinard, Ethel Carrick Fox

All the nice girls love a sailor - 2

In Part 1 of this post I wrote about my husband's great great grandfather, Captain John Winn, a master mariner who disappeared in "North America" sometime between 1830 and 1848.

In trying to crack this major brick wall I have pursued many different lines of research. I began by reading this book, published by the Society of Genealogists:

I then explored the following sources:

Censuses

I cannot find John Winn in the 1841 or 1851 British censuses, the 1840 or 1850 US Federal censuses or the 1851 Canadian census.

Lloyds Registers of Shipping

These annual lists can be fully viewed on Google Books. I have extracted the names of all merchant ships with a captain or owner called Winn between 1807 and 1865. I have eliminated those vessels where I have been able to discover the captain's first name and it is not John. I've also eliminated those still sailing from British ports after 1848.

This leaves me with six captains & vessels:

• 1811-12, Thirsk, J Winn, Hull coaster
• 1822, Holland, Winn, Exeter coaster
• 1830-33, Legatus, Winn, Sunderland, Bristol, Montreal
• 1832-33, Kate, Winn, New Brunswick, London, Halifax
• 1836-40, George Canning, Winn, Newcastle, Halifax, Bombay
• 1841-44, Rainbow, Winn, London, Cape of Good Hope

Passenger Lists

There are three masters called Winn on the Ship's List website but, from the names of their ships, I have eliminated all three as being different people. The captain of the Legatus is also mentioned there, spelled Wynn. Using One-Step Webpages I turned up a John Winn, ship master, aged 35 years & 4 months, who arrived in New York from the Turks on board the schooner "Deposit" on 23 August 1836. However, he is described as US born & resident.

Probate

I can find no will, and no action by the family to have him declared dead.

Records of Merchant Seamen

There are no records of merchant navy officers in the UK before 1845. I spent a day trawling through seamen's records and crew lists at the National Archives. There were many John Winns, all ordinary seamen, but nothing to identify my man.

Newspapers

I can find no reference to him (such as a missing person advert) in the British Library's 19th century newspaper collection.

Genealogy Bank turns up various references in US newspapers in the 1830s to John D Winn, captain of the Eliza from Salem, Massachusetts.

Wrecks

I can't find him listed as the captain of a ship that went down at any of the websites devoted to wrecks.

Where should I go next? Please leave your suggestions in the comments. I'll use them to draw up a future research strategy for Part 3 of this post.