S is for Sea Spray

This post could also have been entitled 'S is for Shipping' or 'S for is Serious Accident' or the long-winded and tongue-twisted, yet descriptive, 'S is for Serious Shipping Accident on the Sea Spray'. 

The Sea Spray is another of the handful of ships owned at some stage by our Robert. From what little research I have done in preparation for this belated S posting (yes, I am aware that the AtoZ Challenge was supposed to finish on Monday but I am determined to complete it, date be damned!) it appears the 296 ton brig was built in 1864, purchased at some point by our Robert and then put on the run between Newcastle and New Zealand delivering coal, timber or even expensive champange! During one such ditch crossing, having disgorged one load of cargo and while being filled with another, our Robert who not only owned the ship but also worked in the capacity of boatswain, suffered yet another serious accident which saw him knocked unconscious, mostly buried under ballast and assumed dead. 

He survived with nothing more than concussion, thankfully, but the accident underscores the seriousness and risk involved in many occupations and in particular, shipbuilding and/or sailing as many other seamen aren't so fortunate to return from a journey. Two of Robert's brother included. 

[1] Auckland Star, Volume VI, Issue 1680, 7 July 1875, Page 2. Found on NZ's answer to Trove, Papers Past. 

F is for Flying Cloud

Not as in the 1851 clipper that set the fastest sailing time between New York and San Francisco. 
Not as in the immigrant ship that brought typhus to Sydney in 1864 and which was criminally under-rationed on its arrival. 
Not as in the Airship R-505 (also known as a blimp). 
Not as in the mining holding.
And, not as in the "very handsome" thorough-bred horse once owned by Mr E. Mitchell Esq. 


F is for the brig Flying Cloud built in Omaha, New Zealand in March 1867, sold at auction on 29 August 1867 after some serious controversy in New Zealand (which I am still investigating) and put on berth to Sydney where it was purchased by our Robert, in partnership with Messrs. Urquhart and McLaughlan, on 5 October 1867 for the sum of £2450. 

22 August 1867 Daily Southern Cross 

Variously referred to in newspaper records as a brig, a barque and a schooner (which are actually all quite different types of ships) the Flying Cloud was approximately 323 tons of Kiwi construction and timber. As best I can tell she was actually a "brig" which traditionally are squared-rigged, two masted ships. 
 She was put to use sailing between Australian ports such as Adelaide, Sydney and Newcastle, and as far as Hong Kong and Mauritius carrying shipments of coal and sugar. On one such journey between Mauritius and Australia, a seamen by the name of James Harris was lost overboard. Sadly,  she was wrecked off of Cape Banks in South Australia on 4 April 1870, thankfully, with all crew saved.
She is just one of a handful of ships owned by our Robert but not the only to end in pieces.


Because of the popularity of the name it's hard to determine which ship is being referred to in various articles so I will update you as I know more!

D is for Death

As in the Leveller. As in the other certainty in life (after taxes of course). As in the accidental death of "a young man working at Mr. Cameron's sawmills at Wickham". [1]

In times past I think it's fair to generalise that occupational health and safety probably wasn't a priority. Deaths at work for those who relied on their physicality to earn a living were unfortunately all too common: in factories and mines, on building sites and in shipyards. From the gravity of the injury suffered by our Robert  and the nature of work undertaken in sawmills generally, it's clear that this was a risky business. Such deaths, while always tragic, would no doubt have occurred more regularly than they should have and have been reported in the newspaper (if for no other reason than to publicly acknowledge the loss of someone's father / brother / husband). And the seriousness of this awful work-place accident was such that it was always going to be reported and reported widely, but what surprised me when I found it (again, on Trove) was the detail with which it was reported.

The "melancholy and fatal accident" [2] of nineteen year old Andrew Crossley, who was employed as an engine driver at the Wickham sawmill owned by our Robert, occurred on Thursday, 11 May 1871. It was reported that Saturday in the Maitland Mercury [3] and then in the Empire in Sydney on Monday [2]. On Tuesday, by which time there had been an inquest into the incident, the Sydney Morning Herald featured an article which painted as blood-spattered a picture of the event as "the scene of the terrible casualty" was at the time the article's author visited it. It wasn't enough to communicate that poor Andrew Crossley "had been completely cut in two by one of the circular saws" the reporter writes [if you're feeling queasy, probably best not to read on...]:

"the travelling bench, the saw, the adjacent timber, the tie-beams, and even the interior of the roofing thickly be-splattered with blood and portions of the bone and flesh from the body of the unfortunate deceased. The corpse presented a frightful spectacle, a deep gash extended from immediately under the sternum to the vicinity of the right knee, completely severing the chest and laying open the whole of the intestines, and the pallor of the body showed it to be completely emptied of blood." [1]

How exactly he came to be on the saw is a little bit speculative. There is no suggestion that it was anything sinister. In fact, the inquest made a verdict of accidental death with no blame to be attached to anyone connected with the works. But, while many of his workmates were present when the accident happened and in fact helped pull him off the saw, none of them witnessed exactly how he came to be on the saw. They either "heard a noise from the saw, as if it was cutting through a piece of wood, .. turned around and saw deceased lying on the front of the saw", "heard a crash; ... looked up and deceased was across the saw" or "stopped down to put some sawdust into the bag: when [they] looked up [they] saw him fast on the saw; [they] heard no noise".[1][*] What was suggested was that he took a route through the machinery to short-cut a task or caught his heel on the saw and in one short moment of poor judgement, making one tiny mistake - he paid with his life. 

Unidentified sawmill, NSW.
This image was scanned from a negative in the Bert Lovett collection.
It is part of the Norm Barney Photographic Collection,
held by Cultural Collections at the University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

[1] 1871 'THE FRIGHTFUL SAWMILL ACCIDENT AT NEWCASTLE.', The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 - 1954), 16 May, p. 3, viewed 4 April, 2012, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article13238822

[2] 1871 'MELANCHOLY AND FATAL ACCIDENT.', Empire(Sydney, NSW : 1850 - 1875), 15 May, p. 3, viewed 4 April, 2012, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article60872068

[3] 1871 'LOCAL NEWS.', The Maitland Mercury & Hunter River General Advertiser (NSW : 1843 - 1893), 13 May, p. 3, viewed 4 April, 2012, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article18753993


[*] It's always interesting reading witness account as no one person ever remembers the same details (or maybe that's just the lawyer in me?)

A is for Accident

Any regular readers may have noticed a new image on the right hand-side of this blog, as well as a new page tap above this post 'April 2012's A to Z Blogging Challenge'. Today, therefore, is day one of blogging in alphabetical order of my chosen subject matter being, of course, Cam's Fam. And so...

A is for Accident. 

As in 'an accident of a very serious nature [that] happened ... to Mr Cameron, of Wickham steam saw-mills, by which it is greatly feared he will lose his right hand' [1]

I found this reference searching the aptly named Trove website of digitised Australian newspapers. It is exactly that: a treasure trove of information and revelations about the past. And, to my excitement, our past!

The Mr Cameron referred to in the article on p. 3 of Maitland Mercury & Hunter River General Advertiser is our Robert, formerly of Garmouth. While I have only really fed you tidbits of his background, (with more to be revealed in due course), an accident involving him was newsworthy because our Robert was quite the entrepreneur and pioneering businessman in the fledgling Hunter region of the mid to late 1800s. 

At various periods of his life he was a shipbuilder, government contractor, and timber merchant. At the time of the accident in 1873 he was the owner of a saw-mill in Wickham. Thankfully it didn't appear to incapacitate him as he died at the grand old age of 80 but, with no occupational health and safety officers to provide follow-up reports on the incident, it is a mystery as to whether our Robert did indeed lose his right hand...

[1] 1873 'NEWCASTLE.', The Maitland Mercury & Hunter River General Advertiser (NSW : 1843 - 1893), 13 March, p. 3, viewed 1 April, 2012, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article18771864. 

SERIOUS ACCIDENT.-We regret to learn that an accident of a very serious nature happened, on    Saturday, to Mr. Cameron, of the Wickham steam saw- mills, by which it is greatly to be feared he will lose his right hand. It appears that Mr. Cameron was adjusting some part of the machinery, when, in withdrawing his hand, he got it in between the cylinder and the bench, thereby severely crushing it. Although a very serious affair, we are glad to be able to state that Mr. Cameron is able to get about and look after his business.

A sailor went to sea sea sea...

Today seems as a good a time as any to write about how Cam’s Fam came to be in Australia, sandwiched as it is between the date the First Fleet came ashore at Sydney Cove to plant the flag for England and to start of the first white settlement (26 January 1788), and when our Robert landed on Australia’s shores some 66 years and 11 days later [1 & 2].

I felt like a detective trying to determine how and when our Robert arrived, so bear with me and I’ll take you on my journey to find out more about his journey!

During my journey into our past I learned was that, after the initial forced migration to Australia that we celebrate on 26^th January (aka the First Fleet!), people began to choose to travel to Australia to settle. In Australia’s early days, these rather brave and somewhat foolish people are who we refer to as Free Settlers, as I'm sure you remember from school! As years passed, the Colony grew and settlement in Australia became more common and attractive, two further groups of people came to Australia: Assisted Passengers; whose journey was sponsored or financed in part by either family, friends or even prospective employees, and Unassisted Passengers; who were able to pay or work for their own way over.

On his death from “senile decay” at aged 80 in Newcastle NSW, our Robert had been in the Australian Colonies for 53 years [3]. Armed with all the above information I kinda fell upon various shipping and passenger lists for arrivals into Australia (love Google!). On one such site, the Records of NSW website, I searched for Camerons arriving as either Unassisted or Assisted Passengers in about 1854. Four pages into the results for the Unassisted Arrivals I found an entry for a “Robt Cameron”, aged 26 years who was a ‘Carpenter’s mate’ from England. I didn’t feel like I needed to search too much further than this because I am certain I found our man!

Why? Because, according to the 1841 Scottish Census our Robert was a Shipwright’s Ap (which I read as possibly a Shipwright’s Apprentice) and in his later life in Australia he was a ship builder. A shipwright by any other name is a ship’s carpenter so it’s not a far stretch to imagine Robert working his way over on a ship as a carpenter’s mate. Not to mention that the age of the “Robt Cameron” was pretty close and the year of arrival spot on. 

Our Robert arrived in Sydney on the 565 tonne barque the Inchinnan on 6th February 1854. The Inchinnan left London on 18^th October 1853 under the command of Captain Thomas Ennis with 24 crew and 18 passengers [1]. Newspaper articles at the time record her arrival in Sydney and there is suggestion that it may not have been the most pleasant of journeys as “[n]orth of the equator, the Inchinnan encountered very heavy squalls from the southward, by which she lost both topmasts and lower yards.” [2] Ingeniously, the fore-top-mast with which she arrived was constructed by deck-boards “without which the voyage would have been considerably protracted”. As carpenter’s mate, I’m pretty certain that mast was representative of some of our Robert’s handiwork and he definitely earned his keep!

There isn’t much more information readily available about the Inchinnan on this particular journey. However I understand it was an important ship in New Zealand’s history, delivering new settlers on a later sailing. What I understand though is that the journey between England and Australia was pretty treacherous generally, due to the sea (as hinted at above) and conditions onboard both for sailors and sail-ees! To avoid immigrant ships becoming “coffin ships” strict rules were enforced by ships’ surgeons surrounding hygiene, diet and daily routine but this didn’t stop death onboard.

I am endeavouring to find out more and plan a couple of posts about the conditions onboard and why Robert may have wanted to leave Scotland to settle in Australia given the risks involved – particularly when he made the journey between the UK and Australia three times: the first on the Inchinnan, the second returning to Garmouth a few years later to marry Betsy and the third after the wedding to travel back to his new home.

I should also note that Robert (and Betsy) weren’t the only of our rels who could be nicknamed “boat people” and I will also share their stories…

  

[1] State Records Authority of New South Wales: Shipping Master's Office; Passengers Arriving 1855 - 1922; NRS13278, [X90], reel 399. Transcribed by Jenny Gerrey, 2004 - As found at http://mariners.records.nsw.gov.au/1854/02/021inc.htm 

[2]1854 'SHIPPING INTELLIGENCE.', The Maitland Mercury & Hunter River General Advertiser (NSW : 1843 - 1893), 11 February, p. 2, viewed 29 January, 2012, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article685738

[3] 1907 Death Certificate of Robert Cameron 

What's in a name?

Oops, not doing so well on the New Year’s resolution to remember birthdays.... While I did help a friend celebrate her birthday on Wednesday night and I’ve bought a couple of cards, I haven’t sent them yet and on Thursday I failed to recognise the birth date of Jessie Cameron, my third great grand aunt. 

Born 11 January 1839 in Garmouth, Moray, Scotland, were she with us today Jessie’d be in the Guiness Book of Records and the Fire Department would be on stand by to put out the 173 candles on her cake!

  

Sadly, Jessie died 'in infancy' [1] but she holds a very soft spot in my heart because she was one of the first of our Robert’s relatives that I identified in the very early days of taking over the family archives.  

As I mentioned, Didi had been tracing the tree for quite some time before I got involved.  She had a pretty complete picture of the family born from Robert in Australia, after he married Betsy. However we didn’t know anything of his beginnings or family beyond the name of the town he came from, being “Garmouth”. (Even that was a mystery for a while because Didi had thought a reference to Garmouth in a Bible passed through the family was someone’s name!)

So, armed with his name and a town name I tried to find more.

Thanks to the wonders of the world wide web and digitization of old documents, with a few (paid) searches on Scotland’s People, I narrowed down two Robert Camerons born in the same area and within a few days of each other. I was able to determine which one was ours by locating our Robert’s marriage certificate to Betsy. Marriage certificates can be a wealth of information and Robert’s was no different, naming his parents as Alexander and Janet Cameron.

A couple of clicks later, I was looking at the beautifully handwritten entry in the old church records for the parish of Speymouth recording his lawful birth on 11 April 1827 to Alexander Cameron and Janet Cramond.  And who should be recorded on the same page but an older sister Jane (born 15 October 1823) and the much younger sister Jessy!

At some point In delving into the past I became aware of the interesting fact that Jessie is actually a nickname for someone called Janet, which in turn is a derivative of Jane [2]. Even more confusing is that all three names could be, and were, used interchangeably! A fact that became very apparent for me when I have the name “Jessy” as the official first name in the Old Parish Records but two years later a census collector noting down a 2 year old “Janet” in the Cameron household [3].

With all three names being used by three different people in the immediate Cameron family, I can only imagine the scenario, perhaps around the dinner table or in anger someone yelling “Jessie Cameron” and at least two heads looking up thinking they were in trouble!

Another interesting point to note about names is that it also wasn’t uncommon for first names to be passed on from generation to generation in Scotland [4] recognizing or commemorating the one before it. So, the first boy would be named after the father’s father and the first girl after the mother’s mother and the second son after the mother’s father. It seems our Cameron family followed this tradition quite well as our Robert is named for his mother’s father, Robert Cramond, and his older brother Alexander for his father’s father. Alexander and Janet ran into trouble with their third son who is traditionally named for the father! As Alexander was already taken, Robert’s next brother was named John (born 18 September 1831) and the youngest boy James (born 24 October 1833).

So now you know a little more about the family from where we came. Let the journey continue!

[1] As recorded on the family gravestone in  Urquhart Old Churchyard, Station Road, Urquhart [photo above] which also has the spelling “Jessie”. The gravestone reads:

ERECTED BY

JANNET CRAMOND

To the memory of her

Beloved husband

ALEXANDER CAMERON

Ship Carpenter Garmouth

who died 19^th April 1840

aged 47 years

Also

their daughter  JESSIE who died in Infancy.

Also their Sons

JOHN CAMERON Carpenter

who died the 10^th Sept 1852

aged 21 years.

And JAMES CAMERON Seaman

who died 23^rd Feb 1858

aged 24 years.

Also the above  JANNET CRAMOND

who died the 4^th April 1883

aged 83 years.

[2] http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/content/help/index.aspx?561 and http://www.whatsinaname.net/female-names/Janet.html

[3] 1841 Scotland Census – this was conducted on the night of 6 June 1841 and while only basically factual detail was recorded it has helped shed light on Cam’s Fam like that our Robert’s brother Alexander was a Shipwright. It also tells me Jessie survived to at least 2 years of age and that their  father Alexander was not counted in the census and therefore may have died before 1841, consequently confirmed when I found the gravestone.  What confuses me is the reference to a 12 year old Elizabeth. I haven’t been able to find any other record of her as one of Alexander and Janet’s offspring.

[4] http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/content/help/index.aspx?561