1. South Carolina General

The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina:

1514-1861

By Lawrence Sanders Rowland
Google Books extract

....rumors circulated throughout the province suggesting possible action against South Carolina, and the local committees were directed to attend to militia discipline and secure arms and ammunition. The available resources of public gunpowder became objects of concern. The Council of Safety seized 3,000 pounds of gunpowder in Charleston, and in September 1775 Captain Thomas Heyward Jr. led the patriot company which crossed Charleston harbor in a rainstorm to occupy strategic Fort Johnson and commandeer its artillery.

The most feared and most likely threat to South Carolina was that royal authorities would use their contacts to incite the Cherokee and Creek Indians to lay waste to the frontier settlements. The Council of Safety learned in June 1775 that two large shipments of powder were being sent to Savannah, still controlled by Governor Wright's royal administration, and to the British garrison at St. Augustine. It was suspected that this powder was destined for the Indians, and the council promptly dispatched two expeditions to intercept the ships at sea.

The first expedition, in June of 1775, was led by Captain John Barnwell Jr. of the Beaufort militia and Captain John Joyner. the Port Royal harbour pilot. With forty men in two barges, they lay in wait at Bloody Point, Daufuskie Island, where they could command the Savannah River entrance from the South Carolina side. Governor Wright of Georgia learned of their presence and dispatched an armed schooner to Tybee Island to counter the Beaufort vessels and escort the powdership to Savannah. The forces of Barnwell and Joyner. however, had encouraged the previously weak opposition party in Georgia. Joseph Habersham now assumed the leadership of the patriot cause in Georgia and with the help of John Joyner secured an armed ship in the Savannah River. Habersham, Captain Brown, and a body of Georgia patriots bore down on the British schooner at Tybee Island and chased it out to sea. Just as the British armed schooner sailed off, the London packet ship Little Carpenter, under the command of Captain Maitland, arrived off Tybee Island with 16,000 pounds of gunpowder. Sensing trouble, Maitland tacked about and tried to escape to the open ocean. The powder ship was overtaken and captured by Habersham's ship from Savannah and Barnwell and joyners two barges from Beaufort. ”The powder was divided between the patriot forces of the two colonies. Colonel Stephen Bull, in command of the militia forces of the Beaufort District, stored a good deal of the powder in the Prince William Parish Church next to his own Sheldon plantation. Five thousand pounds of the prize was shipped directly to Philadelphia at the request of the Continental Congress to eventually find its way to the artillery of Washington's army currently besieging Boston.20

The second expedition, in July 1775, was commanded by Captain Clement Lempriere of Mount Pleasant, one of South Carolina's most experienced seamen. The armed sloop Commerce left Port Royal for St. Augustine sometime.....

Shipyards and European Shipbuilders in South Carolina

(Late 1600s to 1800)

By Lynn Harris

Occasional Maritime Research Papers

Maritime Research Division, South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, USC
As soon as the early Carolina colonists cleared their land and built their homes, they undoubtedly turned back to the sea and constructed watercraft. The rivers and creeks of what was to become known as the Carolina Lowcountry provided ready-made highways for the colonists, and they needed a variety of watercraft to carry on the business of establishing a new colony. They needed vessels to visit their neighbors, to trade with the friendly natives who inhabited the region, to carry goods from a central landing place to their respective homes, and (not least of all) to explore their new world. Fortunately, any colonist with the tools and knowledge to build a house could build a boat to suit almost any purpose.

A Slow Beginning

In a letter written in 1680, Maurice Mathews, one of the colony's original settlers and eventually its surveyor-general and Commissioner to the Indians, noted that "Ther[e] have been severall vessells built here, and there are now 3 or 4 upon the Stocks.” This is perhaps the first written record of boat building in Carolina and probably refers to "vessells" capable of at least coastal trading. The myriad amount and variety of small skiffs, launches, barges, boats, and canoes needed by the colonists would hardly be worth mentioning.
More evidence of early shipbuilding in the colony comes from the ship registers. Under English law, vessels used for inter-colonial or trans-oceanic trading were required to be registered. Few of these records remain. However, dispersed amongst the colony's early records of deeds, inventories, bills of sale, and wills are several registers for the year 1698. Of these fifteen remaining registers, only four are for vessels built in "Carolina.” These are the 30-ton sloop Ruby and the 50-ton sloop Joseph both built in 1696, the 30-ton brigantine Sea Flower built in 1697, and the 30-ton sloop Dorothy & Ann built in 1698.

There are other indications that the shipbuilding industry in South Carolina got off to a slow start. In 1708, Governor Nathaniel Johnson reported to the Board of Trade in London that "There are not above ten or twelve sail of ships or other vessells belonging to this province about half of which number only were built here besides a ship or sloop now on the stocks near launching. In 1719, Governor Robert Johnson reported that "Wee are come to no great matter of [ship]building here for want of persons who undertake it tho no country in the world is [as] plentifully supplyed with timber for that purpose and [so] well stored with convenient rivers . . ." He notes that of the twenty or so vessels belonging to the port, "some" were built here.

Largest Manufacturing Industry

Occasional Maritime Research Papers

Maritime Research Division, South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, USC

As the colony grew and began to thrive so did the boat and ship building industries.

While not comparable with the shipbuilding activities of the northern colonies, shipbuilding became South Carolina's largest manufacturing industry. And just as important, was its impact on the local economy. In addition to shipwrights, the construction of a vessel needed the services of joiners, coopers, blacksmiths, timber merchants, painters, chandlers, glaziers, carvers, plumbers, sailmakers, blockmakers, caulkers, and oarmakers among others.

The extant ship registers show that between 1735 and 1775 more than 300 ocean-going and coastal cargo vessels, ranging from five to 280 tons burthen, were built by South Carolina shipbuilders. This included ships, snows, brigantines, schooners, and sloops. These names referred to the vessel's rig, that is its mast and sail arrangement, and vessels were seldom mentioned without accompanying it with its type. This preoccupation with a vessel's rig is understandable. Denoting the rig distinguishes the schooner Betsy, from the brigantine Betsy, or the sloop Betsy. Even more, those tall wooden masts and billowing sails of the various rigs were easily its most recognizable feature and the first part of a vessel that appeared as it approached over the horizon.

Undoubtedly, Carolina-built vessels were quite similar in most ways to those being built in Britain and the other colonies. The wide, rounded hull-shape of the oceangoing cargo carrier, with its blunt bow and tapering stern at the waterline -- meant to imitate the shape of a duck gliding through water -- and square stern cabin, had become, like the rigs themselves, fairly standard and widely copied by shipbuilders after centuries of development, innovation, and imitation. Since many of the shipwrights of colonial South Carolina were trained in the best English shipyards or in other parts of America, this is hardly surprising. John Rose, the Hobcaw shipbuilder, had learned his trade on the Thames at the Deptford Naval Yard. His partner, James Stewart, had apprenticed at the Woolrich Naval Yard, also on the Thames, and many of the other prominent Carolina shipbuilders had learned the art of shipbuilding before arriving in the colony. Georgetown shipwright Benjamin Darling had come to Carolina from New England. Charles Minors who built vessels in Little River came from Bermuda, while Robert Watts who set up his shipbuilding business at the remote Bloody Point on Daufuskie Island, where he built the 170-ton ship St. Helena in 1766 and the 260-ton ship Friendship in 1771, had come to South Carolina from Philadelphia. Nevertheless it would be hard to imagine that local shipwrights and boatbuilders weren't being influenced by local conditions and preferences and modifying the basic designs so that their vessels accommodated the needs of their customers.

Ships and Schooners

For evidence of ship design meeting environmental conditions and customer’s needs,

we turn again to the available ship registers. They show that the Carolina-built, shiprigged vessel was, in general, of moderate size, yet larger than ships being built in the

other shipbuilding colonies. South Carolina shipwrights were certainly able to build large

ocean-going ships. The 280-ton ship Queen Charlotte, built in 1764 by John Emrie, and the 260-ton ship Atlantic, built at Port Royal in 1773, are two examples. However, shiprigged vessels built in South Carolina during this time averaged 180 tons. A ship in the 150- to 200-ton range seems almost the unanimous choice of Carolina shipowners, with more than half of those built in South Carolina in that range. While these ships were of a rather moderate size, Carolina shipwrights turned out ships that were on the average 40 percent larger than those being produced in other colonies. From available port records we find that ships built in the other colonies averaged only about 130 tons burthen.

Perhaps the epitome of the South Carolina-built ship was the Heart of Oak, built at the Hobcaw yard of John Rose in 1763. Not only did its180-ton size prove typical of the size of locally built ships, but the quality of its workmanship would be proven over a successful career spanning more than 10 years. The Heart of Oak' s illustrious career began almost immediately after her launching. The S.C. Gazette for 21 May 1763 reported that "The fine new ship Heart-of-Oak, commanded by Capt. Henry Gunn, lately built by Mr. John Rose at Hobcaw, came down (to town) two days ago, completely fitted, and . . . 'tis thought she will carry 1100 barrels of rice, be very buoyant, and of an easy draught.” An "easy draught" in 1763 could be considerable. Lloyd's Register for 1764 lists her as having a draught of 14 feet fully loaded. During the colonial period, it was generally accepted that at low tide only 12 feet of water covered the deepest channel through the offshore bar, and in 1748, Governor James Glen noted, "Charles-Town Harbour is fit for all Vessels which do not exceed fifteen feet draught.” This meant that the Heart of Oak, with its "easy draught," had to be careful when it crossed the bar fully loaded. Rose was a passenger on the Heart of Oak' s maiden voyage when it sailed for Cowes, England on 22 June 1763. He was traveling to England in an attempt to recruit shipwrights to come to Carolina. There can be little doubt that he used the Heart of Oak as an example of the excellent shipbuilding materials and craftsmanship available in Carolina. He returned in the Heart of Oak in February 1764. His efforts were considered a failure. In April 1763, when the Heart of Oak was registered, John Rose listed himself as sole owner; however, by June of 1766 Henry Laurens, who owned one forth of the ship, valued his one-quarter interest in the Heart of Oak at £4,000. This sum can perhaps be put into perspective by noting that at the same time he valued Mepkin Plantation, his 3,000- acre property on the Cooper River, at £7,000.
One thing is certain - Carolinians preferred schooners. South Carolina shipwrights built more schooners than all other types of vessels put together. The ship registers indicate that the two-masted fore-and aft-rigged schooner, ideal for coastal trading vessels, averaged about 20 tons burthen and accounted for about 80 percent of the registered South Carolina-built vessels. This appears somewhat astonishing, especially when compared to records from the other colonies where the schooner accounted for only about 25 percent of the vessels built. Elsewhere in the American colonies, the one-masted sloop rig, such as the remains of the Malcolm Boat appears to be, was the most popular rig, accounting for roughly one-third of all vessels registered in the colonies.

This penchant for schooners is perhaps a result of the coastal trade that formed a large part of the commerce in and out of Charleston. In addition to a lively Atlantic and Caribbean trade, Carolinians carried on an extensive and active coastal trade. Rice, indigo, lumber, naval stores, and the other products of the coastal plantations and settlements had to be transported to Charleston for trans-shipment to England and elsewhere. And, the products from England and Europe that arrived in Charleston had to be distributed back to these colonists who were starved for manufactured goods of all kinds. This coastal trade required a small, fast, shallow-draft vessel that was maneuverable enough to sail amongst the coast's sea island. The small coasting schooner being built by Carolina shipbuilders fit the bill perfectly. Looking at the records of port arrivals and departures for a one year period from June 1765 to June 1766, we find the majority of cruises for schooners involved short coastal runs while sloops were being used for short ocean cruises, such as those to the Caribbean and Bermuda.

Shipyards and Shipwrights
As the colonists spread out along the waterways so did the shipbuilding efforts. The registers list construction sites along most of South Carolina's rivers -- at places such as Pon Pon, Dorchester, Bull's Island, Dewees Island, Wadmalaw, Combahee, and Pocotaligo. But the major shipbuilding areas centered around Charleston, Beaufort, and Georgetown.

Most shipbuilding in Charleston took place outside the city proper. The three areas near town that became shipbuilding centers were James Island, Shipyard Creek, and Hobcaw. Although no shipyard sites have been located on James Island, the colonial ship registers indicate a good amount of shipbuilding on the island. Between 1735 and 1772, more than thirty vessels list James Island as their place of construction in the ship registers. This includes the 130-ton ship Charming Nancy, built in 1752 for Charleston merchants Thomas Smith Sr. and Benjamin Smith. Shipyard Creek, now part of the naval base near Charleston, was another shipbuilding site during the colonial period (Smith 1988: 50). Many of the ships listing Charleston as their place of construction in the ship registers were probably built on Shipyard Creek.

During the last half of the Eighteenth century, Hobcaw Creek off the Wando River became the colony's largest shipbuilding center, boasting as many as three commercial shipyards in the immediate vicinity. The largest shipyard in the Hobcaw area, indeed in all of colonial South Carolina, was the one started on the south side of the creek in 1753 by Scottish shipwrights John Rose and James Stewart.

After making a considerable fortune, Rose sold the yard in 1769 to two other Scottish shipwrights, William Begbie and Daniel Manson. In 1778, Paul Pritchard bought the property and changed its name to Pritchard's Shipyard. During the Revolution, the South Carolina Navy Board bought control of the yard and used it to refit vessels of the South Carolina Navy. After the Revolution, ownership of the yard reverted to Pritchard, and the property stayed in the Pritchard family until 1831.

Another shipwright who owned a yard in the vicinity of Hobcaw Creek during South Carolina's colonial period was Capt. Clement Lempriere. The exact location of his yard is unknown, but in all likelihood, it was near or at Remly Point. A 1786 plat of the Hobcaw Creek area reveals the site of the shipyard of David Linn located on the north side of the creek. Linn had been a shipbuilder in Charleston as early as 1744 and purchased the Hobcaw property in 1759.

Georgetown and Beaufort also developed shipbuilding industries during the colonial period. The South Carolina ship registers indicate Georgetown had a thriving shipbuilding industry from 1740 to about 1760. More than 30 vessels list Georgetown as the site of construction during this period including the 180-ton ship Francis, built in 1751. Benjamin Darling probably built the Francis since his was the largest shipyard in Georgetown during this period.

The South Carolina Gazette for 28 September 1765 notes that "within a month past, no less than three scooners [sic] have been launch'd at and near the town of Beaufort, one built by Mr. Watts, one by Mr. Stone, and one by Mr. Lawrence; besides which, a pink stern ship, built by Mr. Black, will be ready to launch there next Monday, and very soon after, another schooner, built by Mr. Taylor, one by Mr. Miller, and one by Mr. Toping; there is also on the stocks, and in great forwardness, a ship of three hundred tons, building by Mr. Emrie; and the following contracted for, to be built at the same place, viz, a ship of 250 tons, and a large schooner, by Mr. Black; another large ship and a schooner by Mr. Watts; two large schooners, by Mr. Lawrence, and on by Mr. Stone." The ship registers verify this abundance of shipbuilding and indicate a proliferation of construction activity between 1765 and 1774.

It would be wrong to assume that all this shipbuilding was taking place at large commercial shipyards. Shipyards during this period ranged from the well-established yard such as John Rose's on Hobcaw which employed perhaps 20 persons building large ships to the "shade tree" variety were one or two persons built small sloops and schooners without any help and worked elsewhere between construction jobs. And this doesn't include the handyman who built a canoe or small sailing skiff for his own personal use. While specific records concerning small boat building do not exist, the newspapers of the time are filled with advertisements indicating a wide variety of locally made watercraft for sale. These small craft virtually littered the local waterways. In 1751, Governor James Glen noted that "Cooper River appears sometimes a kind of floating market, and we have numbers of canoes, boats and pettiaguas that ply incessantly, bringing down the country produce to town, and returning with such necessary as are wanted by the planters".

Live Oak, Yellow Pine, and Long Life

The early boatbuilders as well as shipwrights found local woods excellent building materials. The massive, naturally-curved live oak for the vessel's main timbers, and the tall, yellow pines and for planking and decking were as ideally suited for the small skiff as for the large three-masted ship. The Gazette for 28 September 1765, after noting the vessels presently being built by Carolina shipwrights, claims that "as soon as the superiority of our Live-Oak Timber and Yellow Pine Plank, to the timber and plank of the Northern colonies, becomes more generally known, 'tis not to be doubted, that this province may vie with any of them in that valuable branch of business . . ." And, six years later, the Gazette for 8 August 1771 reports that there had been several recent orders for Carolina-built ships from England as "Proof that the Goodness of Vessels built here, and the superior Quality of our Live-Oak Timber to any Wood in America for Ship-Building, is at length acknowledged." Of course, the Gazette's enthusiasm may have been somewhat of an eighteenth century public relations effort, but there were others with no, or at least less visible, ulterior motives who praised Carolina-built vessels.

Henry Laurens, the owner of many vessels built both in South Carolina and elsewhere, was one who promoted the superiority of the Carolina vessels and the skill of local shipwrights. In 1765 while discussing the cost of shipbuilding in Carolina with William Fisher, a Philadelphia shipowner, he notes, "The difference in the Cost of our Carolina built Vessels is not the great objection to building here. That is made up in the different qualities of the Vessels when built or some people think so.” He adds that a vessel built in Philadelphia "would not be worth half as much (the hull of her) as one built of our Live Oak & Pine . . .” Writing to his brother James from England in 1774 in reference to acting as an agent in having a ship made in Carolina for a Bristol mercantile firm, he admits his hope that a Carolina-built ship on the Thames would assure that "our Ships built of Live Oak & Pine will acquire the Character & Credit which they truly Merit." Live oak and pine construction, along with the other popular shipbuilding timbers, were frequent advertising points in a vessel's sale. On 21 May1754, the South Carolina Gazette ran a typical ad of this sort. It was for the sale of a schooner that would carry 95 to 100 barrels of rice. The ad notes that the vessel is "extraordinary well built, live oak and red cedar timber, with two streaks of white oak plank under her bends, the rest yellow pine.” Live oak was an obvious and common choice for shipbuilding, yet cedar, although immensely less abundant, was also a favorite shipbuilding material due to its ability to resist the infamous teredo worm, also known as the shipworm. In 1779 when the new state sought to have a 42-foot pilot boat made the specifications recommended "the whole of the frame Except the flore [floor] Timbers be of Ceadar."

These woods also made for vessels with long lives. At a time when the average life expectancy of a wooden vessel was about fifteen years, Carolina-built ships boasted usual lives of twenty to thirty years. In 1766, the 20-ton schooner Queenley was registered to trade between Carolina and Georgia. The Queenley was built in 1739 in South Carolina, twenty-seven years earlier. When the 15-ton schooner Friendship was registered for trade in 1773, it was already twenty-eight years old, having been built at Hobcaw in 1745. The South Carolina Gazette ran a story in 1773 that the aptly named 125-ton ship, Live Oak, was "constantly employed in the Trade between this Port and Europe." The Live Oak had been built on James Island twenty-four years earlier. This quality of Southern timber even reached the ears of Alexander Hamilton who wrote in his Federalist Papers "The difference in the duration of the ships of which the navy might be composed, if chiefly constructed of Southern wood, would be of signal importance . . . "

USS John Adams

The high point of South Carolina wooden shipbuilding occurred on 5 June 1799 with the launching of the 550-ton frigate John Adams at the Paul Pritchard Shipyard on Shipyard Creek. The John Adams carried twenty-six 12-pound cannons and six 24-pound carronades making her the first U.S. Navy vessel to be armed with carronades. She was built with a variety of native South Carolina woods. The floor timbers and futtocks were of live oak. The upper timbers were of cedar. The keel and keelson were of Carolina pine while the masts and spars were of long-leaf pine. The deck beams were hewn from yellow pine logs cut along the Edisto River. In 1803, she saw action off Tripoli against the Barbary Powers. During the War of 1812, she spent most of her time blockaded in New York harbor. In 1863, at the age of sixty-four, she was ordered to join the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron off South Carolina. Her long and illustrious career ended in 1867 when she was sold out of the Navy and sent to the breaker's yard.

Decline of Wooden Ships

The wooden shipbuilding industry declined during the first half of the nineteenth century. This was due to a general economic decline in the state and, of course, the development of steamships and steel-hulled vessels. However, small wooden vessels -- yachts, fishing boats, pilot boats, barges, canoes, skiffs, launches, dugouts, batteaux, etc. - - were still being constructed and used on the river and coastal waterways of this state.

This small boat industry continued into the twentieth century.

References

Albion, Robert Greenhalgh. 1926 Forests And Sea Power: The Timber Problem of The Royal Navy 1652-1862.

Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Charleston County Probate Court Records (CCPCR),

Wills and Miscellaneous Records, Vol. 54 (1694-1704).

Charleston County Register of Mesne Conveyance Records (CCRMCR).

Coker, P. C., III

1987 Charleston's Maritime Heritage, 1670-1865. Charleston: CokerCraft Press. Crowse, Converse D.

1984 "Shipowning and Shipbuilding in Colonial South Carolina: An Overview.” The American Neptune 44, no 4 (Fall 1984): 221-244.

Dunne, W.M.P.

1987 "The South Carolina Frigate: A History of the U.S. Ship John Adams." The American Neptune 47, no. 1 (Winter 1987): 22-32.

Fleetwood, Rusty.

1982 Tidecraft: The boats of lower South Carolina & Georgia. Savannah, Ga.: Coastal Heritage Society.

Fraser, Walter J., Jr.

1976 Patriots, Pistols and Petticoats. Charleston: Charleston County Bicentennial Committee.

Goldenberg, Joseph A.

1976 Shipbuilding in Colonial America. Charlottesville, Va.: The University Press of Virginia. Hamilton, Alexander.

1941 "Federalist Papers, No. 11." The Federalist. New York The Modern Library. Labaree, Leonard Woods.

1967 Royal Instructions to British Colonial Governors, 1670 - 1776. New York: Octagon Books.

Laurens, Henry

1970The Papers of Henry Laurens, Volume Two: Nov. 1, 1765 - Dec. 31,1758. Edited by Philip M. Hamer and George C. Rogers Jr. Columbia: USC Press.

1972 The Papers of Henry Laurens, Volume Three: Jan. 1, 1759 - Aug. 31, 1763. Edited by Philip M. Hamer and George C. Rogers Jr. Columbia: USC Press.

1974 The Papers of Henry Laurens, Volume Four: Sept. 1, 1763 - Aug. 31,1765. Edited by George C. Rogers Jr. Columbia: USC Press.

1978 The Papers of Henry Laurens, Volume Six: Aug. 1, 1768 - July 31,1769. Edited by George C. Rogers Jr. and David R. Chesnutt. Columbia: USC Press.

1979 The Papers of Henry Laurens, Volume Seven: Aug. 1, 1769 - Oct. 9, 1771. Edited

by George C. Rogers Jr. and David R. Chesnutt. Columbia: USC Press.

1981 The Papers of Henry Laurens, Volume Nine: April 19, 1773 - Dec. 12, 1774. Edited by George C. Rogers Jr. and David R. Chesnutt. Columbia: USC Press.

Lloyd's Register of Shipping 1764 London: Reprinted by The Gregg Press Ltd.

Mathews, Maurice.

1954 "A Contemporary View of Carolina in 1680." South Carolina Historical Magazine 55, no. 3 (July 1954): 153-159.

Merrens, H. Roy, ed.

1977 The Colonial South Carolina Scene - Contemporary Views, 1697-1774. Columbia: USC Press.

Milling, Chapman J., ed.

1951 Colonial South Carolina: Two Contemporary Descriptions by Governor James Glen

and Doctor George Milligen Johnston. Columbia: USC Press.

Olsberg, Nicholas.

1973 "Ship Registers in the South Carolina Archives, 1734 - 1780." South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 74, no. 4 (October 1973): 189-299. Rogers, George C., Jr.

1970 The History of Georgetown County, South Carolina. Columbia: USC Press.

1980 Charleston in the Age of the Pinckneys. Columbia: USC Press. Salley, A.S., Jr.

1912 Journal of the Commissioners of the Navy of South Carolina, October 9, 1776 -March 1, 1779. Columbia: The Historical Commission of South Carolina.

1913 Journal of the Commissioners of the Navy of South Carolina, July 22, 1779 – March 23, 1780. Columbia: The Historical Commission of South Carolina. Smelser, Marhsall, and William I. Davisson.

1973 "The Longevity of Colonial Ships." The American Neptune 33, no. 1 (January 1973): 17-19. Smith, H.A.M.

1988 Rivers and Regions of Early South Carolina. Spartanburg: The Reprint Co. South Carolina Gazette Various editions, Uhlendorf, Bernard A., trans. and ed.

1938 The Siege of Charleston. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Weir, Robert M.

1983 Colonial South Carolina. Millwood, N.Y.: KTO Press.

2. Shipping Records

The following is from internet Newspaper Archives containing reports of Francis Maitland 2’s ships:

Lloyds Register

Founded to inspect and examine the physical structure and equipment of merchant vessels, Lloyd's graded ship hulls on a lettered scale (A being the top), and ship's fittings (masts, rigging, and other equipment) was graded by number (1 being the top). Thus the top classification was "A1", from which the expression A1, or A1 at Lloyd's, is derived, first appeared in the 1775–76 edition of the Register. Ship surveyors (usually master mariners or master shipwrights) conducted surveys of ships calling at British ports

Not all ships were surveyed and included in the Register. From 1834–37, an attempt was made to include all British vessels of 50 tons or over, although very little information is given about those which had not been surveyed - in contrast the Mercantile Navy List records British registered vessels over one quarter of a ton.

From 1838–1875, only vessels which had been surveyed were included in the Register. After that date, the Register was extended to take in all British vessels over 100 tons, and from 1890 its scope was broadened to include all British and foreign sea-going vessels over 100 tons. It is always possible to determine whether or not a ship had been surveyed from the entry in Lloyd’s Register of Shipping, as the resultant Lloyd’s register classification will be given.

A vessel remains in the Register until something happens to her; for example if she is sunk, wrecked, broken up, hulked, scrapped, etc.

From 1834 onwards Lloyd’s Register was published mid-year and covered the period 1 July–30 June the following year. To reflect this, volumes published after 1868 started to give both years, e.g. 1869–1870.
The following incomplete sequence of 18th & 19th Century volumes were scanned by Google. They have the advantage of being searchable and so it is possible to look for masters, owners etc. Please note however names may be abbreviated, Tmknsn instead of Tomkinson for instance. The 1930-1945 volumes were scanned by staff at Southampton Library & Archive.

1764-66 1768 1780 1789 1796 1797 1798 1799

1800 1801 1802 1803 1804 1805 1806 1807 1808 1809 1810 1811 1812 1813 1814 1815 1816 1817 1818 1819 1820 1821 1822 1823 1824 1825 1826 1827 1828 1829 1830 1831 1832 1833 1834 1835 1836 1837 1838 1839 1840 1841 1842 1843 1844 1845 1846 1847 1848 1849 1850 1851 1852 1853 1854 1855 1856 1857 1858 1859 1860 1861 1862 1863 1864 1865 1866 1867 1868 1869 1870 1871 1872 1873 1874 1875 1876 1877 1878 1879 1880 1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 1888 1889 1890 1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899*

1930-1945

*Incorrectly scanned in reverse, last page first.

N.B. copyright of all images of the 1764-6 edition remain with Lloyd’s Register. Images © Lloyd’s Register Group Limited 2012

Please see Infosheet no.10 for further details on the contents of the Lloyd’s Register of Ships, and Infosheet no.44 to help guide your research when using it. Other collections of the Lloyd’s Register of Ships in the UK are listed on Infosheet no.17 and collections on Europe can be found on Infosheet no.46.

Lloyd’s Lists:

http://www.maritimearchives.co.uk/lloyds-list.html

Google have digitised early editions of Lloyd's List . This collection does not include any issues for 1742, 1743, 1745, 1746, 1754, 1756, 1759 or 1778. Various issues are also missing from certain volumes. In addition issues up to 1752 are dated using the Julian calendar meaning that the New Year begins on 25th March. The first surviving issue here is dated 2 January 1740 but in the year we would now think of as being 1741.

The volumes listed here are searchable making it particularly useful for searching for voyages of particular vessels and the names of masters.

The Marine News section has also been indexed by volunteers at the Guildhall Library which may help with searching through the volumes listed here.

A series of indexes, covering ship movements and casualties 1838 to October 1927, are on microfilm at the National Maritime Museum, the Guildhall Library, Merseyside Maritime Museum and the National Library of Scotland.

The National Maritime Museum has also published a brief history of Lloyd's List.

1741-1744   1747-1748   1749-1750   1751-1752
1753-1755   1757-1758   1760-1761   1762-1763
1764-1765   1766-1767   1768-1769   1770-1771
1772-1773   1774-1775   1776-1777   1779-1780
1781-1782   1783-1784   1785-1786   1787-1788
1789-1790   1791-1792   1793-1794   1795-1796
1797-1798   1799-1800   1801-1802   1803-1804
1805-1806   1807-1808   1809-1810   1811-1812
1813-1814   1815-1816   1817-1818   1819 – 1820
1821 -1822      1823 -1824     1825 - 1826

Achilles: Lloyd’s Register 1764-66 starts at Albemarle – assumed that first part missing. 1768: A-L missing.
Adventure: as for Achilles; probably not our family, operating out of Leith.

Maitlands searched for 1837,8,9,40 a number of ships sailing from Aberdeen & Peterhead with masters &/or owners Maitland, but probably not ours

The following is a possibility, but unlikely as sailing from Leith:
1840: Sarah Jane, Bg vnCa, Maitland, 216 (236), N Brns BRRP, 1828?, & Lik, Dewar & Co, Jamaic, Lth. Jamaica, 4 A1 2-41

1841:
http://www.shipsnostalgia.com/archive/index.php?t-9325.html
Ships Nostalgia > Lost Contact & Research > Ship Research > Bencoolen

This is a long forum with extracts from the Bencoolen logs between Calcutta & England via St Helena in July to September, 1841. Westbrook is mentioned as sailing in the same direction, and doing better than the Bencoolen (a 465 tin ship rigged vessel). Unfortunately, the extracts do not contain dates.
This voyage is the one arriving in Cork in September 1841 from Canton with tea.

Maitland – Brig

http://www.irishshipwrecks.com/shipwrecks.php?wreck_ref=481

Name	Nationality	Location	Date Lost
Maitland	British	Off Cape Clear Co Cork	13/03/1867

Maitland :
Owner	Chas.John Brightman, 15 Great St Helens, London
Flag	British	Builder	Built at Sunderland
Port	Shields	Build Date	1851
Official No	23354	Material	Wood
Lloyds Register		Tonnage Net/Gross	301
Launched		Dimensions in ft	105.2 \| 26.4 \| 17
Ship Type	Sail Vessel	Rigging Style	Snow Brig
Ships Role	Cargo Vessel	Funnels
Engine

Super Structure

Owner and Registration History
Lloyds Register 1852 Owner J.Kelso Reg N,Shilds Lloyds Register 1863 Owner Watts And Co Reg N,Shilds MNL 1867 Owner, Chas.John Brightman.

Location	75 Miles South West Off Cape Clear Co Cork
Date Lost	13/03/1867	Captain
Cause	Abandoned	Crew Lost
Position		Passengers Lost
Google Map Location


History
On the 13th March, when in lat 50.30 N., long 11.30 W., the master of the brig "Maitland," finding his ship in a sinking state made signals of distress to the "Lady Love," which came and remained by her all night. The next morning the master and crew of the "Maitland," 15 in all proceeded in their own boat on board the "Lady Love," and were landed at Queenstown on 28th March. Board Of Trade Wreck Reports 1867

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/673391
The Maitland Mercury & Hunter River General Advertiser (NSW)
Wednesday 25 February 1852

20.-Maitland, ship, 648 tons, Captain Henry, from the Downs November 9. Passengers

Captain A. Vyner, wife, son, and daughter, Mr. E. B. Hamel, wife and daughter, Mr. M'Gregor, Mrs. Dawson and sou, R. Yule and wife, C. Graves and wife, J. Guzzaroni, P. Griffiths, W. Armstrong, R. Kingsford and wife, E. Beasley and wife, R. Kirkpatrick, E. Simkins, T. Boyd, R. Kenyon, T. Hilson and wife, S. Barton, J. Smith, W. Lewis, H. Wilson, K. Längster, F. Roberts, T. Audley, E. Butler, H. Chilwell, W. Addison and wife, H. Green, W. Edwards, W. Trewolla, J. Bevan, G. Wright, G. Penny, G. Inglis, J. Harvey, R. Young, W. Atkins, J. Coleman, R. Alexander, W. Stranger, G. Farmer and wife, A. Dubordone, J. Guese, W. Bishop, A. and H. Bradford, W. Hill, C. Seameret, Read, Smith, White, and Newcombe.

Bute

An East Indiaman, appearing in Lloyds List with Captain Maitland, launched at Blackwall, 3/2/1763, 670 tons.
http://www.euromodel-ship.com/files/Chronicle-of-the-Black-wall-Yard.pdf

Bute:
not in Lloyd’s Register 1764, 1768 A-L missing, not found 1780.

The Downs

The Downs are a roadstead or area of sea in the southern North Sea near the English Channel off the east Kent coast, between the North and the South Foreland in southern England. In 1639 the Battle of the Downs took place here, when the Dutch navy destroyed a Spanish fleet which had sought refuge in neutral English waters. From Elizabethan times, the presence of Downs helped to make Deal one of the premier ports in England, and in the 19th century, it was equipped with its own telegraph and timeball tower to enable ships to set their marine chronometers.

The anchorage has depths down to 12 fathoms (22 m).[1] Even during southerly gales some shelter was afforded, though under this condition wrecks were not infrequent. Storms from any direction could also drive ships onto the shore or onto the sands, which—in spite of providing the sheltered water—were constantly shifting, and not always adequately marked. The Downs served in the age of sail as a permanent base for warships patrolling the North Sea[2] and a gathering point for refitted or newly built ships coming out of Chatham Dockyard, such as HMS Bellerophon, and formed a safe anchorage during heavy weather, protected on the east by the Goodwin Sands and on the north and west by the coast. The Downs also lie between the Strait of Dover and the Thames Estuary, so both merchant ships awaiting an easterly wind to take them into the English Channel and those going up to London gathered there, often for quite long periods. According to the Deal Maritime Museum and other sources, there are records of as many as 800 sailing ships at anchor at one time.[3] (Wiki)

"Flat calm in the Downs. The Deal boatmen sometimes call it a 'sheet' calm. At any rate it is as calm as a pond, but not as motionless, for there is ever, and ever present the deep breathing of the sea, and always there sweeps through the Downs the mighty current of the tide - but to use another simile, the surface is like glass." (Treanor)
The Downs are an anchorage of deep water, open to the north and south, protected towards the east by the Goodwin Sands, and towards the west by the mainland. Rev. Treanor described them thus:

"In westerly winds the Downs are full of shipping outward bound, and waiting for a fair wind. Then on a dark night the long line of their gleaming riding lights suggests to the spectator some great city in the sea."

"In easterly winds the seaward-going host departs, and there come from the south and west the homeward-bound clippers, some in tow of steam-tugs for London, and others bound to northern ports, furling their sails for anchoring in the Downs till winds from the west and south spring up to bring them to their voyage end.

The larger vessels anchor in the southern part of the Downs, in eight or ten fathoms of water, the bottom being chalk; while the smaller vessels bring up more towards the north, in the Little Downs, in from four to six fathoms of water, in splendid holding-ground of blue clay. Once an anchor gets into this blue clay, it will hold the vessel unless her chain-cable parts, or till she splits her hawse-pipes."

Rev. Treanor speaks of "500 merchant sailing-vessels far-reaching to the north and south, some homeward, but the great majority of them outward bound to all parts of the world", of which at least half are British and the remainder "foreigners of all the maritime nations."

"Whether British or foreign, this host of 500 vessels contains about 5,00 men. For days, and sometimes weeks, they ride at anchor in the Downs, wearied by baffling calms or tempests .."

Even today, when storms threaten, many ships head for the Downs to take shelter and ride out the weather until it is safe to proceed to harbour. The layout of the harbour entrances at Dover make it dangerous to attempt an entry when the wind is blowing in the wrong direction, so it is common in rough weather to see several vessels, including cross-channel ferries laden with cars and passengers, riding out the storm off Deal, sometimes for several hours.

".. and at last the sky clears in the north-east, and a golden haze enshrouds the fleet which on the waves lies heaving many a mile."

".. on every ship the windlasses are manned. You hear the clicks of the palls as the anchors come up, and the creaking of the yards as they are being hoisted, and the singing of the sailors as they walk the capstan bars round, or heave the windlass handles to the strange weird mournful chorus of -

Give a man time
To roll a man down.
Give a man time
To roll a man down."

"And then the sailors nimbly run aloft to loose the sails. The gaskets are cast off, the bunt lines are let go, the clew lines hauled, and the great foretopsail bellies out before the freshening north-easter. Each ship spreads her wings, and they 'fly as a cloud and as the doves to their windows', presenting a wondrous spectacle of beauty from Deal Beach".[1]

http://www.gleaden.plus.com/landmarks/keppel.htm

Clipper Maitland

Tea clipper built in 1865 by William Pile, Sunderland. Dimensions: 183'0"×35'0"×19'5" and tonnage: 798,72 NRT and 754,58 tons under deck. Longitudinal section, deck plan and sail plan are preserved in the Science Museum, London. The builder's half model is in the possession of Joseph L. Thompson & Sons, Sunderland.
1865 December 2
Launched at the shipyard of William Pile, Sunderland, for John R. Kelso, North Shields.
1866
Sailed from Sunderland to Hong Kong in 87 days.
1866 July 11 - October 23
Sailed from Foochow to London in 104 days. Captain Coulson.
1867 June 1 - September 24
Sailed from Foochow to London in 115 days.
1867 November 5 - February 16
Sailed from London to Shanghai in 103 days.
1868 October 8 - January 25
Sailed from Shanghai to London in 109 days. Captain Coulson.
1869 July 29 - November 8
Sailed from Hong Kong to London in 102 days. Captain Coulson.
1870 September 10 - December 30
Sailed from Foochow to London in 111 days. Captain Hunter.
1871 February 12 - May 19

Sailed from Cardiff to Hong Kong in 96 days.
1871 July 8 - November 8
Sailed from Foochow to London in 123 days. Captain Reid.
1872 July 19 - November 6
Sailed from Foochow to London in 110 days. Captain Reid.
1873 July 10 - November 3
Sailed from Foochow to London in 116 days. Captain Reid.
1874 May 25
Wrecked on a coral reef in the Huon Islands, New Caledonia, on voyage from Brisbane to Foochow.

Updated 1996-12-28 by Lars.Bruzelius@udac.se

The Maritime History Virtual Archives | Ships | Teaclippers
Copyright © 1996 Lars Bruzelius. _

Richard Maitland’s Convoy in Duke, March 1757

PRO ADM 1/235, Admiral's despatches, Jamaica 1713-1789,

1757-1760 Lists and Indexes, Admiralty XVIII p3.
Copied by AM 22/5/2008: jpg files under family images/Maitland.

Marlborough at Spithead, 7^th March 1757.

Sir,

I received their Lordships orders of the 5^th Instant this morning, too late to answer by the Post. The two Assistant Surgeons I have ordered on board the Lynn.
Mr Jones Agent for the Hospital at Haslar applied to me this afternoon to take on board the Medicines and Stores for the Hospital at Jamaica and at the same time acquainted me they filled four wagons, it being impossible for me to receive such a Quantity either in my own Ship or Lynn with the Provisions ordered by their Lordships. I advised him to ship them on board some Merchant Ship bound to Jamaica. The Wind is now Eastward of the N and the Convoy from the Downs all at an anchor, though few of the Masters have yet been on board to take orders. I propose sailing tomorrow morning, and give them orders at Sea rather than lose an Opportunity of this Wind.
Inclosed is a List of the Ships under my Convoy, a more exact account of them will be sent you by the first Opportunity.
I am Sir
Your most Obedient Servant
Thos Cotes

Ships listed with:
Ships Name, Master’s Name, What Built, Were Belonging, Number of Men, Guns, Tons, From Whence, Whither Bound lading, When Received Order.
An extract:
Duke, Rich’d Maitland, Ship, London, 20, 10, 360, London, Virginia, Ballast, 7^th March 1757. (from NA photograph)

Marlborough at Spithead 10^th March 1757.

Sir,

The 8^th Instant in the morning I made the Signall to unmoor, and intended sailing but before I could get my Best Bower Anchor up, the Wind veered to the Southward and from thence to the Westward, which obliged to moor again in the Evening, it has since been variable with Calms, but I hope is now fixed Easterly. I made the Signal to unmoor this morning by break of day and I hope to get the Convoy out to Sea before Night.
Inclosed is a List of Ships who have taken my orders since my Letter of the 7^th Instant.
I am, Sir,
Your most Obdt Servant,
Thos Cotes
The Wind at NNE with Snow.

Marlborough in Torbay 15^th March 1757.

Since my Letter of the 12^th Instant from this Place His Majesty’s Ships Newcastle, Lynn and Hornett have joined me and brought in with them the merchant ships that were in the rear of the Fleet. The 13^th in the Evening the Wind came to the Northward and I was in hopes of its coming to the Eastward, I immediately made the Signal for getting ready to sail but before we could get a Peak on our anchor, it backed to the Westward and began to blow, and all yesterday it blew very hard at NW and WNW. Last night it was moderate Weather, and this morning it blows very hard at West.
I have wrote to Rear Admiral Harrison at Plymouth to desire a Supply of Beer only to be sent here, if the Wind should continue Westerly and keep us here.
I shall sail as soon as the Wind shifts so that I can get down Channell. Inclosed is the State of His Majesty’s Ships under my Command.
I am Sir,
Your most Obedient Servant,
Thos Cotes.

Marlborough in Torbay 16^th March 1757 at 1,0’clock pm

Sir,
The hard gale from the West to NNW that has blown for two days past, ceased this morning, and at 8 the Wind shifted to No when I made the Signal to prepare to sail, that the merchant ships might get up their Yards and Topmasts, and take up one anchor, most of them being obliged to let go two anchors, when it blew so hard; the Wind now appears to me settled at NNE and I am getting under sail, that the Fleet may have time to get one before Night,

I am, Sir,
etc.

Marlborough at Sea 8^th April 1757.
Latt in 41d 05m N Long 13:35 Wt
Start (Point?) No 38:45 E Dist 230Lg
Finister N54.15E Dist 73 Lgs.

The 17^th of March we sailed from Torbay the Wind then blowing fresh at NNE; by night all the Fleet were got clear; and at 8 we took our Departure from the Start, the Wind continued Easterly till the 18^th, when it veered to the Westward, and the 20^th it blew so hard we could carry no Sail, and were obliged to bring too under a Mainsail; the Merchant Ships who did not take care to bear down lost Company, as we drove much faster than them; The 24^th in the Lattitude of 48˚22’ Longitude 5˚ 4’ from the Start. A Merchant Ship acquainted me, that His Majesty’s Sloop Stork had in the late bad Weather in the Night carried away all her Masts, but had got up Jury Masts and was bore away for the Channell, and as the Wind was then at WSW I hope she soon got into some port. We had very bad weather for fifteen Days together in the Bay of Biscay, but have now a good Prospect of making our Passage soon. Very few of the Convoy have lost Company there being now 97 sail in sight.
Inclosed is the State of His Majesty’s Ship Marlborough, the Lynn and Hornett bring up the Rear of the Convoy, which prevents my getting their accounts.
I shall this morning part Company with Commodore Stevens and the India Ships as they must Steer more to the Southward than our Convoy lays.

etc, Thos Cotes.

Marlborough in Passage
8^th May 1757.
In my last letter of the 8^th of April by way of Madeira I acquainted you of my parting Company with Commodore Stevens and the East India Ships. The 10^th of April I made the Signal for all Masters of Merchant Ships, and finding only six light Ships bound to Barbados, and sixty to the other Islands, I ordered the Lynn to see them safe to Barbados, and with the remaining Sixty steered for Antigua, where I arrived the 5^th Instant, with all the Convoy. The Store ships went into English harbour and the Merchant Ships to their different Ports. I delivered Rear Admiral Frankland his Commission after he had taken the Oaths, and Subscribed the Test, a Certificate of which is Inclosed, I also told him he must direct his agent in London to pay the Fees of the Office.
The 6^th I ran? The Ships bound to Montserrat, Nevis and St Christopher to their several Ports, and anchored in this Road to get a Supply of Water and Rum for the Ship’s Company, all the Wine we brought out of England being expended by the Length of our Passage, I have been obliged to hire a Sloop to fetch my Water, as old Road is by no means a proper Place for so large a Ship to lay and there is no Water here, the Moment she returns I shall proceed with the Trade bound to Jamaica. The Storeships that stopped at Antigua have some of His Majesty’s Stores on board for Jamaica. I have ordered Capt Kirke to call at Antigua to convoy them to Jamaica, and I have desired Adml Frankland to assist in unloading them that the Lynnn may not be detained there.
The Recruits of Colonel Ross’s Regiment I sent to the Head Quarters in a Schooner W Frankland lent me, four of them dyed in the Passage of Fevers. The Packetts for Barbados I sent by Capt Kirke, and those for Antigua I delivered to Admiral Frankland.
Inclosed is an Affidavit, that was yesterday made before the Lieutenant Governor of this Island, the Person who made it seemed to me to be very positive as to the facts. I therefore thought it my duty to get an Original to lay before their Lordships.
Inclosed it the State of His Majesty’s Ship the Marlborough and Hornett Sloop.

I am etc.

Edinburgh Port Royal Jamaica
7 May 1757 659

Recd 22 June,
Read ditto

Sir,
Since my last to you of the 24^th March, by his Majesty's Ship the Biddeford, I beg leave to Acquaint you, for the Information of the Rt Honourable the Lords, Commissioners of the Admiralty, that his Majesty's Ships Augusta, Princess Mary and Humber, Arrived here on the 7^th of last month, from the North sides of Hispaniola, Captain Craven Acquaints me in his Letter of the same day, of his looking into Cape Francois, a Copy of which Letter I have hereby enclosed. His Majesty's Dreadnought, and Shoreham are likewise Arrived, from the South sides of Hispaniola.
I have here inclosed you a Deposition of one Joseph Thurston, Master of the Snow Defiance, giving an Account of his falling in with a Fleet of Ships, Off the Island of Mona, and one of the Ships carrying a White Flagg at the Foretopmast head. As in my former Letter to you, Sir, of the 24^th of March, I acquainted you, the French Prisoners, that were taken by one of our Privateers, gave an account of fourteen Sail of French Men of War, Sailing from Brest, And as this Master says he saw these ships off St. Domingo, I immediately dispatched a small schooner up to Port Louis, to look into that harbour, for if they were the French Squadron, they might have put in there, but upon her return, the Officer I sent in the Schooner, Informed me, he saw nothing in the Harbour, but two small Vessels; I therefore Imagine the Fleet was the Spanish Flota, which is expected every day but as I shall endeavour to gain the best intelligence I can. I have ordered his Majesty's Ship Lively, who arrived here with the Roebuck and Assistance, with the Trade from ?? on the 25^th of last month to prepare for the Seas, and propose as she goes well, to send her up to look into Cape Francois, that I may know if there are any other French Squadron there, except that of Monsieur Beaufremond, and especially as there is some reason to think that the French Squadron that was upon the Coast of Guinea is Arrived there as their Lordships will please to Observe by Captains Wyatts letter to me of this 25^th April.
I have ordered his Majesty's Ship Assistance to Carreen, without loss of time, and I am ordering to put the Squadron in the best condition I can, having Stores of any kind, and hope to have some further ?? with the Trade from England, by the time the Squadron is ready for the Sea.
The several Rumours We have had, both from the Dutch and Spaniards, of the French intending an attack on this Island, has occasioned the Lieutenant Governor to declare Martial Law, and they are now putting the Fortifications of this Island into the best postures of Defence they can; I have given them all the Assistance in my power, by mounting their Cannon and repairing such of their Carriages as were gone to decay, and shall contine my Assistances to them, to this Utmost, and hope in a little time to see their Forts in a suitable situation to repulse any Attack that may be made on this Island.
I would further Acquaint you; for their Lordships Information, that Monsieur Bart, the new Governor of Hispaniola, has sent a Flagg of Truce, which Arrived here the 30^th of March, to Mr Moore, the Lieutenant Governor, to prepare an Exchange of Prisoners, by which Opportunity I received a Letter from Captain Roddan, with an Account of the taking of His Majesty's Ship Greenwich, a Copy of which I herewith Inclose.
His Majesty's Ship the Wager[i] is likewise returned to this Port, but am very sorry to Acquaint you of the Death of Captain Preston, and the Surgeon and Purser of that Ship, I have appointed Mr Shurmer, first Lieutenant of the Edinburgh, Captain of the Wager, and Mr Burnett, Midshipman on board His Majesty's Ship Dreadnought, to be third Lieutenant of the Humber, having moved Mr Dumaresque, first Lieutenant of that Ship, to be fourth Lieutenant of the Edinburgh, Whom I hope their Lordships will favour me so far as to Confirm.
I have Inclosed you, Sir, a certain Account of the eight ?? ships that are Arrived at Cape Francois, under the Command of Monsieur Beaufremond, And likewise Captain Moore's Account of the Spanish Ships now laying at the Havanna.
I beg leave to Acknowledge this Receipt of their Lordships Orders of the 3^rd January 1757, relating to ?? the time of the Departure of the first and second Convoy, for proceeding to England with the Trade if this Island, which I shall punctually Confirm to, and give the proper Notice thereof.
Captain Weller having Acquainting me, he had appointed Mr John Henry third Lieutenant of His Majesty's Ship Assistance on the Coast of Guinea, in the room of one of the Lieutenants who dyed there, And Mr Henry not having passed for a Lieutenant, Applies to me for an Order of that purpose, which I Granted, and I Inclose you a Copy of the Certificate of his having passed, together with the State and Condition of his Majesty's Squadron under my Command.

I am Sir, Your Most Humble Servant,

Geo Townshend

Sir, since writing the above, Captain Wickham of His Majesty's Ship Augusta, & Captain Forest of His Majesty's Ship Rye having acquainted me they are desirous of Exchanging their Commissions, I have consented to it.

Also short list of:
Spanish Ships in Havanna,
French ships at Cape Francois (Haiti),
The English Squadron at Port Royal.

3. A DETAILED HISTORY of St PAUL'S SHADWELL

By Alan Baxter and Associates

(Included as it was the residence of Richard Maitland, the progenitor of the Jamaican Family)

1 The beginnings

The remains of a guard tower suggest that The Highway, on the higher ground above the flood-prone area to the south, formed a main approach to Roman London from the east, but it seems unlikely that there was any significant settlement in the area up until the 16th century. The name ‘Shadewell’ was recorded as early as 1223, and could have derived from Shady (or Poisoned) Well, Shallow Well, or perhaps a corruption of St Chad’s Well. Despite such early records, the area was sparsely inhabited, and in Tudor times it was covered with ditches feeding a tidal mill.

Shadwell developed as a notable settlement from around 1600. It was in this year that it was first mentioned in the baptism registers of St Dunstan’s, Stepney, and its rapid growth is shown by its frequent recurrence in the registers thereafter. Its position was ideal for further growth, as Ratcliff immediately to the east was the nearest landfall downriver of London with a good road to the capital, and was a place of embarkation and disembarkation for travellers and sailors alike.

The majority of the land in Shadwell, from the site of the present Church in the west to the borders of Ratcliff in the east, and from the line later marked by Cable Street to the river, was owned by the Deans of St Paul’s, who were inactive landlords. Nevertheless, in the early 17th century there was a considerable growth in marine industries and trades in the area, which caused a great increase in population and led to a house building boom. Over 60 fines were levied on Shadwell houses built illegally in the 1620s and 1630s along The Highway and the riverfront, and beside Fox’s Lane which ran between them just east of where the present Church now stands.

By the time the Commonwealth government surveyed the Dean’s lands in 1650 there were 703 houses in Shadwell, excluding the area west of Fox’s Lane not owned by the Dean. Around 60% of the householders made their living on the river, as mariners or watermen etc, while another 20% were in trades reliant directly on shipping, such as shipbuilding or supporting crafts. 32 wharves lined the 400 yards of riverfront, while roperies, timber yards and smithies filled much of the land behind.

In a few decades Shadwell had developed piecemeal into a considerable settlement through speculative building, which had created a sprawl of houses and industries with no defined centre and little social organisation. At around 3% of the population, the ‘middle class’ in Shadwell was extremely small in comparison to the other Stepney hamlets. As late as 1640, the parish of Stepney had 41 officers, but there were none responsible for Shadwell. The area desperately needed social leadership and physical improvement.

2 Thomas Neal and urban development

Thomas Neal (or Neale) was a speculative builder, responsible for Neal Street and the Seven Dials area of the West End. In 1656 he built a chapel in Shadwell (described in 3 below), fulfilling the wishes of many local residents who felt that, with a population of around 6,000 people, the area needed a focal point for the community. His activity in Shadwell brought him into close friendship with William Sancroft, the Dean of St Paul’s who had recovered the land after the Restoration, and who later became Archbishop of Canterbury. This close relationship allowed Neal to obtain the lease of Shadwell on extremely favourable terms in 1669, and he set about improving the area in the hope of increasing its value.

One of Neal’s first successes was in 1670, when his influential friends allowed him to overcome numerous objections to splitting up the huge parish of Stepney. In spite of other previous and much more practical proposals for four equal parishes to be created, he gained separate parish status for the Shadwell Chapel. The new parish church, serving an area only 910 by 760 yards, was rededicated to St Paul in honour of the Dean of St Paul’s who had been so favourable toward him. This victory gave Shadwell its own social structure centred around the parish church, with its own organisation of churchwardens to look after the community, ensure law and order, and levy rates to fund local improvements.

Neal’s commitment to the area continued until his death at the end of the century. In 1673 he rebuilt over 100 homes after they were destroyed by fire, replanning the area with wider streets and building a new quay along the river. In 1682 he rehoused over 1500 families after a massive fire in Wapping and Shadwell, laying out Dean Street as a new thoroughfare. Neal also obtained a charter to hold a market, which he built in 1681-82, so that his tenants did not have to travel to the City to buy and sell, the nearer Ratcliff market having foundered. In 1684, he opened a water works that pumped water from the river to houses from East Smithfield to Stepney, and lasted until it was bought up by the London Dock Company in the early 19th century.

Thomas Neal’s achievement was to turn the ramshackle, amorphous grouping of houses into a real community with a religious and social centre in its parish church, and a commercial heart surrounding its market. He greatly improved the attractiveness of the area, paving the way for it to become famous as a residence of sea captains during the 18th century.

3 The first church

The Chapel was built between 1656 and 1658 on land just outside the Dean of St Paul’s estate, along The Highway on the high ground that never flooded. It was a relatively simple building, still owing much to the medieval past in its triple-gabled nave and aisles layout, though the individual features such as the round-headed windows were classical.

Some important elements of this original Church still survive in the present building, most notably the font. The pulpit was thought to be original by some historians, but a different type is shown on illustrations of the old interior. There also remain considerable items of furniture and plate from the old Church.

4 The eighteenth century

Shadwell continued to grow in the early part of the 18th century as most of the spare land was developed. A survey in 1732 noted over 1800 houses in the parish, many of which had degenerated into slums. Unskilled people flocked to the parish from as far afield as north east England and Ireland, looking for casual labour on the docks and wharves. The continuing increase in seaborne trade and naval expansion contributed to a growth in marine industries, including the roperies with their typical long, narrow sheds and walks, so evident on early maps.

Shadwell was famous for its many master mariners; over 175 were registered as living in the parish at one time or another. By the end of the century, St Paul’s was known as ‘the Church of the Sea Captains’, and 75 were said to be buried in its vaults. Captain Cook was perhaps the most famous parishioner, though Thomas Jefferson’s mother was also a regular worshipper before emigrating to America. The Church was the centre of community life in Shadwell, and attracted considerable bequests for its charitable works. Although not one of the more missionary churches in the area, it was nonetheless the scene for five of John Wesley’s sermons between 1770 and 1790, including his very last.

Shadwell’s maritime connections opened it up to the successive waves of immigrants that came to Britain from the later 17th century. Huguenots were among the first to arrive, and planted the ancient mulberry tree which still survives in the Rectory garden for their silkworms. Spanish and Portuguese Jews arrived later, and were known for their skills in metal working and casting. Germans and Scandinavians were also a strong presence in Shadwell, being mainly concerned with the timber trade and related businesses. The area was also notorious for its many taverns and brothels, which did extremely well out of the sailors passing almost continuously through the area.

The industrialisation of the area slowly led to a decline in the social status of the inhabitants, and in their living conditions. J P Malcolm described Shadwell in the following terms in 1803:

Thousands of useful tradesmen, artisans and mechanics, and numerous watermen inhabit Shadwell, but their homes and workshops will not bear description; nor are the streets, courts, lanes and alleys by any means inviting. …[the Church] is a most disgraceful building of brick totally unworthy of description.

The fabric of the Church suffered from the inability of the parishioners to pay adequately for its upkeep. The unstable south wall was rebuilt in 1735, but by the end of the century the local people could not raise enough money to perform vital repairs. When part of the ceiling fell down in 1811, the Church was declared unfit for use, and was closed for all services except christenings and burials.

5 The second church

With their Church in ruins, the relatively poor congregation had little chance of rebuilding it by themselves. A further hindrance was the opposition of some major local ratepayers, most notably the London Dock Company, to the added expense. In 1817, the parishioners finally succeeded in securing a special Act of Parliament to authorise rebuilding; the Act’s wording recognised that although the population of the parish was estimated at 10,000, they were not very wealthy, ‘the far greater part of them being labourers in the docks and on the River’. The architect chosen was John Walters, whose estimate for the new Church came to £14,000. The sale of the fittings and materials from the old building before demolition fetched only £223. 13s. 0d. and £419. 1s. 8d., respectively, leaving the local people with a considerable struggle to find the remainder.

Tradition maintains that the parish obtained a grant from the Church Building Commission to cover the cost of the new building. The Commission was established by Act of Parliament in 1818, to spend £1,000,000 in providing new Anglican churches, both as a memorial and thanksgiving for the victory at Waterloo, and ‘lest a godless people might also be a revolutionary people’. Another Act added £500,000 to this in 1824. There is no reference to St Paul, Shadwell receiving a grant from the Commission in M.H. Port’s comprehensive study, but one seems to have been made nevertheless. In the event, the building cost £27,000, ranking it as one of the more expensive of the time.

John Walters

John Walters was born in 1782, and learned his architecture under D. A. Alexander, the designer of the famously Piranesian Maidstone Gaol, most of what is now the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, and numerous dock and warehouse buildings in Wapping and elsewhere. Walters lived and practised in Fenchurch Buildings in the City, and was by all accounts a diligent, able and respected architect, with an almost fanatical interest in his vocation. As well as several buildings, he also had an interest in naval architecture and designed a diagonal truss to strengthen ships’ hulls. Walters died in 1821 at the age of 39, the result of chronic overwork. He left a widow and a son, Edward (1808-72), who became a successful Manchester architect. Walters’ first notable building appears to have been the Auction Mart in Bartholomew Lane, a fine design which was completed in 1809. Its exterior was rather Palladian, while the interiors were inspired by Sir John Soane’s Bank of England. St Paul’s Shadwell (1819-20) was also in a classical manner, though this time leaning much more towards the Greek influences of Neoclassicism. The Gothic of St Philip’s Chapel, Turner Street, Stepney (1818-20) was impressive for its time, although by the standards of later Victorian architects its detailing appears clumsy. This last building is very different to Walters’ usual style, and in fact was probably mostly designed by his pupil Francis Goodwin, who had was a very prolific designer of Gothic churches for the Church Building Commission (see M. H. Port, pp. 71-72). All of the other buildings known to have been designed by John Walters have now been demolished. St Paul’s, Shadwell therefore possesses particular interest as his only surviving building.

With the money in place to pay for the new Church, Walters’ design was executed by J. Streather, as recorded on the west front. The building consisted of a central box-like main space with a projecting chancel at the east end, and a tower at the west end flanked by staircases to the galleries, and included a large crypt which extended under the entire Church and also eastwards and westwards under the Churchyard. The building was largely constructed out of yellow brick, with a stone plinth, and dressings of stone and stucco render, giving an appearance described by the Gentleman’s Magazine as ‘simply neat, and elegantly chaste’. It was apparently consecrated on 5 April 1820, although some sources give the year as 1821. The railings around the edge of the Churchyard appear to date from the early 19th century and were probably designed along with the Church itself.

Exterior
The Church is like a rectangular box with roughly equal projections at the east and west ends, which contain the tower and stairs, and chancel, respectively. The central box contains the main body of the Church, and is astylar, whereas the two projections are decorated by pilasters, with a pediment at the west end. The windows are also subtly different, with those on the upper part of the main body having individual cornices above their architraves, whereas those on the projections have plain architraves. Such minor details show the thoughtfulness of Walters as an architect.

The western projection of the Church has stone steps with metal railings leading to central panelled double doors flanked by round-headed niches, set in a tetra-style Tuscan pilaster portico supporting a triangular pediment, above which sits the base of the tower. Three tablets above the door and niches record the rebuilding of the Church and the names of Walters as architect and Streather as builder. The sides of this projection act as the flanks of the temple portico, with pilasters at the north and south corners and two rectangular windows one above the other. Where the flanks meet the main body of the Church are interesting gargoyles at cornice level, much decayed now but just discernible as fish or stylised dolphins, alluding to the Church’s maritime connections.

The steeple rises through several stages from its square base above the pediment, moving from a square lantern with four pairs of corner columns supporting an engaged entablature, to a circular tempietto surmounted by inverted brackets supporting an obelisk. Bridget Cherry notes accurately that ‘The stone steeple evokes Wren’s St Mary-le-Bow via Dance’s St Leonard Shoreditch’. The Gentleman’s Magazine described it as ‘peculiarly beautiful, and it is not too much to say, that in correctness of design, and in the simple harmony of its several parts, it scarcely yields to the most admired object of the kind in the metropolis’. Within it hang eight bells, six of which were recast from the peal of the original Church. The clock and its three clock-faces underneath the lantern would The south and north sides of the central box of the Church are virtually identical. They have two rows of five rectangular windows lighting the ground floor and the galleries. The lower windows rest directly on a stone string course, and both rows are set within stone architraves, which have now been painted white. Each side is capped by a plain rendered frieze and cornice, at the same height as that on the west portico, with a the eastern projection is also decorated with Tuscan pilasters, with another tetra-style portico framing the rear outer wall of the chancel, this time without a pediment. The centre originally featured a door at ground level, with a blank wall above (perhaps originally decorated with a commemorative tablet), though in 1848 William Butterfield blocked up the door and inserted a tripartite round-arched window into the upper part of the wall (see 8 below). Either side of the central bay are niches with tablets above, similar to the west end; the north and south sides of this projection also match those on the west.
Interior

The west door gave on to a vestibule beneath the tower, with a room and a staircase to either side and a glazed partition leading into the main space. This measured about 96 feet by 36, smaller than was usual at the time, due to the relatively small size of the parish which the Church served, but it still featured four galleries, one on each side, supported on sixteen Tuscan columns. Three of the galleries remain today; the missing eastern one was semicircular, and contained the organ now in the western one. The western gallery was originally probably similar to the north and south ones, with much lower raking to the steps. The galleries originally also featured religious quotations stencilled onto the entablature above the columns - some parts of which are still discernible today.

The door in the east wall was screened from the rest of the Church by a semicircular partition underneath the gallery, in front of which was west-facing seating. The communion table salvaged from the earlier Church was placed in front of these, with the present pulpit to the south and a large reading desk to the north. The inner doors to the nave, and those to the gallery above, had groups of lozenge-shaped openings very similar to the balustrade motif that Walters had used at the Auction Mart and in the Church’s communion rail.

The Church was probably fitted up with box pews throughout, much like the churchwardens’ pews still present at the west end of the nave. The pews, the wall panelling, and the gallery fronts were of oak, painted ‘in a pale stone colour; the Creed, &c. being written in golden letter on panels of a darker shade of the same’ (Appendix 4). The original appearance of this panelling is still preserved in a hidden section behind the current western gallery (fig 20). Together with the light walls and ceiling, and clear glass throughout, this colour scheme would have made the Church appear much more light, airy and chaste than it does now. A large marble tablet was placed on the front of the western gallery commemorating the names of the officers and the date of the rebuilding – this was later moved to the western vestibule.

The roof

This is an interesting part of the Church, and remains substantially as it was built, apart from some modern metal clamps strengthening cracked members. The main roof structure consists of four interpenetrating trusses of slightly unorthodox design, which intersect over the centre of the domed ceiling which hangs beneath. The smaller chancel roof is of a similar arrangement, though simplified.

6 The Rectory and Church School (St Paul’s Institute)

A charity school for the poor children of the parish, of which there were a great many, was established in 1696, and funded by bequests and benefactions. As such it was the earliest parochial charity school in London. It was housed in a building near the Church, but this had become so dilapidated by 1816 that it had to be closed. The children were taught in rented rooms until 1829, when ‘the schoolhouse was rebuilt upon a very handsome plan, corresponding with the style of the Church; and now forms the entire western end of the new Churchyard’ (anonymous description, c.1829-48).

It is not known who provided the design for the Institute. It has long been held (e.g. in the Buildings of England, 2005, p. 40) that the Institute and the Rectory were built at the same time as the Church, again to the designs of Walters. Given the evidence above this does not appear to be the case for the Institute. It also seems unlikely that Walters was the designer of the Rectory, as an Act of Parliament was obtained for its rebuilding in 1826, five years after his death.

It appears that the new schoolhouse comprised the first two floors of what is now the St Paul’s Institute. The style of these two storeys is very similar to that of many buildings erected at that time, especially in the pavilions at the north and south ends, and also matches the Neoclassical style of the Church. The upper storey in the centre is constructed with slightly different bricks, and would appear to have been added later in the 19th century, giving a slightly Victorian character to what must originally have been a typical Regency building. The unusually high undercroft is original to the 1829 building, and was used mainly as an extension to the burial space in the Church crypt, with which it apparently connects. The northern end of the building facing The Highway contains one set of double doors, behind which is a room understood to be where the local fire engine was kept.

Some maps show the school occupying only the northern half of the building in the mid 19th century, which would explain why there are two main entrances rather than one. The schoolhouse was described variously on maps as a ‘National School’, (1862), as a ‘Vestry Hall’ (1870) and as ‘Shadwell Church School’ (1885). The Education Act of 1890 removed the pupils to the local Board School, and the building was then known as the Church House. It was also used for adult education, for which purpose it was renamed the St Paul’s Institute. The second floor room in the centre functioned as a gymnasium during this period.

7 The development of the docks in the nineteenth century

The early part of the 19th century saw the expansion of St Katherine’s Docks from their original area, built in 1802-05 by the Tower, eastwards into Wapping and eventually into Shadwell itself in 1828-32. The construction of Shadwell Basin involved the demolition of many houses in Lower Shadwell, increasing the already acute overcrowding, which further worsened as more properties were taken over for warehousing. The increase in trade also brought another influx of low skilled labourers who earned a living through casual work, and spurred on the exodus of the dwindling middle class.

The construction of the first Shadwell Basin did not greatly affect the setting of the Church, but the New Basin dug in 1854-58 changed the area greatly. The London Dock Company were able to compulsorily purchase all the houses south of the Church, and part of the Churchyard itself, which was removed to allow construction of the dock and quay. Perceived movement of the Church walls (still evident today in the slightly bowed south wall) during the excavation of the New Basin forced the construction of the large buttressed retaining wall which still prevents the Churchyard from sliding into the water today. A plaque dated 1859 and set into the wall states that it belongs to the parish, though its upkeep is the responsibility of the London Dock Company. This duty has presumably devolved to the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, which now maintains Shadwell Basin. Where now the quay in front of the Church is an open space, from the 1850s until the later 20th century it was filled with low warehouses and workshops, which gave the Church an avowedly industrial setting when viewed from the south.

Butterfield’s most important changes of 1848 involved the chancel, which was turned from a repository for the organ into a sacred space for the altar. The eastern gallery was removed and the organ was placed in a reordered western gallery with dark panelling and draught lobbies, while a rounded chancel arch was built across the eastern recess, supported on engaged stone columns set within the old walls to leave space for a narrow vestry and sacristy to each side, entered by new doorways. This arch clearly divided the Church into two spaces: nave and chancel, rather than the single united space it had been before; the division was further enhanced by lowering the chancel ceiling with a semicircular plaster vault of the same height as the new arch, and inserting in the east wall a tripartite window with equal round-headed lights, featuring stained glass by Ward and Nixon. The high-level windows on the north and south sides of the chancel were blocked by the new lower vault, though the glass and frames survived. The low-level chancel windows were used to light the vestry and sacristy. The eastern door, which so offended the Ecclesiologist, was also bricked up, and the communion table, now referred to as an altar, was placed against the wall.

Butterfield would also have replaced the old Georgian box pews with bench pews, probably like the ones with scalloped armrests still scattered around the edge of the nave and in the galleries. (These were replaced around 1914 or between the wars by neo-Georgian bench pews.) The pews, wall panelling and gallery fronts were either replaced or stripped and stained to a dark colour. The north and south galleries were rearranged so that the seats faced eastwards rather than into the body of the Church. The pulpit was moved to the north side of the Church, and the reading desk cut down into a clergy stall which stood on one side of the chancel, matched on the other side by a copy. A new movable lectern was designed, in typical Butterfield style, to match the round-arched motif he had just introduced in the chancel. The font from the old Church was brought back and placed at the west end, replacing the temporary basin on the communion table that had previously been used.

The Church was also given a decorative scheme to match its new appearance. The low round-headed chancel arch and the triple window had given the building a rather Byzantine air, and this effect was increased by the addition of a reredos featuring ‘the Agnus Dei, and the evangelistic symbols, painted on a gold ground with Byzantine ornamentation’. The chancel arch itself was decorated with ‘the monograms “I H C” and “X P C,” in relief… picked out in colour’. Other, more gothic furnishings such as the side altar at present in the south aisle, and the Puginian gothic chairs that at one time flanked the chancel, were also apparently added at this time. The Ecclesiologist concluded approvingly that ‘the whole effect of the church, with its chancel, is very religious’.

Butterfield’s church alterations were heavily criticised in the 20th century, but it is worth remembering that his changes were so much less thorough than the wholesale rebuilding often undertaken by his contemporaries, as Paul Thompson noted:

[His] rearrangements have been very severely criticized. Nevertheless, what is remarkable is not that he adapted classical churches to the new liturgical needs, but that he respected their architectural character. This was so from the first example, St Paul’s Shadwell, of 1848. Butterfield never attempted to gothicize or Byzantinize classical churches, like Scott, Street or Teulon; he was prepared to change them without imposing his own aesthetic tastes upon them.

It can be argued that Butterfield did actually go some way towards ‘Byzantinizing’ St Paul’s, Shadwell, but Thompson is right to say that, relatively speaking, he was a much less interventionist re-orderer of fabric than was usual for his time. For an example of what could happen to a church in the Greek style in this period one need only look at St Mark’s, North Audley Street, Mayfair, the nave of which was comprehensively rebuilt by Sir Arthur Blomfield in the 1870s. The relative ease with which the St Paul’s was later restored to something close to its original layout is testament to Butterfield’s more restrained approach.

9 Shadwell in the 20th century

There were some attempts to improve living conditions in the parish from the 1840s, when the first philanthropic missions appeared in this part of the East End. Slum clearances were being made as early as the 1860s, but in 1902 Charles Booth noted in his Life and labour of the people in London that the parish of St Paul’s had gained little from the efforts of outsiders and the clergy to improve the religious life and living conditions of most people there. The much larger slum clearance schemes of the London County Council in the first half of the 20th century had a bigger impact on the local environment, and led to the destruction of most of the unsanitary tenements that had been characteristic of the streets around the Church for centuries (fig 36).

Probably the most dramatic alteration to the area in this century was the creation in the 1920s of the King Edward VII Memorial Park to the east of Glamis Road, which entailed the demolition of a great many houses and the destruction of what had been the very heart of old Shadwell. At the time this was seen my most as an important step forward for an area which had almost no recreational or green space, and the setting of the Church from the south east was profoundly changed from urban to semi-rural.

The massive destruction wrought on the East End during the Second World War spared the Church, but destroyed its neighbour St James, Ratcliff, which was not restored (the two parishes were united in 1951). The St Paul’s Institute received minor damage, while the Rectory was quite badly affected. Many of the parish records were also apparently destroyed in the raids. Most of the stretch of The Highway opposite the Church was badly damaged, and was partly replaced in the 1960s with the Glamis Estate.

The social make-up of the area remained solidly working class through most of the 20th century, mainly comprised of dock labourers, watermen and lightermen, and others working in industries and trades associated with shipping. The Government plan to move industry and jobs out of the East End to some of the New Towns in the 1950s and 1960s caused a fracturing of the old relatively stable society, and increased unemployment in the area to far above the national average. Unfortunately this coincided with the decline of the St Katherine’s and London Docks, which had suffered even before the war from the trend towards larger ships that could no longer be accommodated so far upriver. Maritime trade migrated eastwards along with many jobs, until the advent of containerisation in the 1960s ruined the prospects of the docks altogether. Many of the London Docks were filled in and their surrounding warehouses destroyed, and the area slid into a state of widespread dereliction.

Throughout the 1960s, 70s and 80s there was a widespread feeling that Shadwell was ‘dying’, and there were several attempts to close the Church altogether, which were successfully fought off by a determined, though small, congregation. Their efforts enabled the Church to remain as part of the community, which was very slowly coming back to life with new housing schemes, many of them promoted by the London Docklands Development Corporation. The LDDC paid for many improvements to the Church in the 1980s, including the conversion of the crypt into a community centre, and connecting Shadwell Basin to the Churchyard with a set of steps. In 1985-87 the warehouses and sheds around the west, north and east sides of the Basin were replaced by new housing, drawing on the old dockside typology of colonnades to relate to the water. The area south of the Church was left open, enabling a direct relationship with the water, and giving access from the dockside up the steps to the Churchyard.

10 Alterations to the Church in the 20th century

Butterfield’s ecclesiological refurbishment was becoming quite unfashionable by the early years of the new century, and in 1914 the new vicar requested permission to take down the false chancel arch, remove the east window, and replace the pews. Not much appears to have been done before the

The Churchyard was cleared of most memorials in the 1920s and was used as a nature study area. A war memorial cross was erected by The Highway in 1923, but the Church itself had to wait until 1931 for action to be taken to purge most of Butterfield’s changes. The chancel was ‘restored’ to its original shape, although the sacristy and vestry were too convenient to remove, and the stone columns flanking the chancel were retained. The dome was reformed and painted to give an ‘evening sky’ effect, following the admired children’s chapel in the crypt of St Martin in the Fields. Butterfield’s east window was, however, retained, although the original high-level chancel side windows were reinstated. A vestry area formed by wooden panelling in the eastern bay of the south aisle was also removed at this time, opening up the nave back to its original unified state. These changes can be seen marked on the drawings made by the architect, W. C. Waymouth.

Also in 1931, the northern staircase was removed from the west end to allow the conversion of the ground floor into a choir vestry, while creating a rectangular store room on the first floor. This was so well done that it is now impossible to tell that there was ever a staircase in that position. It would also appear that it was around 1931 when additional columns were added under the galleries at the east end so as to flank the side altars, as both a plan drawn up in 1923 and Waymouth’s own plans

In 1956 the Church celebrated its 300th anniversary, and the occasion was used as an opportunity to raise money for repairs to the Church and the renovation of the Churchyard, crypt and Institute building. The amount required was £7,000, and supporters of the tercentenary appeal included John Betjeman, the former Prime Minister Earl (Clement) Attlee and, reflecting the parish’s connection with Captain Cook, the High Commissioner for Australia. One of the most visible results of the campaign was the restoration of the Victorian rose garden within the Churchyard, which contained over 80 varieties. In 1964, the war-damaged east window was finally given new glass, by John Hayward. Also around this time, both the dark wooden columns supporting the gallery and Butterfield’s light stone chancel columns, now vestigial, were given apricot marbling, and gilded capitals. This changed the character of the interior quite markedly, disrupting the previous dichromy of dark brown for all fittings, and light stone or off-white for all walls. The ceiling was also once again repaired, this time retaining the 1931 decoration.

In 1974 the choir stalls were removed from the chancel, and the pulpit moved back into the nave. Then six years later the London Docklands Development Corporation paid the full costs of a £103,000 refurbishment, including repairs to the steeple, a new path through the Churchyard to Shadwell Basin, and the conversion of the crypt into a youth training centre. The latter involved the removal of 200 lead-lined coffins from the crypt into the vaults under the western steps. In the Churchyard, the LDDC paid for the creation of a path through from The Highway to Shadwell Basin, and set up new railings in a similar style to the old ones to separate the grave areas from the forecourt. In 1988 this phase came to an end with the construction of the steps down to Shadwell Basin.

The most recent alterations have included the installation of gas central heating in 1989, the refurbishment of the organ and the conversion of the crypt into a nursery in 1990, and the installation of concrete paving in the parking areas in 1994. Most recently of all, the tower and roof were repaired in the last few years, and in 2005 the plaster ceiling of the nave was restored.

11 The Church and Institute today

Having survived the depopulation of the parish resulting from the creation of Shadwell Basin and King Edward VII Memorial Park, the destruction of the Blitz, and subsequent policies of reducing housing density and removing industry, the Church in the 1980s and 1990s had to adapt to an increasingly non-Christian local population. Although the problem of a small congregation has greatly inhibited the religious life of the parish in the last few decades, the Church has nevertheless continued to be successful in reaching out to the local community. In addition to the Institute, which at one time housed offices for the Borough of Tower Hamlets, the Church has often been used for community purposes, and since 1984 the crypt has been used as a nursery and junior school. Most recently, in 2005, the arrival of a hundred parishioners relocated from Holy Trinity Brompton has provided a huge boost to the religious and communal life of the Church, and promises to have a great impact on its future as an institution.

12 The setting

The Church stands within the St Paul’s Conservation Area. Initially the row of dock cottages east of the Churchyard was also included in the Conservation Area, but they now appear to have been removed. The dock cottages are Grade II listed, however, and still form part of the setting of the Church. North of them along The Highway are modern houses and flats of purple brick, which are sympathetic in their scale to the historic buildings nearby. The Conservation Area bestows protection on all trees within the Churchyard. In addition, the views towards the Church spire are protected by Tower Hamlets Council in its Unitary Development Plan (1998).To east and west, the immediate setting of the Church has not changed greatly in its essentials since the early 19th century. The green island of the Churchyard with the detached Church in its centre is still, as it always has been, an oasis in this tightly-packed urban area, with the spire making a handsome landmark for those travelling along The Highway. John Betjeman was very taken by the beauty of the Church’s immediate setting, and noted that it was certainly designed to be seen in the round, flanked by complementary buildings and surrounded by trees and shrubs: ‘The Church itself is different from a Wren Church in that the steeple is related to the Church as a building. Most of Wren’s steeples are designed to be seen above the tops of houses, whereas St Paul’s (Shadwell) steeple is part of the whole composition.’

Thankfully, many of the surrounding buildings and trees remain to this day, although much else has disappeared. In seeking to convey the importance of the Churchyard and its setting, it is worth quoting from the Statement of Significance of Shenstone & Partners, 2003: ‘Positioned between the heavy traffic along The Highway and the tranquil pedestrian area around Shadwell Basin, makes this a prominent site and group of buildings, of local importance in both townscape and amenity terms, in addition to the architectural and historical qualities of the buildings themselves.’

In contrast to the immediate setting east and west of the Church, the areas to the north and south have changed greatly in character since the construction of the Church. To the south the dense network of streets that characterised old Shadwell was swept away by the London Dock Company, although the sight of the Church from across Shadwell Basin (fig 56) makes a fine view. To the north, the dense agglomeration of houses and warehouses have been swept away and replaced by much more open development, in the form of the Glamis Estate. There is now a great contrast between the green urbanity of the St Paul’s Conservation Area south of the road, and the rather more stereotypical and unsympathetic ‘inner city’ feel of the modern buildings to the north, especially the 1960s estate buildings.

The widening of The Highway and its use as a major east-west through-traffic route has had a major impact on the setting of the Church. It cuts St Paul’s off from the northern part of the parish, and also harms the attractiveness of views towards it, as well as intruding on the peaceful atmosphere which the beauty and role of the Churchyard deserves.

From further away, the King Edward VII Memorial Park and Shadwell Basin New Entrance allow the Church to be framed to advantage from the river, where it appears to be in an almost rural setting. Unfortunately, however, the exceptionally unsympathetic tower of Gordon House on the Glamis Estate intrudes into this view from nearly all directions, greatly compromising the setting of the Church from further away. The problem is especially acute from the river, there it is the only building which disrupts an otherwise beautiful prospect.

4. Trollope's Spanish Town:

MISS SARAH JACK, OF SPANISH TOWN, JAMAICA

by Anthony Trollope (1864)

There is nothing so melancholy as a country in its decadence, unless it be a people in their decadence. I am not aware that the latter misfortune can be attributed to the Anglo-Saxon race in any part of the world; but there is reason to fear that it has fallen on an English colony in the island of Jamaica.

Jamaica was one of those spots on which fortune shone with the full warmth of all her noonday splendour. That sun has set;--whether for ever or no none but a prophet can tell; but as far as a plain man may see, there are at present but few signs of a coming morrow, or of another summer.

It is not just or proper that one should grieve over the misfortunes of Jamaica with a stronger grief because her savannahs are so lovely, her forests so rich, her mountains so green, and he rivers so rapid; but it is so. It is piteous that a land so beautiful should be one which fate has marked for misfortune. Had Guiana, with its flat, level, unlovely soil, become poverty-stricken, one would hardly sorrow over it as one does sorrow for Jamaica.

As regards scenery she is the gem of the western tropics. It is impossible to conceive spots on the earth's surface more gracious to the eye than those steep green valleys which stretch down to the south-west from the Blue Mountain peak towards the sea; and but little behind these in beauty are the rich wooded hills which in the western part of the island divide the counties of Hanover and Westmoreland. The hero of the tale which I am going to tell was a sugar-grower in the latter district, and the heroine was a girl who lived under that Blue Mountain peak.

The very name of a sugar-grower as connected with Jamaica savours of fruitless struggle, failure, and desolation. And from his earliest growth fruitless struggle, failure, and desolation had been the lot of Maurice Cumming. At eighteen years of age he had been left by his father sole possessor of the Mount Pleasant estate, than which in her palmy days Jamaica had little to boast of that was more pleasant or more palmy. But those days had passed by before Roger Cumming, the father of our friend, had died.

These misfortunes coming on the head of one another, at intervals of a few years, had first stunned and then killed him. His slaves rose against him, as they did against other proprietors around him, and burned down his house and mills, his homestead and offices. Those who know the amount of capital which a sugar-grower must invest in such buildings will understand the extent of this misfortune. Then the slaves were emancipated. It is not perhaps possible that we, now-a-days, should regard this as a calamity; but it was quite impossible that a Jamaica proprietor of those days should not have done so. Men will do much for philanthropy, they will work hard, they will give the coat from their back;--nay the very shirt from their body; but few men will endure to look on with satisfaction while their commerce is destroyed.

But even this Mr. Cumming did bear after a while, and kept his shoulder to the wheel. He kept his shoulder to the wheel till that third misfortune came upon him--till the protection duty on Jamaica sugar was abolished. Then he turned his face to the wall and died. His son at this time was not of age, and the large but lessening property which Mr. Cumming left behind him was for three years in the hands of trustees. But nevertheless Maurice, young as he was, managed the estate. It was he who grew the canes, and made the sugar;--or else failed to make it. He was the "massa" to whom the free negroes looked as the source from whence their wants should be supplied, notwithstanding that, being free, they were ill inclined to work for him, let his want of work be ever so sore.

Mount Pleasant had been a very large property. In addition to his sugar-canes Mr. Cumming had grown coffee; for his land ran up into the hills of Trelawney to that altitude which in the tropics seems necessary for the perfect growth of the coffee berry. But it soon became evident that labour for the double produce could not be had, and the coffee plantation was abandoned. Wild brush and the thick undergrowth of forest reappeared on the hill-sides which had been rich with produce. And the evil re-created and exaggerated itself. Negroes squatted on the abandoned property; and being able to live with abundance from their stolen gardens, were less willing than ever to work in the cane pieces.

And thus things went from bad to worse. In the good old times Mr. Cumming's sugar produce had spread itself annually over some three hundred acres; but by degrees this dwindle down to half that extent of land. And then in those old golden days they had always taken a full hogshead from the acre;--very often more. The estate had sometimes given four hundred hogsheads in the year. But in the days of which we now speak the crop had fallen below fifty. At this time Maurice Cumming was eight-and-twenty, and it is hardly too much to say that misfortune had nearly crushed him. But nevertheless it had not crushed him. He, and some few like him, had still hoped against hope; had still persisted in looking forward to a future for the island which once was so generous with its gifts. When his father died he might still have had enough for the wants of life had he sold his property for what it would fetch. There was money in England, and the remains of large wealth. But he would not sacrifice Mount Pleasant or abandon Jamaica; and now after ten years' struggling he still kept Mount Pleasant, and the mill was still going; but all other property had parted from his hands.

By nature Maurice Cumming would have been gay and lively, a man with a happy spirit and easy temper; but struggling had made him silent if not morose, and had saddened if not soured his temper. He had lived alone at Mount Pleasant, or generally alone. Work or want of money, and the constant difficulty of getting labour for his estate, had left him but little time for a young man's ordinary amusements. Of the charms of ladies' society he had known but little. Very many of the estates around him had been absolutely abandoned, as was the case with his own coffee plantation, and from others men had sent away their wives and daughters. Nay, most of the proprietors had gone themselves, leaving an overseer to extract what little might yet be extracted out of the property. It too often happened that that little was not sufficient to meet the demands of the overseer himself.

The house at Mount Pleasant had been an irregular, low-roofed, picturesque residence, built with only one floor, and surrounded on all sides by large verandahs. In the old days it had always been kept in perfect order, but now this was far from being the case. Few young bachelors can keep a house in order, but no bachelor young or old can do so under such a doom as that of Maurice Cumming. Every shilling that Maurice Cumming could collect was spent in bribing negroes to work for him. But bribe as he would the negroes would not work. "No, massa: me pain here; me no workee to-day," and Sambo would lay his fat hand on his fat stomach.

I have said that he lived generally alone. Occasionally his house on Mount Pleasant was enlivened by visits of an aunt, a maiden sister of his mother, whose usual residence was at Spanish Town. It is or should be known to all men that Spanish Town was and is the seat of Jamaica legislature.

But Maurice was not over fond of his relative. In this he was both wrong and foolish, for Miss Sarah Jack--such was her name--was in many respects a good woman, and was certainly a rich woman. It is true that she was not a handsome woman, nor a fashionable woman, nor perhaps altogether an agreeable woman. She was tall, thin, ungainly, and yellow. Her voice, which she used freely, was harsh. She was a politician and a patriot. She regarded England as the greatest of countries, and Jamaica as the greatest of colonies. But much as she loved England she was very loud in denouncing what she called the perfidy of the mother to the brightest of her children. And much as she loved Jamaica she was equally severe in her taunts against those of her brother-islanders who would not believe that the island might yet flourish as it had flourished in her father's days.

"It is because you and men like you will not do your duty by your country," she had said some score of times to Maurice--not with much justice considering the laboriousness of his life.

But Maurice knew well what she meant. "What could I do there up at Spanish Town," he would answer, "among such a pack as there are there? Here I may do something."

And then she would reply with the full swing of her eloquence, "It is because you and such as you think only of yourself and not of Jamaica, that Jamaica has come to such a pass as this. Why is there a pack there as you call them in the honourable House of Assembly? Why are not the best men in the island to be found there, as the best men in England are to be found in the British House of Commons? A pack, indeed! My father was proud of a seat in that house, and I remember the day, Maurice Cumming, when your father also thought it no shame to represent his own parish. If men like you, who have a stake in the country, will not go there, of course the house is filled with men who have no stake. If they are a pack, it is you who send them there;--you, and others like you."

All had its effect, though at the moment Maurice would shrug his shoulders and turn away his head from the torrent of the lady's discourse. But Miss Jack, though she was not greatly liked, was greatly respected. Maurice would not own that she convinced him; but at last he did allow his name to be put up as candidate for his own parish, and in due time he became a member of the honourable House of Assembly in Jamaica.

This honour entails on the holder of it the necessity of living at or within reach of Spanish Town for some ten weeks towards the chose of every year. Now on the whole face of the uninhabited globe there is perhaps no spot more dull to look at, more Lethean in its aspect, more corpse-like or more cadaverous than Spanish Town. It is the head-quarters of the government, the seat of the legislature, the residence of the governor;--but nevertheless it is, as it were, a city of the very dead.

Here, as we have said before, lived Miss Jack in a large forlorn ghost-like house in which her father and all her family had lived before her. And as a matter of course Maurice Cumming when he came up to attend to his duties as a member of the legislature took up his abode with her.

Now at the time of which we are specially speaking he had completed the first of these annual visits. He had already benefited his country by sitting out one session of the colonial parliament, and had satisfied himself that he did no other good than that of keeping away some person more objectionable than himself. He was however prepared to repeat this self-sacrifice in a spirit of patriotism for which he received a very meagre meed of eulogy from Miss Jack, and an amount of self-applause which was not much more extensive.

"Down at Mount Pleasant I can do something," he would say over and over again, "but what good can any man do up here?"

"You can do your duty," Miss Jack would answer, "as others did before you when the colony was made to prosper." And then they would run off into a long discussion about free labour and protective duties. But at the present moment Maurice Cumming had another vexation on his mind over and above that arising from his wasted hours at Spanish Town, and his fruitless labours at Mount Pleasant. He was in love, and was not altogether satisfied with the conduct of his lady-love.

Miss Jack had other nephews besides Maurice Cumming, and nieces also, of whom Marian Leslie was one. The family of the Leslies lived up near Newcastle--in the mountains, that is, which stand over Kingston- -at a distance of some eighteen miles from Kingston, but in a climate as different from that of the town as the climate of Naples is from that of Berlin. In Kingston the heat is all but intolerable throughout the year, by day and by night, in the house and out of it. In the mountains round Newcastle, some four thousand feet above the sea, it is merely warm during the day, and cool enough at night to make a blanket desirable.

It is pleasant enough living up amongst those green mountains. There are no roads there for wheeled carriages, nor are there carriages with or without wheels. All journeys are made on horseback. Every visit paid from house to house is performed in this manner. Ladies young and old live before dinner in their riding-habits. The hospitality is free, easy, and unembarrassed. The scenery is magnificent. The tropical foliage is wild and luxuriant beyond measure. There may be enjoyed all that a southern climate has to offer of enjoyment, without the penalties which such enjoyments usually entail.

Mrs. Leslie was a half-sister of Miss Jack, and Miss Jack had been a half-sister also of Mrs. Cumming; but Mrs. Leslie and Mrs. Cumming had in no way been related. And it had so happened that up to the period of his legislative efforts Maurice Cumming had seen nothing of the Leslies. Soon after his arrival at Spanish Town he had been taken by Miss Jack to Shandy Hall, for so the residence of the Leslies was called, and having remained there for three days, had fallen in love with Marian Leslie. Now in the West Indies all young ladies flirt; it is the first habit of their nature--and few young ladies in the West Indies were more given to flirting, or understood the science better than Marian Leslie.

Maurice Cumming fell violently in love, and during his first visit at Shandy Hall found that Marian was perfection--for during this first visit her propensities were exerted altogether in his own favour. That little circumstance does make such a difference in a young man's judgment of a girl! He came back fall of admiration, not altogether to Miss Jack's dissatisfaction; for Miss Jack was willing enough that both her nephew and her niece should settle down into married life. But then Maurice met his fair one at a governor's ball--at a ball where red coats abounded, and aides-de-camp dancing in spurs, and narrow-waisted lieutenants with sashes or epaulettes! The aides-de-camp and narrow-waisted lieutenants waltzed better than he did; and as one after the other whisked round the ball-room with Marian firmly clasped in his arms, Maurice's feelings were not of the sweetest. Nor was this the worst of it. Had the whisking been divided equally among ten, he might have forgiven it; but there was one specially narrow-waisted lieutenant, who towards the end of the evening kept Marian nearly wholly to himself. Now to a man in love, who has had but little experience of either balls or young ladies, this is intolerable.

He only met her twice after that before his return to Mount Pleasant, and on the first occasion that odious soldier was not there. But a specially devout young clergyman was present, an unmarried, evangelical, handsome young curate fresh from England; and Marian's piety had been so excited that she had cared for no one else. It appeared moreover that the curate's gifts for conversion were confined, as regarded that opportunity, to Marion's advantage. "I will have nothing more to say to her," said Maurice to himself, scowling. But just as he went away Marian had given him her hand, and called him Maurice--for she pretended that they were cousins--and had looked into his eyes and declared that she did hope that the assembly at Spanish Town would soon be sitting again. Hitherto, she said, she had not cared one straw about it. Then poor Maurice pressed the little fingers which lay within his own, and swore that he would be at Shandy Hall on the day before his return to Mount Pleasant. So he was; and there he found the narrow-waisted lieutenant, not now bedecked with sash and epaulettes, but lolling at his ease on Mrs. Leslie's sofa in a white jacket, while Marian sat at his feet telling his fortune with a book about flowers.

"Oh, a musk rose, Mr. Ewing; you know what a musk rose means!" Then she got up and shook hands with Mr. Cumming; but her eyes still went away to the white jacket and the sofa. Poor Maurice had often been nearly broken-hearted in his efforts to manage his free black labourers; but even that was easier than managing such as Marion Leslie.

Marian Leslie was a Creole--as also were Miss Jack and Maurice Cumming--a child of the tropics; but by no means such a child as tropical children are generally thought to be by us in more northern latitudes. She was black-haired and black-eyed, but her lips were as red and her cheeks as rosy as though she had been born and bred in regions where the snow lies in winter. She was a small, pretty, beautifully made little creature, somewhat idle as regards the work of the world, but active and strong enough when dancing or riding were required from her. Her father was a banker, and was fairly prosperous in spite of the poverty of his country. His house of business was at Kingston, and he usually slept there twice a week; but he always resided at Shandy Hall, and Mrs. Leslie and her children knew but very little of the miseries of Kingston. For be it known to all men, that of all towns Kingston, Jamaica, is the most miserable.

I fear that I shall have set my readers very much against Marian Leslie;--much more so than I would wish to do. As a rule they will not know how thoroughly flirting is an institution in the West Indies--practised by all young ladies, and laid aside by them when they marry, exactly as their young-lady names and young-lady habits of various kinds are laid aside. All I would say of Marian Leslie is this, that she understood the working of the institution more thoroughly than others did. And I must add also in her favour that she did not keep her flirting for sly corners, nor did her admirers keep their distance till mamma was out of the way. It mattered not to her who was present. Had she been called on to make one at a synod of the clergy of the island, she would have flirted with the bishop before all his priests. And there have been bishops in the colony who would not have gainsayed her!

But Maurice Cumming did not rightly calculate all this; nor indeed did Miss Jack do so as thoroughly as she should have done, for Miss Jack knew more about such matters than did poor Maurice. "If you like Marion, why don't you marry her?" Miss Jack had once said to him; and this coming from Miss Jack, who was made of money, was a great deal. "She wouldn't have me," Maurice had answered.

"That's more than you know or I either," was Miss Jack's reply. "But if you like to try, I'll help you."

With reference to this, Maurice as he left Miss Jack's residence on his return to Mount Pleasant, had declared that Marian Leslie was not worth an honest man's love.

"Psha!" Miss Jack replied; "Marian will do like other girls. When you marry a wife I suppose you mean to be master?"

"At any rate I shan't marry her," said Maurice. And so he went his way back to Hanover with a sore heart. And no wonder, for that was the very day on which Lieutenant Ewing had asked the question about the musk rose.

But there was a dogged constancy of feeling about Maurice which could not allow him to disburden himself of his love. When he was again at Mount Pleasant among his sugar-canes and hogsheads he could not help thinking about Marian. It is true he always thought of her as flying round that ball-room in Ewing's arms, or looking up with rapt admiration into that young parson's face; and so he got but little pleasure from his thoughts. But not the less was he in love with her;--not the less, though he would swear to himself three times in the day that for no earthly consideration would he marry Marian Leslie.

The early months of the year from January to May are the busiest with a Jamaica sugar-grower, and in this year they were very busy months with Maurice Cumming. It seemed as though there were actually some truth in Miss Jack's prediction that prosperity would return to him if he attended to his country; for the prices of sugar had risen higher than they had ever been since the duty had been withdrawn, and there was more promise of a crop at Mount Pleasant than he had seen since his reign commenced. But then the question of labour? How he slaved in trying to get work from those free negroes; and alas! how often he slaved in vain! But it was not all in vain; for as things went on it became clear to him that in this year he would, for the first time since he commenced, obtain something like a return from his land. What if the turning-point had come, and things were now about to run the other way.

But then the happiness which might have accrued to him from this source was dashed by his thoughts of Marian Leslie. Why had he thrown himself in the way of that syren? Why had he left Mount Pleasant at all? He knew that on his return to Spanish Town his first work would be to visit Shandy Hall; and yet he felt that of all places in the island, Shandy Hall was the last which he ought to visit.

And then about the beginning of May, when he was hard at work turning the last of his canes into sugar and rum, he received his annual visit from Miss Jack. And whom should Miss Jack bring with her but Mr. Leslie.

"I'll tell you what it is," said Miss Jack; "I have spoken to Mr. Leslie about you and Marian."

"Then you had no business to do anything of the kind," said Maurice, blushing up to his ears.

"Nonsense," replied Miss Jack, "I understand what I am about. Of course Mr. Leslie will want to know something about the estate."

"Then he may go back as wise as he came, for he'll learn nothing from me. Not that I have anything to hide."

"So I told him. Now there are a large family of them, you see; and of course he can't give Marian much."

"I don't care a straw if he doesn't give her a shilling. If she cared for me, or I for her, I shouldn't look after her for her money."

"But a little money is not a bad thing, Maurice," said Miss Jack, who in her time had had a good deal, and had managed to take care of it.

"It is all one to me."

"But what I was going to say is this--hum--ha. I don't like to pledge myself for fear I should raise hopes which mayn't be fulfilled."

"Don't pledge yourself to anything, aunt, in which Marian Leslie and I are concerned."

"But what I was going to say is this; my money, what little I have, you know, must go some day either to you or to the Leslies."

"You may give all to them if you please."

"Of course I may, and I dare say I shall," said Miss Jack, who was beginning to be irritated. "But at any rate you might have the civility to listen to me when I am endeavouring to put you on your legs. I am sure I think about nothing else, morning, noon, and night, and yet I never get a decent word from you. Marian is too good for you; that's the truth."

But at length Miss Jack was allowed to open her budget, and to make her proposition; which amounted to this--that she had already told Mr. Leslie that she would settle the bulk of her property conjointly on Maurice and Marian if they would make a match of it. Now as Mr. Leslie had long been casting a hankering eye after Miss Jack's money, with a strong conviction however that Maurice Cumming was her favourite nephew and probable heir, this proposition was not unpalatable. So he agreed to go down to Mount Pleasant and look about him.

"But you may live for the next thirty years, my dear Miss Jack," Mr. Leslie had said.

"Yes, I may," Miss Jack replied, looking very dry.

"And I am sure I hope you will," continued Mr. Leslie. And then the subject was allowed to drop; for Mr. Leslie knew that it was not always easy to talk to Miss Jack on such matters.

Miss Jack was a person in whom I think we may say that the good predominated over the bad. She was often morose, crabbed, and self-opinionated. but then she knew her own imperfections, and forgave those she loved for evincing their dislike of them. Maurice Cumming was often inattentive to her, plainly showing that he was worried by her importunities and ill at ease in her company. But she loved her nephew with all her heart; and though she dearly liked to tyrannise over him, never allow herself to be really angry with him, though he so frequently refused to bow to her dictation. And she loved Marian Leslie also, though Marian was so sweet and lovely and she herself so harsh and ill-favoured. She loved Marian, though Marian would often be impertinent. She forgave the flirting, the light-heartedness, the love of amusement. Marian, she said to herself, was young and pretty. She, Miss Jack, had never known Marian's temptation. And so she resolved in her own mind that Marian should be made a good and happy woman;--but always as the wife of Maurice Cumming.

But Maurice turned a deaf ear to all these good tidings--or rather he turned to them an ear that seemed to be deaf. He dearly, ardently loved that little flirt; but seeing that she was a flirt, that she had flirted so grossly when he was by, he would not confess his love to a human being. He would not have it known that he was wasting his heart for a worthless little chit, to whom every man was the same--except that those were most eligible whose toes were the lightest and their outside trappings the brightest. That he did love her he could not help, but he would not disgrace himself by acknowledging it.

He was very civil to Mr. Leslie, but he would not speak a word that could be taken as a proposal for Marian. It had been part of Miss Jack's plan that the engagement should absolutely be made down there at Mount Pleasant, without any reference to the young lady; but Maurice could not be induced to break the ice. So he took Mr. Leslie through his mills and over his cane-pieces, talked to him about the laziness of the "niggers," while the "niggers" themselves stood by tittering, and rode with him away to the high grounds where the coffee plantation had been in the good old days; but not a word was said between them about Marian. And yet Marian was never out of his heart.

And then came the day on which Mr. Leslie was to go back to Kingston. "And you won't have her then?" said Miss Jack to her nephew early that morning. "You won't be said by me?"

"Not in this matter, aunt."

"Then you will live and die a poor man; you mean that, I suppose?"

"It's likely enough that I shall. There's this comfort, at any rate, I'm used to it." And then Miss Jack was silent again for a while.

"Very well, sir; that's enough," she said angrily. And then she began again. "But, Maurice, you wouldn't have to wait for my death, you know." And she put out her hand and touched his arm, entreating him as it were to yield to her. "Oh, Maurice," she said, "I do so want to make you comfortable. Let us speak to Mr. Leslie."

But Maurice would not. He took her hand and thanked her, but said that on this matter he must he his own master. "Very well, sir," she exclaimed, "I have done. In future you may manage for yourself. As for me, I shall go back with Mr. Leslie to Kingston." And so she did. Mr. Leslie returned that day, taking her with him. When he took his leave, his invitation to Maurice to come to Shandy Hall was not very pressing. "Mrs. Leslie and the children will always be glad to see you," said he.

"Remember me very kindly to Mrs. Leslie and the children," said Maurice. And so they parted.

"You have brought me down here on a regular fool's errand," said Mr. Leslie, on their journey back to town.

"It will all come right yet," replied Miss Jack. "Take my word for it he loves her."

"Fudge," said Mr. Leslie. But he could not afford to quarrel with his rich connection.

In spite of all that he had said and thought to the contrary, Maurice did look forward during the remainder of the summer to his return to Spanish Town with something like impatience, it was very dull work, being there alone at Mount Pleasant; and let him do what he would to prevent it, his very dreams took him to Shandy Hall. But at last the slow time made itself away, and he found himself once more in his aunt's house.

A couple of days passed and no word was said about the Leslies. On the morning of the third day he determined to go to Shandy Hall. Hitherto he had never been there without staying for the night; but on this occasion he made up his mind to return the same day. "It would not be civil of me not to go there," he said to his aunt.

"Certainly not," she replied, forbearing to press the matter further. "But why make such a terrible hard day's work of it?"

"Oh, I shall go down in the cool, before breakfast; and then I need

not have the bother of taking a bag."

And in this way he started. Miss Jack said nothing further; but she longed in her heart that she might be at Marian's elbow unseen during the visit.

He found them all at breakfast, and the first to welcome him at the hall door was Marian. "Oh, Mr. Cumming, we are so glad to see you;" and she looked into his eyes with a way she had, that was enough to make a man's heart wild. But she not call him Maurice now.

Miss Jack had spoken to her sister, Mrs. Leslie, as well as to Mr. Leslie, about this marriage scheme. "Just let them alone," was Mrs. Leslie's advice. "You can't alter Marian by lecturing her. If they really love each other they'll come together; and if they don't, why then they'd better not."

"And you really mean that you're going back to Spanish Town to-day?" said Mrs. Leslie to her visitor.

"I'm afraid I must. Indeed I haven't brought my things with me." And then he again caught Marian's eye, and began to wish that his resolution had not been so sternly made.

"I suppose you are so fond of that House of Assembly," said Marian, "that you cannot tear yourself away for more than one day. You'll not be able, I suppose, to find time to come to our picnic next week?"

Maurice said he feared that he should not have time to go to a picnic.

"Oh, nonsense," said Fanny--one of the younger girls--"you must come. We can't do without him, can we?"

"Marian has got your name down the first on the list of the gentlemen," said another.

"Yes; and Captain Ewing's second," said Bell, the youngest.

"I'm afraid I must induce your sister to alter her list," said
Maurice, in his sternest manner. "I cannot manage to go, and I'm
sure she will not miss me."

Marion looked at the little girl who had so unfortunately mentioned the warrior's name, and the little girl knew that she had sinned.

"Oh, we cannot possibly do without you; can we, Marian?" said Fanny. "It's to be at Bingley's Dell, and we've got a bed for you at Newcastle; quite near, you know."

"And another for--" began Bell, but she stopped herself.

"Go away to your lessons, Bell," said Marion. "You know how angry mamma will be at your staying here all the morning;" and poor Bell with a sorrowful look left the room.

"We are all certainly very anxious that you should come; very anxious for a great many reasons," said Marian, in a voice that was rather solemn, and as though the matter were one of considerable import. "But if you really cannot, why of course there is no more to be said."

"There will be plenty without me, I am sure."

"As regards numbers, I dare say there will; for we shall have pretty nearly the whole of the two regiments;" and Marian as she alluded to the officers spoke in a tone which might lead one to think that she would much rather be without them; "but we counted on you as being one of ourselves; and as you had been away so long, we thought--we thought--," and then she turned away her face, and did not finish her speech. Before he could make up his mind as to his answer she had risen from her chair, and walked out of the room. Maurice almost thought that he saw a tear in her eye as she went.

He did ride back to Spanish Town that afternoon, after an early dinner; but before he went Marian spoke to him alone for one minute.

"I hope you are not offended with me," she said.

"Offended! oh no; how could I be offended with you?"

"Because you seem so stern. I am sure I would do anything I could to oblige you, if I knew how. It would be so shocking not to be good friends with a cousin like you."

"But there are so many different sorts of friends," said Maurice.

"Of course there are. There are a great many friends that one does not care a bit for,--people that one meets at balls and places like that--"

"And at picnics," said Maurice.

"'Well, some of them there too; but we are not like that; are we?"

What could Maurice do but say, "no," and declare that their friendship was of a warmer description? And how could he resist promising to go to the picnic, though as he made the promise he knew that misery would be in store for him? He did promise, and then she gave him her hand and called him Maurice.

"Oh! I am so glad," she said. "It seemed so shocking that you should refuse to join us. And mind and be early, Maurice; for I shall want to explain it all. We are to meet, you know, at Clifton Gate at one o'clock, but do you be a little before that, and we shall be there."

Maurice Cumming resolved within his own breast as he rode back to Spanish Town, that if Marian behaved to him all that day at the picnic as she had done this day at Shandy Hall, he would ask her to be his wife before he left her.

And Miss Jack also was to be at the picnic.

"There is no need of going early," said she, when her nephew made a fuss about the starting. "People are never very punctual at such affairs as that; and then they are always quite long enough." But Maurice explained that he was anxious to be early, and on this occasion he carried his point.

When they reached Clifton Gate the ladies were already there; not in carriages, as people go to picnics in other and tamer countries, but each on her own horse or her own pony. But they were not alone. Beside Miss Leslie was a gentleman, whom Maurice knew as Lieutenant Graham, of the flag-ship at Port Royal; and at a little distance which quite enabled him to join in the conversation was Captain Ewing, the lieutenant with the narrow waist of the previous year.

"We shall have a delightful day, Miss Leslie," said the lieutenant.

"Oh, charming, isn't it?" said Marian.

"But now to choose a place for dinner, Captain Ewing;--what do you say?"

"Will you commission me to select? You know I'm very well up in geometry, and all that?"

"But that won't teach you what sort of a place does for a picnic dinner;--will it, Mr. Cumming?" And then she shook hands with Maurice, but did not take any further special notice of him. "We'll all go together, if you please. The commission is too important to be left to one." And then Marian rode off, and the lieutenant and the captain rode with her.

It was open for Maurice to join them if he chose, but he did not choose. He had come there ever so much earlier than he need have done, dragging his aunt with him, because Marian had told him that his services would be specially required by her. And now as soon as she saw him she went away with the two officers!--went away without vouchsafing him a word. He made up his mind, there on the spot, that he would never think of her again--never speak to her otherwise than he might speak to the most indifferent of mortals.

And yet he was a man that could struggle right manfully with the world's troubles; one who had struggled with them from his boyhood, and had never been overcome. Now he was unable to conceal the bitterness of his wrath because a little girl had ridden off to look for a green spot for her tablecloth without asking his assistance!

Picnics are, I think, in general, rather tedious for the elderly people who accompany them. When the joints become a little stiff, dinners are eaten most comfortably with the accompaniment of chairs and tables, and a roof overhead is an agrement de plus. But, nevertheless, picnics cannot exist without a certain allowance of elderly people. The Miss Marians and Captains Ewing cannot go out to dine on the grass without some one to look after them. So the elderly people go to picnics, in a dull tame way, doing their duty, and wishing the day over. Now on the morning in question, when Marian rode off with Captain Ewing and lieutenant Graham, Maurice Cumming remained among the elderly people.

A certain Mr. Pomken, a great Jamaica agriculturist, one of the Council, a man who had known the good old times, got him by the button and held him fast, discoursing wisely of sugar and ruin, of Gadsden pans and recreant negroes, on all of which subjects Maurice Cumming was known to have an opinion of his own. But as Mr. Pomken's words sounded into one ear, into the other fell notes, listened to from afar,--the shrill laughing voice of Marian Leslie as she gave her happy order to her satellites around her, and ever and anon the bass haw-haw of Captain Ewing, who was made welcome as the chief of her attendants. That evening in a whisper to a brother councillor Mr. Pomken communicated his opinion that after all there was not so much in that young Cumming as some people said. But Mr. Pomken had no idea that that young Cumming was in love.

And then the dinner came, spread over half an acre. Maurice was among the last who seated himself; and when he did so it was in an awkward comfortless corner, behind Mr. Pomken's back, and far away from the laughter and mirth of the day. But yet from his comfortless corner he could see Marian as she sat in her pride of power, with her friend Julia Davis near her, a flirt as bad as herself, and her satellites around her, obedient to her nod, and happy in her smiles.

"Now I won't allow any more champagne," said Marian, "or who will there be steady enough to help me over the rocks to the grotto?"

"Oh, you have promised me!" cried the captain.

"Indeed, I have not; have I, Julia?"

"Miss Davis has certainly promised me," said the lieutenant.

"I have made no promise, and don't think I shall go at all," said Julia, who was sometimes inclined to imagine that Captain Ewing should be her own property.

All which and much more of the kind Maurice Cumming could not hear; but he could see--and imagine, which was worse. How innocent and inane are, after all, the flirtings of most young ladies, if all their words and doings in that line could be brought to paper! I do not know whether there be as a rule more vocal expression of the sentiment of love between a man and woman than there is between two thrushes! They whistle and call to each other, guided by instinct rather than by reason.

"You are going home with the ladies to-night, I believe," said Maurice to Miss Jack, immediately after dinner. Miss Jack acknowledged that such was her destination for the night.

"Then my going back to Spanish Town at once won't hurt any one--for, to tell the truth, I have had enough of this work."

"Why, Maurice, you were in such a hurry to come."

"The more fool I; and so now I am in a hurry to go away. Don't notice it to anybody."

Miss Jack looked in his face and saw that he was really wretched; and she knew the cause of his wretchedness.

"Don't go yet, Maurice," she said; and then added with a tenderness that was quite uncommon with her, "Go to her, Maurice, and speak to her openly and freely, once for all; you will find that she will listen then. Dear Maurice, do, for my sake."

He made no answer, but walked away, roaming sadly by himself among the trees. "Listen!" he exclaimed to himself. "Yes, she will alter a dozen times in as many hours. Who can care for a creature that can change as she changes?" And yet he could not help caring for her.

As he went on, climbing among rocks, he again came upon the sound of voices, and heard especially that of Captain Ewing. "Now, Miss Leslie, if you will take my hand you will soon be over all the difficulty." And then a party of seven or eight, scrambling over some stones, came nearly on the level on which he stood, in full view of him; and leading the others were Captain Ewing and Miss Leslie.

He turned on his heel to go away, when he caught the sound of a step following him, and a voice saying, "Oh, there is Mr. Cumming, and I want to speak to him;" and in a minute a light hand was on his arm.

"Why are you running away from us?" said Marian.

"Because--oh, I don't know. I am not running away. You have your party made up, and I am not going to intrude on it."

"What nonsense! Do come now; we are going to this wonderful grotto. I thought it so ill-natured of you, not joining us at dinner. Indeed you know you had promised."

He did not answer her, but he looked at her--full in the face, with his sad eyes laden with love. She half understood his countenance, but only half understood it.

"What is the matter, Maurice?" she said. "Are you angry with me? Will you come and join us?"

"No, Marian, I cannot do that. But if you can leave them and come with me for half an hour, I will not keep you longer."

She stood hesitating a moment, while her companion remained on the spot where she had left him. "Come, Miss Leslie," called Captain Ewing. "You will have it dark before we can get down."

"I will come with you," whispered she to Maurice, "but wait a moment." And she tripped back, and in some five minutes returned after an eager argument with her friends. "There," she said, "I don't care about the grotto, one bit, and I will walk with you now;--only they will think it so odd." And so they started off together.

Before the tropical darkness had fallen upon them Maurice had told the tale of his love,--and had told it in a manner differing much from that of Marian's usual admirers, he spoke with passion and almost with violence; he declared that his heart was so full of her image that he could not rid himself of it for one minute; "nor would he wish to do so," he said, "if she would be his Marian, his own Marian, his very own. But if not--" and then he explained to her, with all a lover's warmth, and with almost more than a lover's liberty, what was his idea of her being "his own, his very own," and in doing so inveighed against her usual light-heartedness in terms which at any rate were strong enough.

But Marian here it all well. Perhaps she knew that the lesson was somewhat deserved; and perhaps she appreciated at its value the love of such a man as Maurice Cumming, weighing in her judgment the difference between him and the Ewings and the Grahams.

And then she answered him well and prudently, with words which startled him by their prudent seriousness as coming from her. She begged his pardon heartily, she said, for any grief which she had caused him; but yet how was she to he blamed, seeing that she had known nothing of his feelings? Her father and mother had said something to her of this proposed marriage; something, but very little; and she had answered by saying that she did not think Maurice had any warmer regard for her than of a cousin. After this answer neither father nor mother had pressed the matter further. As to her own feelings she could then say nothing, for she then knew nothing;--nothing but this, that she loved no one better than him, or rather that she loved no one else. She would ask herself if she could love him; but he must give her some little time for that. In the meantime--and she smiled sweetly at him as she made the promise--she would endeavour to do nothing that would offend him; and then she added that on that evening she would dance with him any dances that he liked. Maurice, with a self-denial that was not very wise, contented himself with engaging her for the first quadrille.

They were to dance that night in the mess-room of the officers at Newcastle. This scheme had been added on as an adjunct to the picnic, and it therefore became necessary that the ladies should retire to their own or their friends' houses at Newcastle to adjust their dresses. Marian Leslie and Julia Davis were there accommodated with the loan of a small room by the major's wife, and as they were brushing their hair, and putting on their dancing-shoes, something was said between them about Maurice Cumming.

"And so you are to be Mrs. C. of Mount Pleasant," said Julia. "Well; I didn't think it would come to that at last."

"But it has not come to that, and if it did why should I not be Mrs.C., as you call it?"

"The knight of the rueful countenance, I call him."

"I tell you what then, he is an excellent young man, and the fact is you don't know him."

"I don't like excellent young men with long faces. I suppose you won't be let to dance quick dances at all now."

"I shall dance whatever dances I like, as I have always done," said Marian, with some little asperity in her tone.

"Not you; or if you do, you'll lose your promotion. You'll never live to be my Lady Rue. And what will Graham say? You know you've given him half a promise."

"That's not true, Julia;--I never gave him the tenth part of a promise."

"Well, he says so;" and then the words between the young ladies became a little more angry. But, nevertheless, in due time they came forth with faces smiling as usual, with their hair brushed, and without any signs of warfare.

But Marian had to stand another attack before the business of the evening commenced, and this was from no less doughty an antagonist than her aunt, Miss Jack. Miss Jack soon found that Maurice had not kept his threat of going home; and though she did not absolutely learn from him that he had gone so far towards perfecting her dearest hopes as to make a formal offer to Marion, nevertheless she did gather that things were fast that way tending. If only this dancing were over! she said to herself, dreading the unnumbered waltzes with Ewing, and the violent polkas with Graham. So Miss Jack resolved to say one word to Marian--"A wise word in good season," said Miss Jack to herself, "how sweet a thing it is."

"Marian," said she. "Step here a moment, I want to say a word to you."

"Yes, aunt Sarah," said Marian, following her aunt into a corner, not quite in the best humour in the world; for she had a dread of some further interference.

"Are you going to dance with Maurice to-night?"

"Yes, I believe so,--the first quadrille."

"Well, what I was going to say is this. I don't want you to dance many quick dances to-night, for a reason I have;--that is, not a great many."

"Why, aunt, what nonsense!"

"Now my dearest, dearest girl, it is all for your own sake. Well, then, it must out. He does not like it, you know."

What he?"

"Maurice."

"Well, aunt, I don't know that I'm bound to dance or not to dance just as Mr. Cumming may like. Papa does not mind my dancing. The people have come here to dance and you can hardly want to make me ridiculous by sitting still." And so that wise word did not appear to be very sweet.

And then the amusement of the evening commenced, and Marian stood up for a quadrille with her lover. She however was not in the very best humour. She had, as she thought, said and done enough for one day in Maurice's favour. And she had no idea, as she declared to herself, of being lectured by aunt Sarah.

"Dearest Marion," he said to her, as the quadrille came to a close, "it is an your power to make me so happy,--so perfectly happy."

"But then people have such different ideas of happiness," she replied. "They can't all see with the same eyes, you know." And so they parted.

But during the early part of the evening she was sufficiently discreet; she did waltz with Lieutenant Graham, and polk with Captain Ewing, but she did so in a tamer manner than was usual with her, and she made no emulous attempts to dance down other couples. When she had done she would sit down, and then she consented to stand up for two quadrilles with two very tame gentlemen, to whom no lover could object.

"And so, Marian, your wings are regularly clipped at last," said Julia Davis coming up to her.

"No more clipped than your own," said Marian.

"If Sir Rue won't let you waltz now, what will he require of you when you're married to him?"

"I am just as well able to waltz with whom I like as you are, Julia; and if you say so in that way, I shall think it's envy."

"Ha--ha--ha; I may have envied you some of your beaux before now; I dare say I have. But I certainly do not envy you Sir Rue." And then she went off to her partner.

All this was too much for Marian's weak strength, and before long she was again whirling round with Captain Ewing. "Come, Miss Leslie," said he, "let us see what we can do. Graham and Julia Davis have been saying that your waltzing days are over, but I think we can put them down."

Marian as she got up, and raised her arm in order that Ewing might put his round her waist, caught Maurice's eye as he leaned against a wall, and read in it a stern rebuke. "This is too bad," she said to herself. "He shall not make a slave of me, at any rate as yet." And away she went as madly, more madly than ever, and for the rest of the evening she danced with Captain Ewing and with him alone.

There is an intoxication quite distinct from that which comes from strong drink. When the judgment is altogether overcome by the spirits this species of drunkenness comes on, and in this way Marian Leslie was drunk that night. For two hours she danced with Captain Ewing, and ever and anon she kept saying to herself that she would teach the world to know--and of all the world Mr. Cumming especially--that she might be lead, but not driven.

Then about four o'clock she went home, and as she attempted to undress herself in her own room she burst into violent tears and opened her heart to her sister-- "Oh, Fanny, I do love him, I do love him so dearly! and now he will never come to me again!"

Maurice stood still with his back against the wall, for the full two hours of Marian's exhibition, and then he said to his aunt before he left--"I hope you have now seen enough; you will hardly mention her name to me again." Miss Jack groaned from the bottom of her heart but she said nothing. She said nothing that night to any one; but she lay awake in her bed, thinking, till it was time to rise and dress herself. "Ask Miss Marian to come to me," she said to the black girl who came to assist her. But it was not till she had sent three times, that Miss Marian obeyed the summons.

At three o'clock on the following day Miss Jack arrived at her own hall door in Spanish Town. Long as the distance was she ordinarily rode it all, but on this occasion she had provided a carriage to bring her over as much of the journey as it was practicable for her to perform on wheels. As soon as she reached her own hall door she asked if Mr. Cumming was at home. "Yes," the servant said. "He was in the small book-room, at the back of the house, up stairs." Silently, as if afraid of being heard, she stepped up her own stairs into her own drawing-room; and very silently she was followed by a pair of feet lighter and smaller than her own.

Miss Jack was usually somewhat of a despot in her own house, but there was nothing despotic about her now as she peered into the book-room. This she did with her bonnet still on, looking round the half-opened door as though she were afraid to disturb her nephew, he sat at the window looking out into the verandah which ran behind the house, so intent on his thoughts that he did not hear her.

"Maurice," she said, "can I come in?"

"Come in? oh yes, of course;" and he turned round sharply at her. "

tell you what, aunt; I am not well here and I cannot stay out the session. I shall go back to Mount Pleasant."

"Maurice," and she walked close up to him as she spoke, "Maurice, I have brought some one with me to ask your pardon."

His face became red up to the roots of his hair as he stood looking at her without answering. "You would grant it certainly," she continued, "if you knew how much it would be valued."

"Whom do you mean? who is it?" he asked at last.

"One who loves you as well as you love her--and she cannot love you better. Come in, Marian." The poor girl crept in at the door, ashamed of what she was induced to do, but yet looking anxiously into her lover's face. "You asked her yesterday to be your wife," said Miss Jack, "and she did not then know her own mind. Now she has hada lesson. You will ask her once again; will you not, Maurice?"

What was he to say? how was he to refuse, when that soft little hand was held out to him; when those eyes laden with tears just ventured to look into his face?

"I beg your pardon if I angered you last night," she said.

In half a minute Miss Jack had left the room, and in the space of another thirty seconds Maurice had forgiven her. "I am your own now, you know," she whispered to him in the course of that long evening. "Yesterday, you know--," but the sentence was never finished.

It was in vain that Julia Davis was ill-natured and sarcastic, in vain that Ewing and Graham made joint attempt upon her constancy. From that night to the morning of her marriage--and the interval was only three months--Marian Leslie was never known to flirt.

5. JAMAICA MAITLAND RECORDS EXTRACTS

COPY REGISTER:
Films held by LDS at Exhibition Road, London (& Utah).

Examination of the St Elizabeth Parish records show many Maitlands, the earliest of which is our Francis (1). Index film no 1224314 refers to all the missing second generation shown on the original Maitland Tree. The Copy Registers are on film 1368561 (later ones on 1223998) and are photographs of the registers held by the Registrar General in Jamaica.

INDEX:

The significant baptismal entries indexed on film 1224314 are:

1720-1800           Rebecca D. Wright   1         8
1720-1800:          Francis M.      Vol 1   Folio 49
                    Richard M.          1         54
1801-1825           Andrew Wright M     1         190
                    John                1         190
                    Francis             1         190
                    Richard             1         190
                    George              2         57
                    Alexander           2         57
                    Septimus            2         57

Numerous other entries are in the index: they mostly refer to slaves who have taken the owner's name.

Other entries of interest are:
Marriages:
1832      Emma Rebecca M.
1847      Andrew Wright M.

Burial:
1840      Octavius: ours was baptised in London: this is probably a
          slave, named after Octavius. See below.
1856      Andrew Wright M.

Vol 1, folio 8 (1720-1800):
Rebecca Dunston Wright, daughter of Patty, a mulatto, lately a slave belonging to Mr Roderick Rose, three years old last May and baptised Nov 12 1752.

Vol 1, folio 35 (1720-1800):
1773 August 1, baptised, Elizabeth M., reputed daughter of Richard Parchment (?) by Sarah M., born 18 August 1772.

Also: William 28/12/1775, John 12/2/1782, Richard 14/1/1779, Nicholas 2/9/1785.

Vol 1, folio 49 (1720-1800):
1784 May 23: Francis Maitland baptised, reputed son of John Maitland by Rebecca Wright. Born 25 feb 1784. (Listed under Non White).

Vol 1, folio 54:
1788: Richard Maitland baptised, reputed son of John Maitland by Rebecca Wright. Born 4 August 1786.

Under "Persons non-white" category, crossed out, which appears not to be used any more.

Vol 1, folio 190 (1801-1825)
1814 April 12, at Giddy Hall

Andrew Wright M.    )
John M.             )         Children of Francis Maitland and
Francis M.          )         his wife Mistress.
Richard M.          )

Rebecca Wright      ) Slaves Belonging     (    Billy Wright
Jane M.             ) to Francis M.        (    Benjamin Brown
Fanny M.            )                      (    Thomas Brown
Johnson M.          )                      (    William Roberts
Louisa M.           )                      (    John M.
Richard M.          )                      (    Fanny Wright
Thomas Clark        )                      (    Eliza Read (?)

Thomas Wright
Elizabeth Wright       (   Slaves belonging     Bify (?) Wright
Clarissa Wright        (   to Estate of         Mary Wright
Celia Wright           (   Andrew Wright

Vol 1, folio 195:
1814 Dec 11 at Black River, Margaret Carpenter Honneywell, Sambo Woman, the property of Francis Maitland, aged 20 years.

Vol 2, folio 57:
3 baptism entries on 23/3/1821 for George, (Born 14/4/1818), Alexander (born 31/5/1819) and Septimus (born 20/1/1821) M. "... the son of Mr Francis Maitland, a free person of colour and Ann, his wife, reputed white, baptised 23 March".

Also baptised same day, 48 slaves belonging to Francis M.

1821 June 21:
94 slaves, the property of Mitcham & Silver Grove (best Guess)
baptised: many were called Maitland.

Several Maitland marriages were at Giddy Hall in the 1830's between people described as apprentices.

Francis M and Eliza Wright married at Giddy Hall by banns on 9/4/1837. Probably a slave, not ours. A negro called Francis M. was baptised in 1835, aged 50 years.
Edward M & Catherine Griffith, apprentices at Giddy Hall, baptised 24/7/1836. Several similar entries are shown.

On cursory reading, I found a number of burials of Wrights at Lacovia between 1789 & 1806. James Cooper Wright, buried 2/5/1806, had a daughter called Mary Frances by Ann, his wife, b: 14/6/1760.
Several early (1750's) Wright baptisms refer to Westmoreland.

Marriages (1223998):

Octavius M. and Christiana Williams 9 May 1850.
"Samuel Maitland and Camilla Beckford, both of Font(?) Hill married 18 October 1850."

John Bennet and Flora M. both of Burnt Savannah married 12 August 1842.

PORT ROYAL parish records (film 1291768):

St Andrew Parish: (film 1291698) Mary Maitland, bapt 28/6/1740, a quadroon child of Richard Maitland born of the mulatto slave of Mrs Laws.

Kingston PR:
William Maitland bapt 25/8/1794, son of Milborough Merchant by John Maitland, mulatto.

"non white person": John Maitland Munro, b 18/7/1809, reputed son of John Munro by Elizabeth Hutchinson, ch 30/3/1811 at Sacridd?
Lacovia?. Next entry is for John Munro, about 33 years, free mulatto.

There is mention of a James Maitland, planter, dying in Jamaica in September 1773. (ref Scots Magazine, Issue 35 p 559, Nov 1773,
National Library of Scotland checked June 1995). No trace has been found in the Jamaica microfilms.

Slave Manumissions:
Frederick Cowan manumitted by Francis Maitland for £140.
Louisa Wright Manumitted by Frank Maitland for £220

6. George Wilson Bridges – Re Brooks Family

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/11365
Profile & Legacies Summary

1788 - 20th Sep 1863

CLAIMANT OR BENEFICIARY

Biography

George Wilson Bridges (1788-1863), Rector of Mandeville (Manchester parish, Jamaica) 1817-23, and subsequently St Ann parish (1823-1837) was the elder son of George Bridges (1759-1835) of Lawford Place, Manningtree, Essex, corn merchant and country banker who, by 1815 in partnership with, among others, John Marratt of Dedham, controlled the recently developed Essex port of Mistley. A loyal Tory, he had staged in 1809 at Lawford Place a commemoration of George III's jubilee, a dinner for a hundred local poor. At the end of 1815 (when, according to G.W. Bridges, the family had a house in Russell Square as well as Lawford Place) his business affairs were precarious and he seems to have withdrawn from banking. One of the tenants at Mistley had been Golding Constable, father of the painter John Constable, who had in 1804 painted the Bridges family at Lawford Place, with the sixteen year old George standing at the left.

George's mother was Mary Wilson (1768-1863), sole daughter of William Wilson, formerly of Durham, Clapton and Dedham, and Knotts Green, Leyton (where George Wilson Bridges had been baptised in 1788) who died at Brunswick Square in 1805. The Survey of London indicates only one Brunswick Square resident of that name, at No 27, between 1802 and 1807, and describes him as Governor of the Foundling Hospital – an indicator of wealth and influence. On the death of his widow, Ann Wilson, in 1820, a substantial legacy from him would be shared among his surviving Bridges grandchildren.

The Bridges family had Leicestershire gentry roots. They still owned the advowson for the Rectory of Bruntingthorpe, a few miles outside Leicester. George's grandfather, another George Bridges, had nominated his son-in-law, Thomas Freeman, for the benefice, and Freeman would live until 1834 at the age of 75. George Wilson Bridges himself, in his brief “Outlines and Notes Of Twenty-Nine years” (1862), (a document which begins with the claim that “The Writer would not quit the World in the character of that Myth to them which he has too long been to himself”) explains that he became an Anglican clergyman because it was his father's intention, at the first opportunity, to present him to Bruntingthorpe, and that he had had no choice. Bridges has been seen by one modern historian of Jamaica as, in his youth, a disciple of Rousseau, but these late reminiscences around his marriage, in which he presents himself to the friends he had written them for, as, substantially, an innocent victim of the intrigues of others - clearly less than “Confessions” - can't always be independently confirmed.

George's Oxford education was at Trinity. He was ordained priest in Norwich, at 24, in December 1812, becoming curate at Frenze in Norfolk.

The duties did not prevent him undertaking a somewhat abridged Grand Tour in 1814, the result of which was a book, “Alpine Sketches, comprised in a short tour through parts of Holland, Flanders, France, Savoy, Switzerland and Germany during the summer of 1814 by a member of the University of Oxford” (1814).

In 1815, at 27, he took what turned out to be the life-defining step of eloping from Cheltenham with Elizabeth Raby Brooks, (1794 -1862), said to have been already pregnant by him, whom he married at Gretna Green on 24 August – the marriage was subsequently regularised at St George Hanover Square on 3 March 1816, witnessed by “F Brooks” (sic), almost certainly her sister Frances. No witness from the Bridges family appears to have been present. By the time of his father's death in 1835, leaving a very short will which doesn't even mention him, a complete breach had opened up between him and his immediate kin.

Elizabeth Raby Brooks had been born in Jamaica, daughter of John Brooks in St Elizabeth, and Ann Virgo Dunn. She too had expectations – her father, who had died in 1798, had provided £1000 currency in trust for her marriage or her 21st birthday. She was sister to George Brooks of Burnt Ground, who had in 1807 married Sarah Tharp Petgrave, daughter of William Burt Wright.

Elizabeth's sister, Frances, b 1797, married in 1817 the younger William Burt Wright of Kingston. One of Elizabeth's aunts was Ann Pinnock, nee Dunn, (1765-1818) widow of Philip Pinnock (b 1747) at New Shafston Pen, who, in her will, drawn up in June 1818, (PROB11/1718) left Elizabeth £600 in 3% Consols for her own personal use, in the hands of named trustees, Thomas Philip Hampson, William Burt Wright senior, and Francis Smith of Spanish Town, (though probate was in the end, in 1826, granted to Ann Pinnock's sister, Elizabeth Brooks, widow, then in London - Francis Smith, the only surviving original executor, having renounced). It is not known whether, when she left Bridges in 1834, she had other identifiable independent funds, but she would clearly not (as Bridge himself also claims) have lacked family support. Her estate at death was recorded at less than £800. Bridges however, was convinced that by eloping with her he had earned the lasting enmity of another unidentified Dunn aunt (for whom one candidate might possibly be Elizabeth Brooks) in Cheltenham, from whose house Elizabeth had gone with him, and that she had later funded Elizabeth Bridges and her son in, and on condition of, separation. For Bridges, the Hall family in St Ann seemed to have played a part, too.

The elopement and the scandal do not seem to have concerned the Governor of Jamaica, the Duke of Manchester, who in 1817 made Bridges Rector of the new church at Mandeville in the Jamaican parish created in his own name. Bridges claimed that because of the near-bankruptcy of his father he had to fund the voyage to Jamaica on borrowed money. Bridges refused to live in the newly-built Rectory on grounds of lack of privacy and the vestry (with one dissenting vote) allowed him to let it at £300 currency annually as a tavern - which it remained throughout his time in Manchester. He was allowed to keep £240 currency of the rent and found alternative accommodation for his family.

By the 1820s Bridges, who wrote that his attitude towards emancipation had been formed by his residence in the island, was attacking Wilberforce in print, (“A Voice from Jamaica; in reply to William Wilberforce,” London 1823) and compiling the “Annals of Jamaica” he published in 1828. Bridges derived income from his baptism of thousands of enslaved people, arguably the result of policies put in place as part of the amelioration of the slave system; by 1819 his Jamaican Church stipends were £500 currency for a Rector – the Bishop of London having taken advice from Jamaica merchants that this was a sum which could “maintain their position as gentlemen”. Daive Dunkley has suggested that Bridges' opposition to amelioration of slavery was in fact opposition to the foreseeable prospect of a black majority with political rights, rather than a simple defence of the slave economy. Dunkley argues that this led Bridges from the advocacy of planter government to - effectively – suggesting the establishment of the equivalent of a Crown Colony in Jamaica, in which a Governor and appointed Council, not an elected Assembly, would rule.

It also gained him a high profile. In 1829-31 Bridges became a major target for anti-slavery journalism. The violence of his language in Volume II of the Annals about the case of the mixed-race Louis Celeste Lecesne and his brother in law John Escoffery, British citizens of San Domingo origin, expelled on very dubious grounds from Jamaica in 1824, perhaps simply because they were arguing to improve the rights of Jamaican people of colour, attracted attention in London. Bridges described them as “impatient to sheathe their daggers in the breasts of the white inhabitants”. They sued Bridges' publisher, John Murray, in late 1829, forcing him to withdraw and amend volume II. This was one of three major stories around Bridges to break during 1829-31.

The violence was not just verbal. In the case of Henry Williams, (aka Henry Atkinson Williams) in 1829, a Methodist class leader and enslaved person on Rural Retreat in St Ann, at the time being run by an attorney named Betty on behalf of Ellen Moffat Adam, the daughter of the late owner, William Atkinson (vide her husband, Matthew Adam, compensation claimant), Bridges, who was a St Ann magistrate as well as Rector, intervened personally to instruct Williams to ensure his class attended the Parish Church the next Sunday. Williams attended, but his class did not. Williams was then sent in chains to the Rodney Hall (St Ann), and later St Thomas in the Vale workhouses, in both of which he experienced repeated severe floggings. The case was reported in the anti-slavery Jamaica newspaper, the “Watchman”, and became material in the UK for anti-slavery campaigners. There had been other earlier instances of committal to the workhouse for – effectively – private Methodist worship among the enslaved in St Ann.

During the 1831-2 Baptist War, Williams was again arrested, this time under under martial law, charged with holding suspicious (according to him, Methodist class) meetings at his house, found guilty by court-martial in the guardroom at St Ann's Bay on 16 January 1832, given the maximum 39 lashes, and sentenced to six months in the workhouse. Though those responsible probably had the earlier case in mind, or had been told of it, Bridges' name doesn't appear in the official record of the 1832 court martial. Nor does Williams' further persecution appear to have received much anti-slavery press coverage. Goderich's reaction was to indicate that he supported neither the proceedings not the sentence, but he reversed neither, on the grounds of elapsed time and distance, and confined himself to advising the Governor not to advance the militia officers or the magistrates involved further except in the absence of fit alternative candidates.

A further well-publicised 1828 instance of Bridges's violence towards individual enslaved people was recorded in the case of his servant, Kitty Hylton, whom he accused, on her account wrongly, of slaughtering a turkey for his dinner without his permission. She was flogged so badly by other servants on Bridges' instructions and by Bridges himself that her case was taken to the Council of Protection for St Ann in 1828 by one of Bridges' own colleagues, though the Council voted against proceedings by 14 to 4. This case drew the attention of the Commons, Brougham, and, also, Goderich, who in February 1831, well after the 1828 incident, lamented that Bridges, a Minister of the Gospel, should have gone unpunished and required he be removed from the magistracy.

In 1831-2, during the uprising, Bridges helped to found the Colonial Church Union and seems to have played a part in steering its attentions, in the manner of the Church and King mobs of the 1790s in England, towards Baptist and Methodist congregations, buildings, and individual missionaries and their followers, however helpful to law and order some of them might in fact have been, in St Ann and elsewhere. He was also (in “Emancipation Unmask'd”, 1835) a severe critic of apprenticeship, from a completely different direction to that from which the anti-slavery campaigners were attacking, arguing that the evil was the loss of slaveholder power.

In 1834 his wife left him, taking George, one of their two sons, with her. No reconciliation ever took place, though Bridges returned to England with his infant son, just weaned at her departure, for a time to try to contact her, eventually retiring to Coole in Ireland to spend time with a friend, Manchester's successor as Governor of Jamaica from the period of Bridges' greatest notoriety, the 2nd Earl of Belmore. While he was preparing his return to Jamaica and counting the cost of the expedition (which he put at over £1,200, including the loss of a pawned silver presentation plate from the Jamaica Assembly) his father, whose affairs had recovered from their state in 1815, and had been living near Bath, died. Bridges, according to his “Outlines”, could do little more than follow the coffin from Whitechapel to interment in Ilford. He had been reconciled with neither his wife nor his family. In retrospect, he came to believe he had been frozen out mainly by the influence of his younger brother, John William Bridges (his financial agent in London, who had made a success of the estate and whose son was eventually Rector of Bruntingthorpe), and his brother's wife, whom he even saw as having influence on Elizabeth Bridges. (A photograph of the early 1860s in Essex archives shows JW Bridges nearly 60 years since Constable, watching steam threshing at a farm near Manningtree.) In 1837 Bridges's surviving four daughters drowned in Kingston Harbour on New Year's Day. His younger son William was saved.

The effect on Bridges seems to have been profound. Sturge and Harvey, who on the face of it would not have been his most welcome guests at any time, visited him on their 1837 tour in Jamaica, when he was still mourning his loss. They recorded that he received them kindly. The same year, he claims under the influence of the Canadian author Mrs Traill, to whom he eventually let the tower he built there, he left the island for Canada with William. They lived for a while in the wilderness, returning to Britain, for, he says, his son's health, via Malta, in 1842.

On his return he had become, under the auspices of J.H. Monk, (Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, Cambridge classicist and Tory, who is said to have been the last Bishop to wear a white wig in public), Rector of Maisemore near Gloucester. Through William, now a pupil at the local school, and the Mount-Edgecombe family, Bridges seems to have come into contact with W.H. Fox-Talbot (to whose family, who saw him as rich, he seems for a while to have presented himself as a frontiersman) at Lacock Abbey. Interestingly, Bridges' friend and predecessor as Rector of St Ann, Rev Lewis Bowerbank, became curate at St Cyriac's, Lacock, Fox-Talbot's parish church, later in the 1840s.

Bridges tried to get instruction in photography through Fox-Talbot and in the end succeeded. Fortified by an annual Jamaican government pension of £60 and a regular supply of photographic paper from Fox-Talbot, Bridges, having with the assistance of the Yorkshire former Whig MP Sir Sandford Graham, who had been one of Byron's companions in Italy in 1810, prepared his son William for the Navy, and set out in January 1846 for Paris, where he acquired a new camera, and began journeying round the Mediterranean, in contact from time to time with friends and contacts of Fox-Talbot, notably Kit Talbot, from his base in Malta, to Greece, Constantinople and Egypt, sometimes following his son's ship, and visiting and photographing Jerusalem in 1850. He had around 1700 pictures, and made attempts to publish them first through a Cheltenham agent and later in editions prepared by himself, without much success. On his return in 1852 Monk made Bridges his secretary, and found the living of Beachley, near Chepstow, for him at a stipend of £40. Elizabeth Bridges died in Ealing in February 1862, and Bridges re-interred her from Ealing at Beachley. He died on 20 September 1863, the year of his mother's death, and was buried next to his wife.

His assets were less than £100.

Sources