ÿþM i c r o s o f t W o r d

THE ALEXANDER AND THE FIRST
FLEET
The first British people to settle in Australia
were convicts and the soldiers sent to
guard them who sailed out from Portsmouth
on 13 May 1787. The fleet carried about
1400 people including 780 convicts.
There were eleven ships in the fleet. The
largest of the convict transport ships was
the Alexander and she was built in Hull.
Three Hull convicts were also on this
voyage. Although the Alexander was the
largest transport vessel in the fleet she was
very small by modern standards, being only
114 feet long. Despite her small size she
left Portsmouth with 195 male convicts and
thirty crew as well as twenty other
passengers crammed on board..
It is hard to imagine the conditions amongst
the convicts crammed below decks and
there were many problems with disease.
Conditions on the ships were appalling and
they were infested with bugs and rats.
On 20 January 1788, after months of
storms and discomfort, the Alexander
arrived in Botany Bay. The Alexander had
sailed bout 15,000 miles.
Richard Nettleton, one of the three Hull
convicts on the First Fleet, had been
convicted by a Hull court in 1784 of stealing
a silk handkerchief, scissors and snuffers
with the value of one shilling (5p). He was
sentenced to be transported for seven
years.
After a number of difficult years, the colony
survived and the basis for modern Australia
was formed.
The Alexander had a very hard voyage
back to Britain and many of the crew
succumbed to scurvy. The ship had played
an important role in the establishment of
modern Australia.
ALEXANDER COTTON
FROM HULL TO HEADMAN OF
TRISTAN DA CUNHA
In the mid-South Atlantic lie the three
small volcanic islands which make up
Tristan Da Cunha, home to one of the
most remote communities in the world.
In 1816 the British government placed a
small garrison of troops on Tristan Da
Cunha to stop the islands being used as a
base to free Napoleon who was kept a
prisoner on St Helena, another Atlantic
island. When Napoleon died in 1821 the
garrison of soldiers was taken off.
Alexander Cotton was on the ship which
was sent to Tristan Da Cunha to take the
soldiers off and he was so taken with the
islands that he and another person asked if
they could have permission to go back and
they were dropped off in 1822.
Alexander Cotton, also known as John
Taylor, was born in Hull. He was one of a
small number of settlers on the main
island. Some of the others had arrived as a
result of shipwreck. By 1827 Tristan’s
population had reached 14 adults but
Cotton and four of the others were
bachelors.
When the ship Duke of Gloucester visited
the island in 1827 the captain was asked if
he could find brides for these men when
his ship called in at St Helena. They did
and returned to the island with five
volunteers. All still appeared to be happily
married when visited by the American ship
Antarctica in 1829. Everyone was
considered very equal to each other on the
island. No one was considered to be
superior to anyone else.
Cotton’s wife was called Maria and would
have been about eighteen years old when
she came to Tristan from St Helena. Over
the following years they were to have
twelve children and gradually the
community grew.
Alexander Cotton eventually became
headman of the island after the death of
the oldest settler. Cotton held the post until
shortly before his death in 1865 aged
about 77 years.
Today the island of Tristan and its main
settlement called Edinburgh has a
population of around 300 people. Cotton is
one of only seven surnames still found on
the island. The island seems to be a very
happy place and serious crime is unknown.
Back in 1961 the entire population had to
be evacuated because of a large volcanic
eruption. Many islanders spent almost two
years living in Britain but virtually everyone
chose to return to Tristan when the
eruption was over.
Alexander Cotton, from Hull and the other
early men and women settlers played a
major part in establishing the quality of life
enjoyed by the islanders.
ALFRED CHEETHAM
ANTARCTIC SEAMAN
It has been said that if ever there was a
seaman worthy of the title of Antarctic
Seaman then that person was Alf
Cheetham.
Alf ran away to sea in his teens and
learned his seamanship in the Hull fishing
and merchant fleets. Later, he lived with
his wife and up to fourteen children down
Bean Street between Anlaby and Hessle
Roads.
He made his first trip to Antarctica as part
of the crew of the SY Morning to relieve
Captain Scott’s ship Discovery which was
trapped in the ice.
He later served with Shackleton on the
Endurance during the famous TransAntarctic Expedition of 1914-1917 when
the ship between locked in the ice and was
crushed and abandoned. Alf and the rest
of the crew had to haul their open boats
across miles of ice and then row across
the wild ocean to find temporary safety on
Elephant Island. They were later rescued
after Shackleton took one of the boats on a
perilous trip across the oceans to the
island of South Georgia.
Alf returned safely to Britain in 1917 and
then joined the Merchant Navy. He was
killed when his ship was torpedoed in
August 1918 in the North Sea just a few
months before the end of the First World
War.
AMY JOHNSON
Amy Johnson was born in Hull down St
George’s Road and attended Boulevard
Secondary School. She went on to
Sheffield University.
After university she returned to Hull and
developed a love of flying. In July 1929 she
obtained her pilot’s licence. She found it
hard to make a living out of flying because
it was then considered to be mainly an
activity for men but she was driven by a
dream of blazing a trail for women across
the skies. She wanted to show that women
could be every bit as good as men.
Amy bought a second-hand Gypsy Moth
biplane which she named Jason after the
trade mark of her father’s fish merchants
business. She wanted to challenge the
record of flying from England to Australia.
She had a lot of difficulties to overcome
during the flight but she finally touched
down in Australia on the 24 th May 1930.
Little Jason and the brave pilot had covered
9,960 miles in 19.5 days. Amy hadn’t
broken the record but she had become the
first woman to fly solo from Britain to
Australia. After she returned to Britain she
flew little Jason up to Hull and attended a
civic reception at the City Hall. At her
suggestion, the Amy Johnson Trophy was
set-up, to be awarded each year to a Hull
child who shows exceptional bravery.
She set many more records over the next
few years and had many adventures but in
January 1941 her plane went missing when
it crashed into the River Thames. Amy’s
body was never found but the memory of
her determination has proved an inspiration
to many who have come after her.
Fox and the Northwest Passage
Captain Luke Fox, or Foxe, was born in
Hull in 1586 and christened in St Mary’s,
Lowgate. A skilful seaman, he was
interested in Arctic history and became
very good at navigation.
The
legendary Northwest Passage
In 1631 he set off to find the Northwest
Passage. Fox reached the Hudson Strait
in June but on the 10 th July he became
trapped in the ice. After two day’s struggle
he managed to break free.
He entered what we now call Hudson’s
Bay in Canada but could not find the
Northwest Passage. During his voyage
around Hudson’s Bay and beyond he
found many unexplored places and then
sailed back home without losing any
member of his crew which was unusual for
such a voyage in those days. He later
wrote a book called ‘North-west Fox’ about
Polar exploration and it is often thought to
be the first book written by someone from
Hull.
Cover page from Fox's book
’ GASSY JACK’ DEIGHTON
John Deighton was born in Hull on the 7th
November 1830. He was usually known as
Jack and may well have been born down
Brook Street, close to what is now the
Prospect Centre.
Jack went to sea at the age of fourteen and
later worked in America. He tried to find
gold during a couple of gold rushes but
failed and lost all his money. By this time
he was living in what we now call British
Columbia in Canada. Having little money
left he gathered up his few remaining
possessions and set off in a canoe with his
Indian wife, her mother and an Indian
cousin called Big William. Jack’s dog also
came along in the canoe.
He found a place called the Burrard Inlet in
an area where many lumberjacks were
cutting down trees for timber. There was
nowhere for the lumberjacks to get a drink
so he built a small saloon called The Globe
which was very popular. So was its owner
Jack, who kept everyone amused with his
adventures and stories. This is how he got
his nickname Gassy which was a Victorian
term for being talkative. A small settlement
grew up around his saloon and this was
officially called Granville but everyone
knew it as Gastown.
Jack died when he was only 44 but
Gastown continued to grow and became a
great city. Today, it is the oldest part of the
great city of Vancouver and is graced with
a statue of Gassy Jack.
HENRY WOLSLEY BAYFIELD
Henry Bayfield was born in Hull on the
21st January 1795. At the age of eleven
he joined the Royal Navy and worked his
way up to become acting master on the
sloop Star when he was 21 years old.
Bayfield was placed in charge of the
surveys of Lake Erie and Lake Huron in
Canada when he was 22 years old. He
charted thousands of islands and later
charted the bays and islands of Lake
Superior. His works on the Great Lakes
was sometimes very dangerous and on
one occasion his assistant, Collins, was
drowned whilst surveying.
In 1834 Henry Bayfield was promoted to
Captain and wrote many important articles
and books on navigation. In 1867 he finally
became an Admiral. The town of Bayfield
in Ontario, Canada is named after him.
HERBERT JOHNSON
Herbert Johnson was born in Hull in 1890.
His father was lost when his fishing boat
disappeared while fishing in the North Sea
and his mother Charlotte had a desperate
time trying to keep the family fed and
clothed and together. She took in washing
and ironing for neighbours. This was long
work for very little money but by working
long into the night she kept money coming
in. Eventually, however, she had to put one
of her children into the orphanage so she
could manage to keep the others fed and
clothed. Imagine the heartbreak of having to
choose which one of your children would
have to be put into the orphanage?
Herbert signed aboard a trawler when he
was just fourteen and on one of his trips, as
part of Hull’s famous Gamecock Boxing
Fleet, he witnessed the Russian warship
open fire on unarmed Hull trawlers on the
night of the 21st October 1904 in the
mistaken belief that they were Japanese
torpedo boats. This incident became known
as the Dogger Bank Incident or Russian
Outrage. In Hull a statue at the corner of the
Boulevard and Hessle Road commemorates
the incident and the three Hull trawlermen
who lost their lives through the action.
After a while spent on jobs ashore, Herbert
returned to the sea and fishing soon after
his sixteenth birthday. He became a skipper
in 1912 at the age of twenty-two. By this
time his older brother Billy was also a
skipper and between them they made good
money to support their widowed mother and
their brothers and sisters.
Tragically, Billy’s trawler was lost in the
North Sea almost exactly twenty years to
the day after his father’s fishing boat had
disappeared and Herbert was so sad that
he gave up the sea for some months.
However, by the start of the First World War
he had returned to the North Sea as a
skipper.
In May 1915 Herbert’s trawler, the Hector,
was captured by a German U-boat. The
crew were told to get into the trawler’s little
rowing boat and the U-boat sunk the Hector
with gunfire. Before they sailed away the
Germans left trawlermen with a kettle full of
hot water and all the food off the trawler’s
table. The crew spent an unpleasant night
on the North Sea in a little boat but were
picked up by another trawler the next
morning.
A couple of months later Herbert took
another trawler, the Cassio, to the fishing
grounds off Iceland and on the way back
they were chased by another German Uboat. The Cassio tried to get away but the
U-boat chased after the trawler and fired its
guns. The fishermen were forced to stop
and they were ordered into their little rowing
boat. The U-boat then sunk the Cassio and
submerged. For the second time in less
than two months Herbert Johnson was
alone with his crew in an open boat, far out
to sea. They were eventually picked up by a
sailing ship.
Later in the war Herbert Joined the Navy
and commanded armed fishing vessels.
After the end of the war, Herbert was at
Scapa Flow when the great battleships of
the German High Seas Fleet were scuttled
by their crews.
Herbert retired in the 1950s and lived on
until 1978. His story might have been
forgotten had not his son Phil given him a
tape recorder and tapes with which to recall
his remarkable life.
HMS BOREAS
HMS Boreas was built at a Blaydes
shipyard in Hull in 1767. In 1784, Horatio
Nelson, later to become Britain’s most
famous admiral, took command of HMS
Boreas and sailed across the Atlantic
Ocean to the West Indies. The ship was
his first command as a captain. Nelson
and his ship were used to put a stop to
illegal trading of goods between the United
States and the West Indian islands which
were controlled by Britain.
Nelson and HMS Boreas spent almost four
years in the West Indies and are
particularly associated with the islands of
Antigua and Nevis. Nelson met his wife,
Kitty, on Nevis. In 1787 Nelson and
Boreas sailed back to Britain but when he
set off on the long voyage back across the
Atlantic he was feeling rather ill. He was
worried that he was not well enough to
survive the voyage. He didn’t want to be
buried at sea so he had a barrel of rum put
to one side in the hold so that if he should
die his body could be preserved and
buried back in England. Later, after he
was killed during the Battle of Trafalgar on
HMS Victory his body was brought back to
England in a wine barrel.
Two postage stamps showing Nelson and
HMS Boreas were issued by the island of
Nevis in 1983, a timely reminder of
Britain’s most famous admiral and his Hullbuilt ship.
HMS BOUNTY
In the late 1780s a ship had to be found
which could be converted into a floating
greenhouse in order to carry breadfruit
from Tahiti to the West Indies. The plan
was to grow breadfruit in the West Indies
and feed it to the slaves there.
The Admiralty decided to buy the Bethia a
ship built by the Blaydes family who lived in
Blaydes House down the High Street in
Hull. The Navy Board bought her on the
23rd May 1787 for £1950 and renamed her
Bounty. She was then immediately
transferred to Deptford for refitting.
The Bounty sailed from England on the
23rd December 1787 with Captain William
Bligh and a crew of 45 men bound for
Tahiti. Their mission was to collect
breadfruit plants that were then to be taken
to the West Indies and planted to provide
cheap food for the slaves who worked on
the sugar plantations.
The voyage to Tahiti was very stormy and
took ten months. The crew of the Bounty
then spent five months in Tahiti which they
found beautiful. After collecting the plants
the Bounty set off for the West Indies but
on the morning of the 28th April 1789,
three weeks into the voyage, Fletcher
Christian and part of the crew mutinied,
took over the ship and then set Captain
Bligh and eighteen members of the crew
adrift in the ship’s 23 foot long launch.
Captain Bligh managed to sail the little
launch and seventeen crew members –
one died on the voyage – for over 3,618
miles to reach a Dutch settlement at Timor
from where they were able to get shipped
back to Britain.
Meanwhile, the mutineers took the Bounty
back to Tahiti and then, with six Polynesian
men and twelve women, they set sail
again, taking the ship to the isolated
Pitcairn Island, miles from any other land.
After burning the ship and enduring a
violent beginning, they established a
settlement and colony on Pitcairn Island .
Their descendants still live there. The 23rd
January each year is still celebrated each
year on Pitcairn Island as ‘Bounty Day’.
Today’s replica HMS Bounty was built as
an ocean going vessel in 1960 for the
movie ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’. MGM sailed
the ship around the world to promote the
film. Later the replica Bounty has been
used as the Black Pearl in the film ‘Pirates
of the Caribbean’ with Johnny Depp. The
replica Bounty paid a visit to Hull in 2007.
HMS HECLA
HMS Hecla was one of the most famous
discovery vessels of her age and was
launched in 1815 at Hessle Cliff. The ship
was then taken to Humber Dock, now Hull
Marina, where the final work of making her
ready for the sea was carried out.
HMS Hecla
and HMS Griper
Melville Island
In 1816 Hecla saw action in the
Bombardment of Algiers. This was an
attack on the Barbary Corsairs. This was
the last time that HMS Hecla fired guns in
anger.
The Hecla had been heavily built so that
large guns known as mortars could be fired
from the vessel. This made the ship very
suitable for working amongst thick ice
during polar voyages of exploration. In May
1819 the Hecla, in command of William
Parry, and accompanied by a smaller gun
brig called HMS Griper, set sail for the
Arctic in search of the Northwest Passage.
The ships sailed around the southern tip of
Greenland, up the Davis Straits and into
the ice in Baffin Bay. Then they sailed
westwards and sheltered for a full arctic
winter in the grip of the ice in a bay, they
named Winter Harbour, on Melville Island
far to the north of any houses, fields or
trees. The ships broke out of the ice in June
1820. They could not resume their voyage
west because of the sheer amount of ice in
front of them but they had discovered and
explored a large part of the Northwest
Passage and set a record for the furtherest
west that ships had travelled by such a
route in one season. This record was to last
for 150 years.
Captain Parry was to take the Hecla back to
the Arctic on two further voyages in search
of the Northwest Passage. On both
voyages the Hecla and its accompanying
ship, the Fury, met with extreme conditions.
On the last voyage the Fury was dashed
against the rocks and wrecked but the
Hecla was able to carry both crews to
safety.
HMS Hecla was Captain Parry’s favourite
ship and he also used the vessel as his
ship for his attempt on the North Pole in
1827.
The Hecla was later involved in trading and
whaling but was wrecked on a whaling
voyage to the Davis Straits in 1840.
The ship’s epic voyages of exploration are
remembered by the Hecla and Griper Bay
and the Hecla and Fury Straits in Canada’s
northern waters.
HMS ROSE AND THE AMERICAN WAR
OF INDEPENDENCE
HMS Rose was built in Hull by the Blaydes
family in 1757. She was designed to
operate as a patrol ship.
The ship fought in the Seven Years War
between Britain and France and was later
sent across the Atlantic to North America
to stamp out smuggling.
On the 7th October 1774, the Rose’s
captain, James Wallace, bombarded the
small New England town of Bristol. Most of
the Rose’s guns were aimed at the fields
beyond the town but the church was hit.
Almost two years later, in July 1776, the
Rose and another ship the Phoenix, sailed
up the Hudson River, bombarding New
York. The two ships repeated the
bombardment despite coming under heavy
fire from the shore. The actions of the Rose
shocked the Americans and were part of a
British attack on General Washington and
his army which drove them out of New
York. The Rose’s commander, James
Wallace, was later knighted for his actions.
The exploits of the Rose have gone down
in history and a replica of the ship was built
in 1970. The replica Rose has had an
interesting history and has featured as
HMS Surprise in the film ‘Master and
Commander’, starring Russell Crowe.
JAMES EVANS
The Evans family from Hull were one of
many local families who settled in Canada
in the 1820s and one member of the family,
James Evans, had a remarkable and long
lasting effect on the native people North
America.
When the Evans family emigrated to
Canada, James stayed in England until he
finished serving his apprenticeship with Mr
Fearn, grocer of Lowgate in Hull.
Some time after he went to Canada he
taught in schools and learned the native
Indian languages. A devout Methodist
preacher, he travelled over great areas of
Canada by canoe and dog sled visiting
Indian settlements and encampments. He
was appointed to a remote settlement
called Norway House and over the next few
years he developed a written language for
the local Cree Indians. He based this on the
shorthand he had learned when serving his
grocery apprenticeship in Hull. He built a
printing press and from here the first books
in the Cree Language were published.
Teaching the Cree to read did not make him
popular with the company that controlled
much of the region.
His health deteriorated and in 1846 he
came back on a visit to Hull with his
Canadian wife and stayed with relatives
down Whitefriargate. He died suddenly and
was buried in Waltham Street Methodist
Church in Hull.
He was never forgotten in Canada and over
one hundred years after he died, his
cremated remains were returned to the
Cree Nation and reburied near where he
had produced his books. On his tombstone
there are written the words, ‘He brought the
light'.
JOHN BACCHUS DYKES
John Bacchus Dykes was born in March
1823 in the Ivy House down Lime Street on
the eastern bank of the River Hull.
He was part of a well known Hull family and
from an early age showed a great talent for
music. At the age of ten he could play any
musical instrument and when eleven he
became assistant organist at his
grandfather’s church. He went on to
become a vicar and to write music for many
Victorian hymns.
In the 1860s he set a poem written by
William Whiting to music. Once set to
music the poem became the hymn ‘Eternal
Father Strong to Save’, otherwise known as
‘For Those in peril on the Sea’ and is now
the most famous maritime hymn in the
world.
Eternal father was the favourite hymn of the
United States President, Franklin D.
Roosevelt and was played during his
funeral in 1945. It was also played when
President Kennedy’s body was brought
back to Washington after his assassination
in 1963.
THE MICHAEL (KICK) MURPHY STORY
Whilst relatives were clearing out the house
of Ted Murphy shortly after his death in
August 2002, an old battered case was
found. It contained letters and materials
relating to the short life of Michael Murphy.
Michael was known to family and friends as
Kick. The contents of the suitcase help to
tell his remarkable story.
The suitcase contained many letters sent by
Michael to his parents and brother while he
was away at sea, having started his
apprenticeship in 1892 aged sixteen.
Michael sailed on a large sailing ship with
four masts and went all over the world. He
visited Cape Town, Australia and North and
South America as well as Germany before
he was eighteen. The letters were all sent
over a four year period from the different
places he went to whilst on his voyages
around the world. Here is one example:Monday 8th October 1894
Dear father and Mother,
I am just as happy as when I was at home
and am wishing I could have a night off to
go to Hull Fair. This is the third time I have
missed it...........
.................... I wish you could write a little
oftener as all the other chaps are getting
letters every time the steamer comes in and
I have only had two.
In September 1896, the letters suddenly
stopped arriving in Hull. It was discovered
that Michael’s ship had sunk with the loss of
all hands.
SAMUEL STANDIDGE
Few British ships went whaling in the
middle of the eighteenth century. Few
people in Britain at the time knew how to
catch whales but Samuel Standidge, a Hull
captain and shipowner was sure that
profits could be made. In 1766 he sent a
ship to Greenland in search of whales.
The first ship returned with one whale and
some 400 seal skins. Standidge had
difficulty selling these at first but had them
tanned as leather and then made into
boots which he wore to show off the
quality. After this, he sold the sealskins
easily and made plenty of money.
The next year he went north with two
ships. The ships caught whales and the
voyages made a profit. The British whaling
industry was up and running again and by
the 1790s Hull was the largest whaling
port in the country.
Standidge became a very wealthy man.
He was knighted and became, Sir Samuel
Standidge. He was Warden of Trinity
House on several occasions and also was
Sheriff and Mayor of Hull on different
occasions.
Sir Samuel Standidge is buried in St
Mary’s Lowgate near the grave of
Benjamin Blaydes of Blaydes House.
SIR JOHN HALL
Sir John Hall was born in Hull, one of a
family of five children. His father was a sea
captain who went on to become a wealthy
shipowner. John was baptised at All Saints
Church, Margret Street, Sculcoates. After
living down Prospect Street and Brook
Street, the family purchased a house, Rose
Cottage, at Elloughton. His father, George,
is buried close to the church door in
Elloughton churchyard.
John was interested in politics from an early
age and by the early 1850s, he and his
brothers had decided to emigrate to New
Zealand.
They began sheep farming and over the
following years they became wealthy and
well respected farmers and businessmen.
John returned to England for a couple of
years in 1860 and married Rose Anne
Dryden of Park House in Cottingham.
John went on to have a successful career
in politics and rose to the position of New
Zealand Prime Minister in 1879, a post he
held until 1882. He was knighted in 1882.
Sir John Hall played a leading role in
making sure that a law giving women the
right to vote was passed by the New
Zealand parliament. New Zealand was the
first country to give the vote to women.
The Hall brothers from Hull and Elloughton
played a major role in the opening up and
development of New Zealand.
SWAN RIVER AND THE TRANBY
About 1829 it was decided to create a new
colony around the Swan River in Western
Australia.
Settlers who arrived before the end of the
year 1830 were to be given land. A number
of people in East Yorkshire and North
Lincolnshire were soon interested and
looked for a ship to sail to the Swan River
with settlers. They searched for a suitable
vessel. At this time there was a wrecked
vessel lying close to the ferry stage on the
banks of the River Humber. The wreck was
a small ship called the Tranby which had
been built in Hull in 1823.
Despite being in terrible condition the
Tranby was bought by the Hull firm of
Boulton and Humphrey and over the
following months underwent a complete
overhaul and refit. The vessel was then
chartered for carrying the Swan River
emigrants to Western Australia.
The Tranby departed from Hull in early
September 1829, carrying no less than 37
passengers and 14 crew together with their
livestock and farming implements. The
livestock included cattle, sheep, pigs,
dogs, cats and rabbits. A lot of people and
animals in a ship only 80 feet long.
At one point in the voyage, the Tranby was
struck by what seems to have been a
‘meteorite’. The Mate and several
passengers were injured, a sheep was
killed and a dog suffered a broken leg.
The Tranby finally arrived in the Swan
River in February 1830.
Ann and Joseph Hardey built their first
dwelling, Tranby House, named after the
ship, in 1830. The couple rebuilt the house
in 1839 and it still stands, one of the oldest
houses in Western Australia. The
Australian Tranby College, still celebrates
Tranby Day each year in memory of the
day the brig Tranby arrived at the Swan
River Colony in 1830.
THE INCA AND OLLANTA
High in the Andes mountain range in
South America is a huge lake called Lake
Titicaca. The lake is nearly 120 miles long
and lies nearly 200 miles from the coast
and at a height of over 12500 feet above
sea level. It is home to a small fleet of
ships. The two largest steamships to have
worked on the lake were the Inca and
Ollanta, both of which began life on the
Humber foreshore in Hull near what is now
the Victoria Dock Estate.
The Inca was one of the most important
ships on the lake in the early part of the
twentieth century but when she became
somewhat old it was decided to order a
new and even bigger vessel, to be called
the Ollanta. Once more the contract came
to Hull.
The Ollanta, like the Inca before, was first
assembled in Hull at Earles Shipyard. All
the ship’s parts were then numbered the
vessel was taken apart again, put in
packing cases and shipped out to South
America. On arrival on the coast of South
America, the packing cases were carried
by train up to the shore of Lake Titicaca
and then put together under the direction
of William Smale, a skilled engineer who
lived in Hull and had learned his trade at
the Earles Shipyard.
Local people who lived by the Lake were
trained to help put the ship together and
the Ollanta was completed and launched
on the 18th November 1931.
The Inca was scrapped in the early 1990s
after a very long working life but the
Ollanta can still be seen on the Lake.
THE ISABELLA AND CAPTAIN ROSS
The Isabella was a Hull whaling ship. She
was chartered by the Admiralty and
commanded by Captain Ross in 1818 on a
mission to find a way through the Northwest
Passage, north of Canada, something
which people and ships had been trying to
do for centuries.
Captain Ross was tricked by an Arctic
mirage. He sailed along a stretch of water
called the Lancaster Sound but thought his
way forward was blocked by mountains. His
ship had been at sea for months and the
weather was turning worse so he decided
to turn back. His second in command,
William Parry, disagreed and thought that it
was clouds and not mountains that Ross
could see in the distance. The next year
William Parry took another expedition on
through the Lancaster Sound and proved
Ross to be wrong.
Despite being proved wrong, Ross decided
to return to the Arctic and in 1829 he went
back in a little steamship called the Victoria.
The little ship became stuck in the ice and
Ross and his crew were forced to spend the
next four years in the Arctic. They were the
first explorers to survive there for so long.
Eventually, they decided they would have to
try and get away in small boats which they
dragged across the ice until they reached
open water. They set sail and after some
time a sailing ship was seen, they waved to
try and attract attention but the ship did not
see them. Suddenly another sail was seen
and this ship saw them waving and turned
to pick them up. The ship turned out to be
Ross’s old flagship, the Isabella under the
command of Captain Humphreys.
Eventually, the Isabella brought Ross and
his expedition back to the River Humber
and to Hull where he received a hero’s
welcome. After all, he had been given up
for dead. Ross was later knighted for his
achievements.
THE WILLIAM SCORESBY
The William Scoresby was built in Beverley
then floated down the River Hull to be fitted
out in Queen’s Dock (now Queen’s
Gardens) in 1925.
The ship was initially used to work
alongside Captain Scott’s old vessel,
Discovery, to make investigations into the
lives and habits of whales in the Antarctic
and Southern Oceans. At least two Hull
men were one the first of her exploratory
voyages. John Blanchard from Monmouth
Street and Walter Baxter of Westbourne
Avenue were both petty officers on the
ship.
The William Scoresby often worked in
atrocious conditions, at one time being
surrounded in an ice pack by over 2,000 ice
bergs. During the 1920s and 1930s the
ship made many important voyages of
discovery and exploration, investigations
were made in many parts of the southern
oceans of the world and the waters near
Antarctica. The work carried out by the
ship’s crew and scientists played a major
part in increasing our knowledge of the
oceans and paved the way for later
conservation measures.
TWO TALES OF THE TITANIC
There were a number of people with Hull
connections who were caught up with the
Titanic tragedy of 1912 when the great
liner sunk a few hours after hitting an
iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean. This is the
story of two of the survivors, Joseph
Boxhall and Algernon Barkworth.
Joseph Boxhall
Joseph Boxhall was Fourth Officer of the
Titanic on its maiden voyage. Joseph was
off duty when the Titanic struck the iceberg
at 11.40pm but played an important part in
the events that followed. It was he who
calculated the Titanic’s position so that the
first ever wireless distress signal could be
sent out.
Boxhall was then put in charge of Lifeboat
Number 2 which carried twenty five people
to safety.
It was Boxhall who spotted the steam ship
Carpathia in the distance and guided the
vessel towards the lifeboats with the help
of green flares. Boxhall was the person
who told the Captain of the Carpathia the
unbelievable news that the great liner had
sunk. By 8am the Carpathia had picked up
more than 700 survivors.
When Boxhall died in 1967, aged 83, his
ashes were scattered, as he had wished,
on the Atlantic Ocean over the position
calculated as the Titanic’s final resting
place.
Algernon Barkworth
Algernon Barkworth was born in Hessle in
Tranby House, now the main part of Hessle
High School. He was a wealthy man and
paid £30 (a lot of money then) for the
crossing on the Titanic. He was wide
awake, having been playing cards until not
long before the iceberg struck. Later, he
went down to his cabin to retrieve his
clothes and case and recalled that the
band was still playing.
Algernon put on his fur coat and lifebelt
and jumped into the sea. He later thought
that his fur coat and case helped to keep
him from sinking and freezing to death.
Struggling in the dark, cold water he
managed to grasp a plank of wood and
eventually reached a lifeboat. He was very
lucky because nearly all those left in the
water succumbed to the cold. The two
people he had been playing cards with
both died in the tragedy.
Algernon spent much of the rest of his life
back at Tranby House in Hessle near Hull
where he died aged 80 in 1945.
VIOLA – DIAS
The Viola was launched at Beverley in 1906
and was then floated down the river to Hull
where the trawler was fitted with its steam
engines. The ship was built by the order of
Charles Hellyer, a famous Hull trawler
owner. He named almost all his ships after
people from William Shakespeare’s plays.
Viola is named after a character from
Twelfth Night.
The Viola is today the oldest surviving
steam trawler in the world with its steam
engines still intact.
The little ship with its crew of Hull
trawlermen, including skipper Charles
Allum, who lived down Rosamund Street on
Hessle road, played an important part in the
First World War. The Viola seems to have
been involved in the sinking of two U-boats.
After the war the Viola was sold to the
Norwegians and used for fishing then
whaling. The little ship was later renamed
Dias and voyaged to the island of South
Georgia in the South Atlantic and was used
for seal hunting and as a support vessel for
South Atlantic expeditions.
The trawler sailed off to war from Hull in
September 1914 and has never returned.
Viola-Dias now lies on a beach at the
deserted whaling station of Grytviken in
South Georgia.
The Viola is a wonderful reminder of the
role that Hull fishermen and their families
played in both twentieth century world wars.
WILLIAM COLBECK
William Colbeck was born on the 8th April
1871 in Myton Place, Hull, the second child
in a family of six born to Christopher
Colbeck, a baker and his wife Martha.
He went to sea against his father’s wishes
and eventually became an officer with the
Wilson Line. He joined a Norwegian
expedition to Antarctica. He was one of a
small party from the expedition who set a
record for travelling further south than
anyone had done before.
He later commanded the SY Morning
which took supplies to Scott’s ship,
Discovery, when it was trapped by ice in
Antarctica in 1902. Captain Colbeck and
his crew, many of whom were from Hull,
dragged supplies across miles of ice to
make sure the crew of the Discovery could
survive another winter in the ice.
In 1903, Captain Colbeck and the Morning
joined with another ship the Terra Nova on
a second voyage into the polar ice fields
and played a major part in freeing the
Discovery.
After their long voyages the crew of the
Morning landed back in Britain in autumn
1904.. Thousands of people greeted
Colbeck and the Hull members of his crew
when they arrived back at Paragon Station.
Captain Scott named Cape Colbeck and
Colbeck Bay after him.
WILLIAM HARMAN
William Harman was christened on the 9th
September 1804 in St Peter’s Church,
Drypool, on the eastern bank of the River
Hull, not far from what is now The Deep.
He grew up in Hull and as a youth seems
to have learned the skills of an ironfounder
or blacksmith, probably on the site of what
is now called the Old Foundry near
Cannon Street in Hull. In the 1820s he
moved to France and used his ironworking
skills at the Charenton Ironworks near
Paris. Here he gained a lot of experience
in making parts for ships. His girlfriend
came from Hull to join him and they were
married in Paris in 1825.
William seems to have come back to
England in the late 1820s but then moved
to the United States of America where he
helped make some of the earliest steam
locomotives to be built in America. He
eventually took his young family, by way of
the Great Lakes, to a small frontier town
consisting of just a few log cabins and
muddy tracks. That place was Chicago
which grew into a large city. He lived there
until about 1852 and the town grew rapidly.
He was Chicago’s first shipsmith, the name
for the man who made the ironwork for
ships.
By 1852 William’s family had grown up but
his wife had died. He re-married and set off
with his second wife, Mary and her children
by covered wagon for Oregon on the west
coast of America. They travelled by
covered wagon across the plains and on to
the Oregon Trail. The journey to the town
of The Dalles in Oregon took six months
and ten days. During their long treck
through the hot summer, Indians stole their
horses and many of their cattle died of
thirst.
Mary, who was injured on the way across,
rode on the wagon for the last part of the
journey but William and the older children
covered the last six hundred miles on foot.
They finally reached their destination and
set up home in Oregon City.
William soon put his ironworking skills to
good use and produced the ironwork for
many famous steamboats which worked
on the Columbia River in Oregon. One of
the vessels he forged the iron for was the
steamboat Idaho which the state of Idaho
is thought to be named after.
William and his family eventually moved to
The Dalles and he became mayor there in
1870 and died in 1889. By the time he died
the little frontier post of Chicago had grown
into America’s second largest city.
WILLIAM OLIVER
Distant water trawlers had to contend with
almost everything the sea could throw at
them: gales, freezing fog and snow as well
as ice which froze on the ship, threatening
it with capsizing.
It was very dangerous work and the ability
of these trawlers to survive owed much to
the skill, courage and resources of the
trawler crews, especially their skippers.
Many of Hull’s most successful distant
water skippers would figure highly on any
list of the world’s finest twentieth century
mariners. Yet the only way to become a
Hull trawler skipper was to start on the very
bottom rung. Most skippers started as
deckie learners or galley boys.
Hull has produced many fine skippers, not
least William Oliver. He was born down
Herbert’s Terrace, Hull in 1885 and started
work on sailing trawlers, known as sailing
smacks, in the North sea and survived a
terrible storm on the smack Butterfly in a
storm which swept away the skipper and
mate of his vessel and sank another six
ships.
William Oliver went on to become a superb
seaman and never lost a crew member
during the many years he spent as a
skipper, a wonderful achievement at a time
when many lives were lost in this
dangerous job.
By 1914 he had become a regular skipper
and mainly fished around Iceland but in
1914, after the start of the Great war, he
joined the Royal Navy and in February
1916 he took charge of the armed trawler
Marion and then later the armed drifter
Kymic.
After the war he went back to fishing and
until well into the 1930s he spent much of
his time on trawling trips to the northern
fishing grounds. An examination of
seventeen years of his diary entries show
that he was at sea for over 75% of the
time.
In the 1920s and early 1930s he made a lot
of money from fishing. He and his wife
moved from the back streets of Hessle
Road to the Boulevard and then out to
Anlaby. He was one of the select band of
people able to afford a car in the 1920s.
When he gave up fishing he became the
much respected secretary of the Hull
Trawler Officer’s Guild.
William died in February 1959 in Anlaby
but his wonderful diaries ensure that his
remarkable story will live on.