Kings, Queens, Miners and Maids: Family Lore; Rounding the Horn

This week #52ancestors suggests that I write about Family Lore. The best bit of family lore comes from my great grandfather; George Edward Newell, a native of Edinburgh and son of an American sailor, Frederick Newell, and a Scottish mother Christina Hall Main.

Ted Newell was born to be a sailor. His father, a sailor before him, had arrived on British shores from the United States of America, as a sailor, and settled in Leith, Scotland sometime between 1865, and 1870. By 1870 his first son was born; George Edward Newell, aka Ted.

Ted was apprenticed to the British Merchant Navy on the 7th October 1886, at the grand old age of 16 years. Wikipedia explains that during those 4 years an apprentice would have "seagoing experience aboard ship, in work-clothes and as mates with the deck crew, under the direction of the bo'sun cleaning bilges, chipping paint, polishing brass, cement washing freshwater tanks, and holystoning teak decks, and studying navigation and seamanship on the bridge in uniform, under the direction of an officer, before taking exams to become a second mate." On the 5th August, 1890 (the year his indenture ended) Ted earned his Second Mate certificate of competency.

Two years later Ted earned his First Mate certificate of competency. To achieve this certificate a candidate had to prove the ability to navigate by the stars, including being able to calculate in advance the position of useful stars so the sextant could be pre-set to the correct altitude, ready for observations.

In 1894 Ted earned his Masters certificate. Ted would have had to show that he was able to command a ship, and navigate by the planets and the moon. He would have needed to have advanced knowledge of the compass and its errors, plus an ability to use complex logarithms to ensure accuracy. With this certificate Ted would be able to captain a ship.

Finally, in 1895, Ted was awarded the highest form of certification available to seamen of the time; the Extra Master. David Gittens (Could You Make It To Extra Master?) describes the abilities of an Extra Master here;

"Great circle sailing... was the province of the Extra Master. This learned mariner was required to solve problems of considerable complexity, using spherical trigonometry. An examination question might ask the candidate to determine the great circle course from a point on the Kamchatka Peninsula, in Russia, to Cape Horn, listing all the turning points on the course and the courses to be steered between them, assuming the course is changed every 10° of longitude. This calculation occupies two large pages.The Extra Master was required to know how to find a position by Sumner's position lines...The Extra Master was able to construct Mercator charts from scratch...The would-be Extra Master was required to write essays on such topics as tropical revolving storms and to explain the reasoning behind the celestial navigation. Plenty of diagrams were required and neat and methodical work was expected. This is partly why the examination occupied 26 hours, spread over five days. The examination papers were marked progressively and after a final oral examination the candidate was immediately informed of his fate."

Ted was just 25 by the time he had achieved this certificate.

But the story that has become family lore happened to Ted when he was just 18 years old, and was still working his way towards his Second Mate certificate; just halfway through his apprenticeship to the British Merchant Navy. The tale, related below, was told to three of his grandchildren many times through the course of their childhood. My uncle related the story to his children in turn, as follows....

This tale dates from 1888, when, as a young man in the merchant navy training to be an officer, he sailed from Falmouth round Cape Horn on the southern tip of South America to Lima in Peru on the west coast. I say “sailed” because it was indeed a sailing ship, a training ship, like the ones sometimes used even today.

Ted’s best friend Archie served on the same ship, the Carpathian. When they reached Lima they found another ship belonging to the same company, whose third mate had met with an accident and could not sail with them on the homeward journey. To fill the vacancy, Ted was transferred to the other ship. The Carpathian, with Archie on board, sailed first on the long voyage back to England via Cape Horn.

Watercolour, 1896, by Gaetano Esposito (not The Carpathian!)

One night, when Ted’s ship had in it’s turn left Lima and was sailing southwards off the coast of Chile, he had a vivid dream on which he saw the Carpathian sinking in a terrible storm as they tried to round the Horn, and some of the crew, Archie among them, taking to life boats and reaching land.

When he woke up, Ted was of course very worried, although there was nothing he could do then in the days before wireless telegraphy. When he got back to Falmouth to find that the Carpathian was overdue he went straight to see Archie’s parents to tell them of his dream. They, however, told him not to worry.

Cape Horn is one of the most dangerous parts of the oceans to sail.

On the night of his dream, when he was asleep in his bunk somewhere off the Chilean coast, thousands of miles from England, Ted had appeared to them and told them that the Carpathian had sunk but that Archie himself was all right, having got off in a lifeboat and reached land safely. And so it proved to be! Even seamen’s tales do not come much more bizarre than that.

Ted and Archie saw little of each other after that, but when Archie died at the grand old age of 87 Ted got in touch with his daughter, who came to visit. She confirmed that her father had often told the story. Ted, incidentally, rounded Cape Horn under sail a total of nine times, more than any other living Briton, by the time of his death in 1960.

George Edward Newell (Ted)

I have searched for information about the ship The Carpathian, and have found nothing. The closest I have found is a record of a British ship called The Cambrian colliding with a French ship on the 6th August 1888, off the coast of Chile at Valapriso, which is considerably further north than Cape Horn. Perhaps there is a record of this shipwreck somewhere; I shall continue looking. I DO love the idea that there is a family out there somewhere, telling the same tale, but from Archie's point of view. Maybe one day we will make contact, and share stories!

Additional spookiness to this bizarre tale is that we currently have two dogs. They came to us at different times, and are the best of friends. Their names were given to them without any thought to this story. The eldest dog is a flat coated retriever, named Archie. The youngest, an English springer spaniel, is called...... Yup, you guessed right! His name is Ted.