Ship’s Carpenter, Milburn Fleet. Lost at sea, North Atlantic, January 1885
Introduction
During my research into the Newrick family (my mother, Yvonne, was born a Newrick), the initial date I found regarding the SS Clandon’s (ON 77105) disappearance was January 22nd 1885. This gave me an unpleasant start, as it was the same day and month as my father, Laurence Williams, disappeared in an aircraft crash at sea in 1979.
My father’s body was never discovered, and I have been wary of the date ever since. As it turns out, that date was not material to the Clandon’s disappearance, as she actually set sail on her final voyage two days later, and the date of her sinking is not known. However, that connection, between two men lost at sea in January in unexplained circumstances, has stayed with me. As I write this, it occurs to me that this might explain the work I have put into the research for this account of Albert Newrick’s life and the vessel on which he lost his life, which is the most extensive I have written about any of my ancestors.
Early Life and Family
Albert Newrick was born in 1848 in Bishopwearmouth, Sunderland, County Durham. He was the fourth son of Nathaniel Aaron Newrick (1814–1865), a miller from North Shields, and Charlotte Dawson Maddy (1815–1898), who came from London.
The family lived at 19 South Johnson Street, Sunderland. By 1851, the household included Albert’s three older brothers: James Frederick (b.1839), Aaron Henry (b.1842), and Joseph Maddy (b.1845). Albert, aged three, was the youngest. More children followed: Mary (born 1851), Charles William (b.1851, died 1854 in infancy), Mary Emma (b.1855) and Charles Septimus (b.1857). By 1861, the family had at least seven surviving children.
Nathaniel was a miller by trade, but the family’s connection to the sea ran through Albert’s uncle, Charles Newrick (1807–1858), who had married Isabella Blythe in 1829. Isabella’s father, William Blythe (1788–1855), and her brother, Robert Robson Blythe (1822–1872), were both Master Mariners from Sunderland; William was also a shipowner. It was through the Blythe connection that Albert and his brother James found their way to the maritime world.
Albert’s eldest brother, James, entered the merchant service in September 1855, apprenticed at the age of sixteen aboard the Margaret, a vessel of about 247 tons. He would rise through the ranks, gaining his Certificate of Competency as Second Mate in January 1865 and as First Mate in September 1868. James married Julia Lewis in 1866 at St George in the East, in London’s docklands. He remained in the merchant service until his death at the Dreadnought Seamen’s Hospital, Greenwich, in June 1896, aged fifty-seven. Albert would follow a different path to the sea; through the shipyard.
Apprenticeship
By the time of the 1861 census, Albert was thirteen years old and already bound as a shipwright apprentice. His brother Aaron, aged eighteen, had followed their father into milling; James, at twenty-one, had already been at sea for six years; Joseph, at fifteen, was absent from the household, possibly apprenticed elsewhere. Two younger siblings, Mary Emma and Charles, were still children at home.
Sunderland in the 1860s was one of the world’s greatest shipbuilding centres. The River Wear was lined with yards, Laing’s, Doxford’s, Thompson’s, and many smaller concerns, turning out wooden and increasingly iron-hulled vessels for the merchant trades. A shipwright’s apprenticeship meant learning the practical craft of building ships: working with timber, iron, and the complex geometry of hull construction.
A shipwright apprenticeship typically lasted five to seven years, taking Albert through to about 1866 or 1868. Here he acquired the skills of a ship’s carpenter, including caulking, structural repair, and an understanding of how a ship’s hull worked under stress.
Marriage and Life Ashore
In the fourth quarter of 1869, Albert married Mary Dent in the registration district of Sunderland. He was about twenty-one years old.
By 1871, Albert and Mary were living at Chapel Row, Shildon, County Durham. He was working as a joiner, and Mary was twenty years old. They had a baby daughter, Charlotte Anna, who, it seems likely, was named after Albert’s mother, Charlotte.
Shildon was an inland railway town, not a port. It was the home of the Stockton and Darlington Railway’s works, and there would have been ample employment for a man with carpentry and woodworking skills. At this point in his life, Albert appeared settled: a young husband and father, working a skilled trade ashore, some distance from the sea.
However, the family had suffered loss by this time. Albert’s brother Joseph had died in 1870, aged just twenty-five, leaving a widow, Matilda Patterson.
Going to Sea
Sometime between 1871 and 1878, Albert left his life ashore and went to sea as a ship’s carpenter. What prompted the change is not known. The agricultural depression of the 1870s affected inland towns; the pull of better wages at sea may have been a factor, or perhaps the example of his brother James, by then a certificated First Mate, drew him back to the sea.
A ship’s carpenter held a specialist and responsible position aboard a merchant vessel. He was not part of the deck or engine room hierarchy, but stood apart as a skilled tradesman charged with the ship’s structural integrity: maintaining the hull, decks, hatches, masts, and boats; sounding the bilges; caulking leaks; and making emergency repairs in heavy weather. On an iron vessel, the carpenter’s work also encompassed the wooden fittings, hatch covers and derrick gear.
Albert found employment with W. Milburn & Co. of Newcastle and London, one of the substantial tramp shipping firms based in the North East. The Milburn fleet operated iron cargo steamers across the world’s trade routes — to the Americas, to Australia via the Suez Canal, and wherever freight could be obtained. It was within this fleet that Albert would spend most of his years at sea, moving between vessels as the company’s needs and the trades demanded.
The SS Clandon 1878-1885
The SS Clandon (Official Number 77105) was an iron screw steamship built by Charles Mitchell & Co. at their Low Walker yard on the Tyne, Yard Number 358. She was launched on 4 April 1878 and completed the following month.
Her dimensions were 285.0 feet in length, 35.0 feet beam, and 24 feet depth of hold, with a gross tonnage of 1,970. She was powered by a compound inverted two-cylinder engine (32 and 62 inches in diameter, 42-inch stroke) rated at 200 nominal horsepower, built by R & W Hawthorn of Newcastle, driving a single screw. In addition to steam power, she was rigged as a half brigantine, carrying fore-and-aft sails as an auxiliary in case of engine failure.
The Clandon was registered on 29 May 1878 to Watts, Milburn & Co., London, and transferred in 1879 to W. Milburn & Co. At the time of her loss, her owner was Mr John Davison Milburn, shipowner, of Newcastle-on-Tyne, with Mr Milburn as the managing owner. She had cost about £30,000 to build.
During her construction, she was built under special survey at Lloyd’s, inspected three or four times a week by Mr Moverly, then Lloyd’s surveyor at Newcastle. Many of her plates were tested in his presence by bending and punching. The materials and workmanship were considered of the best quality, fully up to Lloyd’s requirements for a first-class ship.
She was classed 100 A1 from her launch and retained that classification until her loss. Her plating averaged 2/16ths thicker amidships than at the extremities, and on one or two strakes, 3/16ths thicker. She was treble-riveted amidships and double-riveted at the ends. She was built with five transverse bulkheads and was of the water-ballast type.
Her first master was Captain Dinsdale, who would later testify that she had carried two cargoes of grain and one of cotton across the Atlantic, and that on all occasions she had proved herself a good sea boat. She was, in the language of the day, an “ocean tramp”; a cargo vessel with no fixed routes, running between ports wherever freight could be found. Her trade took her across the Atlantic and far beyond.
The Cardenas Incident
The Clandon’s Atlantic trade was not without incident. In the summer of 1883, on a voyage from Montreal to Cardenas — the sugar port on the northern coast of Cuba — she ran aground at Cardenas. The casualty was reported to Lloyd’s by cable through Matanzas: the British steamer Clandon, from Montreal for Cardenas, had gone ashore, and attempts were being made to get her off. The Board of Trade’s register of wrecks and casualties recorded the stranding against her official number, 77105, and closed the file that June.
The attempts to refloat her evidently succeeded. She was got off, repaired, and returned to service, retaining her 100 A1 classification to the end.
That is the ship’s record, from her launch on the Tyne to the eve of her last voyage. Albert Newrick’s part in it begins earlier, in the autumn of 1880, with a crew agreement signed in London.
1880–1881: Albert Newrick’s Eastern Voyage
On 4 November 1880, Albert Newrick signed the crew agreement for the SS Clandon in London. He was thirty-two years old. His previous ship was recorded as the Clandon herself; he was not joining fresh but rolling over from an earlier agreement, having already served aboard her for at least one previous voyage and possibly since her maiden year of 1878. He signed on as a carpenter at six pounds per month.
The agreement, signed by Captain Ralph P. Walton of Sunderland, gave the Clandon liberty to trade from London to Cardiff and thence to Malta, the Mediterranean and Black Seas, the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, the Indian and China Seas, the Cape and Australian Colonies, the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and the coasts of the Americas; a standard worldwide tramping charter, not exceeding three years. An additional clause provided that all hands would receive an extra two pounds per month while employed to the eastward of Suez. This was a bonus that would be earned.
The crew that assembled in London in early November was international, typical of the merchant service. Alongside Albert from Sunderland, the Mate J. Harvey from Sunderland, and the 2nd Mate Wm. Frank Reynolds from Cardiff, there was a Boatswain and five Able Seamen from Malta — Frank Bonello, Salvatore Ferrugia, John Shambrey, Joseph Caparo, Richard Mousie, and the brothers G.E. and Joseph Portelli — a seaman from Elsinore in Denmark, one from Dominica, a Donkeyman from Stockholm, and engineers from Maryport, Manchester, and Glasgow.
Twenty men signed on at London on 4 and 5 November, and the voyage commenced on the 5th. From London, the SS Clandon proceeded to Cardiff, almost certainly to load coal; South Wales steam coal being the standard outward cargo for tramp steamers bound east. She then set course for the Mediterranean.
Through the Canal
The consular certificates stamped on the crew agreement record the ship’s progress with bureaucratic precision. On 3 December 1880, the agreement was deposited and returned at the British Consulate in Port Said, at the northern entrance to the Suez Canal. Three days later, on 6 December, the ship arrived at Suez at the canal’s southern end. The transit had taken the standard three days.
From Suez, the Clandon entered the Red Sea. Eight days later, on 14 December 1880, she arrived at Jeddah, the ancient port on the Arabian coast that served as the gateway to the holy city of Mecca.
The Pilgrim Trade
At Jeddah, the nature of the voyage becomes clear. The British Consul’s certificate records that Richard Mousie, Able Seaman, was discharged and left behind on the grounds of sickness. The Consul investigated, found the grounds genuine, paid Mousie his wages of four pounds six shillings, delivered his effects, and made arrangements to send him home to Malta at the ship’s expense.
But it is the Singapore certificate, dated 20 January 1881, that reveals what the Clandon was doing in those waters. The 2nd Mate, William Frank Reynolds, was left behind at Singapore in hospital, suffering from “smallpox sustained while employed on board in the Pilgrim trade.”
The Clandon was carrying Hajj pilgrims. The annual pilgrimage to Mecca drew tens of thousands of Muslims from across Southeast Asia, from the Malay Peninsula, the Dutch East Indies, British India, and beyond, to Jeddah and back. The return traffic, carrying pilgrims home after the Hajj, ran through December and January. British and Dutch cargo steamers were routinely hired into this trade for the season, their holds temporarily converted to carry human passengers in conditions that were often overcrowded and insanitary. Smallpox outbreaks were a known and feared hazard. Quarantine regulations existed, but enforcement was uneven, and the pilgrim ships were notorious for violating them.
Singapore and Rangoon
The Clandon cleared Jeddah on 18 December 1880 and, with her pilgrim passengers, crossed the Indian Ocean to Singapore, arriving by mid-January 1881. It was here that the smallpox struck the 2nd Mate. Reynolds was hospitalised ashore; the ship’s agents, Messrs John Meyer & Co., guaranteed his expenses and passage home. His wages were settled partly in sterling and partly in Singapore dollars.
Singapore brought further trouble. A crew member named William Lake, who had joined at an intermediate port, was discharged on the grounds of imprisonment. Whether this was a local criminal matter or a shipboard offence referred to the authorities is not recorded. Two replacement seamen, Thomas Taylor and Robert Bevan, were signed on at Singapore to fill the gaps in the crew.
From Singapore, the Clandon proceeded to Rangoon, arriving by 2 February 1881. The agreement was deposited at the Mercantile Marine Office there and returned on 15 February. Rangoon, modern Yangon, was one of the great rice-exporting ports of the British Empire, so the Clandon was probably loading rice for the homeward voyage. This was a pattern typical of a tramp steamer of the period: coal outward from Cardiff, pilgrims from Jeddah to Singapore and rice homeward from Rangoon.
Homeward
The homeward voyage took the Clandon back through the Indian Ocean, the Suez Canal, and into the Mediterranean. On 21 March 1881, she called at Malta, where the Boatswain Frank Bonello and the Able Seaman Salvatore Ferrugia were discharged by mutual consent; Maltese men stepping off at their home island, as had plainly been arranged. Two replacements, Michele Abela and Natale Randich, signed on for the remaining leg. The certificate was issued by Edward Cassolani, Superintendent of the Ports at Malta.
On the night of Sunday, 3 April 1881, a census was taken of all persons in England and Wales, including those aboard merchant vessels. Albert Newrick appears on the return for the Clandon (RG 11/5286), listed as entry number 3: “A. Newrick, Married, aged 32, Carpenter, born Sunderland, Durham.” The ship was at sea, nearing home. Albert was the only man listed as married among the first fifteen entries. Somewhere ashore, Mary and young Charlotte Anna were waiting for him.
On 10 April 1881, the Clandon arrived at Liverpool, and the crew was discharged. Albert received a balance of wages of 12 pounds, 4 shillings, and 5 pence. His character was recorded as Very Good for both General Conduct and Ability in Seamanship; the highest marks a merchant seaman could receive. Captain Walton, who had commanded the ship throughout, remained aboard for the next agreement.
1881: The Huntingdon
Albert did not stay long ashore. Less than four months after his discharge at Liverpool, on 29 July 1881, he appears on the inward crew list of the SS Huntingdon (Official Number 82874), arriving at Sydney, New South Wales, from Melbourne. He is listed as “Albert Newrick, Carpenter, aged 34, Sunderland.” The Huntingdon was a newly built steamer of 1,464 tons, registered in London, under the command of Captain William John Haynes, with a crew of twenty-six.
The Huntingdon appears in contemporary shipping notices alongside other vessels managed by W. Milburn & Co. from their offices at Billiter-avenue, London, trading to Australia via the Suez Canal. Albert had not left the Milburn fleet; he had simply moved between the company’s ships, as merchant seamen routinely did.
At this point in his career, Albert was a skilled tradesman employed within a fleet, moving between vessels worldwide as opportunities arose. The Milburn company operated their tramps on whatever routes offered freight: the North Atlantic grain trade, the Australian run, the pilgrim traffic, and routes to the Far East and beyond. Albert’s world was not one ship but many, and his horizons were not the North Sea but the oceans.
1881–1884: The Middle Years
Between his appearance on the Huntingdon in July 1881 and his return to the Clandon in October 1884, Albert’s movements are only partly known. When he signed on the Clandon at North Shields on 28 October 1884, his previous ship was recorded not as the Huntingdon but as the Marcia, of London. There may have been other vessels in between; the Marcia was simply the last before his return to the Clandon.
There are several vessels named Marcia, but only one fits: an iron screw steamer, Official Number 70611, registered at London, built in 1874 and of about 1,060 tons gross. She was the sole London steamer of the name afloat in the years Albert was at sea.
Whether she was a Milburn vessel is less certain. She does not appear in the surviving lists of Milburn ships, and neither her name nor her modest tonnage fits the company’s pattern of the 1880s; this suggests that the Marcia, unlike the Clandon and the Huntingdon, belonged to another owner. The registered ownership can only be confirmed by physically inspecting her Board of Trade registration file, but on the evidence so far, Albert’s last berth before he returned to the Clandon appears to have lain outside the Milburn fleet.
What is clear is that Albert remained at sea throughout this period. He was a career ship’s carpenter by now, a man in his mid-thirties with at least six years of deep-sea service behind him. The Marcia was simply one more ship in a working life that took him wherever the freight trades led.
1884: The Penultimate Voyage
On 28 October 1884, Albert Newrick signed the crew agreement for the Clandon at North Shields. He was thirty-six years old. The master was Captain Thomas Pittick, aged thirty-four, who had succeeded Ralph Walton at some point during the intervening years. The agreement was for a voyage from the Tyne to Newport News, Virginia, and thence to any port within seventy-two degrees North and sixty degrees South latitude. This was another worldwide tramping charter, not exceeding three years.
The crew that assembled at North Shields in late October 1884 included several men who would remain with the ship to the end. William George Kirkaldy, aged thirty-five, of London, signed on as Mate. John Hunter, forty-nine, of Forfar, was 2nd Mate. L.H. Nicholson, just twenty, of Leeds, was 3rd Mate. Daniel Woowat, thirty-four, signed as Cook. John George Thoburn, twenty-six, of North Shields, was 2nd Engineer, and John Scholfield, twenty-six, of Newcastle, was 3rd Engineer.
The Able Seamen were an international crew: men from Birkenhead, Germany, Sweden, Norway, and Shetland, drawn from a dozen different ships.
Albert’s wages had fallen since 1881, from six pounds to five pounds ten shillings per month. The early 1880s had been hard years for the merchant shipping trade; freight rates were depressed, and seamen’s wages had fallen with them. But the Carpenter still earned more than the 3rd Mate and well above the Able Seamen at three pounds ten shillings.
The Clandon sailed from North Shields on 29 October. By 22 November, she was in New York, where the crew agreement was deposited at the British Consulate General and returned on the 29th. She then proceeded to Newport News to load cargo before recrossing the Atlantic to Avonmouth, where the crew was discharged on 22 December 1884.
Albert signed the discharge, with what may be the last record of his signature. He received a balance of six pounds five shillings and eightpence halfpenny. Captain Pittick did not discharge but remained aboard.
It was three days before Christmas. Albert had been paid off at Avonmouth, far from Sunderland. Whether he travelled home to see Mary and Charlotte Anna, or stayed near the ship is not known. The turnaround was tight. Within weeks, the Clandon would be in New York again, loading for her final voyage.
The SS Clandon’s Final Voyage
Albert’s discharge at Avonmouth on 22 December 1884 gave him only the briefest spell ashore. Five days later, on 27 December, he signed on again for the Clandon at Newport, in Monmouthshire, where the ship had moved round to load. The new agreement, signed by Captain Thomas Pittick as master, was for a voyage from Newport to New York and thence to any port within seventy-five degrees North and sixty degrees South latitude, to end in the United Kingdom, with a maximum term of one year. It was the familiar worldwide tramping charter, and it carried the master’s standard endorsement: no spirits allowed.
Much of the crew signed at Newport in the days after Christmas, and many were Newport men, or men lodging in the town. Albert’s address on the agreement was given as 4 Mill Side, Newport — the same address entered for Arthur Williams, the ship’s cook. Whether this was a genuine lodging or one of the boarding-house addresses that seamen so often gave in place of a home is impossible to say. But it suggests that Albert spent that last Christmas not in Sunderland with Mary and the children, but in the Welsh coal port beside his ship.
The Clandon sailed from Newport on 28 December 1884 and crossed to New York, arriving in January 1885, where she began loading for the homeward voyage to Leith. She was under the command of Captain Pittick.
She had loaded a large and varied cargo for the Atlantic crossing to Leith: 23,333 bushels of wheat, 25,541 bushels of corn, 10,343 sacks of flour, 1,000 barrels of sugar, 790 cases of canned goods, 200 barrels of lubricating oil, 2,400 staves, 68 packages of woodware, 40 packages of manufactured wood, 1 package of hardware, 4 packages of furniture, 16 wheels, 8 cases of agricultural implements, 227,887 pounds of lard, 1 case of drugs, 131,168 pounds of tallow, 100 barrels of pork, and 45 bags of clover seed.
In all, she carried 2,394 tons of cargo, 74 tons of dunnage, 30 tons of stores, and about 300 tons of coal; a total dead weight of 2,798 tons, some 42 per cent above her gross tonnage. Her draft on leaving, as recorded in the official notice left by the captain with the British Consul at New York, was 21 feet 3 inches forward and aft, giving a freeboard of about 5 feet 6 inches. In salt water, with the ashes and ice on board consumed, she would have risen a few inches, giving a freeboard of about 5 feet 9 or 10 inches — just within the limits prescribed by Lloyd’s and the Board of Trade for a winter North Atlantic crossing. She was, as the subsequent inquiry would note, as deeply laden as she could be with safety to those on board.
The crew numbered 27 hands all told.
The New York Crew
The complement that finally carried the SS Clandon to sea was not quite the crew that had signed at Newport. New York, a great port, with higher wages to be had on American ships and a constant demand for hands, was notorious for tempting men to desert, and the Clandon lost several.
On 16 January 1885, two able seamen slipped the ship at New York: Antonio Ferrari, aged thirty-two, of Trieste, who had joined from the Austin Friars, and Lewis Beale, aged forty-six, late of the Universal. Two others who had signed at Newport — the able seaman M. Bargross, a Greek, and the fireman James Bunnion of Sunderland — are marked in the account as having failed to join at all. The first engineer, Arthur Petton of North Shields, had been discharged sick at Newport on 23 December, before the ship even crossed, leaving her to make the Atlantic passage with only her second and third engineers.
To fill the gaps in the forecastle, two able seamen were engaged at New York on 22 January 1885: A.G. Olsson, aged twenty-three, and K.A. Lundgren, aged twenty, both signing on from the Burswell of Newcastle. They joined the ship two days before she sailed.
Whatever chance, or trouble, or better offer drew the deserters off the ship saved their lives; and whatever need drove the two replacements aboard cost them theirs, forty-eight hours later, when the Clandon put to sea for the last time.
Before sailing, the vessel was surveyed by Mr Jenkins, the marine surveyor to the Bureau of Inspection of the Board of Underwriters at New York, who found her fit for the voyage. Mr McCaldin fitted her for the reception of her cargo. The stevedore, Mr Hogan, oversaw the loading. Mr Chapman, the pilot, took her to sea. All would later testify that she left in a thoroughly good and efficient state.
On 24 January 1885, the pilot left her outside the bar at Sandy Hook, at about one or half past one in the afternoon. The Clandon headed out into the North Atlantic, bound for Leith. She was due to arrive on or about 14 February.
Three Missing Steamers
Terrible gales struck the North Atlantic between 28 January and 1 February 1885. It had been hoped that the overdue vessels might have put into Fayal in the Azores for shelter. But the steamer Cremona, arriving at Liverpool after coaling at Fayal on the 16th of February, brought no news of any of the missing craft.
By late February, the fears were turning to certainty. On 23 February, the North British Daily Mail in Glasgow reported that the Clandon, twelve days overdue at Leith, was supposed to be lost in the Atlantic with all hands. The agents at Leith had received no news of her since she left New York. Seventy-five guineas had already been paid for re-insurance on the steamer.
On 25 February, the Dumbarton Herald carried the news among its shipping disasters: “Among other casualties mentioned is the supposed foundering of the Clandon, a large ocean steamer bound for Leith. The steamship Preston, of West Hartlepool, is also thought to have gone to the bottom with all hands.”
On 28 February, the St James’s Gazette in London listed five overdue Atlantic steamers by name: the Guiston, the Preston, the Fernwood, the Hundard, and the Clandon. Three of them were owned by Messrs William Milburn and Co. of London. Their total value, including freight, was nearly 500,000 pounds. Their crews would number two hundred men in all.
The New-York Tribune reported from the American side that, in all probability, the officers and crews of at least three ocean steamers that sailed from New York the previous month would never relate their experiences. The story was picked up by newspapers across the United States, including the San Francisco Chronicle on 25 February.
By mid-March, the shipping agents and underwriters had reached a final conclusion. The Aberdeen Weekly Journalreported on 14 March under the headline “Loss of Four Steamers: One Hundred Men Missing.” Mr Spence, of the agents Simpson, Spence & Young, offered his opinion: the steamers, running at eight or nine knots during the fearfully tempestuous week ending 31 January, had likely disabled their steering gear and, broaching to, were left with all on board to the mercy of the waves.
No wreckage from the Clandon was ever reported to have been found, and no bodies were recovered.
The Inquiry
On 13 June 1885, a formal investigation was held at the Sessions House, Westminster, under the authority of the Merchant Shipping Acts, before H.C. Rothery, Esquire, Wreck Commissioner, assisted by Captain C.Y. Ward, Captain James Kiddle, R.N., and W.B. Robinson, Esquire, Chief Constructor R.N., as Assessors. The case was numbered 2577.
Mr Mansel Jones appeared for the Board of Trade. Mr Roche appeared for the owners. Four witnesses were examined by the Board of Trade, and the depositions of five witnesses taken at New York were produced and read. Mr Roche produced four further witnesses from New York, Newcastle, Liverpool, and Newport. The Fernwood inquiry, involving the same owners, the same dimensions, the same port, and a departure only two days earlier, had been heard immediately before. Mr Mansel Jones noted that the evidence applicable to one was, for the most part, equally applicable to the other.
The Court examined Clandon’s construction, her condition when she left New York, whether she was overladen, whether she had sufficient stability, and the insurance effected upon her. On every point, the evidence was satisfactory. She had been built under special survey at Lloyd’s, classed 100 A1, and had retained that classification until her loss. Her plating was thicker amidships than the minimum required, treble-riveted at the centre and double-riveted at the ends. Her boilers, built by Messrs Hawthorn of Newcastle, were seated so securely that even if the vessel had turned bottom up, they would not have become unseated. She was properly stowed, not overladen, though as deeply laden as she safely could be, and her stability was considered sufficient.
Mr Milburn had valued her at £22,000, about £11 per ton on the gross tonnage. She was insured for that amount: £11,210 at Lloyd’s, £6,120 in Mutual Clubs, and £4,670 by the owners themselves. The Commissioner noted with satisfaction that, unlike in the Fernwood case, the owners had insured her at what appeared to be a fair value and had taken a large portion of the risk themselves.
The Verdict
The Court’s verdict was clear. The newspapers had blamed the January storms. The shipping agents had spoken of disabled steering gear, and vessels left to the mercy of the waves. But the Wreck Commissioner, having heard the evidence of ice and icebergs in the North Atlantic lying across the course the SS Clandon would naturally have taken, reached a different conclusion: “The only conclusion to which we can come is that she may have come into collision with some of these icefields or icebergs and have foundered.”
The Dead
The Register of Deaths of Masters and Seamen in British Merchant Vessels (BT 334) records the official deaths of the SS Clandon’s crew for the half year ending 30 June 1885. The cause of death for every man is entered as “D.W.”: Drowned and the place of death as “Sea.” The official date of death is given as 24 January 1885, the day the pilot left her at Sandy Hook. This is an administrative date, the last date the vessel could be accounted for, rather than the actual moment of loss, which came sometime in the days that followed.
Albert Newrick appears at line 16, page 410, sheet 1193: “A. Newrick, aged 36, Carpenter, D.W., Sea.”
The register names twenty-seven men. The youngest was W. Penfold, aged just sixteen. The full complement, as recorded in the death register, was: T. Pittick (Master, aged 30); Wm. G. Kirkaldy (1st Mate, 36); John Hunter (2nd Mate); L.H. Nicholson (3rd Mate, 20); J. Wright (Boatswain, 32); A. Newrick (Carpenter, 36); Daniel Woowat (Steward, 34); Arthur Williams (Cook, 22); Joseph Furness (A.B., 40); William Howard (A.B., 23); Henry Sykes (A.B., 34); H. Jones (A.B., 29); John McAlister (A.B., 27); A.G. Olsson (A.B., 23); K.A. Lundgren (A.B., 20); J. Powell (A.B.); Jno. Geo. Thoburn (2nd Engineer, 26); John Scholfield (3rd Engineer, 26); E.F. Nelson (Donkeyman, 25); W. Fisher (Fireman, 35); John Vernica (Fireman, 31); Michael Kavanagh (Fireman, 29); Alexander Grassie (Fireman, 21); William Makarovsky (Fireman, 24); W. Penfold (16); W. Haswell; J. Sutton (Fireman).
Aftermath
Albert’s wife, Mary, and their six children survived him. The youngest, Lily Marion, had been born in March 1884 and was not yet a year old when her father sailed from New York for the last time. She would have had no memory of him.
Charlotte Anna, the eldest, was about fifteen at the time of the loss. She later married George Walker and lived until 1932. Joseph Maddy, the eldest son, born in 1872 and named after Albert’s brother, Joseph Maddy Newrick, entered the marine engineering trade. By 1921 he was working as Foreman Marine Engineer at Messrs G. Clark, Southwick Engine Works, Sunderland, one of the Wear’s foremost marine engine builders, living with his wife Isabella at 68 Ormonde Street. He died in 1941. Ada, born in 1874, married Daniel Krimpen and lived until 1954. Jane Anne Atkinson, born in 1879, married John Humble and died in 1944.
John James, born around 1875, followed his father towards the sea, though through the engine room rather than the carpenter’s shop. A newspaper notice of the marine engineers’ examinations held at North Shields records him as one of the successful candidates for a 2nd– class certificate in July 1900. By 1911, however, he is recorded as an inmate at Sunderland Borough Lunatic Asylum at Cherry Knowle, Ryhope, aged thirty-four, with his occupation given as “formerly Engineer.” What brought him there is not known. He died in 1925.
Lily Marion, the youngest, married William Davison Ramsay in New Zealand in 1906, having emigrated from Sunderland sometime after the 1901 census. She died at Linwood, Christchurch, on 2 August 1920, aged thirty-six, with her youngest child not yet two years old.
Mary Dent survived her husband by forty-four years, dying in 1929.
The Milburn company itself had suffered a catastrophic loss. In the space of weeks, W. Milburn & Co. lost the Clandon, the Fernwood, and the Coniston; three steamers and the best part of a hundred men. The Plainmeller, another Milburn vessel of similar dimensions, would also go missing the following year. Despite the losses, the company carried on. The ocean tramp trade required ships and men, and there was no shortage of either in the ports of the North East in the 1880s.
Figure 7: The erecting shop at George Clark’s Southwick Works, Sunderland, photographed in the early years of the works. Joseph Maddy Newrick worked here as Foreman Marine Engineer in 1921. Photograph preserved by Thomas Olsson, formerly draughtsman at the works.
Sources
Crew Agreements
- SS Clandon (ON 77105), Crew Agreement 1880–1881. Maritime History Archive, Memorial University of Newfoundland. Agreement commenced in London, 5 November 1880; terminated in Liverpool, 10 April 1881. Master: Ralph P. Walton. Albert Newrick, Carpenter, entry 4.
- SS Clandon (ON 77105), Crew Agreement 1884. Maritime History Archive, Memorial University of Newfoundland. Agreement commenced at North Shields, 29 October 1884; terminated at Avonmouth, 22 December 1884. Master: Thomas Pittick. Albert Newrick, Carpenter, entry 5.
- SS Clandon (ON 77105), Agreement and Account of Crew (Foreign-Going Ship, Form Eng.1) and Account of Crew (List C), final voyage. Office copy forwarded to the Registrar General of Seamen. Signed at Newport, 27 December 1884; sailed 28 December 1884; New York to Leith, 24 January 1885. Records the master (T. Pittick, aged 34, of Essex), the crew’s Newport addresses, desertions of two able seamen at New York (16 January 1885), the first engineer discharged sick at Newport (23 December 1884), and two able seamen engaged at New York (22 January 1885).
Census Records
- 1851 Census: HO 107/2395, Bishopwearmouth, St Michael’s Parish Church, Sunderland. Entry 95, 19 South Johnson Street.
- 1861 Census: RG 9/3766, Bishopwearmouth, Sunderland. Entry 106.
- 1871 Census: RG 10/4928, Shildon, County Durham. Entry 174, Chapel Row.
- 1881 Census: RG 11/5286, aboard SS Clandon, at sea. Entry 3.
- 1911 Census: RG 14, Bishopwearmouth and Ryhope, ED 12–13, Piece 30259. John James Newrick, inmate, aged 34, formerly Engineer, born Bishop Auckland, Durham. Sunderland Borough Lunatic Asylum, Cherry Knowle, Ryhope.
Marriage Record
GRO Marriage Index: Albert Newrick, Q4 1869, Sunderland registration district, Volume 10a, Page 712.
Death Records
- Register of Deaths of Masters and Seamen in British Merchant Vessels, half year ending 30 June 1885 (BT 334). FHL Film 1483317, sheet 1193, page 410, line 16.
- Great Britain, Select Deaths and Burials, 1778–1988: A. Newrick, aged 36, death date 24 January 1885, Merchant Marine, At Sea.
Board of Trade Inquiry
Formal Investigation No. 2577: “Clandon” (S.S.), The Merchant Shipping Acts, 1854 to 1876. Sessions House, Westminster, 13 June 1885. Before H.C. Rothery, Wreck Commissioner. L. 367. 2354. 180.—6/85. Wt. 408. E. & S.
Board of Trade Casualty Registers
Board of Trade / Registry of Shipping and Seamen, Registers of Wrecks and Casualties: SS Clandon, ON 77105, London. Stranding at Cardenas, reported by cable via Matanzas, 1883 (vessel refloated and returned to service); loss with all hands, entered among “Missing Vessels”, 10 April 1885, twenty-seven crew lost. Managing owner J.D. Milburn, Newcastle.
Vessel Records
- Tyne Built Ships: SS Clandon, Charles Mitchell & Co, Low Walker, Yard No. 358, ON 77105.
- Tyne Built Ships: SS Burswell (1878), the vessel from which A.G. Olsson and K.A. Lundgren joined the Clandon at New York.
- Crew List Index Project (CLIP): SS Clandon, ON 77105, crew agreements 1878–1884 held at Maritime History Archive, Newfoundland.
- Crew List Index Project (CLIP): Huntingdon, ON 82874, London, Steam, 1,464 tons, built 1881. TNA registration record BT 110/150/46 (not yet digitised).
Australian Records
New South Wales, Australia, Unassisted Immigrant Passenger Lists, 1826–1922: SS Huntingdon, Melbourne to Sydney, arrived 29 July 1881. Albert Newrick, Carpenter, aged 34, Sunderland.
Newspaper Reports
- “Supposed Loss of an Atlantic Steamer and All Hands,” North British Daily Mail, Monday 23 February 1885.
- “Ocean Tramps Believed to Be Lost,” New-York Tribune, Tuesday 24 February 1885.
- “Trade Notes: Shipping Disasters,” Dumbarton Herald and County Advertiser, Wednesday 25 February 1885.
- “Missing Steamers,” St James’s Gazette, London, Saturday 28 February 1885.
- “Three Missing Steamers,” San Francisco Chronicle, Wednesday 25 February 1885, page 3.
- “Loss of Four Steamers: One Hundred Men Missing,” Aberdeen Weekly Journal, Saturday 14 March 1885, page 6.
- “Feared Loss of a Liverpool Steamer and 28 Lives,” Liverpool Mercury, Thursday 12 March 1885 (SS Coniston crew list).
- “Marine Engineers’ Examinations at North Shields,” Shields Daily Gazette, Friday 7 July 1900. John J. Newrick named among successful candidates for 2nd class certificate.
Consular Certificates (from Crew Agreements)
- H.B.M.’s Consulate, Port Said: Agreement deposited and returned, 3 December 1880.
- H.B.M.’s Consulate, Suez: Ship arrived 6 December 1880.
- British Consulate, Jeddah: Steamer entered 14 December 1880; cleared 18 December 1880. R. Mousie discharged sick; repatriation to Malta arranged.
- Shipping Office, Singapore: 20–26 January 1881. Wm. Reynolds hospitalised (smallpox, pilgrim trade); Wm. Lake discharged (imprisonment); Thos. Taylor and Robt. Bevan engaged.
- Mercantile Marine Office, Rangoon: Agreement deposited 2 February 1881; returned 15 February 1881.
- Port Department, Malta: 21 March 1881. Frank Bonello and Salvatore Farrugia discharged (mutual consent); Michele Abela and Natale Randich engaged. Signed: Edw. Cassolani, Superintendent of the Ports.
- British Consulate General, New York: Agreement deposited 22 November 1884; returned 29 November 1884.
Researched by Nigel Williams.
Albert Newrick was a first cousin five times removed of the writer, through his mother, Yvonne Patricia Newrick (1941–2024).