Voyage to Australia: the ship 'Magdalena'

The ship Magdalena left Southampton harbour 23 May 1853, bound for Adelaide, South Australia. Captain Brenton was in charge and, apart from the crew, there was a surgeon superintendent, a handful of cabin passengers and about 360 government sponsored (assisted) immigrants. It arrived in Port Adelaide on 25 August 1853 after a voyage of three months.

Southampton docks

On board were my ancestors, William and Ann Wyllie  (or Wylie, as they were listed on the passenger list). William was 25 years old and Ann (nee Cranston) was 23. They had married three years earlier in Ann's home town in Muirkirk, Ayrshire, Scotland. Ann was about five months pregnant when they boarded and their first child was born in Black Forest, Adelaide about a week after they arrived.

I'd be interested to know how they travelled from Ayrshire to Southampton. Did they travel to Glasgow and then board a coastal ship? It's quite a distance. Why didn't they travel directly from Glasgow or Edinburgh? Even Liverpool is much closer. So I imagine there was quite a lengthy lead-in time to the actual departure, and we'll never know the reasons prompting them to make the decision to emigrate but I think it would have been economic. It wasn't gold prospecting because they stayed in South Australia for several decades before moving the Victoria.

Anyway, I digress. Back to the voyage itself. An Adelaide newspaper published a list of the passengers on board the Magdalena as well as the cargo she carried.

South Australian Register, 26 August 1853

South Australian Register, 26 August 1853

South Australian Register, 26 August 1853

According to the above report there were nine births and eleven deaths on board during the voyage. But another source states eight births and fourteen deaths. You can find a full list of the names (as well as a detailed passenger list) on the TheShipsList webpage but the cause of death is not known because the surgeon superintendent was inept at keeping accurate records. He was charged and convicted in an Adelaide court as detailed in the following newspaper report.

South Australian Register, 27 October 1853

There was also a small newspaper report of a lost item of luggage. I wonder how often luggage was lost or stolen after it was taken off the ship.

I have in my home a wooden chest that we use as a coffee table. We have no way of knowing for sure but I believe it is a chest that one of my ancestors used to carry their luggage on ship - and the Wyllies on the Magdalena are the most likely. My father remembers that when he was a child in the 1920s it was kept in the boys' bedroom and used to store clothes. 

And, lastly, a little anecdote. My Uncle Jim Wyllie told me that he met a man who told him that his father was on the Magdalena with William and Ann Wyllie, and he remembered William winning a raffle on the voyage. The prize was a case of apples which was shared among some of their fellow passengers.

Voyage to Australia: The ship 'Rodney'

My husband's ancestors, William and Ann Alford (with their infant son William), and William's brother, James, journeyed from their homes in Devon to South Australia in 1855 on the ship called 'Rodney'.

Australian newspapers regularly reported news of ships departing England but as the news was gleaned from newspapers on ships that had recently arrived it was often months out of date and inaccurate. Relatives and friends waited anxiously in Australia for news of ship travel times and events - there would have been letters sent beforehand as the intending emigrants made travel preparations.

Cornwall Chronicle (Devonport, Tasmania), 24 Jan 1855

The Rodney left Plymouth 21 November 1854 and arrived Adelaide 20 February 1855. It carried 321 passengers. William Frazer (or Fraser) was the Master, John Brownfield the Surgeon-Superintendent and Mrs Morgan the Matron. According to a report in the Government Gazette 'the ship arrived in very good order-harmony and contentment prevailed on board.'

An Adelaide newspaper listed the passengers (our William and Ann are first on the list). It doesn't mention that there were six births during the voyage and seven deaths (all infants) but the numbers were published elsewhere in the paper the same day, and the names were published in the Government Gazette.

South Australian Register, 21 Feb 1855

South Australian Register, 21 Feb 1855

The South Australian Government Gazette
Name	Age	Date of Death	Cause of Death	Where buried
Williams, Norris ?	1	December 7th 1854	Convulsions	at sea
Parry, Henry ?	1	December 19th 1854	Exhaustion	at sea
Park, Matilda (Parkin)	inf	January 8th 1855	Diarrhoea	at sea
Ellery, George	1	January 12th 1855	Diarrhoea	at sea
Newton, Elizabeth	inf	January 19th 1855	Diarrhoea	at sea
Ellery, William	2	February 12th 1855	Measles	at sea
Trevithick, Mary A.	1	February 12th 1855	Diarrhoea	at sea

Name of Mother		Date of Birth	Sex of Infant
Watkins, Mary		December 24th, 1854	female
Harris, Celia		December 30, 1954	female
French, Ann		January 15th 1855	male
Comley, Sarah Ann		January 17th 1855	male
Walker, Elizabeth		February 15th 1855	female
Fleming, Johanna		February 17th 1855	female

The South Australian Register, 21 Feb 1855

The Rodney was at Port Adelaide for about four weeks and during that time one of the crew, Daniel Small, was charged by the ship's master, William Frazer, and fined for being drunk and disorderly.

South Australian Register, 28 Feb 1855

The ship sailed 20 March 1855 for Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and was carrying mail for England.

South Australian Register, 19 March 1855

The Alfords lived near the present-day Victor Harbor in South Australia for a year or two and then moved to, initially, Brighton in Victoria. William and Ann are buried at Warragul, Victoria and James is buried at Ballan, Victoria.

Voyage to Australia: The ship 'Dirigo'

Jane Phelan nee Welsh

My husband's ancestor, Jane Phelan nee Welsh, travelled to Australia on the ship Dirigo  in 1859 to join her husband, Daniel Phelan. I have no proof but, according to information on their son's birth certificate, Daniel and Jane had married in Ireland about a month before he migrated to Australia. He arrived in Melbourne, Victoria in December 1856 on Royal Charter and was employed immediately as a warder in the prison. (I'll blog about Daniel and Jane another day - he worked always as a warder at Pentridge Prison in Coburg and the family lived nearby.) I don't know why Jane didn't travel to Australia with Daniel, and probably never will know. Maybe Daniel had already booked his passage, or his employment was pre-arranged and he had to earn enough to pay for Jane's passage. In 1856 Daniel was 26 years old and Jane was 18.

Great-aunt Ina told me that Jane's ship was 'shipwrecked' on the voyage to Australia and the Nominal List of passengers seemed to support that. The Dirigo left Liverpool on 28th November 1858 and Milford Haven on 4th January 1859 and arrived in Melbourne 28th March 1859. What happened between Liverpool and Milford Haven (which is on the south coast of Wales)?

Sydney Morning Herald, 12 Feb 1859

Dirigo sailed from Liverpool and sought a safe harbour in Milford Haven after experiencing a storm in the Irish Sea.

The Star (Ballarat), 30 Mar 1859

Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 4 Apr 1859

Government Report with details of the Dirigo. Column headings: Ship, tonnage, contract price per adult, date of departure, date of arrival, number of days on voyage, Name of Surgeon Superintendent, number of immigrants (male, female, children under 14 male and female, total), deaths (ditto).
  http://www.theshipslist.com/ships/australia/1858-1859.shtml

So, it appears that shortly after the ship departed from Liverpool it was hit by a severe storm and was badly damaged. The top-masts were lost. The report in the Sydney Morning Herald provides more detail - 'the jib-boom, fore and main topmasts, foreyard and mizen top gallant mast' were lost. I have no idea what they are but it sounds bad. It must have been a terrifying storm for the passengers and Captain White did well to get them and his damaged ship into a safe haven.

The Melbourne newspaper, The Argus, also published a report in its Shipping Intelligence column. First I found the notice of arrival.

The Argus (Melbourne), 29 March 1859

But then I remembered that I'd been told to always check the Shipping Intelligence column thoroughly so I scanned further down and found this report of goods imported on the Dirigo (the importers must have been getting very impatient because of the five or six week delay)...

The Argus (Melbourne) 29 March 1859

... and then even further down the column I found this report that provided me with more details about the storm. It states that the ship was 'off the south coast of Ireland' when she encountered a heavy gale and was 'obliged to put back to Milford Haven'.

The Argus (Melbourne), 29 March 1859

I wonder if the passengers were allowed ashore for the month they were in Milford Haven for repairs. I wonder where the new timber for the masts was sourced. Did the ship's crew do the repairs? From the newspaper notice above it appears that they had some 'considerable trouble' obtaining new masts.

So now we know that once they were under sail they made good progress until they rounded the Cape of Good Hope but then the winds were light and they slowed down. The length of the voyage was 120 days but that includes the time in Milford Haven.

Several newspaper articles also mention that the 2nd Officer, Henry Doyle, fell overboard from the poop and could not be rescued because the ship at the time was 'under double-reefed topsails'.

There is one more newspaper item relevant to this voyage of the Dirigo. It's an advertisement about the hiring of the immigrants. According to the disposal list on the ship's Nominal Roll our Jane was hired by J W Mansfield who lived in Swanston St, Melbourne but the date is 31 March, a day before the event detailed below, so maybe there were other arrangements as well. And I'm further confused by the fact that Jane was not a single woman, she was married to Daniel who would have been expecting her, so I'm not sure why she sought employment. Oh well, more mysteries to think about.

The Argus, 1 Apr 1859