Glee Maiden

[Kit]

My 2g grandfather travelled on this ship from Melbourne to Dublin from December 1866 to June 1867, or at least those are the dates I think he travelled. The embark and disembark dates all say 1867 on his discharge slip but as December does not come before June, to me, it should be 1866.

Can anyone find any records for this ship? I'd love to see his name somewhere.

This is my elusive Joseph Bridges.

[Merry]

I looked at the Shipping Intelligence records in the newspapers for details of the ship sailings. As usual they are detailed except for the sailing you are interested in!

I can't find details of the sailing from Melbourne, but there is a notice that the ship was reported at Callao (in Peru), sailing to Cork, Ireland on 21 Jan 1867, so presumably it got there from Melbourne and would have left Australia a few weeks before, so Dec 1866 sounds good.

The arrival date in Ireland is odd though, as there's a notice of the ship's arrival at Tyne Dock (That's South Shields in County Durham, England) from Callao around 29 March 1867, carrying 1000 tons of guano!

The date you have is after that, so did the ship continue on to Cork? (I would have imagined it going there before reaching the North East of England.)

EDIT: there's an ad on 18 May 1867 for the ship, sailing from Liverpool to Melbourne on June 30 1867.

After that, the next mention I see is the ship being cleared at London for Port Phillip on 12 Aug 1867. So it's not clear what happened in between.

[Uncle John]

I guess they loaded the guano in Peru. Carrying guano was often the fate of former passenger ships past their best.

Liverpool to Melbourne on 30 June and London to Port Philip only 6 weeks later sounds highly unlikely. It's more likely that the first voyage was cancelled or curtailed. UK to Australia in under 3 months is highly unlikely, especially in an old ship.

[Merry]

I took those notices to mean:

Melbourne to Callao say six/seven weeks - beginning of Dec 1866 until 21 Jan 1867.

Callao to England two months, arriving end of March 1867.

Left Liverpool around 30 June 1867, but not immediately for Melbourne. I've looked at some more ads and the ship was in London on 15 July 1867 and being advertised as one of the quickest in the world. The fastest ship, listed in the same ad, had a record of 67 days Australia to Liverpool.

The Glee Maiden left Gravesend for Port Phillip on 15 Aug.

I don't know at what age a ship would have been classed as old in those days, but the Glee Maiden doesn't appear in the papers until 1861.

[Merry]

The Glee Maiden was built at Sunderland in 1860 by James Hardie for Dickson of Dumfries, (Doward, Dickson & Co.).

[Kit]

Thanks Merry.

I only found the information in your last post myself. I tried to work out passenger lists for Victoria but totally failed.

The Glee Maiden is also a re-incarnation, the original having sunk in 1816, from memory.

Sounds like my Joseph certainly got around in his youth. I do wonder why he decided to settle in India.

[Uncle John]

What surprises me is the thought of a ship reverting from carrying guano to carrying passengers. Seven years is not old in ship terms. I'm guessing it was a sailing ship, so it's possible that it had had a misadventure somewhere that made it unsuitable for carrying passengers, or maybe the owners found guano a more profitable cargo.

[Kit]

Joseph didn't stay on that ship long. The records I have show he worked on 5 different ships but there are gaps in the records. He returns to Melbourne at some point but then magically appears back in the UK for his next trip.

Surviving merchant marine records are hard to find. I just have to hope more come online.