to distribute the weight equally, tightly packed and leveled off to avoid shifting. The known history of Vicar of Bray includes the loss of crew to accidents, such as a man washed overboard in a storm, and the drowning of the steward and a seaman while rowing ashore at Port Wallaroo, South Australia, in a hailstorm in July 1862.2 The captain, also in the boat, nearly drowned too, but managed to grab onto the overturned boat’s keel until he was rescued.3 There were several instances of serious damage to the ship and a rebuilding, which may have been the result of damage or to renew the vessel in the face of wear and tear, or the need to increase cargo capacity. Vicar of Bray remained in service for two more decades. In the winter of 1858–59, it was rebuilt and re-registered in April 1859 as a 347.69-ton barque. In June 1862, the vessel was re-registered at 364.63 tons due to re-measurement, and in May 1877, it was re-registered again at 252.51 tons. It would appear, therefore, that the vessel was typical in build and career, albeit long-lived. The barque’s voyages began with a maiden trip to Liverpool, arriving 16 June 1841, where Vicar of Bray loaded before departing a month later for Lima, Peru, via Rio de Janeiro. The round-trip voyage back to Liverpool took a year, with Vicar of Bray entering the port of London on 1 July 1842. Subsequent voyages took
the ship back to South America. The details of the many passages are, for now, not assembled in one source, but can be found through additional research into records of ship arrivals. Voyages to the west coast of South America occur as well, including both to Valparaiso and Callao, throughout the 1840s and into the 1860s. One seemingly anomalous voyage, albeit the barque’s most famous, brought Vicar of Bray to San Francisco during the Gold Rush. The ship carried a pertinent cargo of iron retorts (furnaces). The choice of cargo was, in fact, not so anomalous and speaks to the network of British capital and interests in the mineral wealth of the New World. The furnaces were for the recently developed mercury mines south of San Francisco at New Almaden. Mercury, extracted from its ore, cinnabar, was needed to extract gold from crushed rock. Vicar of Bray arrived at San Francisco on 3 November 1849, “fm Valparaiso, cargo to order.”4 On 30 November, Alexander Forbes, superintending the mines’ operation, wrote to James A. Forbes, one of the owners (but no relation) that “notwithstanding the many difficulties you must have in transporting the cargo of the Vicar of Bray, yet I hope a part of the apparatus will soon be got up to supply the demand of the placeres as well as to send us some here.”5 What this meant was that not all of the furnaces were being shipped
courtesy san francisco maritime national historic park
Contemporary painting of Vicar of Bray ca. 1875.
Advertisement for Vicar of Bray while in port in San Francisco during the California Gold Rush, printed in the Daily Alta California, 20 February 1850. to New Almaden, and that some had been diverted to the gold mines (placeres) in the interior of California. Nearly trapped by gold fever and the resulting loss of crew in San Francisco, Vicar of Bray’s master managed, after a four-month hiatus when he put out numerous advertisements seeking passengers and cargo, to leave San Francisco on 10 March 1850 with a new crew, bound for Valparaiso, most likely in ballast. Once there, Vicar of Bray re-entered the copper-ore trade. In the 1850s and into the 1860s, the barque worked the copper trade to and from Australia, carrying ore from the mines outside of Adelaide to Swansea. The pattern of voyages now meant Vicar of Bray was continually circumnavigating the globe, heading west from Australia, and thence through the Indian Ocean and round the Cape of Good Hope. Its cargoes diversified to include other bulk freight. An advertisement in the Honolulu Polynesian noted it had arrived with merchandise for sale in March 1862. In March 1870, Vicar of Bray arrived at Bristol with 6,737 bags of sugar from Mauritius. After discharging, the barque headed to Cardiff, loaded 436 tons of coal and 29 tons of “machinery,” and cleared on 25 May 1870 for Valparaiso. Arriving in the Falklands 133 days later, in distress, Vicar of Bray limped into Port Stanley after a loss of sails and boats and damage to the upper works at sea on 8 October 1870. The owners at that time were Thomas Brand Callenan of Sunderland, described as a “master mariner,” and Thomas Gilbert Garrick of Sunderland, described as a “shipowner,” who had bought 2
South Australian Register, 1 January 1863, p. 3. Launceston Examiner, 12 August 1862, p. 2. 4 Daily Alta California, 8 November 1849. 5 The United States vs. Andres Castillero, No. 420, New Almaden Mines. United States District Court, Northern District of California (1862). Printed at the Office of the Daily Herald, San Francisco. 3
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SEA HISTORY 162, SPRING 2018