nicholas dean collection, maine maritime museum
Aerial view of Vicar of Bray in 1979 lying next to its wharf in Goose Green. Rediscovered by Karl Kortum in 1966, Vicar of Bray then became the subject of an extensive campaign to recover it from the Falklands and return it to San Francisco for use as an indoor exhibit. Those plans never came to fruition. Ten years after that, in April 1976, pioneer maritime archaeologist Peter Throckmorton visited the site and conducted a survey on the hulk with shipwright Hilton Matthews and historian Norman Brouwer. “The Vicar lies parallel to the shore,” noted Throckmorton, resting on a bottom of soft mud overlying shingle, and listing to port “at an angle of about 15 degrees.” The interior of the hull,
nicholas dean collection, maine maritime museum
the vessel in January 1868 from Dublin merchant Robert Smyth. Each man owned half of the vessel, with Callenan in command. According to local lore, the battle to bring his ship safely into port so exhausted Callenan that he was carried ashore, insensate. While the barque lay at Stanley being repaired, Callenan died at the age of 58 and was buried in the Stanley Cemetery on 11 December 1870. With Callenan’s death and the cost of repairs, Garrick dropped his ownership by half of his original 32 of 64 shares to 16. The new majority ownership, with 48 of 64 shares, shifted to John Smurthwaite, a “merchant” of Sunderland, according to a bill of sale registered with Lloyds on 18 September 1871. Smurthwaite in turn sold the barque a year later to the Falkland Islands Company. Vicar of Bray made voyages carrying “general cargo” between Stanley and London for another decade under at least four masters, according to shipping register notes. Its final registry with Lloyds of London, dated 12 May 1861, was surrendered on 12 May 1880 with the notation “converted to a hulk at Stanley, Falkland Islands.” Ultimately dismasted, the once-lofty vessel was moored next to four other hulks as a floating warehouse in the harbor. In 1912, Vicar of Bray was shifted to neighboring Goose Green for use as a hulk. A jetty built out to it basically copied the same layout used in Stanley. It has remained there ever since.
The Berryman/Marean team, 1979. Interior view toward the stern.
he noted, was full of “her last cargo of coal,” left because it was “spoiled by the salt and… no good for the stove.”6 Throckmorton attributed the hulk’s stability at its site to being held down by the coal, which continued to ballast the hull. Throckmorton returned to Vicar of Bray in 1978. The following year, an NMHS-supported architectural survey by naval architect Parker E. Marean III of Maine, working with ship preservationist and historian Eric Berryman, Joseph Sawtelle, Jean Sawtelle, Nicholas Dean, and Klara Holmkvist, “tagged and measured the main structural members of the vessel,” while Dean photographed the major details of the Vicar and Sawtelle conducted “an underwater survey of Vicar’s interior and the remains of her cargo of coal.” A local diver, Ken Halliday, together with a volunteer from the Norwegian yacht Copernicus, Arild Tvedt, made an underwater survey of the hull. That survey found that the timbers below the water, while waterlogged, were sound, and that the vessel was holding together. Berryman, Marean, and their team concluded that Throckmorton was correct and that the ship could be successfully salvaged. But there was no money. Since then, other than the occasional tourist, 6 Peter Throckmorton, “ ‘As Good As Can Be Made:’ Report on the Vicar of Bray,” Sea History no. 5 (Autumn 1976).
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