CARGO to VDL 1850 per RATTLER, barque 522 tons
CAPTAIN EDWARD GOLDSMITH, master
Birdseye view of London Docks
Illustrated London News, page 204,Sept. 27, 1845
The "Rattler" to Hobart VDL, 1850
This voyage would be Captain Edward Goldsmith's final round-trip as master of his fastest and finest barque, the Rattler, 522 tons, from London to the port of Hobart, Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania). The barque was cleared at the Western Dock, London Docks, across the river from Rotherhithe, on 3rd July 1850 and sat mid-stream in the Thames for more than a month while lightermen loaded the cargo until ready to sail from the Downs by 22 August, 1850. Cabin passengers numbered seven, with four more in steerage. They arrived at Hobart three and half months later, on 14th December 1850. The return voyage of the Rattler to London would commence on 19th March 1851, after three months at Hobart while Captain Goldsmith attended to his construction of the ferry Kangaroo and the development of a patent slip at his Domain shipyard.
TRANSCRIPT
14 - Arrived the barque Rattler, 522 tons, Goldsmith from the Downs 26th August, with a general cargo. Cabin - Mr. and Mrs Cox, Mr and Mrs Vernon, Matthew and Henry Worley, C. J. Gilbert; steerage, Mrs. Downer, John Williams, Wm. Merry, Charles Daly.Source: The Courier (Hobart, Tas. : 1840 - 1859) Wed 18 Dec 1850 Page 2 SHIPPING NEWS.
Detail of document below:
Signature of Captain Edward Goldsmith on list of crew and passengers per Rattler from London, at Hobart, 26 December 1850. Crew listed by name: 22; passengers listed by name: 12, one more than was reported in the Mercury, 18 Dec. 1850, a T. B. Watern [?]
Rattler crew and passengers arrivals Dec. 1850
Source:Archives Office of Tasmania
Cargo, Passenger and Crew Lists
Customs Dept: CUS36/1/442 Image 203
Customs House at London recorded on the Rattler's Entry and Cocket documents a staggering quantity of spirits, beer, wine and alcohol-related products for duty-free shipment to Hobart on this voyage. The impact of such a large consignment arriving at the penal colony of Van Diemen's Land, a small society where the transportation of prisoners from Britain was still ongoing, and where the total population numbered less than 70, 000 persons, would have been considerable, affecting women of all classes, free-settlers and locally-born included, but women with under-sentence convictions were especially vulnerable to more conduct offences, more alcohol-related offences, and higher mortality rates (Kippen & McCalman UniMelb 2014).
Without doubt, however, the most unusual consignment of this voyage were three horses, three 3yr old fillies purchased by John and James Lord from the bloodstock of the Duke of Richmond, Goodwood House, West Essex, UK. Read the full story in this post here.
Captain Edward Goldsmith was praised by the colonists of VDL as a mariner of exceptional skill, and a generous importer of exotic biotica and engineering equipment, some at his own expense, but he was also an astute businessman where the production and supply of alcohol was involved. His family's tenanted hop fields dating back to the mid-18th century in the parishes of Chalk and Higham, Kent, provided export quality beer which helped supply his father's inn and victualling house, the Princess Victoria Inn, Rotherhithe, formerly known as the Ship on Launch. It was situated opposite Brunel's Thames Tunnel, which was commenced in 1825 and finally completed in 1843, drawing visitors from all over, and proving a boon to local businesses. When Richard Goldsmith died at Rotherhithe in 1839, he bequeathed the Princess Victoria Inn - or "The Vic" as it was called by locals - plus outbuildings and cottages on the corner of Deptford Lower Road and Paradise Row to his daughter Deborah Meopham Goldsmith (National Archives UK Ref: PROB 11/1910/347). His sons Captain Edward Goldsmith and John Goldsmith inherited the land and tenanted houses, including Craddock Cottage where Charles Dickens spent his honeymoon in 1837, at Chalk and Higham, Kent, the management of which was largely left to John Goldsmith while Edward pursued his profession as master mariner, marine insurer and engineer from the late 1820s until retirement at Gadshill, Higham, in 1856.
Discharging cargo at Hobart, a deepwater port
Archives Office Tasmania [n.s.,n.d.]
Western Dock & Lightermen
The Rattler was cleared on 3rd July 1850 from the Western Dock, London Docks, on the northern side of the Thames, and spent the next six weeks moored mid stream while being loaded by lightermen until setting sail on 22 August 1850. Aside from the predominant cargo of alcohol, there was a case for the Governor of VDL, Sir Wm Denison; a box for the Royal Society; iron and coal from the Welsh "Iron King" William Crawshay II; and drugs from Mr. Lucas of Cheapside. There were transhipments too from Rotterdam ex-Apollo of Geneva spirits, i.e. gin, the English word derived from jenever, genièvre, also called Dutch gin or Hollands, British plain malt spirits distilled from malt ex-The Earl of Aberdeen, and Mr Cheesewright's cargo of Spanish and Portugal wine from Jersey in the Channel Islands.
Plan of the London docks as completed, 1849
Henry Robinson Palmer (1795–1844) British civil engineer
Source: Oxford University Bodleian Library
Of the Western Dock in 1849, journalist, and playwright Henry Mayhew wrote: -
The Western Dock comprises 20 acres; the Eastern, 7 acres and the Wapping Basin, 3 acres. The entire structure cost 4,000,000l. of money. The wall alone cost 65,000l. The walled-in range of dock possesses water-room for 302 sail of vessels, exclusive of lighters; warehouse-room for 220,000 tons of goods; and vault-room for 60,000 pipes of wine. The tobacco warehouse alone covers five acres. The number of ships entered in the six months ending May 31st, 1849, was 704 , measuring upwards of 195,000 tons. Six weeks are allowed for unloading, beyond which period the charge of a farthing per ton is made for the first two weeks, and halfpenny per ton afterwards. The business of the Docks is managed by a Court of Directors, who sit at the London Dock House, in New Bank-buildings, whose capital is 4,000,000l.; and there have been as many as 2900 labourers employed in the docks in one day....Read Henry Mayhew's complete article here ...
Lighterman at Western Dock, the well-named Mr Middlemist, would have gauged the power of the currents and tides, and with their help, rowed the 23 casks on board his lighter out to the Rattler before signing off on this cocket:
Mr. Middlemist, lighterman
Source: Archives Office of Tasmania
Cargo, Passenger and Crew Lists
Customs Dept: CUS36/1/442 Image 679
Mr. Middlemist would have steered his lighter with long oars called "sweeps" to ferry cargo as well as crew and passengers from the dock to the ship moored in the river. "Lighters" - a name derived from the Old Dutch or German "lichten" meaning lighten or unload - were flat-bottomed barges in use until about the 1960s. This video is an engaging and invaluable contemporary account by former Thames lightermen of their personal ancestry, working conditions, and community.
At YouTube: The Weekend Millionaires - An Oral History of the Thames Lightermen
The profession has employed generations of Londoners with the lightermen carrying cargo and the watermen carrying passengers. For hundreds of years generations of families and communities have worked on the river with a rich history of apprenticeships, work and family life and culture developing around it. Whilst the trade for watermen dwindled with the construction of bridges, the lightermen continued to grow with London's trade up until the 1960s when containerisation and then the closure of London's dockyards led to a decline in the trade. Today far fewer people work on the Thames but for those who do, or who have retired in the past 30-40 years, there remain vivid memories and important stories to tell. This project aims to record and share some of these.Ted Hunt shows the skills of lighterage in this video:
At YouTube
The Merchants & their Exports to VDL
The three mast barque Rattler was designed specifically for the merchant trade between London and Hobart, Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania). Weighing 442 tons, with maximum capacity of 522 tons when loaded, and measuring 114.5 x 28.7 x 19.5 feet, the vessel was built at Sunderland in 1846 for Robert Brooks of London.
Rattler, 1846: E. Goldsmith, master and R. Brooks owner
Lloyd’s Register of British and Foreign Shipping
Gregg Press Limited, 1846
In all, sixty-seven cockets were signed by exporters and 530 listed items were cleared for the Rattler, Goldsmith, master, for Hobart Town, at London Docks on 22nd August 1850. A glance over these documents (viewable at ATO, CUS36/1/442, images 654-789 ) would give an estimate of more than twenty tons of cargo loaded by that date, and to the value of many thousands of pounds (l =£ pounds) sterling, several totalling £2000 on a single cocket, a voyage which ship owner and exporters alike were careful to entrust to a master mariner with an impeccable record. The numbers pencilled at the top of the second page of this final victualling bill show the collector's and searcher's calculations: 3139 ÷ 3500 × 522 = 468 tons, making the Rattler lighter, safer and faster than the maximum proscribed weight of 522 tons.
Victualling bill: 14 "settlers" rather than "passengers" ,
Ship's food supplies for crew and passengers
Source: Archives Office of Tasmania
Cargo, Passenger and Crew Lists
Customs Dept: CUS36/1/442 Images 654, 655
DUTCH GIN
This Entry and Cocket "For Transhipment Only" and second page indicates that 300 gallons of Geneva spirits , i.e. gin, etc from the ship Apollo was also signed by lighterman Mr. Middlemist, one of many lightermen whose signatures appear on these cockets. By 1853, he was listed as Middlemist & Hammond, Custom House Agents, in Kelly's Post Office London Directory 1853 [click here].
Dutch Gin ex-Apollo: exporters W. H. Smith and J. Browning & Co. of 37 Mark Lane:
Three hundred proof gallons Geneva Spirits not sweetened the produce of Holland and Twenty Hundred weight of common foreign glass bottlesSource: Archives Office of Tasmania
Cargo, Passenger and Crew Lists
Customs Dept: CUS36/1/442 Images 782, 783
SPANISH WINES
White wines, sherry and brandy shipped by Robert Blake Byass on board the Rattler were from the vineyards and winery of Manuel María González in the Jerez region of southern Spain. Agent in England to the company which Byass formed with González in 1836, named simply González Byass, he paid £400 for this cargo, free of duty, with the standard declaration:
I, Robert Blake Byass, do hereby enter Goods the Growth, Produce or Manufacture of the United Kingdom not prohibited by Law to be exported, and not liable to any Duty on the exportation thereof.
Robert Blake Byass
Source: The Company's website: http://www.gonzalezbyass.com/en/
Exporter Robert Blake Byass
Source: Archives Office of Tasmania
Cargo, Passenger and Crew Lists
Customs Dept: CUS36/1/442 Images 743, 744
Classed and cleared from London. Lighterman Mr R. M. Phillips, of Phillips, Grave & Phillips, Custom House Agents, signed this document on 8 August 1850. Included in this shipment were 8 pounds common green glass bottles.
Transhipments Wines and spirits from exporter Robert Blake Byass 192 casks and 30 kegs
Source: Archives Office of Tasmania
Cargo, Passenger and Crew Lists
Customs Dept: CUS36/1/442 Images 743, 744
FOREIGN BRANDY
Brandy: exporter Richard Smith:
Two thousand gallons Brandy proof spirits not sweetened ForeignSource: Archives Office of Tasmania
Cargo, Passenger and Crew Lists
Customs Dept: CUS36/1/442 Image 700
BRITISH RUM from AMERICA
Rum: exporter James Joseph Roope
Six thousand proof gallons Rum spirits not sweetened the produce of and imported from British possessions in AmericaSource: Archives Office of Tasmania
Cargo, Passenger and Crew Lists
Customs Dept: CUS36/1/442 Image 678
TOBACCO
Tobacco: exporter J. Frederick Dunbar
Two thousand pounds manufactured tobaccoSource: Archives Office of Tasmania
Cargo, Passenger and Crew Lists
Customs Dept: CUS36/1/442 Image 756
LIQUORICE JUICE
James Cook & Co. exporters
Ten hundred weight of Liquorice JuiceSource: Archives Office of Tasmania
Cargo, Passenger and Crew Lists
Customs Dept: CUS36/1/442 Image 750
IRON from WALES
William Crawshay was successful in getting 1343 cwt of iron loaded onto the Rattler on 8th August 1850, which was cleared and marked as "shipped", although the supporting document for his load showed 23 tons of iron bars, which - if shipped - would have constituted almost 8/10s of the load in the hold (20 hundredweight = 1 ton in Imperial long measure!)
Anon. William Crawshay II c. 1830
WILLIAM CRAWSHAY II (1788 – 1867) was the day to day manager of the Cyfarthfa and Hirwaun works, and bought other ironworks at Treforest and in the Forest of Dean. It is he who is generally called the ‘Iron King’ and who built Cyfarthfa castle and the Caversham Park mansion. His father thought that spending £25,000 on Cyfarthfa Castle was a needless extravagance. During his period the works grew immensely, and enormous quantities of iron were manufactured and great quantities of coal raised to feed the furnaces.Source: Crawshays Family
http://www.alangeorge.co.uk/Cyfarthfa,TheCrawshays.htm
Exporter "Iron King" William Crawshay
1282 Bars of Iron - 23 tonsSource: Archives Office of Tasmania
60 Bdls of Hoop Iron 1and half tons
1 cask rivets
1343 cleared at London 9 August 1850
Shipped
Cargo, Passenger and Crew Lists
Customs Dept: CUS36/1/442 Images 768, 769
DRUGS
The unnamed proprietor of the Oatlands Dispensary received a shipment of assorted "drugs etc", which consisted mainly of tinctures, spices, oils and essences from J. Lucas, 63 Cheapside, London, advertising within days of the cargo unloading at New Quay that "no expense will be spared in fitting it to supply to the wants of the public, in confidence ..."
Drugs from J. Lucas of Cheapside
Source: The Courier (Hobart, Tas. : 1840 - 1859) Sat 28 Dec 1850 Page 3 Classified Advertising
Henry Mayhew on the London docks
Henry Mayhew The Morning Chronicle: Labour and the Poor, 1849-50
LETTER III
Friday. October 26, 1849
LONDON DOCKS (THE).
Situated on the left bank of the Thames, between ST. KATHERINE'S DOCKS and RATCLIFFE HIGHWAY. The first and largest dock (John Rennie, engineers) was opened Jan.30th, 1805; the entrance from the Thames at Shadwell, Henry R. Palmer, engineer, was made in 1831; and the New Tea Warehouses, capacious enough to receive 120,000 chests, were erected in 1844-45. This magnificent establishment comprises an area of 90 acres - 35 acres of water, and 12,980 feet of quay and jetty frontage, with three entrances from the Thames, viz., Hermitage 40 feet in width; Wapping, 40 feet; and Shadwell, 45 feet. The Western Dock comprises 20 acres; the Eastern, 7 acres and the Wapping Basin, 3 acres. The entire structure cost 4,000,000l. of money. The wall alone cost 65,000l. The walled-in range of dock possesses water-room for 302 sail of vessels, exclusive of lighters; warehouse-room for 220,000 tons of goods; and vault-room for 60,000 pipes of wine. The tobacco warehouse alone covers five acres. The number of ships entered in the six months ending May 31st, 1849, was 704 , measuring upwards of 195,000 tons. Six weeks are allowed for unloading, beyond which period the charge of a farthing per ton is made for the first two weeks, and halfpenny per ton afterwards. The business of the Docks is managed by a Court of Directors, who sit at the London Dock House, in New Bank-buildings, whose capital is 4,000,000l.; and there have been as many as 2900 labourers employed in the docks in one day.
"The Tobacco Warehouses are rented by Government at 14,000l. a-year. They will contain about 24,000 hogsheads, averaging 1,200lbs. each and equal to 30,000 tons of general rnerchandise. Passages and alleys, each several hundred feet long, are bordered on both sides by close and compact ranges of hogsheads, with here and there small space for the counting house of the officer of Customs, under whose inspection all the arrangements are conducted. Near the north-east corner of the warehouses is a door inscribed 'To the Kiln,' where damaged tobacco is burnt, the long chimney which carries off the smoke being jocularly called 'The Queen's Pipe.' -Knight's London, iii. 76.
This is the great depot for the stock of wines belonging to the Wine Merchants of London. Port is principally kept in pipes sherry in hogsheads. On the 30th of June,1849, the Dock contained 14,783 pipes of port ; 13,107 hogsheads of sherry ; 64 pipes of French wine; 796 pipes of Cap wine ; 7607 cases of wine, containing 19,140 dozen; 10,113 hogsheads of brandy; and 3642 pipes of rum. The total of port was 14,783 pipes, 4460 hogsheads, and 3161 quarter casks.
"The courts and alleys round about the London Docks swarm with low lodging-houses, and are inhabited either by the Dock labourers, sack-makers, watermen, or that peculiar class of London poor who pick up a precarious living by the water side. The open streets themselves have all, more or less, a maritime character. Every other shop is either stocked with gear for the ship or for the sailor. The windows of one house are filled with quadrants and bright brass sextants, chronometers and huge mariner's compasses, with their cards trembling with the motion of the cabs and waggons passing in the street. Then comes the sailor's cheap shoe-mart, rejoicing in the attractive sign of 'Jack and his Mother.' Every public-house is a Jolly Tar,' or something equally taking. Then come sail makers, their windows stowed with ropes and lines smelling of tar. All the grocers are provision agents, and exhibit in their windows tin cases of meat and biscuits, and every article is warranted to keep in any climate. The corners of the streets, too, are mostly monopolised by slopsellers, their windows party-coloured with bright red and blue flannel shirts, the doors nearly blocked up with hammocks and well-oiled 'nor' westers,' and the front of the house itself nearly covered with canvas trousers, rough pilot coats, and shiney black dreadnoughts. The passengers alone would tell you that you were in the maritime districts of London. Now you meet a satin-waistcoated mate, or a black sailor with his large fur cap, or else a Custom-house officer in his brass-buttoned jacket.
"As you enter the dock, the sight of the forest of masts in the distance, and the tall chimneys vomiting clouds of black smoke, and the many- coloured flags flying in the air, has a most peculiar effect; while the sheds, with the monster wheels arching through the roofs, look like the paddle-boxes of huge steamers. Along the quay, you see new men with their faces blue with indigo, and now gaugers with their long brass-tipped rule dripping with spirit from the cask they have been probing; then will come a group of flaxen-haired sailors, chattering German; and next a black sailor with a cotton handkerchief twisted turban-like around his head. Presently a blue-smocked butcher, with fresh meat and a bunch of cabbages in the tray on his shoulder, and shortly afterwards a mate with green parroquete in a wooden cage. Here you will see sitting on a bench a sorrowful- looking woman, with new bright cooking tins at her feet, telling you she is an emigrant preparing for her voyage. As you pass along this quay the air is pungent with tobacco, at that it overpowers you with the fumes of rum. Then you are nearly sickened with the stench of hides and huge bins of horns, and shortly afterwards the atmosphere is fragrant with coffee and spice. Nearly everywhere you meet stocks of cork, or else yellow bins of sulphur or lead-coloured copper ore. As you enter this warehouse, the flooring is sticky, as if it had been newly tarred, with the sugar that has leaked through the casks, and as you descend into the dark vaults you see long lines of lights hanging from the black arches, and lamps flitting about midway. Here you sniff the fumes of the wine, and there the peculiar fungous smell of dry-rot. Then the jumble of sounds as you pass along the dock blends in anything but sweet concord. The sailors are singing boisterous nigger songs from the Yankee ship just entering, the cooper is hammering at the casks on the quay, the chains of the cranes, loosed of their weight, rattle as they fly up again; the ropes splash in the water; some captain shouts his orders through his hands; a goat bleats from some ship in the basin; and empty casks roll along the stones with a hollow drum-like sound. Here the heavy laden ships are down far below the quay, and you descend to them by ladders, whilst in another basin they are high up out of the water, so that their green copper sheathing is almost level with the eye of the passenger, while above his head a long line of bow-sprite stretch far over the quay, and from them hang spars and planks as a gangway to each ship.
"This immense establishment is worked by from one to three thousand hands, according as the business is either "brisk or slack.
"He who wishes to beheld one of the most extraordinary and least known scenes of this metropolis should wend his way to the London Dock gates at half-past seven in the morning. There he will see congregated within the principal entrance masses of men of all grades, looks, and kinds. There are decayed and bankrupt master butchers, master bakers, publicans, grocers, old soldiers, old sailors, Polish refugees, broken-down gentlemen, discharged lawyers' clerks, suspended Government clerks, almsmen, pensioners, servants, thieves- indeed, every one who wants a loaf and is willing to work for it. The London Dock is one of the few places in the metropolis where men can get employment without either character or recommendation." ,,,
Mode of Admission.--The basins and shipping are open to the public; but to inspect the vaults and warehouses an order must be obtained from the Secretary at the London Dock House in New Bank-buildings; ladies are not admitted after 1 p. m.
Henry Mayhew, "Labour and the Poor" in the Morning Chronicle for Oct., 1849.
[click here for full text of this article quoted by Cunningham]
Peter Cunningham, Hand-Book of London, 1850
Source: Victorian London