HMS Captain 1870         

 

Information and Memories from Descendants (cont)
 

Up John Collier Peter Baldwin T G Beenham John Bremner Thomas Butcher C W Dyer J Ellis George Fisher Wilfred Glanville John Gribble Albert Grover George Habens Walter Hedger Robert Herd John Hermitage Tom W Ivey Thomas Kernan RJ Magawley William May Robert Mayne Francis Merryman GH Payne Edmund Powell Alfred Ripley Anthony Spiller Arthur Tregaskiss John Walker

 

George Fisher, stoker


My father was probably told of the link with the ship in the 1920s, but whilst the story when it reached me was a bit thin - my great-great-grandfather had gone down on an experimental ship, and was commemorated in St Paul's - the circumstances had become distorted.

Certainly it was right that the ship had been an experimental one, but the story was that it had just one mast at the rear was not correct.

Being an East End (of London) family, you would think that a quick trip to St Paul’s would have shown them not only the drawing of the ship with a full complement of masts, but also the report from the Court Martial, all on the two plaques!

I started to investigate this story seriously when I started work on my family tree. One of the things I did was to record an item in January 2000 on the BBC Radio 4’s programme `Making History’. At my request for information, they talked to a historian at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, and to a military historian at the Public Records Office in Kew. They could confirm that a George Fisher had transferred from HMS Asia to HMS Captain in April 1870, and subsequent genealogy investigations have shown this man to be my great-great-grandfather.

George's father was from Sunderland, and worked on the coal boats, but married and settled in Greenwich, south-east London in 1807. George, born in 1822, was the fifth of eight children, started work at the age of 14 as an apprentice on a coal ship, and worked the rest of his life on coal and Royal Navy ships. Records show his conduct to be "good" and "very good" with two good conduct badges.

George's first wife died (of consumption) after eight months of marriage, just four months after producing a son. He re-married on the fourth anniversary of his first marriage (to the day!), and produced seven children (five surviving childhood), the youngest being my great-grandfather. His second wife, my great-great-grandmother, died, also of consumption, just three months after the disaster killed George, leaving the five children; the oldest three set up house together (or, at least, rented a couple of rooms in a house) in Greenwich, whilst the two youngest sons then became boarders at the charitable Greencoat School, also in Greenwich.

 

"The stokers and trimmers had the worst jobs, so were paid 50 per cent more than the others. They toiled in the stokehold in appalling conditions shoveling tons of coal and ash by hand in temperatures of about 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43 degrees Centigrade). The air was thick with dust and the noise was indescribable."

(Quotation and picture relate to a contemporary ship (HMS Warrior) - would you want to be in there when the ship rolled over?)




Juan Campos in his book Náufragos de Antaño adds the following (paraphrased) - 

"Some survivors are said to have listened to howls leaving the funnel - surely those of the stokers burnt by the boiling water and the burning coal from the boilers. Next a formidable noise was heard breaking the inside of the ship, the explosion of a boiler making contact with the cold water. This was a frequent event in shipwrecked steam ships, and was sometimes responsible for more victims than the accident itself."

 

Barry Fisher (UK) - great-great-grandson