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The Story of HMS Captain (cont) |
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The
Survivors (cont)
John Lewis Walker
"Three lines in the "News in Brief" column of the Herald Supplement, announcing the death in England of John Ellis, another of the Captain’s survivors, led Mr Walker to increase the number with this historic part of his life. Always he has been a reserved man, slow to tell his stories of the sea to the casual acquaintance. So retiring is he that the efforts of public men of the district and even the friendly interest of the distinguished admiral did not overcome his modesty when a personal introduction to Earl Jellicoe was arranged. Mr Walker has stories of skirmishes in many quarters to which his eleven years’ service in the Navy took him. As a boy he was fond of the life, but in later years the knowledge of the opportunities ashore made him dissatisfied. He is one of many of New Zealand’s finest who gave up their service in an informal way, and had an anxious time in the first few months of their new careers. But he feels he "did his bit" in those 11 years. Bitter as his memories are of the bad, old days of flogging, no one is prouder of his part in Britain’s campaign against slavery, of which he saw something when HMS Pearl went to the South Seas when numerous traders were making attempts at the practice." (John arrived at the port of Auckland in the early 1870s but we haven't yet been able to find out precisely when or even the name of the vessel (hope to do more on that soon) but we do know that he "jumped ship" with a friend, changed his name to John Lewis and hid among the timber workers among the Kauri forest in the Waitakere Ranges about 20 km west of the growing town. He chose the name Lewis because his best friend on HMS Captain was Lewis Werry (who also figures in the photo of the survivors.) Apparently either the navy or the police were frequently closing in on him and one night he and his friend Bates, stole a dinghy and rowed across the Manukau Harbour to the Awhitu Peninsula, at that time also a wilderness of kauri forest and tough loggers. As John Lewis he soon became leader of a logging camp in Tram Line Gully, He reverted to Walker when he married 16 yr old Annie Jane Hayter in the Presbyterian church at Kohekohe on 5 November 1880. He was 30 according to his marriage certificate. Then followed 13 children!!!!!! My father was number 10 and he was named after the ship's captain, Hugh Talbot Burgoyne Walker.) "The Herald paragraph was the first news for years John Walker had had of John Ellis or indeed of any of his ship mates of the Captain. But the incidents of the night are indelibly fixed in his mind." Those who were saved had the fortune to be on watch at the time. They had miraculous escapes. "I was washed overboard by heavy seas from windward," relates Mr Walker, "and on coming to the surface I was dragged by a seaman named Freeman into a launch that still had its canvas cover on." Soon after midnight Mr Walker went to answer to his name on the roll of the lifeboat crew. Before that routine duty could be performed a sudden gust struck on the starboard beam. Captain Burgoyne went to the bridge and shouted orders as the ship gradually turned over on its leeward side. The lifeboats were in crutches, but not gripped or lashed, consequently they were washed overboard by the heavy seas that came from the windward. Those on the deck at the time followed as the ship’s lean to increased, and few came to the surface.
(When the survivors arrived back in England) there was a relief fund raised, and each of the survivors was presented by Queen Victoria with a Bible. Mr Walker confesses that many of the gifts, including his, were afterwards exchanged for "basins of grog". "They were too unwieldy anyway," he observed. "We had lots of gifts like that, and it always reminded me of the music hall song of the time –
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HMS Captain 1870
"What
I remember most clearly before being pulled on to the covered launch was
that I lashed out at something that had gripped my leg," says Mr
Walker. "I thought it was a shark, but it turned out to be a youth
named Gribble, who was saved, but had a swollen face and a black eye for
a long time