Even running the River Lagan appears something the Neills wished to be rid of at this time, perhaps because of the internal upheavals, as she was advertised for sale in 'The Journal of Commerce'. We left her lying at Liverpool in June 1881. A. R. Marshall and Co., Neills' agents there, placed a watchman aboard and also hired a ratcatcher (fee 12/6d!). The crew had been paid off, as was customary, but with no sale likely, another cargo was loaded for San Francisco and a new crew signed on. The Public Record Office at Kew, London, houses one crew list for the River Lagan, being the Articles of Agreement this crew signed the day prior to sailing from the Mersey…
'… to any ports in the Pacific, Indian or Atlantic Oceans, Chinese or Eastern Seas and Continent of Europe and back to final port of discharge in U.K., not exceeding three years.'
'… to any ports in the Pacific, Indian or Atlantic Oceans, Chinese or Eastern Seas and Continent of Europe and back to final port of discharge in U.K., not exceeding three years.'
The Carrick duo of Quinn and Jack were again master and mate respectively, a Londoner, Henry Boardman, was second mate and, interestingly, third mate was Robert Neill, aged 20 - almost certainly the eldest son of John Neill. His previous ship is listed in the Articles as the Eldorado, a Neill collier that had not survived until the recent dissolution; Robert Neill was very likely to have been aboard when she put into Donaghadee harbour in distress in November 1880, stranded and became a total loss.
The rest of the crew consisted of the carpenter, steward, cook and sailmaker and eleven ABs (able-bodied seamen). These men were the usual cosmopolitan mixture that included a Swede and a Finn, as well as a 21-year-old Bangor man, George Bruce. One of the ABs, however, Charles Constant, from Middlesbrough, failed to rejoin the ship having collected an advance of £2 l5s, a month's wages, this again being a not uncommon feature of seaport life at this time. (Wages were advanced so that men could pay debts to boarding houses). So eighteen men set off for California and back.
The Articles of Agreement, intriguing browsing, also state the final outcome of each man's service. Only twelve of the original crew returned to Liverpool to be paid off. Young George Bruce never even reached San Francisco; baldly, his entry states, in Quinn's handwriting, 'Fell overboard 13 degrees S.,3l degrees 10 mins. W. 15 October 1881.' Arriving at San Francisco, Robert Neill and four of the ABs deserted. What story or stories lie behind this will now probably remain closed forever, but these were times when unwary seamen were 'shanghaied' in drinking dens and woke up, lost and hungover, on an American 'Down Easter' sailing ship - melodramatic, indeed, but true. What happened to Robert Neill, of course, concerns us especially here. The Neill family tree fails to record Robert's date of death, and, though there is some inconclusive evidence that he settled in Canada, it is also possible that he returned to take part in the coal business. The Belfast Street Directories of the mid 1890s list a Robert Neill, coal merchant, living in Otter Street, Ballymacarrett, Belfast.
Captain Quinn signed on two Swedish ABs and two teenage Ordinary Seamen to replace the missing men. Desertions, in fact, though illegal, were very common in those days. Captain John Nicholson of Bangor, on a voyage from Belfast to Baltimore via Sligo in 1877, in his barque Muriel, lost three men at Sligo and eight at Baltimore!
The River Lagan arrived back in the Mersey from San Francisco on 28 June 1882, a round trip often months, and finally berthed in Waterloo Dock to discharge 1330 tons of wheat. Again, the owners tried to sell her, this time by auction: 'Peremptorily and without any reserve, the very handsome iron barque River Lagan…' It appears that the sale was negotiated, for on 20 July 1882 Charles Neill is recorded as receiving £1,000 'to account of share of profit of voyage of River Lagan … and on account of deposit against sale of ship this day,' but matters must have fallen through, for on 3 August Charles sold his 28 shares to brother James and two days later, with David Jack now assuming his first master's post, the River Lagan left Liverpool for Iquique in Chile. Before we forget William Quinn, named on the ship's painting in 1878, it should be said that his subsequent career at sea would no doubt fill an entertaining book - 1884 to 1898, master of the barque Bankhall in world-wide trading, then the Bankburn and Glenericht round Cape Horn, before finally going into steam in the Bankfields in 1905.
Captain Jack maintained the Carrickfergus connection by skippering the River Lagan for over two years without an accident. She loaded two cargoes of nitrate at Iquique, for Hamburg in 1883 and Glasgow in 1884, and between these carried a Hamburg-San Francisco freight. It was indeed a slow progress round the world - an analysis of her passage times reveals an average of only 90 miles in a day - but memorable and colourful episodes starred the crew's life too. At Iquique, the chief nitrate port of Chile, the last bag of cargo was hauled up to the main yard with the youngest crew member astride it. He called for three cheers for his ship, the bell was tolled, a cross of lights to represent the Southern Cross was hoisted aloft and all vessels cheered the homeward bounder, before the crews' swelling voices across the anchorage joined in singing the windlass shanties 'Rolling Home' and 'Goodbye Fare Thee Well.'
One hundred and eighteen days out from Iquique, the River Lagan arrived at Glasgow on 16 October 1884. Here Captain Jack left her and after a few months ashore joined the Belfast barque Arabella of James Tedford. Sadly, the former Neill mate and skipper met a violent death aboard her on 5 June 1886; while the Arabella was lying in Rio de Janeiro he was murdered, poisoned by the ship's cook.
James Neill, by now owner of all 64 shares in the River Lagan fixed his barque to load general cargo at Glasgow for Chile. To what was to prove a brief command he appointed Captain William Mahood, a Portavogie man born in 1854, who had passed his master's ticket at Belfast in 1880 and then served in the steamers of Gustavus Heyn of Belfast as first officer. In 1884 he gained his first command, the steamer Bickley, but on 7 October 1884 she ran aground on the Island of Mull and became a total loss. Although no blame was attached to him, Captain Mahood left the service of Heyn and was officially engaged to the River Lagan on Christmas Day, 1884.
The next day she was towed down the Clyde and hoisted sail, destination Valparaiso, 11,000 miles away.
No word was heard of the barque from that date until 5 May 1885, when this cryptic telegram from Montevideo was delivered to James Neill:
'SMACKING 4 MARCH STATEN ISLAND'
According to the then standard Scott's Code, the first word meant, 'She is a total wreck, Captain and crew are coming home.' The well-known Staten Island is the New York one, but it was realised that the River Lagan had encountered another Staten Island, Isla de los Estados, an Argentinean possession sixteen miles off the coast of Tierra del Fuego and 180 miles north-east of the notorious Cape Horn. A few days after receipt of the telegram, Lloyd's received the following communication from their agent in Punta Arenas:
'24 April 1885. An Argentine cutter which arrived here some days ago from Staten Island had on board the crew of the barque River Lagan which had been wrecked during a fog on that island. The crew will leave for Liverpool by the s.s. Aconcagua.'
Captain Mahood and the crew of sixteen duly arrived in Liverpool on this Pacific Steam Navigation Co. vessel on 29 May- and those are the only facts known about the whole affair. A Board of Trade Inquiry was held, but its proceedings have not been preserved and all that remains is the finding that absolved William Mahood of any responsibility. That nothing appears to exist recording the circumstances of the wreck and the crew's survival on a remote and cruelly inhospitable island for about six weeks is an utter shame. Even Captain Mahood's life has faded from trace. Although Portavogie is a tightly-knit community and memories long, and Mahoods are still in the locality, this William Mahood has defeated inquiries that might just have uncovered handed-down tales. He went back into steam in the Ayrshire three months after returning home from Argentina, and his last recorded deep-sea command is the Belfast tramp steamer Oakley in 1897, from the U.K. to Brazil and the River Plate. Our William Mahood is certainly not the William Mahood buried in front of Glastry Presbyterian Church, but he appears to have been a cousin of this Portavogie boat builder.
The stranded complement of the River Lagan may have been given succour by lighthouse keepers or fishermen (modern atlases mark a settlement on the island) - we just do not know. Or, perhaps, they were in the extremities later experienced on Staten Island by the men of the Glasgow barque Colorado, commanded by Captain James. As he later recalled:
'We had a good stock of Epp's Cocoa there. We used it in a liquid state for drink. We also baked it on the fire which made splendid bread and kept us alive and warm on the barren island, which is situated in a region of perpetual ice, snow and storms!'
Blurred now under a tantalising veil of vagueness, the career of the River Lagan thus ended.
The Neills' shipowning interests at this time were by no means entirely centred on the River Lagan, although the rate of acquisition slowed down during the years of her career, and for a year on either side of the great family division of 1881, no new vessels were purchased. For Charles Neill, despite selling his 28 shares in the barque in 1882, after the abortive bid to dispose of her, shipowning on this scale cannot have been an off-putting experience, for a year later he purchased a barque himself, as sole owner. The adventures and misadventures of this historic and interesting vessel, the Bebington, will form the bulk of the rest of this chapter, but this is a convenient point to catch up on what was happening nearer home.
The three brothers were all again resident in their home town now, as around the late 1870s John Neill had moved from Dock Street, Belfast, to Kensington Villa, Princetown Road, Bangor. His young son James, 13, died in 1880, and, of course Robert, the eldest boy, left the River Lagan in San Francisco in 1881 - later history uncertain. Francis Campbell, 'Frank', Neill, born in 1862, was in his father's business, however, intended as a successor, which he later became. The John Neill shipping fleet had suffered a reverse in August 1879, when the barquentine Enterprise, 194 tons, stranded and broke her back while putting to sea from the small north-west Donegal harbour of Ballyness.
John bought outright the jointly-held shares of his brothers in three vessels, as a result of their severing connections, and added another in April 1883 when he bought the brigantine C. M. Reynolds from Hugh Savage of Portaferry.
James Neill, trading as Robert Neill and Sons, had married again after his first wife Sarah Mulcaster died. His second marriage was to Mary Bella Campbell (1851-1930), and they had eight children between 1880 and 1894, commencing with Amy in 1880 and Rose in 1882. Then followed five boys, Robert Campbell, who died young in 1921; James Wilson, who later emigrated to Canada; John Ferguson, William Campbell and Samuel Dodd, and finally a third girl, Helen, in 1894. Their father took an increasingly active interest in the local community, in 1885 being one of the Town Commissioners. One of his main interests in the 1880s was the new pier for Bangor, which was eventually constructed as the North Pier, just recently demolished.
Having bought out his brothers' interests in the River Lagan in 1882, and with the Slaney and Just to carry his coal, James made only one minor entry into the shipping market when he bought the little two-masted cargo boat Susannah, 20 tons, officially described as a wherry, which had been built by James Dickson of Castle Espie near Comber in 1870 and probably used on Strangford Lough. James Neill no doubt found employment for her in the import of limestone to Bangor before selling her again to local sea-captain Henry Magill.
A welcome diversion from James Neill's interests occurred in April 1885. Reported the 'Belfast News-Letter':
'There arrived at Bangor quay yesterday morning the schooner Just, belonging to Mr. Neill, with a cargo of tar barrels, etc., from the Isle of Man for the purpose of the forthcoming Royal visit to Belfast. It is intended to have a great display of illuminations at Bangor and other vantage points on the sea-girt shore in honour of their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales.'
On this Royal occasion the future King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, with Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence, visited Belfast port and the Princess of Wales ceremonially turned the first sod of the new Alexandra Graving Dock.
The headquarters and family home of Charles Neill was at 2 Quay Place, opposite the Central Pier, in the building which presently houses the Quarterdeck Restaurant. The Charles Neill business also took in Newtownards, where he was based beside the Railway Station. Thus coal could be imported into Donaghadee and carried by rail to Newtownards, as there was an extension from Donaghadee station down the pier. Thence it was carted to customers in rural townlands such as Ballyhaft and Ballyblack.
Charles Neill's major investment since setting up on his own, however, took his name a great deal farther from Bangor than these quiet spots, for in mid-1883 he acquired the old iron barque Bebington from Shaw, Savill and Co., the celebrated London shipowners, as she lay at London after a final San Francisco to Calais voyage for them. The Bebington had a strong Ulster connection and Charles quite probably remembered her construction back in 1859 by Robert Hickson and Edward Harland on the Queen's Island. She was a pioneer iron deepwater sailing ship, thus built as Hickson wanted an outlet for the products of his Belfast Iron Company in Eliza Street. A native of Birkenhead, Hickson was the first owner and gave her a Merseyside place name, but the vessel was in fact completed by his yard manager Edward Harland, to whom he had sold out late in 1858, so initiating the renowned shipbuilding concern.
The Bebington, completed as a full-rigged ship but later re-rigged as a barque, measured 924 net tons, was 183.4 feet in length by 33.1 feet in the beam and had a depth of hold of 20.4 feet. Little is known of her spell under Hickson's ownership, but her first recorded passage was Belfast to India in 1859. Robert Hickson owned her until 1872 when the purchasers were Adamson and Ronaldson of London, who placed her in the New Zealand emigrant trade, a sphere of employment which she carried on after Shaw, Savill took her over in 1876. The name Bebington was and still is remembered out in New Zealand - but for the wrong reasons. Dismissed as 'an old tub' by many of the hundreds who endured sailing in her, conditions aboard were poor and she was continually plagued by bad luck and horrendously long passages. Her best recorded time was from London to Lyttelton in 1879, an unimpressive 99 days. Her worst run out to New Zealand, and not only in length, occurred in 1876, under Captain Holdrich. One night out from Gravesend, she was severely damaged in collision and forced into Portsmouth, and shortly after leaving there typhoid and typhus broke out among the passengers, from which 16 persons died. The provisions ran short and Captain Holdrich had to put into Port Elizabeth. Finally reaching Auckland after 160 days, the Bebington was detained five weeks at anchor by the port health officer as there were 67 cases of measles aboard! Other examples of ill-fortune following the vessel exist, and Charles Neill's undoubted hopes that her luck would change under his aegis were not to be fulfilled.
The new owner invested in the laying of a new deck in the Bebington and sent to her as master Captain John Reid, who had previously been in John Neill's service in the barquentine Enterprise and brigantine Ocean Star. His first foreign-going command was the barque Woodbine, owner David Dorman of Belfast, in 1882. A Carrickfergus man, like Quinn and Jack of the River Lagan, he lived at Sailor's Row, and joined the Bebington at East India Dock in London, where she was loading for New Zealand again. It is possible, but not likely, that passengers were carried on this trip, which got off to almost as inauspicious a start as the awful 1876 passage. On 11 February 1884, just ten days after sailing, a heavy sea broke over the stern and smashed her wheel. With difficulty, repairs were made, but the next day much of the fore-rigging was torn away. The gale continued day after weary day, acid in cases on deck broke loose and had to be jettisoned; tarpaulins on the main hatch were ripped adrift and leaks sustained that required constant pumping. Her eventual time was 151 days to Lyttelton - laborious in the extreme but not as bad as the 180 days it took her to return home to the U.K. with grain from Port Pirie in South Australia. When she finally anchored in Penarth Roads off Cardiff, Captain Reid had this telegram sent to Lloyd's:
'Lost fore and main topgallant masts and one man overboard in the Indian Ocean 2 March 1885.'
The grain was discharged at Sharpness, up the River Severn, and the Bebington was towed back down to Penarth, where she loaded coal for Panama, rounded Cape Horn and made port in 185 days. No mishaps en route were recorded so by now it was clear that the barque was simply confirming the reputation she made in passenger days as a very slow ship. This did not mean as much when cargo only was being shipped, however, and was very much less important than in deepwater bulk carrying today. Crew's wages, as we have seen, were low, nobody in Panama was in a particular hurry for the coal- and, most important, the wind was free!
From Panama, the Bebington headed north for Portland and Astoria, on the Columbia River in the State of Oregon, and sailed again on 20 July 1886, grain-laden for Queenstown (now Cobh), where orders would be awaiting as to final port of discharge. This was to be her longest recorded passage ever, a marathon 258 days before she eventually arrived at Plymouth. In 'Lloyd's Weekly Shipping Index', six months passed without word of the Bebington at this time, an August entry 'Passed Cape Hancock 24 July' being repeated each issue until 24 February when 'Off the Falklands 9 November' appears - a relief for all with an interest in the old vessel and her cargo. She put into Pernambuco in Brazil, and even after leaving there on 22 January 1887 it still took more than ten weeks to reach Plymouth although she was possibly delayed at anchor off Queenstown.
This snail's pace voyage seems to have been enough for Captain Reid; he left the Bebington at Plymouth and Charles Neill himself had to travel to Devon and take command of his vessel on her short trip round to load coal at Swansea. This, of course, he was entitled to do as the holder of the requisite qualifications, even though he had been based ashore for many years. Still, the sea had been his life in youth, having first shipped on board at the age of twelve, and later having skippered the Triton. Captain Reid, for the record, went on to command many well-known sailing ships like the Queen's Island and Oaklands. Never having gone into steam, he died about 1907.
From Swansea, the outward orders were for Carrizal Bajo in Chile and the new master taking her on another Cape Horn passage was Captain William Hay. Yet again a Carrickfergus man commanded a Neill barque, Captain Hay being aged just 26 and this his first command. A passage of 118 days to Carrizal Bajo was followed by two months handling cargo in the open bay there, and then 137 days home to Fleetwood, probably with nitrate. Hay was paid off the Bebington at Fleetwood and a Bangor master mariner, Gilbert Oliver, replaced him. Captain Oliver, who was born in 1848 and passed his master's ticket in 1875, took the barque out to Chile again with coal for Valparaiso, passage duration 134 days. Another return nitrate cargo was fixed, the Bebington sailing 900 miles up the Chilean coast to Pisagua, then making another tedious haul back to Antwerp in 167 days.
The Bebington always had a reputation as a very slow ship, so it is interesting by way of comparison to place her Cape Horn passages beside those of a great barque famous for speed, the huge German Potosi - average outward time from the Elbe to Chile (usually Valparaiso) 70 days, homeward 79 days, between 1895 and 1905. Interesting but unfair, as the five-masted Potosi was just about the culmination of man's development of the wind-powered craft, making use of the latest advances in meteorology and with rigging improvements, carefully selected officers and a trained crew. The Bebington was much more typical of thousands of sailing ships tramping the Earth with cosmopolitan crews picked up from dockland boarding houses.
From Antwerp, the old wanderer crossed the North Sea in July 1889 to Middlesbrough, to load for Argentina, cargo probably coal or railway iron. In the Public Record Office, Kew, her Articles of Agreement for this voyage can be consulted, sixteen men signing on (some illiterate ones by rough crosses) …to Rosario… and/or if required to any port or ports within the limits of 72 degrees N. and 65 degrees S. latitude, trading to and from as may be required until the ship returns to a final port of discharge in the U. K., for any period not exceeding two years.'
This committed the crew in effect to going anywhere from the latitude of the North Cape of Norway to a southern extremity 500 miles south of Cape Horn! Oliver again commanded, and as mate he had Alexander McDevitt, a 41-year-old Scot, with Liverpool man Thomas Sedman, 23, a second mate,
There are some interesting differences from the composition of the River Lagan crew of 1881. No third mate or steward were carried, while the jobs of sailmaking and cook were combined by Finn Eric Ericsson. More significantly there were only six ABs compared with ten on the River Lagan and they included three men over 60, the eldest, Dane Niels Krogh, 70. No doubt life aboard was strenuous for the two young Ordinary Seamen, John Keenan and Henry Coffin, both of Bangor, who were paid thirty shillings a month! At ten shillings a month, three seventeen-year-olds signed on, officially titled 'Boys' - Robert Lindsay, Bangor, Samuel Vint, Donaghadee, and James Busby, Middlesbrough.
Only five of this crew had been on the previous voyage of the barque to Chile and back, but this was nothing unusual as crews were paid off after each voyage ended in the U.K. or a near-Continental port when the ship, unlike today, had a long sojourn in port. When the Bebington arrived at her port of discharge in Argentina, not in fact Rosario but San Nicolas, downstream from it on the River Parana, the mate McDevitt left 'by mutual consent' and two ABs deserted. Three fresh sailors were signed on before the vessel shifted down the Parana to Buenos Ayres to load grain back for Rouen. Despite the wording of the Articles, all the original crew except the boy Busby were paid off at Rouen, and when orders came to sail for Barry, Captain Oliver signed on a motley assortment of ‘runners’ just for this trip.
From Barry, where a fresh crew was engaged, the Bebington sailed for Buenos Ayres again, and six months after leaving the Argentinian capital, she was back. This was not bad going for the Bebington, but the next voyage was easily her best in the Charles Neill years, just 67 days from Buenos Ayres to Lyttelton in New Zealand, the port for Christchurch, where she arrived on 2 February 1891. Sailing on 6 March for Rouen, she took 125 days to reach the great French port, and finally was back in the U.K. on 12 August 1891, where she docked in Liverpool a year and six days after leaving British waters. She had sailed 30,000 miles without a fatality or serious damage.
After three years and three months, Captain Oliver had relinquished command at Rouen, an elderly Cumbrian, John Penny, being engaged to take the Bebington to the Mersey. Oliver was soon on his way to Australia as mate of the steel barque Lough Neagh, new from Workman Clark's Belfast yard, and in 1896-97 commanded the Newfield. He seems to have come ashore after this and lived at 7 Castle Square, Bangor, later residing in Church St. A sailing, ship man to the last, his recollections and accumulated knowledge would 'be of a life utterly foreign to us today. The bare statements of passages and cargoes would be fleshed out by the daily features and problems of the shipmaster's life - accommodation flooded by the cold ocean off the pitch of the Horn, dealing with fo'c'stle 'sea lawyers' airing grievances, referring to the 'Ship Master's Medical Guide' to remedy a case of ringworm or stitch a gash with a sailmaker's needle. The only person to try to collect tales from the days when Ulster sea captains traded across the world under sail was the late Captain R. H. Davis, a former master himself in the Lord Line, whose papers are now lodged in the Public Record Office for Northern Ireland.
Since her sluggardly 258 days from the Columbia River ports to Plymouth in 1886-87, the Bebington appears to have traded fairly satisfactorily for Charles Neill, though in the absence of any financial records we can only guess that she was earning a reasonable profit. This era in her career ended in 1891. On 25 September she was reported sailing from Liverpool for Santos and San Francisco, with Captain William Hay back in command; in the intervening years since leaving her at Fleetwood he had served as mate in the steamers of T. and ]. Harrison of Liverpool. Late in 1891 she arrived in Santos - and did not leave the Brazilian port again until 6 January 1893! Two events are recorded which go at least some way towards explaining this hiatus in her voyaging. Early in 1892, Captain Hay died and later, on 29 April, the Bebington was run into by the British steamer Balcarres Brook and her bowsprit, figurehead and headgear were carried away. So the mishaps that in the past had dogged the old barque had recurred. Yellow fever or 'Yellow Jack' was rampant in Brazil at this time and Captain Hay may well have fallen victim to it.
The mate, Edgar Kidd, took over command and when he finally quit Santos, doubtless with no regrets, the destination was not San Francisco as originally planned but Adelaide, the Australian port being reached in 90 days. Next orders were to round the coast to Geelong near Melbourne. Here grain for Calais was loaded and the voyage home made in 129 days. The Bebington was towed in between the long piers of Calais on 3 November 1893, to end her career under Charles Neill in the very same place to which she brought her last cargo for Shaw Savill. Unknown to those aboard, Charles Neill had died of pneumonia in Bangor on 18 October 1893.
By the terms of the will, the Bebington passed to Mrs. Olivia Neill but in fact never traded under the name again. After a year laid up at Calais, she was sold on 13 November 1894 to the prominent Norwegian firm of Larsen and Kiaer of Dram men, operators of both sail and steam vessels. They renamed her Handel Lust and eked out nearly eight more years trading from what was now becoming a seagoing museum piece. No doubt her iron hull was the vital factor in her longevity, but no ship is immortal. The Handel Lust left Middlesbrough on 7 July 1902 with coal for Las Palmas, under Captain Knudsen, and three weeks later was towed into Rotterdam, having stranded on the 10th on the Ooster Bank off Brouwershavean. This was the end. She was condemned as unfit for sea and dismantled.
The rest of the crew consisted of the carpenter, steward, cook and sailmaker and eleven ABs (able-bodied seamen). These men were the usual cosmopolitan mixture that included a Swede and a Finn, as well as a 21-year-old Bangor man, George Bruce. One of the ABs, however, Charles Constant, from Middlesbrough, failed to rejoin the ship having collected an advance of £2 l5s, a month's wages, this again being a not uncommon feature of seaport life at this time. (Wages were advanced so that men could pay debts to boarding houses). So eighteen men set off for California and back.
The Articles of Agreement, intriguing browsing, also state the final outcome of each man's service. Only twelve of the original crew returned to Liverpool to be paid off. Young George Bruce never even reached San Francisco; baldly, his entry states, in Quinn's handwriting, 'Fell overboard 13 degrees S.,3l degrees 10 mins. W. 15 October 1881.' Arriving at San Francisco, Robert Neill and four of the ABs deserted. What story or stories lie behind this will now probably remain closed forever, but these were times when unwary seamen were 'shanghaied' in drinking dens and woke up, lost and hungover, on an American 'Down Easter' sailing ship - melodramatic, indeed, but true. What happened to Robert Neill, of course, concerns us especially here. The Neill family tree fails to record Robert's date of death, and, though there is some inconclusive evidence that he settled in Canada, it is also possible that he returned to take part in the coal business. The Belfast Street Directories of the mid 1890s list a Robert Neill, coal merchant, living in Otter Street, Ballymacarrett, Belfast.
Captain Quinn signed on two Swedish ABs and two teenage Ordinary Seamen to replace the missing men. Desertions, in fact, though illegal, were very common in those days. Captain John Nicholson of Bangor, on a voyage from Belfast to Baltimore via Sligo in 1877, in his barque Muriel, lost three men at Sligo and eight at Baltimore!
The River Lagan arrived back in the Mersey from San Francisco on 28 June 1882, a round trip often months, and finally berthed in Waterloo Dock to discharge 1330 tons of wheat. Again, the owners tried to sell her, this time by auction: 'Peremptorily and without any reserve, the very handsome iron barque River Lagan…' It appears that the sale was negotiated, for on 20 July 1882 Charles Neill is recorded as receiving £1,000 'to account of share of profit of voyage of River Lagan … and on account of deposit against sale of ship this day,' but matters must have fallen through, for on 3 August Charles sold his 28 shares to brother James and two days later, with David Jack now assuming his first master's post, the River Lagan left Liverpool for Iquique in Chile. Before we forget William Quinn, named on the ship's painting in 1878, it should be said that his subsequent career at sea would no doubt fill an entertaining book - 1884 to 1898, master of the barque Bankhall in world-wide trading, then the Bankburn and Glenericht round Cape Horn, before finally going into steam in the Bankfields in 1905.
Captain Jack maintained the Carrickfergus connection by skippering the River Lagan for over two years without an accident. She loaded two cargoes of nitrate at Iquique, for Hamburg in 1883 and Glasgow in 1884, and between these carried a Hamburg-San Francisco freight. It was indeed a slow progress round the world - an analysis of her passage times reveals an average of only 90 miles in a day - but memorable and colourful episodes starred the crew's life too. At Iquique, the chief nitrate port of Chile, the last bag of cargo was hauled up to the main yard with the youngest crew member astride it. He called for three cheers for his ship, the bell was tolled, a cross of lights to represent the Southern Cross was hoisted aloft and all vessels cheered the homeward bounder, before the crews' swelling voices across the anchorage joined in singing the windlass shanties 'Rolling Home' and 'Goodbye Fare Thee Well.'
One hundred and eighteen days out from Iquique, the River Lagan arrived at Glasgow on 16 October 1884. Here Captain Jack left her and after a few months ashore joined the Belfast barque Arabella of James Tedford. Sadly, the former Neill mate and skipper met a violent death aboard her on 5 June 1886; while the Arabella was lying in Rio de Janeiro he was murdered, poisoned by the ship's cook.
James Neill, by now owner of all 64 shares in the River Lagan fixed his barque to load general cargo at Glasgow for Chile. To what was to prove a brief command he appointed Captain William Mahood, a Portavogie man born in 1854, who had passed his master's ticket at Belfast in 1880 and then served in the steamers of Gustavus Heyn of Belfast as first officer. In 1884 he gained his first command, the steamer Bickley, but on 7 October 1884 she ran aground on the Island of Mull and became a total loss. Although no blame was attached to him, Captain Mahood left the service of Heyn and was officially engaged to the River Lagan on Christmas Day, 1884.
The next day she was towed down the Clyde and hoisted sail, destination Valparaiso, 11,000 miles away.
No word was heard of the barque from that date until 5 May 1885, when this cryptic telegram from Montevideo was delivered to James Neill:
'SMACKING 4 MARCH STATEN ISLAND'
According to the then standard Scott's Code, the first word meant, 'She is a total wreck, Captain and crew are coming home.' The well-known Staten Island is the New York one, but it was realised that the River Lagan had encountered another Staten Island, Isla de los Estados, an Argentinean possession sixteen miles off the coast of Tierra del Fuego and 180 miles north-east of the notorious Cape Horn. A few days after receipt of the telegram, Lloyd's received the following communication from their agent in Punta Arenas:
'24 April 1885. An Argentine cutter which arrived here some days ago from Staten Island had on board the crew of the barque River Lagan which had been wrecked during a fog on that island. The crew will leave for Liverpool by the s.s. Aconcagua.'
Captain Mahood and the crew of sixteen duly arrived in Liverpool on this Pacific Steam Navigation Co. vessel on 29 May- and those are the only facts known about the whole affair. A Board of Trade Inquiry was held, but its proceedings have not been preserved and all that remains is the finding that absolved William Mahood of any responsibility. That nothing appears to exist recording the circumstances of the wreck and the crew's survival on a remote and cruelly inhospitable island for about six weeks is an utter shame. Even Captain Mahood's life has faded from trace. Although Portavogie is a tightly-knit community and memories long, and Mahoods are still in the locality, this William Mahood has defeated inquiries that might just have uncovered handed-down tales. He went back into steam in the Ayrshire three months after returning home from Argentina, and his last recorded deep-sea command is the Belfast tramp steamer Oakley in 1897, from the U.K. to Brazil and the River Plate. Our William Mahood is certainly not the William Mahood buried in front of Glastry Presbyterian Church, but he appears to have been a cousin of this Portavogie boat builder.
The stranded complement of the River Lagan may have been given succour by lighthouse keepers or fishermen (modern atlases mark a settlement on the island) - we just do not know. Or, perhaps, they were in the extremities later experienced on Staten Island by the men of the Glasgow barque Colorado, commanded by Captain James. As he later recalled:
'We had a good stock of Epp's Cocoa there. We used it in a liquid state for drink. We also baked it on the fire which made splendid bread and kept us alive and warm on the barren island, which is situated in a region of perpetual ice, snow and storms!'
Blurred now under a tantalising veil of vagueness, the career of the River Lagan thus ended.
The Neills' shipowning interests at this time were by no means entirely centred on the River Lagan, although the rate of acquisition slowed down during the years of her career, and for a year on either side of the great family division of 1881, no new vessels were purchased. For Charles Neill, despite selling his 28 shares in the barque in 1882, after the abortive bid to dispose of her, shipowning on this scale cannot have been an off-putting experience, for a year later he purchased a barque himself, as sole owner. The adventures and misadventures of this historic and interesting vessel, the Bebington, will form the bulk of the rest of this chapter, but this is a convenient point to catch up on what was happening nearer home.
The three brothers were all again resident in their home town now, as around the late 1870s John Neill had moved from Dock Street, Belfast, to Kensington Villa, Princetown Road, Bangor. His young son James, 13, died in 1880, and, of course Robert, the eldest boy, left the River Lagan in San Francisco in 1881 - later history uncertain. Francis Campbell, 'Frank', Neill, born in 1862, was in his father's business, however, intended as a successor, which he later became. The John Neill shipping fleet had suffered a reverse in August 1879, when the barquentine Enterprise, 194 tons, stranded and broke her back while putting to sea from the small north-west Donegal harbour of Ballyness.
John bought outright the jointly-held shares of his brothers in three vessels, as a result of their severing connections, and added another in April 1883 when he bought the brigantine C. M. Reynolds from Hugh Savage of Portaferry.
James Neill, trading as Robert Neill and Sons, had married again after his first wife Sarah Mulcaster died. His second marriage was to Mary Bella Campbell (1851-1930), and they had eight children between 1880 and 1894, commencing with Amy in 1880 and Rose in 1882. Then followed five boys, Robert Campbell, who died young in 1921; James Wilson, who later emigrated to Canada; John Ferguson, William Campbell and Samuel Dodd, and finally a third girl, Helen, in 1894. Their father took an increasingly active interest in the local community, in 1885 being one of the Town Commissioners. One of his main interests in the 1880s was the new pier for Bangor, which was eventually constructed as the North Pier, just recently demolished.
Having bought out his brothers' interests in the River Lagan in 1882, and with the Slaney and Just to carry his coal, James made only one minor entry into the shipping market when he bought the little two-masted cargo boat Susannah, 20 tons, officially described as a wherry, which had been built by James Dickson of Castle Espie near Comber in 1870 and probably used on Strangford Lough. James Neill no doubt found employment for her in the import of limestone to Bangor before selling her again to local sea-captain Henry Magill.
A welcome diversion from James Neill's interests occurred in April 1885. Reported the 'Belfast News-Letter':
'There arrived at Bangor quay yesterday morning the schooner Just, belonging to Mr. Neill, with a cargo of tar barrels, etc., from the Isle of Man for the purpose of the forthcoming Royal visit to Belfast. It is intended to have a great display of illuminations at Bangor and other vantage points on the sea-girt shore in honour of their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales.'
On this Royal occasion the future King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, with Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence, visited Belfast port and the Princess of Wales ceremonially turned the first sod of the new Alexandra Graving Dock.
The headquarters and family home of Charles Neill was at 2 Quay Place, opposite the Central Pier, in the building which presently houses the Quarterdeck Restaurant. The Charles Neill business also took in Newtownards, where he was based beside the Railway Station. Thus coal could be imported into Donaghadee and carried by rail to Newtownards, as there was an extension from Donaghadee station down the pier. Thence it was carted to customers in rural townlands such as Ballyhaft and Ballyblack.
Charles Neill's major investment since setting up on his own, however, took his name a great deal farther from Bangor than these quiet spots, for in mid-1883 he acquired the old iron barque Bebington from Shaw, Savill and Co., the celebrated London shipowners, as she lay at London after a final San Francisco to Calais voyage for them. The Bebington had a strong Ulster connection and Charles quite probably remembered her construction back in 1859 by Robert Hickson and Edward Harland on the Queen's Island. She was a pioneer iron deepwater sailing ship, thus built as Hickson wanted an outlet for the products of his Belfast Iron Company in Eliza Street. A native of Birkenhead, Hickson was the first owner and gave her a Merseyside place name, but the vessel was in fact completed by his yard manager Edward Harland, to whom he had sold out late in 1858, so initiating the renowned shipbuilding concern.
The Bebington, completed as a full-rigged ship but later re-rigged as a barque, measured 924 net tons, was 183.4 feet in length by 33.1 feet in the beam and had a depth of hold of 20.4 feet. Little is known of her spell under Hickson's ownership, but her first recorded passage was Belfast to India in 1859. Robert Hickson owned her until 1872 when the purchasers were Adamson and Ronaldson of London, who placed her in the New Zealand emigrant trade, a sphere of employment which she carried on after Shaw, Savill took her over in 1876. The name Bebington was and still is remembered out in New Zealand - but for the wrong reasons. Dismissed as 'an old tub' by many of the hundreds who endured sailing in her, conditions aboard were poor and she was continually plagued by bad luck and horrendously long passages. Her best recorded time was from London to Lyttelton in 1879, an unimpressive 99 days. Her worst run out to New Zealand, and not only in length, occurred in 1876, under Captain Holdrich. One night out from Gravesend, she was severely damaged in collision and forced into Portsmouth, and shortly after leaving there typhoid and typhus broke out among the passengers, from which 16 persons died. The provisions ran short and Captain Holdrich had to put into Port Elizabeth. Finally reaching Auckland after 160 days, the Bebington was detained five weeks at anchor by the port health officer as there were 67 cases of measles aboard! Other examples of ill-fortune following the vessel exist, and Charles Neill's undoubted hopes that her luck would change under his aegis were not to be fulfilled.
The new owner invested in the laying of a new deck in the Bebington and sent to her as master Captain John Reid, who had previously been in John Neill's service in the barquentine Enterprise and brigantine Ocean Star. His first foreign-going command was the barque Woodbine, owner David Dorman of Belfast, in 1882. A Carrickfergus man, like Quinn and Jack of the River Lagan, he lived at Sailor's Row, and joined the Bebington at East India Dock in London, where she was loading for New Zealand again. It is possible, but not likely, that passengers were carried on this trip, which got off to almost as inauspicious a start as the awful 1876 passage. On 11 February 1884, just ten days after sailing, a heavy sea broke over the stern and smashed her wheel. With difficulty, repairs were made, but the next day much of the fore-rigging was torn away. The gale continued day after weary day, acid in cases on deck broke loose and had to be jettisoned; tarpaulins on the main hatch were ripped adrift and leaks sustained that required constant pumping. Her eventual time was 151 days to Lyttelton - laborious in the extreme but not as bad as the 180 days it took her to return home to the U.K. with grain from Port Pirie in South Australia. When she finally anchored in Penarth Roads off Cardiff, Captain Reid had this telegram sent to Lloyd's:
'Lost fore and main topgallant masts and one man overboard in the Indian Ocean 2 March 1885.'
The grain was discharged at Sharpness, up the River Severn, and the Bebington was towed back down to Penarth, where she loaded coal for Panama, rounded Cape Horn and made port in 185 days. No mishaps en route were recorded so by now it was clear that the barque was simply confirming the reputation she made in passenger days as a very slow ship. This did not mean as much when cargo only was being shipped, however, and was very much less important than in deepwater bulk carrying today. Crew's wages, as we have seen, were low, nobody in Panama was in a particular hurry for the coal- and, most important, the wind was free!
From Panama, the Bebington headed north for Portland and Astoria, on the Columbia River in the State of Oregon, and sailed again on 20 July 1886, grain-laden for Queenstown (now Cobh), where orders would be awaiting as to final port of discharge. This was to be her longest recorded passage ever, a marathon 258 days before she eventually arrived at Plymouth. In 'Lloyd's Weekly Shipping Index', six months passed without word of the Bebington at this time, an August entry 'Passed Cape Hancock 24 July' being repeated each issue until 24 February when 'Off the Falklands 9 November' appears - a relief for all with an interest in the old vessel and her cargo. She put into Pernambuco in Brazil, and even after leaving there on 22 January 1887 it still took more than ten weeks to reach Plymouth although she was possibly delayed at anchor off Queenstown.
This snail's pace voyage seems to have been enough for Captain Reid; he left the Bebington at Plymouth and Charles Neill himself had to travel to Devon and take command of his vessel on her short trip round to load coal at Swansea. This, of course, he was entitled to do as the holder of the requisite qualifications, even though he had been based ashore for many years. Still, the sea had been his life in youth, having first shipped on board at the age of twelve, and later having skippered the Triton. Captain Reid, for the record, went on to command many well-known sailing ships like the Queen's Island and Oaklands. Never having gone into steam, he died about 1907.
From Swansea, the outward orders were for Carrizal Bajo in Chile and the new master taking her on another Cape Horn passage was Captain William Hay. Yet again a Carrickfergus man commanded a Neill barque, Captain Hay being aged just 26 and this his first command. A passage of 118 days to Carrizal Bajo was followed by two months handling cargo in the open bay there, and then 137 days home to Fleetwood, probably with nitrate. Hay was paid off the Bebington at Fleetwood and a Bangor master mariner, Gilbert Oliver, replaced him. Captain Oliver, who was born in 1848 and passed his master's ticket in 1875, took the barque out to Chile again with coal for Valparaiso, passage duration 134 days. Another return nitrate cargo was fixed, the Bebington sailing 900 miles up the Chilean coast to Pisagua, then making another tedious haul back to Antwerp in 167 days.
The Bebington always had a reputation as a very slow ship, so it is interesting by way of comparison to place her Cape Horn passages beside those of a great barque famous for speed, the huge German Potosi - average outward time from the Elbe to Chile (usually Valparaiso) 70 days, homeward 79 days, between 1895 and 1905. Interesting but unfair, as the five-masted Potosi was just about the culmination of man's development of the wind-powered craft, making use of the latest advances in meteorology and with rigging improvements, carefully selected officers and a trained crew. The Bebington was much more typical of thousands of sailing ships tramping the Earth with cosmopolitan crews picked up from dockland boarding houses.
From Antwerp, the old wanderer crossed the North Sea in July 1889 to Middlesbrough, to load for Argentina, cargo probably coal or railway iron. In the Public Record Office, Kew, her Articles of Agreement for this voyage can be consulted, sixteen men signing on (some illiterate ones by rough crosses) …to Rosario… and/or if required to any port or ports within the limits of 72 degrees N. and 65 degrees S. latitude, trading to and from as may be required until the ship returns to a final port of discharge in the U. K., for any period not exceeding two years.'
This committed the crew in effect to going anywhere from the latitude of the North Cape of Norway to a southern extremity 500 miles south of Cape Horn! Oliver again commanded, and as mate he had Alexander McDevitt, a 41-year-old Scot, with Liverpool man Thomas Sedman, 23, a second mate,
There are some interesting differences from the composition of the River Lagan crew of 1881. No third mate or steward were carried, while the jobs of sailmaking and cook were combined by Finn Eric Ericsson. More significantly there were only six ABs compared with ten on the River Lagan and they included three men over 60, the eldest, Dane Niels Krogh, 70. No doubt life aboard was strenuous for the two young Ordinary Seamen, John Keenan and Henry Coffin, both of Bangor, who were paid thirty shillings a month! At ten shillings a month, three seventeen-year-olds signed on, officially titled 'Boys' - Robert Lindsay, Bangor, Samuel Vint, Donaghadee, and James Busby, Middlesbrough.
Only five of this crew had been on the previous voyage of the barque to Chile and back, but this was nothing unusual as crews were paid off after each voyage ended in the U.K. or a near-Continental port when the ship, unlike today, had a long sojourn in port. When the Bebington arrived at her port of discharge in Argentina, not in fact Rosario but San Nicolas, downstream from it on the River Parana, the mate McDevitt left 'by mutual consent' and two ABs deserted. Three fresh sailors were signed on before the vessel shifted down the Parana to Buenos Ayres to load grain back for Rouen. Despite the wording of the Articles, all the original crew except the boy Busby were paid off at Rouen, and when orders came to sail for Barry, Captain Oliver signed on a motley assortment of ‘runners’ just for this trip.
From Barry, where a fresh crew was engaged, the Bebington sailed for Buenos Ayres again, and six months after leaving the Argentinian capital, she was back. This was not bad going for the Bebington, but the next voyage was easily her best in the Charles Neill years, just 67 days from Buenos Ayres to Lyttelton in New Zealand, the port for Christchurch, where she arrived on 2 February 1891. Sailing on 6 March for Rouen, she took 125 days to reach the great French port, and finally was back in the U.K. on 12 August 1891, where she docked in Liverpool a year and six days after leaving British waters. She had sailed 30,000 miles without a fatality or serious damage.
After three years and three months, Captain Oliver had relinquished command at Rouen, an elderly Cumbrian, John Penny, being engaged to take the Bebington to the Mersey. Oliver was soon on his way to Australia as mate of the steel barque Lough Neagh, new from Workman Clark's Belfast yard, and in 1896-97 commanded the Newfield. He seems to have come ashore after this and lived at 7 Castle Square, Bangor, later residing in Church St. A sailing, ship man to the last, his recollections and accumulated knowledge would 'be of a life utterly foreign to us today. The bare statements of passages and cargoes would be fleshed out by the daily features and problems of the shipmaster's life - accommodation flooded by the cold ocean off the pitch of the Horn, dealing with fo'c'stle 'sea lawyers' airing grievances, referring to the 'Ship Master's Medical Guide' to remedy a case of ringworm or stitch a gash with a sailmaker's needle. The only person to try to collect tales from the days when Ulster sea captains traded across the world under sail was the late Captain R. H. Davis, a former master himself in the Lord Line, whose papers are now lodged in the Public Record Office for Northern Ireland.
Since her sluggardly 258 days from the Columbia River ports to Plymouth in 1886-87, the Bebington appears to have traded fairly satisfactorily for Charles Neill, though in the absence of any financial records we can only guess that she was earning a reasonable profit. This era in her career ended in 1891. On 25 September she was reported sailing from Liverpool for Santos and San Francisco, with Captain William Hay back in command; in the intervening years since leaving her at Fleetwood he had served as mate in the steamers of T. and ]. Harrison of Liverpool. Late in 1891 she arrived in Santos - and did not leave the Brazilian port again until 6 January 1893! Two events are recorded which go at least some way towards explaining this hiatus in her voyaging. Early in 1892, Captain Hay died and later, on 29 April, the Bebington was run into by the British steamer Balcarres Brook and her bowsprit, figurehead and headgear were carried away. So the mishaps that in the past had dogged the old barque had recurred. Yellow fever or 'Yellow Jack' was rampant in Brazil at this time and Captain Hay may well have fallen victim to it.
The mate, Edgar Kidd, took over command and when he finally quit Santos, doubtless with no regrets, the destination was not San Francisco as originally planned but Adelaide, the Australian port being reached in 90 days. Next orders were to round the coast to Geelong near Melbourne. Here grain for Calais was loaded and the voyage home made in 129 days. The Bebington was towed in between the long piers of Calais on 3 November 1893, to end her career under Charles Neill in the very same place to which she brought her last cargo for Shaw Savill. Unknown to those aboard, Charles Neill had died of pneumonia in Bangor on 18 October 1893.
By the terms of the will, the Bebington passed to Mrs. Olivia Neill but in fact never traded under the name again. After a year laid up at Calais, she was sold on 13 November 1894 to the prominent Norwegian firm of Larsen and Kiaer of Dram men, operators of both sail and steam vessels. They renamed her Handel Lust and eked out nearly eight more years trading from what was now becoming a seagoing museum piece. No doubt her iron hull was the vital factor in her longevity, but no ship is immortal. The Handel Lust left Middlesbrough on 7 July 1902 with coal for Las Palmas, under Captain Knudsen, and three weeks later was towed into Rotterdam, having stranded on the 10th on the Ooster Bank off Brouwershavean. This was the end. She was condemned as unfit for sea and dismantled.