I hesitated about posting this as it is basically a family history question (and I’m not sure I want to encourage the: “My name is John Smith, can anyone tell me where I can find my family tree…”, type of question). But since there are a few nautical experts here I would be grateful for any help they, or frankly anyone, cares to give.

My g.g.grandfather was master of a small steamship in the last quarter of the 19th century. This ship, the “Bob and Harry”, was too small to appear in Lloyd’s Register, but I have found her in the Mercantile Shipping Lists. She was a wooden steamship, built in 1870 in Newcastle upon Tyne: length 64 feet; breadth 19 feet; depth of hold 7 feet; net tonnage 25; gross tonnage 50; engine 14 hp, screw propelled.

Her home port was Newcastle (where gggfather lived). In the 1881 census she is recorded as being in port at Pittenweem, Scotland, with a crew of three: gggfather as “master”, his son as “engineer”, and an 18 year old lad as “fireman” ie stoker. From various sources her routes were from Newcastle to the ports of Fife, ie: Burtisland, Kirkaldy, Pittenweem, Crail... occasionally as far as Dundee. She seems to have been on long term charter (or a similar arrangement) to a merchant shipping firm based in central Newcastle who, from trade directories, seem to have dealt in such commodities as bagged coal, salt, pig iron, and lumber, while at the same time acting as approved shipping agents for Armstrong and Whitworth’s massive Tyneside shipbuilding and armaments business.

My questions are:

What sort of vessel was she? What did she probably look like? From her size and the trade she seems to have served, I have assumed she was something like an earlier version of a Clyde Puffer operating a bit in the style of Para Handy… albeit some 50 years earlier and in a different setting – would this be roughly correct ?

Also as I have stated above, the records suggest she may have carried coal, salt, iron… but all these commodities were, at the time, produced both in Newcastle and in Fife, while lumber was required equally at both destinations. So I’m a bit confused as to what her cargoes actually were. Any guesses anyone?

And finally gggfather’s occupation is always given as “master mariner” which I took to be owner/captain. But in the mercantile lists it is the Newcastle shipping agent who is given in the box labelled: “Sole Registered Owner or Managing Owner where there are more Owners than One”. So is a ship’s master not necessarily her owner?

Thanks for any suggestions and apologies if this posting is inappropriate for the forum.

Sorry but I'm off at a tangent again. Norm, your thoughts about the sailor on watch made me think of how little in the essentials the cabotage trade has changed since the days when the Phoenicians were doing exactly what you and Meles are describing; going from port to port, picking up whatever was available and braving whatever the weather would throw at them. Don't you feel that any of these sailors, from any age would, despite the change in technology, immediately understand and empathise with each other? It's a bit like farming, the sea, like the earth, is what it always was and making your living from either is something very fundamental and in every sense elemental.

http://www.nationalhistoricships.org.uk/ships_register.php?action=ship&id=146

http://www.nationalhistoricships.org.uk/ships_register.php?action=ship&id=473

The lives of the above pair - cargos carried etc - might help you get a picture of what she may have done.

We get all sorts of yachts here, some almost as big as cruise ships with aerials, satelite dishes and other gizmos bristling everywhere. But I can't help but think that as impressive as it seems that it is not really sailing, whereas a propper yacht slicing through the water and with the sails full is a sight to behold.

Norman - yes, I remember Decca, and its oceanic cousin, Loran - I wonder, though - do the old MW beacons still transmit the directional signals - a pattern of dots and dashes, with the bearing indicated by the transition - that we used to have in those days? I think we are getting too dependent on satellites - a really good electromagnetic storm in the troposphere and we'll be finding ULCCs trying to get into some benighted fishing port ....

MM - haven't had time to check yet, but those dimensions (64 x 19 x7) ring a bell - I think they are standard for a type of coastal / broad canal vessel, but I'm not sure which. Will check later.

As I recall the beacons were turned off, not so long ago, having said that ‘not so long’ could be up to 15 years ago… or even less…



I agree we have become completely beholden to ultra modern technology, I went aboard a small posh yacht in Nayland marina Pembroke and was amazed at the navigation gear available to a boat of that size… in reality a chart and chart table is no longer a requirement as its all on a CD… loaded into the radar and plots not only your course but also the course and speed of all the other vessels on the screen, and even sounds an alarm if it detects a risk of collision, advises what action to take and can automatically make adjustments via the auto pilot to avoid the risk… as it happened the owner of the vessel was showing me around as I’d expressed an interest in buying it, he himself was an ex mercantile marine engineer, and stated his preference for the old fashioned and well tried and tested methods of course plotting. It makes me wonder just what we would resort to in the event of a complete collapse of the satellite system… what about if the mobile phone system was hacked into and taken over… I understand a lot of front line military communications in the gulf were made on mobile phones… furthermore… what’s happened to good old Morse… no longer a requirement to gain neither a ham licence, nor a radio opps licence at sea… when I think back at the struggle I had with my Morse… I tried not to go for ships with long names, as it was still required when entering the ‘Elbe’ on route to Hamburg… I dreaded it, tapping away out on the wing of the bridge on the trusty old Aldis lamp… best thing was to plan to arrive in daylight when the shore stations could read for themselves the name of the vessel…



MM coaster… I’m glad you’ve come aboard on this… interesting what you say about its dimensions… I think just suitable for the Caledonian and Crinnan canals… but the size of its engine… at just 14 HP… I wonder what speed she could maintain against a tide.

Beware, Norman - hp figures for steam engines can be misleading in the extreme!
I would not be surprised if the HP given is NHP - Nominal Horse Power - derived from cylinder size, and not really a measure of HP - for a steam engine, you need (as I'm sure you know) to consider the IHP - Indicated Horse Power, which is more or less directly comparable to SHP or BHP, but

Quote :

Kempe's 'Engineer's Year-Book', 1898 edition, says of Nominal Horsepower "This may be taken as 1/6 of the Indicated Horsepower".

14bhp is about the rate for a motor narrowboat - one that will be towing a butty - and would give her about 4 knots, or would give about that in a wide canal barge.
14 NHP would by the above work out about 80 IHP - about the power of the engines of the WWII Motor Fishing Vessels of the 61'6" group - of 50 tons net, and gave them 8-9 knots.
The vessel we are considering would meet the size limits for the Crinan, Caledonian, or Forth & Clyde canals.

Thanks for all your comments and suggestions for further research.... I still need to mull through. Just a couple of points that I have uneathed since the OP.

I was confused about the term master... it is of course nothing to do with the vessel's ownership, but rather that the "captain" has attained his Master's Certificate of Competency. My confusion there.

I have found the vessel in Lloyd's Register for 1874/75 when she was listed under the ownership of an earthenware manufacturing firm on the Tyne, and she is then specifically listed as "a lighter, for river purposes only".

Interesting comments about yachts too... granddad on my mother's side of the family was in later years skipper on the private yachts of Colonel Buckley (a long term friend of Shackleton) as they pootled around Scotland, the Hebrides, Scandinavia, South of France and the Med. I have several photos of these yachts from just after WW1 .... the interiors were all plush uphostery, cut glass, carved mahogony and brass... the saloon even complete with piano and potted palms! That's the way to travel!

Heavens, I hope the piano was bolted down. Hate to think what it would do to anyone in a rough sea!

It wouldn't have been hard. Rag music was all the rage that time.

There's a nice free card model of these at http://cfp.muerell.de/products/9/details
Pics at "photos of the original"
I remember being taken ashore from HMS Phoebe in one like MFV 256 at Portland - think she was an RMAS vessel at that date.

From 2012:

Meles meles wrote:

My g.g.grandfather was master of a small steamship in the last quarter of the 19th century. This ship, the “Bob and Harry”, was too small to appear in Lloyd’s Register, but I have found her in the Mercantile Shipping Lists. She was a wooden steamship, built in 1870 in Newcastle upon Tyne: length 64 feet; breadth 19 feet; depth of hold 7 feet; net tonnage 25; gross tonnage 50; engine 14 hp, screw propelled.

Her home port was Newcastle (where gggfather lived). In the 1881 census she is recorded as being in port at Pittenweem, Scotland, with a crew of three: gggfather as “master”, his son as “engineer”, and an 18 year old lad as “fireman” ie stoker. From various sources her routes were from Newcastle to the ports of Fife, ie: Burtisland, Kirkaldy, Pittenweem, Crail... occasionally as far as Dundee. She seems to have been on long term charter (or a similar arrangement) to a merchant shipping firm based in central Newcastle who, from trade directories, seem to have dealt in such commodities as bagged coal, salt, pig iron, and lumber, while at the same time acting as approved shipping agents for Armstrong and Whitworth’s massive Tyneside shipbuilding and armaments business.

..... What sort of vessel was she? What did she probably look like? From her size and the trade she seems to have served, I have assumed she was something like an earlier version of a Clyde Puffer operating a bit in the style of Para Handy… albeit some 50 years earlier and in a different setting – would this be roughly correct ?

Thanks for all the replies back then ... and yes the consensus was that she was a bit like an early Clyde Puffer.

And now over four years later, and thanks to the sleuthing skills of Normanhurst, I can finally show you what she really did look like. This is a painting of the 'Bob and Harry' made probably about 1882-1885 when she passed to a new owner a Mr Ross of Newburgh, Fife, the photo coming, via Normanhurst, from Ross's great, great-grandson. Isn't the internet wonderful for finding things like this.



... and now to try and find a picture of my g.g.grandfather's last ship, of which he was master from 1882 until he retired in 1891, the "Blue Billy".

No picture as yet, but there was a Blue Billy built on the Tyne in 1872;

Blue Billy

Yes that's the one (Reg No.67339) she was a tad bigger than the Bob & Harry but much the same sort of vessel and when gggdad was master she was occupied in much the same trade up and down the NE to the ports on the Forth, and around Fife as far as Dundee. The name Blue Billy refers to so-called 'purple ore', calcined iron oxide, which was a by-product of roasting pyrite to make sulphuric acid. This was basically a waste product but the Siemens iron works on the Tees operated a process that could utilise 'purple ore' mixed in with regular iron ore. So I assume originally the Blue Billy had been used to transport this material from the chemical works on the Tyne, down to the iron works on the Tees, probably returning with iron and steel for use in the Tyneside shipyards.

These records have not been digitized and cannot be downloaded. Next time you're in Kew. Meles, you can pay them a visit;

Agreements and Crew Lists

Couldn't resist;

It's in Lloyds Register for 1874/75:



For some reason, I cannot find it in the 1883/84 edition.

I can't remember the details from when I was looking at all this but I think she was just at the lower size limit to be included in Loyd's Register, hence why she might be missed for 1883/84. She does also appear, sometimes, in the Merchantile Shipping Register which was a separate register and included much smaller vessels than Lloyds.

Ships Agreements and Crew Lists are a very labourious way to get information (unless you are trying to find the names of the crew)... but, knowing the name of the master (my ancestor), what I have done is search for the Blue Billy's mention in the 'what's in port' sections of local newspapers. These newspapers are often available online but you have to pay to see the relevant pages (which are scanned images of the old newspaper pages). However if you do a google search using the ship's name and a likely port, you often get a search response showing the newspaper name and date, (say the Dundee Chronicle Sept 1886) with your search words (eg the ship name and gggdad's name) highlighted together with a few words either side. Since I was interested in looking only at shipping news, all the newspaper entry would typically give anyway would be something very brief such as: date, ship-name, master, principal cargo ... and then onto the next ship etc. Bear in mind to be searchable the newspapers' old-fashioned typeset text has been scanned by OCR, and so 'Blue Billy' might have been read and be recorded for search purposes as '8lue Hilly', but with a bit of playing around I found I could trace the Blue Billy and gggfather's movements through the 1880s, and the cargoes they carried, as together they pottered around the ports of NE England, the Forth, and around Fifeshire to Dundee and Montrose.

Do you know where she was registered? There's often quite a bit of info available from the records at the port of registry.

On a totally different tack, take a look at http://www.ssfreshspring.co.uk/blog

'Blue Billy' was originally registered at Newcastle upon Tyne in 1872 as "a lighter, for river work only" ... but that was a decade before ggg-dad took command of her as a sea-going vessel, and so by his time she'd obviously been modified a bit.

And whilst details of the ship are always helpful (and can give important leads to other things) ... my primary interest remains trying to trace the history of my ancestor. A photo of the 'Blue Billy' would be very nice indeed, but it probably won't now tell me much more about ggg-dad's life than I already know, as found through other sources.