By Wally Waits[i]
©2015
The ship St. Helena was
built by Robert Watts in Beaufort, South Carolina. It was “said to be the
best Ship ever built in this Province.”[ii] This multi-masted
sailboat likely was named because Beaufort was located in St. Helena Parish
which was established in 1712.
It was launched on
October 15th, 1766 in what was then the British Colony of South Carolina.
Captain George Perkins was its first master.
He died two weeks later at Beaufort, Port Royal.[iii] George Arthar took command next and served
for at least a decade.
The “St Halena” [sic]
was listed in the Ship Registers of South Carolina as having the capacity of
170 tons. The owners were Francis Stuart
of Beaufort and Nathaniel Wraxall and George Abbot Hall & Co., merchants of
Bristol.”[iv]
Francis Stuart was a prominent
merchant who died on 22 Sep 1766[v] and therefore did not see
the launch of the St. Helena. He was a wealthy
Beaufort businessman and farmer with business connections throughout the
colony.[vi] Nathaniel William Wraxall was the only son of
Nathaniel Wraxall, a Bristol merchant. The
son worked for his father before he was employed by the East India Company
between 1769 and 1771. George Abbot Hall
was born in 1737 in Bristol. He became a
Charlestown merchant as early as 1764.
He served as a revenue collector during the Revolutionary War.
The St. Helena was
designed for carrying raw commodities to England. It had a freight
capacity of nearly 1,000 barrels (or about 3,000 bushels).[vii] The crops exported
to England included rice, corn, cotton and tobacco.
The British colonies in
North America were still dependent on their mother country for finished goods
that were of a higher value. Books, manufactured items and woven clothes
and fabrics were some of the items imported into South Carolina.
The St. Helena
apparently only carried indigent Protestant settlers in January, 1768. There
is no other reference to the St. Helena carrying poor immigrants, despite
making at least three more trips from Bristol to Charleston in 1768. Any
other travelers sailing aboard the ship had to have been paying passengers. No record was kept of paying passengers as
their ship’s captain was not being reimbursed for passenger’s fares.
The Waight passengers
aboard the St. Helena arrived in the Charlestown harbor on February 3rd, 1768.[viii] On the surface it
looked like there was little left in the records. Sifting through the
dregs has helped to add additional details.
The St. Helena sailed
out of the Charlestown harbor bound for Gosport, England on March 7th,
1767. Its sleek design enabled her to slice rapidly through the water at
better than 110 miles per day. A vessel headed for American happened to
have passed the St. Helena at Lat. 49° Long. 15°. In the North Atlantic,
the St. Helena was almost to England because the St. Helena was only a couple
of days from sailing into port.
As a matter of fact, the
England-bound ship was 3457 miles from Charlestown if the meeting occurred
exactly at Lat. 49° North, Long. 15° West. When the west-bound vessel
hailed Captain George Arthur of the St. Helena, the captain yelled that he was
“31 days out” of Charlestown. To have travelled close to 3,500 miles in
31 days means that the St. Helena was sailing 111.5 miles per day.[ix]
Bristol, England and
Charlestown, South Carolina are 3969 miles apart. If the St. Helena
travelled at the same speed, she could make the trip in a little over 35
days. The ship proved be just as fast in 1768.[x]
The South
Carolina Gazette reported the St. Helena docking February 3rd in the
Charlestown harbor. By calculating backwards, a 35 day trip across the
Atlantic means that she departed Bristol on or about January 1st, 1768.
The Bath
Chronicle and Weekly Gazette, an English newspaper, was consistent in
reporting vessels arriving and departing at the port of Bristol, England.
Issues of this newspaper survive all through December, 1767. Yet, there
are no reference to the St. Helena leaving Bristol before the end of the year.
How long did the St.
Helena remain in port following arrival? In 1768, Capt. Arthur spent two
layovers in Charlestown and another in Bristol. Following the arrival of
the St. Helena on February 3rd, it returned to the sea after seven weeks in
South Carolina. The St. Helena laid over in port three weeks following
another arrival in Charlestown in July, 1768. After returning to Bristol,
there was a four week lay over while Carolina cargo was unloaded and the
loading of English goods for the return to South Carolina.
The English records are
incomplete as to when the St. Helena arrived in the Port of Bristol. It
could have spent anywhere from a couple of weeks to a couple of months tied up
to a wharf before sailing for Charlestown.
A search of the
newspaper for January, 1768 turns up no references for the St. Helena. As
a matter of fact, the January issues of the Bath newspaper apparently do not
survive. With no references in December issues, and no issues at all for
January, one can imagine a departure on the morning tide on New Year’s Day, or
the next tide. It would be unlikely to have departed from Bristol much
later than this.
Here in summary, is the
story. The Waight passengers arrived in Bristol probably between the
middle of December and the end of the year in 1767. In all likelihood,
they did not spend much time in town as lodging would have been
expensive. They likely met their fellow passengers – the Snead family and
two adventurous lads named Lester and Townshend – about the time of boarding as
no other connection has been found.[xi]
The newness of the St.
Helena would have been reassuring to the passengers. Capt. Arthur
probably added to the sense of security because he seems like he knew how to
command a freighter. He also probably had a business-like relationship
with forwarding agents on both coasts.
The trip to North
America would have been shorter if New York was the destination. But, the
South Carolina colonial government was paying a bounty to ship captains, for
the owners of the St. Helena, when the passengers themselves could not afford
their fares. This one time, Capt. Arthur took aboard these poor
travelers, possibly because his freight load was lighter due to the season of
the year.
After docking in the
Charlestown harbor, the captain reported the names and ages to the clerk at the
Governor’s Council office in order to receive compensation for their unpaid
fares. This was the only time he did this in 1768.
[v] www.familysearch.org, family tree. He was born in 1728 in Scotland.
[viii]
South Carolina Gazette, 8 Feb 1768 according to a transcription
in Citizens and Immigrants – South Carolina 1768, p. 302. I
am indebted to Dick Waits of San Antonio, Texas for bringing this source to my
attention.
[x] Georgia Gazette, 17 Aug 1768, p. 2 and the English
newspaper Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette, 22 Sep 1768, p. 2.
[xi] A Jonathan Waight served in two Tory units
during the 1781-82 period of the American Revolution, but research to date has
not established any connection between the Waightes or the Lesters before this.
No comments:
Post a Comment