Robert Cadwalader is a former mariner and an artist, as well
as being a volunteer at Porthmadog maritime museum. He lives in Criccieth. I
bought this ready framed, oil-on-board painting of the Gomer from him. We
arranged to meet him at the museum to pick up the painting during a Welsh
holiday in 2016. Robert kindly allowed me to use some of his paintings to
illustrate my book, Seafarer Jones. The Gomer has a special significance for
Chris’s family.
Captain Richard Jones, 1814-1866, was Chris’s great, great
grandfather. He was born in Criccieth in 1814. He began his seafaring career as
a cabin boy in 1825, when he was just eleven years old, on board the Gomer, a
brig belonging to the ship owner Richard Pritchard, who sailed it out of
Beaumaris on Anglesey.
Richard Pritchard took emigrants from Anglesey and later
from Porthmadog to New York. It must have been a baptism of fire for young Richard
Jones. Captain Pritchard was renowned for his seamanship, to the extent that
potential customers came from all over Wales for a safe passage with him to the
New World, but unlike many other captains, he is reputed to have taken a
somewhat more direct route there than most, which meant that the Gomer, not the
largest of ocean-going vessels even at that time, faced mountainous seas with
some regularity.
An advertisement from the time indicated that the Gomer was
expecting to leave Beaumaris with over 100 people on board, including a crew of
nine, during her emigration voyages, as well as ballast made up of one hundred
tons of slate. Her overall size, as far as can be gathered from the picture
above and her limited tonnage, suggests that she might have been somewhat
overcrowded at times.
As Henry Hughes put it in his book,
“Immortal Sails,” “…Captain Prichard
chose for his ocean career a passenger service between Beaumaris and New York,
which meant fighting every mile of the way against the biggest seas in the
world and some of the wildest storms. The east-to-west crossing, especially in
winter months, is infinitely more difficult than the west-to-east. Sympathy can
be expressed with the brave commander and his splendid men on this bleak and
inhospitable route in such a small craft, but words fail when passengers are
considered.”
He goes on to say, “It is not difficult to imagine the scenes,
the suffering of women and children often battened down for days and nights on
end in the congested surroundings of the Gomer's meagre accommodation,
exhausted by sea-sickness, haunted by fear and prostrated by grief at leaving
the " land of their fathers," perhaps for ever. What joy in their
hearts, after fifty or sixty weary days of lifting and dipping, griping along
and plunging down the slopes of great billows, to see the cheerful face of
Captain Prichard peeping through the open door of their cabin to tell them the
good news that the New World was under the lee and only a few leagues away!”
It is not clear how many times Captain
Pritchard made this journey, but young Richard Jones moved on to the Eivion
after just one year on the Gomer. Captain Pritchard, no doubt weighing up his
options carefully, eventually gave up the sea in 1835 to take a commercial
position on land in Porthmadog, with his reputation as a skilled, yet daring,
captain safely intact.
Richard Jones continued to learn the ropes on the Porthmadog
schooners, the Eivion and the Catherine & Mary in the 1830’s, becoming a
mate on the Britain and the Humility, before gaining his certificate of
competence and taking charge of the Phoenix and then the Pearl. He became a
ship’s master in 1851, captaining the Edward from 1855, a boat that he owned
himself after 1861.
Richard had married Ann Hughes in 1836 and they had nine
children, including Chris’s great grandfather, Hugh Robert Jones, 1843-91. In
1868 and at the age of only 54, Richard was drowned when the Edward, was
wrecked off Anglesey. She had been returning from Liverpool
when a storm blew up and she was driven onto the rocks. All of the crew of four
were lost. Richard’s body was recovered, along with that of his nephew, fifteen-year
old Griffith Hughes. Both family members were buried in St Catharine’s
graveyard in Criccieth.
Captain Hugh Robert Jones died on board
his ship, the Province, in the Atlantic Ocean, in 1891. His body was brought
ashore at Sharpness for burial at Criccieth. His son and Chris’s grandfather,
Captain Richard Jones, 1876-1923, also died on board his ship, the SS Antar, this
time in the Pacific Ocean. He is buried in Vancouver. Richard’s son and Chris’s
dad, Richard Hamilton Jones, 1920-2008, broke with this unfortunate tradition -
but only just - when the ship in which he was being held as a prisoner of war,
the Italian freighter, Sebastiano Venier, was torpedoed, and beached on the
coast of Greece during World War Two. He avoided the fate of his father, his
grandfather and his great grandfather, by escaping over the side of the
stricken vessel on a rope to finally reach the shore, as she foundered on the rocks.
Consequently, I have been a little wary of
going out on a boat with Chris. So far, our ferry journeys have all passed
without incident. It is at the back of my mind, however, that her family has
“got history” when it comes to incidents at sea.
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