I started these family tales partly because I was taken by how much travelling had happened. The further my detective work took me the more travel and surprises it threw up. Families with solid Yorkshire roots were (whisper it) really from Lancashire and Ireland. In fact that branch almost certainly includes Welsh and even Southern English roots as well. I am aware that there are family connections all over the world that didn’t fit in closely enough with the tale that I was telling.
This section on travelling arose because Ruth was taking a ferry through the Baltic and it made me think about Fred Scott’s journey to Russia before the first World War. Inevitably revisiting that started me on another trail to get a bit more detail, so here is what I came across.
Fred Scot’s job in the Barrow shipyard centred around carrying buckets of hot rivets up to holes drilled in the steel plating and pushing a rivet through each hole, held in tongs, while the riveter flattened it on the other side. The finished rivet then shrank and pulled the two plates tightly together, as long as it had been held firm enough while being hit. I have a memory of a very small man, with a late life, little pot belly, a very bald head and a bright smile, that is hard to tie in with that job description.
Not that long after he started in the shipyard he did that job over and over on the ship shown above. It was launched in 1906 and then went for sea trials. Those trials and experience in the Russo-Japanese war meant the post launch changes were proposed and these were done by Vickers’ workers in Kronstadt, Russia. From my brother’s memory of one of Fred’s stories, which seems right to me, we think he travelled to and from Russia by train and ferry, which would have been some journey in itself. From what I’ve read Russian railways were well behind the rest of Europe at that time. Similarly I think that a ferry would have been involved to get to Kotlin Island, though it is now fully connected to St Petersburg by Dams. In Kronstadt, on Kotlin, he settled down to holding up rivets in the extra plate being added. I am also unsure how he got back once the job was done, but I do remember tales about the ‘Russkies’, playing football and the food.
John Bowness
The tales are not absolutely clear. The census records show him as an apprentice to his future wife Barbara’s brother Samuel, but Vi’s tales indicate that he was a qualified seaman and that is backed up by the fact that she donated his cedar ships chest, his bunk roll and his seaman’s manual to the local sea cadets because no-on was interested in them. She also said that he died as a result of TB, contracted while on a ship that was wrecked. The keepsakes we do have indicate that he went to Africa or India at some point, but I have been unable to find harder evidence of which ship or anything else. The picture below is of a vessel sailing out of Maryport at the time. There were others, with possible shipwrecks, but none fully convincing.
Thomas William Bowness, Elizabeth Varty and America.
Thomas left a short note in a diary setting out his journey to America in 1882. He left Liverpool on September 12th and arrived in Baltimore on the 29th. I have had no luck provably tracing the journey. The UK didn’t care much about people going, so didn’t keep records. The USA kept records of immigrants, but I have had no luck finding either Thomas or Elizabeth. What I have found is that there was a ship sailed from Liverpool on the right date, but going to New York, and thus Ellis Island, and arriving on the 12th. Thomas is not listed as a passenger. Nor could I find him arriving in Baltimore.
There seems to be a sense of a plan in Thomas’s journey, arriving in Texas and working on a ranch, that implies some fore-knowledge of what he was doing. I suspect that he knew people, who knew his father and thus about sailing and overseas. The leads me to suspect that he may even have made the journey as crew, further doing the same on another ship to Baltimore. Let’s not forget that Thomas had to travel to Texas after reaching Baltimore, then up to Pennsylvania later. It is quite likely that he reversed his journey in 1889 to collect Elizabeth and they would both have made the journey across again. They and their two children would then have returned to Cumberland for good round about 1895. I also have a memory of a tale of him returning to America to sell a property later as well. What a set of gadabouts eh?
Herbert Joseph Scott
Fred Scott’s brother Herbert seems to have arrived in the USA in 1909 aboard the SS Arabic, built in Belfast, docking in New York. As far as I can tell he lived on both east and west coasts at various times, became a Presbyterian minister at some point and then ended up in Canada, where both he and his wife are buried in Niagara township. As I have said elsewhere, I remember him visiting us, so both he and Sarah must have travelled back and forth a bit. Sarah must also have travelled across to the USA from Bolton to marry him in 1910. It still makes me smile that, when my dad was still alive, I considered taking him to Canada to see an ex neighbour and to visit Bert’s grave. The smile is because I managed to find pictures of both Bert’s and Sarah’s graves on-line. Weird.
William Herbert Bowness and George E Bowness
William Herbert was the first born of Thomas and Elizabeth Bowness in America and Annie Barbara followed. When they all came back to Cumberland, George E was born in 1900, so was considerably younger.
In 1912 William emigrated to Australia, arriving in Sydney on the Otranto. He lived there for the rest of his life and I think he died in 1945. He came back for a while with the Australian forces during the first world war and witnessed his sister’s wedding to Idris Morgan.
George would have been 12 when William left, but would have seen him when he returned and no doubt had his imagination captured by his stories. In 1926 he decided to follow his big brother and arrived in Sydney on the RMS Ormonde. Interestingly his job was described as Motorist. I don’t know exactly when or how he came back back, but he married Jane Stockdale in 1933.
Violet Morgan/Kavanagh
So not only was aunty Vi annoyed with her treatment as nurse, she had an uncle who could tell her tales of Australia and another uncle who still lived there, though he died before she left the UK. She left on 30/9/1948 and arrived on roughly 10/11/1948 on the Ranchi. Her last address in the UK was given as Hefferston Grange, Weaverston, Cheshire, which was a grand hall converted into a hospital. By 1948, her little sister had qualified as a nurse and was training as a midwife, both not possible for Vi because she hadn’t gone to Grammar School. Here is the first part of her letters home from the journey. She signs herself ‘Girlie’ Note also the Cumbrian Mam.
I’m not sure exactly sure when or how Vi returned to the UK, but by then she was classed as a proper nurse, was driving a car and later ended a Sister and then up teaching nurses. Her travels across the world had served a purpose.
I am so impressed by the toughness involved in all these travels. I promise never to moan about long journeys again.