Diary Doldrums

A few months ago, I was sent a copy of a shipboard diary purportedly written by a collateral ancestor, Robert Campbell McDonald Dow, M.D. (brother to my 3xgr-grandfather, Dr. John Dow) on a voyage to Australia in the 1860s. The person who gave it to me asked if I could make out the name of the ship. So, never one to do things by halves, rather than just figure that out, I set about to transcribe the whole diary (it was only 24 pages, two diary pages to an A4 copy). And I’m so glad that I did.

The diary is filled with description and reflection; depicting the experience and thoughts of someone going to sea possibly for the first time:

“Crew all busy with rigging, sailmaker, altering & making sails, cocks crowing, hens cackling, pigs grunting & sheep bleating, quite a lively scene. Sunday – after divine service, watch the flying fish, shimmering in the sun beams & dancing on the waves, some of them flew on board much to our delight.”

“…the sea is a lonely place, and the ship is almost as much separated from the land and its people by the blue waters, as the moon is parted from the earth by the blue ether…”

“…for at sea, the darkness and the ocean seem to be one thing – the desire as it were of great Nature herself, and not a veil on her head, nor a hue on her face.”

There are also references to interesting or significant shipboard events:

“…notice evident signs of an execution steward cook __ mysteriously flitting about with instruments of torture, and on enquiry I find that Porkey No 1 is to be executed at 4 pm.”

What a delightful turn of phrase the writer has and I’m inspired by the thought of such talent in our family tree. However, from the beginning I had doubts that Robert was the author.

First, I needed to establish the date the diary was written. The original diarist has not noted the year anywhere. There is an annotation in different pen and hand in the top margin of the first page: “Voyage to Australia c1860 R C Dow MD”. Only a portion of the diary entries are dated and then only a month and date (i.e. Sept 10) without a day being named. However, several times the diarist mentions ‘divine service’ which most likely occurred on a Sunday. Checking a website of old calendars to find years when the date and month noted were Sundays, I determine that the voyage was probably in 1868 and 1869.

Googling the name of the ship Thyatira, I find it was built in 1867 and destroyed in 1896. There are surprisingly few references to the ship and it is not included in the usual ship list websites. It was a wooden clipper ship of 962 tons, built for the Aberdeen White Star Line.

The ‘Thyatira’ in an unidentified port. 
Image courtesy of State Library of South Australia [PRG 1373/19/18]

Turning to digitized newspapers via Findmypast.com and Trove, I find notices and reports of the Thyatira’s departure from London, arrival in Melbourne, sale of its cargo, re-loading and departure from Melbourne in 1868, and arrival back in London in 1869. The details correspond with the diary entries. One such notice has a useful piece of information “No passengers”. It seems Thyatira was a cargo ship (that perhaps carried the occasional passenger). But this explains why I haven’t been able to find a passenger list for the voyage.

• At this point, I conclude that the diary cannot have been written by Robert for the following reasons:
• The ship was built and made its maiden voyage in 1867.
• The diary was most likely written on the Thyatira’s round trip voyage London to Melbourne in 1868-69
• Robert was already in Australia in 1857 establishing his medical practice in Sandhurst, Victoria.
• Robert married Ellen Beardsell in St Kilda (Melbourne), Victoria in 1858.
• Robert died in St Kilda in 1861 (making it very difficult for him to have been sailing in 1868).

The end? Not so fast. Because, of course, I still really want to know who did write the diary. And are they someone else on our family tree?

I turn to the Crew List Index Project to see if any official records have survived that might hold a clue. CLIP points to the Maritime History Archive, which does hold the official log and crew agreement, copies of which can be provided upon request (which I have duly made). While I await the outcomes of that, I need to break the news to my third cousin twice removed (on the other side of the world) that the diary he sent me is not what he believes it to be.

Dropping anchor on this story for now.