MARINERS
TEAPOTS
Jane Kelly:
Penicuik Pottery at Valleyfield House
off 17 High
Street Penicuik EH26 8HS
Hand-thrown
Mariners teapots.
Made to stay
steady when everything else moves around them.
I’m a descendant of many seafarers. One, Edward
Herbert, was with Admiral Rodney at Martinique in
1782. Another, Richard Monk, served below decks in the Navy of the
1840s. Another, Robert Hamilton, went to sea from Port Glasgow in
1850. Another, Hugo Friedlander, sailed to Java
with the flying Dutchman in 1856. Another, Sligo
sea captain John Bruen, was swept away when his collier foundered on icy rocks
at the Mull of Galloway in 1888. Some of my Banff-based relatives
started the Adam Brothers shipping fleet out of Aberdeen and built barges on the Tyne
and Thames. Great
grandmother Annie Hope Blake was born at sea, lost her young father to the North Sea, and then lost both her husbands in the wild seas off New Zealand. Grandfather Martin Bruen trained as a
ship’s engineer with Dennys on the Clyde.
My father Winston Monk wrote a history of Britain in the Western
Mediterranean. And
Valleyfield House here in Penicuik, where I make Mariners teapots, was built by
the Navy in 1812 to oversee the Admiralty Transportation Board’s inland depot
for 5,000 Napoleonic sailors. Becoming the home of the Cowan papermaking
family with their seashell trademark for nearly a century and a half, it’s been
used by potters now for the last 30 years. And memorably used for a while too
by Iain Oughtred and his friends,
who built their famous Ness Yawl Jeanie
Henderson here in the house one winter and launched it through a window.
-Jane Kelly, potter
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The Tragedy of the "Galgorm Castle" 1888
Come all you sympathisers and
listen to my song,
On the melancholy subject I won't
detain you long.
It's concerning the calamity that
befell that gallant ship,
The
ill-fated 'Galgorm' on her last and final trip.
The crew when last she started,
was comprised of eight all told,
Undaunted and courageous men,
experienced, brave and bold,
The Captain was John Bruen who knew his duties well,
And whose
navigating qualities no other could excel,
The mate was Jamsie
Tracey and no better could be found,
His
experience as a seaman both practical and sound.
And John Murphy at the engine -
he was in his proper place,
A temperate and steady man who
never knew disgrace,
Edward Towey
was a fireman, a genial, worthy soul,
Both he and Peter Foley had the
fires to control,
Two worthier companions you could
not in Sligo find,
And deeply they're lamented by
the friends they left behind.
Michael Gillen was another one of
that ill-fated crew,
And 'er
embarking at the Quay, he bid his friends adieu,
All these have met a watery grave, it grieves me much to state,
There are but
two survivors left, their story to relate.
The 'Galgorm'
was a steamer built in 1879,
In the thriving town of Belfast,
north of the bloody Boyne,
She never met an accident since
first she worked a screw,
Until this
sad fatality by which she lost her crew.
On the 12th of March she started
with a load of English coals,
(Not thinking that so very soon
she'd perish on the shoals)
She proceeded on her voyage that
night and the next day,
But perished
in a heavy fog near Dromore in Luce Bay.
A terrific snow storm was raging
at the time,
Which the captain thought to
weather with energy sublime,
But alas such hope soon vanishes
as the crew were washed away,
And all of them, excepting two
have perished in the sea.
The Captain leaves a loving wife
and family of ten,
As a husband and a father he was
foremost among men.
Poor Tracey leaves a widow and
little children eight,
And Murphy's care was five in
all, who now lament his fate.
Edward Towey
leaves a widow and a family of five,
To mourn and
tender for he loved them when alive.
And oft will Mrs. Foley in the
stillness of the night,
Think of her awful vision and her
little child's insight.
Now to conclude and finish, I
have little more to say,
But that their souls may obtain
peace, let every Christian pray,
And I hope a generous public,
assisted by the press,
Will start a
widow and orphans fund to relieve their sad distress.
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Richard Monk enters the Navy aged 15 in
1844
"When I got to London Town I kept asking for
the Queen's Head, Tower Hill, for I had heard that it was a sort of recruiting
place for the Navy. Here I met a quartermaster, a big burly fellow, and asked
him how I should go about getting into the Navy. He said that boys only got
about 12s 6d or 12s 9d a month, but added that as I was a big chap, I could
safely tell the captain that I was nineteen years old. Then he took me upstairs
to the captain. He was sitting at a round table, and on it I remember was some
blue paper, some red tape and a decanter of rum. The old man was a link to the
very distant past and he had a terrible gruff voice.
"What do you want?" he
growled, and I said, "To go in a man-o'-war sir." "Some young,
runaway apprentice or other," he snapped out, and I owned up that he was
right. Well, I passed the doctor, who had a room downstairs, and the captain
ordered the quartermaster to take me to the receiving ship, Perseus,
lying in the Thames off the Tower. When I got to the hotel I only had 2d. I spent that on
something to eat, thus joining the Navy absolutely penniless. I didn't like the
look of things aboard the Perseus at all, and as for
the hammocks, I couldn't get into them until a fellow showed me how. The
rations were none too good. We got 1lb of biscuits and a pint of cocoa for
breakfast; a pint of soup, 1lb of meat, a few vegetables and 1/2 pint of grog
for dinner, with a pannikin of tea, and some grog and
what biscuits we had saved from breakfast for tea. Then we went to Sheerness to
the hulk Minataur to wait until the Vanguard had
fitted out of Plymouth."
An Early Steam Squadron
"All the vessels of the line
were sailers in those days and the real wooden walls
of old England right enough. I
boarded the Vanguard at Plymouth in 1844, and the
next year we cruised in the Bay of Biscay. There were eight
steamships when we started, seven paddle boats and one screw. I think it was
the first steam squadron in the Navy. Anyhow it was an experiment. The names of
the paddle boats were the Terrible, Retribution, Siden,
Odean, Bulldog, Gladiator and Polyphemus,
and there was the Battler, a barque rigged screw driven ship. After an 8 week
cruise the Battler was the only one of the lot with us, the others having
developed engine troubles and put into the nearest ports.
"For the most of my time I
served in the Mediterranean. They were rough
days. Nearly every week, men were flogged and on one occasion
that I know of a man was hung from the yardarm. Part of the outfit of
our ship would make sailors laugh nowadays. All round the orlop
deck below the water line were hung shot plugs. These were made of wood, and
when the boat went into action the carpenters had to walk round and round, so
that if a shot came through they could grab a plug, cover it with oakum and
grease, and drive it into the hole with a maul.
A Whaling Cruise
"Early in 1849 I was paid off
and in the same year I shipped aboard the whaler Norwhal
for a cruise in the south seas. She was a wooden
barque of about 400 tons and was commanded by Captain Baker. We carried six
guns for our protection. Early in 1850 we arrived in the Bay of Islands. There must have
been 18 or 20 whalers in at the time. I remember going aboard the American
ship, Swift, hailing from New Bedford, and the John
Franklin, which was a full ship. We had 760 barrels of oil. In those days Kororareka consisted of two hotels, two stores, and a few
shanties. The 65th Regiment was camped somewhere in the neighbourhood, if I
remember right, and there were thousands of Maoris…”
Link
to Richard Monk's page
look at Jane
Kelly’s other teapots and the latest
ones here
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