The South African Commercial Advertiser for 31 August 1842 and for 3, 7 and 10 September 1842 carried reports of the wreck of the convict ship Waterloo. If anyone has found reference to an ancestor being transported in 1842, but has found no reference to them in Australia, they may be on this list. You can use CTRL F to search for a particular name. Posts 2 and 3 contain some interesting editorials even if you have no ancestors involved.
List of the Prisoners lost by the Wreck of the Waterloo, August 28th 1842:
James THELWALL
James SKERRATT
Abraham MILLS
John TAYLOR
James JACKSON
Edmund HARDMAN
John GODDARD
Richard HOWARD
John NORTH
Richard MARSH
John STONE
Edward NEWTON
Daniel RIGDEN
Henry MEPSTED
George THORN
Richard ADCOCK
Henry PROCTOR
Thomas CLARK
James WILLIAMS
Edward ALEXANDER
Sydney ALDRIDGE
Abraham SCATCHARD
William WOODWARD
Frederick WIGHTWICK
John ATTWOOD
William SAINT
James DAVIS
George CUNNINGHAM
George LLOYD
Robert WELLS
James BARNES
William THISELTON
William NASH
Richard HILL
William STAMPS
William LOW
George GARNER
George BRADBURY
Alexander JOHNSON
Thomas JOHNSON
Charles GREEN
Henry DAWES
Richard EDMONDS
John JONES
Robert ESSON
James ELLIOTT
Robert FAIRFAX
Richard HEWITT
Richard TAYLOR
Joseph FLINT
William JONES
Richard HOLYLAND
John SHORT
George HARRIS
John BROWN
John BULMORE
Richard PARKER
Jennis JACKS
William HAMLET
William MOORE
___ BROOKES
James ARMITAGE
Charles BLYTH
Isaac HANCOCK
Points HOWELL
Daniel STEWART
Henry HICKS
George BAALAM
John ROBINSON
Edward BIRCH
James BAMBER
James WILKES
James CARSON
Charles WORKMAN
Thomas PARSONS
Benjamin CURRAY
Thomas COWLEY
John CRAIG
Peter WINSTANLEY
William GOULDING
Henry MARRIOTT
John PEACOCK
Felix CURRAY
George HETHERINGTON
George WYLES
Edward GREGORY
Thomas WILLSON
John JONES
Francis BARNES
Angus McKINNON
John LEDINGHAM
Thomas SMEDLY
John REYNOLDS
John HAWKINS
James BIRCH
John ELLIS
James DUNCAN
Joseph BARKER
Thomas PEARMAN
Bertrand EDMONDS
Henry BARNSLEY
James CLARK
Thomas HILL
John WILDING
James GREENHAM
Hugh CAMPBELL
James KNOTT
Robert NEWTON
James JOBLIN
John THOMPSON
John BROOMFIELD
Thomas VOSE
Robert PARKINSON
John SMALLY
George GILES
Thomas POWNALL
Henry MORGAN
William WRIGHT
John LOVATT
William BIGGS
Thomas BOSWELL
Thomas KIRWIN
Daniel MURPHY
John NOWLAN
William GYOURY
Nathaniel JENKINS
Robert WALTHAM
James HEWITT
James KING
George WILLIAMS
John BROOKES
Frederick PURSER
William WHITE
John ROSSER
William ROSSER
James ROSSER
Thomas HEWITT
Elijah MARTIN
Emanuel OSBORN
Thomas BARLOW
George JONES
Jonathan PACKER
Richard CRANE
The above is a correct Return of Prisoners drowned at the Wreck of the Convict Ship Waterloo.
(Signed) Henry KELSALL MD, Surgeon RN.
Names of Men of the Guard and the Soldier’s Wife who were saved on the 28th August from the wreck of the Waterloo.
Lieut. HEXT, 4th “The King’s Own” Regt, commanding the Guard.
99th Regt:
Ensign C. LEIGH
Corporal CULLUM
Corporal ARMSTRONG
Private BAWN
Private BROADHEAD
Private BROADBENT
Private BAUNAN
Private BERNE
Private MONAGHAN
Private PEARCE
Private RUTHERFOORD
Private TAYLOR
Private WARD
Private YARDLEY
Private MOORE
Drummer ARMSTRONG
Mrs. MULVANEY.
Names of those who were lost on the 28th August:
Serjeant SMITH, Mrs. SMITH and three children.
Corporal MULVANEY and one child.
Corporal MADDEN
Private NESTOR, Mrs. NESTOR and one child.
Private GREENLESS, Mrs. GREENLESS and three children.
Private AHERN
Private MUIR
Private ASKEY
Private BARNACLE
Private BYRNE
Private BEAUMONT
Private REYNOLDS
Private VINCENT
Private WARBURTON
Private WHITMORE
Also Mrs. ARMSTRONG and five children.
All the lost belonging to the 99th Regt.
Total Saved: 1 Lieutenant, 1 Ensign, 2 Corporals, 1 Drummer, 12 Privates and 1 Woman.
Total Lost: 1 Serjeant, 2 Corporals, 12 Privates, 4 Women and 13 Children.
Capt. AGER, the Master of the Waterloo, was saved; also Mr. JACKSON, Chief Mate; Mr. GUNNER, 2nd do; Mr. GILL, 3rd do; and fifteen of the crew.
The boatswain, Mr. CHIVERTON, was lost; also the sailmaker, the carpenter and 11 of the crew.
Charles Stanisforth HEXT, Lt.
4th “The King’s Own” Regt.
List of the Convicts received in Cape Town Prison from the wreck of the Waterloo, 2nd September 1842.
1. Stephen PARKER
2. Joseph HERNSHAW
3. David JONES
4. John JONES
5. William JOHNSON
6. William DODSWELL
7. John MARTIN
8. Robert STEWART
9. William WILLIAMS
10. James BROWN
11. William HENRY
12. Leslie CLARK
13. Henry HUNT
14. Richard BAKER
15. Edward MOORE
16. Joseph SLAWSON
17. Edward CAPSTACK
18. William SMITH
19. Joseph DARBISHIRE
20. Charles CARTWRIGHT
21. William CARTER
22. William SIMPSON
23. Frederick HUDSON
24. Frederick CHESHIRE
25. William HESKETH
26. Charles DAVIS
27. James HARVEY
28. Thomas William WEETMAN
29. William BREKHAM
30. John HARRIS
31. Edward ALEXANDER
32. William JONES
33. Thomas ASHWORTH
34. Thomas SQUIRES
35. Iven HARDWICKE
36. William GARDNER
37. John WINTERBURN
38. William CLARKE
39. William SINDEN
40. William KINGGATE
41. Thomas RODGERS
42. James MARFILE
43. John DAVIS
44. John COLLENS
45. Joseph DARWEN
46. William WATKINS
47. Thomas TAYLOR
48. John GARNER
49. John CLARKE
50. Thomas STANDING
51. James WATKISON
52. John SMITH
53. John BEAUMONT
54. Henry SUTTON
55. James GREEN
56. John JOHNSTONE
57. John WILLIAMS
58. William FRENCH
59. Daniel BURNS
60. William MOOBAY
61. Thomas HILL
62. Thomas MILES
63. Robert NIXON
64. John WILLIAMS
65. John CLIFFORD
66. Alexander SMITH
67. John GILBERT
68. William ROBERTSHAW
69. Mathew COWLEY
70. William TIPPIN
71. John ROBERTS
72. John THOMAS
73. William COLLINS
74. James WILKES
75. John ASTBURY
76. Wm. RICHARDS
Results 1 to 10 of 71
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05-01-2009, 4:20 PM #1
Wreck of the Convict Ship Waterloo 1842
Sue Mackay
Insanity is hereditary - you get it from your kids
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05-01-2009, 4:21 PM #2
Editorial 31 August 1842
Cape Town, August 31 1842
On the forenoon of Sunday last two large vessels, the Abercrombie Robinson and the Waterloo went on shore on the South Eastern beach at the bottom of Table Bay.
Both vessels were engaged as Transports by the British Government. The Abercrombie Robinson had on board, besides her crew and several passengers, 501 soldiers with their officers. She was a large Ship of nearly 1500 tons burden. After grounding near the shore she stood upright, and no lives have been lost. She will probably, or rather certainly, be a total wreck.
The Waterloo, a Ship of 414 tons, bound to Van Diemen’s Land, had on board, besides her crew, two hundred and nineteen male convicts, Dr. HELSELL in charge, Lt. HEXT, Ensign LEIGH, thirty men of HM 99th Regiment, five women and thirteen children. She took the ground between eleven and twelve o’clock in the forenoon and in fifteen or twenty minutes became a mass of rubbish, And now ensued a most piteous massacre. In about two hours and a half, amidst the crumbling heaps of their perfidious prison – of men, women and children, one hundred and ninety four were crushed, disabled and drowned.
There was no preparation for saving life made on board or on shore. No life buoys, no coils of ropes lashed to casks, nor any apparatus for establishing a communication with the shore from the Ship.
On the shore there was no Life Boat, no apparatus for throwing ropes over stranded vessels, nor any thing, in short, to show that the Government or people here had ever before heard of such a thing as a shipwreck. We stood amongst thousands on the beach within a hundred and fifty yards of the dissolving fabric, looking on the agonised faces of our fellow creatures, as they sunk in dozens, battered and bruised and suffocated – useless as children, or idiots, or wild Caffers. As corpse after corpse floated to our feet, and was raised from the brine, there seemed a curse in every dead man’s eye on the improvidence, the imbecility, the brutish indifference to human suffering and human life, to which, combined with fiendish avarice, so many miserable souls had been sacrificed.
For this ship, it appears, was built twenty seven years ago at Bristol, of light materials for the timber trade. No longer fit to carry logs, she is patched up like other whited sepulchres, stuffed with a living cargo by a contractor, and dispatched to the ends of the earth – a voyage of more than twenty thousand miles.
No doubt a “survey of professional men” will “find” that there was no fault anywhere; that the Waterloo was a sound ship, thoroughly repaired, and perfectly seaworthy; that she had on board all the equipments requisite for such a voyage and such a consignment; that the officers of the ship did all that human strength, directed by skill and animated by humanity, could do; and that the accident must be ascribed entirely to a hurricane, a mountainous sea, and a remarkably hard beach.
Now as to the hurricane and the mountainous sea, it is enough to observe that there were twenty other vessels at anchor in the Bay, besides the Waterloo and the Abercrombie Robinson, and none of them parted from their anchors, or dragged them to any perceptible extent. The wind was blowing a gale, but by no means a violent one, and it was partly off shore. The sea was not running unusually high. Without ropes in their hands or any precaution, men walked into the water up to their shoulders to drag out the bodies of the dead and dying, without the slightest risk. This could not have been done had the surf been such as a gale causes on an open beach. These are facts to which thousands can bear witness.
With respect to the bottom or ground where the ship struck, some say it is rock, others that it is sand, like the rest of the beach. As soon as the weather is fine it will be examined, and the most convenient spaces marked for this method of disembarking Her Majesty’s troops or convicts.
For some years back such “accidents” have been ascribed to the insufficiency of Lighthouses at the entrance of the Bay. That fault has just been fully remedied. The old Lighthouse is now properly attended, and the new one is so well placed, and so brilliant, that no man dare pretend to miss it, or to mistake it for anything else. These and some further improvements in this department, still in progress, were forced on the Government by the remonstrances of the Public, and particularly of the mercantile body.
When the Helen was lost at the entrance of the Bay, four or five months ago, the Commercial Committee very properly inquired into the cause, and found on the testimony of numerous witnesses that the Lights on that particular night were defective, and had thus misled the master of the vessel. This they represented to Government, and a remedy was instantly found.
We recommend the same course in the present case. The committee cannot compel witnesses to attend or give evidence, but they can invite them; and if interested parties disregard such invitations, that fact will not be without meaning.
These two wrecks will be much talked of at home. We think we can insure their being mentioned in Parliament. Let us show that we here are neither indifferent to human life nor to the character of our bay, which the villainy and the incapacity of strangers have too often brought into undeserved disrepute.
In the midst of this unhesitating condemnation on some points, and charges of guilt on others, we have to mention that two unofficial spectators, Mr. MOLTENE and Mr. STILL, procured the assistance of a common boat belonging to a Malay, which reached the Waterloo after she was falling to pieces, and brought off two men, and on a second trip fastened a rope to the wreck. After this a larger boat, belonging to Messrs. SINCLAIR was brought from the Abercrombie Robinson, and moving backwards and forwards along the rope, saved a good many lives. This shows what might have been done by a Life Boat used in time.
We purposely avoid going further into details at present, satisfied with thus openly charging all the parties concerned, before the world, with the offence of culpable negligence, or criminal intention. The world, let them be well assured, expects an answer, and will treat them according to the case they may make out in defence.
It is not strange, by the way, that we should hear such lamentations from what is called the Shipping Interest, as if no employment could be had for their new-built, fine-moulded, copper-fastened A.I. Vessels, while for the most important of all services, the transport namely of troops, and of persons under Judicial Sentences, such vessels as the Waterloo find ready acceptance in the twenty seventh year of their fragility and rottenness? We shall endeavour to force our way through this moral confusion, convinced that either the Shipping Interest are a pack of liars or the Contractors a pack of knaves. The official gentry who grant the contracts and their cousins the Surveyors will naturally fall into their proper places in the course of the Inquiry.Sue Mackay
Insanity is hereditary - you get it from your kids
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05-01-2009, 4:23 PM #3
Editorial 3 September 1842
Cape Town, September 3 1842
In speaking of the wreck of the Waterloo transport in Wednesday’s paper it was mentioned that she was built for the timber trade. This, we have been told, is not ascertained, and is probably incorrect. We have nothing else to correct in the statement now before the public.
The Committee of the Commercial body have instituted an Inquiry into the circumstances attending this horrible event, as well as to the loss of the Abercrombie Robinson, on the same occasion. The attention of Government, and of the Admiral, has also been fixed on these two accidents, the public and the parties concerned may therefore expect that all the facts will be properly ascertained and made known.
The loss of life by the ruin of the Waterloo is, we learn, as follows:
Convicts 143
Soldiers 15
Sailors 14
Women 4
Children 14
So great a loss of life has not happened in Table Bay since the year 1799. On the 5th November of that year His Majesty’s Ship Sceptre, Captain EDWARDS, was driven on shore and, like the Waterloo, immediately went to pieces, being an accursed old hulk on her way home to be broken up. A few hours after she struck not a vestige of her was to be seen, but the fragments of the wreck scattered on the strand, in myriads of pieces, not a single plank remaining whole, nor two attached together, Captain EDWARDS, his son, ten other officers, and near 300 seamen and marines perished.
On the same day several other vessels went on shore, among the rest a Danish man-of-war 6½ guns. But their crew were all saved, as in the case of the Abercrombie Robinson on the present occasion.
Taking advantage of the excitement caused by this melancholy event, funds have been raised, and measures are taken for constructing a Life Boat, and for having a Rocket Apparatus always in readiness in this Bay, for rendering assistance to vessels in distress, or for saving life.
But something more is required. A Coroner’s Court must be established, through which a competent Magistrate, with a Jury, may at once ascertain the manner in which any man came by his death, whose dead body has been washed ashore from a wreck. The propriety of adding such a Court to our Judicial Establishment has been suggested to Government, and we feel confident that the suggestion will be attended to without unnecessary delay.
In the absence of such a court we feel constrained, by a regard to truth and plain dealing, to send home along with the account of these two shipwrecks, our Protest on behalf of Table Bay. The weather, the water and the bottom are blameless.
The Abercrombie Robinson came into the Bay on the evening of the 25th, when it was dark, proceeded too far up the Bay, and came to anchor in a position unsafe for her should it come on to blow. The wind did blow a gale with squalls, and she wisely went on shore with an anchor at her bows, thereby saving some seven hundred souls, most of whom must have perished had she foundered where she rode at anchor. Had she been in a proper position she would have rode out the weather like the other vessels.
Of the Waterloo it is impossible to speak with moderation. Deadly blame rests somewhere, and justice will, we have no doubt, find out the parties that deserve it.
And now it would be proper to ask a few questions respecting the precautions taken on board of all transports into which involuntary passengers, such as soldiers and convicts, are thrust by Government.
1. Is it a rule to take the lowest tender, without respect to the Class of the vessel?
2. Or does Government, as it ought, limit tenders to the first class vessels?
3. Who are the surveyors? How are they paid? Do they receive money in any shape, and how much from the owners of the ships they survey for this service?
4. Is it true that they are “hard-worked men, with small salaries and large families” and that a friendly help of fifteen or twenty guineas is sometimes added to the regular charge by the benevolent ship owner?
5. When four, five or seven hundred souls are put on board a transport, is care taken to have at the same time the means of making signals in the dark and in foggy weather, in case of danger; or is all left to the chance of somebody seeing the flash of small arms, when the report of the same cannot be heard?
6. Is extra apparatus carefully placed on board for saving life in case of wreck, such as Life Buoys, instruments for throwing lines, and the other well-known means of communicating with a lee shore?
These are some of the questions that will be put, and that must be answered at home by the authorities, whoever they may be, to whose departments this branch of the service belongs. We have not leisure to pursue the subject farther today. Every reader can do it for himself.Sue Mackay
Insanity is hereditary - you get it from your kids
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05-01-2009, 7:07 PM #4Jan1954Guest
Well! I have found this fascinating - and none of my Ag Labs were involved!
Thank you for posting this, Sue.
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07-01-2009, 10:32 AM #5
For those who are interested there is a painting of the wreck of the Waterloo in the Tasmania State Library.
It seems that the survivors of the wreck who were transferred to Cape Town prison did eventually complete their journey to Van Diemen's Land on board 'Cape Packet'
(Source: Bateson, Charles, The Convict Ships 1787-1868, Brown, Son & Ferguson Ltd 1985, ISBN 0 85174 195 9)Sue Mackay
Insanity is hereditary - you get it from your kids
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05-11-2009, 6:42 PM #6rock islandGuest
My 2 x gt grandfather's brother was James GREENHAM. On 3rd January 1842 at Hertford Quarter Sessions, when he was 17, he was convicted of larceny and sentenced to 7 years transportation.
He embarked on the Waterloo on 30th May 1842. I found his name on the list of convicts on the ship together with the annotation 'drowned'. I googled Waterloo and found this forum. Many thanks for posting this information Sue - it provides a wonderful insight to those harsh times.
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05-11-2009, 7:01 PM #7
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05-11-2009, 8:24 PM #8spisonGuest
Sue
Excellent list! The attached newspaper clippings are from the National Library of Australia's newsapaper database. Some are reproductions of ones you must have used from SA. The rest are from Australia. I don't think there's a list among them. (There are a couple of ring-ins in the search.)
https://newspapers.nla.gov.au/ndp/del...e=full&sortBy=
JaneLast edited by spison; 05-11-2009 at 8:32 PM. Reason: spelling added a bit
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05-11-2009, 8:53 PM #9R.RoyalGuest
God, thats so awful & tragic. All those poor people dying like that .
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05-11-2009, 9:22 PM #10spisonGuest
Hi R. Royal,
Yes it was but the government wasn't learning as 9 years earlier in 1833, the 'Hibernia' caught fire. If you want to read truly horrendous accounts go to the NLA link and search for 'Hibernia' wreck and read about what happened. Basically when fire broke out there were only enough boats to rescue about 80 of those on board - most of whom were crew - 150+ people were left on board the burning ship in the middle of the ocean.
Ghastly
Jane
Helping you trace your British Family History & British Genealogy.
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