Hard down! Hard down!. Captain Jack Isbester
forecastle, sharing the space with all the other sailors. After his death, in accordance with tradition, his possessions were sold to his shipmates. This was a way of ensuring that his meagre possessions were not wasted and of providing a little money for the next of kin, when and if known.
Calcutta was reached in mid-September, after about five months at sea. During the passage while Sealkote was in the Atlantic, John Isbester would have experienced Westerlies followed by the steady north east trade winds, then the doldrums and the south east trades, mostly pleasant sailing in latitudes far more benign than was offered by the waters around Shetland. Rounding the Cape of Good Hope, probably at a good distance from the land, the westerly winds of the Roaring Forties might have accelerated their passage before they turned northwards into the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal. The final weeks of the voyage would have occurred during the south west monsoon season, providing a fair wind but unpleasant rainy, sweaty conditions when tempers are likely to have been short. Arriving at Sandheads at the mouth of the Hoogly, Sealkote would have acquired a pilot and a tug and been towed up the fast-flowing river to Budge Budge or Calcutta. The dense mangrove swamps, the innumerable small boats transporting passengers or stacked high with sacks or bales of farm produce, the fishermen with their nets and the brown-skinned people in lungis and saris would provide fascinating sights for a young man who until that time had seen only the Faeroes, Scotland and northern England.
When berthed at No.5 Hastings Moorings, Calcutta, at 0715 hrs on Monday 17 September, shortly after Sealkote’s arrival in the port, Lewis Joseph, ordinary seaman, loosing sails, fell from the mizzen topsail yard onto the poop deck. He was immediately seen by a doctor who happened to be on board at the time and sent to Calcutta hospital where he died at 1015 hrs the same morning of a ruptured spleen. A fall in these circumstances would be unusual – the ship would be steady and the temperature not extreme – but the records show that Joseph had taken a cash advance of 5 shillings on the ship’s arrival in port the previous afternoon, in addition to incurring debts of £1 5s with a bumboat man for unspecified goods or services. In Calcutta in 1871, 5 shillings – half a week’s wages for an ordinary seaman – would have been a very much more substantial figure than it seems today. Whatever the reason, it is likely that his fall was caused by feeling unwell. When Joseph’s effects were sold, John Isbester paid 3 shillings for a pair of boots which Joseph had earlier in the voyage bought for 16 shillings from the captain’s slopchest.
Most of the crew deserted soon after the ship arrived in Calcutta, which probably suited both crew and owners well. The latter could use cheap local labour when needed for the two months during which Sealkote was in the port, and the former could have a few days ashore enjoying themselves after their five months at sea and then, when their money ran out, ship out to some new destination.
Sealkote remained in Calcutta until mid-November and I like to think that my grandfather wandered around the suburban Kidderpore covered market as I did 90 years later, enjoying the immaculate stalls selling beans and pulses in sacks carefully opened to display their attractive contents, bars of coarse local soap, brilliantly coloured saris and enticing, juicy mangoes, sweet and tasty bananas and delicious papayas. For five months John Isbester had been climbing the lofty masts of Sealkote but he may have been surprised at the skill and nonchalance with which Indian men shinned up palm trees to harvest the coconuts.
Calcutta at that period offered plenty of traditional attractions for sailors.
A great deal of moral latitude, not to say licence, was permitted in Calcutta at that time. Everything was cheap – rum, women and tobacco. The merchant sailor was allowed to do pretty much as he pleased in pursuing his peculiar ideas of personal enjoyment. He might get drunk in the Numbers, riot in the Checkers and then proceed to clean out the German Barracks without fear of serious interference or arrest on the part of the East India police, most of whom were recruited from the maritime contingent themselves.6
John Isbester seems to have been an unusually committed and well organised seaman. During nine years of service before the mast he never deserted, adopting a pattern of behaviour more like an established petty officer – a sailmaker or carpenter – than an ordinary or able seaman. Many of his shipmates deserted in Calcutta, but there and on subsequent voyages to inviting places such as Quebec, New York, New Orleans, Buenos Aires, San Francisco, Adelaide and Sydney he appears to have maintained a faultless record, always completing the voyage. This suggests that he was committed to getting on, to earning promotion. He also seems to have made it his purpose to visit all the great seaports of the 19th-century world – and I have to admit to more than a tinge of envy when I read an account of the ports that he visited.
Eight ABs – a typical mixture of Scots, Irish, German, Swedish, Canadian and Channel Islanders – were signed on in early November when the ship was ready to leave Calcutta. One of them, Augustus Jouan, a 30-year-old from Guernsey, had been released from hospital a day before he joined the vessel. After four days at sea and when still in the Bay of Bengal he ‘was taken sick with the cholera’, and ‘despite all possible means being used to save him’ he died a few hours later.7 The homeward voyage around the Cape of Good Hope, through the Atlantic and up through the Channel to Dundee took a bit more than four months, and John Isbester paid off, after a voyage lasting ten and a half months, with £16.17s.3d earned at a rate of £2 per month.
His next four voyages were all quite short ones, being round trips to Quebec, New York, New Orleans and again to Quebec in four different ships, all sailing from Liverpool. The first was the ship City of Manchester, 1,116 tons gross, where he signed on as ordinary seaman. The ship’s official log book8 reveals only that on 30 May seven seamen deserted in Quebec, where six replacements were later signed on. It must have been a relief that no-one died.
He then served as able seaman in the iron clipper ship Strathearn, 1,784 tons gross, a hard-driven ship credited with making a passage from New York to the United Kingdom in ten days. She carried three mates, a bosun, 26 ABs and four 0Ss, double the size of crew to which John Isbester would become accustomed. She also had an engine driver to look after a boiler and winch, provided to help with heavy hauling. Outward bound to New York, in mid-Atlantic, Thomas Evan AB fell overboard from the main shear pole, a position low in the main shrouds. The ship hove to and a boat manned by the chief officer and four sailors was launched, but searched for him without success. On the homeward passage from New York at 0300 am John Fillibank OS, taking in the starboard sidelight, ‘either overbalanced himself or was washed overboard’. He was presumably taking the light in to top up its oil; the sidelight was probably lost with him, but spares would have been carried.
There was no possibility of saving him, the ship going 12 knots and the morning very dark. The Chief Officer threw a lifebuoy and put the helm down but he was not seen and we very reluctantly had to give up hope of saving him.
Nine days later misfortune struck this unfortunate crew again. The official log book records:
At about 5.45am whilst the ship was running 15 knots before a NW gale shipped a sea on the poop and swept Mr Campbell Chief Officer overboard. Blowing very hard with very heavy sea at the time, it was quite impossible to do anything to save him.9
At the end of that passage John Isbester must have been relieved to set foot again in the familiar streets of Liverpool.
Next came the barque John Geddie, of Halifax, Nova Scotia, 651 tons gross – a small vessel with crew of 13 all told. John Isbester is recorded in the official log book10 as John Ibister, one of numerous familiar corruptions of the name. John Geddie seems to have been a happy ship under the command of George Wellen Smith. The log book records no failures-to-join, no desertions in New Orleans, and no penalties for offences committed, in contrast to her following voyage, a round trip from Liverpool to Halifax under a different master, where each of these misdemeanours were common. By this time, however, John Isbester was aboard the ship Advice, 1,261 tons gross, on the