Hard down! Hard down!. Captain Jack Isbester
on the 22nd of the month. John was still at home when this devastating occurrence took place – he had registered the birth the previous day. Over the years four of their children were to die as infants, but five survived to live full lives. I am aware of no official explanation for the deaths, but my father speculated that the water in the Olligarth well had been contaminated by liver fluke from sheep and was the cause.
My father, Charles Allan Isbester, was in later life an early user of the drug warfarin to thin his blood and, because this was of interest to the medical profession, a ‘routine hospital post mortem’ was performed when he died, aged 74. This found the immediate cause of death and also found ‘hepatic cirrhosis [i.e. cirrhosis of the liver] a morbid condition contributing to death but not related to the immediate cause’.1 My father was a lifelong teetotaller. Could he also have been a liver fluke survivor?
By the beginning of April John Isbester was back in Liverpool, staying in lodgings at 25 Chester Street and looking for the chance of a command. A possible temporary command was taken by a man prepared to accept £3 a week in port and £6 a week at sea, the superintendent telling John Isbester that he knew that John would not agree to such a low rate. The superintendent was not necessarily right on that: John Isbester’s pay as chief mate of the Queen of Australia had been £7 10s a month2 and this would have been significantly better, but he probably knew what a competent master could expect to be paid. A big barque was expected shortly from Queenstown, a ship on which Captain Arthurson of the West Ridge had served as mate, and John Isbester could probably get the mate’s job there. It was frustrating to not have promotion but when he reflected on how other men fared, he was doing no worse than they were.3 Addressing his wife affectionately once or twice during the course of the letter as ‘Susie pusie’ he ended with news of one or two other Shetland men in Liverpool and with good wishes for all those at Olligarth.
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