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James & Agnes | Official Number
51073 |
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James & Agnes | Official Number
51073 |
The James & Agnes was the largest two-masted schooner built at the Ashburner shipyard in Barrow, and she was to spend her early years almost entirely in foreign trade. She could carry about 220 tons of cargo, and she was strongly built to a high classification, 12 years A1. She was launched in October 1864 and her first master and managing owner was Capt. James Brockbank of Ulverston.
Until about 1880 the James & Agnes was commanded by certificated
masters, including Capt. Brockbank, Capt. John Latham who was later drowned
with the Mary Bell, and Capt. Evans,
who later commanded the William Ashburner.
These masters were able to take her outside the limits of home waters,
and the James & Agnes existed almost entirely in foreign trade
in these years. However, she never crossed the Atlantic, and most of her
trade was in the Mediteranean or to Spanish and Portugese ports. The following
report is an account of one of her misadventures:
The Ulverston Mirror, 2nd February 1867;
" LOSS OF AN ULVERSTON
SAILOR - Intelligence has been received of the arrival of the schooner
James
& Agnes, Captain Brockbank, at Majorca, after a very rough passage.
She encountered very heavy weather and we are sorry to have to record the
loss of one of the seamen, named Henry Rawcliffe, who was washed overboard
during one of the many gales she encountered after leaving Liverpool. Henry
Rawcliffe was a native of Ulverston, and eldest son of Capt. W. Rawcliffe,
late of the Richard Roper.
In 1873 the James and Agnes, Capt.Latham, was the last vessel to see the Lord Muncaster before that schooner was lost with her whole crew.
Thomas Ashburner & Co. managed the James & Agnes from about 1869 until 1909, when the remaining nine vessels of the Ashburner fleet were disposed of at a series of auctions in Connah's Quay. She was sold to Capt. James Horan of Arklow, Ireland. She was only to survive for less than a year, for she went missing in October 1910, taking with her Capt. Horan and four other Arklow men. The schooner had loaded 220.8 tons of anthracite, nearly a full cargo, at Swansea, and was bound for Cowes, Isle of Wight. She left Swansea on the morning of 19th October, and in the evening, as a gale began to blow up, she was sighted by another Arklow-owned schooner Venedocian as she passed to the E of Lundy Island. A Board of Trade Inquiry into her loss discounted loss due to bad weather or explosion of the coal cargo, and concluded that she must have been run down by an unknown steamer somewhere in the vicinity of Lundy Island.
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