Tom Roper
 Official Number
16675
The Tom Roper was launched on the 23rd May 1857, the second schooner built by William & Richard Ashburner at Barrow. Nominally she was built for Harrison, Ainslie & Co., a Barrow firm of iron ore producers. Her first master was Capt. Robert Stones of Ulverston, who previously had had command of the Ashburners' first schooner, the Jane Roper. The Tom Roper participated in the copper ore trade to the Guadiana River ports in her early years, then gravitated into the coasting trade.

The Tom Roper was berthed at Falmouth on Census night in April 1881, and her crew were listed as follows  :
 

Thomas Evans W  30 Connah Quay, Flint, Wales  Master 
Samuel Bunt U 21 Newquay, Cornwall Mate 
Eugene Sullivan U 24 Bearhaven, Cork  OS
George Day U 22 Lowestoft, Suffolk AB
Thomas Bond U 17 Wensley, Staffs.  Boy
Tom Roper, painting unsigned and undated, courtesy of Dick Charnley
The Tom Roper was to have a long career that lasted until the First World War. She was participating in the hazardous cross-Channel trade and was returning light from Guernsey to Cardiff. After putting into Weymouth she encountered a German submarine 20 miles SSE of Start Point on the 21st October 1917. Bombs were placed on board and the schooner was sunk. There was one life lost amongst the crew (see Source 5). Typically submarines allowed the crew to evacuate their victim in the vessel's small boat, and there seems no reason for a life to have been lost. Possibly there was bad weather or an accident, or perhaps the boat was fired on, since this was a period during the War when submarines were acting more ruthlessly than in previous years (see Jane Williamson, lost the previous month).
 
Name
Year Built
Gross Tons
Length (feet)
Breadth (feet)
Depth (feet)
Masts
Figurehead
Stern
Lloyd's Classn.
Tom Roper
1857
120
80.0 
21.3 
11.0 
2 
Male 
Square
 12A1

Sources :

  1. Launch reported in the Lancaster Gazette newspaper, Saturday, 6th June 1857, page 8 - the schooner was christensd by Mrs.Morgan, wife of the vicar of Dalton.
  2. Survey Report (Tom Roper) LIV 14679 Box 14 at the National Maritime Museum
  3. The Ashburner Schooners, ISBN 0-95-16792-0-1
  4. Lloyd's War Losses - the First World War: Casualties to Shipping through Enemy Causes 1914-1918.
  5. Photocopy of another painting of the Tom Roper, master Peter Hodgson, 1867.  More detail in Pierhead Painters
  6. See Naval History Net (citing from "British Vessels Lost at Sea 1914-1918" published by HMSO, 1919).
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