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Official Number
93424 |
| The Mary Barrow was a wooden three-masted
schooner, equipped with a topgallant yard set over double topsails
and described as a very beautiful ship by Basil Greenhill. She was built
in October1891, by William Henry Lean at Falmouth and was owned in Barrow
and manned by Ulverston seamen in her early years. Her Crew
List for 1891 shows that Captain James Crewdson of Ulverston was her
first master, and that he probably took delivery of the schooner in Falmouth
and sailed her to Lancaster ready for her first deepwater voyage. Capt.
Crewdson had been master of the JH
Barrow in 1881, and probably had a long association with the schooner's
owner, James Barrow.
The Mary Barrow has been said to have begun her life in the Newfoundland trade (bringing dried, salted cod to Europe) and in the trade to South America (see Source 3). Barrow and Ulverston vessels were not usually employed in the Newfoundland trade, but the trade from South America with bone, bonemeal or hides was well-established, and it is more likely that the schooner made her foreign voyages to Brazil, Uruguay and the Caribbean. |
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In 1894 Captain Crewdson brought the Mary Barrow back from South America with a crew of six. After an eventful five week passage she arrived at her home port with two of her crew dead from yellow fever, two crewmen laid up with the same disease, and only two men fit to work the ship. One of the sick crewmen was John Wilson, a descendant of the Ulverston shipbuilder of the same name (see Source 2). John Marshall was one of the crewmen who died. In an "account of wages and effects of a deceased seaman", signed by Capt.Crewdson and retained by John Marshall's family, he was listed as an Able Seaman, aged 19. He died, "cause unknown", on the 10th December 1894 as his ship entered the South Western Approaches, at Lat. 49 N, Long. 12.30 W. This document also records that the Mary Barrow sailed on a foreign voyage from the UK on the 14th August of that year. Other documents report that John Marshall was buried in an unmarked grave at Falmouth seven days after his death (see Source 6).
In the Liverpool Mercury on the 11th January 1908 it was reported that
the schooners Lizzie R.Wilce, Swansea to St Malo, and the Mary
Barrow of Barrow had driven ashore at St Ives, the crews rescued by
lifeboat.
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Sources :
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