James & Mary

Official Number
56700

The James & Mary was a schooner built at Matthew Simpson's shipyard at Glasson Dock, Lancaster. She was launched on Thursday, 17th October 1867, and was the second of many schooners built by Simpson to be acquired by owners in Fleetwood for management by Edmund Porter, having been preceded by the Dairy Maid. The James & Mary was made very strong to carry pig iron and ore cargoes, and could carry 220 tons on a register tonnage of 140. The third of Simpson's schooners to enter the Porter fleet was the Result, built the following year.

In December 1894 the James & Mary was on passage from Par to Runcorn with a cargo of china clay, under the command of Capt.T.Williams and with four other crewmen aboard. On the 22nd December, caught in a Force 11 storm from the SW, she saught shelter in the Ribble, but struck the banks off  Spencer's Brow, off Southport. The five crew were taken off  by the Southport lifeboat, and the abandoned vessel was swept onto the beach at Birkdale. Her cargo was subsequently removed by lighter, but the wreck was further damaged in subsequent gales.

Name
Year Built
GrossTons
Length (feet)
Breadth (feet)
Depth (feet)
Masts
Figurehead
Stern
Lloyd's Classn.
James & Mary
1867
 142
92.6   
22.5 
11.2 
2 
 
 
8 years A1 

Sources :

  1. Launch reported in the Lancaster Gazette newspaper, Saturday, 19th October, 1867, page 5.
  2. Lloyd's Register of Shipping 1868-9: schooner, master J.Gornall.
  3. Wreck info from "Shipwreck Index of the British Isles" Vol. 5 by Richard & Bridget Larn.
  4. Wreck reported in the Liverpool Mercury, 25th December 1895 and also in Reynold's Newspaper, 23rd Dec.(though the vessel is identified as the James Murray, reported wrecked off Taylor's Bank) and the Manchester Times, 28th December 1894.