Thomas Bilbe's "Coonatto," built at Nelson Dock, Rotherhithe, 1863

Coonatto by Thomas Goldsworth Sutton
National Maritime Museum PY8564

Coonatto was a three-masted  clipper commissioned from the partnership of Thomas Bilbe and William Perry in 1863 by Anderson, Thompson and Co. (later Anderson, Anderson and Co.) for the Orient Line for the transport on their London to Adelaide route of cargo, mainly wool, and passengers.

The relationship between Thomas Bilbe and Anderson, Thomson and Co. began when Bilbe built a ship named Celestial for James Thomson, using a patented system of wooden hull framing.  The ship was a great success and led to the contracts with Anderson, Thompson and Co., the founders of the Orient Line, for the London to Adelaide (Australia) route.  Other ships built by Bilbe for the Orient Line included Orient, Borealis, Yatala, and Argonaut (click on the links to see my previous posts about these ships).  The Orient Line.  A lovely description of the Orient Line ships survives from an 1898 article by John Arthur Barry:

As a good instance of how the sailing lines changed into steam, there existed in the sixties a fine fleet of small clippers trading to Adelaide for wool. The largest of them all was the Orient, of some 1200 tons or so. Then came the Murray, Goolwa, Yatala, Coonatto, Derra, etc., fast, fine-lined, London-built vessels of from 800 to 1000 tons, speedy but wet. Indeed, it was said of them that they took a dive on leaving the Channel, came up at the Cape for breath, and did not reappear until Kangaroo Island was in sight. This was perhaps an exaggeration, but their skippers drove them for all they were worth, and carried their main-top-gallant sails when other vessels had their upper topsails off; also imagined the world was coming to an end, or that Australia had disappeared, if they couldn't find Cape Borda in anything under eighty days. 

Coonatto in Adelaide.  From the Trove website, PRG 1373/2/6
at trove.nla.gov.au

The Orient Line became the Peninsula and Orient Steam Navigation Company, which eventually became re-branded as the very familiar P+O.  By the time that Coonatto was built, Bilbe had moved on to a new and innovative method of hull construction: composites.  He  patented and trialled composite ship construction with the clipper  Red Riding Hood in 1857, and all ships after this one built by Thomas Bilbe were composites.  Composite ships were built with a mixture of wood and iron.  The iron frame and ribs reinforced the hull and meant that the structure could be more open, providing additional room for cargo. 

Coonatto was the first ship that Bilbe built for the Orient Line.  She was a composite clipper, a method of construction that Coonatto was 160ft 2in long with a 29ft beam.  Coonatto's entry in the 1874-75 Lloyds register provides basic information about the ship's build but also mentions an interesting addition to the ship's equipment when, in 1874, she was provided with felt and ‘yellow metal’ cladding.   The Citizan website says that traces of the cladding still remains attached to some of the exposed timber.  It sounds as though this was similar to the copper hull cladding that protected ships against the effects of wood-consuming species and improved the speed of ships through the water.  A similar modification can be seen on the restored tea clipper Cutty Sark in Greenwich, which has had the so-called Muntz alloy fastened to the entire hull. 

Orient Line passages, March 1870

She was known as a fast ship, described by Basil Lubbock as "an out and out clipper with very fine lines."   Lubbock says that she was "very wet," which means that she took a lot of water on board when under sail, but he thought that this might be due "to the hard-driving of her skipper, Begg, a Highlander, who never spared her and made some very smart passages out and home."  Coonatto's fastest times were 66 days to the Semaphore Lightship and a 70-day run, even after losing both her helmsman and the wheel overboard after broaching-to (falling foul of the wind) off St Paul's Island!

Clippers were mainly cargo carriers, although the Orient Line also carried passengers.  The clippers on the Australian run were transporting a mixture of products to London, but primarily wool in exchange for a variety of British products.  Basil Lubbock describes the shipping trade from Adelaide, which was the focus of only two or three firms, as follows:  "During the sixties and seventies, when Sydney and Melbourne were filling their harbours with the finest ships in the British Mercantile Marine, Adelaide, in a smaller way, was carrying on an ever increasing trade of her own, in which some very smart little clippers were making very good money and putting up sailing records which could well bear comparison with those made by the more powerful clippers sailing to Hobson's Bay and Port Jackson."  He goes on a little later:  "Their captains, however, were always keen in rivalry and put a high value on their reputations as desperate sail carriers.  They made little of weather that would have scared men who commanded shops of three times that tonnage of the little Adelaide clippers, and they were not afraid of a little water on deck."

The Trove website has a rather wonderful advert for Orient Line passenger places on clipper ships heading to various destinations in March 1870.  Coonatto was one of the ships heading for Adelaide under the command of Captain J.N. Smart.  Two other ships listed on the advert, Orient and Yatala, were also built by Bilbe for the Orient Line (see my post about her here).   White Eagle, another ship on the list, was also owned for a time by Bilbe and his business partner William Perry, which was actually built in Aberdeen in 1855.

The South Australian Advertiser 8th October 1870. Shipping News (with thanks to the Trove website) provides this rather nice description of Coonatto leaving Australia for London:

COONATTO, for London via Port Augusta.
"The Orient liner Coonatto has once more taken departure from the port by towing over the bars on Thursday evening. It was Captain Smart's intention to have immediately sailed for Port Augusta, where she is to complete her wool landing;  but during the night there was little or no wind; therefore the ship remained at anchor awaiting a favorable change. . . . The Coonatto weighed anchor in the roads on Friday afternoon, and presented a very handsome appearance as she beat away on a sea breeze. Towards nightfall the wind hauled more off the land and enabled her to lay a course clear of Troubridge."

The remains of Coonatto today
Copyright MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology)

In 1876, carrying a cargo of copper, copper ore and wool to England from Australia, she became beached in the English Channel at Crowlink, near Beachy Head, and could not be re-floated.  At the age of 13 she was wrecked.  The wreck is thought to remain at the foot of the white cliffs.   The Citizan website provides a good description of the find: 

Situated in the Seven Sisters and Birling Gap park lies the wreck of what is believed to be the Coonatto, a London registered bark-rigged clipper (a type of three-masted ship) that sources suggest ran aground in 1876. The wreck lies on the very edge of the intertidal zone, below the cliffs at Crowlink. The keel and starboard side of the ship are still clearly visible where they came to rest. The remains include large and small timbers, some still clad in a zinc alloy, whilst the total length of the wreck is roughly 43m bow to stern.  The site is subject to the erosive forces of the waves and tides. Interestingly records describe the salvaged cargo being craned onto Crowlink Cliffs but given the present location of the cliffs and the type of cargo to be craned this suggests considerable erosion since the wrecking. The CITiZAN team hope that more research will establish the extent of the cliff that has disappeared and further understanding of the vessel.  To date we have worked with partners and volunteers in the National Trust and Eastbourne Heritage Services as well as training the first 15 CITiZAN volunteers in England to work on this site. A plan of the site has now been produced with future focus on more detailed drawings of the diagnostic elements of the ship that survive as well as an attempt to generate a 3D model of the site to provide those who cannot make the journey to the site with the chance to learn more about this fascinating wreck.

There is apparently a painting in the Seaford Museum in East Sussex that is thought to show Coonatto foundering at Crowlink, but I have been unable to find an image of it.

John Arthur Barry, writing in 1898, watched the demise of sail in favour of steam:

In the great mail steamers of that same Orient line that now lie alongside Circular Quay you may at any moment see the evolution of canvas to steam in its widest and most complete and final aspect.  Other fleets, as the White Star one, for instance, have not quite yet arrived at the termination of the process, and still own a few sailers out of the fine array of once famous Aberdeen liners—-the Damascus, Patriarch, Thermopylae, and others, such as the Centurion, Abergeldie, Maid of Judah, Windsor Castle, Nineveh, etc., whose names, as well as those of the Duthie's and Thompson's, are indissolubly bound up with the early maritime history of the colony. Now and again, perhaps, in one of the harbor bays, you may see a shapely old craft whose aspect seems in some way friendly and familiar, only that she flies a foreign flag, and has a foreign name upon the stern. Dirty, weather-beaten, forlorn as she is, with rusty rigging and paintless spars, nothing can disguise the old ocean aristocrat who a score of years ago was the pride of her captain, the crack clipper of her fleet and whose comings and goings were matters of moment, both on this side of the world and the other one.

The 6ft (1.83m) figurehead from
Coonatto now in the Jervis Bay
Maritime Museum
(Photo from the Jervis Bay
Maritime Museum website)

As far as I know, Thomas Bilbe did not make the transition to constructing steam ships, which seems odd as he was certainly an accomplished engineer. He certainly didn't do so in Rotherhithe.  It would be interesting to know what he did next, because he was clearly a very colourful character and it would be good to know more about him.  If you have any details about his life, please do get in touch.



Sources for this post:

John Arthur Barry  1898. How the Wool Went Home Long Ago. Australian Town and Country Journal, Sydney, NSW.  Saturday, December 17, 1898
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks13/1301811h.html 

Basil Lubbock 1975. The Colonial Clippers. Brown, Son and Ferguson Ltd.

Charles F. Morris 1980. Origins Orient and Oriana. Teredo Books

Stuart Rankin 1996. Shipbuilding in Rotherhithe - The Nelson Dock.


Websites:

Jervis Bay Maritime Museum
http://jervisbaymaritimemuseum.blogspot.com/2014/03/figurehead-on-show.html
http://jervisbaymaritimemuseum.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/wreck-of-caonatto.html

The Citizan.org website:
http://www.citizan.org.uk/resources/key-zones/south-east/wreck-coonatto-crowlink-birling-gap/


The MOLA Facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/MOLArchaeology

Built in Rotherithe: Argonaut 1866, the last clipper built by Thomas Bilbe

Nelson Dock, 1868. Click to see the full-sized image

Thomas Bilbe built Argonaut in 1866 with his partner William Perry.  Bilbe was based at the Nelson Dock shipyard from 1850 until the late 1860s.  It was one of Rotherhithe's biggest shipyards. As well as tea and wool clippers, Bilbe built a ship that was armed and designed to operate in the illegal opium trade, he transported Chinese coolies as cheap labour, and pioneered a new method of hull framing and invented a mechanical slip, which he patented.   The slip can still be seen today immediately next to the Hilton Hotel's car park on Rotherhithe Street, its engine house preserved immediately behind it, facing onto Rotherhithe Street.

The site is now located within the grounds of the Hilton Hotel on Rotherhithe Street (today's postcode SE16 5HW - see the location on Streetmaps.co.uk) and is one of the few places in Rotherhithe to preserve any of the physical infrastructure of the area's shipbuilding past.   The dry dock was incorporated into the hotel complex when the Scandic Crown Hotel first owned the site.  It is the only one to be preserved on Rotherhithe.  Bilbe's patented mechanized slip and the slip's engine house also survive to the west of the dry dock, also part of the Scandic Crown's original estate.  The engine house was opened as a museum during the regeneration of Rotherhithe in the 1980s, but to as far as I know has not been open to the public in the last 20 years.  

Nelson Dock in 1862, by Stuart Rankin from his 1996
booklet "Shipbuilding in Rotherhithe - The Nelson
Dockyard." Rotherhithe Local History Paper no.2. 

Thomas Bilbe was a remarkable character, and I have said something about him on my earlier post about Wynaud.  Other Bilbe ships that I have written about are Borealis, Orient,and Yatala.  Thomas Bilbe was responsible, either on his own or with his business partner William Perry, for the construction in the 1860s of the clippers Orient, Florence Nightingale, Red Riding Hood, Whiteadder, Wynaud, Coonatto, Borealis, Yatala, and Argonaut at Nelson Dock.  Like William Walker, discussed on previous posts, Thomas Bilbe specialized in composite ships.  His first composite was Red Riding Hood, and thereafter all his ships were composites, made of wood planking on an iron framework, a design that provided additional strength to the structure of a ship, and made much of the internal woodwork that had formerly been required redundant, providing additional room for cargo.  

Argonaut was built for Bilbe and Perry's own use, unlike some of their earlier ships, which had been built for the Orient Line.  Clippers built in America and Britain in  the earlier and mid 19th century had been constructed for the tea trade from China, and Argonaut was built for this trade.  The Thames shipwright strike of the 1860s was one of the final nails in the coffin of Thames clipper building, diverting most of the new contracts to the Tyne and Clyde. The rising dominance of steam ships and the opening of the Suez Canal also doomed the age of commercial sail.  Argonaut was the last of Bilbe and Perry ships, and William Walker's Lothair (launched in 1869, the year that the Suez Canal opened) was the last clipper to be built on Rotherhithe. 

Argonaut

Argonaut had a net tonnage of 1073, was 206ft long, 33ft wide and 26ft deep.  David R. MacGregor describes her as "sharp in the ends" with "a long floor."  She had three masts and sported a magnificent set of sails and was fitted with two cannons for defence against pirates.

It was of critical importance to ship owners that their cargoes arrive at their destinations as soon as possible, because the first cargoes back earned the best prices.  There was always, therefore, a race between the great sail clippers to return to port ahead of ships that were owned by competitors.  Andrew Shewan described Argonaut as "a galloper" and commented that her first captain, Sandy Nicholson, who was her master for many years, was "noted as a sail carrier," meaning that he liked to deploy as much sail as possible for the prevailing conditions.

Argonaut on an Angry Sea. By Henry Scott

Argonaut's first voyage was to Foochow in China on a tea run.  Leaving Foochow with her cargo of tea on 10th July 1867 she arrived back in 111 days, arriving in London on 29th October.  It was an exceptional maiden voyage, only 8 days behind that of the famous Ariel and the same number of days as another well known fast ship, The Fiery Cross.  In the following year she took 113 days to return from Shanghai to London improving her time in 1869 with a run of 109 days on the same route.  MacGregor, in his book The Tea Clippers,  says that in 1872 Captain Nicholson had "sailed through the dangerous Paracels on a moonlit night and did not have to tack till of the Cochin China coast.  The Paracels were known to be dangerous, and had not been surveyed, and taking them at night was a particularly risky short cut to the Java Sea."   

There's a great incident involving Argonaut that is described by Basil Lubbock in "The China Clippers," whilst she was in Shanghai.  Lubbock explains that most clippers were equipped with an armory of hand weapons as well as two or more cannons that could be deployed both for defence against pirates, as well as ceremonial purposes:

Shanghai Bund in 1860. Peabody Essex Museum. Click to see full size.

Regarding the use of the cannon for saluting purposes, an amusing incident occurred in Shanghai in 1868. Several of the tea clippers were moored in the river, discharging, etc., before proceeding to Foochow, when the Leander, having finished, unmoored and towed to the sea.  Her departure was signalised by a general solute from the other clippers present.  And it so happened that just as the Argonaut fired one of her guns from the starboards side of the poop, a Chinese man-of-war junk happened to be sailing past.  the wad, which had been made purpose hard of old rope in order to raise a loud report, went right through the junk's mainsail and landed on the quarter of another ship near by, knocking away some of the gilt carving on her stern.  The men on the junk fell flat on the deck with fright when the gun went off, and it knocked a hole in her sail large enough to drag a wagon through. 

Apparently the story did her a lot of good, because pirates operating in Chinese waters considered her to be a force to contend with!

I love the comment of Andrew Shewan about her ensign:  "Everywhere the British Ensign waved supreme.  It was sometimes worn at the peak, but more often on a flagstaff over the taff rail . . . . But it should be a full-sized ensign, not the insignificant mockery of a thing which some masters affected for economy's sake . . . the Argonaut, some three hundred tons bigger than the Norman Court, with a full poop and a long flagstaff, flew an ensign not much bigger than a large pocket handkerchief.  It completely spoilt the appearance of the ship and looked ridiculous, like a cock robin perched on an elephant."

Bilbe and Perry had an agreement with Jardine Matheseon and Co in China for Argonaut.  According to David R. MacGregor in his book The China Bird, Thomas Bilbe was one of the few sail ship owners and agents who understood that steamships were taking over at a terrifying speed from clippers, whilst many others maintained a blind optimism about the situation, even whilst steamers filled the Chinese harbours.  He quotes a letter from Thomas Bilbe and Co to Jardine Matheson on July 29th 1870:

"We are duly in precept of your esteemed favour of the 2nd ulto and have perused it with grate interest, the state of matters as regards the loading of the teas ships is, oar rather will be we fear, pretty much as we have anticipated.  In fact we will think ourselves well off in the face of the competition of you are able to get the Argonaut loaded at 30s with fair despatch.  Of course we don't mean that such a rate pays, but only that we will look upon it as a fair get out under the circumstances."

Argonaut hove-to with her mainsails clewed up, waiting for
the arrival of a pilot.  By James Burr. From David MacGregor's
"The China Bird."

In 1873 Argonaut was involved in an unfortunate incident when under the command of Captain Nicholson.  She was loaded with 1,465,000 cases of tea and left Foochow on 9th August 1973, headed for London. MacGregor tells a story with a less successful outcome than his earlier tale, which took place in the following year:  "In 1873, anxious to carry the somewhat westerly monsoon for as long as possible, Nicholson kept on too long and stranded on the Pescadores, being forced to jettison 300 tons of tea before getting off."  MacGregor concludes that episodes of this sort "were frequent amongst the hard-driven ships."  Even with the delay she made the trip in 111 days. 

In 1874 her new commander, Captain Cameron, was only able to achieve the trip in 128 days. It was the end of her China career.  Like so many tea clippers Argonaut was ousted from the China tea trade by the dominance of steam and the ability of steam ships to make use of the Suez Canal, which had opened in 1869.  Steam ships, which at that time required refuelling stations, were unable to cover the Australian route, giving the sailing ships a last lease of life and an important role and many of the tea clippers were reassigned to the Australian wool trade. 

In 1877 she was sold to Anderson, Anderson and Co (later the Orient line, which was eventually amalgamated into P+O).  Bilbe and Perry had built several successful ships for Anderson, Anderson and Co. for the Australian trade, and this was added to their fleet. In 1883 Anderson, Anderson and Co. sold Argonaut to Jacob Brothers of London.  They in turn sold her to Jacob Brothers of London in 1883.  Argonaut only survived another five years under Jacob Brothers.  In 1888 she put in to Port Natal (Durban, South Africa), taking on water en route from western Australia to Hamburg.  She was condemned, and her sailing life was over.

The photograph below shows Nelson Dock today.  The barriers at its Thames end are painted with the name of one of its early 1900s owners, Mills and Knight, and is now filled with water and blocked off from the Thames.   Grade 2-listed, the Nelson Dock passed into the ownership of the Hilton Hotel when the hotel chain purchased the property from the Holiday Inn, which had purchased the site from the group that owned the Scandic Crown.  For several years, rather incongruously, it was fitted with a fountain, and still has an artificial heron and real water lilies.  But it looks loved, and where heritage preservation is concerned, that's what is important. At the time of writing the Hilton Hotel is about to be upgraded to become a Doubletree, so it will be interesting to see what they do to the dock and to the patent slip and its engine house in the redevelopment process.  It would be lovely if the former engine house museum were to be re-opened.

Nelson Dry Dock at the Hilton Hotel.
Photograph by Christine Matthews.

Lavender Dock and Lavender Wharf 1684-1937 (today's Sovereign View)

Detail of Rocque's 1746 map showing Lavender Street and
the shipwrights' premises that occupied the sites that later
became Lavender Dock and Lavender Wharf.  The map
also shows some of the market gardens that were all
over Rotherhithe at this time, and probably gave
Lavender Street its name.

There are a number of buildings and features named Lavender, including three that I have already covered on previous posts:  Lavender Pond, Lavender Pumphouse and Lavender lock.   This post looks at the other two:  Lavender Dock and Lavender Wharf.  The site was immediately upriver from where the surviving Lavender Lock was built in 1862.  See the location of the site at SE16 5XH on this map on Streetmap.co.uk.

The earliest known building on the site was a windmill, dating to around 1684, but no details about it survive.  Lavender Dock was the site of a shipbuilding yard from 1702 and ships were built at the site until the mid 19th Century.  In the early nineteenth century the site was divided into two, Lavender Dock and Lavender Wharf.  By the late 19th Century the shipyard had been filled in and it was replaced by a series of small wharf buildings known collectively as Lavender Wharf.  The site was further subdivided in the early 20th Century into Lavender Wharf and Grand Surrey Wharf.  All remains of the site were erased by the modern Barratts residential development Sovereign View.

The Lavender dock, wharf and lock names come from the name Lavender Street, which was what this stretch of Rotherhithe Street was called during the 18th Century, shown on the Rocque map of 1746, above.  Lavender Street was probably named for the growing of lavender in the local market gardens, where I was surprised to learn that it was a popular crop.

Unfortunately, the history of neither site forms a nice linear sequence, and the sequences of both sites are composed of bits and pieces of information cobbled together, but it is fascinating that such a small site should have such a multitude of uses over time.

All the ships mentioned in this post will be covered on future posts, if they have not already been covered.  


Lavender Dock

The site was a shipbuilding yard from 1702 until 1708 when, Stuart Rankin records, Edward Swallow had the site and built ships including the 50-gun Leopard and the 40-gun Southsea Castle.  In 1709 Swallow moved to Limehouse.

Following Swallow the yard was occupied by John Whetstone, one of a prominent family of barge and ship builders operating along the Thames.  He built a 50-gun ship called Gloucester at the yard, launched in 1745.  It appears to have been his only Royal Navy commission, perhaps because it took him two years to build, which was double the time taken by other ship builders in the area to complete similar vessels.  It is not recorded when Whetstone left the yard.  Rocque's famous map shows the whole section of frontage along Lavender Street between being occupied by shipwrights in 1746 (above right). 

Robert Inwood's frigate Southampton, built at Lavender Dock. From
British Warships in the Age of Sail 1714-1792: Design,
Construction, Careers and Fates, by Rif Winfield

In 1756 Rankin says that the yard was in the hands of Robert Inwood who built a number of ships for the Royal Navy during his tenure at the yard including the 10-gun sloop Spy, the 32-gun frigate Southampton, the 28-gun Aquilon, the 14-gun sloop Beaver and the frigate Boston and the 28-gun Hussar.  The frigate Southampton deserves special mention as she was the first of a new type of ships, indicating the esteem in which Inwood was held by the authorities who entrusted him with the job.

After Inwood's departure, at some point between 1770 and 1773 the yard was held by a number of ship builders to supplement their existing operations.  Immediately following Inwood, for example, the shipyard was briefly taken by the well known Peter Everit Mestaer, who already operated a number of other yards along the Thames, although he was here only briefly.  Although it is not recorded which of his ships were built here, it is possible that he took the yard only to fulfil specific commissions whilst his other yards were busy, or that he expanded too far and had to reduce his holdings later on. 

Trethivick's Catch-Me-Who-Can.
Sourced from Wikipedia

The site was split into two in the early 19th Century, with the dry dock and related ship building structures next to the remains of today's lock, and Lavender Wharf, as it became known, immediately downriver.  The dock was taken over as a ship breakers in the name of Job Cockshott in the early 1800s.  Ship breaking became a popular activity as the ship building industry went into decline, and there were several along Rotherhithe's frontage.  Ships were broken up and sold off for their parts.  Most valuable was their wood and their metal fittings, but even old rope had a certain value, as it was processed and re-worked into other products. Many famous naval warships met their ends at ship breakers like this.   Job Cockshott operated from the yard until 1824, when he died.  He invested in property in the immediate area, was a shareholder in the Commercial Docks Company, owned two ships of his own, and had an interest in Lavender Wharf.  Job Cockshott's story intersects with that of the engineer Richard Trevithick.  Trevithick is notable for many reasons, whose previous connection with Rotherhithe was  the failed attempt to tunnel under the Thames at Rotherhithe before Sir Marc Brunel's successful Thames Tunnel, and this will be covered on another post.  At the time of his meeting with Job Cockshot he had premises nearby and was working on a number of projects to develop ship and dock related machinery.  His most famous invention was the high pressure steam engine to power his Catch Me Who Can railway locomotive, which was displayed with great fanfare in July 1808.   The Catch Me Who Can was not, however, a commercial success, attracting crowds, achieving enduring novelty status, but no investment.   Trethivick presumably went into business with Cockshott to reduce his losses and they entered into an agreement to install the locomotive's machinery in the former Lord Mayor's State Barge to power an internally installed paddle wheel.  Unfortunately the story ends there, and nothing seems to have come from the venture.

Lavender Wharf and Lavender Dock.
Rotherhithe Rating Valuation Plan 1862.
From Stuart Rankin's Shipbuilding in Rotherhithe No. 4b

The next couple of decades are unclear, and the site was probably used for various small ventures, including ship breaking, repairs and barge building.  However, by 1865 the shipyard had passed into the hands of John and William Walker and it entered another great ship building phase, this designing and building commercial rather than naval ships.  Of John Walker there is no surviving record, apart from the name of the business, although he was clearly related to William Walker.  William Walker was a shipbuilder who operated, at different times, out of Rotherhithe, Deptford, Poplar and Millwall.  William Walker specialized in composite ships. It was here that the Walker brothers built the composite clipper ship Mikado (upcoming post) and the subsequent three composite clippers about which I have already written: Shun Lee, Ambassador and Lothair.  Clippers were originally designed to serve the China tea industry, and were used in the Antipodean wool industry as well.  Sleek cargo carriers with tall masts and vast billowing sails, they were designed for speed.  Originally made purely of wood, they were improved by the use of iron frames to reinforce the structural integrity of the ships and expand the available storage space.  These composite ships came at the end of the age of the wooden tea clippers, and are amongst the most beautiful and successful. The Walkers' Lothair was one of the fastest ships of her day, her speeds comparing to those of the more famous Thermopylae and Cutty Sark.  Lovely Lothair, launched in 1870, was the last large sailing ship to be built in a Rotherhithe shipyard.

Ambassador, built by William Walker
at the Lavender Dock (Thomas J. Duggan 1869)

Lavender Dock was marked on the 1868 Ordnance Survey map, and James Turner had the dock from October 1873 to 1886, and was succeeded by John Medhurst who was there until at least 1890, but the dry dock had vanished on the Ordnance Survey map by 1894, by which time it had been filled in and the entire site was now marked as Lavender Wharf.  There is a lot of overlap between the dock and the wharf, with wharf buildings being occupied at the same time as the dock site from at least the early 19th Century.


Lavender Wharf

Wharves are a nightmare to find out about from secondary sources.  I've already posted about other wharves and have found that as with many of the almost countless other wharves around Rotherhithe, it is frustratingly difficult to find out much about any of them.  Many of them had additional buildings added and removed over time, and not all of the available maps show these transformations.  Many of them had name changes, which make them difficult to trace in records. Wharves habitually changed hands many times, sometimes with new owners, sometimes new leaseholders, and tracing their histories is often more a matter of listing names of successive owners rather than learning much about how individual buildings were used, what cargoes were handled and what their owners were like and where they came from. Lavender Wharf is unfortunately no different.

Lavender Wharf and Dock, from the 1843 Rotherhithe
Rating Valuation Plan. From Stuart Rankin's
Shipbuilding in Rotherhithe No. 4b.

Lavender Wharf was a river frontage and buildings immediately down river of the Horseferry Stairs, which divided it from Horseferry yard.  It was built over part of the shipbuilding yard of Lavender Dock, which it eventually replaced, and wharf premises co-existed with the dock for many decades. The company Beech, Whitaker and Brannon had Lavender Wharf until 1818, when they published in the London Gazette to announce that the partnership had been dissolved but it is by no means clear what they did.  As wharfingers they would have handled cargo delivered by boat, but whether they specialized in a particular cargo or handled general content is unknown.  According to an anonymous comment on a previous post, the James Brannon of the partnership lived from 1762-1818, so the partnership seems to have been dissolved on his death.  Job Cockshott had an interest in the wharf between around 1806 to 1824, apparently an extension of his shipbreaking activities at the Lavender Dock.  The overlap in these two sets of dates can probably be accounted for by the fact that Lavender Wharf was made up by a number of different buildings.

Following the death of Job Cockshott in 1824, Cockshott's Lavender Wharf lease was taken over by Thomas Beech, also for ship breaking.  On the Rotherhithe Rating Valuation Plan of 1843 it is shown as "Lavender Stone Wharf, Mr Manuelle," and there are seven buildings shown, four of which are labelled:  sheds, dwelling, blacksmith's shop and granary.  The granary was probably the former mould loft, adapted to a granary after the site ceased to be used for ship building.  Mould lofts were large flat surfaces that were used to draw out the hull and cross-sections of the ship, drafted by loftsmen, which were then used for templates for building ships.  In 1862 William Walker had amalgamated the dock and the wharf until around 1870, when the wharf and the dock were again leased as separate units and the wharf was leased to William Lund.  It seems likely that he is the same as the William Lund who commissioned Ambassador from the Walker. W. Lund and Sons established the Blue Anchor delivery line in 1869, and Ambassador was purchased as the primary ship of the brand new line particularly for the tea trade.  In 1895 part of the site was leased by a chicory manufacturer.

Lavender Wharf in 1914, highlighted, which is flanked by
Grand Surrey Wharf and Lavender lock

Between the 1890s and the late 1930s a number of Lavender Wharf  buildings were collectively occupied by W.B. Dick and Company (their registered premises was 233 Rotherhithe Street), which handled barrels of oil, delivered by river and stored in large tanks behind the premises.   The 1914 Ordnance Survey map shows that the site had now been further divided into two, with Lavender Wharf occupying the downriver part of the site next to Lavender Lock, and Grand Surrey Wharf occupying the upriver section.  W.B. Dick also occupied a building on the other side of the Lavender lock, and operated a number of motorized barges from its premises.  A rather nice account in London Night and Day 1951 describes how the W.B. Dick site could be distinguished by its aroma:  "In fog, pilots smell their way upriver.  Well, this is one of the places they smell.  And the distinctive smell is that produced in the processing of mineral lubricating oils."  One wonders quite what the smell was.  W.B. Dick expanded to take in Grand Surrey Wharf. The oil containers, five of them, are still shown on the 1984 Docklands History Survey.

Lavender Wharf in 1937, when it was the premises of W.B. Dick and Co.

Today

Nowadays the land it inhabited is occupied by a modern pseudo-Regency residential development named, somewhat grandiosely given its dubious architectural merit, Sovereign View, running along the Thames Path.  I wonder which sovereign the developers (Barratts) may have had in mind when they named it?

The site of Lavender Dock and Lavender Wharf today,
seen from the Thames.  Lavender lock is at far left.
Courtesy Google Maps.

The 1866 clipper "Shun Lee," built at Rotherhithe's Lavendar Dock

Shun Lee by Montague Dawson

Shun Lee was built in 1866 by John and William Walker at Lavender Dock in Rotherhithe.  The site is now occupied by the east end of the modern residential Sovereign View development (SE16 5XH) near to the Lavender pump-house and the Lavender Lock, both of which survive today.  More about John and William Walker can be found on my previous posts about the tea clippers Ambassador and the fast ship Lothair, which was the  last large sailing ship to be built in Rotherhithe.

As with the other Walker ships, Shun Lee was a composite,with wooden planking laid over an iron frame.  To get an understanding of what the wrought iron frame looked like and how it worked, see the last photograph on my post about Ambassador or go and visit the wonderful Cutty Sark in Greenwich, London.  Composites had many benefits over ships made entirely of wood.  The wood made ships light and streamlined but the iron frames provided longevity and strength. Most importantly, a composite had no need of the giant beams required by a wooden ship, which left more room for cargo.  The earliest known composite hull was the schooner Excelsior of 1850, built by John Jordan, and one of the earliest clippers to be built was Bilbe and Perry of Rotherhithe's 720 ton Red Riding Hood.  Although built by John and William Walker, the work was overseen by Bernard Waymouth, who was a renowned surveyor for Lloyd's Register and became an authority on composite ships.  The experience he gained working with shipbuilders like John Walker stood him in good stead when later, as a naval architect, he went on to design the famous Thermophylae.   

Lavender Dock

She was 674grt (650 nt), 158ft long, with a 31ft beam and was Register A1 at Lloyds.  The only unusual design features were longer than average overhangs at both bow and stern. A description of her was published in the "London and China Telegraph" at the time of her launch:

The frame is of double-angle iron, diagonally trussed, with extra angle and bulb iron stringers worked longitudinally on frames right fore and aft.   The bottom is double to the underside of the wales, the inner bottom being fastened to the frames with galvanized iron bolts, and the outer bottom being worked diagonally and fastened to the inner bottom with pure copper bolts.

The above description, full of technical details, illustrates the real interest in shipbuilding innovation that existed at the time. 

Advert for passage on Shun Lee, from The London
and China Telegraph, Volume 11, 1869

Shun Lee was owned and operated by the Walker company for the first years following construction.  Although ostensibly designed for the China tea trade, Shun Lee's first voyage under Captain Milbank was to Australia.  She did one China trade trip and was sold in 1871 to Potter and Co. of London for work on New Zealand trade routes.  Shun Lee changed hands several times.  In 1874 she was sold to M. Ion & Co. and subsequently to J. Graham who apparently re-sold her to M. Ion & Co.  In 1885 she was purchased by J. Henkins and in 1891 by J. Carew.

In 1880 her full rig was reduced to barque rigging, a standard procedure for former tea clippers when they were no longer required to achieve the high speeds demanded by the tea trade over such long distances. With shorter rigging they were easier to handle and required fewer crew hands to man them. 

Shun Lee by Thomas Goldsworth Dutton
Royal Museum Greenwich, London (PY8575)

There are no particular tales to tell about Shun Lee.  There seems to be no record of her China voyage, how long it took or what cargo she was carrying.  In his book "White Wings," Sir Henry Brett says that under Captain Langlands, sailed from England on May 18th 1871, arrived Port Chalmers, Otago in New Zealand on December 2nd with  passengers on board.  Emigration to New Zealand provided the clippers with an outward cargo that contributed to their profitability.

Shun Lee never saw the end of 1891.  In the September of that year she was in Rio de Janeiro when she caught fire and burned.  Three crew members falsely accused the mate of deliberately setting fire to the ship, were found to be lying and had to pay the costs of the inquiry.  The cause was actually declared as internal combustion.

Shun Lee by Montague Dawson

The 1869 tea clipper Ambassador, built in Rotherhithe's Lavender Dock

Ambassador in the year of her launch.
Thomas J. Duggan 1869

Ambassador was built in 1869 by was built by John and William Walker at Lavender Dock in Rotherhithe, a site which is now occupied by the east end of the modern residential Sovereign View development (SE16 5XH) near to the Lavender pump-house and the Lavender Lock, both of which survive today.

She was 714grt (692nrt), and measured 176ft by 31.3ft and 19.1ft.  Apparently she was fitted with the figurehead of an eighteen century diplomat, but I've been unable to find which one.

The 1868 Ordnance Survey map shows
the Lavender Dock where
Ambassador and the other Walker tea
clippers were constructed, right at the
apex of Rotherhithe.

William Walker was a shipbuilder who operated, at different times, out of Rotherhithe, Deptford, Poplar and Millwall.  Of John Walker there is no surviving record, apart from the name of the business, although he was clearly related to William Walker.  William Walker specialized in composite ships.  The company had also previously built Shun Lee, Mikado and a year later built their fastest and biggest clipper Lothair, all composites.  Lothair was described in a previous post. Composites were wooden ships built on iron frames, providing additional strength to the hull (a famous example is the Cutty Sark, which has been restored and is now in dry dock in Greenwich, London). They were lighter, requiring much less internal structural work, which also provided more internal space.  Composite ships were only accepted as a recognized class in 1867, when they were described in the Lloyds Register, which gave guidelines for their construction.  The photograph at the end of the post shows Ambassador as she is today, with only the iron frame remaining, bright orange with rust, showing how the precise form of the frame with its once beautiful lines.

"Setting Topgallants, The China Clipper Ambassador,"
1870, by Derek Gardner. Note the steamship in the
background at the right - steam eventually saw
the demise of sailing ships.

Ambassador was built for William Lund.  W. Lund and Sons established the Blue Anchor shipping line in 1869, and Ambassador was bought as the first ship of the new line specifically for the tea trade (the company was sold to the Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co. in 1910).  The Blue Anchor shipping line, like many others at this time, was engaged in the China shipping industry.  Ships like this are known as tea clippers but not only carried tea (although that was one of their most profitable cargoes) but china, fabrics, sundry other cargoes and quite often passengers too. As David MacGregor says in The China Bird, 1869 was a "boom" year for tea clipper building.  Other clippers built around the country in the same year were Cutty Sark, Norman Court, Deerhound, Duke of Abercorn and Caliph, whilst orders were placed for Wylo, Miako and Osaka. It is ironic that so many tea clippers were built in the same year that the Suez Canal was built, an innovation that gave steam shippers the edge over sail for the first time. 

Ships in the Tea Race of 1870
From Brian Lubbock, 1914.

Although Ambassador was a beautiful looking ship and considered to be reasonably fast, she never attained the crossing speeds of the best of the tea clippers.  In his book The China Clippers, all Brian Lubbock has to say about her was that she was  "very cranky and overmasted, though a fast ship."  She only made six tea voyages in total (a two-way voyage a season or year was standard for tea clippers travelling distances which would usually take over 100 days). Her first passage to the UK was from Foochow in the 1870-71 season under Captain P. Duggan took 115 days (she left Foochow on 25th July and arrived off Deal on the 15th November), whilst the clippers Lahloo and Leander took only 98 days to complete the same route in the same season.  She wasn't the slowest though, by any means - the slowest ships that year was Eme (135 days), who took a different route from most of the other vessels and was becalmed for some days. Ambassador's fastest crossing between Foochow and London was 108 days, in 1872. 

Ambassador's sister ship, Lothair

In 1874 Ambassador was reduced to a barque rig and changed routes  Steam ships were becoming increasingly successful and with the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 steamers could reach China from London in much better time, making sailing ships in the China trade progressively redundant. Tea clippers were unable to use the Suez Canal due to the difficulty of the winds in the Red Sea, where the Suez Canal terminated.  Instead, the clippers were used on a more diversified set of routes where steam was still unable to compete due to the need to store fuel at convenient points along their routes. Accordingly,  Ambassador began to serve the Australian wool industry, which was still out of the reach of steamships who needed multiple re-fuelling bases along their routes, and also sailed between Hong Kong and New York and Yokohama and New York.  In the 1876-77 season she went up against her sister ship, the notoriously fast Lothair, also made by Walker at Lavender Dock a year after Ambassador in 1870. Both ships were sailing from Yokohama to New York.  Here's MacGregor's account of that race, which contains an intriguing temporal ambiguity:

Ever since Ambassador and Lothair found themselves together in Sunda Straits bound for the same port they must have made a race of it.  Lothair had knocked eight days off her lead down the China Sea and although the shipping reports give her a lead of two days off the Cape of God Hope, the two ships were also report in company on 11 January at 11 January in 35degreesS, 19degreesE.  Lothair still held her two-day lead on paper as she crossed the Equator two days ahead in longitude 25degreesW.  Ambassador crossed it at 34degreesW and went on to get into port four days ahead, although her overall time was four days greater.  Maury recommended ships bound for America to cross the Equator at about 33Degrees30'W, and Ambassador's gain of six days on Lothair ably proves his point.

Ambassador towards the end of her life, with
reduced rigging

David MacGregor in "The Tea Clippers describes how in 1877 a rather more traumatic journey took place.  Travelling from New York to Melbourne under the command of Captain C. Prehn running before a westerly gale force 10 in the South Atlantic, Ambassador's deck "was swept by a enormous sea, carrying overboard her master, four crew her steering wheel and the boats."

In 1888 Ambassador sold to George Milne of the Inver Line in Aberdeen, but he kept her for only a year, after which she was sold to G. Shaddick, Swansea, in 1889.  Again, she exchanged hands very rapidly and in 1891 Sold to Burgess and Co. of London.  Three years later, in 1894, she was again sold, this time to Aktieselskabet Kristians and then to Ole G. Olsen, Kristians and was employed on the routes between the Atlantic ports to the Pacific around Cape Horn, sailing under a Norwegian flag.  The rounding of Cape Horn was notoriously dangerous and is the subject of numerous seamen's shanties.  Brian Lubbock says that in  July 1895 a hurricane around Cape Horn was so bad that 14 ships put back for repairs, six of which went into Port Stanley and the remainder into Monte Video.  En route from Florida to Hawaii, Ambassador, damaged and leaking, was one of the ships that put into Port Stanley, together with Priorhill, GW Wolff, Eagle Crag, Ratharina and Gladys.  Sadly, Ambassador never sailed again.  She was condemned in Port Stanley in December 1895 and put up for sale.  

The remains of Ambassador today
Karsten-Rau-Photography

On 10 January 1896 sold to Frank Townsend for £850.  Townsend was presumably hoping to re-sell her for a profit because he had her moved to Ponte Arenas off the Chilean coast, where she was again put up for sale.  This time she was purchased by  a company called Jose Menendez and Mauricio Braun for £1,250.  Although they were ship owners, as well as merchants, they used her as a storage hulk. Her career as a sailing ship was over but she was retained for storage purposed for another forty years, passing into the hands of the  Sociedad Ganadera y Comercial Menendez. In 1899, when they no longer required her, she was towed to her present location at Punta Arenas, in the Straits of Magellan, Chile, and beached.  She survives today as an iron frame with virtually none of her wooden covering surviving.  She was placed on the National Historic Landmarks List of Chile in 1973.

With thanks to Brian Lubbock and David R. MacGregor for their great books.

"Orient," built by Bilbe and Perry at Nelson Dock, 1853-1879

Orient by Thomas Goldsworth Dutton, 1853.
National Maritime Museum.

In her day, the clipper Orient was a well known name, partly due to her speed and her role in the Crimean war, but most significantly because she was the first ship to serve in the passenger carrying Orient Line, a company that was eventually absorbed into the PandO empire. 

Built by Thomas Bilbe in 1853 at Nelson's Dock (or Cuckold's Point) she was constructed for Anderson and Thomson by Thomas Bilbe, for use in the Australian gold boom.  Gold had been found in Australia in 1851, and by 1852 the fortunes being made in mere weeks attracted unskilled workers from the British Isles, all hoping to make their own fortunes.  As speed of arrival in Australia was an important factor for these prospectors, the basic clipper design was still appropriate even though the cargo was now human.  In response to the increased number of families emigrating, the government introduced new regulations to improve conditions on board ships carrying emigrating passengers.   

Thomas Bilbe, who specialized in tea clippers, has been mentioned on previous posts about Wynaud and Borealis, and he was a most remarkable man.  As well as tea and wool clippers, he built a ship that was armed and designed to operate in the illegal opium trade, he transported Chinese coolies as cheap labour, and pioneered a new method of hull framing and invented a mechanical slip, which he patented.   The slip can still be seen today immediately next to the Hilton Hotel's car park on Rotherhithe Street, its engine house preserved immediately behind it, facing onto Rotherhithe Street.

It is unclear how Bilbe became involved with the owners of The Orient Line, but he built a number of clippers for them (under the names James Thomson and Co. and Anderson, Anderson and Co.) at the Rotherhithe yard, beginning with Celestial, which he built for James Thompson and Co. in 1851 and ending with Yatala in 1865 and Argonaut in 1866, both of which Bilbe built with his business partner, the former shipmaster William Perry.

Orient in Port Adelaide

Orient had a registered tonnage of 1033 tons, she was 184.4ft long, with a beam of 31.7ft and a depth of 21.1ft.  Her hull was a composite of wood on an iron frame, and she had three masts.  Because she was destined for the Australian gold rush, beneath a 61ft poop she was fitted with cabin space that had not been factored into any of the earlier Bilbe designs.  Orient's first sailing as a passenger carrier was in 1856 from Plymouth to Australia under Captain A. Lawrence.

She had only been operating for a year when she was chartered to take troops to the Crimea, and in the September of 1854, referred to as Transport 78, she safely delivered members of the  she 88th Connaught Rangers.  Remarkably, she survived a gale that wrecked over 30 ships at Balaklava that saw the loss of over a thousand lives.  She continued to be employed the military between 1855 and 1856 when she served as a hospital ship. 

Following her service in the Crimea Orient became the first ship to operate for the Orient Line. The Orient Line began its life as a ship-broking company, established by James Thomson in 1797, which invested in a small fleet of its own that expanded steadily through the first half of the 19th Century, its ships sailing all over the world.  In 1829 James Anderson joined the company in a senior capacity, eventually becoming lead partner.  Anderson's nephew, also James Anderson, joined the firm in 1828.  In 1854 the company was renamed Anderson, Thompson and Co, and in 1869, after the death of the last Thompson to be involved in the company, it became Anderson, Anderson and Co.  The clipper Orient, already equipped to carry passengers, was the first ship to serve the new The Orient Line of Packets (better known simply as The Orient Line), which was established to carry passengers and some cargo, mainly wool, to and from Australia. 

Orient spent 21 years operating between England and Australia, completing a voyage every year until 1877.  Even though the East Indian routes had fallen to the far more efficient steamships that could make use of the Suez Canal since its opening in 1860, the steamers were unable to carry or source sufficient coal for the trip to Australia, so the clippers continued to have an important role carrying Australian wool and passengers.. 

Orient, commemorated on a stamp

In January 1862, en route from Adelaide to Plymouth, she caught fire. In spite of the inspired direction of her Captain and the work of the crew, the fire took hold and spread during the course of that day and the following night.  The decision was taken to offload the female passengers onto a Dutch ship that was standing by, but eventually the fire was extinguished and the ship limped into Ascension in the South Atlantic Ocean for temporary repairs.  She then returned to London, where the ship's insurance underwriters rewarded Captain Lawrence, his officers and crew, with plate worth £900.  

Orient's fastest passage time was in 1866, when she completed the journey between Plymouth and Port Adelaide in 72 days under her second commander Captain Harris under whose captaincy she achieved her fastest times, although her average was around 95 days.  As usual on this route, she normally stopped off at Capetown and St Helena on her return journey. 

One of the famous contemporaries of Orient, on the same route, was the clipper Lammermuir.  In 1873 Lammemuir departed Blackwall without the ship carpenter's tool chest, a vital component if the ship ran into trouble. The Blackwall-based owner of the great ship,  John Willis, anxious to reunite the ship's carpenter with his all-important tools, entrusted the chest to Orient's Captain Mitchell.  His initial instruction was simply to deliver the chest to Lammemuir when both ships arrived in Adelaide. But Captain Mitchell promised that he would overtake Lammermuir before she reached the Equator, so in fine good humour, John Willis wagered Captain Mitchell £5.00 that he would not be able to do so,  which probably seemed like a fairly safe bet as his own ship already had a ten day start.  But Orient was able to make the delivery successfully, making up the two week gap before Lammermuir reached the Equator, and Orient's captain won his wager with John Willis.  Orient actually arrived in Adelaide six days earlier than Lammermuir, effectively putting the icing on Captain Mitchell's cake. 

In 1879 Orient was sold to Cox Brothers of Waterford in Ireland.  She sailed for them from British west coast ports to Canada and the United States. In 1891 she was again sold on. She was de-masted and converted into a coal hulk off Gibraltar, an unusual fate for a former clipper.  She was only broken up in 1925.