7: Captain Broome Extracts

‘The ship had eight steerage and three first class passengers - t
wo of whom were Mrs and Miss Broome, the captain’s wife 
and sixteen year old daughter, Nell.’

The captain of the West Australian, forty-six year old Edwin Broome, came from a seafaring family in Topsham, a small port on the river Exe which has a sheltered harbour for the seagoing trade. Once the second largest port in England it was a centre for fishing and ship-building. During the Civil War it had been an important stronghold for the Royalist forces and had seen a Parliamentary naval assault.

The captain was descended from two of Devon’s oldest fishing families, the Broomes and the Pyms, each of which contained several master mariners, while his wife, Elizabeth Mary Smith, was the daughter of a master mariner of Bishopwearmouth, Sunderland.

It takes a special kind of woman to marry a seaman and as with many sea faring families the absence of fathers and husbands for long periods meant wives were left behind to run their own households and finances without interference. On their return ashore the fathers and husbands were more often than not quite happy to continue with this arrangement consequently the women were of an independent nature. 

Captain Broome was twenty-two when he qualified as second mate in 1861, twenty-three when he qualified as first mate, twenty five when he became captain in 1864, and thirty when he married Elizabeth Mary Smith in 1869.

After passing the captain’s examination his younger brother, James Broome, born in 1851, served as mate on several vessels until 1880 when he took command of the three masted 233 ton Belle of the Exe. She was a brigantine, built for Redway in Exmouth in 1878, with three instead of the more usual two masts, a single deck, sheathed in felt and yellow metal and fastened with copper bolts and.

Unfortunately his voyages took him into mosquito ridden areas and in 1880 while at Lahore, India and still only twenty-nine, he contracted and died of what was then called African Fever, now known as malaria. 

John, the youngest Broome brother, passed his masters examination when he was twenty-three but was mate until he got his first ship in 1886, the Sunderland built 155 ton schooner Rebecca. His voyages also took him to Australia and in 1888 he took command of the Charlotte, later renamed the Charlotte Padbury, a 634-ton barque built in 1874.

The Charlotte Padbury

Captain Edwin Broome had considerable experience before taking command of the West Australian having been the master of the Eugeine, the Derby Castle and the Belle of Devon.

From 1874 he commanded the City of Durham and the Hugh Fortescue, and shortly after the GBS was launched became her captain and on his first voyage his brother, John was first mate.

The West Australian was propelled by both steam and sail, which was not at all uncommon since it was impossible then for a ship to carry sufficient coal for a non-stop voyage from London to Australia.

Due to the regularity of these wool ship sailings between London and Fremantle the Broome brothers frequently passed each other during voyages or found themselves in port at the same time. They would then meet up at their favourite meeting place to spin yarns about the difficulties and dangers encountered during their last voyage. On occasion Edward would be invited to join them and, as second mate, he much preferred to listen rather than join in the banter finding he could learn a lot from the experiences of better qualified men. He soon discovered, as with Captain Escott, these were men he hoped to emulate one day.

Captain Broome had seen the best and the worst of weather on his travels and, as Edward was to discover, had frequently survived heavy weather during which he witnessed the foundering of many good ships while battling to save his own.

In the year before Edward joined, the Mennock had been in Fremantle at the same time as the West Australian clipper. The Mennock’s crew, returning from shore leave, started off for their vessel five miles off in the Gage Roads only to discover the wind was strong and the waves far too high to pull against and they gradually drifted off in a northerly direction.

Captain Broome ordered a boat to be launched to go to their aid but the crew soon found themselves in the same situation and both boats were forced to put out anchors and endure a night being blasted by the icy cold wind until rescue came the next morning.  

By the time Edward joined, Captain Broome had circumnavigated the globe several times during his twenty year service.

These were Australia’s pioneering days. The Swan River settlement, which eventually became known as Western Australia, had yet to establish its own industries and until then many imported supplies were still essential.

Ships arrived regularly from Britain with cargoes containing a variety of farming equipment and building materials - horse rakes, mowers, reapers, chaff cutters, twine, shearing equipment, wire netting, steel fencing wire, galvanized iron roofing, guttering, ridging, down pipes, deal timber, casks of cement and cast iron baths. There were also cases of compressed beef, weighing machines, saddlery, handcarts, perambulators, gigs, earthenware, groceries, drapery, clothing, bedsteads and suites of furniture.

Often, when there was spare cargo room on board, items were sent on ‘spec’ and on arrival were listed for sale by the agent as part of the ship’s cargo. The mining industry always needed supplies of mining tools and blasting powder and often, after taking on general cargo in London, they loaded gunpowder at Gravesend which was then stored in packets in the magazine on board.

It wasn’t only at sea during a voyage that seamen encountered danger. Before the West Australian started back on her return journey, at the beginning of January 1886, the weather in port was particularly bad with a strong southerly breeze and the seamen going to and fro when boarding their ships had to be very careful, as happened with the already mentioned ship Mennock.

In mid-1886, with Captain Broome sailing regularly from London, the Broome family decided to move from 17 Peel Street, (near Mowbray Park), Sunderland, where they had lived since 1870, to London. As with the Freemans in earlier times, moving great quantities of furniture any distance was not only expensive but problematic and before the move ‘the whole of his [Captain Broome’s] valuable modern furniture and furnishings’ was sold by auction.

Their new home at 23 Albert Square Gardens, Ratcliffe was a terraced three storey Georgian style house, built of yellow-brown brick in the 1840s. It had a basement, arched ground floor windows and doors and a rear garden. The house, now part of a conservation area, stands along one side of a U-shaped cul-de-sac in the centre of which is a grassed square with mature trees. The open end is on the south side of Commercial Road.

For centuries this area on the north bank of the Thames, between Wapping marsh and the Isle of Dogs, had supplied not only the crews to man the ships which had made London the largest port in the world but also the ships’ chandlery and provisioning to run and repair them - candles, soaps, oils, paints, ropes and nautical gear and all manner of other commodities required by sea-going vessels.

As happens in home ports at the end of a voyage the crew is paid off at the waterfront, and those without a home to return to and even some who had, spent their hard-earned money on wine, women and song all of which Ratcliff most willingly supplied. When their money was spent it was time to go back to the waterfront to look for a ship and sign on again.

At either the end of a voyage the West Australian could take on a few first class passengers but the ship’s accommodation was frequently empty. First class fares from London to Fremantle cost about £60 and when, at departure time, the accommodation had not been sold it was not unusual for the captain to purchase berths at a much reduced rate for family members.

Edward counted himself fortunate to be signed on again as second mate when the ship sailed from London for the Swan River in July 1886, with eight steerage and three first class passengers, two of whom were Mrs and Miss Broome.