["Old Memories", THe Mail (Adelaide, SA), Saturday 12 July 1913, page 9]
OLD MEMORIES.
By A. T. Saunders.
On July 13, 1837--and that will be 76 years ago tomorrow--the ship Adam Lodge, 467 tons, arrived in Sydney from Londonderry, Ireland, having sailed thence on March 29, 1837. I addition to her crew, the Adam Lodge brought 379 emigrants, of whom 195 were children. That the ship was overcrowded is apparent, and probably was the cause of the deaths of 29 children and five adults which occurred on the passage of 106 days. Among the passengers was my maternal grandfather with his wife, son, and four daughters, one of whom, Mrs. Sarah Allen, widow of Captain Thomas Allen, and mother of Capt. Allen, who was master of and was lost in the Koombana, is now living at the Semaphore. Though she was only eight years old when she arrived in Sydney, Mrs. Allen's memory of events which happened since and before 1837 is good and clear.
Last month I passed three days in the Public and Mitchell Libraries in Sydney looking up documents respecting Sydney and South Australia, and was thus able to test the accuracy of many of Mrs. Allen's recollections. Seventy-six years is long time to look back, and seems longer when we remember that when the Adam Lodge sailed from Ireland, that country had 8,000,000 inhabitants, half of whom died of hunger and disease in the potato famine, or were shipped to America and other countries...
William IV was King when the Adam Lodge sailed, and Victoria was Queen when the ship arrived in Sydney. Sir Richard Bourke was Governor of New South Wales, and Mrs. Allen heard him read the proclamation of the death of the King and the accession of the Queen. She says he was a small man with a deep scar down his face from a wound received in Spain. When Mrs. Allen arrived in Sydney it was not 50 years old. Melbourne was unknown--in 1839 there were only 3,000 people on the banks of the Yarra--Western Australia was eight years old, South Australia was not seven months old, and Port Adelaide did not exist.
My grandfather, William Galway, settled in Sydney for a few years, carrying on his trade of a builder, and then moved to Maitland, in the Hunter River Valley, but business became dull in New South Wales, and in 1847, as the copper discoveries were booming South Australia, he decided to make another move to Port Adelaide. In December, 1847, he and his son left Sydney in the steamer Juno for Adelaide via Boyd Town--how many South Australians eer heard of Boyd Town, Boyd's folly, and his death--Melbourne, Port Fairy, and Portland. One of his fellow passengers to Port Adelaide was David Bower. In January, 1848, the Sydney "Morning Herald" records the departure of the Juno for Port Adelaide, and among the passengers "Mrs. Galway and the 4 Miss Galways."
Port Adelaide was a curious place in 1848. It was built on a swamp from which the sea had been excluded to some extent by embankments, but was subject to inundations as late as 1865, connected to the dry land by a causeway built by the South Australian Company by digging deep holes in the swamp on each side of the causeway, and heaping up the spoil on it. To do this a deviation from Col. Light's original Port road was made from the sit of the present Alberton Baptist Chapel to the present Commercial road. Corrugated galvanised roofing iron--that great civiliser--was unknown in Port Adelaide in 1848, so most of the roofs were made of shingles. Water was scarce, for, of course, there would be no wells in Port Adelaide, so the Portonians depended on rainwater stored in barrels (there were no iron tanks then) or on water boated from Lefevre's Peninsula or brought from the Alberton sandhills...
... My grandfather's four daughters soon married--there were not many old maids in Port Adelaide in those days.
... The eldest, my mother, married Thomas Saunders, master mariner, ... The second and sole surviving sister, who is now nearly 84, and whose mind and memory are as keen as ever, though her body is not as robust as one would wish, married Capt. Thomas Allen, who had some curious experiences.
He sailed from Port Adelaide to California in 1849, and his crew deserted, his ship was seized and confiscated on an unfounded charge of smuggling, which was disproved, and for which compensation was paid. When taking Adelaide convicts to Tasmania after the disappearance of the Lady Denison, which was said to have been seized by the convicts, she was carrying from Adelaide to Hobarttown, a plot to seize Capt. Allen's ship was discovered, so he passed the anchor chain through the 'tween decks of the ship, had the legs of the convicts chained to the anchor chain, and told them that if they any trouble he would heave on the chain, and stand them on their heads. He had no trouble, and when the convicts were leaving, one of them handed him a "Norie's" book on navigation, which Capt. Allen had for many years. For several years Capt. and Mrs. Allen sailed in and about Malaysia and the east, from Madras to Manila, from Sydney to Singapore, meeting various well-known men, Alfred Russell Wallace and Bully Hayes, the pirate, among others. Capt. Allen for years had his schooner manned by Malays, and was frequently chartered by Chinamen, who thought that, being a large man, he must have known more than a smaller man.
Mrs. Allen was the first white woman to visit part of Cambodia. In the fifties American sailing ships were numerous in the East, and Capt. and Mrs. Allen met many of them, one being the famous "Live Yankee," Capt. Thorndyke. Several children were born, and buried in various parts of the world. One was born in Marmion's Hotel, Fremantle, in 1857, and was therefore named Marmion. A few years ago I looked up his baptismal record in the Catholic Presbytery, Fremantle. It was written in Spanish Latin and Father Cox, who translated it to me, smiled at the Latin script. The worthy Spaniard had forgotten to record if the child was a boy or girl. The godfather was W. E. Marmion, afterwards the Hon. W. E. Marmion, of the Forrest Ministry, to whose memory a handsome Celtic cross now stands in Fremantle.
After leaving the Eastern trade, Capt. Allen bought a share in an unlucky full-rigged ship, the Schah Jehan, and unfortunately took a cargo of coal to Wallaroo, then in its infancy. During the voyage from Newcastle, off Cape Northumberland, the Schah Jehan ran into a terrible gale and electric disturbance. "St. Elmo's" fire decorated the mastheads, yards, and booms, and in the worst of the gale Mrs. Allen gave birth to Mr. Seaborn Allen, now of Messrs. G. Wills & Co., Port Adelaide, the steward being the only one to give any assistance. Another terrible gale smote the Schah Jehan when alongside the small Wallaroo Jetty, and after vainly trying to bring the ship up with anchors, she was scuttled. This saved the jetty and the ship, but ruined Capt. Allen. It did not suit William Watson Hughes and Thomas Elder to have Wallaroo condemned as a dangerous port for ships Of 1,000 tons, so Capt. Allen was ruined. A Parliamentary paper, of 1863, I think, tells a part of the tale. Capt. Allen afterwards sailed various ships, and then joined the Pilot service at Port Adelaide, and had the ill-fortune to be pilot of the steamer Coorong when a boat was cut in two and a pilot was drowned. Mr. Sam Harvey, lately of the Customs, is a survivor of that boat's crew.
Again, Capt. Allen went to sea in command of various ships with Mrs. Allen and their surviving children. One trip took the diggers to the Gympie (Queensland) gold rush, and after the Franco-Prussian war and the exile of the Communists to New Caledonia, many voyages were made to Noumea with bread stuffs. Capt. and Mrs. Allen then settled down ia Port Adelaide, where Capt. Allen died, and Mrs. Allen still lives.
It is a pity Mrs. Allen's reminiscences cannot be preserved. Not only is her memory a remarkable one, but she has many scrapbooks containing most interesting items of South Australian history and South Australian persons.
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