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Thank you for your replies, it's all very helpful.
As to the name of the ship and the exact date, I only wish I knew the answer. I am working from a diary, written by one of my partner's ancestors and there is very little in the way of clues.
I know that he was at home in London in 1881. My guess is that this voyage was taken shortly after that as, if his diary is accurate,  he and his wife had only one child and by the middle of the decade there were definitely more!
The only clues as to which ship it was are that shortly before the trip to Demerara, the second mate, a Mr Parkins, was fatally injured when he fell from the main yard and then, as the ship was somewhere off Deal, they collided with a vessel named Rona/Rosa ( unclear writing) and had to go into Dover for repairs.
There are no other names, of people, or of vessels. He gives the day and the month but not the year!
I have no idea why this man went to sea. None of his census entries give any indication of him being a sailor. He did live in striking distance of the East India Docks, so maybe it was an obvious thing to happen at some point in his working life.
My reason for looking into the route and what he might have seen is that I am a singer in the world of folk and traditional music and I thought it might be fun to try to write a song around this short diary, so a fact or two and a bit of historical accuracy would be useful. 

In fact, historically, Appleby was our County Town.

The Records Office is in Kendal County Hall, which was built in the late 1880s.

Although our postal addresses have been in Cumbria since the 1970s, I think lots of us would still say we live in Westmorland.

Jen ( in Kendal)

I have no problem with this thread being revived! It's always good to hear about the lives of distant family members. But I would agree that it makes sense to start a new thread in WW1, where there are experts a-plenty! 

I posted on another thread that since a lack of sense of smell or taste was not listed on other the Govt sites or the BBC, I would be extremely sceptical of it, but I see that it is now listed on the BBC on their page giving symptoms. To be more exact it says that doctors in the UK have been recording patients reporting a lack of sense of smell and that there is also "apocryphal" evidence of a lack of sene of taste as well. (Of course much of our sense of taste is related to our sense of smell anyway.)

One cheerful thing is from what I have seen it seems to be a symptom typically seen in the latter stages of the illness during recovery.

Since I posted the question in the other thread, this set of symptoms has been given much more credence by medical scientists and certainly my GP was clear that it ought to be taken seriously. I am still extremely sceptical about having had the virus but have done as advised and isolated myself for the allotted  period of time. I still have very little in the way of a sense of smell or taste.

Do any of you who suspect they may have this virus have any idea where you might have picked it up?

If I have indeed had it, I picked it up from people I meet in a weekly singing group. Several of them have had it quite badly and I was in direct contact with them the day before the first one of them became ill.

Gosh Monica, that is a real mixed bag of symptoms. I really hope your husband starts to feel better and that the whole family comes through it soon.

I am now well over a week in with the no smell or taste thing, though it is beginning to change - I can smell cumin powder, toothpaste has a "fresh" flavour and oranges have a little bit of taste! This is a distinct improvement.

Wine is totally vile!

We will be allowed out of quarantine soon, which is just as well as supplies are running low. My daughter will shop for us if I ask but I really don't want to put her at any more risk than necessary.