(click the No at the bottom of each page to read more)
http://goo.gl/4ZeIeTJoseph Somes was one of the promoters of Lloyd's
Register. In his old age he was partnered by his sons,
and the firm at his death disguised itself under the name
of the Merchant Shipping Company.
T. & W. Smith.
In the history of the Calcutta and Madras
passenger trade, T. & W. Smith, of Newcastle, rank on
an equality with Green aud Wigram.
The firm was founded as far back as the beginning
of the nineteenth century by Thomas Smith, one of
the Smiths, of Togstone, in Northumberland, who,
having served an apprenticeship with a Newcastle
ropemaker, eventually, like George Green at Blackwall,
married his master's daughter and succeeded to his
business. This example of the good apprentice had
two sons, Thomas, born in 1783, and William, born in
1787. The elder joined his father as a ropemaker,
whilst the youngest was apprenticed to William Rowe,
at that time the largest shipbuilder on the Tyne.
In 1808, the year William Smith completed his
apprenticeship, Rowe launched the largest ship ever
built on the Tyne— H.M.S. Bucephalus, a 32 -gun
frigate, measuring 970 tons.
Two years later old Thomas Smith bought Rowe's
business and, taking his two sons into partnership,
founded the shipbuilding firm of Smith & Sons, though
he still continued the ropemaking business with his
eldest son.
The Smiths had not been long in the business before
they turned their attention to the bu'.lding of Indiamen,
at that time almost the monopoly of the Blackwall
Yard. Curiously enough, their first Indiaman was the
Duke of Roxburgh, of 417 tons burthen, built to the
order of their rivals, Green & VVigram.
She was followed by the George Green, also to the
order of the famous Blackwall firm and launched on
Boxing Day, 26th December, 1829. This ship, accord-
ing to a contemporary account, was considered the finest
passenger-carrying merchantman ever built on the Tyne
at that date and the equal of any London-built ship.
She measured 568 tons burthen on a length of 135 feet,
was "frigate -built" and "fitted up with much elegance
for the carrying of passengers." Her life, however,
was a short one, as she was lost on her way to
London from the Tyne. Smith's next Indiamen
was the Duke of Northumberland, of 600 tons burthen,
launched 28th February, 1831. It was soon after this,
however, that the Newcastle firm commenced running
ships of their own to Madras and Calcutta in competition
with Green and Wigram.
Basil Lubbock - The Blackwall Frigates
(1876–1944) married (1912) Dorothy Mary Thynne née Warner (d.1944). Educated at Eton College, he went to Canada in the gold rush in 1897, and came home round Cape Horn as an ordinary seaman. This was the experience which informed such fiction as Jack Derringer: A Tale of Deep Water (1906), set on a ‘Yankee hell-ship’ with much unconvincing dialect. The first hundred pages or so read like an essay about life at sea; then Lubbock remembers that it is a novel and adds a villain and a heroine. In the second part the hero falls overboard and has some adventures in the company of a cowboy before settling down with his pure woman. Deep Sea Warriors (1909) is similar. Lubbock later fought in the Boer War and the First World War, in which he won the MC, and published a number of non-fictional works about maritime history. He was a keen yachtsman. The writer Percy Lubbock (1879–1965) was his first cousin.
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