SS London sank in the Bay of Biscay 1866 en route to Australia

[Heatha]

SS London sank in the Bay of Biscay 1866 en route to Australia. On board was one Charles Gough. I have used Trove and various other websites but I cannot place Charles. Charles was drowned, amongst over 200 others. Can anyone suggest any ideas where I might get a lead on Charles? He appears to be a distant relative but I am struggling to place him. I have no idea of his date or place of birth.

[Girl Guide]

There is quite a bit of information about the sinking but although there is a list of passengers who died no ages are mentioned.

https://www.wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?158473

This website gives a description of what happened and the list of passengers who drowned.  The only other possibility is to find a passenger list for the SS London in 1866 that may indicate ages.  Not sure that it will be available.

There are 118 Charles Goughs listed on the 1861 so a thankless task to pin him down via that.  I would imagine that some of them would be either too old or too young but it would still be virtually impossible to find the correct one.

Not helpful I know, but family history can come up with brick walls and this would seem to be one.

[GrahamSimons]

Brute force approach would be to list all of the 1861 individuals and match them with 1871 census. With luck you would have maybe 20 in 1861 but not 1871; could then trace those with registered deaths, whittling the 20 down to a handful? Would be a big project and would depend on the accuracy of the indexes of the two censuses.

[Girl Guide]

Not a bad idea Graham albeit a very tedious one.  I did find Charles listed on the Registers Of Deaths Of Passengers At Sea, 1854-1890 along with the others.  No ages for any of them.

Archive reference BT 158

Death date 11 January 1866, Cause of death - drowned, ship foundered.

Depends on whether Heatha wishes to slog through the records.

[Ruskie]

If you believe this Charles is a relative and he was travelling from England to Australia, can’t you trace this family back in England to see if he disappears from all records related to your family? For example you must know the names of your Goughs and where they were living. Does a Charles appear with them in the 1861 census but the same Charles can’t be found in 1871? That might add weight to the drowned Charles being yours.

[still_looking]

A report in here https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~nzbound/genealogy/london.htm mentions C. Gough as being in the second cabin and specifically distinguishes children so that might allow you to ignore those in the census below a certain age. Possibly also ignore those unlikely to afford the second cabin.

Might be worth checking newspapers in the UK for reports of the sinking in case he merits a passing mention.

S_L

[Heatha]

Thank you everyone for your replies. We have now used trade directories for Melbourne which list the member of the Gough family to whom Charles was related as Jesse Gough and not James Gough as was reported. This cements the fact that he is related but we have no record of him in our extensive records of the Gough family. So onward and upward. I will follow all your lines of enquiry and report back if I ever find out who Charles was!