Skelendipity

It is always exciting when genealogical enquiries into a single individual end up providing enough background material for a fabulous (and true!) family saga of international proportions. In this case, my path has led to a former Germanic state to the colonial trading hub of Batavia in the Dutch East Indies, to the Cape of Good Hope in the Napoleonic era where slavery had become intertwined in the business and personal relationships of the day. I lingered a while in Victorian London’s East End and then tracked ships on passages to India and carrying immigrants to Australia and New Zealand. This all culminated in the mysterious disappearance of a vessel carrying gold with the modern equivalent value of at least Five Million Pounds Stg in the lonely expanses of the Southern Ocean. This is the background to the life of Captain Richard Wrankmore, one-time Master of the ship Derwentwater and who was a witness in the 1858 Tasmanian coronial enquiry into the death of the ship’s surgeon, Dr.