Dead Men's Tales (2) Richard Wrankmore
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. John Smith (see my earlier post here).
South African historian Jackie Loos found this woman interesting and has written an article about her entitled Anna Wolfferum and Her Husbands, Thomas Hudson and Richard Wrankmore. It may be in the South Africa National Library collection but fortunately is also available to read online via the National Library of Australia e-resources collections (membership of the NLA needed to read in full).
In 1814, Thomas Hudson, who was “apparently in good health at the time” promptly died the day after he had made a new will that just happened to be witnessed by his new business associate, Richard Senior. The article suggests that after discovering that he himself was in a serious financial mess, Thomas Hudson:
“… may have taken his own life – or he may have been helped to eternity by someone who had designs on his property and his wife.”
Scarcely six months after Thomas had died, Anna gave birth to her third child and eight days later his brother Samuel Hudson arrived from England only to discover:
“… his brother was dead and effectively ruined. He immediately suspected foul play and Anna confirmed his misgivings by marrying Richard Wrankmore [Richard Senior] with unseemly haste when her baby was just six weeks old …”.
Another family researcher is further of the opinion that one or more of Anna's children born while she was married to Thomas Hudson were in fact fathered by Richard Senior. Their first official child together, the subject of this story, Richard Junior, was born at Stellenbosch, Cape of Good Hope on 10 September 1815. He has a baptism date in the Dutch Reformed Church records of 1 October, 1815.
On his mother’s side, Richard Junior’s German grandfather was Marthinus Wolfferum of Kehrenbach, Hesse-Cassel, and his grandmother was Anna Bierens, a Eurasian woman who came from Batavia, Dutch East Indies (now Jakarta, Indonesia). It looks as if Anna Bierens, Anna’s mother, was a feisty character and while their men failed around them she and her daughter helped to keep the whole family afloat. Her daughter Anna worked as a postmistress and boarding house keeper.
The ancestry of the mixed-race Anna Bierens would be interesting to trace but well beyond the scope of this post and no doubt involves marriages or illicit liaisons between white male colonialists and women of Malay origin. This paragraph of Loos’ article foreshadows South Africa’s long and difficult history with racism:
“The fact that neither of the Wolfferum girls [i.e. Anna and her sister] found a suitable Cape Dutch partner seems to suggest that attitudes towards mixed marriages had hardened during the last years of the eighteenth century and that Anna Bierens wasn’t a mother-in-law of choice.”
Curiously, although of mixed ancestry herself, Anna Wolfferum and her children, being Hudsons and Wrankmores, also owned slaves during this era and the Jackie Loos article further delves into the complicated situations that arose, and again which are too lengthy to detail here, but eye-opening in that they demonstrate how 150 years or so before Apartheid became law that the Cape’s business affairs were thoroughly interwoven with personal relationships between all the races. Many a “white” South African will carry the DNA of their ancestors’ indiscretions with slaves. The emancipation of slaves throughout the British Empire did not come into force until 1833 but it was slow to be completely eradicated, especially in the more remote corners of the Empire.
The Wrankmore plot further thickens when one of Richard Senior's abandoned English offspring, a daughter called Elizabeth, arrived in the Cape. She promptly caused even greater consternation by converting to Islam and marrying a Muslim fisherman:
“Not having grown up in a slave society, she was probably more open to cross-cultural friendships than locally-born women. She may have observed that free Muslim men were generally sober, hardworking and devout, and made good husbands and fathers.”
Richard Senior died in 1834 and his wife Anna in 1846, aged 59. It appears that Richard Junior had decided on a life at sea in the Merchant Service and in 1851 received his certificate as Master.
Richard Junior had married Elizabeth Ann Davis in 1839 in London. The couple did not seem to have a permanent base as the Census Returns show Elizabeth living in a series of addresses in places like Mile End, Deptford and Tower Hamlets, all within easy reach of the London docks from which Richard would have sailed on his numerous journeys around the world and increasingly on the lengthy immigrant run to Australia and New Zealand. When a return voyage from London to New Zealand, plus the turnaround time in waiting for and loading cargo, could take more than six months, it is obvious the couple would have spent more time apart than together.
From reading several newspapers of the day in which passengers posted compliments and thanks for Captain Wrankmore's competence in getting them safely and comfortably to their destinations, his skill as a mariner was recognised and, if even known about, any irregularities attached to his father's involvement with the death of Thomas Hudson or the hasty and possibly bigamous marriage to Anna Wolfferum could have had no bearing when Richard Junior was made an Honorary Lieutenant in the Royal Naval Reserve in September 1864.
For a background story of what happened to Captain Wrankmore and the Glenmark's next and final voyage, please read this blog post from Lost Christchurch Heritage. (There are some typos in it, including getting the Captain's name wrong as well as the ship's image.) Also this short entry is from the main source on Australian Shipwrecks (again with an error in Wrankmore's name)
Glenmark. Wooden ship, 953 tons. Built at Aberdeen, 1864. Lbd 197.7 x 33.6 x 21 ft. Traded exclusively between London and Lyttelton, New Zealand, with an average for her eight voyages of ninety-five days. Captain Wrackmore. On her last voyage she left Lyttelton with fifty passengers and crew, a cargo of wool and £80,000 in gold bound for London via Cape Horn. She was not seen again.
Some newspaper reports detail the sighting by another vessel of wreckage about six days out from New Zealand, but conditions were so treacherous they were unable to stop to investigate.
Copyright, Papers Past New Zealand
This short Youtube video also adds to the story and speculates as to why no-one has yet tried to find the whereabouts of the Glenmark and attempt to salvage the gold she was carrying.
These obituaries later appeared in the newspapers (Saunders onwards):
Copyright, Papers Past New Zealand
It all began with a Cape Town merchant called Richard Wrankmore (Richard Senior). It is not known when he arrived in South Africa, but he originally came from Devon. Richard Senior wouldn't have wanted his potential customers to know that he'd already chalked up debts back in his home county and had abandoned a wife and six children. He formed a business association with another English trader, Thomas Hudson, who was married at the time to an Anna Wolfferum.
South African historian Jackie Loos found this woman interesting and has written an article about her entitled Anna Wolfferum and Her Husbands, Thomas Hudson and Richard Wrankmore. It may be in the South Africa National Library collection but fortunately is also available to read online via the National Library of Australia e-resources collections (membership of the NLA needed to read in full).
In 1814, Thomas Hudson, who was “apparently in good health at the time” promptly died the day after he had made a new will that just happened to be witnessed by his new business associate, Richard Senior. The article suggests that after discovering that he himself was in a serious financial mess, Thomas Hudson:
“… may have taken his own life – or he may have been helped to eternity by someone who had designs on his property and his wife.”
Scarcely six months after Thomas had died, Anna gave birth to her third child and eight days later his brother Samuel Hudson arrived from England only to discover:
“… his brother was dead and effectively ruined. He immediately suspected foul play and Anna confirmed his misgivings by marrying Richard Wrankmore [Richard Senior] with unseemly haste when her baby was just six weeks old …”.
Another family researcher is further of the opinion that one or more of Anna's children born while she was married to Thomas Hudson were in fact fathered by Richard Senior. Their first official child together, the subject of this story, Richard Junior, was born at Stellenbosch, Cape of Good Hope on 10 September 1815. He has a baptism date in the Dutch Reformed Church records of 1 October, 1815.
On his mother’s side, Richard Junior’s German grandfather was Marthinus Wolfferum of Kehrenbach, Hesse-Cassel, and his grandmother was Anna Bierens, a Eurasian woman who came from Batavia, Dutch East Indies (now Jakarta, Indonesia). It looks as if Anna Bierens, Anna’s mother, was a feisty character and while their men failed around them she and her daughter helped to keep the whole family afloat. Her daughter Anna worked as a postmistress and boarding house keeper.
The ancestry of the mixed-race Anna Bierens would be interesting to trace but well beyond the scope of this post and no doubt involves marriages or illicit liaisons between white male colonialists and women of Malay origin. This paragraph of Loos’ article foreshadows South Africa’s long and difficult history with racism:
“The fact that neither of the Wolfferum girls [i.e. Anna and her sister] found a suitable Cape Dutch partner seems to suggest that attitudes towards mixed marriages had hardened during the last years of the eighteenth century and that Anna Bierens wasn’t a mother-in-law of choice.”
Curiously, although of mixed ancestry herself, Anna Wolfferum and her children, being Hudsons and Wrankmores, also owned slaves during this era and the Jackie Loos article further delves into the complicated situations that arose, and again which are too lengthy to detail here, but eye-opening in that they demonstrate how 150 years or so before Apartheid became law that the Cape’s business affairs were thoroughly interwoven with personal relationships between all the races. Many a “white” South African will carry the DNA of their ancestors’ indiscretions with slaves. The emancipation of slaves throughout the British Empire did not come into force until 1833 but it was slow to be completely eradicated, especially in the more remote corners of the Empire.
Cape household with Slaves
Strand and Burg Streets (where the Wrankmores lived)
Iziko Museums of South Africa
The Wrankmore plot further thickens when one of Richard Senior's abandoned English offspring, a daughter called Elizabeth, arrived in the Cape. She promptly caused even greater consternation by converting to Islam and marrying a Muslim fisherman:
“Not having grown up in a slave society, she was probably more open to cross-cultural friendships than locally-born women. She may have observed that free Muslim men were generally sober, hardworking and devout, and made good husbands and fathers.”
Richard Senior died in 1834 and his wife Anna in 1846, aged 59. It appears that Richard Junior had decided on a life at sea in the Merchant Service and in 1851 received his certificate as Master.
 |
| Ancestry.com, National Archives UK |
Richard Junior had married Elizabeth Ann Davis in 1839 in London. The couple did not seem to have a permanent base as the Census Returns show Elizabeth living in a series of addresses in places like Mile End, Deptford and Tower Hamlets, all within easy reach of the London docks from which Richard would have sailed on his numerous journeys around the world and increasingly on the lengthy immigrant run to Australia and New Zealand. When a return voyage from London to New Zealand, plus the turnaround time in waiting for and loading cargo, could take more than six months, it is obvious the couple would have spent more time apart than together.
 |
| Findmypast.co.uk |
From reading several newspapers of the day in which passengers posted compliments and thanks for Captain Wrankmore's competence in getting them safely and comfortably to their destinations, his skill as a mariner was recognised and, if even known about, any irregularities attached to his father's involvement with the death of Thomas Hudson or the hasty and possibly bigamous marriage to Anna Wolfferum could have had no bearing when Richard Junior was made an Honorary Lieutenant in the Royal Naval Reserve in September 1864.
 |
| Copyright, Papers Past New Zealand |
After many voyages with the Derwentwater, Richard Junior became the Master of the Glenmark, primarily on the London-Lyttleton, New Zealand, run.
Finding an image online of this ship is futile, as many of those available are of a later vessel of the same name and repeatedly wrongly attributed to Wrankmore's vessel, which was the wooden 1860s built Glenmark, not the steel-hulled vessel in those photographs. This image of a model is said to be of the correct Glenmark, but as its attribution is hard to establish, one can't be sure.
In November, 1871, the Glenmark arrived in Lyttleton after a difficult voyage. This report describes it in some detail.
Finding an image online of this ship is futile, as many of those available are of a later vessel of the same name and repeatedly wrongly attributed to Wrankmore's vessel, which was the wooden 1860s built Glenmark, not the steel-hulled vessel in those photographs. This image of a model is said to be of the correct Glenmark, but as its attribution is hard to establish, one can't be sure.
In November, 1871, the Glenmark arrived in Lyttleton after a difficult voyage. This report describes it in some detail.
| Copyright, Papers Past New Zealand |
For a background story of what happened to Captain Wrankmore and the Glenmark's next and final voyage, please read this blog post from Lost Christchurch Heritage. (There are some typos in it, including getting the Captain's name wrong as well as the ship's image.) Also this short entry is from the main source on Australian Shipwrecks (again with an error in Wrankmore's name)
Glenmark. Wooden ship, 953 tons. Built at Aberdeen, 1864. Lbd 197.7 x 33.6 x 21 ft. Traded exclusively between London and Lyttelton, New Zealand, with an average for her eight voyages of ninety-five days. Captain Wrackmore. On her last voyage she left Lyttelton with fifty passengers and crew, a cargo of wool and £80,000 in gold bound for London via Cape Horn. She was not seen again.
Some newspaper reports detail the sighting by another vessel of wreckage about six days out from New Zealand, but conditions were so treacherous they were unable to stop to investigate.
Copyright, Papers Past New Zealand
This short Youtube video also adds to the story and speculates as to why no-one has yet tried to find the whereabouts of the Glenmark and attempt to salvage the gold she was carrying.
These obituaries later appeared in the newspapers (Saunders onwards):
Copyright, Papers Past New Zealand
And so Richard Wrankmore's long and successful career at sea ended. The conditions the ship faced as reported in the newspapers during the outward voyage to New Zealand may have contributed to weakening the vessel's timbers or masts so that she was unable to survive another similar hurricane force onslaught without fatal damage. As there were no survivors, no-one can ever know.
Richard and Elizabeth appear to have had only one child. Born in 1850, she was Evelyne Hestern Wrankmore and in 1877 married a bank clerk, Ernest Thornton Douglas. She had twin sons, Cyril Richard and William Thornton. It appears that Elizabeth lived with her daughter in Surrey until her own passing in 1891, nearly twenty years after her husband disappeared. Captain Cyril Richard Douglas was awarded the Military Cross during the First World War.
The list of lost crew members from the Glenmark who were owed wages can be found on Ancestry.com under UK Registers of Wages and Effects of Deceased Seamen. Interestingly, some of the individuals who perished in the Glenmark had been in trouble with the law in Lyttleton and served varying terms of imprisonment on shore before being returned to the vessel. Only one name that appeared in the courts is not shown in the deceased listings. Perhaps his bad behaviour turned out to be a lucky event if it meant he missed sailing on the doomed voyage. And thereby hangs another tale.
Sources:
Richard and Elizabeth appear to have had only one child. Born in 1850, she was Evelyne Hestern Wrankmore and in 1877 married a bank clerk, Ernest Thornton Douglas. She had twin sons, Cyril Richard and William Thornton. It appears that Elizabeth lived with her daughter in Surrey until her own passing in 1891, nearly twenty years after her husband disappeared. Captain Cyril Richard Douglas was awarded the Military Cross during the First World War.
The list of lost crew members from the Glenmark who were owed wages can be found on Ancestry.com under UK Registers of Wages and Effects of Deceased Seamen. Interestingly, some of the individuals who perished in the Glenmark had been in trouble with the law in Lyttleton and served varying terms of imprisonment on shore before being returned to the vessel. Only one name that appeared in the courts is not shown in the deceased listings. Perhaps his bad behaviour turned out to be a lucky event if it meant he missed sailing on the doomed voyage. And thereby hangs another tale.
Sources:
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