Every Picture Tells a Story
In researching an old family photograph, Tanya discovers a story of emigration from the north of England to Port Adelaide in South Australia in 1853.
First posted in 2015 - edited in 2022 for clarity and a better read.
The Brooks family circa 1850s, Australia. Photo: Family archive
Someone, somewhere once said, every picture tells a story.
Here I am looking at a picture and thinking of a story. The picture is an early family photograph from the 1800s – there is a woman seated, a man seated next to her. Three children are standing behind them: a boy, a girl, a boy. There is a younger child asleep on the woman’s lap gently steadied by her hands.
My Granny's careful notes on the back list the names of all in the family.
From the back, left to right: Joseph, Elizabeth and Walter. Seated from left: Ann and James Brooks.
The sleeping child perhaps is, ? Samuel, b. in Australia.
Joseph has a strange look. His right eye looks distorted as if a fold of skin has been dragged down onto his cheek. I remember my Granny saying an expert in early photographic processes thought that the wet emulsion had slipped a little after exposure and the final chemical process had fixed this strange anomaly forever.
Fragile Layers
I turn the picture over. There are several fragile layers all contained within an elaborate frame. The entire object is terribly fragile. I am worried it will slip out of my hands and the whole thing will come apart, spilling out its contents.
Brown tape crinkles under my fingers as I peer at the aged image. I think the picture is a collodion image. Rather than completing the process at the negative stage, the glass plate image is bleached with silver salts reversing the negative image back to a positive. If I separate the glass plate out from its safe layers and hold it up to the light, it looks like a negative. When I sit it back in its frame with the black velvet behind the glass, the positive image shines.
The image is so delicate I hold my breath as I look, convinced that even the air from my lungs might damage it.
A Story of Emigration
I'm fascinated by the story the picture hints at. My Granny's notes on the reverse hold the key to a family story. Underneath the list of names and birth-dates, in her small neat handwriting are the words:
Emigrated to Adelaide, S. Australia, ss Hercules, April-July 1853
My Granny spent some time researching her family history. I remember being sort of interested in the vague manner of a 21-year-old. Now I'm thinking about something my Dad said to me recently. My Great Great Great Grandfather, he thought, was a surveyor in Australia in the 1800s who helped to map the Northern Territories. Mmm. I wonder.
Who is James Brooks?
I google "Hercules 1853" and find the passenger list of HMS Hercules, recorded by the South Australian Register on Wednesday 27th July 1853. On the previous day, HMS Hercules arrived at Port Adelaide:
"One hundred and ninety souls to land – the 8th ship from England to S.A (South Australia)".
Sitting at the top of the list is the name, Brooks.
First name: James
Age: 23
Occupation: Miner/Sapper
Birthplace: Bernisdale, Snizort
I instantly have many questions.
Where is Bernisdale? And Snizort? What is the H.I.E Society? And what is a Sapper?
Gathering Information
Bernisdale is a small village, a township on the Isle of Skye situated near the River Snizort, where it flows into a deep dark fjord, the sea-loch, Loch Snizort Beag. I imagine it's a beautiful yet bleak place where the summer sun lights the land for the longest days or where, in winter, the same land becomes cloaked in the icy air. The forecast today describes the Isle of Skye as 'uncomfortably cold'.
A Sapper & Miner is a military engineer in the army corps now known as The Royal Engineers.
So. James Brooks, born onto an island where farming and agriculture were a part of life, was not a farmer.
I'm confused.
The name 'Brooks' sounds English, not Scottish. I am certain this side of the family was from the north of England.
I search for the "HIE Society" - The Highlands & Islands Emigration Society. This was a charity set up to help provide assisted passage to the colonies for the very poor living in the Scottish Highlands & Islands. I phone the Skye & Lochalsh Archive Centre.
The helpful voice on the other end of the line tells me that the potato famine caused by blight (similar to Ireland) left many families living in the Highlands & Islands starving and destitute at this time. Families had been squeezed into pockets of land too small for more than one family group. The landowners and government of the time were looking for a way to "create space". HMS Hercules was one of the ships that journeyed these desperate families to a new life in Australia.
Yet James Brooks is listed as a Sapper & Miner, not an emigrant of The Highland & Island Society. So why was he on this ship? The listing informs me that the family boarded HMS Hercules at Campbeltown, Argyllshire, not at Skye.
I phone The Highland Archive Centre. I am directed to the Scotlands People website where for the princely sum of £7, I am able to locate James Brooks on the 1851 census. The parish is Temple, Midlothian, Scotland. He is 21, living as a lodger, his occupation is Sapper & Miner and his birthplace is Cheshire. Frustratingly I can't read the name of his birth town. The elaborate cursive writing is almost impossible to read. It takes me some moments to even be able to find his name.
I gather together all these snippets of information.
The Tall Ship HMS Hercules
James Brooks was born in Cheshire, not Skye, and joins the Sappers & Miners, perhaps as a teenager. The passenger list ages him at 23, his wife Ann 24 and their eldest child 6. In Campbeltown, Argyllshire, when his youngest child Walter is a baby, the family boarded a ship, the HMS Hercules, on 26th December 1852.
The journey of this tall ship of immigrants commanded by Captain Baynton had hardly begun when it runs into a storm. Taking refuge for a number of days at Rothesay, the ship sets sail again. Again its passage is thwarted by outbreaks of disease, smallpox and typhus. The ship is quarantined in Cork, Ireland for several months. Fifty-six people die and seventeen children are orphaned. Some passengers are transferred to different ships creating a split of many families.
Finally, the tall ship leaves Cork in April 1853. It sails for three months before arriving in South Australia.
I think about this journey. It's hard to imagine the conditions; a terrifying storm, rampant disease, months of inescapable quarantine, and yet more months at sea before arriving at a place on the other side of the world.
I scroll the passenger list again and find a stow-away, another James, a Macdonald, the son-in-law of Donald McAskill, a shepherd from the Highlands. I wonder if he survived the journey.
I return to my picture, the photograph from so long ago. I talk to my Dad about the picture and what I had discovered. Now living in Australia, it seems fitting that he picks up the trail of the Brooks family on their arrival at Port Adelaide in the southern hemisphere's winter of 1853.
