Isaac and Eliza Fry nee Quire

  Isaac and Eliza Fry nee Quire, arrived in Williamstown, Melbourne in   June 1859. Their decision to leave Somerset, and settle in Australia was no doubt     influenced by the fact that Isaac’s older brother Francis had emigrated to South Australia 10 years earlier in 1849.    The decision to leave Somerset would have been a difficult one to make.  Both Isaac and Eliza left family and friends behind with little prospect of ever seeing them again.  For Isaac it meant saying goodbye to his father John, his    sisters Ann and Jane and     brothers James, Joseph, Robert, John and Thomas.  It would have been equally hard for Eliza who left behind   her parents, John and Fanny Quire, her younger sister Jane and her brothers William, Giles and John. 

  There are   two family stories which survive from around the time the family set sail for Australia. They have been passed on by word of mouth for almost 150 years.  They were told to my grandfather Arthur Gordon Sherwood by his grandmother Eliza Fry.  He in turn told his son and daughter Pat and Jean Sherwood.    The first story refers to Eliza’s father John Quire.  According to the    story her father’s body lay in the house the night before the family left for Australia.  Because they were to leave the following day, Eliza could not attend her father’s funeral.  This story has always interested me.  A check of the Burnham parish church records for 1859 (this was the year that Isaac and Eliza left England) shows that John Quire did in fact die that year.  He was buried on the 6 February in Burnham.  Their ship the ‘Herald’ sailed from London two weeks later on the 20 February.  Immigrants were required to make their way to their port of departure well before their ship sailed.  When they arrived they were put up either in immigrant hostels or onboard the ship as she prepared to sail.  If Isaac and Eliza left their home in Somerset two weeks before their ship sailed, then their departure would have been very close to the time of her father’s death. Perhaps they left as the story suggests just before he was laid to rest.

The second story tells us that Eliza’s mother, Fanny Quire was very unhappy with the fact that her daughter was emigrating.  According to Eliza, her mother   said to her that she would rather see her dead than go to Australia.  As a parting gift to her daughter, Fanny gave her a small emerald green christening bowl.  The bowl accompanied the family on their journey to Australia.  They took it with them   to South Australia and then back to Victoria where the family finally settled.

The christening bowl is 60mm high, with a 120mm diameter opening at the top.  The walls of the bowl are 8mm thick.  There is a 10mm diameter hole in the base.   The bowl is tentatively dated at around the mid 1800’s. It is not known if   members of the Quire family were baptised using the bowl back in England.  Perhaps it was used to baptise Isaac and Eliza’s children. In Australia Arthur and Minnie Sherwood’s children were baptised using the bowl.  At the time of writing, the bowl was kept by J Lynch of Nhill, Victoria.

There must have been compelling reasons for Isaac and Eliza to leave their families and take their two small children (Jane and Frank) and venture half way across the world to a foreign land.  There were   dangers involved in travelling in a crowded immigrant ship powered only by the winds, and at the mercy of storms and treacherous seas.  Disease was perhaps the greatest threat the family faced onboard ship, with the very young being particularly vulnerable. Having said their final heart wrenching goodbyes they would have made their way to London where they boarded the “Herald”. According to the Argus newspaper the 1 195 ton Herald sailed from London via Plymouth on the 23 February with 424 government immigrants.  The ship’s captain was W H Flenley and the medical officer was Dr. Sanger. 

           The journey to Australia took a little over 3 months. Isaac was 34 and Eliza 35. With them were 5-year-old Jane and 3 year old Frank. Isaac, Eliza and Jane all celebrated birthdays on the voyage out. According to the Herald’s disposal list the family paid their own fare  to Australia.  It was quite common in those times for families to apply for and receive an assisted passage from the government. 

Of those who made the journey there were 59   married couples and 41   young children and babies.  There were 261 single women and only 4 single men.  The large number of single females no doubt went some way towards correcting the imbalance that existed between males and females in the new colony.  Considering the hazards of sea travel, deaths onboard were surprisingly few.  One adult and a small child were the only casualties during the voyage.  Their bodies would have been wrapped in tarps, weighted down and lowered into the sea after a burial service conducted by captain Flenley.  

According to the Age newspaper, fine weather was experienced during the voyage until the ship reached the coast. Several days before the Herald sailed into Hobsons Bay a thunderstorm accompanied by flashes of lightning hit the city.    Heavy rains followed.

The Herald berthed at Williamstown, on 1 June 1859.  It was  Wednesday and the first day of winter.  There was dew in the morning, with misty rain at times during the day.  It was cloudy and overcast for most of the day. The temperature reached a maximum of 57 degrees Fahrenheit, with a low of 48.  The newly arrived immigrants waited anxiously no doubt, after months at sea to disembark. 

In the early days of settlement, Williamstown was Melbourne’s main port.  It was where the sailing ships landed with their cargo of weary settlers. The sight that greeted the passengers onboard the Herald as she sailed into Hobson’s Bay must have been impressive.  Anchored in the harbour were immigrant and navy ships, mail steamers and tugs.  Yachts, fishing boats and small pleasure craft would have dotted the Bay.   Because there were no maximum-security prisons   available, prisoners were incarcerated in floating jails.  Five, yellow painted prison hulks   moored in Hobson’s Bay kept   high risk prisoners in appalling conditions.  Set up along the shorefront, were the stores and business premises of the merchants, and the workshops of the sail makers, ship builders and ship repairers. Railway (Nelson) Pier, starting at the lighthouse extended 800 feet into the Bay. Williamstown   by 1857 had 3500 people not counting the floating population of seamen who would have increased the population by half again.  Hotels and stores made of stone and brick lined the wide streets.

On Saturday morning, 4 June the Herald was hauled alongside the Railway Pier.  The passengers and luggage were landed and taken to Melbourne by train.    The dull and wet conditions earlier in the week had given way to clearing skies and light winds. A heavy fall of dew and slight fog greeted our weary settlers as   they first stepped onto land.

             Having disembarked and loaded their luggage (which   amounted to all they possessed) onto the train, Isaac, Eliza, Jane and Frank made the final leg of their journey into Melbourne.  We know from Minnie’s birth certificate that the family were living in Kew a suburb of Melbourne by May of 1860, eleven months after they arrived from England. It’s not known why the family came to Melbourne and settled in Kew.  Perhaps there were family or friends living there at the time. The family stayed in Melbourne for almost three years before moving to   South Australia.   Isaac and Eliza were in their late thirties when they left Melbourne.  Their   daughter Jane was 9, their son Frank 7 and Minnie the baby of the family was barely 2 years old.  It is not known how they made their way to South Australia.  It may have been overland in a horse drawn coach or on a steamer from Melbourne to Adelaide.

© R J Sherwood. 2001

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