the lofty masts of Sealkote but he may have been surprised at the skill and nonchalance with which Indian men shinned up palm trees to harvest the coconuts.
Calcutta at that period offered plenty of traditional attractions for sailors.
A great deal of moral latitude, not to say licence, was permitted in Calcutta at that time. Everything was cheap – rum, women and tobacco. The merchant sailor was allowed to do pretty much as he pleased in pursuing his peculiar ideas of personal enjoyment. He might get drunk in the Numbers, riot in the Checkers and then proceed to clean out the German Barracks without fear of serious interference or arrest on the part of the East India police, most of whom were recruited from the maritime contingent themselves.6
John Isbester seems to have been an unusually committed and well organised seaman. During nine years of service before the mast he never deserted, adopting a pattern of behaviour more like an established petty officer – a sailmaker or carpenter – than an ordinary or able seaman. Many of his shipmates deserted in Calcutta, but there and on subsequent voyages to inviting places such as Quebec, New York, New Orleans, Buenos Aires, San Francisco, Adelaide and Sydney he appears to have maintained a faultless record, always completing the voyage. This suggests that he was committed to getting on, to earning promotion. He also seems to have made it his purpose to visit all the great seaports of the 19th-century world – and I have to admit to more than a tinge of envy when I read an account of the ports that he visited.
Eight ABs – a typical mixture of Scots, Irish, German, Swedish, Canadian and Channel Islanders – were signed on in early November when the ship was ready to leave Calcutta. One of them, Augustus Jouan, a 30-year-old from Guernsey, had been released from hospital a day before he joined the vessel. After four days at sea and when still in the Bay of Bengal he ‘was taken sick with the cholera’, and ‘despite all possible means being used to save him’ he died a few hours later.7 The homeward voyage around the Cape of Good Hope, through the Atlantic and up through the Channel to Dundee took a bit more than four months, and John Isbester paid off, after a voyage lasting ten and a half months, with £16.17s.3d earned at a rate of £2 per month.
His next four voyages were all quite short ones, being round trips to Quebec, New York, New Orleans and again to Quebec in four different ships, all sailing from Liverpool. The first was the ship City of Manchester, 1,116 tons gross, where he signed on as ordinary seaman. The ship’s official log book8 reveals only that on 30 May seven seamen deserted in Quebec, where six replacements were later signed on. It must have been a relief that no-one died.
He then served as able seaman in the iron clipper ship Strathearn, 1,784 tons gross, a hard-driven ship credited with making a passage from New York to the United Kingdom in ten days. She carried three mates, a bosun, 26 ABs and four 0Ss, double the size of crew to which John Isbester would become accustomed. She also had an engine driver to look after a boiler and winch, provided to help with heavy hauling. Outward bound to New York, in mid-Atlantic, Thomas Evan AB fell overboard from the main shear pole, a position low in the main shrouds. The ship hove to and a boat manned by the chief officer and four sailors was launched, but searched for him without success. On the homeward passage from New York at 0300 am John Fillibank OS, taking in the starboard sidelight, ‘either overbalanced himself or was washed overboard’. He was presumably taking the light in to top up its oil; the sidelight was probably lost with him, but spares would have been carried.
There was no possibility of saving him, the ship going 12 knots and the morning very dark. The Chief Officer threw a lifebuoy and put the helm down but he was not seen and we very reluctantly had to give up hope of saving him.
Nine days later misfortune struck this unfortunate crew again. The official log book records:
At about 5.45am whilst the ship was running 15 knots before a NW gale shipped a sea on the poop and swept Mr Campbell Chief Officer overboard. Blowing very hard with very heavy sea at the time, it was quite impossible to do anything to save him.9
At the end of that passage John Isbester must have been relieved to set foot again in the familiar streets of Liverpool.
Next came the barque John Geddie, of Halifax, Nova Scotia, 651 tons gross – a small vessel with crew of 13 all told. John Isbester is recorded in the official log book10 as John Ibister, one of numerous familiar corruptions of the name. John Geddie seems to have been a happy ship under the command of George Wellen Smith. The log book records no failures-to-join, no desertions in New Orleans, and no penalties for offences committed, in contrast to her following voyage, a round trip from Liverpool to Halifax under a different master, where each of these misdemeanours were common. By this time, however, John Isbester was aboard the ship Advice, 1,261 tons gross, on the last of his four short voyages.
These voyages lasted from three to four and a half months, including a month or so in the destination port, and were separated by no more than a few days of leave – insufficient time for a return to Shetland. That is not surprising. When I was 20, life at sea was fascinating – there were skills to learn, sights to see and adventures to be had – and time away from home was no hardship. John Isbester did not even have parents to whom to return.
He next joined the barque Beulah, 746 tons nett, for what was to prove a very different voyage. In the space of 20 months she went from Liverpool to Sydney in Cape Breton Island, thence to Darien in Georgia, USA, next to Pensacola in Florida, and from there to Buenos Aires in Argentina. Following a month or so in Buenos Aires, Beulah rounded Cape Horn carrying John Isbester into the Pacific for the first time and working her way north to Portland in Oregon, USA, close to the Canadian border. Her cargo was probably discharged in Portland, and she then moved to Albany, still in Oregon, to load wheat for Europe. As was very common she proceeded via Cape Horn to Queenstown, Ireland, for orders, from where she went immediately to Liverpool to discharge, the passage from Albany having taken four months.
John Isbester paid off on 8 April 1875, at the right time of year for a bit of a holiday and probably with a few pounds in his pocket. He took more than five months’ leave at that time and it is likely that he returned to Shetland for some or all of that summer. While there, staying at Haggersta or visiting his aunt and uncle, he may have learnt that his absent father was in Sydney, Australia.
In September he was back in Liverpool to find a ship. He’d done India, he’d done North and South America, east and west: where was new and where would be interesting? Australia sprang to mind – he might meet his father – and John Isbester joined the iron ship North Riding, 1,432 tons gross, as able seaman for the voyage to Sydney, which port was reached on 19 December, in comfortable time for Christmas 1875. North Riding seems to have spent about five weeks in Sydney before proceeding to Adelaide and then to Port Wakefield in the Spencer Gulf to load wheat, before returning to Adelaide to clear for Queenstown, Ireland, for orders. Seven of the ship’s ABs, including two Shetland men,11 deserted towards the end of the ship’s stay in Sydney in late January 1876. John Isbester, however, remained to complete the voyage in Liverpool paying off, in August 1876, with a healthy £30.7s.11d.12
My grandfather used to mention that he had met his own father on his own early voyages to Australia.13 In fact this was the only early voyage that he made to Australia, though he called there regularly during the last 15 years of his life.
He was of course referring to my great-grandfather, John Isbister, who had probably left Shetland in the 1850s, and earned a living intermittently
