Saturday, January 17, 2015

Souvenir Saturday: the barque Priscilla and Thomas Alfred Gadsden





The clipper barque Priscilla which brought my great great grandfather, Thomas Alfred  Gadsden, to Natal in June 1863. The Priscilla, one of the earliest of the White Cross clippers (others were the Silvery Wave, the Verulam, Isabella Hartley and Burton Stather) was a frequent visitor to the Colony during the 1860s and 70s.

Advertisements in The Natal Mercury reveal that the Priscilla in November 1863 made the fastest passage then on record from Natal to England, i.e. 52 days.






For more on her captain, Brown, see
http://molegenealogy.blogspot.com/2013/04/souvenir-saturday-captain-george-brown.html

.For more on Thomas Alfred Gadsden and Priscilla see Keeper of the Bluff Light:
http://molegenealogy.blogspot.com/2014/08/keeper-of-bluff-light-thomas-alfred.html


Acknowledgement: Tom Chivers


2 comments:

ANDREW VAN RENSBURG said...

beautiful painting!

Mole said...

Yes isn'r ir?! A totally serendipitous finding via Twitter - made contact with a descendant of Captain Geo Brown of the Priscilla. I had searched in vain for a painting of this barque for many years. Thrilled to have the image.
Mole