The Nurse Family and Purton
My first real awareness of my family’s shipping connections was in 1974, when my Aunt Marjorie (Miss Margaret Ellen Nurse) wrote a letter to the Bridgwater Mercury.
To quote from her letter,
“I first visited Bridgwater in the 1920s when the
docks were a hive of activity with sailing craft
coming and going on every tide. I can still smell
the scent of the pine as timber from Scandinavia
was unloaded on the quayside. I remember the
grace of the Sunshine and the strength of the
Charles and Frank Nurse. Many were the arguments over the later ship. Martin and Job Nurse
extolling the merits of the older craft to the detriment of the handsome interloper. Only recently
have I learnt that the C&F Nurse was a metal
built schooner and therefore an affront to the
wooden ships beloved by the older sailor.”
Research has shown that my branch of the family was descended from John and Louisa Nurse who had lived in Epney, Gloucestershire and moved to Bridgwater, Somerset in about 1880. John had a younger brother, David. David became a successful ship owner and he and his descendants are described in the book, “The Nurse Family of Bridgwater and Their Ships” by James Nurse. Charles and Frank Nurse, the ship owners of Commercial Road, Gloucester, were cousins.
Aunt Marjorie’s letter produced a response from Wilf Rowles who was related to the Nurse family. Wilf was a remarkable person, possibly best known for his book, “Sharpness, the Country Dock”. He had been at sea for over forty-five years, twenty-five of which he was master of coastal tankers. Wilf had built up a collection of over 3,000 photographs of vessels that came into Sharpness and Gloucester.
In the several letters he wrote to my Aunt, Wilf gave details of the Nurse family
ships. He had a stock of wonderful phrases like “Iron men in wooden ships” and he
quoted Kipling when describing the sacrifices made by old time mariners:
“If blood be the price of Admiralty
Lord God we have paid in full.”
Three Nurse ships ended their days on the Gloucester shores of the Severn; the C&F Nurse, the Guide and the Island Maid.
Let Wilf recall the C&F Nurse.
“The last time I saw the C&F Nurse under sail was in the early 1930s. I was with
my father in a little coasting steamer owned in Bristol and we had called into Dover
for bunkers. Captain Kelly, then master and owner of the C&F Nurse asked father if
he could tow him clear of the land. This we did and I can see father now, watching
the old vessel until we lost her, hull down. She was a fast ship and once sailed from
the Elbe to Glasgow, north about, through the Pentland Firth in three and a half days
and that is wild water at any time. Eventually the little lady came back to Sharpness
and was purchased by the Gloucester Dock Company, who stripped her down to
become a humble barge on the Gloucester & Berkeley Canal under the name of Enterprise. The latter day bargemen did not like her due to the fact that she swam
through the water very easily. When I worked the Gloucester tugs and towed her
down the canal, we used to let her go at Purton and she would carry her way to
Sharpness, approximately one mile. Around the middle 1950s she was taken out on
the foreshore at Sharpness and cut up, but the bottom part of her still remains above
the North Pier.”
That was written in 1975 and the remains of the C&F Nurse are now completely buried. However that might not be the end of the story. Recently a rudder has been revealed in the vicinity of the North Pier, which might, just might, be from the C&F Nurse.
Remnants of the other two Nurse family ships, the Guide and the Island Maid are in the Purton Graveyard.
The Guide was a wooden schooner, originally rigged
as a brigantine, built in Dartmouth in 1854 and registered at Weymouth for much of her
life, even while
under Nurse ownership. Records at the Dorset History
Centre reveal an adventurous life sailing to such Mediterranean ports as Alexandria. She took part in the
cattle trade, importing cattle from Corunna in Spain
for the Army and Navy Commissariate.
She was owned by C&F Nurse in the 1880s and captained by Frank Nurse and by George Nurse. George climbed aloft near the South Stack, Anglesey to determine his position and was never seen again. Frank was on the Lucy Johns which was lost with all hands off Cornwall in December 1910.
Eventually the Guide was purchased by G.T. Beard of Gloucester, who changed her name to Shamrock, stripped her down and she worked on the Canal until the middle 1930s when she was taken to the ships’ graveyard.
The Island Maid was launched at Plymouth in 1863 and described in a local paper as a very handsome clipper schooner intended for the fruit trade. When the fruit trade was lost to steam ships, the Island Maid like the Guide, was engaged in the cattle trade. In 1975 Wilf wrote, “A few years ago you could still see the rings to which the cattle were tethered but the ravages of time have dealt harshly with the little lady.”
From 1884 to 1891 the Island Maid was Brixham owned. She was then purchased by Frank and Charles Nurse and Harry Edward
Field. Finally in 1907 she was dismantled and became a barge on the Sharpness Canal and renamed the Orby.
I would like to quote again from my Aunt Majorie’s letter. “My father spent his childhood with an Uncle John and Aunt Margaret at Epney in Gloucester. When I was eleven years old we travelled from Gloucester on the Gloucester-Sharpness paddle steamer and were met by Great Aunt Margaret in a pony and trap.”
Uncle John and Aunt Margaret lived at Epney Villa. Aunt Margaret was the daughter of Richard Hillman, a ship owner. In one census, she was listed as a barge owner. Aunt Margaret came from Stonehouse so could this have been a Stroudwater barge? The paddle steamer referred to was presumably one of the canal packet boats, the Wave or the Lapwing.
A visitor to Purton today will see little of the Guide or the Island Maid. However, with my brother Michael and my cousins John and Bernard, I am happy to sponsor a plaque for the Island Maid to commemorate the sailors of the Nurse family and to remember Aunt Marjorie whose letter opened the door to the fascinating world of our ancestors who plied their trade along the Bristol Channel.
Peter Nurse
January 2011