SS Accrington
 

Here's a photo of Accrington....the original painting is with the New Zealand National Gallery....A little bit different from the usual, but's there's a good story there to...

...there have been at least 2 ships named Accrington; the above, an iron hulled square rigger of the latter part of the 19c which worked the UK/OZ/NZ routes, and HMS Accrington which was a WW2 convoy protection vessel and which was credited with saving over 150 lives over 36 Convoys. More will be said later, when I can find a bit more time...

..like the story of the captain & senior officers getting poisoned by the crew. Fatally.

SS Accrington
 

I look forward to the rest of the story with bated breath!

I always thought you was the S.S. Accrington Tealeaf as in Super Stud

I put that behind me years ago...

"horror voyage on the ship "Accrington"

Investigations reveal that the "Accrington" once went on a vogage that went horribly wrong, when it was ferrying troops to India in 1859.
When it arrived there, 65 of the crew were dead, including the Captain and his first mate. A crew member, described as "a gentleman of colour", was later brought to trial in Southampton, but, although he apparently admitted giving poison to the captain and first mate, the magistrates ruled there was no case to answer to because of the officers' extreme cruelty on the voyage.

The accused man is believed to have killed the pair after 63 people had died on the passage to India, through the brutal regime imposed by the ship's master. The very cruel ways in which the captain and his chief mate had been towards both crew and passengers, had made them extremely unpopular. They used brute force and even the women on board did not escape violence at their hands. One morning, the steward, put a quantity of tartar emetic into some coffee.

"Both the captain and the mate died from the effects of the poison but the ship's surgeon, narrowly escaped with his life.

I never knew anything about this Tealeaf. See! You learn something every day.

June
__________________

Thanks to Atarah for the above!

Very Interesting that one Atarah.One lives and learn

SS Accrington
 

Hi, just found out that the Accrington was built in Nantes in 1855 and originally christened "Francois Arago" - but its name was changed when it was converted into an all-sail cutter - but ... think about it ......that must be where ARAGO STREET here in Accrington gets its name from eh?

Atarah

Hells Bells! I did'nt even know there was an Arago Street in Accy........where about's is it? You'll have to forgive me...I left Church in 1974 & although I'm back every 2/3 weeks I don't get about as much as I used to & as such my memory and knowledge of streets gets a little dim at times.

I know the ship was originally christened "Francois Arago" (who was he, we wonder?) and that it was iron hulled & steam powered.........so they took the engine out & made it all sail. This is unusual in itself - a retrograde step - or possibly it was a French Engine & alot of crap (My prediction, by the way, is that the QMII will turn out to be a troubled ship)

The more interesting thing is who bought it, refitted it, and changed it's name to Accrington? The detail available on the net relating to the incidents of 63 dieing on the voyage (when at the time a similar voyage to India around the Cape would have possibly resulted in a few deaths, excepting shipwreck or cholera breaking out) states "owner unknown"........yet it appears to have been used a a troopship. The other interesting thing is that Casman - the steward who poisioned Homer & Cooper, the Captain & 1st mate respectively, was described at the trial as "a gentlemen of colour", which in those days = guilty. Yet he walked free.

There is a mystery here.....there certainly appears to have been some form of cover up. No one I know in Accy has heard of the SS Accy & what happened - & I only heard at the NMM 16 years ago...so maybe there is a story to be told.

No. 691:
FRANCOIS ARAGO AND WATT


by John H. Lienhard
Click here for audio of Episode 691.

Today, a French scientist tries to redirect his country. The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.

It's 1834. A famed scholar rises to address the French Academy of Sciences. He's François Arago. Arago was born on the eve of the French Revolution. He trained at the Ecole Polytechnique -- Napoleon's great think tank. When he was only 23, the Ecole made him a professor of mathematics.

First Arago worked in astronomy -- then in optics and electricity. He helped prove that light moves in waves. He measured the speed of sound in ice. He worked on the polarization of light. His electrical work anticipated Faraday.

But Arago looked beyond science toward its use. His work on electricity found use in telegraph systems. He took part in the study of steam boiler explosions.

In his mid-40s, he went a step further. He took up politics. His verve and charisma won liberal causes, like abolishing slavery in French colonies and improving conditions for sailors.

Now Arago rises to take on another radical cause. The theoretical French have let their industry fall far behind the practical English. The French look at England the way we've started looking at Japan.

Arago's lecture is one the French Academy isn't ready for. It's about England's James Watt. He starts by acknowledging two French thinkers who had the idea of a steam engine. But, he says, it took the English to put flesh and blood on the idea.

The English built the actual engines. The only science that helped them was the science of their own shrewd observations.

And, he adds, those engines have improved the life of the poor. With that he's gone too far. French intellectuals preferred to see English machines as evil. Arago faces an angry outcry.

Soon after, he wrote a second paper to defend himself. He titled it, "On Machinery Considered in Relation to the Prosperity of the Working Classes." It says things most of us take for granted: Machines don't steal jobs, they create them. Machines make goods affordable to the poor. And so on.

By now, of course, the new engines really had become monsters. Four years after Arago's talk, Charles Dickens published Oliver Twist. Dickens woke the English public to the horrors of industrial slums. A new wave of social reform began.

But Arago celebrates the humanitarian impulse that drove people like James Watt in the first place. Watt really had created machines in the interests of the common people -- of whom he was one. And which of us would exchange our common lives today for the lives we lived before Watt -- or before Arago.

I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston, where we're interested in the way inventive minds work.

Arago Street
 

Hi Tealeaf, its off 137 Burnley Road, Accrington. I have often wondered how it got its name, now I know!

Blooming heck Tealeaf that was a gobfull

o wot an interesting post this keep up the good work atarah & of course tealeaf im enjoying it very much thanks /