#17872 Abraham Sutton at 22 years, Master of Jane & Mary Anne of Cork. The age recorded is consistent with his baptismal record as the son of Robert Sutton and Catherine Murphy of Ring, Clonakilty. #17876 George Sutton at age 31, Master of William Brown of Cork. UK M&M documents his birth in Clonakilty (Section 2: Fig. 2)
#17877 Nathaniel Sutton at 41 years, born in Clonakilty, Master of Industry of Cork.
#17878 William Sutton at 21 years, mariner on Hannah of Cork. UK M&M documents his birth in Clonakilty (Section 4: Charles and this Appendix: Fig. 47) and his captaincy of the Mary in 1845. #17879 Thomas Sutton at 38 years, Master of James Carmichael of Cork. His Clonakilty birthplace has been documented in UK Nat. Archives BT98/616 documents.
Safety at Sea
( Canada, Old Head )
‘ Statistics have not yet been seriously examined, but it seems not unlikely that the wooden square-rigged sailing ship, ambling about the coasts and over the seas of the world at an average speed, if she was well-designed and equipped, well-commanded and well-managed, of about five miles an hour, and more especially the fast wooden sailing ship sailed fast, were probably the most dangerous vehicles ever regularly used by man ’ (Greenhill 1980). The nineteenth century ‘ saw literally thousands of horrific shipwrecks, scores of them in Irish waters ’ (De Courcy 1986). Section 4 of this research, the Catalogue of nineteenth-century sailing ships, documents the loss of many vessels at sea in the category ‘Fate of Ship’. De Courcy (1986) highlighted two major nineteenth-century safety improvements. The first was the Irish Lifeboat Service of which the first station opened at Dún Laoghaire in 1803. Design was improved during the century, but ‘ it was not till motor engines were fixed in lifeboats early in this (twentieth) century that the chance of surviving shipwreck in Irish waters began to be taken, more or less, for granted ’ ( ibid ). Andrew Hennessy of the Passage shipyard of Cork designed and built a prototype lifeboat in 1825 that was highly praised but not adopted (O’Mahony 1986 ). Courtmacsherry’s Lifeboat Service began in that same year of 1825. The Ballycotton Lifeboat Station was established in 1858 and their first vessel was powered by oar and sail (see Troubadour for a later event). The Queenstown Lifeboat Station was established in 1866. Some of the lifeboat coxswains bore names that were familiar in the Cork maritime community: Captain W D Seymour 1872 – 9, Captain N Sutton Dep HM 1879 – 83 and Captain G Osborne RN 1883 – 919 ( Crosshaven Lifeboat | RNLI – The charity that saves lives at sea ). The second safety improvement mentioned by De Courcy was avoidance of ship overloading by the 1876 introduction of the Plimsoll Line on all merchant ships, above which they could not be loaded. Samuel Plimsoll’s work had been stimulated by reports he received on the overloading of Irish cattle boats and emigrant ‘ coffin ships ’ .
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