Dec 11, 2018
Peter,
Peter,
Fascinating to read your comments on Cook’s Endeavor, which I suspect would have been fitted out with leather-related rigging by the Richardson Leatherworks located in Whitby at the same time. Not only that, but my non-blood ancestor Jeremiah Dixon (via my g-grandmother Augusta Ann Dixon Richardson) hitched a ride with Cook for one of his incredible efforts to observe the Transit of Venus. Lots to be found on all that on the internet, these days.
Jeremiah has even become somewhat of a celeb, thanks to my favorite rocker, Mark Knopfler, see: https://youtu.be/HaQS45-
Your Wiki info re the size of the SHWR shipyard is astonishing but perhaps not surprising… in approx 1964, I visited the SHWR “works” in Sunderland, with my father. It was… no small operation!!!
One or more very large ships were under construction… but what I remember most vividly was the enormous size of a marine engine (steam; triple expansion?) being assembled inside a cavernous shipyard building. Seemed to be easily 50′ tall, larger than a large house.
I’m boggled to think what nerve it took to scale-up existing engineering, metalworking, and steam technologies to create such large structures successfully, in the heyday of the late-industrial-revolution. Not to mention… to obtain the capital to finance the bold enterprise. Wigham must have been a genius with bankers in the early days, and he must have had cast iron nerves.
All that said, I don’t believe SHWR had anything to do with Swan yachts or Hunter yachts.
Charlotte Karney Yalouris, a direct descendent of WR via her mother Celia Richardson, now lives in Cambridge MA… and we’re pretty close, which is nice. My genealogical connection to that branch of the family is quite slender, however.
J R
(Personal deleted)