The Concertina at Sea - The Anglo-German Concertina

II. A Compendium of Occurrences
The 1850s
Figure 2. The schooner Allen Gardiner, at Banner Cove,
Tierra del Fuego, October 1855. From Harper’s New
Monthly Magazine, 1861
In October 1854, a two-masted, 88 ton schooner named the
Allen Gardiner set sail from Bristol, England. Named for
the founder of a mission on the Falkland Islands, this ship
was built for the ‘Patagonian or South American Mission
Society’ for the purpose of converting the native
inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego to Christianity. There are
several accounts of this voyage, which is of interest as the
earliest yet-documented use of a concertina at sea. After
nearly a year in transit, the vessel arrived at Tierra del
Fuego, and contact with the natives commenced:
Sunday Morning, October 21 1855. We entered Banner
Cove, a charming place and first rate anchorage, being
well-nigh landlocked. We had no sooner cast anchor than
somebody cried out, ‘There they are- the natives are
coming off!’ All eyes were strained in the direction pointed
out, and soon a canoe, with an old woman and three men,
paddled towards us. …We beckoned for them to come
nearer- and invitation they speedily accepted, and two of
them were assisted up the ship’s side. …They were
delighted with the several trifles given to them, and the
crew dressed the old man in a pair of trousers, tarpaulins
and cap…They walked up and down the deck with
Bunning, who was quite free and humorous with them, and
they wanted everything they saw. …They were remarkable
mimics; whatever you said was repeated by them, and your
actions closely watched and faithfully imitated….we tried
what effect music would have on them, the captain striking
a few notes on the concertina; we afterward sang the
doxology, to which they listened with much attention. 2
Another member of the party, W.P. Snow, recounted,
‘They did not like a looking-glass when shown to them,
but the music of a concertina delighted them
exceedingly.’ 3 This reference shows that the concertina
could indeed survive a long sea voyage, and moreover that
its use at sea was not considered remarkable at the time.
The mission was ill-fated; four years later the crew of the
vessel was attacked at harbor off the island, and all but one
of that crew perished at the hands of the native population.
Also in 1855, a three-masted clipper ship named the White
Star (ex-Blue Jacket) was sailing from Liverpool to
Melbourne, Australia, carrying 600 immigrants. The White
Star, at 2339 tons and 288 feet in length, was one of the
fastest ships afloat in her day, and became the first of the
famed White Star passenger fleet. The passengers
published an onboard newsletter, with the following
announcement:
The choir, composed of Miss Ford, the Messrs. Miller, Mr.
Seward, the Messrs. Ford, &c, and accompanied on the
concertina by Herr Kohler. (They) have greatly improved
since they commenced singing together, and, last Sunday,
chaunted the “Venite” and “Jubilate”… 4
Herr K W Kohler appears to have been a passenger, and
was the treasurer of the passenger’s organization on that
voyage.
Figure 3. The British clipper White Star, ca. 1855. From
an original lithograph in the Peabody Essex Museum,
Salem, Massachusetts; www.pem.org
In 1859, a young American named Kimble Bent, who had
joined the British Army in Ireland, became disaffected
with this service and deserted, by joining the crew of the
Boston bark Maria. The ship was sailing from Cork to
Boston,
…when about three hundred miles off the land a furious
easterly gale began to blow, and the old barkey sprang a
leak. Hove-to in the storm, all the crew could do was to
stand to the pumps. The huge Atlantic seas came
thundering on deck, and more than once washed the men
away from the pumps. For six days and six nights they
wallowed in the deep, all hands, sailors and passengers,
taking turns at the pumps, working for their lives. All those
terrible days of storm and fear the Maria's hands had
nothing to eat but hard biscuits soaked with salt water.
There was no place to cook and no means of cooking, for
the galley with all its contents had been washed overboard.
While the crew laboured at the pumps, the captain tried to
cheer them up and put a little life into their weary bodies
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