Brigg Matters Issue 61 Summer 2021

daughters married, Master
Mariners.
On gaining his Master’s
Certificate in 1853,
Charles immediately
became Mate on the SS
Great Britain which, after
a troubled decade since
her launch, had just been
refitted in order to take
emigrants to Australia as
a consequence of the gold
rushes there. She was the
Concorde of her day, using
a combination of steam and
sail power to take up to
700 passengers in varying
degrees of comfort at record
speeds because she could
continue under steam in
light winds.
Charles served under
Captain Gray for much
of his time on the Great
Britain, completing 14
return voyages in total,
the last three as Captain
following the disappearance
overboard and presumed
suicide of Gray.
You would expect a
Master Mariner’s life to be
adventurous, and Charles’
does not disappoint. One
of the (literally) tall tales he
told Mother Mary at dinner
concerned being taken by
the King of the Friendly
Islands (Tonga) to the palace
to meet the Queen who, towering above his 5’9” frame,
caused him to climb on a chair in order to perform the
traditional greeting!
The Great Britain was refitted twice and, with Chapman
as Officer, took British troops to overseas conflicts, firstly
in 1855—as reported in the Stamford Mercury—to the
Crimean War, and in 1857 to the Indian Uprisings.
Shortly after this Chapman was given his own command,
the Thetis, built in Canada. It briefly held the Blue
Riband for the fastest crossing of the North Atlantic but
in 1866 it was shipwrecked on an unmarked island in
Isambard Kingdom Brunel with the chains of the SS Great Britain
the Pacific. Chapman took six of his crew in a longboat
to try to get help but it was a month before they were
rescued and longer still before help could be sent for the
remaining 26 crew members. We wonder whether his
family knew anything until his safe return.
Chapman was only to make three return trips to Australia
as Captain of the Great Britain. It is understood that on
his way to rejoin SS Great Britain, in dock in Liverpool,
he fell from a horse-drawn tram creating the medical
condition from which he later died in 1875 aged 53.
Although still a relatively young man, he had lived a life
few of us could match.
This year marks the
200th anniversary of
his birth and, but for
the pandemic, it would
have been celebrated it
in style this Summer on
board the wonderfullyrenovated
Great Britain
moored in its original
dry dock in Bristol and
attended by over 100
descendants from all over
the world.
At the time of writing
no known descendants
are living in the Brigg
or North Lincolnshire
area. It would be so
appropriate should any
be found as Rick and
his wife are intending
to revisit Brigg and
Broughton in the near
future to continue
their research into the
Chapman family.
Poster for SS
Great Britain
The SS Great Britain was the first iron-hulled ship designed as a passenger ocean-going vessel to be fitted with
the revolutionary screw propeller. Designed and constructed in Bristol by the famous Victorian civil/maritime
engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, she was launched in 1843 with her maiden voyage in 1845. She was,
until 1854 the world’s largest passenger ship.
Initially proposed for transatlantic routes, for which she gained the record of the fastest crossing of 13½ days, SS
Great Britain was re-designated to the Far East and Australia routes.
She had an illustrious but varied career, refitted from a 350- to over 700-passenger liner; officially sold for scrap,
but brought back into service; used as a troop-carrier and, in later life, becoming a store ship and a static coal
bunker in the Falkland Islands. In this latter role she fuelled the Royal Navy’s Southern Atlantic fleet during WW1
and part of the metal structure was used to repair HMS Exeter, severely damaged during its skirmish with the
German ship Admiral Graf Spee during the Battle of the River Plate in WW2 (December 1939).
In 1970 the SS Great Britain’s abandoned hulk was recovered and brought back to Bristol where it now forms
the city’s number 1 tourist attraction as one of this country’s National Heritage Fleet.
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Brigg Matters
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