March 10, 2016
In yesterday’s blog article (I Have the Name of the Ship and the Year He Came Over – Now What?), I tracked the ship Hector that took my family to America in 1834.
I approached this research thinking this would be easy. I began by searching in GenealogyBank’s Historical Newspaper Archives for articles about the ship Hector.
I simply searched by the name of the ship and the years that bracket my family’s arrival on 29 July 1834. That produced over 1,700 search results, so I limited the results to just the articles about shipping using the Passenger Lists search page.
That produced 258 search results – I can work with that.
There – I spotted this article.
Great – that’s their ship. This is going to be easy.
But wait – what is this?
Another ship Hector?
The same day the Charleston Courier was reporting that the ship Hector, bound for Liverpool, had cleared Mobile on 13 March 1834, another Charleston, South Carolina, newspaper (the Southern Patriot) was reporting that the brig Hector had arrived in Troon, Scotland.
The ship Hector cannot be in two places at once.
So, there were at least two ships named Hector.
Hmm…better dig deeper.
This newspaper article from the Charleston Courier gives us the answer and tells us more about this ship.
The article refers to it as the “new ship Hector” and tells us that Captain William Williams had started this voyage in New York City and had stopped in Key West, Florida, before arriving in Mobile, Alabama, on 8 January 1834.
So – the ship Hector that my family traveled on is referred to as the “new” ship Hector. Good information. I’ll need to look carefully at articles about the ship Hector, checking to see who the captain was in order to sort out which ship is which.
The article also tells us more of the history of this ship:
The [ship] H. [Hector] was driven ashore on a part of Florida Reef called Great Conch Reef, 21st ult. [21 January 1834] – was got off however, with merely the loss of her false keel, the vessel sustaining it is believed very little damage – having put into Key West, after a very short detention, proceeded on her voyage – the cargo is supposed to be in a sound state.
Use GenealogyBank to gather the information about the ship your family took to come to America. You might find that there were multiple ships with the same name – and interesting details of the voyages, including storms and damage/repairs they experienced.
It’s a Great Day for Genealogy!
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