The Dove, a BMS Ship

The Dove, a seventy-ton ironclad steam-powered schooner complete with an Archimedes screw, was used for the transportation of missionaries to Jamaica and West Africa. The ship was built by John Laird of Birkenhead in 1843 at a cost of £2,140. An engraving of the ship appeared in the Missionary Herald (October 1843), 541, with a detailed description on the following page. An announcement of the launch of the Dove from the shipyard in Liverpool on 11 November 1843 appeared in the Missionary Herald (December 1843, 683); in the brief notice, a writer for the Liverpool Standard was quoted as saying, “We do not remember to have seen a vessel of more beautiful model, or one more likely to be found a good sea boat in a gale, and swift sailer under ordinary circumstances.” Such was not the case, however, for by the end of January 1844, the BMS Committee declared the Dove “not seaworthy for both sailing & steaming purposes.” An agreement was reached between Laird and the Committee, in which a new boat would be built, using the engines and paddles from the old boat. The cost of the boat (now 90 feet in length) was valued at £1300 and would be ready in four months. Half the loss of the first boat would be covered by the BMS, and the other half by Laird, who was also responsible for removing and transferring the engines to the new boat. In August 1844 a subcommittee was formed “to ascertain the qualities of the ‘Dove’ as a sea-going vessel, & to report thereon to the Committee.” The next month Laird’s new ship was tested by Captain Walters (the Dove’s first captain who resigned shortly before the ships maiden voyage), who “fully approved of her qualities as a sea-going Boat.”  Shortly thereafter George Bayley, the ship inspector for Lloyd’s Register, gave his approval to the ship. The ship was completed and sailed for London in December 1844 while final arrangements for its purchase were being carried out between Laird and the BMS Committee. In January 1845 the BMS Committee announced that they were “fully satisfied” with the “fitness” of the Dove “for the service for which she is designed, and of her sailing qualities.” On 27 January 1845, a dedication service was held on board the Dove and on 4 February it left Gravesend for Cowes where the missionaries would embark and sail from thence to Fernando Po. The pilot (Thomas Milburn) wrote that “a finer vessel cannot be: indeed I cannot say too much for her qualifications. She is uncommonly stiff under canvas.” By 1847, Clarke had come to believe the ship was not fulfilling its original design and urged the BMS to sell it. As these letters reveal, Clarke had wanted a steam-powered boat small enough to be effective in the rivers of West Africa. The BMS opted for a boat large enough to handle the Atlantic Ocean, but one, they thought, small enough to maneuver along the African rivers; that apparently was not the case. It may also be that the maintenance costs of the boat played just as large a role in its demise. In February 1850, a BMS sub-committee report noted that “owing to the expense attendant upon the maintenance of the Dove . . . immediate steps [should] be taken to bring her home or to dispose of her in Africa.” In 1853 the Dove was sold for £300 to a local trader in West Africa. For a drawing of the Dove, see Baptist Magazine 35 (1843), 541; Missionary Herald (January 1845), 48; (March 1845), 158-59; Geoffrey R. Breed, “The Dove,” Baptist Quarterly 40 (2004), 440-42; Ernest A. Payne, The First Generation: Early Leaders of the Baptist Missionary Society in England and India (London: Carey Press, [1936]), 79. (f. 188); BMS Committee Minutes, Vol. H (Oct. 1841-Dec. 1842), ff. 192; Vol. I (January 1843-May 1844), ff. 9, 14, 27, 29-30, 33, 35, 64, 70, 182, 186-88, 201; Vol. J (May 1844-July 1847), ff. 8, 28-29, 40, 43, Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford.