My 3x great grandfather Lazarus Roberts does not mention his seventh and youngest son, Edward, in his will. Had he, like his brother Charles, also been lost to the family? Sadly, he had. 

Edward Parrey Roberts was born at Brightlingsea, Essex on 2 January 1843:

All Saints Brightlingsea, born 2 Jan 1843, baptised 6 Feb 1843, Edward Parrey son of Lazarus and Mary ROBERTS, Brightlingsea, Lieutenant in the Royal Navy.

The origin of his middle name is unknown. Perhaps he was named after the Arctic explorer William Edward Parry, famous in the 1840s for his expeditions in search of the Northwest Passage?

Edward Roberts’s life was a short one with a tragic ending, but using available records and newspaper reports it is possible to piece together a narrative of his brief life and time in the Royal Navy.

Great Yarmouth

By the 1850s the family had moved to Great Yarmouth, on the Norfolk coast and when the 1851 census was taken eight-year-old Edward was at Harrison’s Buildings, St George’s Road, with his father Lazarus, his mother Mary (my 3x great grandparents) and his brothers Alfred and Arthur and sisters Ellen and Catherine, and a maid. His grown-up siblings, including my great-great grandfather James, had already left home.

Edward’s Yarmouth was the one described by Charles Dickens as ‘lying in a straight low line under the sky’, seablown and smelling of fish, pitch, okum and tar and echoing to the rattle of carts on cobbles. When Edward turned six, in January 1848, Dickens visited the fishing town to gather material for his new novel, David Copperfield, and found it to be ‘the strangest place in the wide world’. 

Edward was slightly younger than Dickens’ fictional protagonist, but if he ever read David Copperfield – first published in book format in 1850 – he might have recognised the boathouse on the sands, home to Peggotty’s family, and St Nicholas churchyard, where Dickens had Ham buried and where Edward’s mother Mary was laid to rest in 1855 (see here). Edward may even have found the characters familiar: Dickens based some of them on people he met at Yarmouth.

It is perhaps ironic that the story of David Copperfield should also feature the wrecking of a boat in a fierce storm, just off the coast, in which a character is drowned. But more on shipwrecks in a bit...

HMS Swallow

In April 1862, aged just nineteen, Edward was back in Plymouth, where he joined the steam sloop HMS Swallow, under Captain Wilds, preparing to depart on a four-year surveying expedition to the Far East. For Edward this would be cut tragically short.

HMS Swallow was attached to the Hydrographic Office, its task to survey, measure and map the islands and coastlines of the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea. These mapping activities were essentially to keep sea lanes clear of any obstacles to navigation and trade, which for the British Empire meant primarily tea and opium.

From here the Swallow sailed north, along the East China coast to Hong Kong and Shanghai, then up to Japan and Korea, leaving the warmer waters of the East China Sea for the less hospitable Yellow Sea. Such a journey was not without peril. There was much resentment of foreign interference amongst the Chinese population: the following year, the British ship Martha & Emily ran aground in bad weather near the island of Taiwan and was overcome by rebels armed with spears and knives. The captain of this ship was shot in the head as he looked over the rail (Lloyd's Illustrated Newspaper, 1 February 1863). The threat of attack was never far away, at least in the minds of the Europeans.

But the Swallow was not here to wage war. Reports to the Royal Geographical Society summarise their activities:

Mr. Edward Wilds, Master, commanding the Swallow, with his staff, have carried meridian distances to Singapore, to Pulo Condore, Sapato, Hong-kong, and Shang-hai, and resurveyed the shallows of Wu-sung River, leading to the last-named place. The Swallow is now engaged in the Japan Sea. [May 1863]

The Swallow, under Mr. Wilds, has been employed in the northern portion of the Chinese waters. Its commander has made new chronometric measurements between Hong Kong, Shanghai, Nagasaki, Yokuhama, and the Korea, and surveyed 700 miles of coast-line, including part of the Korean Archipelago; Chin Chu Bay, on the south coast of Shan-tung; also the harbour of Amoa, a good plan of which was much required. [May 1864]

The botanist suffered badly from seasickness, but he was able to dine with the officers – with whom, it was reported, he got on with well and who were ‘mostly of the navigating class’. This must have included Edward, at twenty a junior officer still but now promoted to acting second master. Perhaps they passed the time discussing botany? Oldham, according to Wilds, was found to be ‘very zealous and agreeable’ and ‘always on shore collecting when he had the opportunity’.

Reporting the Disaster

Out of a complement of 108 souls on board, ninety-nine were drowned in the wreck of the Racehorse, poor Edward among them. It was an extraordinary casualty rate and one of the worst maritime disasters of the day. 

According to The Times, Lieutenant Nicolas of the Insolent reported to the Admiralty four days after the incident. On 14 November 1864, Commander Hayes, senior officer of the Navy’s North China Division, also sent an official communication to London, informing them of the loss. 

News of the wreck appeared in all the major newspapers, including the Illustrated London News and The Times, as well as the local press. The Telegraph commented that ‘Sadder yet, almost, is the roll of the men who were on board the Racehorse on their way to join the Insolent at Chefoo ... there must be somebody to whom their death will be a solomn and painful memory.’

List of Men drowned in Her Majesty's ship Racehorse while on passage to join the Insolent at Chefoo: E.P. Roberts, second master; W. Smith, leading stoker; Thomas Simmonds, stoker; Thomas Toucher, ditto; Taff Thomas, ditto; –Brain, ditto; –Coombs, ditto; William Barnes, corporal, Royal Marines; –Marshall, private, Royal Marines; –M'Nellity, ditto; –Robinson, ditto; Daniel Kerney, boy, second class; Robert Herbert, ditto.

Some weeks later, The Times and Telegraph both reported that HMS Rattler had returned from a visit to the wreck and had succeeded in retrieving ‘all her guns, anchors and cables, together with a large quantity of clothing and personal property. The latter are much damaged by salt water and are almost useless’. 

The same week the London and China Telegraph reported that ‘the bodies of Lieut. Farquhar, Dr. Fawcett [surgeon], Mr. Crabbe [assistant paymaster], and thirteen men belonging to the Racehorse, have been recovered by the gun-boat Insolent.’ Fifty-six bodies were eventually recovered and buried on shore. It doesn’t look as if Edward’s was among them.

Interestingly, also lost in the wreck were some botanical specimens from another collector, Frederick Dickins – probably ferns or cones he had gathered at Yokohama – for return to Kew: ‘[He] made a large collection of specimens that he sent home on the HMS Racehorse, which shortly after her departure, was lost near Chefoo’ (see here).

By April 1865, pieces of the broken timbers had been washed ashore on Chefoo (Yantai) beach, as illustrated in the contemporary engraving below, and the remains were partly submerged about sixty yards out. It was apparently so high up at low tide that the upper deck was left dry and could easily be reached by foot from the beach (Hampshire Advertiser).

According to the London and China Telegraph (6 February 1871), the Chinese interpreter and consul M.C. Morrison was one who walked over the sands and ‘camped out for three months during a severe winter on the wreck of H.M.S. Racehorse ... in order to carry on communications with the Chinese for the benefit of the survivors, and, if possible, to save the ship’. It is not quite clear to what end or how succesful this was, nor which winter it was.

The Aftermath

The last time Lazarus saw his youngest son, just twenty-one when he died, was probably in April 1862, when the Swallow sailed from Plymouth Sound. Presumably the Admiralty informed him that Edward was missing by the end of 1864: it was recalled that news reached Sheerness around then. He would have read the first full accounts of the wreck of the Racehorse in the British press early in the new year. It is very unlikely that any of Edward’s personal possessions ever found their way back to Lazarus.

Reports of the disaster did not go unchallenged. Questions were asked in the press: how so many men could have perished so quickly, so close to land; why the captain was one of so few to be rescued and why ‘a fine ship, fully manned and equipped, was knocked to pieces in an hour or two by a swell rising so suddenly’ (Essex Standard, 6 January 1865). The same newspaper also wondered why Captain Boxer’s initial accounts were conveyed through Lieutenant Nicolas of the Insolent, commenting, perhaps a shade sarcastically, ‘We must presume that Captain Boxer was himself too ill or too much exhausted to give any description of the event in his own handwriting’.

But whatever doubts were raised, there was no inquiry. In the spring of 1865, Lazarus would have read in the press that the remains of the Racehorse had been sold at Chefoo for a ‘trifling sum’ and that Captain Boxer was court-martialled at Yokohama, the conclusion being that he had made insufficient allowance for the current between the cape and Chefoo but was praised for his attempts to save the ship once they were in trouble. William Lowlett, the boatswain, was also singled out for praise at the court-martial for his conduct during the ordeal. 

In May 1865 it was reported that the survivors – the ‘Racehorse men’, with whom Edward had all too briefly shared conversation, cabin space and food – had arrived back at Spithead on board the Tartar. Captain Boxer had received severe injuries to his arms ‘through falling spars’. He recovered and was promoted through the ranks, eventually making rear admiral, retired early at his own request and died in Upper Norwood in 1887, aged fifty-four. Although his obituary does mention that he captained the Racehorse, no reference is made to its disastrous end under his command.

Individual death notices of those drowned began to appear in British newspapers in January 1865, such as the Gentleman’s Magazine, which detailed the typically ‘heroic career’ of the ship’s surgeon, James Edward Fawcett, ‘a son of the Rev. James Fawcett, Vicar of Knaresborough ... born at Woodhouse, in Leeds, in April, 1834’ and twenty-two-year-old Richard Crabbe, ‘Assist.-Paymaster, R.N., third son of the late Benjn. Crabbe, esq , Strabane, co. Tyrone’.

Edward’s appeared in the Herts Gazette (his middle name slightly misspelled):

Wrecked in H.M.S., Racehorse, Edward Parry Roberts, Esq, R.N , youngest son of Captain L. Roberts R.N , and brother of W. P. Roberts, Esq., Surgeon, Cheshunt-street, Cheshunt.

Quite a few Racehorse men had connections with Kent and Sussex. The South Eastern Gazette of 18 January 1865 carried the death notices of chief engineer George Dooley of Worthing and the ship’s steward, George Hearsey of Canterbury, as well as John Kirby, the twenty-four-year-old quartermaster, of Hythe. The Dover Telegraph carried a slightly longer death notice of Thomas Dobbin, the ship’s surgeon, aged twenty-nine:

Thomas Dobbin, who held the post of master on board the Racehorse, and who was the second son of the late Thomas Dobbin, Esq., R.N., whose widow now resides at Charlton, Dover. The deceased was a promising officer, and none who knew him will learn the sad news without a thrill of pain, at so abrupt a termination of the life of one who bid fair to be a good naval officer as well as an ornament to society. Of the ship’s company who were drowned, we hear of more than one who was connected by kinship or acquaintance with inhabitants of this town [Dover]. Commander Charles K. F. Boxer, who was fortunately one of the five [sic] who were saved, we believe, is the third son of the late Capt. Edward Boxer, R.N., of Dover.

Thomas Dobbin’s probate wasn’t granted until 1872, by which time his widow Eliza had remarried: a necessary move for many women in similar positions, once their deceased husband’s money had dried up. 

In the immediate aftermath of the wreck, a committee was formed for the relief of Widows and Relatives of the Officers and Crew of the Racehorse and by the end of the year the Hongkong Committee of the Racehorse Widows and Orphans Fund had received donations totalling about $2,000 from upwards of fifty prominent Hong Kong banks and trading companies, as well as the officers and crew of several ships on the China Station. This was sent home to help those thrown into destitution by the loss of a husband or father in the disaster.

By 1867 it was reported in the press that £261 10s had been paid out to twenty ‘fathers & other relatives’ of those lost. So Lazarus may have applied for a share of this. 

Remembering the Racehorse

The tragedy of HMS Racehorse fell off the headlines fairly quickly after the 1860s, such is the newspaper editor’s fickle appetite for disaster. Even as early as February 1865, the Standard was suggesting that ‘The wreck of Her Majesty’s ship Racehorse seems to a certain extent lost to the public mind’, wondering, ‘Can it be because the accident did not occur in our immediate vicinity, but when our men were serving ... on a foreign station in a time of war that they are so soon forgotten?’ 

By the twentieth century, if the Racehorse was barely remembered at all as an event in naval history, those who perished were soon relegated to a mere statistic. Looking back on a century of shipping disasters in 1901, the Aberdeen Press and Journal ranked the Racehorse as the tenth worst British shipwreck since 1850, in terms of casualties (Aberdeen Press and Journal, 20 September 1901). The names of the ninety-nine men drowned were already lost to history.

The remains of the fifty-six bodies recovered must still lie where they were buried, somewhere near the beach. Where exactly is not known but it could have been Temple Hill cemetery, which overlooked the bay at Chefoo. It seems many of the foreign gravestones here were destroyed during the twentieth century though (see the bottom of this page for a photograph).

A grave in China can have been of little comfort to relatives left behind in Britain to grieve. Gradually, as with Edward’s in Plymouth, names were added to the gravestones of wives and parents. I have found a handful of such memorials scattered around the country.

No doubt most people reading these inscriptions today will wonder what HMSRacehorse was and how it was wrecked.

As a footnote to the story of the Racehorse disaster, I found the following in a book published in 1920:

A wreck, with a funnel above water, lies about 2.2 miles 341° from Chefoo lighthouse. A green buoy is moored on the eastern side of the wreck. (Asiatic Pilot: East Coast of Siberia, Sakhalin Island and Korea, vol. 3)

The Racehorse initially struck a rock ‘two miles east of White Rock’, but that could also be two miles from the lighthouse on Kungtung-Tao island. Even so, it seems unlikely the wreck visible in 1920 mentioned in Asiatic Pilot was the Racehorse: fifty-six years had elapsed by then, and plenty of other ships had been wrecked in these waters over the intervening decades. But if it was, it could be seen as a memorial of sorts to an already forgotten maritime disaster.