The Guy Mannering

The Guy Mannering

We have very little information on the ships most of our ancestors used to travel from Europe to America in the last half of the 19th century. The following information, compiled from various sources gives us a good picture of one of the ships plying the trade between Liverpool, England and New York. The Guy Mannering is first mentioned in Basil Lubbock's 1925 book, The Western Ocean Packets, as an American ship, built by William H. Webb who "was responsible for many of the finest packet ships but also for a goodly number of America's fastest clippers." A packet ship is defined as "a regularly scheduled passenger and cargo boat". From America, packet ships carried flour, grain, cotton and timber eastward to Europe. On their return, as well as passengers, they carried steel and iron.

I will not guarantee that this is the ship Guy Mannering, as it came from an unofficial website.

In William Armstrong Fairborn's Merchant Sail, the ships built by Webb are classified as square-rigged, three-masted, triple-deckers. The Guy Mannering is listed as a packet/general trader of 190 feet. Launched in March 1849 from Webb's docks on the East River at Front Street between Sixth and Seventh Streets, she was a 1,419 ton vessel, one of 18 owned by William and Guion's Black Star Line which was partly British owned.

Her first east-west voyage sailed from Liverpool on May 22, 1849 and arrived in New York, June 28th, a 38-day voyage. Five years later, on April 5, 1854 she arrived in New York from Liverpool with 429 passengers. During this voyage, 8 people died (six of these were children under 2 years of age; two of whom were from one family). There were also two children born during the voyage, but one of them who died nine days later, is one of the unlucky eight. Along with the initial voyage of 1849 and this one in 1854, we know of one other voyage of the Guy Mannering from Liverpool, in 1856. Fairborn tells of two, west to east, runs between NY and Cape Clear, the southern most island, off the coast of Ireland, which were reported to have taken a point-to-point record of nine days. We do not have any information about the dates of these voyages and nothing is heard of this ship after the voyage of 1856. Many other ships employed on this route were later redirected to the California trade.

Because so many immigrants died during the voyages to America in the 1840-70's, the term "Coffin ships" became an effective way to describe the ships generally making the trip. The question is if the Guy Mannering should be considered as such. According to Edward Laxton in his 1996 book The Famine Ships, an American built ship like the Guy Mannering had to conform to US Passenger Laws requiring more space and food allocation for the steerage passengers than ships registered in Britain. Thus, she would not generally be classified today as a "famine ship". However, many ships built in America had the copper bottom attached in England prior to their first return trip. With part British ownership, there is question as to which laws governed treatment of the passengers on the Guy Mannering and whether she could be classified as one of the infamous "coffin ships." From the one passenger list that identifies the dead, we can see that, in reality, mortality seems to have been low.

Contributed by Jerry Tuttle