Bedford
14 June 1882
My dear Chris
Your letter from Albany came a few days since. Glad to hear
you were well and happy.
The Sobroan docked in the 25th May. The passage was long
from Table Bay and East winds in the North Atlantic kept us out
many days. We had six deaths from consumption and a fatal accident from aloft in the rig a ????? Boy named Wheeler
All else were well when we came home but since I have had an attack of severe cold ????????? which have kept me at home for more than a week. I am getting better.
Mater has been ill with cold at same time. All others are well.
I am afraid the plausible basics made by such men as you may
often meet in the P&O ????? are very tempting to young men but
little comes of them when the test came. In any case now a days
when thousands of young men gone out to sea for a living in the
Colonies every station is avarice with candidates paying a price and where the necessary experience is obtained. and you want a place to earn money you may possibly get a pittance for hard & manual work in some of the many stations where you are virtually banished from society to curb inaction and without a prospect of ever doing any good for yourself money is more than ever necessary to obtain a footing in the Colonies now and you would
have plenty and not the risk of losing it.
You are very well where you are and your wisest course is to reassess as you get older your dream of fortune nevertheless will pass away and you will see things from another point of view.
One of the Lewis’s came home with me ??? I think he had been four years in the bush with an uncle. You could not conceive
a more degraded looking old looking young man. He seemed to have quite forgotten all good manners and even how to hold himself when speaking to anyone. Untidy, uncouth, dirty. Such a picture of young man who had good early training and a good education I never saw and sooner than see you in any one of mine- so far degraded I would have you earn your daily bread in the humbled way at home. A life in the colonies does not elevate and lowers even those who have wealth and all that a good position can command. You must have seen them in many cases in your short experience.
As you are coming home we will have plenty of opportunities of discussing this further.
Meantime try and think where you are and how many dozen would be glad to get there at any price and how much you would regret leaving if after a few years of colonial life your health broke down or you left it in disgust, your reflection might be if I had staid here I should have been chief by this time. Now I am no where When I was Mate of La Hogue in 1858 a fine young man named Bank was second in the Duncan Dunbar then a new ship he had served his time probably with Neatby the Captain and had been 3 in the La Hogue the previous voyage with Capt Neatby – before the Duncan Dunbar was built on this first voyage
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a wealthy squatter had taken some fancy to him and encouraged him to give up the sea and take to station life promising to take
him on one of his stations & ?? for him. He went home and returned next year on the understanding that he was to be discharged in Sydney which he was. This was in 1859 ??
In 1872 the first voyage of the Sobraon to Melbourne you remember we went round to Sydney with David Walker ??
this man came and spoke to me on board told me who he was
said he was then 2nd mate with Waalker and told me something of his history. Since I had ast heard of him he went on a station the ?? who induced him to leave the sea lived on from year to year in a small ????
After wasting 8 or 9 years and no prospect of this man doing anything for him he gave it up in disgust and is to begin life at sea again. He is now in command of one of the ASN&Co steamers.
I have not heard of or from Col Hackett. ?? I don’t think he can have succeeded in getting land.
The weather is stormy and cold and wet. The country wants sunshine and not another disastrous season.
All the children are well. Archie carpentering.
With love from self and Mater
I am always
Your loving father
J A Elmslie