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Cond.
In February 1950, in a heavy fog the William Ashburner ran aground on the rocks while sailing up the River Severn to Sharpness, the crew got off safely but the ship re-floated herself and floated down the river only
To run aground again and this time she was stuck for good. Vandals started to strip her of anything they could sell, and eventually she was sold for scrap to a police officer who burned the wooden ship where she lay and then reclaimed all the copper cladding and plugs from her hull.
The William Ashburner was the largest wooden sailing vessel built at Barrow-in-Furriness, and the only schooner built by the Ashburner shipyard that traded across the Atlantic or south of the Equator. In her first nineteen years, mainly under the command of Capt. Robert Charnley and Capt. Evans, she voyaged frequently to Uruguay for beef and bone meal, and to the West Indies for sugar, also to New York and to the Mediterranean. She later went into the coasting trade and had a long working life that lasted until 1950, a working life span of 74 years which did her proud.
Construction of the William Ashburner was started in March 1875 and took only 19 months. She was launched on the 19th October 1876 and her command was given to Capt. Robert Charnley. Her first voyage was to Cardiff and by the end of the year she had visited her first foreign port,*Palma on the island of Majorca. In the following year her hull was yellow-metaled at the Ashburner shipyard, and she was relaunched on the same day as the Mary Ashburner
In these years under Capt. Charnley the William Ashburner was considered to be a fast ship, it being claimed that she once covered 240 miles in 24 hours with a full cargo of coal. In 1878 she took 40 days to make her first passage to South America, going from*Liverpool to Parahiba, Brazil. She continued in transatlantic trade until 1894, when her final deep water passage was from Antwerp to Parahiba, returning to London by way of Trinidad and Barbados. Thereafter she existed in the general coasting trade, being retained under the management of Thomas Ashburner & Co.
In 1943 she was sold to Capt. Nicholas Sinnott of Limerick, and he employed her in the Bristol Channel grain trade. By this time the schooner had had her masts poled off and the square rig spars removed. On 1st February 1950, traveling in thick fog from Swansea to Sharpness to pick up a cargo of grain, the William Ashburner grounded on the Chapel Rock. She was beached at the mouth of the River Wye where she was examined and declared a constructive total loss. It is believed that her wheel was salvaged and is now on display at the Avonmouth Seaman's Mission.
In 2008 I was reading the local paper from the Avonmouth area and there was an article about trying to find out where the large ships wheel had come from, who owned it, and what ship. I wrote to the editor and told him that I had sailed on the ship that the wheel belonged to, explained how the wheel was on display in the Seaman’s Mission plus the owner’s name. I further stated that since the Mission was being torn down the wheel should go to the family of Captain Sinnott back in Ireland. I received a reply from the editor of the newspaper telling me that the Sinnott family had been contacted and the wheel would be returned to the family.
After nearly fifty-seven years of hanging on the wall the wheel that I had cleaned and handle sixty years ago had finally found its rightful home, and I feel good that I had done something to make that happen.
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