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Stephen PENFOLD (1835-1918)Tree020:S001

	Stephen PENFOLD, Tree020-S001-01		Stephen PENFOLD, Tree020-S001-02		Stephen PENFOLD, Tree020-S001-03

Name:	Stephen PENFOLD 1
ONS Reference:	Tree020:S001
Sex:	Male
Record Id:	5543
Father:	John PENFOLD (1797-1884)
Mother:	Elizabeth THOMPSON (1794- )

Individual Events and Attributes

Birth	25 May 1835	Lamberhurst, Kent
Baptism	5 Jul 1835 (age 0)	Lamberhurst, Kent 2
Ordination	6 Jan 1906 (age 70)
Death	9 Jul 1918 (age 83)	in Puente, Los Angeles, California, USA

Marriage

	Spouse: Rebecca VARLEY, Tree020-S001A-01

Spouse	Rebecca VARLEY (1836-1919)
Marriage	1855 (app) (age 19-20)	California

LDS Ordinances

Baptism

15 Aug 1853 (age 18)

Clarencetown, Australia

Individual Note (shared)

American Barque Julia Ann B F Pond Commander

Wrecked on a Coral Reef in the South Pacific on the Night of 3rd October 1855. Five Lives Lost

Harriet Pond 1856

 

The Julia Ann made two voyages towards San Francisco from Australia. The first voyage began on 22 March 1854 at Newcastle, Australia. On board was Benjamin F. Pond, half-owner of the vessel. Captain C. B. Davis of New Bedford Massachusetts, was master during this passage. There were sixty-three Saints also aboard under the direction of Elder William Hyde, a former member of the Mormon Battalion and later an early bishop in Cache Valley. His counselors were Charles Stapley and Richard Allen.

The passage was generally favorable, although there were periods of seasickness, an outbreak of measles, and the death of a "Sister Allen" following the birth of her child. The Julia Ann stopped at Huahine, an island northwest of Tahiti, and Hawaii to replenish her supplies. The emigrants held meetings every Sabbath and prayers every morning and evening. After an eighty-three-day passage the relatively small bark arrived at San Pedro, California, on 12 June 1854.

I used the word "Towards" at the beginning of this article, because she didn't actually arrive on the second voyage; she was carrying 350 tons of Newcastle coal and 42 passengers, including 28 members of the LDS Church, and broke apart on a coral reef near the Society Islands on Oct. 3rd, 1855.

On 7 September 1855 the Julia Ann began this, her last voyage. Under command of her half-owner, Captain Benjamin F. Pond, the vessel sailed from Sydney, Australia bound for San Francisco. Of the fifty-six passengers, twenty-eight were Mormons and included two American missionaries returning home, Elders James Graham and John S. Eldredge. Elder John Penfield, Sr., presided over the Saints. Shortly after leaving Sydney, the bark encountered strong winds and heavy seas, causing much seasickness Captain Pond set a course between the Scilly Islands and Mopea, or Mopelia. He placed a watch on the foretop, and about eight o'clock in the evening the log was hove. The vessel's speed was indicated at 11.5 knots. Soon the sea became broken, and about an hour later the Julia Ann with a great crash struck a coral reef and immediately swung broadside. In this position the water dashed over her at every swell.

Captain Pond quickly ordered all passengers to the aftercabin. In the panic and confusion several mothers snatched their undressed children from bed and rushed aft. The fears of the passengers were eased somewhat when a sailor informed them that the reef offered a means of escape from the sinking vessel. One of the sailors, an expert swimmer, carried a rope from the bark and fastened it to the reef. Most of the passengers made their way to temporary safety by means of the rope. However, "Sisters Humphrey and Harris and three children" were drowned. John McCarthy, a Mormon survivor, gave this account of the disaster:

I saw mothers nursing their babes in the midst of falling masts and broken spars, while the breakers were rolling twenty feet high over the wreck. One lady-sister Harris-preparatory to leaving the ship with her two children, the eldest of which was two years old, tied the youngest, a babe six weeks old, to her breast; the vessel immediately afterwards broke in two across the main hatch, and the waters rushing in, engulfed herself and child amid the struggling waves and timbers of the wreck.

There was another lady-sister Humphrey-who had three children. When the vessel struck she told her friends to protect her children and convey them safely to Great Salt Lake City, for her earthly career was run. Shortly afterwards she, with one of her children, was swept by a sea into the foaming surf, and they were seen no more. There was also a young mother of seventeen, who manifested true courage during the dreadful scene; her husband took their child and lashed it to his back, and struggled to the reef on a rope, with his wife close behind him, and the three were saved unhurt.

By midnight most of the passengers reached the reef. A few more were carried ashore on pieces of wreckage as the vessel broke up. At dawn the survivors were heartened by the outline of Scilly Islands some twelve miles away. During this time one incident revealed the character of Captain Pond. While the crew was putting the passengers ashore, the second mate was carrying a bag containing $8,000. Pond told him to leave the money and carry a little girl to land instead, and the mate did so. The money was lost, but a life was saved.

Once on the reef the survivors immediately built a raft from the wreckage. After two days under a burning sun without food or water the survivors were carried by the raft to an uninhabited island where the only living creatures were rats, shellfish, seafowl, turtles, and fish. Scraping holes in the sand, the castaways obtained water that the sand's filtration had made reasonably potable. With the aid of a magnifying glass they kindled a fire and prepared a meal of roasted shellfish.

Then the captain and nine men in a quarter boat built by the ship's carpenter made a precarious voyage across the reef and through squalls to Bora Bora. Pond went on to Huahine where he chartered the 9-ton schooner Emma Packer. On 3 December 1855 this vessel took the survivors from the island to Huahine and then on to Tahiti, after enduring almost two months on a tiny island.

The Julia Ann hailed from San Francisco. This three-masted bark was built with one deck, a square stem, and a billethead and was owned by Benjamin F. Pond, Henry Wetherbee, and J. C. Stone.

When she struck the reef, the ship broke in two, the stern section lifting onto the reef and the bow falling into deep water. Five Mormons, two women and three children, died in the shipwreck, about 400 miles from Tahiti in French Polynesia.

The others spent 48 hours in the sea before finding refuge on Scilly, a desolate, uninhabited island. Several men later rowed 250 miles to Bora Bora for help against prevailing trade winds. The survivors were rescued nearly two months after the shipwreck and taken to Tahiti. Meanwhile, they lived in family units and ate only coconuts and fish and drank water from holes dug deep in the sand.

The Julia Ann was a barque of some 372 tons. She was 119' x 27' x 13' and was built in 1851 at Robbinston, Maine. There is an account of the saga in the Mitchell Library in Sydney. A further account can be found in Ships, Saints, and Mariners: A Maritime Encyclopedia of Mormon Migration, 1830-1890 by Conway B. Sonne pages 124-125. The passengers were common people: millers, papermakers and farmers. A total of 120 Mormons migrated in the two voyages of the Julia Ann. She made several voyages to Sydney bringing diggers to the Australian goldfields along with cargoes of grain, flour and tools like picks, shovels and hoes.

The ship was wrecked during a violent storm because a nearsighted crewman on watch forgot his glasses. By the time he returned from below deck to retrieve them, the ship smashed into the reef. The stern section lifted onto the reef and the bow fell into the deep water.

Mary and Martha Humphreys, Eliza Harris and her infant son, Lister, and 10-year-old Marian Anderson, were never found.

After the wreck, the ship's crew rigged a pulley system from the ship to the reef and ferried survivors across the water in the arms of the captain. The first was 17- year-old Rosa Clara Logie, who was pulled hand over hand to the reef. The captain left her standing on the sharp coral.

Sources

1	"John Green [Tree020]". Record originated in John Green's Gedcom file

2	"St Mary's Lamberhurst PR". C131531.