Charlotte Sophia
This postcard showing the ketch at Railway Wharf, by Frank Spry, is one of a series of photographs which include Charlotte Sophia. She was a typical small coaster of the time.
The Littlehampton Harbourmaster’s journals in the West Sussex Records Office list the traffic during these years, and she is recorded as visiting between 23rd and 27th May 1911. The other craft shown on the card were also recorded by the Harbourmaster, indicating that the photograph was taken during that particular visit.
As Charlotte Sophia was registered at Portsmouth, details of her are available on the Portsmouth City Records Office website. They include crew lists which indicate that the three individuals pictured at the stern are Anthony Bootyman (46) Master, Fred Hobgen (24) Cook and Ordinary Seaman, and Walter Joseph Gad Hobgen (17) Cook. Too many cooks, perhaps?
The craft seems to have had some difficulty keeping crew, and in the course of the six months from February 1911 there were five different companions for the master. Whenever a crew member was discharged, it generally involved a wait in harbour of some days to find a replacement. Perhaps that’s why for his last voyage of the sequence, from Torquay to Plymouth, he was single-handed for a day - quite some feat given the heavy gear involved! Fred Hobgen remained, Charlotte Sophia’s longest serving crew member, from 7th February to 10th July.
The original mate, John James Holland, left on 25th March and Fred Hobgen presumably replaced his role, in addition to engaging his cousin Walter as cook.
Although most crew in these small vessels survived into old age, despite the dangers, Holland was less fortunate and suffered the fate of many seamen coasting under sail in those years. On the night of 16th February 1915, he was the mate of the schooner St. Clair when she was wrecked in Butcher’s Cove, Bigbury Bay, South Devon. St. Clair was caught in a storm while attempting to enter Salcombe with a cargo of gas coal, and driven on to rocks, breaking up, and casting the five crew into huge seas. Only three bodies were eventually washed ashore, almost unrecognisable from battering on rocks, and proving their identity was difficult. An article published in the Western Morning Press on 24th February 1915 concluded that one of the bodies recovered was that of John James Holland.
As for Charlotte Sophia, she was lost on 17th June 1916 in a collision with an unnamed Royal Navy trawler in St. Helen’s Roads, IOW. Fortunately the crew were saved on that occasion.
Details of the two vessels were obtained from the excellent Closing Down Sail by W. Martin Benn, published by the author in 2011.