Henry appears to have had an ‘on’ ‘off’ relationship with the sea.
The following information (mainly researched by his Granddaughter Joan) and photographs, are reproduced here, with permission, from his family.
By the 1871 census he was on board HMS Bristol, a Naval Cadet training ship. On 26th March she departed from Plymouth Sound for the South America Station and is “at anchor in Funchal Bay, Madeira” for the purpose of the census on 2nd April.
A Landlubber again, in the 1881 census Henry and Mary-Jane were living in Newington, Surrey. They have 2 daughters, Rhoda, baptised on 4.8.1881 and Henrietta baptised 4.9.1879. There is note of the birth of 2 other daughters, 1 baptised on same date as Rhoda in 1881, so perhaps a twin, and also 1 in 1878, but they are missing from this census so may have died. Henry’s occupation at this time was Tea Warehouseman.
Henry had returned to sea by the 1891 census in which Mary -Jane is listed as head, with Rhoda-14, Henrietta-12, Eva-8, Alice-6 and Henry Gilbert junior-2. Eva died in 1900, Henrietta married in 1899 and had 1 son, but she died in 1903.
It was reported in the North Devon Journal, 1st December 1898 - "They left on Saturday night for a cruise down the Bristol Channel on the look-out for up-Channel vessels. All went well until about nine o lock on monday morning. There was a strong north-east wind blowing with a rough sea. The "Earl of Jersey" which belonged to a Cardiff firm, was off Lundy Island, when all at once she struck a sunken rock. The water rushed into the fore compartments, and the hands had just time to run on deck and jump into their boat, when the tug heeled over and went down, the crew losing all their belongings. Noticing a tug about a mile away (which proved to be the Royal Briton, of Cardiff), they rowed to her and were taken on board, being subsequently brought on to Ilfracombe, where the disaster was reported to the Custom House authorities. The crew, being thoroughly done up, were taken charge of by the Shipwreck Mariners Society and taken to the St James Boarding house. They were provided with new clothes and having partaken of a substantial meal, were only too glad to retire to rest".
The loss of his wife and having to send away the 4 children, unable to care for them himself, must have taken its toll on him. By the 1911 census, he was listed as a widower, aged 58, a former stoker and living as an inmate in the casual ward of the Camberwell Workhouse, London.
In January 1918 he sent a series of postcards to his youngest daughter, Ivy, then 24, saying his leg was getting on fine. We don’t know what caused the injury.
Below we see some of the images of the Garth Castle sent to daughter Ivy. Please do not reproduce these as they belong to the family who have given us permission to use them here.
Amongst the full list of his personal effects was “correspondence tied in a red handkerchief”.
He was actually 64 years old, dying 36 days before his 65th birthday and just 12 days before the end of the war. Between 12th and 20th October 1918 more than 20 crew members of the Garth Castle died of influenza. Only 2 of these lie in Queensferry Cemetery.
Henry would have been posthumously awarded the Mercantile Marine War Medal.