The Freedom an Introduction

Published by Christol Gilbert

Campbell River Genealogy Society

A newsletter from…

The Treehouse

March 2007, Volume 20, Number 1

ISSN 1492-7365

Heritage Week in BC

& The Museum at

Campbell River

Stories. .

Freedom of

Mevagissey…

… Tom Hall

THE FREEDOM OF MEVAGISSEY Pt. 1

By Tom Hall and Edited by Christol Gilbert

Your club should have a warning sign over the door, “Highly Addictive nut so group of people”. I came to a couple of meetings when Candi-lea was speaking and got the gist of how to get started in genealogy. She is definitely addictive, fell in love with her right away…and then went to the church and met Judy, Laurel, and Norm. After listening to a presentation that Laurel Lahay gave on Scotland (she even baked

Shortbread), I WAS HOOKED.

My obsession began with the painting (shown left)signed by Michele FUNNO, an Italian, active c1837– 1865 in Naples Italy. The caption at the bottom reads Freedom of

Mevagissey Thomas Ley 1848. My mother, Marjorie HALL nee CLOKE, handed it

down to me. The CLOKE family origins are in Mevagissey, Cornwall. The painting came to my maternal grandfather, John Francis CLOKE by his nephew Thomas LEY. Our family has the painting, a chest, and some old bonds. My brother, Douglas HALL, has the old bonds and his son Christopher HALL has the chest. Our cousin Ann has a ship in a

Bottle that fascinates me as well.

I was interested in the boat and ended up chasing people related to it. Nobody mentioned that one might be diverted from the main goal and get interested in the builder, the owners and crew, the painter and on and on. I found myself hung up on a woman

Emmeline KYMBREL who I had never heard of simply because she was in the puzzle. As you know, hours went by in a flash. I just started to go off in too many directions. Eventually, I went to England to see where the Freedom was built and where she sank. I wanted to put together the material I have in a readable story like fashion and then settle into a more definite pattern.

Mevagissey is a fair weather harbor located on the south shore of Cornwall England in St. Austell Bay.

It is the largest fishing village in the bay and has an unbroken tradition of boat building since 1745. It is closely associated with its sister summer harbor, Gorran and across the bay, Fowey, where most of the fishing boats are laid up to ride out the winter storms. The Freedom of Mevagissey was built in Aug 1832 in a Mevagissey shipyard. With one deck and two masts, the counter stern schooner was carvel built with standing bowsprit and a woman bust figurehead. She was registered in nearby port of Fowey,

Official number 13032, weighing in at 106 tones; the length 64.9 ft., breadth 19.6 ft, and depth 11.8 ft.

The Builder

Nicholas LELEAN is recorded as the builder of the Freedom. There were two Nicholas Leleans, father and son, who were well known and respected Mevagissey ship builders. Most likely, the son built theFreedom. A portion of The Lelean Shipyard is still intact in the Mevagissey harbour and houses a museum. A Lelean descendant, Maureen MUSSON provided the following information about the family.

Nicholas LELEAN was born on 12 July 1769 and baptized on 13 August 1769 in Mevagissey, the third issue and second son of William LALEAN and Sarah (nee BARON). He married at the age of 23 on 14 August 1792 in Mevagissey to Catherine BASSETT, who was baptized on 1 June 1767 in Mevagissey.

Nicholas and Catherine had six children baptized in Mevagissey, 4 sons and 2 daughters: Ann (1793),  Nicholas (1795), Thomas (1797), Peter (1799), William Bassett (1802) and Catherine (1804), affectionately known as “Kitty”. According to the booklet John Wesley’s Silver Buckles written by

Lilian Lelean Scholes, Nicholas and Catherine had seven children, but only six appear on the IGI. On  the1974 Family Tree another Catherine is shown without any date of birth or baptism and mentions that she died as an infant.

Nicholas became a Sea Captain and was Master of the Brig named SEVEN BROTHERS, reputedly built in the Lelean Shipyard. One summer’s day in 1805 (England was at war with France) the Seven Brotherssailed out of Mevagissey Harbour. It had hardly left the bay when a French privateer, a much larger ship, bore down upon her. The Frenchmen boarded her and during hand-to-hand fighting, two of Nicholas’s crew died. The Seven Brothers was taken as a prize to Brest, with Captain Nicholas Lelean and his surviving crew as prisoners of war. The prisoners were marched in stages from Brest to Aaras,

then later to Verdun. There they spent nine long and weary years in a French military prison. They were well treated by the French. Their captors were humane men, men of a religious outlook; possibly some were Huguenots who recognized a similarity between their own form of worship and the simple, sincere Christianity of their prisoners. The courteous behavior of the Cornish men, their honesty and their reliability, did not fail to impress the French. As Nicholas and his fellow prisoners won the respect of

their captors, conditions became much better for them, but there was still no hope of getting home. At one time, there was talk of an exchange of prisoners and hopes rose high, only to be dashed to the ground and followed by bitter disappointment when nothing came of it. Once, during the time when plans for exchanging prisoners were being discussed, Nicholas saw  Napoleon Bonaparte, the Emperor of France, and he was surprised by the effect that the Emperor’s

magnetic personality made upon him. He had often said before he was captured “he felt he could slay the tyrant”, yet such was the fascination of Napoleon’s personality and majesty of his bearing that he now “felt he could have placed his hand under Napoleon’s feet”. All his hatred for the great enemy of England had melted away.

However, Nicholas, who was a devout Christian, was allowed to hold Religious Services, Prayer Meetings and Classes for his fellow prisoners, many of whom like himself were Methodists. At home in  Mevagissey, he had been a Class Leader and a Trustee of the local chapel, and next to his family and the free wind of the sea. It was the church that he missed the most. One of the privileges allowed to Nicholas was the writing of letters. Certainly, these were far from frequent; they averaged little more than one a year, and of course, there was no guarantee of their safe delivery across the sea to England. Another fortunate thing for Nicholas was that his wife was one of the few literate people on her part of Cornwall. She could read and write, and during the time of her husband’s imprisonment, Catherine was able to put her education to good advantage by holding a little Dame school for the children of Mevagissey whose parents were glad to have them taught the ability to read and write that they themselves did not possess. With the few pennies she earned by her teaching, Catherine was able to keep the family from hardship

all the time her husband was away. The letters of Nicholas are still extant. The originals

were distributed among different members of the Lelean family and are still treasured among them. We have transcribed some of the letters spanning a

five-year period and they record in some details the conditions under which Nicholas was living in captivity.

Stay Tuned for Part 2: The Owners and Masters

1841 Census, Lelean’s Court,

Mevagissey, Cornwall, England

11

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COPYRIGHT: Expired

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