Sailing into history

Searching for a photograph of the 19th century ship that brought his ancestors to Australia led Harley Stanton to discover a much bigger picture of the past

The great sailing ships of old were called cathedrals in the sea. They towered over the seven oceans, their white-sailed majesty a symbol of hope and the human spirit in the quest for new lands and new lives. The Conway was one such “cathedral” which carried Harley Stanton’s ancestors and countless other immigrants to Australia from European shores in the mid-19th century.

The Conway might have appeared just another of the huge fleet of ships that traded with the colonies in the Victorian era but for Dr Stanton its appearance on the horizon represented far more than a mere footnote to a study of both maritime and emigration history in the British Empire.

It represented a “tapestry” of the golden age of sail and migration. Calm and tempest, joy and sorrow, the Conway had a story to tell and Dr Stanton was determined to tell it.

The project started unexpectedly following a family reunion in 1999 when the voyage of the family’s ancestors was discussed. At that point Dr Stanton set out to find an image of the ship, a painting, an engraving or possibly a photograph at the dawn of photography. The hunt for the picture proved unsuccessful but with all the research he turned over on the life and times of the clipper Conway, he realised the ship represented far more than the role it played in his ancestry, however vital this might be. His research morphed into a book appropriately called My Cathedral in the Sea – A History of the Conway; an account of a ship that traversed the oceans of the world for 24 years, covering more than 350,000 nautical miles, including five trips to Australia carrying 2000 immigrants.

“My interest grew beyond the desire to find a picture or painting; instead I wanted to understand the experience of family members who had made this journey and the ship on which they had travelled,” Stanton says.

It was a process that was to take him on a journey, visiting Canada where the Conway was built and building a picture of the lives of those who sailed on the ship, passengers and crew.

“There is a thread that appears in the life of this ship that is like the nature of human experience: our birth, our pursuits, our passions, our weaknesses, our sickness and challenges until finally we sink into the depths,” he added, describing his book.

“I have not sought so much to comment but to reveal the life of one ship, its voyages and the time and experiences of those who sailed with the Conway. As much as anything, this is my story, my journey. It’s a rich tapestry of documents, people, places and things.”

Following in the wake of the Conway, Dr Stanton travelled to far-flung places, from the clipper’s birthplace in the shipyards of Saint John, New Brunswick, in 1851, to many of the ports where it picked up cargo and passengers. On the way he collected not only manifests of passengers, cargo and crews but ship’s logs and diaries to bring the Conway’s adventures to life. They form