Extract from the article ‘In the days of brigantines’, which appeared in the Hartlepool Mail in the mid-1960s:

“Way back at the beginning of the twentieth century, in the boom days of West Hartlepool as a seaport, the town’s docks were constantly choked with shipping. It was in 1895 that Mr. William Swarbrick first sailed out of the port, as a 14-year old apprentice on board the Aberdeen-registered brigantine Alexandra, carrying coal between the Hartlepools and the London reaches.

It was a trip Mr. Swarbrick recalls that could be done in 30 hours – but it might as easily take three weeks. In that case the trip was a continual struggle against the weather for the eight-man crew of the Alexandra. It meant clawing out to sea to escape the dangers of a lee shore and as often as not sailing ships like the Alexandra would be forced hundreds of miles off course into the middle of the stormy North Sea. On more than one voyage the ship was given up for lost ashore, but turned up nearly a month overdue.

The Alexandra was owned by her skipper and two London Pilots, so the fsater she could complete the voyage the better they were pleased. It was a tough and dangerous life for a 14-year-old just out of school. The threat to the ship was always there, often impressed on her crew by the fate of many other vessels on the same run. Mr. Swarbrick remembered one gale that sent half a dozen coasters hurrying for  shelter into the Humber. With the wind in the north-east it took tremendous seamanship to keep them safely away from the rocks under their lee – but one did not make it. She was driven onto the rocks and ripped apart. Only her skipper survived.

Mr. Swarbrick had four years at sea in those early days when sail was gradually giving way to steam. While working between trips at Gray’s shipyard he broka a leg and had to “swallow the anchor”. But before that happened he saw more of the Seven Seas than the stretch between the Tees and the Thames. He made the switch from sail to steam before he was 18 and signed on the tramp steamers that wandered around Europe and across the Atlantic.

A typical trip took the small steamers across to Norway with coal, back with timber, across to Italy, and then the long haul to the United States with iron ore. After his accident the nearest he came to going to sea again was when he came close to getting a “pierhead jump”. The system was to keep an eye on the docks in case a ship that was about to sail was short-handed. On one occasion Mr. Swarbrick was all set to put to sea once again when an errant regular member of the crew turned up at the last minute and the chance was lost.

Mr. Swarbrick remembered from the days of his connection with the docks how West Hartlepool was the jumping-off point for hosts of people whose children became American citizens. At that time there was a steady traffic in ships between the Hartlepools and Hamburg. Passenger steamers and freighters made regular trips, and when they arrived here, they were full of European families – many of them Jewish – who were leaving their homelands for the United States. They would file off the ships carrying all their possessions on their backs, bedding rolled up in a single counterpane, and swarm aboard the Liverpool trains.

For Mr. Swarbrick, the next 48 years were spent in the Wages Office at Gray’s. When he started work there the yard was building ship No.601 – when he left No.1121 had gone down the slips. Mr. Swarbrick lives in Penrhyn Street, West Hartlepool.”

From Geoffrey Milton Donald, grandson of William Milton Swarbrick. November 2009.

The 'Alexandra', though not strictly a Hartlepool ship, was part-owned by a Captain Stevenson and was on the run down the coast to London with north-east coal and presumably other goods to make up the ballast on the way back. We believe it was registered in Aberdeen, number 5324 at 160 tonnage, as a 'Hermaphrodite Brigantine', being two-mast square rigged, but with a fore-and-aft sail at the rear. The Stevenson family we think ran the 'Harbour of Refuge' pub in Old Hartlepool.

William Milton Swarbrick (1881 to 1969) came from a seafaring family with two captains in the lineage, one of whom lost his ship in a fearful storm, was washed up on shore alive but died of exposure. Grandfather was apprenticed at the age of fourteen on the Alexandra and was expecting eventually to gain his 'mates ticket' and follow in the family tradition. He took with him a  copy of "Two Years before the Mast" which he kept all his life. In 1899 he transferred to steam-powered cargo boats (he always refused to call anything without sails a 'ship, even the Queen Elisabeth was a boat!) and covered both European ports and the Atlantic run to Charleston Carolina and Savanna Georgia.

After breaking a leg on shore he decided to leave the sea in favour of Miss Leah Clementson who became our grandmother. When she went to the docks to collect his final wage packet she was told that he owed the company two shillings and sixpence! He subsequently worked in the finance offices of William Gray's shipyards, where, apparently, Sir William would cheerily address him as 'Bill'. Amongst other pursuits he kept the books for the local branch of the Ancient Order of the Foresters mutual society and was a long-time member of the Eldon Grove bowling club. Despite several  opportunities to move they lived all their married lives in Penrhyn Street, preferring the neighbourly community where, on the occasions when the front door was locked, the key would be hanging on a string behind the letterbox. He kept near-perfect health and mind until he died in 1969 after a brief illness not far off his eighty-eighth birthday.

The following reminiscences spring from the many and oft-repeated tales I heard from him in his 'anecdotage'.

As the young apprentice and possible future skipper himself, he was in the charge of the Captain, though by no means spared any of the hard work on a sailing ship. Quite the contrary, he was expected to learn everything to do with handling it, though Captain Stevenson was wont to cut an extra slice of cheese from the barrel for him to take away. 'His' sail was usually either the fore-topsail or the fore-t'gallant and he had to take his place in all weathers along the yard to set or furl the sail, standing on the swaying rope, with "one hand for the ship and one hand for himself". He told us that it was considered not the done thing to go the easy way through the 'lubber hole' in the masthead platform, but to climb up round the outside of the rigging.

At more relaxing times when the ship was at anchor or becalmed, the crew was able to devote time to fishing for supper. On one occasion the catch included 'gurnard' which can make noises like the barking of a dog. So annoyed at this, the captain's terrier dog Peter grabbed one but unfortunately fell overboard with it. Despite launching the boat he was never found. Captain Stevenson locked himself in his cabin for a long time afterwards. Even sadder, many years later, grandfather found him picking up cigarette ends in Llyn Street.  He gave the old boy a fiver, which would be worth quite a bit in those days. There was not much in the way of pensions then.