WATER LILY
Shipbuildervessel built by
DUTHIE
(Footdee, Aberdeen)
Date10 August 1860
Object NameBRIG
MediumWOOD
ClassificationsShip
Dimensionslength 109.3' x breadth 23.3' x depth 13.8'
gross tonnage 218 tons
gross tonnage 218 tons
Object numberABDSHIP000537
Keywords
Subsequent Names: PIONEER (1868); LEONORA (c. 1870)
Fate: wrecked at Kosrae (Kusaie), Federated States of Micronesia, 15 March 1874.
Propulsion: Sail
Description: Brig rigged, 1 deck, 2 masts, shield figurehead.
Owners:
1860: Registered at Aberdeen for owners;
Robert Anderson, shipowner, 52 shares, James Leask, advocate, 12 shares (both Aberdeen).
Share sales:
16/05/1861: James Leask 12 shares to Robert Anderson.
07/1861: Sold to G Thompson Junior in July 1861.
09/1861: Sold to John Towers, Chelsea, registered at London
(Aberdeen Register of Shipping (Aberdeen City Archives))
Masters:
1863-70: Master Towers (Lloyd's clearly continues reproducing the same outdated listing)
1868-70: Master Benjamin Pease (see newspaper extracts below)
1870-74: Master William Henry Hayes
Voyages (Lloyd's):
1863-70: London - Cape of Good Hope
23/08/1860:
From Glasgow for Buenos Aires direct - the beautiful new A1 at Lloyds British built and coppered clipper brig WATER LILY, 218 tons register, will be at a loading berth in a few days.
(Glasgow Herald)
27/11/1867:
Manila, 8 October [...] The British brig WATER LILY, Amoy to Saigon, has put in here totally dismasted and decks clean swept.
(London and China Telegraph)
27/02/1868:
The Aberdeen brig WATER LILY was announced for sale by auction for the 20th January.
(London and China Telegraph)
23/11/1872:
SKULL HUNTING
To the Editor of the Herald
Sir- In answer to a letter, signed "Old Trader," in your issue of to-day, calling upon the correspondent of a letter concerning the cruise of the BLANCHE amongst the South
Sea Islands (printed in your Saturday paper, 16th instant), to answer certain statements made in the before-mentioned letter, I will briefly endeavour to do so.
First The practice of skull-hunting is, I believe, entirely confined to the Solomon Islands, and that is the group to which I alluded.
Second, Cases of white men having assisted the natives in skull-hunting in the manner detailed by me were reported to Earl Belmore by the Rev. Charles Hyde Brook, Cambridge College, of the Melanesian Mission, as having in one instance taken place at Florida (Solomon Group), while he was actually present on the beach, the act being committed on some natives in a canoe, by the crew of a vessel which was described by the Rev. Mr. Brook as a large black brig. [...]
Fourth. As to the vessel suspected to have assisted in the practice of skill hunting, I may mention that the brig WATER LILY, commanded by Captain Pease, was one. With the exception of this vessel, I do not care to state in a public paper names of suspected vessels, which are only hearsay, and could do no good whatever.
Signed 'VERITAS', Sydney, November 22, 1872
(Sydney Morning Herald)
"The LEONORA was 250 tons register, and had been built for the opium trade. During her career in Chinese seas she acquired the reputation of being the fastest vessel on the coast. She then carried eight guns. She had been several times attacked by pirates, who were invariably beaten off with loss. At the time of my visit she carried but one gun, which stood on the main deck, Hayston [Hayes] having sold two others of the same calibre to the natives. But for this, as far as I could see, she had a most peaceful appearance." [...] "The foc'sle was large, for she carried betweeen twenty-five and thirty men. The thing that struck me most however, was the bulkhead, which was loop-holed for rifles, so that if any disturbance took place in the fore-hold, which was sometimes filled with Kanaka labourers, the rebels could be shot down with ease and accuracy."
(Rolf Boldrewood (1894), "A Modern Buccaneer" (Macmillan & Co., London), p. 35)
27/05/1933:
The Real Bully Hayes.
The Raw Material of a Romantic Legend.
By "MÄKAIEA."
By the later [eighteen]-sixties Hayes had worked up a close association with Captain Benjamin Pease, a small, wiry, energetic ex-lieutenant of the United States Navy, who commanded a brig, the WATER LILY, and hazed his villainous crew of international scoundrels in proper Yankee fashion. Together with a fast schooner, the MALOLO, Pease had stolen the brig from the Williams family in Honolulu, sons of the missionary. He chartered the vessel to a syndicate in Shanghai for "timber trading to Ponape." Timber trading was a comprehensive term which covered many other activities, kidnapping and slave dealing, looting native villages and lonely trading stations piracies on native craft, opium running, and what not. [...]
PUTTING into Guam, Pease was arrested by the Spanish authorities over a matter of outrages in the Carolines, sent to Manila, handed over to the United States Navy, and given four months' gaol In Shanghai. His trusted friend, Hayes, took the opportunity
to steal the WATER LILY, the rascally crew being agreeable enough at the prospect of release from Pease's iron handed discipline. There is considerable reason to suspect that Hayes arranged the whole matter of his benefactor's arrest. After his release that
strenuous Individual tried hard to get within reach of Hayes, but was murdered by natives at the Bonin Islands [...]
THE twice-stolen, thrice-named brig, WATER LILY-PIONEER-LEONORA, did not bring Hayes much luck. A hurricane struck Ponape whilst she was at anchor, and she became a total wreck. Hayes cleared out in a boat, [and] reached Guam
(Brisbane Courier, p. 19)
On 15 March 1874, while lying at Kusaie in the Caroline Islands, the LEONORA was totally lost on a reef but her company escaped
(John Earnshaw (1972), 'Hayes, William Henry (Bully) (1829–1877)', in Australian Dictionary of Biography (Melbourne University Press) https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/hayes-william-henry-bully-3737/text5879 )
1814
1826
1841
