Augustine Podmore Williams

Last updated • 3 min readFrom Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia
Augustine Podmore Williams
Born(1852-05-22)22 May 1852
Porthleven, Cornwall, England
Died17 April 1916(1916-04-17) (aged 63)
Shamrock, Barker Road, Singapore, Straits Settlements
Burial place Bidadari Cemetery (former)
Other namesAustin Williams
Augustus Podmore Williams
Daddy
Occupation(s) Water Clerk, former mariner
Employer(s)McAlister & Co.
Dawood & Co.
Spouse
Elizabeth Jane Robinson
(m. 18831916)
Children16

Augustine Podmore Williams (22 May 1852 – 17 April 1916) was an English mariner who gained notoriety in the 1880s as the result of a scandal on the high seas. [1]

Contents

Biography

Austin Williams was born in Porthleven, Cornwall, the son of a country parson. He was a merchant mariner. In July 1880, the 28-year-old Williams was serving as chief mate aboard the Jeddah , a boat owned by the Singaporean merchant Syed Mohamed Alsagoff. The boat was captained by Joseph Clark, who set sail from Singapore on 18 July 1880. The ship stopped at Penang and took on board more than 950 Muslim pilgrims, all making their way to Arabia in order to perform the hajj in Mecca. The ship's destination was the Red Sea port of Jeddah.

On 3 August, the ship found itself in the middle of a fierce hurricane which gradually grew in intensity. As the Jeddah began to take on water, the officers lost nerve and Captain Clark, spurred on by his chief mate Williams, decided to abandon ship in a boat which would only take on himself, his wife and a few of the officers and passengers. As there were nowhere near enough boats for the pilgrims, they would have to fend for themselves. The pilgrims found this out, and the officers only managed to abandon ship and launch their boat with great difficulty in the middle of the night. They assumed that the ship would founder. However, the next day, the storm died down and the skies cleared. The deserting officers had been rescued by another vessel (the Scindia), and Captain Clark had reported the Jeddah lost in the high seas. Meanwhile, the Jeddah was towed to Aden port by the steamship ''Antenor''.

When the true story became known, the scandal made news throughout the nautical world. The case was discussed extensively and written about in the contemporary press in Singapore, Britain and elsewhere. An inquiry found Captain Clark guilty of gross misconduct and his captain's certificate was suspended for three years. Austin Williams, on the other hand, was seen to be a key instigator of the desertion and faced the opprobrium of the entire shipping community. He left the sea soon after the trial. He became a water-clerk with the Singaporean ship chandlers McAlister & Co., for whom he worked for the next 27 years.

Williams married a Eurasian girl from Singapore by the name of Elizabeth Jane Robinson on 22 January 1883 in St Andrew's Cathedral. They had sixteen children, seven of whom died before their father.

Eventually, he went into business on his own, but met with scant success. Williams later joined the firm Dawood & Co. While on duty on 15 March 1916, he slipped and fell, fracturing a hip bone. He failed to recover from this injury, and died of complications a month later, on 17 April 1916, at his residence at Shamrock, 32 Barker Road, and was interred at the Bidadari Cemetery in northeast Singapore.

Legacy

Williams's story served as the inspiration for Joseph Conrad's novel Lord Jim . Conrad, who was himself an experienced sailor, had spent time in Singapore in the 1880s and had come across Williams as a result.

A century later, the author Gavin Young tracked down the few remaining traces of Williams in Singapore, including his long-forgotten grave in Bidadari, in the course of researching In Search of Conrad , a book of travel and literary detection. When the dead of Bidadari Cemetery were exhumed in the early 2000s in order to make way for redevelopment plans, Williams's granddaughter, Queenie, a daughter of his youngest son, Cuthbert, reclaimed his remains. [2]

Joseph Conrad based his novel Lord Jim on the story of the Jeddah and the character of Austin Williams.

Related Research Articles

HMS <i>Cornwall</i> (1902) Royal Navy armoured cruiser

HMS Cornwall was one of 10 Monmouth-class armoured cruisers built for the Royal Navy in the first decade of the 20th century. She was assigned to the 2nd Cruiser Squadron of the Channel Fleet on completion in 1903. The ship was refitted in 1907 in preparation for service as a training ship for cadets with the 4th Cruiser Squadron on the North America and West Indies Station beginning in 1908.

USS <i>James E. Williams</i> US Arleigh Burke-class destroyer

USS James E. Williams (DDG-95) is a Flight IIA Arleigh Burke-class destroyer in the United States Navy. The ship was named for Boatswain's mate Petty officer first class James Eliott Williams (1930–1999), a River Patrol Boat commander and Medal of Honor recipient from the Vietnam War who is considered to be the most decorated enlisted man in Navy history. As of April 2023 the ship is part of Destroyer Squadron 26 based out of Naval Station Norfolk.

<i>Lord Jim</i> 1900 novel by Joseph Conrad

Lord Jim is a novel by Joseph Conrad originally published as a serial in Blackwood's Magazine from October 1899 to November 1900. An early and primary event in the story is the abandonment of a passenger ship in distress by its crew, including a young British seaman named Jim. He is publicly censured for this action and the novel follows his later attempts at coming to terms with himself and his past and seeking redemption and acceptance.

<i>The Spy in Black</i> 1939 film by Michael Powell

The Spy in Black is a 1939 British film, and the first collaboration between the British filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. They were brought together by Alexander Korda to make the World War I spy thriller novel of the same title by Joseph Storer Clouston into a film. Powell and Pressburger eventually made over 20 films during the course of their partnership.

<i>Around the World in 80 Days with Michael Palin</i> 1989 British television travel documentary series

Around the World in 80 Days with Michael Palin is a 7-part BBC television travel series first broadcast on BBC1 in 1989. It was presented by comedian and actor Michael Palin. The show was inspired by Jules Verne's classic 1873 novel Around the World in Eighty Days, in which a character named Phileas Fogg accepts a wager to circumnavigate the globe in eighty days or less.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alan Villiers</span> Australian author, adventurer, photographer & mariner (1903–1982)

Alan John Villiers, DSC was a writer, adventurer, photographer and mariner.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reginald Drax</span> British naval officer (1880-1967)

Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax, KCB, DSO, JP, DL, commonly known as Reginald Plunkett or Reginald Drax, was an Anglo-Irish admiral. The younger son of the 17th Baron of Dunsany, he was Director of the Royal Naval Staff College, President of the Naval Inter-Allied Commission of Control in (Berlin), commander-in-chief of successive Royal Navy bases. His brother Edward, who became the 18th Baron of Dunsany, was best known as the famous playwright and author Lord Dunsany. Edward inherited the paternal estates in Ireland, while Reginald was bequeathed most of his mother's inheritance across portions of the West Indies, Kent, Surrey, Dorset, Wiltshire and Yorkshire. He extended his surname by special Royal licence in 1916, and was noted for the quadruple-name result, Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ronald Stuart</span> First World War Victoria Cross recipient and senior British Merchant Navy officer

Ronald Niel Stuart, VC, DSO, RD, RNR was a British Merchant Navy commodore and Royal Navy captain who was highly commended following extensive and distinguished service at sea over a period of more than thirty-five years. During World War I he was awarded the Victoria Cross, the Distinguished Service Order, the French Croix de Guerre avec Palmes and the United States' Navy Cross for a series of daring operations he conducted while serving in the Royal Navy against the German U-boat campaign in the Atlantic.

<i>The Secret Sharer</i> 1910 short story by Joseph Conrad

"The Secret Sharer" is a short story by Polish-British author Joseph Conrad, originally written in 1909 and first published in two parts in the August and September 1910 editions of Harper's Magazine. It was later included in the short story collection Twixt Land and Sea (1912).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bidadari Cemetery</span> Defunct cemetery in Toa Payoh, Singapore

Bidadari Cemetery is a defunct cemetery in Singapore. It used to serve the Christian, Muslim, Hindu and Sinhalese communities, and accepted burials between 1907 and 1972. The site of Bidadari Cemetery used to be Istana Bidadari, the home of Che Puan Besar Zubaidah, who was the second wife of Sultan Abu Bakar of Johor Istana.

<i>Outcast of the Islands</i> 1952 British film

Outcast of the Islands is a 1951 British adventure drama film directed by Carol Reed based on Joseph Conrad's 1896 novel An Outcast of the Islands. The film features Trevor Howard, Ralph Richardson, Robert Morley and Wendy Hiller.

“Youth” is an autobiographical work of short fiction by Joseph Conrad first published in Blackwood’s Magazine in 1898, and collected in the eponymous collection Youth, A Narrative; and Two Other Stories in 1902.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph Stenhouse</span>

Commander Joseph Russell Stenhouse, DSO, OBE, DSC, RD, RNR (1887–1941) was a Scottish-born seaman, Royal Navy Officer and Antarctic navigator, who commanded the expedition vessel SY Aurora during her 283-day drift in the ice while on service with the Ross Sea Party component of Sir Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition in 1914–17. After Aurora's escape from the ice he brought her safely to New Zealand, but was thereafter replaced as the vessel's commander. He later served with distinction in the Royal Navy during both World Wars.

Frederick was a sailing ship built in 1807 at Batavia. She made four voyages to Australia and was wrecked at Cape Flinders on Stanley Island, Queensland, Australia in 1818.

SS Jeddah was a British-flagged Singaporean-owned passenger steamship. It was built in 1872 in Dumbarton, Great Britain, especially for the Hajj pilgrim trade, and was owned by Singapore-based merchant Syed Mahomed Alsagoff. In 1880, the officers onboard the Jeddah abandoned it when it listed and appeared to be sinking, leaving more than 700 passengers aboard. The event later inspired the plot of Joseph Conrad's novel Lord Jim. The vessel was retrieved and continued to sail, later being renamed Diamond.

The family of Al-Saggoff'

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The captain goes down with the ship</span> Maritime tradition

"The captain goes down with the ship" is a maritime tradition that a sea captain holds the ultimate responsibility for both the ship and everyone embarked on it, and in an emergency they will devote their time to save those on board or die trying. Although often connected to the sinking of RMS Titanic in 1912 and its captain, Edward Smith, the tradition precedes Titanic by several years. In most instances, captains forgo their own rapid departure of a ship in distress, and concentrate instead on saving other people. It often results in either the death or belated rescue of the captain as the last person on board.

Joseph Conrad was a Polish author who wrote in English after settling in England. He is regarded as one of the greatest writers in English, though he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties, and always with a marked Polish accent. Before embarking on writing, he had a career sailing in the French, then the British, merchant marine. Of his 19-year merchant-marine career, about half that time was spent actually at sea.

<i>Iserbrook</i> (ship)

Iserbrook was a general cargo and passenger brig built in 1853 at Hamburg (Germany) for Joh. Ces. Godeffroy & Sohn. It spent over twenty years as an immigrant and general cargo vessel, transporting passengers from Hamburg to South Africa, Australia and Chile, as well as servicing its owner's business in the Pacific. Later on, the vessel came into Australian possession and continued sailing for the Pacific trade. In 1878 it caught fire and was sunk the same year. At last, it was re-floated and used as a transport barge and hulk in Sydney until it sank again and finally was blown up.

MV <i>Empire Star</i> (1935) UK refrigerated cargo liner

MV Empire Star was a UK refrigerated cargo liner. She was built by Harland and Wolff in 1935 as one of Blue Star Line's Imperial Star-class ships, designed to ship frozen meat from Australia and New Zealand to the United Kingdom. She served in the Second World War and is distinguished for her role in the Evacuation of Singapore in February 1942. She was sunk by torpedo in October 1942 with the loss of 42 lives.

References

  1. Gavin Young, In Search of Conrad, Penguin Books, 1992, pp. 48-91
  2. "Singapore's dead make way for the living", The Daily Telegraph, London, 17 August 2004.