Our River Stories: Joyce Gibson
We’ve still got more stories to share! This time Joyce Gibson lets us in on her family history of the Tyne.
“Our River Stories: My great grandfather, James Jamieson, was a captain of tugs on the Tyne. So far as I understand from maritime records, he held shares in two tugs ‘The George’ and ‘The Friend’. He is recorded in the 1881 census as ‘Waterman Captain of Tug Boat’.
His son, my grandfather, John Jamieson sailed out of the Tyne. He was 3rd Engineer on SS Skidby. On Tuesday 31st January 1905 the vessel went aground on Sable Island off the North East Coast of Canada and was stranded there for two or three months. My family have old photographs of the crew in suits and flat caps on the SS Skidby whilst it was aground. The photographs also show icicles from the wheel of the ship.”
“The local folk of Sable Island were very kind and provided shelter, clothes and food to the crew whilst they were stranded. The daughter of the Superintendent of the Lifesaving Establishment at Sable Island kept an autograph book. This is now in the Museum on Sable Island along with other records relating to SS Skidby. You can see in the image below that in the autograph book is my grandfather’s signature. We downloaded this from the museum website together with the above photo of SS Skidby in the ice. This information was all gleaned via the power of the internet a few years ago. This was fascinating, as none of the family had ever seen my grandfather’s handwriting as he lost his sight a few years later, well before my mother was born in 1917.”
“At the time he lost his sight in about 1910 (the reason for the loss of his sight was never known) my grandfather was already married to my grandmother. When he left the sea, my grandfather, along with my grandmother, had a newsagents shop down by the River Tyne. It was somewhere near one of the shipyards which they had until the depression when it closed as there was no work in the shipyards and consequently no-one had money for newspapers and tobacco.”
