The 'Katherine Stewart Forbes' arrived March 1839 in Port Adelaide, South Australia

Sir Charles Cooper, first Chief Justice of South Australia 

Hi Everyone,

I can't imagine what my Great-Great-Great-Great Grandmother Janet Slone nee Row thought when she left her home in Scotland and boarded the sailing ship Katherine Stewart Forbes in Plymouth in October 1838.

The Katherine Stewart Forbes was a three mast ship built in 1818.  She was only 117 feet long and not quite 30 ft wide.  (35.6m x 9m)  The ship had previously conveyed settlers to New Zealand,  transported convicts in 1830 and 1832, and had also made a previous trip to Port Adelaide in 1837.

We also know that the ship called at Capetown in Africa, for an extended period of time.

On board this particular journey with my 4x great grandmother was one Charles Cooper Esq., soon to be sworn in as Chief Justice for the Province, the bewhiskered man in the photograph.

The South Australian Gazette and Colonial Register reported that Charles Cooper arrived in excellent health 'notwithstanding a long and rather tempestuous passage.'

Also on board the Katherine Stewart Forbes were many goods including but not limited to 3 wheelbarrows, 4 carts, 16 wheels, 2 pigs' heads, 6 oars, anvil, 6 puncheons bottled beer, 6 bedsteads, and one iron bedstead, 21 barrels pork, 19 tierces beef and a piano.  Does anyone know what a tierce is?

All this amazing information was printed in the newspaper at the time, when the ship arrived in March 1839. It was a long trip even for those days,

I've made a list in TROVE called 'Katherine Stewart Forbes 1839' so you can find the digitised newspaper articles, including the list of goods article, plus articles that mention Charles Cooper.  Should you want to know more about Sir Charles' life, please refer to the Australian Dictionary of Biography.  I have provided the link below.
http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/cooper-sir-charles-1918

Historically yours,
Valerius Copernicus

Newspaper articles found in Trove reproduced courtesy of the National Library of Australia.
Image used courtesy of the State Library of South Australia  - B440

Citation details

'Cooper, Sir Charles (1795–1887)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/cooper-sir-charles-1918/text2253, published first in hardcopy 1966, accessed online 21 April 2015.

This article was first published in hardcopy in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 1, (MUP), 1966

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