Page 12 - Captain William Strike of Porthleven

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2: William Strike: a 19 century life in coastwise trade

A sea-going career

William Strike married Mary Anne Chegwidden in June 1836, by which time he was
serving as mate on the Penzance schooner ‘William & Ann’. William and Mary Strike
had nine children. The fortunes of their sea-going sons is chronicled later. William’s
career at sea is described in what follows: all told the career extended well over fifty
years and ultimately he was also able to describe himself as a ship owner too.
William Strike retired in 1881 at the age of 67: he died aged 78 on July 6, 1892.
Mary, his wife, died four years later. By chance, William Strike’s best known
command – of which he was part owner – ‘Ready Rhino’ was lost in the year of his
death, albeit several years after he relinquished his part ownership of the vessel.

Back in 1814 when William Strike was born at Porthleven, Cornwall was beginning to
experience the early years of a mining boom. In the early 1830s, for example, it was
likely that up to 70,000 people in Cornwall earned a living from copper mining.
Davy had devised the miner’s safety lamp but nevertheless, the life of a Cornish
miner was dangerous in the extreme. Whether the life of a seaman was any less
dangerous is doubtful. The dangers of sea-going in peace and war would be
experienced both by William Strike and some of his sons. The reality of a dangerous
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life at sea in this period of the 19 century is borne out by the creation of the Royal
National Life Saving Institution in 1824. Altogether there were four lifeboats stationed
at Porthleven during the period 1863 to 1929: a period of 66 years. During that time
the service record shows that the various lifeboats were called upon only on nine
occasions. Allied to the fact that a second lifeboat station was erected in an
extremely exposed position towards the harbour entrance, it was perhaps not
surprising that the lifeboat was withdrawn from Porthleven in 1929. It was seven
years before the birth of William Strike that the warship HMS Anson went ashore at
Loe Bar, south of Porthleven. One hundred and ninety mariners lost their lives in this
tragedy, which was observed by Helston cabinet maker, Henry Trengrouse. As a
result Trengrouse put his energies into the development of rocket-propelled
apparatus capable of reaching a stricken vessel like the ‘Anson’, as well as cork-filled
lifejackets, the forerunners of today’s lifejackets.

By the time William Strike was about to emerge from his teens slavery was being
abolished in the British Empire. Four years later Queen Victoria came to the throne.
Six years later, as William Strike took command for the first time, in 1843, the S.S.
‘Great Britain’ became the first propeller-driven ship to cross the Atlantic, in just short
of fifteen days. A year later the Morse telegraph was used for the first time.

The start of the Crimean War was in 1853 when William Strike was still engaged
primarily in coastwise trade, aboard the schooner ‘Heed’, of which he was master
from the year 1847. By the time he had taken command, and part ownership, of the
schooner ‘Jane’ the Tamar railway bridge linking Devon and Cornwall was well under
construction and opened for traffic in 1859 just a year before Strike and his partners
took delivery of the schooner ‘Ready Rhino’ from a Sunderland shipyard on the River
Wear.

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