In around 1835 a sailor called Sharrock Dupen moved his family to Hayle, in Cornwall. It was a decision that was to transform their lives. Sharrock took a job as steward on the steam packet Herald, which made the weekly voyage from Hayle to Bristol and back. When the Herald was replaced by the Cornwall, and then the Cornubia, he continued to take care of the passengers, who remembered him as ‘a rather short, extremely stout man, but withall very active. He victualled the boats well and the passengers had always good reason to be satisfied with the table.’
Sharrock Dupen and his wife Johanna Woolcock had thirteen children. Ten survived to adulthood. One of them was my great-grandmother Hester.
Hester married a London tailor, becoming stepmother to his five children. She went on to have four children of her own, including my grandfather Harold Baxter.
The boys all went to sea and travelled the world. George sailed to New Zealand and Australia before jumping ship to become a coffee planter in the Nelliampathy hills of southern India. John joined the navy and took part in a small colonial war in Perak, one of the Malay States. Ernest made three voyages as 4th engineer on a steamship that brought tea from China, transported Chinese labourers to the Australian goldfields, and carried pilgrims to Mecca. He then went out to join George on his coffee plantation.
The girls also led independent lives, becoming governesses and starting their own very successful schools. They may have travelled no further than Bristol or London, but they too are examples of how lives were changed by the age of steam.
Children of Sharrock and Joanna Dupen
Joanna (Annie) 1832
Catherine (Kate) 1833
Sharrock 1834
Salome 1836
Rhoda 1837
Ellen 1839
George 1841
John 1843
Charles 1844
Sarah 1846
Hester 1848
Samuel 1849
Ernest 1851
Victorian Lives 