User:Kittybrewster/Alexander

Able seaman Alexander Arbuthnot (sailmaker's mate on HMS Pandora (1779)).

Comparatively recent developments in DNA sequencing (see [www.pandorawreckancestors.net]) have prompted renewed interest in a British sailor called Alexander Arbuthnot.

According to Admiralty records this man was recruited (i.e. ‘prest’) off or in Great Yarmouth by a press gang operating from HMS Richard (Adm. 36/11092) He was assigned –rated as an ‘AB”, able seaman- to the Pandora on 26 Oct 1790 and re-rated as a sail-maker’s mate on 1 Dec 1790.


 * HMS Richard was a so-called 'tender' used for the 'impress service'; I am not sure when it was built nor where, nor tonnage, nor what sort of rig it had. I imagine it was a small, but decked, vessel used for inshore purposes. There would have been 100s of similar vessels all around the coast. There was an 8 man crew as well as 'the lieutenant's gang' of 6 men on board commanded by Lt Robert Corner who eventually was posted to the Pandora as the 2nd lieutenant


 * CORNER, Robert - Commission dd. 21 Aug 1790. Appeared on 13 Oct.1790; received £33.1s.6d advance pay; paid £110.12s. ‘neat wages’ on 26 Oct.1792 · Age 37; from London. Prior to his appointment as 2nd. Lt to the Pandora, he was CO of a press gang operating from HMS Richard in the North Sea. It is interesting to note that a number of men in Corner’s press gang and from the Richard’s crew appear to have followed him to the Pandora (Adm. 36/11092) Hamilton (1793:27) mentions that Corner had been commissioned “in the land service” before joining the RN; Corner was first commissioned as an RN lieutenant in 1779 – at age 26. He was promoted to 1st Lieutenant of HMS Terrible in 1792 and also served as 1st lieutenant (1798-1802) in HMS Victory under Horatio Nelson’s command*. He ended his career as Superintendent of Marine Police in Malta; and was buried in February 1819, aged 66, in St Paul's Pro-Cathedral, Valetta
 * But he was not on board the Victory at Trafalgar!

Unfortunately relevant Admiralty records (Adm. 36/11136) give no details about his age or place/county of birth.

He was ‘D.D’ (“discharged dead”) from the Pandora’s muster on 29 Aug 1790 with 30 of his shipmates after the wreck of HMS Pandora (1791) on the Great Barrier Reef.

It is assumed this Alexander Arbuthnot was in his late teens or early/mid 20s when he died – his birth year would therefore fall between 1765-1774.

I am interested in tracing living male descendants of the men who died in the Pandora as DNA-Y sequences have recently become available for the three skeletons (nick-named ‘Tom, Dick & Harry’) that were recovered from the wreck during archaeological excavation of the Pandora wreck in the mid/late 1990s.

Alexander Arbuthnot is considered a promising person in terms of this ‘reverse genealogical’ research; in particular because of his responsibilities as sail-maker’s mate, i.e. he was possibly below-decks at the time of the wreck assisting other crew with desperate efforts to ”thrum” the vessel’s hull with sail cloth to slow down the ingress of water (ultimately to prevent the ship from sinking)

I look forward to hearing from genealogists who may have an Alexander Arbuthnot (b. vicinity Gt. Yarmouth?? between 1765-74) in their family tree – if so, the Pandora’s ‘Tom, Dick or Harry’ may be their ancestor (gr/gr/gr grandfather?) This could be proved by submitting to a simple Y-chromosome DNA test to test for a match with sequences from Tom, Dick & Harry.