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My namesake's gravestone in Padstow Churchyard.
Sacred to the memory of
Captain William Bartlett Jun.
from Teinmouth Devon
Who unfortunately drowned
on this shore the 8th day of Nov
1814 and inter'd here the 18 Dec
Aged 24 years
Research shows that very high quality piping clay from the Newton Abbot area in South Devon was barged down the River Teign and then out by sailing ships via Teignmouth.
The young Captain Bartlett was sailing the clay from Teignmouth to Liverpool with a crew of 8 when his square-sterned brig, Ann, built at Starcross in 1812 and owned by Jack Bartlett, started to take on water and sank somewhere off Trevose, where Bartlett's body was found washed ashore.
Later that same November the schooner Fame was wrecked at Polzeath with a cargo of oats on its voyage from Youghal in Ireland to Southampton. Captain Roberts and his crew were all saved.
Actually looking at the wrecks of 1814 it was not a great time to have a ship named Ann. Just in the first month of that year:
3rd Jan, Ann struck the Cockle Sand, in the North Sea and foundered
5th Jan, Mary Ann was driven ashore at Gibraltar. She was on a voyage from Gibraltar to Africa. Mary Ann was subsequently declared a total loss
20th Jan, another Mary Ann, this time a transport ship was wrecked near Saint-Jean-de-Luz, Basses-Pyrénées, France.
29th Jan, Ann, another transport ship, was lost on the coast of France. She was on a voyage from Quebec City, Lower Canada, British North America to Milford, Pembrokeshire
And so on... to such an extent that the good people of Padstow raised £29 over the next 15 years so that by 1830 they could build the Daymark at Stepper to show the entrance to the Camel Estuary and provide shipping with a marker to find a safe haven on this dangerous section of coast.
The formerly white painted tower might have guided a young Captain Bartlett safely across the Doom Bar into Harbour Cove and Padstow itself had it been built earlier. Who knows.
Today people see the Daymark as just some sort of chimney, for a mine perhaps, and don't realise its former importance for those in peril on the sea.
Sir Goldsworthy Gurney, a remarkable local figure born just three miles from Polzeath in Treator
Gurney became a very young surgeon in Wadebridge at the age of 19! Medicine at this time was a mix of herbal remedies, old wives' tales, chemicals (including poisons), and pseudoscientific ideas like ‘bleeding’ or ‘cupping’. A doctor who kept patients alive was considered lucky as much as skilled.
Doctors typically gained experience through apprenticeships and Gurney was placed with Dr. Avery in Wadebridge as a medical pupil and was given a lot of responsibility. Gurney made several "ingenious contrivances" for Dr. Avery to use in his practice. He also wrote medical papers on chemistry and heat and electricity during his apprenticeship. Gurney took over Dr. Avery's medical practice in 1812 or 1813 when his mentor retired. All of Dr. Avery's patients stayed with Gurney suggesting that he was well-regarded by his mostly farmer clients and he married a farmer's daughter from Launcells, Elizabeth Symons in 1814.
Polzeath's small population around this time was concerned with mining so I imagine that if he had patients from here they would have had mining injuries or he might have attended to those who drowned.
Could he have attended my namesake, the young Cpt William Bartlett in 1814? Perhaps to see attend to him and his drowned crew? Or could Gurney have been there in 1819 to attend to the six men who drowned in Polzeath taking ore across Hells Bay, from Pentire Haven to Padstow?
As end note is there perhaps a connection between Gurney's wife, Elizabeth Symons and Samuel Symons of Wadebridge? He built “Doyden Castle” in 1827 on the cliffs at Port Quin? This "wealthy gentleman of Wadebridge" built it as a pleasure house for entertaining and owned mines from there up to Trevigo Farm and its former mansion.
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