Coincidence and history

Last year we went on a cruise from Singapore to Thailand, Cambodia and back to Singapore over 7 days. The ship is the Gemini and it can carry about 800 passengers but on our cruise there were only 260 passengers, mostly from Australia. One couple we met on the cruise lived at one time in the same suburb as we did…Bicton. It turned out that the husband’s father was the somewhat gruff Sergeant Shea at the local Police Station. We discovered many things and people in common from the fifties.
His wife learnt that we had spent some years teaching in Papua New Guinea and told us of her grandfather who was a Master Mariner on a ship out of Samarai in the early 1900s. He was killed during a storm which swept down through Papua New Guinea and devastated Cooktown in Queensland in 1907. The cause of death was noted as being struck by a rigging block during the storm. The Queensland newspaper reporting the death suggested that it seemed suspicious as two other Masters on the same ship had died at sea.



The grand daughter had letters and photographs between the ship’s Master and his wife and new born baby. The wife was living in Cooktown and was awaiting housing before moving to Samarai. The letters tell of his life on board and on land at Samarai, his plans for their arrival and expressions of his love for his wife and child. He died before mother and daughter arrived in Samarai. He was Norwegian with the name of Soren Nilsen, but anglicised it to Nelson. I wrote up the story with pictures to be published in Una Voce, the newsletter of the PNGAA.

Top photo is of Samarai c 1906.