Liverpool historic wreck and last emigrant ship holed in Falklands
Mike Stammers , Keeper of MMM , at Albert Dock , Liverpool has just returned from the Falklands. His main task was to investigate the history and condition of the last emigrant ship , the ‘Charles Cooper’ which lies next to the main street in Stanley, the capital. The ‘Charles Cooper’ was built in Connecticut for New York owners and for the first four years traded between New York and Antwerp in Belgium. On the return voyages to New York she carried emigrants from Europe in search of a better life in the United States – a total of 882 people. After 1859,she was used in the ‘tramp’ trades, voyaging with a whole variety of cargoes to many ports. These included Savannah to load cotton bales for Liverpool, India and Sri Lanka. Her last voyage was with a cargo of coal from Philadelphia for San Francisco .In September 1866, she sustained damage off Cape Horn and put into Stanley for repairs. But the cost of repairs was too high and she was auctioned to a firm of local merchants J.M. Dean & Son who used as a storage hulk in Stanley harbour. Deans sold their business to the Falkland Islands Company in 1888 and shortly after that the ‘Charles Cooper’ was beached alongside the hulk of the ‘Actaeon’ at the West jetty.She was provided with an overall roof and served as a warehouse until the 1960s. Today , she is deteriorating fast. Her ageing timbers have collapsed on the outer side and the marine authorities are concerned that she will break up and be a hazard to shipping.
He also took time to investigate the condition of the Jhelum.She was built by the Steel family in the south docks of Liverpool in 1849 and was abandoned in the Falklands in 1871 and used as a storage hulk by the Packe Brothers .Mike and a team from Merseyside Maritime Museum carried out a full survey of the vessel in the late 1980s which was later produced as a book complete with detailed plans. The Jhelum is also in a state though not as advanced as the ‘Charles Cooper’ .Unfortunately the underwater parts of their hulls are being attacked by the teredo .This mollusc can bore holes in timber a up to half an inch in diameter and this can fatally weaken the structure of an old wooden ship.Not only that but both are also being attacked by a small marine creature rather like a mini wood louse , a gribble. Mike says’The Falkland authorities are urgently looking in to ways of bringing parts of the ‘Charles Cooper’ on to dry land and shoring up the Jhelum .’These will be expensive operations and
Yet they seem to be the only way something of these important maritime relics’ said Mike.
Mike’s visit was funded by the Shackleton Foundation. He hope to produce a book on the Charles Cooper in due course.
