DeeKnow’s Grotto

Over the last few years my hard-case Aunty Alice has been compiling a heap of resources relating to the two families on my mothers side, the Phillips (English) and Mansons (Scottish), and recently my Mum handed me a copy of some stuff that I thought I just had to regurgitate into something web-friendly.

May not exactly make thrilling reading for others, but its a starting point and I reckon I'll carry on and do a little research and fleshing out of my Fathers side, the Stringers (Engilsh) and Allens (Irish).

One thing that may thrill you however, if you like internet anecdotes, is the experience I had when I went looking for a photo of the boat that the Stringers came out to NZ on in 1874. I had found out that the name of the boat was the Waikato, so I had a search round on Googles web-search but didnt turn any images up, so I flicked over to their images search and still nothing.

I narrowed the search to 'Waikato 1874' and guess what. Only one image in the results, and it was a great photo of the actual boat sitting in a dry-dock in Port Chalmers. Bloody brilliant.

Have found some other reasonably cool stuff too, loads of details about the Waikato itself, the voyages it made to NZ and some content from newspaper articles at the time covering their arrival, an abbreviated log from the captain (Hodder) on a similar voyage, and a copy of an entertaining document the "British Passengers Act" issued in 1864 which outlined conditions and behaviour expected of passengers and crew, including such classic clauses as...

20. The following kinds of misconduct are hereby strictly prohibited; that is to say, all immoral or indecent acts or conduct, taking improper liberties or using improper familiarity with the female passengers, using blasphemous, obscene, or indecent language, or language tending to a breach of the peace, swearing, gambling, drunkenness, fighting, disorderly, riotous, quarrelsome, or insubordinate conduct, also all deposits of filth or offensive acts of uncleanliness in the between decks

11:56:41 PM