The Voyage of the Clifford

The Port Nelson Haven Ahoy! exhibition tells the story of early colonial migration to Nelson in the 19th century. The exhibition is based on the transcriptions of a number of diaries and logbooks detailing the daily experience of the long voyage out from England to Nelson. Two of the diaries featured in the exhibition were written aboard the same ship, the Clifford, on the same voyage from Gravesend to Nelson in 1842.

The text below introduces the two diaries and briefly explains the background to their transcription.

The Gapper Diary - written on board the Clifford, December 1841 - May 1842

Gapper. 1841-1842. [Diary written on board the Clifford, December 1841 - May 1842] transcribed by Dawn Smith. Nelson Provincial Museum, Archives Collection: NPM2004.33.1

Spelling and punctuation have been transcribed as they appear in the diary. Due to the diary being written in pencil, many words have become illegible and these have been marked by the symbol ^.

The Gapper family farmed at Appleby, Nelson and Bernard and Mary are buried at Appleby's St Albans Church. At the time the diary was transcribed it was thought that it had been written by Bernard. If you read the diary carefully you may conclude that it was perhaps written by Mary.

Thomas Hughes Surgeon's Log Of The Clifford 13 December 1841-13 May 1842

Hughes, T. 1841-1842. Surgeon's log of the Clifford / transcribed by Marsha Donaldson. The original log is held at Alexander Turnbull Library (MS-Papers-4203)

In 1989 the original log was deposited in the Alexander Turnbull Library from the estate of Mr W S Boyes. Sometime prior to this date a typed transcript had been made and deposited in the Nelson Provincial Museum as part of the Bett Collection. A microfilm copy of this transcript is held by the Manuscripts and Archives Section, Turnbull Library at Micro-MS-0676. The typescript was filmed in 1981. Between the time the transcript was made and the deposit of the original log at the Turnbull Library the first 2 pages of the original log have become detached and lost. The current transcript has been made by Marsha Donaldson from the original log, with the addition of the transcribed entries for 13-17 December 1841 (ie those missing from the original). The earlier transcript was compared with the original log and a number of mistakes were found, mainly in the transcription of passengers’ names. There are a number of words that could not be deciphered and a series of dots [...] indicate this in the transcript. Assistance with deciphering the pharmaceutical terms was given by the chemist, Silverstream Pharmacy, Upper Hutt

Dr Thomas Hughes was listed in the Clifford's passenger list as aged 34; occupation Surgeon. Source: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ourstuff/Clifford.htm accessed 14 October 2010.