Royal Commonwealth Society : Wreck of the Mission ship Allan [sic] Gardiner

Hamond family

Royal Commonwealth Society

<p style='text-align: justify;'> A watercolour of the battered shell of the Allen Gardiner, a schooner named after the missionary Allen Francis Gardiner. </p><p style='text-align: justify;'> Gardiner’s proselytizing took him to Port Natal in the 1830s and then to Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego in the 1840s. His tragic death of starvation, alongside his missionary colleagues on Picton Island off Tierra del Fuego in 1851, prompted his former naval colleagues including Captain Bartholomew James Sulivan (see RCMS 273/4) to raise funds to revive the Patagonian mission and provide it with a schooner, the Allen Gardiner. Tragedy repeated itself and in 1859 the crew of the Allen Gardiner was massacred at Wulaia on Navarin Island. </p><p style='text-align: justify;'> The Allen Gardiner was apparently repaired and used on other missionary voyages, so it is not clear when this picture was painted or by whom, though it is likely to be by a member of the Hamond family. </p><p style='text-align: justify;'> The watercolour is pasted into an album on the Falkland Islands created by the Hamond family of Twyford Hall, Norfolk. It contains photographs, original drawings and watercolours, mostly of maritime interest, ranging in date from 1845 to 1900. The album was purchased from Spots by the Royal Colonial Institute Library in 1912. </p><p style='text-align: justify;'>See Janus record <a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/db/node.xsp?id=EAD%2FGBR%2F0115%2FRCMS%20273'>here</a></p>