‘On the ship Dublin, James Ryder Master’ (1777)
The verse letters of John Monk's aunt, Mary Ryder, included the following touching prayer for the safety of her brothers Stephen and John, who captained privateers and merchant ships, often sailing together from Liverpool to London and further afield.
John Monk witnesses the birth of airmail, maybe
I uncovered an array of stories while researching Bonaparte & Brimstone, some of which proved to be just a step too far removed from my subject and had to be discarded.
Headstones scrubbed bare by the centuries
Several generations of the Monk and Matthews families lie under three large, slab headstones opposite the entrance to the church of St Mary and St Helen, Neston. The stones have aged very badly through the years and today reveal very little about those who lie beneath.
The faces of Bonaparte & Brimstone
Portraits of the better-known characters in Bonaparte & Brimstone were easy to locate, but beyond naval captains and aristocracy, unearthing portraits of family members is a long game, involving patience and luck.
Scandal! Charles Monk and the Neston Savings Bank
Set alongside John Monk’s roguish charm, his eldest brother Charles always seemed rather stuffy and uptight to me, unfairly so perhaps. He may not have had John’s exciting stories, but he had a strong sense of civic duty and could regularly be found on committees or supporting local initiatives. Even far into his retirement, Charles remained an influential figure locally.
Kelsick Wood, Georgian shipbuilder, artist, doodler…
I have been fascinated with the pocketbooks and story of Kelsick Wood for some time now. Kelsick was a Georgian shipbuilder in the West Cumberland town of Maryport, who carried a small leather-bound pocketbook with him during the 1820s and 1830s. He filled its pages with the business of his yard: contracts for ships, timber yard stock lists, details of his shipwrights, even a short-lived diary.
