Childhood

Our Mum's grandfather Charles Henry Harris was born in Gosport on 15 September 1856, to parents William and Mary. He was their sixth child, three boys and three girls. All the older children were born on the Isle of Wight. William was a blacksmith and many year before had fallen out with his father George and wasn't able to work in the family blacksmith business. So William moved to the mainland to find work, possibly in Portsmouth Dockyard. While Charles was still a baby the family moved to Limehouse in London around 1857 or 1858, to No. 1 Gun Lane. The area was characterised by shipbuilding trades, barge-builders, boat-builders, rope-makers, sailmakers, and ships chandlers. This picture depicts Limehouse in 1850.

Around this time ships had begun to be built with an iron hull covering the wood framework - known as 'ironclads'. In London in 1857 the Royal Navy’s first ironclad battleship HMS Warrior was under construction. There was a high demand for experienced blacksmiths and maybe this was why William Harris moved to London. 

 A few years later on 14th November 1863 William Harris died in the London Hospital of kidney and heart disease aged just 39, leaving Mary to look after eight children. The elder children were probably already working, but the family were probably struggling to survive. In July 1867 Charles’s older brother William joined the Royal Navy. In 1869 the family (Charles, his mother and three younger brothers) was forced to move back to the Isle of Wight to claim poor relief. His mother received poor relief for 5 years from 1869 to 1874.

Royal Navy Service

Charles joined the Royal Navy on 20 March 1871 at HMS St. Vincent Gosport aged 14. His family might have been forced to move back to the Isle of Wight to claim poor relief. Joining the Royal Navy would have removed him as a burden from the family, and possibly made a contribution to their income. By signing on he was committing to serving ten years from when he reached the age of 18, and until that time he was ranked as a boy.After his initial training he was posted on 1st Jan 1873 as a Boy 1st class to HMS Vanguard which was a very modern ship at the time having been launched in 1870. On 15th September 1873 he was promoted to Ordinary Seaman and started his ten years adult service.

HMS Warrior

On 1st April 1875 Charles was posted to HMS Warrior which was shortly to take up a new role as the flagship of the First Reserve Squadron. HMS Warrior was built by the Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company and was launched in December 1860. It was the first iron hulled armoured frigate and at the time the world’s largest warship. When Charles joined her in 1875, the Warrior had just completed a lengthy rebuild in Portsmouth Dockyard. She had been fitted with new boilers, new masts and rigging, and a new deck. She was virtually a brand new ship, but out of date by the standards of the day.

 After trials of her engines and equipment the Warrior sailed from Portsmouth on 8 May 1875 to take up her new role at Portland. Charles Harris already had experience of similar ships, so he would quickly have felt at home on the Warrior. The Warrior remained in Portland for the next few weeks while preparations were being made for the Reserve Squadron to make a goodwill cruise round the coast of Ireland. In the last week of July 1875 the Reserve Squadron left Portland for their Ireland cruise. They were to visit Galway, Londonderry, Belfast, Dublin, and Cork. By the end of August all was going according to plan and the Squadron had reached Dublin. The ships had been visited by hundreds of sightseers from the various cities. In Galway there were so many who wanted to visit the ships that they stayed an extra couple of days.

But disaster was about to strike. On the morning of 1st September 1875 four ships of the Reserve Squadron left Dublin bound for Cork. Warrior was leading, followed by Hector, Vanguard and Iron Duke. Only two of them arrived at Cork, Warrior and Hector.  As they were passing Dun Laoghaire just outside Dublin they encountered thick fog. HMS Vanguard suddenly turned hard to port after she saw a merchant ship dead ahead. Almost at once the fourth ship in the line Iron Duke rammed the side of the Vanguard causing fatal damage below the waterline. The Vanguard sunk in less than an hour. The Iron Duke stopped to pick up survivors. Fortunately there was no panic and the whole crew of the Vanguard made an orderly escape to the Iron Duke. The only casualty was the Vanguard's dog. Seventy minutes after the collision, Vanguard was resting in 165 feet of water, the tips of her masts still visible above the surface. She had come only 18 miles from the harbour at Kingstown. Warrior and Hector continued to Cork, and Warrior later returned to the site of the Vanguard wreck after leaving Cork, and finally returned to Portland in late September 1875. Charles on HMS Warrior was not directly involved but he would have learnt fairly soon of the loss of his first ship. This is how the Illustrated London News envisaged the accident.

HMS Sultan

Charles left the Warrior a couple weeks later on 27th September 1875 and was then posted to HMS Sultan. She left Portsmouth in November 1875 and arrived Gibraltar in December with an outbreak of scarlet fever. She returned to Plymouth and several men were transferred to hospital with scarlet fever. The ship underwent a major refit at Portsmouth and was recommissioned on 25th February 1876 under Captain HRH Duke of Edinburgh - Alfred, the second son of Queen Victoria. Charles Harris was a crew member all this time - did he get scarlet fever?

By June 1876 Sultan was back in Gibraltar. Here's an extract from a newspaper in September 1876:

“...the Duke of Edinburgh is making himself very popular with his men onboard the Sultan, the magnificent ironclad which the Duke commands in the Mediterranean. Not only does he give musical performances and encourage theatricals, but when “all hands” are piped to bathe, the men are greatly diverted by their gallant captain going overboard with them and joining in the fun”

HMS Valorous

Sultan remained in the Mediterranean for two years until in May 1878 the whole crew from their captain the Duke of Edinburgh downwards moved to another ship, The Black Prince, sister ship to the Warrior. She returned to Portsmouth in December 1878, and Charles Harris was posted to HMS Valorous, the last paddle frigate in the Royal Navy, a couple of months later.

By a curious turn of fate Charles was once again involved with the Vanguard during his time on Valorous. The Vanguard wreck was a hazard to shipping and after much pressure from politicians the Royal Navy was forced to do something about the wreck. Torpedo Lieutenant Durnford from HMS Excellent put forward a plan to dynamite the wreck to break off the masts which were sticking out of the water. His plan was approved and on 3rd June 1879 HMS Valorous set off from Portsmouth with hundreds of tons of dynamite and a working party to Kingstown. Charles Harris was by now a Petty Officer 2nd class aged 23. After delays due to bad weather and some early failures the exercise was eventually successful and by late June the shipping route into Kingstown was clear. 

A few days after the exercise to blow up the Vanguard Charles’s Navy service came to an abrupt end. On the 4th July 1879 he was invalided from the service in Plymouth hospital, having served only 7 years of his ten years commitment. Whether it was because of illness or accident we don’t know. Perhaps he had been injured by the explosions during the Vanguard exercise. But whatever it was the Royal Navy considered itself liable because he did get a pension.

Back to Civilian Life

Two years later in 1881 Charles was working as a labourer and living with his mother and three younger brothers in Brading on the Isle of Wight. He seems to have recovered from whatever it was that caused him to be unfit for Navy service. The following year he married Fanny Maria Budden on 3rd July 1882 at Sandown. They had two children, a boy William in 1883 and a daughter Ada Mary (our Granny) in 1888.

Working in Portsmouth Harbour

When Granny was born Charles was working  on the Floating Bridge, and later as a steam launchman for the Floating Bridge company. The Floating Bridge was a flat bottomed boat drawn by chains between Portsmouth and Gosport. It was large enough to carry carts and horses as well as people and for a long time enjoyed being the only ferry service across the harbour. The picture here shows crowds on the floating bridge arriving at Portsmouth for the Naval Review in 1862.

In the 1880s competition arrived in the form of steam launches for foot passengers. The Floating Bridge company fought to keep their share of the market by introducing steam launches of their own, and it was on one of these that Charles Harris was working. The picture shows the steam launches at the Portsmouth side.

Chaplin & Co. Carriers

Charles moved on from the Floating Bridge company to join Chaplin and Co. carriers. He worked on a luggage boat called the ‘Advance’ which made daily trips between Gosport and Ryde carrying goods. The Advance was a two masted sailing boat like the one shown in the postcard below at Ryde. Victoria pier is on the right of this picture with the goods wharf adjacent.

On Monday 11th September 1893 Charles and his skipper John Cross left Gosport at about 9:30 am for Ryde which they reached about 10:30. The weather was wet and windy. When they made to cast off for the return journey tragedy struck. The forward rope attached to the Victoria pier remained attached to the pier, and Charles stepped on the coil of rope. As the boat moved away from the pier the rope tightened round Charles’s leg and dragged him overboard to his death. This was 4 days before his 37th birthday. An inquest was held the next day in the Gem Inn, Ryde. Verdict – Accidental Death.

When Charles died his wife Fanny was left to bring up the two children on her own. William was aged 9 and Ada (our Granny) was 4. Fanny died in 1905 aged 55. William was then 21 and Ada was 16. William married in 1905. Ada married Thomas Herbert Osborne four years later in 1909, aged 20.