12 October 2011
Ronald, I read with interest your account of the Palmerston voyage of 1872 from Hamburg, Germany to New Zealand, and addition news items. Although I had read a translation of the diary before, I felt I wanted to write you and tell you that the man who died on the 25th of August from the fumigation was my grandmother's grandfather. I had heard an account of the incident since I was a very young child (I am now 64). Our family did not have many of these details, but the story lived on through the 10 year old boy, Ole Jensen, who became William John Hastie in New Zealand. When he reached adulthood, he went back to Norway and found his youngest sister, Borea Jensen, (1865-1931) who was my great grandmother. We have photos of Uncle Hastie in 1931 when he visited our family in New York for the funeral of his sister. My mother, now age 88, was a teenager at the time and remembers that visit. I put together a brief account in a story form of the Jensen family (attached in PDF). I hope you find it interesting. Thank you for posting all the details of the trip which I have enjoyed reading. Dave Crankshaw Ft Lauderdale, FL
Ronald, I read with interest your account of the Palmerston voyage of 1872 from Hamburg, Germany to New Zealand, and addition news items. Although I had read a translation of the diary before, I felt I wanted to write you and tell you that the man who died on the 25th of August from the fumigation was my grandmother's grandfather. I had heard an account of the incident since I was a very young child (I am now 64). Our family did not have many of these details, but the story lived on through the 10 year old boy, Ole Jensen, who became William John Hastie in New Zealand. When he reached adulthood, he went back to Norway and found his youngest sister, Borea Jensen, (1865-1931) who was my great grandmother. We have photos of Uncle Hastie in 1931 when he visited our family in New York for the funeral of his sister. My mother, now age 88, was a teenager at the time and remembers that visit. I put together a brief account in a story form of the Jensen family (attached in PDF). I hope you find it interesting. Thank you for posting all the details of the trip which I have enjoyed reading. Dave Crankshaw Ft Lauderdale, FL
The Jensen Family
by David C. Crankshaw, Copyright Oct. 2011 My mother’s mother’s mother’s mother was named Andrea Thomine Olsdatter, born the 27th of Feb. 1827 in Kristiansand, Vest-Agder, Norway. She was the 7th and youngest child of a teacher, Ole Tellefsen, originally from the farm Bennestad, and his wife Anne Marie Olsdatter. Andrea had an older brother, Ole Jonas Olsen, 1819-1893, who was a scholar and traveled the world. He was called “Uncle Olsen” by the family and was said to have been in Chicago at the time of the great fire (1871). There was correspondence between his family and the Minnesota families, as I later learned in my family research. Uncle Olsen was at one time a constable in Kristiansand and he died there in 1893, age 74. He was well known and influential in the large port city of Kristiansand (formerly “Christianssand”), a city named after its founder, King Christian IV in 1641. It is the fifth largest city in Norway today. The northeast part of town is the remaining part after the town fire of 1892. It has kept the original wooden houses, with one and two floors, that accommodated workers, workmen and people of humble means. All the houses are facing the streets and you will see cozy windows, main entrances with stairs, iron fences, benches and flowers. The kitchen and bedroom are on the backside of the house and with a separate door to the backyard and the garden. It was here that the Jensen family lived. Andrea Thomine Olsdatter was married to Borre Andreas Jensen on 28 Dec 1853 in Kristiansand Cathedral pictured here as it must have looked back then. They had five children, all christened here: 1. Jensine Karoline Borresdatter, 1854 2. Andrea Otillie Borresdatter, 1856 3. Anna Ingertha Borresdatter, 1859 4. Ole Jonas Borresen, 1862 5. Borea Boresdatter, 1865 In the 1865 census, housefather, Borre Andreas Jensen, age 35, and his wife, Andrea Tomine Olsdatter, age 37 lived at 314a Consumption (now Henrik Wergelandsgate) along with their children Jensine Karoline (11), Otillie Andrea (9), Ane Ingertha (7), Ole Jonas (4) & Borrea (1). Also in the same house was Borre’s mother, Kirsten Borresdatter, then 65. All looked well and happy for the Jensen family, but their world changed two years later when Andrea Thomine Olsdatter died age 41. My grandmother (Bertha Johnson Olson, 1890-1984) often told me of the story of her mother, Borea Jensen, orphaned at the age of 3, went to live with the family across the street and that her father went to sea with his only son, Ole, adding that the father died on the voyage, leaving little Ole an orphan. She told me how Ole was adopted “at the next port” (New Zealand) and he grew up there. When he became an adult, he went back to Norway to find his little sister and brought her to America. Having been raised by a Scottish couple named “Hastie” and renamed William John Hastie, Ole only spoke English and his sister Borea only spoke Norwegian. They could only “exchange tears of joy,” as my grandmother put it. I thought that this story was much more interesting than the soap operas on TV that my grandmother enjoyed watching in her later years. It was my family history! And, after many years of research, many of the details have come to light. I found in the church registry online that “Andrea Tomine Olsdtr, 41, died May 3, 1868, wife of Borre Jensen, cause of death was toring.” I am yet to find the meaning of toring, but believe it to be a lung disease, from what I learned of the story. Perhaps T.B. Borre had his mother to help care for the children, but when she died, he became depressed and began drinking. He decided to leave Kristiansand and start a new life in a new land and booked passage for New Zealand. We find that he booked on the “Palmerston” (pictured at the right) which left Hamburg, Germany on 28th of July 1872 taking his 9-year-old son Ole with him. The ship arrived at Port Chambers, New Zealand on the 6th of December 1872, but not with Borre Jensen. A diary of the voyage has survived! You can find an English translation of the Danish diary of Christen Christensen online telling of the voyage of the Palmerston. Heavy storm on August 1st and finally better weather as they left the English Channel. Of special interest is the entry on the 25th of August 1872, and I quote... “One man dead today belonging to Norway. He was a widower and had 4 children. The three he left in Christiana and the fourth which was 10 years of age was on board. With him a rumour was circulated amongst the passengers that the man had been stealing a bottle of poison from some person on board so as to poison himself thereby. But that was not so, that was done so as to hide away the real fact, which was done by one of the stewards on board who had to attend to the fumigation of all the occupied quarters below the main deck. It was done once a week by ordering all the passengers below up on to the main deck for the time of fumigation, and the Stewards duty was to see everybody had left below before he started the steaming or rather smoking and to see all hatches and ventilators closed up as to keep all the fumes from escaping. Then the steward brought down two or three buckets of Stockholm tar and placed them on a creating and lighted a coal fire so as to bring the contents to boil for about an hour. But the steward had overlooked to see into the beds so as to make certain that all the people were out, and they were not because this Norwegian was still in his bed sleeping. Afterwards when the people went down again the man was discovered dead in his bed, of suffocation no doubt of the strong poisoned gases from the boiling tar. Some ugly rumour soon passes amongst the passengers relating to the poor mans death, that gave the Captain some concern, as he did not like to have an investigation of the unlucky circumstances after the arrival in New Zealand because he would know it would likely be a serious matter for him and the steward, therefore he told the people on board that it was his intention to take the boy belonging to the dead man to bring him up himself as he had no children. That promise gave satisfaction to some of the passengers, not knowing the devious side of that promise by the Captain. The boy (later noted), was kept on board the ship until the last day before going away then the boy was told that he was to travel along with some person to serve in Oamaru district and to have a different name instead of his own. That was meant so he could not be traced by any of his ships companions, so ended that honourable promise of a German Ships Captain.” ![]()
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