Sacramento County
Biographies
CAPTAIN
WILLIAM H. BRADLEY
CAPTAIN WILLIAM H. BRADLEY. The lives of some men are peculiarly rich in incident, and especially in this the case with those who in early life have followed the sea. To write the history of such lives would be to fill volumes. The subject of this sketch has a life history well worth writing; but in a work of this character, where only a limited space is allowed to each individual, the question is not what to include, but what to leave out of the interesting narrative. Captain Bradley was born in Yorkshire, in the north of England, in 1847. He received a common-school education and at the age of fourteen years entered upon his sailor’s apprenticeship of three years, under Captain Harrison, of the brig Daring, of Whitby. Finishing his term of apprenticeship, he made two short voyages before the mast; then a voyage to the Black Sea, as second mate of the Ariel, of Stockton; and on the return voyage he was wrecked. “Never shall I forget the peril of that time,” says the gallant Captain. “We were going through the Bay of Biscay, our vessel laden with grain, and in a gale, and in order to avoid a collision with another vessel the Ariel was ‘brought to’ suddenly, shifting the cargo and springing a leak; for three nights and two days we manned the pumps, but our utmost efforts were not sufficient. Inch by inch our doom approached, and after many weary hours a sail was descried to windward. She bore down upon us. Hope became a certainty; but alas! She proved to be an Italian trader, and seeing our signal of distress - the reversed Union Jack - she, with heartless cruelty, passed by us on the other side. The sea was running high, but we had no other choice - we must leave the sinking ship. First one and then another of our boats were swamped, in attempting to launch them, but the lifeboat was successfully launched by cutting away the bulwark and rail, and in it our fifteen men were crowded, at the mercy of the raging sea. Happily a Welsh schooner bore down upon us and threw out a life-buoy with 100 fathoms of line attached, and we were drawn safely to her deck. In that moment of safety, look!, the gallant Ariel, poised for one moment upon the crest of a mighty wave, the next gone for ever!” Such is life on the sea. The wrecked crew was well treated by the strangers, and on the following day they were landed safe at Queenstown. After a few weeks rest at his home in Yorkshire, the young sailor shipped once more before the mast, in the ship Manfred, Captain Scott, bound with a cargo of coal for Colombo, Ceylon, and to Burmah, in British India, for a cargo of rice for Rotterdam, Holland, and home. The English merchant marine service has no equal in the world, its efficiency being due largely to her system of thorough examination instituted by Government. When the subject of this sketch finished the voyage above described, he went to Sunderland and passed his examination before the Board of Government Examiners, both as to seamanship and navigation, receiving a certificate which entitled him to the position of second mate, on any English vessel. And he at once secured such a position on the Regina, a sister vessel to the Ariel, and sailed away on a voyage to the Black Sea. After twelve months’ service, came another examination before the Board, and again he passed with credit, securing this time a certificate as chief mate, and secured a position on the new bark Hannah Hodgson. Eighteen months later he was passed as Captain. Thus step by step we find him gradually rising, steadily onward and upward, until he is in command of the bark Dorathea, engaged in the Mediterranean trade; later on he was transferred to the steamers Polino, Aagean and Nio, and was chief mate on these vessels, making his firsts trip to the United States in the latter with Captain Turnbull Potts - now a ship owner - as master. After two more trips in the Nio, to the Mediterranean, he came again to New York, as Captain of the steamer Charles Townsend Hook, when one of those experiences befell him, which can be best related in his own words: “We had come to New York, in ballast, taking on a general cargo. I remember that sixteen vessels left New York and Baltimore on that day. On the 24th of December we ran into a cyclone. My experience and observations of the laws governing storms enabled me to ascertain that we were running into the center of the cyclone, and that by ‘going about’ we could steer clear of its greatest violence; in doing this, however, we ‘shipped-a-sea,’ and were very nearly lost. But the air-compartments, or water ballast tanks in the bottom of the ship, with which she was provided, brought her afloat, as I knew they would, the only question being, would she be right side up. That she did come right side up, the sequel shows, for she came riding safe into London, twelve days from New York, being the second to arrive out of the sixteen to start, eight of which were never heard from.” After a short rest he was again afloat, this time on a voyage to the White Sea - the northernmost point of Russia - where he first learned that the latitude could be found by an altitude of the sun at midnight. On his next voyage he took command of the Silbury, the finest steamer of the Chapman’s fleet of ten vessels, running from London to Havre, Hayti and Jamaica, a voyage of three months’ duration. When the Charles Townsend Hook, their new steamer, was completed, he was complimented by being transferred to her, extending the line from Jamica (sic) to New Orleans, where they took a cargo of cotton for Rotterdam. Afterward the C. T. Hook was chartered for two years in the China trade, by Katz Brothers, Singapore, running with passengers and freight from Hong Kong to Saigon, Cochin China, Bankok, and Manilla. Later on, and while at home recruiting for another voyage, he was sent to Glasgow to superintend the loading of vessels for the West Indies, and upon his return to Sunderland, he was to look at the steamer Madras, then lying at Shields, with a view of her purchase for the China trade. She was a 3,000-ton vessel, of which he was afterward commander. In 1883, being then in the China coasting trade, he left Hong Kong, with 600 Chinamen, a crew of thirty men and twelve China Doctors. On the eighth day out chicken-pox was reported, which was later found to be the dread small-pox, and for sixty four days they were detained by the Hawaiian Government officials before being allowed to discharge their cargo at Honolulu and proceed to Vancouver’s Island. For fourteen days more they were detained there before being allowed to dock and discharge cargo. He then steamed away for Tacoma, Puget Sound, for coal; but finding they would be delayed, he went to Seattle, and so on to San Francisco, where they arrived in August, 1883. The Captain left the steamer there, determined to take no more chances on the sea, but to build a home, and to enjoy at least some of the rewards so richly earned, to live with his family henceforth, and to enjoy the society of his children; for, out of the entire fourteen years of married life in which he had followed the sea, only about six months had been spent on shore. He purchased a farm near Ione, sent for his family, disposed of his interest in the various vessels which he had acquired by patient industry, and in the following February he became a farmer in the golden State of California. Here he remained until March 1, 1888, when he moved his family to the city of Sacramento and engaged in the grain business on J street. The Bradley family is an old one, his father, John Bradley, having been master mechanic for William Lund, of Keightley, for twenty-five years. Mrs. Bradley is a lady of culture and refinement, the daughter of Captain John Openshaw Cormack, of Suderland, England.
Transcribed by: Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
Davis, Hon. Win. J., An Illustrated History of
Sacramento County, California. Pages 714-716. Lewis
Publishing Company. 1890.
© 2007 Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.