Local Sagas: A Corner of Old Battery Point

This story is by Oatlands resident Elizabeth Ellis OAM, a frequent visitor to 1 Trumpeter Street over the years.

1 Trumpeter Street
Taken in March 2024 by Anna Cresswell

3 Trumpeter Street
Taken in March 2024 by Anna Cresswell

2 Marine Terrace
Taken in March 2024 by Anna Cresswell

Introduction

After European settlement in the 19th century and for much of the 20th century, Battery Point was in many ways a little self-contained world of its own. This was partly because of its topography and geology (dolerite knob of a hill) and the resulting separation from the town of Hobart, but more particularly because of the development of shipbuilding, warehouses, docks and associated whaling and other seafaring industries around its foreshores. This led to increasingly dense housing for the tight-knit community of maritime workers living close by and within short walking distances of their places of employment, interspersed with a few pubs and small shops.

This relative isolation from the rest of Hobart was especially true of parts of southern and eastern-facing Battery Point. Despite the establishment of slipyards, shipwrights’ workshops, boatbuilding sheds and some housing along the foreshores from the 1830s, considerable portions of land in the immediate vicinity remained undeveloped until the second half of the 19th century. However, by the end of the century Battery Point had become closely settled and assumed the appearance that defines its character to this day.

Battery Point slipyards off Napoleon Street, c.1870. Libraries Tasmania (ref. NS73-1-1-2)

Battery Point slipyards off Napoleon Street, c.1920. Maritime Museum of Tasmania (ref. P_2019_224)

Early Land Subdivisions

In February 1819 Governor Lachlan Macquarie granted 90 acres in the district of Queenborough to Lieutenant-Governor William Sorell. This land comprised much of today’s Battery Point on the southern and eastern sides adjoining the Reverend Robert Knopwood’s original 30 acre grant on the northern side and extending to the Sandy Bay Rivulet and present day Quayle Street on the southern side.

In February 1824, Sorell transferred his grant to William Kermode, a free settler from the Isle of Man, ‘in consideration of £600’, said to be payment of a debt.(1) William Kermode had streets laid out and sold some blocks and small subdivisions over the next three decades before his death in 1852 at Mona Vale, his splendid property on the Macquarie River near Ross. However some areas of the original 90 acre grant remained undeveloped.

William Kermode’s son, Robert Quayle (his mother’s maiden name) Kermode, inherited his estate, including the Battery Point land. R.Q. Kermode began a series of further land sales, including one in March 1859 for which a sale plan exists in the Tasmanian Archives and Heritage Office (TAHO). This poorly printed map with amateurish lettering and spelling mistakes is nonetheless a valuable historical record of 40 blocks on offer adjoining the Secheron estate on the northern side located in the newly laid down Marine Terrace, Mona, Colville, Derwent and Trumpeter (here named Napoleon Street North) Street.

Plan of a property at Haltery [Battery] Point belonging to R.Q. Kermode, Esquire to be sold by auction … 7th March 1859. Libraries Tasmania, Tasmanian Archives and Heritage Office (TAHO), (ref. AF 394-1-98)

Trumpeter Street was created in the early 1830s and was originally known as Napoleon Street North or just Napoleon Street as an extension of the street which still bears the name. It was renamed Trumpeter Street in the early 1850s. In the later 19th century it was renamed again as Derwent Street but finally changed back to Trumpeter Street in 1939. (2) The extension of Trumpeter Street from Marine Terrace to the foreshore remained known as Derwent Street, or Derwent Lane, as it has now become.

In the 1859 sale present day 1 Trumpeter Street and 2 Marine Terrace comprised lot 20, a single triangular-shaped block with measurements given as 116 x 120 x 85 (street frontage) feet. Lot 21, present day 3 Trumpeter Street, measured 120 x 114 x 50 feet (street frontage). It appears that lot 21 sold at or soon after the 1859 sale; lot 20 on the corner remained unsold.

After the death of Robert Kermode in 1870 unsold blocks from the 1859 sale were again offered for sale by Messrs Guesdon and Westbrook in January 1874 on behalf of Kermode’s estate. A sale plan exists in TAHO (see image below). Lot 41 (lot 20 in the 1859 sale) at the corner junction of Trumpeter Street (named Napoleon Street on the plan), Marine Terrace, Derwent Road (not ‘street’ as it later became) and present day Napoleon Street, was still available. This lot comprised the combined present day 1 Trumpeter Street and 2 Marine Terrace. However, at present day 3 Trumpeter Street a house had been built with the owner’s name, ‘Garth’, shown on the plan. This was Captain John Garth, a sea captain.

Plan of valuable allotments at Battery Point belonging to the estate of the late Robt. Q. Kermode Esq. …to be sold … 22nd January 1874. Libraries Tasmania, Tasmanian Archives and Heritage Office (TAHO), (ref. AF 394-1-104)

Number 1 Trumpeter Street (and 2 Marine Terrace)

In the Mercury, 26 November 1879, an advertisement appeared for ‘Thomas Westbrook [to] sell by public auction at his mart, this day … at 11 o’clock, a capital weatherboard cottage of four rooms, with verandah at the back and small garden in front. The land has a frontage on Napoleon-street of 84 ft. with a depth of 119 ft.’ This block size remained the same as that given for lot 20 in the 1859 and 1874 sales.

On 27 November 1879 the Mercury reported that ‘Mr Thomas Westbrook offered for sale at his mart in Collins Street today a weather-board cottage of four rooms to Mrs [Jane] Spiller for £200.’ It can therefore be assumed that present day 1 Trumpeter Street was built after 1874 but before 1879 on lot 41 of the 1874 sale. Hobart Valuation Rolls for the period indicate the house was probably newly built when offered for sale in 1879. Entries for Rolls prior to that in the 1870s indicate there were allotments with sheds on the land.

This house and land were then numbered 3 Trumpeter (or Derwent or Napoleon) Street, with today’s 2 Marine Terrace being 1 Trumpeter (or Derwent) Street following subdivision of the original land into two smaller triangular blocks. This subdivision appears to have occurred soon after Jane Spiller bought her property. In the Hobart Valuation Roll for 1881, well known ships chandler and merchant R.R. Rex is given as the owner of the 2 Marine Terrace land, probably purchased from Mrs Spiller for work purposes with its access to the shipyards. From the late-1880s he was living at his grand new house, Oscalusa, in Mona Street.

An entry in the 1896-7 Wises’ Tasmanian Post Office Directories shows by then the present brick cottage at 2 Marine Terrace had been built and was occupied by mariner Robert Mazey, with well-known shipwright Henry Featherstone of Purdon & Featherstone and his family moving there the following year. The Featherstones stayed a relatively short time, moving to a larger house in Marine Terrace (variously numbered 4 and 6, to the left of Taieri, no. 10) which became their family base for some years. The famous shipyard remained in operation until well into the 20th century. For several decades in the 20th and 21st centuries, the brick cottage at 2 Marine Terrace has been occupied by a niece of the late owner of 3 Trumpeter Street whose family are to this day long term Battery Point residents (see the 3 Trumpeter Street section below).

Jane Rebecca Spiller (née Weare) was the daughter of a Hobart publican, Thomas Joseph Weare. Her husband, John George Spiller (JGS), sometimes known as Seymour Spiller, was the sort of character who turns up on the fringes of 19th century society. Exuberant and self-confident, he was one of four sons of Irish free settlers who became tavern proprietors in Hobart. Three Spiller brothers became actors, performers, musicians and general theatrical entrepreneurs whose extravagant exploits were reported with relish by local newspapers. Jane, aged 24, and JGS, aged 30, were married by licence at St Mary’s Cathedral, Hobart on 21 April 1868. Their marriage certificate described them, perhaps optimistically, as ‘lady’ and ‘gentleman’.

After years of following JGS from one boarding house or hotel room to another in Tasmania, Victoria and New South Wales or living at her father’s hotel, Jane Spiller was apparently in a position to purchase a property in her own name, probably as a result of a distribution from her father’s estate. Thomas Weare had died at his hotel in Liverpool Street exactly a month before the Battery Point house sale and three days before the birth of Jane’s third child and second son, Leslie. (3) JGS died at Latrobe, Tasmania in April 1880, still trying to make an impression on stage, only a few months after Jane had purchased the Trumpeter Street cottage. Their only daughter, Eva May, died of heart disease and dropsy aged just eighteen on 19 May 1889 at the Trumpeter Street cottage. (4)

On 17, 20 and 23 April 1900, advertisements appeared in the Mercury for the forthcoming sale by Roberts & Co. of ‘Mrs Spiller’s cottage, no. 3, in Derwent-street, Battery Point, bounded by the properties of Garth and Rex. It has a frontage of 38 f[ee]t and a depth of 100 f[ee]t [that is, the original block by now divided in half] comprised of 4 rooms and kitchen, with every convenience and is in good order’.

The Mercury, 27 April 1900 reported that Roberts & Co. sold a ‘4-roomed W.B. cottage on account of Mrs. Spiller for £255.’ The Tasmanian News, 23 April 1900 gave the same information but added the name of the purchaser as ‘Mr D. Parker’. This may have been David Parker, licensee at the time of nearby Shipwrights’ Arms Hotel. If so, he did not live there according to entries in the Wise’s Tasmanian Directories for the next decade. The property appears to have been leased to various tenants during this time. When it was sold in April 1900 1 Trumpeter Street was designated 3 Derwent Street but by 1905 had been renumbered 1 Derwent Street.

Jane Spiller left Hobart soon after the sale of her house and is recorded as living in Sydney in Balmain in the 1901 New South Wales Census. During her last years in Sydney, Jane moved several times, living at what were then fairly insalubrious inner city addresses in Stanley and College Streets. (5) She died in Sydney on 10 September 1912 and was buried in the Roman Catholic section of Rookwood cemetery.

Then in 1913, Wise’s annual Tasmanian Post Office Directory lists Arthur Williams as the occupant (and owner) of 1 Derwent Street. Arthur Joseph Williams and his family were to be the longest residents of the house, living there for four decades. Arthur Williams was a shipwright, described by his grand-daughter as a caulker (sealing the seams of boat planks) who was employed by shipbuilders and slip owners Purdon & Featherstone at their yards in Battery Point, off Derwent and Napoleon Streets. (6)

Arthur followed the trade of his shipwright father, Edward, and the two lived and worked together in the close-knit community around the slipyards. (7) From 1909 until 1912 they were listed in the Post Office Directories as occupying adjoining cottages then numbered 42 and 44 Napoleon Street, today known as the Mariners’ Cottages. Prior to that they were at 30 and 32 Napoleon Street. Each of these addresses was a few metres from their workplaces.

Arthur was one of ten surviving children of Edward and Mary Ann (née Foght or Voght) Williams. He was born in Hobart on 15 September 1871. On 4 February 1892 he married Mary (or Mary Ann) Simmons (or Simmonds) as given on the marriage certificate. Both were aged 20. They lived in Napoleon Street at number 30 until Mary’s death from pneumonia in November 1905. There were no children. Arthur’s mother died in June 1909, also recorded as living in Napoleon Street (number 32).

On 17 May 1911 Arthur Williams married for a second time to Rosina (‘Rose’, or ‘Roseina’ as she signed her name on the marriage certificate) May Curtis at the Chalmers Church manse in Bathurst Street. Arthur signed with a cross, indicating he was not able to write. His new wife was almost 31 years old, having been born on 23 May 1880. While fisherman Thomas Flynn was recorded as her father on the marriage certificate (he was in fact her unofficial step-father), on her birth certificate no father’s name was given. Her mother was Philadelphia Louise Curtis (née Henson, sometimes spelt Hanson or Hinson), born on 27 January 1854 at Birch’s Bay (her birth was registered at Peppermint Bay) to sawyer and timber cutter Thomas Henson and his wife, Margaret (née Schay, Shay or O’Shea), both ex-convicts, Thomas from Northamptonshire and Margaret from Ireland. With an extended family, she brought up her children in various lodgings around the Old Wharf Hunter Street area and later at Montpelier Retreat near Salamanca Place.

When Rose and Arthur Williams married, neither was considered young. Several years afterwards their only child, daughter Rosina Jean (‘Jean’) was born on 31 October 1915. In her reminiscences (see below), Jean said that her grandmother Philadelphia was the midwife at her birth in the Trumpeter Street cottage and that she was well known locally for this role. Arthur’s father, the widowed Edward, lived with the family until his death on 14 August 1916, aged 81. His death notice in the Mercury stated that he was a shipwright and had five sons and five daughters.

Jean told her own story, ‘70 years for the love of Battery Point’, to Mercury reporter Louise Bower, published in the issue of 2 February 1985. She married carpenter, builder, engineer, Australian Defence Force officer and champion dog breeder Eric Walter Mayhead (1911-1995) who was known locally as the ‘Red Major’. Eric Mayhead was responsible for constructing the alterations and additions to 1 Trumpeter Street in 1947 to fit their growing family into the small cottage. These included enclosing the verandah to create the present sunroom and the bathroom at the rear. (8) Eric also had a shed behind the house as his carpenter’s workshop (this was converted into a delightful garden studio in 2019) and there were dog kennels along one side of the back yard. (9) Jean and Eric had four daughters, all born while the family was at 1 Trumpeter Street, so by the early-1950s there were four adults and four young children living there. (10)

There were internal alterations to the house in 1978 and 1985, (11) and a room in the roof and upstairs balcony in 1997. In early 2021 with a new owner, the interior of the house was gutted and two original chimneys were removed, a dramatic contrast to Eric Mayhead’s efforts to save Battery Point buildings in the 1970s in association with Sir Alfred White and his son, former MP the late John White. This is described in the latter’s article, ‘Dead Man’s Hand on Battery Point!’ story by John White on this website. (12)

In the early 1950s the Williams and Mayhead families moved to 17 Secheron Road which they called Glencarron, located near the gates of Secheron. Arthur Williams 8 died on 9 September 1959 and Rose on 26 January 1966. Their daughter, Jean lived until 10 September 2007. Her last Battery Point home was at 5 Secheron Road.

Number 3 Trumpeter Street

The history of the adjoining property (now 3 Trumpeter Street, earlier numbered 5) on the upper side of today’s no.1 is noteworthy, indeed significant, in its own right. It is the earliest house on this side of the street, and may date from the 1860s. It retains its original boundaries from the 1859 land sale. A diagram of the house position, noted as belonging to ‘Garth’, appears on the 1874 sale plan for R.Q. Kermode’s estate land.

Captain John Walter Garth (1835-1903) lived there with his wife for about four decades and was most likely the original owner. He was the son of James and Mary Garth. On his birth certificate his father is listed as a ‘sawyer’ of Pittwater. John Garth married Elizabeth Short (born in Hobart in 1838 and living in De Witt Street at the time of her marriage) at St George’s Church, Battery Point on 9 September 1862, with his occupation given as ‘mariner’.

John Garth was a well-known maritime identity and sea captain as master of various ships plying the Tasmanian coastal trade and to Victoria and South Australia. His main commands were Camilla, Seabird, and most famously, the square-rigged barque Natal Queen, which was a regular and imposing sight at the docks in Hobart.

Both Natal Queen and Seabird were wrecked in severe winter storms a fortnight apart in June 1909 at Adventure Bay, Bruny Island. (13)

Natal Queen. Maritime Museum of Tasmania (ref. P_OM_C_2a)

Camilla. Maritime Museum of Tasmania (ref. P_OM_J_23a)

It was a tough life, not for the faint-hearted, as a report in the Adelaide Advertiser, 20 July 1889 indicates:

Port Pirie … Captain Garth, of the barque Queen of Natal [sic], which is unloading here, was proceeded against at the Police Court today for assaulting and throwing overboard the Chinese cook on the vessel The case was withdrawn on the captain promising to give the cook his discharge.

Captain Garth died in May 1903. His obituary appeared in several Tasmanian newspapers, including the Mercury, 8 May 1903:

John William [sic] Garth, a retired Hobart shipmaster, died at his residence, Derwent-street, Battery Point, on Thursday. Deceased was identified with the whaling industry in the early days, severing his connection with it about 1864. For some years he was closely connected with the Tasmanian East Coast trade, and was also well known as master of the brigantine Camilla and Seabird, and subsequently of the barque Natal Queen. He retired from the sea in the nineties. Flags on vessels in port were half-masted out of respect to his memory.

Mrs Garth continued to live at 3 Derwent Street until its sale on 22 February 1907 as advertised several times in the Mercury:

Parsons and Georgeson. Instructed by Mrs. Garth, will offer for sale on the premises, on the above date … Her comfortable cottage residence, Derwent-street, Battery Point. The property has a frontage of about 50ft with a depth of about 180ft. there being ample room for further additions being built if so desired … Possession at once. Immediately after the sale of the property, surplus furniture and effects, choice pot plants and contents of fernery.

Mrs Garth died on 25 March 1911. She and Captain Garth had no children.

In the 1909 edition of Wise’s Tasmanian Directories, Frank Calvert and his family were listed as the new residents of 3 Derwent Street and continued to live there until around 1920. Frank Calvert came from the extended South Arm orchardist family and was another seafaring man, described as ‘master mariner’ in Australian Electoral Rolls. In the first years of the 20th century he was co-owner of Captain Garth’s former ship Seabird, and on board when she was wrecked on 12 June 1909 at Adventure Bay, Bruny Island with ‘terrible seas raging’. In his official report the Harbourmaster, Captain Milford McArthur, stated ‘… the Seabird was lost through there not being sufficient steam up to move the vessel. As the vessel was not insured it would be a severe lesson to the owners …’

Seabird. Maritime Museum of Tasmania (ref. P_GSL367)

In 1909 the Calvert family had a new vessel under construction at Purdon & Featherstone’s. This was SS Reemere, built for local coastal trading and passengers on the Hobart−South Arm−Lewisham−Wedge Bay route. She was launched by Elsie and Frank Calvert’s eldest daughter, Jean on 21 October 1909 and was ready for service by January 1910. For the next ten years with Frank Calvert as her captain, Reemere was a constant sight on the Derwent and around the Channel ports and the East coast. She continued operating for decades in south-eastern Tasmanian waters after which she was last sighted in Vanuatu in 2012 and is believed to have sunk sometime after that.

People at launch of SS Reemere. Maritime Museum of Tasmania (ref. P_2003-030)

SS Reemere. Maritime Museum of Tasmania (ref. P_OM_E_85g)

After the Calverts left about 1920, Wise’s Tasmanian Directories for 1922 and 1924, record the occupant of 3 Derwent Street as William B. Bowerman, Assistant Deputy Harbourmaster. There were then several short term occupants with the next family to live at 3 Derwent Street for an extended period from around 1930 to 1939 being the Gates, fish curers.

In 1939-40 William David Clarke (‘Bill’) Price acquired 3 Derwent Street (in 1939 renamed again, and finally, Trumpeter). Like most of the previous residents, Captain Price was a seafaring man, best known for his ownership of the trading ketch Enterprise built in 1902 at Purdon & Featherstone’s. He donated Enterprise to the Bicheno Sea Life Centre in 1980. She was a land-based exhibit, intentionally destroyed in 2009 when funds for her restoration were considered impossible to raise. Bill Price died aged 87 in 1987.

His son, Norman John (‘Norm’) Price, continued to live in the house at 3 Trumpeter Street. He was proud of his Battery Point heritage and at one time told his neighbour at 1 Trumpeter Street, Susan Ellis Blackburn, that he slept in the same bedroom as he had as a child. Norm died aged in his nineties in early January 2024, staunchly clinging to the old ways despite the ‘new’ Battery Point emerging all around him. In his working life, Norm was well-known to customers at Hobart city stores T.J. Cane, Charles Davis and G.P. Fitzgerald. He was also a collector of many and varied objects with his front garden housing at various times a bus, engines, old cars and other eclectic possessions hidden under a blanket of wild roses and bougainvillea. Despite its present near derelict condition, the house at 3 Trumpeter Street would probably still be recognisable to its original owners, Captain and Mrs Garth, its block of land from the 1859 Kermode sale intact − even though any trace of Elizabeth Garth’s ‘choice pot plants’ and fernery is long gone.

[Hobart City Council] Metropolitan Drainage Board, Hobart Detail Plan no.35 (section), 1905-1909. Libraries Tasmania TAHO (ref. Record ID SD_ILS:1310492 (series)

Along with other properties in the vicinity of Trumpeter, Napoleon and Derwent Lane and Marine Terrace, this corner of Battery Point occupied by 1 and 3 Trumpeter Street and 2 Marine Terrace, is a reminder of the once tight, enclosed world of the shipyards, boat building and waterfront maritime activities where the working and personal lives of residents interacted constantly in close proximity, and were interwoven over several generations with each other, ships and the sea. Their stories and the houses and places associated with them are of critical importance in preserving the essence of the local history of old Battery Point, and as a record of people not necessarily classified as ‘the great and the good’ but who lived out their lives in this small enclave of Hobart and defined much of its culture and character.

Endnotes

1 Amy Rowntree, Battery Point Today and Yesterday. Hobart, 1968 (reprint edition), p. 69. See also Col. Sorell’s location at Battery Point. Surveyor William Sharland, manuscript, nd, Tasmanian Archives and Heritage Office (TAHO), AF394/1/2.

2 Mercury, 30 August 1939, p. 2. Also Hobart City Council Notice, 29 September 1939 and The Story of Battery Point Street by Street, by Donald Howatson. Hobart, November 2012, p. 48, 54. As Howatson notes, Sloane Street was originally named Trumpeter Street in the 1830s by journalist Henry Melville after the newspaper he edited at the time. The name changed to Sloane Street in the 1850s referring to one of its most notable early residents.

3 Thomas Weare’s hotel, then known as the Vine Tavern (renamed the Shamrock Inn by December 1880) on the corner of Harrington and Liverpool Streets and still there as the Shamrock Hotel, albeit with a 1930s make-over, was offered for sale on 4 November 1879.

4 She was buried in the Weare family grave (no. 7278) at Cornelian Bay on 22 May 1889, her religion, like the rest of her family, given as ‘Church of Rome’.

5 Sands Sydney Directories, 1906 and 1910.

6 Susan Ellis Blackburn, Conversation with Yvonne Onn, 24 November 2021.

7 Edward Williams’ Apprentice Indenture with shipyard owner John Ross, dated 1851, is held by the Maritime Museum of Tasmania, ref. D_1997-005. 8 TAHO, AE 417/1/5034.

9 Susan Ellis Blackburn, op.cit.

10 Ibid.

11 Libraries Tasmania, Tasmanian Archives and Heritage Office (TAHO), AE417/6/2320 and AE417/8/2324.

12 See the story Dead Man’s Hand on Battery Point on this website

13 See Wrecked on Bruny Island, by Greg Ware, 2014.

I would like to thank and acknowledge Dr Susan (‘Sue’) Ellis Blackburn and her daughter, Dr Anna Cresswell for all their help and encouragement in compiling this account and Anna for her photographs of the houses used throughout this story taken in March 2024. With Sue’s son, Chris Shearer, their cat Schwarz and dearly loved dog Archie, they were the last residents of 1 Trumpeter Street from 1995. It was, as it had been for so many years for others in the past, their happy family home for a quarter of a century. Sue sold the property in 2020.

Elizabeth Ellis OAM
March 2024

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