The Downhomer; September 1994, pg 49. The Old World Connection by Roger Guttridge The Mystery Crew of the "Mountaineer". A mystery which has remained unsolved for almost 150 years concerns the fate of the Mountaineer, a schooner whose crew sailed from Poole for Newfoundland in 1850 and were never seen again. The story is regarded here as Poole's answer to the more famous mystery of the Mary Celeste, the New York based brigantine found abandoned but with sails set in the east Atlantic in 1872. The 87 ton Mountaineer was built at Hamworthy, Poole, in 1836 by William Cox and Thomas Slade senior. In 1850 she left for Newfoundland but failed to return when expected and was given up for lost by the people of Poole. Then on October 19 of that year she was found drifting 150 miles off the coast of Labrador, crewless but with her cargo of salt intact. Strangely, not only was there no sign of life on board but no personal possessions either - apart from three miniature portraits, found in the captain's locker, off Queen Victoria's second daughter, Princess Alice. The Mountaineer was towed to Jersey by fishermen from the Channel Islands before being brought home to Poole. In June 1851 she was re-registered by Robert Slade, of John Slade and Company, the Poole Newfoundland merchants, before resuming a career which continued for some years. Of her 1850 crew, however, nothing more was heard. The mystery is of a special interest to Ken Tilsed, a member of an old Poole seafaring family, who still lives on the outskirts of the town. "The captain of the Mountaineer in 1850 was John Tilsed," he said. "He may have been my great-grandfather, and if so. I would like to know what happened to the crew. Ken's grandfather, Harry George Tilsed, and Harry's brother, another Captain John Tilsed, were also on the Newfoundland ships in the 19th century. This john Tilsed also became captain of a local paddle steamer, the Brodick Castle, in about 1901. He named his house in Poole after the vessel, which eventually sank off the Dorset coast soon after starting a voyage to Argentina as a cattle ship. "I remember as a boy my grandfather, Harry George, sitting me on his knee and giving me a woollen picture of a ship", said Ken, about age 76. "The sailors used to make Woollen pictures and I often wonder if that one was the Mountaineer. In the end my mum out it under the stairs, the moths got it and it was thrown out." Harry George Tilsed's son, also Harry George, served on the Royal Yacht 'Iolaire'; before joining Poole Pottery as a sculptor in the 1920s. The seafaring Tilsed family's connections with Poole are said to go back at least 300 years. Two photographs are presented with this article.
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