My 1st Australian Ancestor was a "hard-driving" Scottish Captain

Submarine Matters mainly deals with matters undersea. But have I told you my great great grandfather, Captain William Begg (photo below), was my first ancestor in Australia. Sadly there were no submarines available in the years he sailed. So he was a surface "skimmer".

Drawing mainly from Wikipedia: Begg was born in 1821, in Montrose, Scotland. At a typically young age, he was apprenticed as ship's carpenter and served as a seaman for several years before around 1840 being put in charge of a cargo boat shipping timber from the Baltic.

In 1855 he was appointed captain of The Sebastian (426 tons) on the India route, calling in at Adelaide, South Australia and Mauritius on the return voyage.

His next appointment was as captain of the Orient Line clipper Coonatto trading between England and Adelaide from 1863 to 1866. Coonatto was known as a fast ship, described by Basil Lubbock as "an out and out clipper with very fine lines."   Lubbock says that she was "very wet," which means that she took a lot of water on board when under sail, but he thought that this might be due "to the hard-driving of her skipper, Captain Begg, a Highlander, who never spared her and made some very smart passages out and home."  

Coonatto's fastest times were 66 days to the Semaphore Lightship in Adelaide and a 70-day run, even after losing both her helmsman and ["the wheel" another man] overboard after broaching-to (falling foul of the wind) off St Paul's Island [in the Indian Ocean]! In that same storm Captain Begg had both his legs and also some ribs broken!

Then Captain Begg was put in charge of the clipper/"liner" The Murray (see painting below), on which he served until 1872, making very good voyages, and impressing his passengers with his urbanity and sailor-like qualities, an asset to the reputation and no doubt profitability of the Orient Line. See photo of Begg below.

In the early 1870s he settled in Adelaide and was made manager of the Tug Company, then was appointed ship's surveyor for Lloyd's of London. In 1877 he and John Legoe had a part in formation of the Port Stevedoring Company,[1] and he served with that company until a few weeks before his death [in 1889"]"

The Murray (1,019 tons) clipper ship was Captain William Begg's, largest command from 1869 to 1872. (Painting courtesy State Library of South Australia via wikimedia.)

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Captain William Begg is seated as years before he had broken both legs in a storm at sea. Standing without hat is probably his first officer (or top petty officer?), maybe of The Murray (see painting  above). The two standing gentleman with hats look relaxed and upper class, maybe owners of the ship or shipping company. (Photo may have been taken in 1872 and is from the Begg and Coates family collection. Both my Mum and late Dad were descendents of Captain Begg).

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"Begg was awarded a silver medal by the Italian government for his part in rescuing sailors from a burning vessel." This was the Mannin Barabino, which caught fire while sailing from Genoa to Puerto Rico in May 1870. 

Begg and the crew of The Murray went to her aid and did what they could to rescue survivors, but 120 perished either in the inferno, the barque's cargo being largely [flammable alcoholic] spirits, or in the sea after her overloaded boat capsized."

See further details at a Submarine Matters article of January 22, 2019 on the dangers, hardships and routes taken by clipper ships.

Pete