Seventh Generation

64. Captain John MOWLE was born on 18 December 1797 in Deal, Kent, England, United Kingdom.^29,108 Although Pioneer Families of Australia states that his dob was 1792,The Births, Deaths, Marriages and Obituaries column in The York Herald (York, England), Saturday, November 20, 1869 states that he was 71 at the time of his death. This means he was born between November 1797 and October 1798. This matches perfectly with his baptism at Deal on Jan 5th 1798 (parents Jeremiah and Mary) rather than Dover in 1792. He was baptized on 5 January 1798 in Deal, Kent, England, United Kingdom.¹⁰⁹ From circa 1823 to 1854 he was a Captain in Hull, Yorkshire, England, United Kingdom.^109,110
From Information Provided by Peter Holford.
Using the reports in regional papers, there are sporadic reports of Mowle in the shipping lists - these lists always entered the name of the ship followed by the name of the captain. In 1823 J. Mowle was captain of the Earl of Cloncarty sailing between London and Rotterdam e.g.The Morning Post (London, England),Friday, March 21, 1823 . This has to be John - the only other candidate would be Jeremiah but he would have been over 60 years old and sea captains tended not to last that long! It would also fit in with his career progression. Both Stephen Sayer (b.1804) and John were employees of the St George Steamship Company. This was an exceptionally early company to venture into steam. It started in 1821 - nine years before the ground-breaking Liverpool to Manchester Railway.

The following quote is also consistent with information in the book "The Early History of Hull Steam Shipping" by F H Pearson (published 1896)

St George Steam Packet Co.
Founded in Liverpool in 1821 but with much of the share capital from Cork, initially there were two ships, St George and St Patrick, serving Liverpool, Dublin and Bristol, but two more were added later, the Lee on the Cork to Liverpool route, and the Severn on the Cork to Bristol. In 1825 the company H.Q. moved to Warren's Place, Cork, and in 1831 moved again to Penrose Quay. They expanded rapidly from this time and were soon operating out of every major British port as well as Holland,Denmark and Russia. In 1843 the company was renamed the City of Cork Steamship Co., (from http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~mturner/cork/shipping_lines.htm)

This company expanded to other ports including London and presumably this is where John and Stephen became employees. From 1832 John was in charge of the Earl of Roden sailing between Liverpool Dublin and Cork. Stephen followed his elder brother in 1834 and captained the Herald on the same route.

In 1834 the St George SP Co decided to expand into Hull. Up to that point there had been just a few steam packets sailing from Hull mostly run by a local Hull firm, unsurprisingly called the Hull Steam Packet Company. This was a shrewd business move as the Yorkshire and Lancashire textile regions were growing fast and there was a big export trade to the continent as well as down the coast to London. St George parachuted in some existing ships and their captains including John Mowle, Two Irish captains (Hayden and Moffatt) and another Kent man - William Knocker, RN from Dover (is this the same William Knocker who in 1848 married John's first cousin once removed, Emma Maria Mowll b. 1826?). Stephen obviously decided to stay in the west or perhaps he wasn't invited to go to Hull! This was also an era of a huge movement of people from the Continent to America. You might think that the best route was direct from Hamburg to New York. However it was much cheaper to cross to Hull and get the train to Liverpool before catching a vessel across the Atlantic. In Hull they had to build a migrants hall next to the main railway station to process all these people (the building is still standing). So John would have been moving large numbers of Germans one way and returning with finished textiles.

John Mowle stayed in Hull until at least 1842. He was on the Hull to Hamburg route for twenty years with occasional visits to Rotterdam. His ships included the Lee which was registered in Liverpool (1834-5), the William the Fourth (NOT William IV !) which was registered in Dublin(1835-41) and the Severn (also registered in Dublin) which he captained in spells when the William wasn't sailing. In 1842 he switched employer to the Hanseatic Steam Navigation Company and captained a new ship, the Manchester, for a few months. Later that year he moved to the Leeds (until 1848), then the Leipsig (sic) from 1848 to 1850 and the Hamburg from 1850 to 1854. On 6 June 1841 John lived at Kingston Street, Holy Trinity in Kingston Upon Hull, Yorkshire, England, United Kingdom.¹¹¹ From 1842 to 1848 he lived in Leeds, England, United Kingdom.¹⁰⁹ From 1848 to 1850 he lived in Leipzig, Germany.¹⁰⁹ From 1850 to 1854 John lived in Hamburg, Germany.¹⁰⁹ He died on 23 October 1869 at the age of 71 in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada.^{29,105,108,110} (The death date is from his gravestone and corroborated by two separate websites. It is however different from that quoted in Pioneer families of Australia and notes by his son JMB Mowle - August 1859) He was buried after 23 October 1869 at St. Peter's (Anglican) Cemetry in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada.¹⁰⁵

Captain John MOWLE and Ann EASTES were married on 1 June 1823 in Deal, Kent, England, United Kingdom.^9,112 Ann EASTES, daughter of Silvester EASTES and Susanna GARDNER, was born in 1798. She was baptized on 11 March 1798 at St Leonard in Deal, Kent, England, Great Britain.¹¹³ In 1841 she lived at Kingston Street, Holy Trinity in Kingston Upon Hull, Yorkshire, England, United Kingdom.¹¹¹ In 1871 Ann lived Age: 73; MaritalStatus: Married in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada.¹¹⁴ She died on 17 June 1879 at the age of 81 in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada.^29,110 She was buried at St Peter's (Anglican) Cemetery in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada.¹⁰⁵

Captain John MOWLE-54 and Ann EASTES-55 had the following children: