Weatherhead -- Sailors from British Isles

Picture is of my great uncles one in Australian Infantry Uniform..early 1900's
My Grandfather Charles's younger brothers. They were sons of Horatio Weatherhead, Tynong Victoria, Australia
Horatio was grand-son of Captain Thomas Weatherhead - another Captain of Convict Ship, "The Phoenix"
you can check the web for voyage dated 1821..

There is the Ancestor we can trace back to then there is Matthew Weatherhead


We know less about.. but an Explorer in the Early days of Queensland..





MATILDA British whaler under the command of Captain Matthew Weatherhead. The Matilda had sailed from England on March 27 1791, and had touched at Port Jackson and Peru before arriving in Tahiti on February 14, 1792, anchoring in Vaitepiha Bay. For some inscrutable reason Captain Weatherhead stayed only three days at Tahiti.
On the night of February 24, 1792, the Matilda foundered on Mururoa atoll, 640 miles south-east of Tahiti (see the March 1792 commentary in Part I). All of the crew were saved and reached Tahiti on March 5. Soon afterwards the schooner Jenny from Bristol arrived in Tahiti, and when she sailed for America Captain Weatherhead and four members of the crew went with her. Instead of waiting for another ship, three of the men took one of the four whaleboats of the Matilda, fitted it with sails of native matting, and sailed for Port Jackson. They were never heard from again.
If they had waited only a few weeks, they could have sailed back to Europe with Captain Bligh in the Providence. Bligh arrived on April 10 and when he left a little over three months later, he took fifteen of the Matilda’s crew with him. The remaining six wanted to stay on Tahiti. One of them, the Swede Anders Lind, became a kind of military advisor to Pomare I.
In February 1826 Captain Frederick Beechey in HMS Blossom found parts of the wreck of the Matilda on the northern shore of Mururoa.http://library.puc.edu/pitcairn/bounty/encyclopedia.shtml
==========================================





WEATHERHEAD OTTER LONDON 1789


Whalers heritage Project





/http://explorenorth.com/whalers/features/whalecaptains2.htm





.........................................................................................................................





Some more interesting topics from these chaps, I took some quick notes





http://www.danbyrnes.com.au/blackheath/ships2.htm





Early Explorer/ found merchant--at blackheath site..


.http://www.merchantnetworks.com.au/--


Webmaster of the Merchant Networks Project, Dan Byrnes, is the author behind The Blackheath Connection, a major work on the history of the transportation of convicts from England to North America and then Australia, 1717-1810.