To: AUS-IMMIGRATION-SHIPS mailing list, AUS-IMMIGRATION-SHIPS@rootsweb.com Dear All, I am looking for information on a ship named Gottorp and those who travelled on her to Australia in 1857. >From what little I already know, the Gottorp was one of the ships used to transport German immigrants under a Bounty scheme first set up by Wilhelm Kirchener in the late 1840s, originally to focus on supplying experienced workers for early Australian vineyards. Many of them went initially to the Hunter Valley. At first the scheme sought to find and bring only married immigrants. Later on however the requirements appear to have been relaxed. The Kirchener scheme thrived at a time when German emigration in population percentage terms was at its peak in the early 1850s. At that time it was a very attractive prospect for Germans to emigrate to English-speaking countries because these were experiencing an economic boom at the same time as Germany was suffering agricultural depression. In late 1857 the bubble burst on the boom of the early 1850s, beginning in New York as a financial panic on over-extended debt, and very quickly spreading to other countries. Following that German emigration rate collapsed rapidly. The Gottorp voyage of 1857 was the fourth and last to Australia under the scheme, and in 1858 the scheme itself was formally wound up and terminated I think. In view of the fact that it is 150 years very soon since the arrival of this particular Gottorp voyage I'd try to put up this webpage very soon. And I'd like to find anyone else connected with or interested in the last immigrants transport to Australia by the Gottorp. I have obtained a photocopy of a translation of a diary by a Gottorp 1857 passenger, Herr Nagorcka. I do not as yet know which repository has the original, in German, of this diary. Nagorcka decribes the men brought to Australia on the Gottorp in 1857 as mostly "outcasts", and that they were "paid to leave the country and given 40 Gulden to assist them on their way". He also remarked that most of them were "deported" from their country. He wrote: "three-quarters of the passengers were deported of whom half were no good and didn't deserve good treatment." So far I have found trace of only one other person ever searching for the Gottorp on the internet, as follows: """"""""" From: "Baden-Wuerttemberg Mailing List" <mscarlah@earthlink.net> Subject: [B-W] Ship - GOTTORP/GOTTORF Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 01:04:06 -0800 B-W List subscribers: If you have any interest in responding to the following forwarded message, please send it DIRECTLY to the author at bndoneil@cyber-net.com.au . Please do NOT reply to the B-W List or the List Co-Administrator. Thank you! ----------------------------------------------------------- FORWARD OF ----- Original Message ----- From: "Barbara O'Neil" <bndoneil@cyber-net.com.au> Sent: Wednesday, March 29, 2000 12:41 AM Subject: Ship - GOTTORP/GOTTORF Anyone with information on a ship named GOTTORP (maybe that's incorrect & it may be GOTTORF?) or with information on the name KIRCHNER (from Kochendorf, Wurttemberg) please contact me direct at bndoneil@cyber-net.com.au Barbara in Australia """"""""" I am descended, on my mother's paternal side from a German on that clipper, named Christian Steiner, who I think came from Wurttemberg. The very few indictions found of where the Gottorp passengers came from point to Wurttemberg. So if it was any government authority that paid the men 40 Gulden (in addition to the free passage under the bounty scheme, which money had to be later repaid from wages during the two years of contracted work) then most likely it is the government of Wurttemberg that is involved (or at least that is the sole clue so far). The diarist indicates that the Gottorp arrived on the 15th September and was led into the harbour by a pilot boat sent out to escort it. The Shipping Master's Office register reads "GOTTORP - Brig of Sydney, Moffat, Master,Burthen 198 tons, From the Port of Bremen to Sydney, New South Wales, 17th September 1857". Thus if you didn't know otherwise you might think this means the ship arrived on the 17th, but instead the 17th date probably means when the record making was completed(?). What "Moffat, Master" means I don't know. I need a shipping expert's advice to interpret records. Moffat was not the Captain's name. The captain's name in the Shipping Master's Office record says "R. Borgfeldt". That well agrees with the diary which says near its beginning "Captain Borgfeld should be a capable man for the voyage". The diary describes the vessel as "a new three-mast sailing ship of the clipper type, built for fast sailing" with the "name Gottorp, in golden letters". The Kirchener scheme may well have had strong connections/arrangements with the Hamburg line, it seems. Some things suggesting that are that there was another German ship in Sydney Harbour when the Gottorp arrived and that ship was noted as being from Hamburg. Also when the diarist left the Gottorp he stayed the night at the "Hotel Hamburg" in 19 Tink Street, Sydney. This is all I know. Cheers, John Byrnes (Geologist) LachlanHunter Associates P.O. Box 121, BURWOOD, NSW 1805 Australia