Dear Listers, I am still seeking information (log, sketch, notes, passenger reminiscences, etc) on the "MAGNOLIA" - a clipper that apparently left New York on 27 July 1852 and arrived in Melbourne on 24 November 1852, having called in at Rio de Janeiro and possibly also San Francisco. My great grandfather James JONES, 34 years, accompanied by a son James Frederick JONES, 12 yrs - all born in England - were on board, as was a shipmate George BUDDEN. They went on to the Goldfields soon after arrival. The "Magnolia" was about 700 tons and carried 100 first class and 138 second class passengers. It was possibly a clipper of John Ogden's Pioneer Line that apparently plied the New York-California route that was later extended to Australia for gold seekers in the early 1850s. I have searched the three volumes of IH Nicholson's "Log of Logs" and can only find the following info: 1. Magnolia, Barque: Sydney 17.4.1866 for Valparaiso proceeding south of New Zealand in company and frequent communication with "JASON" qv 19-21 April. 2. Magnolia, whaler of N Bedford, Captain Simmons. Pacific cruise inc New Zealand, Hawaii 1840s. Ref Osborn, Capt B, "Reminiscences of voyage around the world ..." 1892. Does anyone know whether either of these are the 1852 Melbourne one? I have been unable so far to find any newspaper reference to the Magnolia's arrival in the Melbourne papers of the time, but my search was pretty cursory. --------------------------------------------------------- Interestingly, one of the other passengers was Charles Augustus DOUDIEB/ DOUDIET 20 yrs. An extract from notes on him from the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery goes as follows: "At the age of twenty Charles Doudiet set out from his home in Belle Riviere near Montreal in Canada to try his luck on the Australian gold fields. It was 1852 and from the sketchbook that he made of his journey it is known that he travelled by riverboat and train to join the clipper Magnolia, in New York. ... The carefully planned Frontispiece of the Sketchbooks records the highlights of the journey from his home in Belle Riviere to the gold fields at Forest Creek in Victoria, Australia, it was to be an account of a young man's adventures. The journey by sea from New York to Port Phillip Bay, Victoria, took four months, the clipper arriving on 24 November 1852. Charles's fellow passengers on the Magnolia were predominantly other young men in their twenties and thirties also attracted by the possibility of finding their fortune on the Australian gold fields. The surviving pages of Charles Doudiet's "Australian Sketchbook" reveal all that is known of his time in Australia. The sketchbook was begun in Melbourne in February 1853 and finished in Ballarat in September 1855. About half of the original book is now in the collection of the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery. ... Charles Doudiet is remember today because his drawings provide us with the only visual accounts by an eyewitness of these pivotal moments in the unfolding of the drama of Eureka events on the Ballarat gold fields. ... "Joyce, Penny and Fletcher along with myself carried Ross to the Star where he died in great pain at about 2am on the 5th". Ross, a fellow Canadian, is generally believed to have designed the Eureka flag. Fletcher was one of the men arrested after the burning of Bentley's hotel. With his friends, Doudiet was a part of a defining moment in Australian nationalism. ... While he appears not to have made his fortune, he had taken part in Australia's only armed public uprising. He returned to Canada and married in March 1857. He later studied theology at Queen's College, Kingston Ontario, and was ordained as a minister in Montreal in 1869, subsequently serving several congregations in Canada. He died in Hollowell, Massachusetts, on 13 June 1913." Any help anyone can give on that voyage would be gratefully received. Roger