The Voyages of Joseph Price, 1829 to 1854

At age 14 Joseph Price went to sea from Maryport, Cumbria, England, as an apprentice in 1829 and became Master Mariner (Captain) before age 24. In the course of 35 voyages he sailed, mostly from Liverpool, to Nova Scotia, Montreal, and Quebec in Canada; St. Thomas, Haiti, Jamaica, and Cuba in the Caribbean; several ports in Colombia and on the Mediterranean; Brazil; and many ports on the Pacific coast of South and Central America; and to San Francisco. On his later voyages he was a part owner of his ships.

His last voyage before retiring from the sea was in the new ship "Confiance" leaving Liverpool December 8, 1852, and arriving at Geelong, Victoria, Australia on April 25, 1853, with 416 immigrants, including 15 infants born on board the ship. There were also 27 deaths, mostly from dysentery among the children. He then sailed home, stopping in Peru for a cargo of guano, his only round-the-world voyage.

He kept detailed, personal records of his voyages and of his life ashore which in later life he summarized into several books of "Sea Remarks." The voyages, except the last, are described in two books which are reproduced in the first.file below as transcribed by his elder great-grandson. The voyage to Geelong was recorded daily in a journal which is in the second file below. To these have been added by another great-grandson some explanatory notes, excerpts from diaries of four passengers on the voyage that were deposited in the State Library of Victoria and links to other sites related to the narrative.

The third file below is a complete transcript of "The Passengers Act, 1852" which governed emigrant traffic from the United Kingdon to the Colonies.

The files are in Adobe Acrobat 6.0 format. It can be loaded using Acrobat Reader which is a free download and can be invoked if it is not already in the visitor's system.

Click on Thirty-four Voyages of Joseph Price

Click on The voyage of the emigrant ship "Confiance" to Geelong, Australia

Click on The Passengers Act, 1852

Comments to: W.M.Price

Copyright 2004 Canada. -- This copyright applies only to the Joseph Price Journals and Sea Remarks.

This page was revised 2005 April 18