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Many families and individuals from Embsay and Eastby emigrated in the second half of the 19th century to destinations in Canada, United States, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.
Amongst them were 25 year old Nicholas Birkbeck and his younger brother John aged 21 of Rockville House, who took advantage of Free Passage being offered to married and single people by the Government of New Zealand. They embarked for Auckland from Gravesend on 11th September 1874.
Their father John Birkbeck was born at Hill Top, Embsay in 1822 and married an Embsay girl Margaret Susannah Smith in 1845. They had three other children, their eldest son Thomas born in 1847, and two daughters Celia and Mary born in 1857 and 1860. John Birkbeck had risen from apprentice Tea Dealer to prosperous yeoman farmer to self-styled Gentleman living at Threapland House, Cracoe.
Their eldest son Thomas followed his father into farming, whilst their second son Nicholas, who was clearly a bright boy, was sent to Giggleswick Grammar School where he was a classical and mathematical scholar. He was then apprenticed to an engineering business in Bolton, and later worked for a patent company in London working on new engineering patents. He left London for Newcastle and the works of Sir William Armstrong (who built and lived at Cragside, now a National Trust property) and went through full engineering training, learning engraving, drawing, pattern making and fitting. His younger brother John accompanied him to Newcastle where he was apprenticed to another firm.
In the meantime, their father had fallen into financial difficulties, and in 1871 had put Threapland House up for sale and returned to Embsay. Nevertheless, he was still able to move to the prestigious Rockville House, which in 1871 had recently been sold and divided into two. The other half was occupied by his cousin John Mattock, Embsay’s principal grocer and draper. Part of Rockville is still known as Birkbeck House.
In 1872 Nicholas was given an opportunity to go out to Egypt to fit some huge cranes but decided instead that his prospects may be better served by emigrating to somewhere in the Empire, and returned home to Embsay. Over the following year or so he acquired commissions from several engineering firms in both Australia and New Zealand to sell and superintend the fitting up of machinery. Accepting an offer of free passage to New Zealand, he invited his younger brother John to go with him, who by that time was training as an agriculturalist.
Nicholas Birkbeck was fond of athletic sports and had won prizes in Bolton and Newcastle. He was also captain of the Embsay Cricket Club and when he left his fellow teammates presented him with several items including a ‘brass fusee clock of large size’. So, large it had to be left behind at Rockville House. On Sunday 6th September the whole of Embsay cricket team and other friends accompanied them to Skipton station to give them a last farewell. They set off from Gravesend aboard the ‘Cospatrick’ a 191-foot wooden three-masted full-rigged sailing ship. On board were 433 passengers and 44 crew, under Captain Alexander Elmslie. All but four of the passengers were assisted emigrants including 125 women and 126 children. The Birkbeck’s were the only two single men emigrating from Yorkshire.
The ship’s journey was via Madeira and the southern tip of Africa and by 18th November 1874 they were about 400 miles south-west of the Cape of Good Hope when just after midnight a fire took hold in the boatswain’s store where flammable materials including tar, oil and pitch were stored. Despite the use of fire hoses the crew failed to contain the fire. The ‘Cospatrick’ had five lifeboats but they were capable of carrying only 187 of the 478 people on board. In the panic in the middle of the night two of the boats failed to launch.
As for the Birkbeck boys, it was later reported that they stayed together until the fate of the Cospatrick was inevitable, then in the rush both of them succeeded in getting into a boat, but not into the same. John Birkbeck got into one containing about 80 people, most of them women and children but it was so overloaded the boat capsized and all were drowned.
Nicholas Birkbeck had succeeded in getting on to one of the two remaining lifeboats that were successfully launched. The two boats stayed together until 21st November when one became separated in a storm and was never seen again. According to the survivors report it contained the chief officer, six crew and 25 passengers.
On 27th November, nine days after the evacuation, the ‘British Spectre’ picked up the surviving lifeboat which had originally contained 32 people including 9 women, but by the time there were picked up only five men were alive. The survivors reported that they had been reduced to drinking blood and eating the livers of their dead companions. Two of the survivors died shortly after being rescued, leaving only Second Mate Charles Henry MacDonald, able seaman Thomas Lewis, and Edward Cotter, an 18 year old who was working his passage.
Although the survivors arrived at Madeira on 6th December news didn’t get to Britain until after Christmas when a brief notice appeared in the Shipping and Mercantile Gazette on 26th December that the Cospatrick had been destroyed and all but three of the passengers and crew were supposed drowned. More detailed accounts began to appear in other newspapers in the following days.
The eventual inquest was related in various newspapers of the day and gave accounts of the last days of the survivors, amongst which was that Nicholas Birkbeck had got on board the surviving lifeboat, but ‘after bravely taking his share in steering the boat and baling out the water which made upon them continually, his strength failed him, and he fell victim to the intense cold that prevailed at nighttime. His body had to be thrown overboard with those of others whom he had vainly endeavoured to cheer and comfort under their terrible sufferings’.
It’s impossible to appreciate the impact this had on the Birkbeck family in Embsay, receiving the tragic fate of their boys in dribs and drabs from newspapers, but things were to get worse for the family.
In November 1875, their father’s ‘Estate and Life Policies’ were sold to raise money for his creditors, and he died the following year on 5th December 1876 aged 54. He was buried in Embsay Churchyard without a gravestone. Annie Greenwood of the Mason’s Arms, Eastby noted in her diary “John Birkbeck of Rockville died on Tuesday & was interred today at Embsay Church; he has had a miserable time of it lately what with his creditors, sickness & poverty. Very few people at the Funeral. He ought to have been a man who should have lived respected and died lamented.”
After John Birkbeck’s death, his widow and children left Rockville and moved to Skipton, where their remaining son Thomas worked as a gardener. His widow Margaret and their two daughters Celia and Mary lived initially on Raikes Road, and later on Belgrave Street where Margaret Birkbeck died in 1902. Both her daughters died unmarried in 1938 and 1948.
Debts and legal problems prevented his widow receiving anything from the estates of her husband or the two lost sons, and probate was only finally granted to the remaining son Thomas Birkbeck in 1914, 12 years after his mother’s death, and nearly 40 years after the deaths of his father and brothers.
David Turner, Embsay with Eastby Historical Research Group
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