Spanish Joe Maurea

Joseph Maurea was known as “Spanish Joe”. The reasons why are a puzzle, because Joseph was born on 25 February 1827 in England. The first documentation about Joe is a migration record. He travelled as a single man to Melbourne at the age of 30 year, looking for better opportunities. He arrived in Melbourne on the Winefred on 2 June 1958. He was listed as a miner on the ship’s records.

Joseph and Mary Hamigan had a son John born on 22 August 1876 in New South Wales. There is no record of a registered marriage. Our next record of Joe is in Western Australia. He had gone pearling aboard the lugger Ethel.

In the 1880s cholera was a pandemic and fatal illness. It spread easily via food (especially fruit) and water contamination, poor sanitation, poor ventilation. The prison hulks in London were ideal breeding grounds for cholera, killing within 36 hours. Isolation was recognised as one of the key preventative measures for the disease, but the overcrowded prisons and hulks were not able to practice isolation of infected people. Neither were ships voyaging to Australia.

The first cases of cholera came to the east coast, like the British-India ships Dorunda and Claudine. Once there, the interstate barques carried the disease to Western Australia. WA had strict quarantine procedures, whereby a vessel with any type of illness on board had to anchor outside an inner harbour, fly the quarantine flag and await a doctor’s visit to determine the risk of spread.

After a period at sea without fresh fruit or vegetables and limited fresh water, pearling crews looked forward to eating fruit and having unlimited water to drink.

William Thomas Ellery was 35 years old. He was the master of the pearling vessel Florence. He lived in Cossack with his wife Susannah (Eliza) Lewington and three of their four children (one deceased), aged between 11 and 5 years of age. Susannah was pregnant with another child, due in May of 1882.

William’s father died from burns sustained from the boiler while working aboard the steamship Lady Stirling. William was a carpenter by trade before he became a pearler. He missed fruit when he was at sea. He enjoyed it when it was brought into Cossack by a coastal tramp.

On 19 February 1882 Ethel anchored in Cossack. She was a 14 ton lugger, a small two masted schooner, registered in Fremantle as number 8 of 1870, the year she was built in Perth. Her official number was 61099.Her dimensions were 44 x 12 x 5.75 feet [13.4 x 3.66 x 1.67 metres]. Ethel was built for a conglomerate of Perth businessmen wishing to invest in the pearling industry. Ethel had one to three luggers working with her, and she was a catcher/carrier vessel.

Ethel had been out of the water following a cyclone that struck the northwest the previous year. She had been anchored in Yammadery Creek, Fortescue River and was driven high and dry into the mangroves. She was repaired and refloated and went back to work. Ethel was hard to wreck. She had been in a cyclone in March 1878 where she was driven into a sister boat Venus resulting in her sinking. She stove her side in and lost her head sails.

William Ellery ate his fruit unaware that it was contaminated with cholera. He died within a few hours. He died intestate. His wife was expecting their fifth child within three months.

Meanwhile on board Ethel Joe was struck down with the same symptoms. He was dead within hours. He left his wife and six-year-old son.

An inquest was conducted for both men. The verdict for William was cholera, transmitted from the fruit he ate. Joe’s autopsy gave “a variety of causes”, although with the same symptoms it was concluded he had cholera. It appears consideration was given to the panic that may ensue should the public be aware of two cholera deaths in one day.

The men were buried in the Cossack cemetery on 27 March 1882.

Susannah Ellery delivered a boy Frederick James in May 1882 three months after she buried her husband. She used the same name as her previously deceased son (1877). Sadly, Frederick died at two years of age. Susannah remarried to Thomas MacNee Paxton at Cossack in 1886 at the age of 39 years. It appears Mary Hamigan and 6-year-old John returned to live in New South Wales.

Ethel went on to have many more adventures and near misses until she was finally scuttled by murderous mutineers in 1899 [See the Ethel story, the Ah Soor story and the Houssein story].