One of the side effects of careful research is that you sometimes find things that have been taken as fact, but prove to be overstated, or untrue. This week I was putting some key events into chronological order and noticed something that seemed at first an interesting side-story, but eventually turned into debunking not one but two of the traditional stories about Manasseh Ward!
This came up when I was writing the basic narrative of Manasseh and Madeline's family story. I was laying down the basic timeline of key events when I noticed a coincidence in dates. Two things happened on on Friday 6 May 1898.
- Manasseh and Madeline's eldest daughter, Madeline jnr married Robert Lambert in Gosford.
- The SS Maitland was wrecked at what is now known as Maitland Bay.
I read several accounts of the rescue and none mentioned Manasseh. In fact, they all told the story of a rescue staged from Rock Davis' shipyard at Davistown. So I consulted the always helpful Local History Librarian at the Gosford Library, Geoffrey Potter, who is the published author of a book about the Maitland disaster. Geoffrey was able to give be a very good summary of the events and point to the original source of the story about Manasseh, which is a single paragraph in the local paper.
Wreck of the SS Maitland
Based on a summary that Geoffrey's kindly provided, the events were something like this:
The wreck occurred at 5.45am on 6th May 1898, but the alarm was not raised until very late that day when, during a brief window in the gale conditions, Barrenjoey Lighthouse spotted a dark shape ashore to the north of Broken Bay. Word was sent by horseback to Manly, across the harbour to Sydney, then by rail to Woy Woy. From Woy Woy word was sent to Rock Davis’ shipyard at Blackwall. A party set out from Blackwall by boat and then on foot. They did not know what sort of vessel they were looking for, nor exactly where it was. They made their way to Putty Beach and then proceeded north through the bush. They finally reached the wreck site late on the afternoon of Saturday 7 May – 36 hours after the initial disaster. The last of the survivors made their way ashore just as the rescue group arrived. The survivors were taken back to Woy Woy, leaving several crew members to guard the wreck from looters.
And the original quote from the local paper:
The first to arrive right on the scene of the wrecked Maitland on horseback was Mr M. Ward, Mayor of Gosford, who being reared in the vicinity of the wreck knew every inch of the country. On Sunday morning Mr. Ward piloted about 15 horsemen over the mountain headlands to Boat Harbor [sic] Beach, a feat which the daily papers considered an absolute impossibility.
The Gosford Times, 13 May 1898
The problem with this is that by the time the horseback party arrived at the site, the rescue was effectively over and most of the survivors had been taken back to Woy Woy!
There are several possible explanations. One is that the newspaper got the day wrong, and the horsemen set out n Saturday morning, but in that case we would have expected that they would have been mentioned in the accounts of the rescue. Another possible explanation is that the horseback party was setting up the recovery operation. In that case, in the point of the newspaper story could Manasseh's skill as a bushman and his knowledge of the area. If we put the emphasis on the words "on horseback", we might be closer to the truth.
So to debunk the myth:
Manasseh Ward's probably did not play a role in the rescue of survivors of the Maitland disaster, but he probably was instrumental in navigating the first group of horsemen to the site, which was considered a wonderful feat of bushmanship. This was possibly the start of the recovery operation, not the initial rescue.
To find out more about the Maitland disaster, I suggest you buy Geoffrey's book:
Wreck of the Maitland: a scene to make the angels weep by Geoffrey Potter
available from the Gosford Library for $25.
You can also find it on other online sources, but it will probably cost more!
President's Hill
In my correspondence with Geoffrey Potter, he happened to mention that he also had concerns about the idea that President's Hill in Gosford was named in honour of Manasseh Ward as the first President of Erina Shire. He has since provided me with at least two separate instances where the name was used many years before Erina Shire was created.
Land was being sold in "The President's Hill Estate" (a real estate subdivision) as early as 1887 and there are numerous advertisements in the Sydney and Newcastle newspapers to prove it. For one example, see The Daily Telegraph, 16 November, 1887, page 2 (fifth advert in column 3).
Manasseh Ward was not elected to his first term on the Gosford Borough Council until 1888. Erina Shire would not be created created until 1906, 19 years after President's Hill was first mentioned.
Conclusions
It is probably inevitable that myths would be found in the story of a man who was so admired and loved in the community. One of the very early people to write about the early days in Gosford was George Fletcher, a Boer War veteran who worked at Erina Shire in Manasseh's time as Shire President. He wrote regularly under the pen name 'Perong', and in one of his memoirs in 1936 he wrote:
I may be permitted here to say that I have known Gosford for a very long time, and I have known some very good men, and have had (and still have) a very high regard for many, but my feeling for Manasseh Ward amounted almost to worship, and it still holds good.
The key to me is that even when you strip away the tall tales and myths, there are many more facts that can be verified, and they all tell the same story. Manasseh Ward was a man who had a great love of life and the district in which he lived his whole life. He was a generous, warm hearted man who made a huge contribution to the development of the Gosford district.
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