Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 3.djvu/288

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. m. APRIL u, 1917.

Sirius (450 tons) was originally one of a line of vessels (the St. George Steam Packet Co.) plying between Cork and JLondon. She was built at Leith in 1837. In the previous year, at a meeting of the British Association, Dr. Lardner had re- ferred to the project of establishing steam intercourse with the United States, then impending, as " perfectly chimerical." This statement so impressed a Cork citizen, Mr. James Beale, that he promptly guaranteed, if any one would join him, " to coal and send out a steamer from Cork, then built, to New York, and find a captain who should be competent to take her." As a consequence he named Lieut. Roberts, R.N., of Ardmore, Passage West (see ' N. & Q.,' June 22, 1895), and the Sirius was chartered. She was 178 ft. long, 25 ft. broad, and her depth in hold at midships 18 ft. ; schooner rigged, with a standing bowsprit, paddle- boxes, and dog figurehead.

" We had now on board [so runs the Journal] 450 tons coal, 20 tons water, and 58 casks resin, besides an incalculable stock of other stores, all of which, I beg to be understood (with the exception of 90 tons of coal) was over and .above what she was ever intended to carry as a dead weight, add to which her having 22 tons of the water [sic] on deck, and you may form some conjecture as to her probable fate had she not been an admirable sea boat and in every respect qualified for the most dangerous weather."

The Sirius, however, arrived safely, and a second round-trip (Capt. S. S. Mowle) was accomplished the same year ; but Capt. Roberts, transferred to the ill-fated Presi- dent, was lost with that vessel and all on board while returning from New York i.hree years later.

The Sirius, meantime, had resumed her cross- channel sailings, but in 1847, while on a voyage from Glasgow to Cork, was totally wrecked on the rocks of Ballycotton Bay. HUGH HARTING.

46 Grey Coat Gardens, S.W.

QUAKER'S YARD, GLAMORGANSHIRE (12 S. iii. 211). This was so named from the contiguous Friends' Burial-Ground, a plot of land 1 ac. 1 rd. 3 p., which came into the possession of the Friends in 1667, on lease for a thousand years, from Mary Chapman of St. Mellon's (Mon.). A burial took place there as recently as 1891. There is no Meeting House within many miles. There is a reference to this place in George Sorrow's ' Wild Wales.' Further informa- tion can be had from Friends' Reference .Library, 136 Bishopsgate, E.G. 2.

NORMAN PENNEY.

WILL OF NATHANIEL KINDERLEY (12 S. iii. 9). If the will related to real estate, and there was no personalty, it did not formerly require to be proved, but ranked as a title deed, without proving, as the Registrar suggested. There are any number of such unproved wills which form part of the title to real estate. If the will related to more valuable freeholds than the one sold, it would not be handed over with the other deeds. RALPH THOMAS.

AUTHOR OF QUOTATION WANTED (12 Si iii. 230). " Life isn't all beer and skittles. "- In ' Pickwick Papers,' chap. xl. of the original edition, but xli. of the 1890 edition, Sam Weller, in reply to Mr. Pickwick's remark about imprisonment for debt, says : " They don't mind it ; it's a reg'lar holiday to them all porter and skettles." With respect to other prisoners he says : " Th^em downhearted fellers as can't svig avay at the beer, nor play skettles neither." The word " skettles " is altered to " skittles " in the 1890 edition. DIEGO.

Surely a proverbial phrase. Cf. ' Tom Brown's Schooldays,' chap. ii. : " Life isn't all beer and skittles ; but beer and skittles, or something better of the same sort, must form a good part of every Englishman's education." G. W. E. R.

About eight-and-forty years ago this truth was impressed on me by one who said the assertion came from ' Verdant Green.' I am sorry I did not try to verify the quota- tion. As C. S. Calverley is thought to have been the original of one of the characters in Cuthbert Bede's amusing book, it is interest- ing to find the beer and skittles idea in Calverley's ' Contentment.'

ST. SWITHIN.

ST. PAUL'S SCHOOL SUBSCRIBERS TO KNIGHT'S ' LIFE OF COLET' (12 S. iii. 148). Samuel Knight, LL.D., the author of the ' Life of Colet,' was one of the founders of the Society of Antiquaries in 1717. It seems from this probable that the Robert Stevens or Stephens about whom MR. MCDONNELL asks for information was the solicitor to the Customs, and King's Historiographer, who was also one of that body of founders, and died in 1732 (see Archceologia, i. xxxvi).

The name of Motteux occurs in the list of Fellows of that Society, one John Motteux having been elected on March 22, 1770, and died in 1793 (as MR. WAGNER kindly in- formed me), and another of the same name