OLD BOATMAN

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 45, 16 November 1940, Page 7

OLD BOATMAN

Death Of Jack Thompson LINK WITH SAILING DAYS Old .Jack Thompson, tile last of Wellington's public boatmen, died early yesterday morning at the Home for Aged Needy, at the age of !>5 .years. Tiiomp.son lias been wrongly described us one of Wellington’s original boatmen. That was not the case, for there were boatmen for hire in Wellington in the very early ’4o’s, and Thompson did not arrive in New Zealand till 187-1. He used to relate that he was born in some place with a Gaelic name, which in English meant Ash Valley, somewhere in Argyllshire. He went, to sea as a boy, and came to New Zealand in 1874 in' the ship Invercargill. For a time after that be worked in the South Island, but later went to live in Wellington, making the passage in a small schooner. This craft ran into bad weather, and lost her canvas. Thompson used to say that Hour sacks were sewn together for use as sails to bring the schooner to laud again. For a time after that he was employed in the coastal trade, as one of the crew of the old steamer Manawatu. After he left that vessel he went to Dunedin, where he lost a leg in an accident, which put him out of count as an able seaman. So he came to Weilington once more, about 1883, and took over the “Grid Iron,” a place that stood near Hunter Street east, on the waterfront on the approach to Queen’s Wharf. There he sold tobacco, cigars, pipes, chocolate, cigarettes, and books, and incidentally hired out boats, and plied for hire in them himself, for all his one leg. In those days the sailing vessels were still on the high seas, and those having business with them made a point of being rowed out to them as soon as they dropped anchor in the stream. Old Thompson was one of the boatmen, who undertook this work. Another was Chalker, a typical tubby old sailor of the last century, and another Sam Murch. Thompson was a well-known character, not only to everyone about the waterfront, but to politicians and some Governors of New Zealand. The old man has been “out of commission” for many years now. having been an inmate of the Home for Aged Needy for the last 20 years.