Seaman James Moriarty is listed on line 5. He is 23 years old. He is a coal trimmer. He is from Bangalore which is in India.
I don't know that this is our James Moriarty, but don't you wonder how he went from remote Caherdaniel in County Kerry to Australia where a British penal colony had been used to develop the new continent? I haven't found anything else.
The S.S. Columbian was used to transport troops during the Crimean War. In 1856 it was awarded the Australian mail contract. But in 1857 it entered the Sydney to Suez service - as shown above.
The coal trimmer would load the coal into the ship. Then he would use a large shovel and a wheelbarrow to keep the coal supplies level to prevent the ship from listing. He would get the coal to the stokers who shoveled it into the furnaces. The trimmers worked in poorly lit conditions and were exposed to coal dust. The temperature was fierce due to the heat from the boilers. And of course they were poorly paid. Prospecting for gold certainly would be more appealing!
Bangalore had a British Army garrison. Maybe James Moriarty had joined the British Army and was sent to India? We'll probably never know.
But no matter how he got to Australia, when the placer gold dried up there, James Moriarty headed to the gold fields in British Columbia, where a rush for gold in the Fraser River basin had started in 1858. Again this was placer gold so no expensive equipment was needed. The first Europeans had only arrived in British Columbia in the late 1700s - they were fur traders. There might have been a couple hundred of them when the news about gold leaked out. 30,000 prospectors reached British Columbia by that summer.The gold rush transformed this area. The prospectors made their way up the Fraser River - this was uncharted land and the conditions were challenging. In 1860 gold was also found further inland in Caribou. Unfortunately, when the gold gave out, this newly developed area faced a recession.
And James Moriarty was on the road again! I wonder if he found much gold in Australia or British Columbia?
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| Cabin from Pionerville in the Boise Basin |
The article from the Idaho Historical Society said that James Moriarty arrived in Placerville in July 1863. Placerville was located in the remote Boise Basin in Idaho Territory. As more and more placer miners moved into the basin, there were skirmishes with the Native Americans - including the Shoshone - living in the area that the miners were now claiming.
Placerville was established in late 1862 and contained 300 houses by 1863. At that time $18 a day was made by mining. On Granite Creek $10 to $50 a day was made - sometimes even $100-$200 daily were panned out. Placerville, which is a ghost town today, had a population of 5000 in 1863 and was the local supply point for the mining towns around it. So when James Moriarty arrived in July 1863, this new town was already booming.
Because gold production in the boise Basin lasted for a longer period, Placerville grew into a thriving town. Wilkapedia says that Placerville was "unusual in that it even had a street grid and a town square, known locally as the 'plaza.' Additionally it had an Episcopal church, thirteen saloons, seven restaurants, five butcher shops, five blacksmith shops, as well as hotels, druggists, express agents, bakeries, livery barns, carpenters, sawmills, and – attesting to the presence of women—dressmakers and a millinery shop." Families settled here.
When the placer gold dried up, underground quartz mining became popular but this required money, experience, and complicated machinery. The placer miners drifted off - the population in Placerville was down to 318 in 1870.
So what happened to James Moriarty?
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