Sam was the brother of George in my last post, and son of William and Catherine in first post of 28th June 2020. The first miracle is that he survived infancy, as he was orphaned with his siblings at the age of seven.
Who cared for Sam is a mystery. He may have initially been taken in by relations, but he most likely was handed to the parish poor law officials (see below) as we know that ultimately they took responsibility for him.
Sam does not have a surviving baptism record, and nor does he have a surviving apprenticeship record, but what does survive, by some miracle, are a series of documents in the records of the Royal Navy that document his early life. I have never come across anything quite like it. Without the Royal Navy I would never have traced him.
Greenwich circa 1750
In his teens Sam Ginn was apprenticed to a Greenwich fisherman, Richard Wilkinson. We know this, because Richard tells us in an affidavit he swore many years later. He even went to the lengths of getting the parish clerk to check the baptism register at St Bartholomew the Less church so as to give the Navy and us full details of Sam's birth and parentage.
There is no doubt but that Sam was apprenticed out by the parish, that is he somehow survived until his teens and was then, about the age of fourteen (1731) apprenticed out under the Poor Laws to Richard Wilkinson. We know this, not only because Wilkinson involved St Barts in his evidence above, but because whereas a normal apprenticeship lasted for seven years, until 1767 a parish apprenticeship lasted until the boy was a man of twenty four. So Sam was effectively "sold" by the parish and bound to Wilkinson (who did not have to pay him money and provide him nothing but his keep) for ten years. What an existence.
What is worse, is that Wilkinson himself then effectively sold Sam to the Royal Navy, probably in the early 1730s. He gave the Navy Board the original apprenticeship indenture (which I think may still be at the National Archives - I am looking into it) and expected each ship that Sam served on to forward the whole of Sam's wages to Wilkinson - you could not really make this story up !
So what we have here is Sam entering the Royal Navy in his teens. It is impossible to research "other ranks" in the Navy before the Crimean War (mid 19th century) because sailors did not have a "career" as such, ie did not sign up for a length of service until then. The navy man was recruited for any ship and any voyage that might take him on and might then be ashore for a time. So when a ship recruited, Sam would have joined the crew, when it finished it's voyage it would have paid him off and he would have been ashore until the next ship took him on. So without knowing the ships ("chicken and egg") you cannot trace the man in the ship's muster and log records. And the Royal Navy had a heck of a lot of ships.
But what I know at the moment is that Sam Ginn thrived in the Navy. By 1739 there is reference to him being made a Boatswain ("Bosun") ie what was termed a "standing officer" being the best seaman in the crew save for the Ship's Master (ie the man - not the Captain - who effectively managed the ship). There are a couple of warrants or appointments concerning this surviving and I am looking into what ships they relate to - as a Bosun was appointed to a ship.
But, ironically through the actions of Wilkinson, I know that in 1741/2 Sam Ginn was on board HMS Romney. We know this because the Paymaster at Portsmouth (God bless him) had been so affronted upon seeing the Indenture and being told that he could not pay Sam ("now on the Romney") that he got himself in "a passion" said Wilkinson and defaced the indenture, paid Sam directly and sent the Indenture back to the Navy Board.
HMS Romney was a 50 gun 4th Rate ship of the line built in 1708. She had been given a major refurbishment and relaunched in 1726. Above is a model of a 1720 built (HMS Falkland) 50 gun 4th rate the model now in Greenwich Museum. In 1742 the Romney was commanded by Thomas Grenville (later captain of HMS Falkland above and killed at the Battle of Cape Finisterre in 1747), after April 1743 by Henry Godsalve.
Now the interesting thing is that Sam obviously knew that Richard Wilkinson was coming after him, because when you research the Muster and Paybooks of HMS Romney 1740-1745 (ADM 33/352 at the National Archives) you find that Samuel Ginn is now Samuel Gean and had signed on as an Able Seaman, not being able to get a "ticket" as the Bosun. Sam was not illiterate, this was an attempt to disassociate and distance himself from Richard Wilkinson (see muster entry below)
The British were pretty much always at war during the 1700s, and at this time we were embroiled in the War of Austrian Succession (don't ask) and (having a German King) were on the side of the Austrians, the old enemies being France and Spain.
HMS Romney was stationed at Port Mahon in Menorca (below) as part of the Mediterranean Fleet.
She patrolled the area around there and the Straits of Gibraltar, and in March1743 the Romney sighted a Spanish treasure ship, a ship with a very valuable cargo, some estimated it at nearly £150,000 sailing from Veracruz to Cadiz.. The ship was taken, Grenville was promoted up a notch, but more important, to Grenville and all of the crew at least, was the prize money.
The Admiralty down valued the prize, which must have infuriated the crew, but Grenville received about £30,000 getting a fair chunk of the pot. A quarter of the pot was shared between the other ranks, and the ship having a full complement of 300 men, leads me to the conclusion that our Samuel here received between £50 - 100. Sam's luck had turned. The men would have lined up to receive the money in gold paid into their hats on the drumhead, and knuckled their forelock on receipt..
Godsalve now became Captain, but things went down a notch for all concerned in February 1744. The British were blockading Toulon in France where a Spanish squadron had taken refuge. France, not officially at war with Britain, was on the Spanish side and secretly planning an invasion of England.
Command of the British Mediterranean Fleet had been given to a Thomas Matthews who had not been to sea since 1736 and had never had command of anything bigger than a squadron. Second in command was a man called Lestock who could not stand Matthews, so things were not set to go well from the start.
The British Fleet attacked the Spanish who came out of Toulon attempting to escape. The British outnumbered them, but Matthews muddled his signals to the Fleet and on a day with little wind the British fleet was scattered all over the place and could not "form line" and concentrate their numbers so as to crush the Spanish. Lestock had a squadron, which included HMS Romney, but seeing Matthews in difficulty, Lestock smirked and held his ships back - some five miles (!) from the main British force.
Matthews knowing the situation was critical, seeing the Spanish escaping and the French fleet gathered in Toulon, engaged the Spanish with those ships he could bring to line, too few, and was given a mauling, upon seeing which the French fleet sailed out and finished the job. The Royal Navy were accustomed to constant success, the public ("Hearts of Oak") disgusted, Matthews was dismissed the service and Lestock court martialled. I think we can guess the words Sam Ginn and his mates uttered on the fiasco.
Sam Gean as he now was came home. At the moment I am not sure if he ever went back to the Navy again. He certainly went back to Greenwich where he quite likely used his prize money to buy a boat.
Sam married three times. In February 1745 he married Mary South at Greenwich St Alphege by Licence, saying that he was 28. Mary died in 1759 or thereabouts and in 1760, also by Licence (below) Sam married Elizabeth Scanlan which you can see bears his signature.
Elizabeth died in February 1776, and in November of that year Sam married a Mary Moore, again by Licence.
As I say, we do not know if Sam returned to the Navy after 1745, the fact that there were no children from any marriage leaves the question open, but we do know that by the 1750s at least Sam had bought a boat and set himself up as one of the Greenwich Fishing Fleet, who sailed the east and south coasts of England and trawled their catch. They sold their fish at Ship Stairs and at the Greenwich Market which was set up in 1700 and is still active and on the same site today.
At some point Sam bought a house in Cold Bath Row in East Greenwich. He is in the Greenwich Land Tax of 1780 as a property owner. Bank of England records also show that by 1781 he had acquired a few stocks and shares. You have to admire the guy, from having less than nothing, Sam made lemonade from the lemons that life had given him.
Sam Ginn or Gean "Mariner" in the register, died in 1790, he was 72. He left a will (PCC) calling himself "as Gentleman" and leaving everything he owned to Mary.. He is buried at St Alphege Greenwich which is today as it was built in 1712 and still known as "The Mariner's Church". Mary remarried a William Wheatley of Greenwich in 1797.
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