In the Graveyard – Henry Sampson

By his great-grandson, Peter A Sampson

Little did I know, at the outset of my ancestry search after my parents’ passing, that my

quest would culminate in my wife, Angela, and I flying from Montreal, Quebec, Canada to visit my great-grandfather Henry Sampson’s grave in Porto, Portugal.

Here’s how the story unfolded …

I had never had the opportunity of meeting my paternal grandparents, given my

grandmother’s sudden death when my father was only three years old. Family information was sparse at best, and even the name of my paternal great-grandfather had long passed out of living memory. After some detective work on the internet, I was able to establish my great-grandfather was Henry Sampson, originally from Liverpool. Delving into historical city directories in Montreal and Quebec City, I traced Henry’s movements and occupations, as a driver, cook, and turner in Montreal, and later a hotelkeeper in Quebec City. Henry’s first wife had died of tuberculosis in 1911, and he moved to Quebec City, where he married his then housekeeper, Ethel, the following year. Travel records indicated that Henry and his bride sailed to Liverpool on a honeymoon, but all information about Henry just stopped there.

What had happened to Henry? Puzzling.

Consulting with my cousins, the only bit of available information was in the form of

family lore. Henry had died, purportedly, because he was ‘too fat’! The poor man had met his end, it was said, when he was hoisted in a ‘bosun’s chair’ (designed for transferring personnel and mail between ships) which could not bear his weight, and so he drowned. Intrigued by this unusual detail, I set out to find out how, when and where my great-grandfather might have found himself in such a predicament.

The rescue attempt in progress, with Bosun's Chair rigged between the crossed beams and the shipwrecked SS Veronese.

More website browsing and link clicking eventually led me online through the

Maritime History Archive at Memorial University in Newfoundland to the British National

Archive, and a register of people lost at sea. Only one Henry Sampson had died in 1913.

Henry, it was recorded, was one of ten people who had perished as passengers on the SS Veronese, after the ship ran aground on 16 th January 1913, near the port of Leixoes – not far from Porto. Having set out from Liverpool for Montreal, the ship had picked up Portuguese passengers in Vigo, bound for South America. Ethel had survived the ordeal: however, 50-year-old Henry, after being brought to land in a ‘breeches’ buoy’ (otherwise known as a ‘bosun’s chair’) died the following day from exposure and exhaustion.

I was thoroughly pleased with myself, yet I wasn’t satisfied. Where was Henry

buried? This became my new focus – obsession, I’d call it! The wreck of the SS Veronese was widely reported internationally, and I scoured these newspaper articles for clues. I noticed there had been a Liverpool Board of Trade Inquiry into the wreck – a kind of maritime coroner’s inquest equivalent. These reports were kept at Southampton Central Library, and the one pertaining to the SS Veronese confirmed the whole tragedy… but did not end the quest for Henry’s remains.

I had to resort to guesswork to find Henry’s final earthly resting-place. I knew my

great-grandfather had not, in fact, drowned, so the body was not lost at sea. Therefore, there were three possibilities: repatriation to Quebec, return to Liverpool, or local burial in Portugal. The distance made Quebec extremely unlikely, the timing precluded Liverpool (the British survivors only sailed for the ship’s port of origin two weeks later, too long to preserve the body), leaving Portugal as the most likely option. Henry would not have qualified for a Catholic cemetery … but there was an Anglican churchyard in Porto…

Having found the St James Church website in 2013, my email to a church warden was

blessed with a reply confirming that Henry had indeed been interred on the 20th of January 1913, with an excerpt from the burial register, and even providing the plot number and gravesite photos.

We had finally found Henry. And this time, we won’t let him lie forgotten!