Charles Townsend Gedye was a Victorian entrepreneur of Cornish descent who is best known as a shipping grandee in

colonial Australia The history of Australia is the story of the land and peoples of the continent of Australia. People first arrived on the Australian mainland by sea from Maritime Southeast Asia between 50,000 and 65,000 years ago, and penetrated to all part ...

, co-owner and founder of the centenarian Dangar, Gedye & Co.

Life and Works

Charles Townsend Gedye was born in Devonport in 1833, the only surviving son of Charles Michael Gedye and Alice Townsend both from

St Neot, Cornwall St Neot ( ) ( kw, Loveni) is a civil parish and village in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The parish population at the 2011 census was 947. It is between the towns of Bodmin and Liskeard. The parish is named after the Saxon monk, Saint Neo ...

. At the age of 14, he accompanied his father on a mail ship (''Louisa'') for a new life in Australia. On arrival, Gedye's father was engaged as manager at a meat canning factory in

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, while Gedye trained in book keeping and clerical work in support of his father. Eastbourne

Gedye had a natural aptitude for numbers with an eye for detail, and in 1850 father and son went in to partnership. It was not long before Gedye took over as principal of the company from his father and moved his operations to

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. In 1853, Gedye married Mary Harriet Wintle, a celebrated

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n watercolourist. For the next few years, Gedye moved with his growing family between Sydney and Newcastle, operating independently as a consultant auditor for the local government as well as various Sydney businesses.

Shipping

In 1866, Gedye collaborated with Frederick Holkham Dangar to invest in fast ocean-going

clipper A clipper was a type of mid-19th-century merchant sailing vessel, designed for speed. Clippers were generally narrow for their length, small by later 19th century standards, could carry limited bulk freight, and had a large total sail area. "C ...

s, and two years later, they part-owned their first vessel, ''South Australian''. Both men scoured shipyards from Britain to San Francisco, handing over responsibility for their business interests to each other in their absence. In 1868, they part underwrote a second vessel, ''Hawkesbury'', whose maiden voyage to Sydney was completed in 1869 and continued with the partnership in the Sydney-London trade until it was sold in 1889. Neotsfield_wiki_ca_1890

The partnership itself was only formalised in 1870 with the creation of Dangar, Gedye & Co. The mainstay of their business was as commissioning agents for their own export/import freight, signing up many of the finest clippers of their day including the legendary ''

Cutty Sark ''Cutty Sark'' is a British clipper ship. Built on the River Leven, Dumbarton, Scotland in 1869 for the Jock Willis Shipping Line, she was one of the last tea clippers to be built and one of the fastest, coming at the end of a long period of ...

'', which ran for the partners from 1885 to 1893, the period of her most sensational performances. ''Cutty Sark'' was arguably the most glamorous of the ships run by the partners, but they also commissioned many other notable racing clippers, including ''Tweed'', ''Hallowe’en'' and ''Brilliant''. The first wholly-owned Dangar, Gedye & Co ship was the Peruvian ''Francisco Calderón'', purchased in 1879. The ''Francisco'' was a

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slave steamship which was stripped, re-fitted for sail and re-named ''Gladstone'' in homage to the then

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of Britain, a close friend of Dangar's. The second company clipper was launched in 1889, named ''Neotsfield''.

Legacy

Gedye’s involvement in shipping raised his profile from merchant to business leader in a few short years. In 1870, he was commissioned as a

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in Sydney, mostly serving with the Water Police Courts. Shortly after, Gedye started appearing in a variety of directorships for mining companies from Gold to Copper to Oil Shale, and electricity, as well as serving as auditor for the Chambers of Commerce and sitting on the boards of a number of financial institutions. Gedye was admitted as a fellow to the

Royal Society of New South Wales The Royal Society of New South Wales is a learned society based in Sydney, Australia. The Governor of New South Wales is the vice-regal patron of the Society. The Society was established as the Philosophical Society of Australasia on 27 June ...

in 1877 and in 1882, he was honoured with the office of

Consul Consul (abbrev. ''cos.''; Latin plural ''consules'') was the title of one of the two chief magistrates of the Roman Republic, and subsequently also an important title under the Roman Empire. The title was used in other European city-states throug ...

for the

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in New South Wales. Gedye had become a respected leader in Sydney, seen as a safe pair of hands by the

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of the time, honoured by a grateful

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. Gedye died at his home in London in 1900. The company bore his name for more than a century until it ceased trading in 1976.

References

Bibliography

A.D. Fraser (Ed.) - 1938, "THIS CENTURY OF OURS, Being an Account of the Origin and History during One Hundred Years of the House of Dangar, Gedye & Malloch Ltd, of Sydney.", published Halstead Press Pty Ltd, Sydney, 2012 {{DEFAULTSORT:Gedye, Charles Townsend Australian ship owners Consuls-general of Norway to Australia Australian justices of the peace History of Newcastle, New South Wales Maitland, New South Wales History of Sydney 1833 births 1900 deaths Australian people of Cornish descent British emigrants to Australia Colony of New South Wales people 19th-century Australian businesspeople