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THE SETTLER HANDBOOK by MD Nash
THE SETTLER PARTIES

RUSSELL'S PARTY

Led by William Russell of 48 Bridge Gate Street, Glasgow, Scotland. This was a party of Scots artisans and trademen whose deposits were paid through Monteith of Glasgow, and who sailed from Greenock in the Abeona on 13 October 1820. At sea on 25 November, in latitude 4° 30' N and longitude 25° 30' W, the ship caught fire, and after burning for fifteen hours was totally destroyed. Three small boatloads of survivors were rescued by a Portuguese merchant ship; 16 of the crew including the master, 27 emigrants and nine passengers were saved, and 114 people - nine of the crew, 100 emigrants and five passengers - were lost with the ship.

Six survivors of the Abeona disaster were given passage to the Cape in HMS Sappho in the following year, and arrived in Simon's Bay in August 1821. They applied for a grant of land, and presumably settled in the western Cape.

SURVIVORS OF RUSSELL'S PARTY WHO REACHED THE CAPE

CLARK, James.
McLAREN, John. Joiner.
McLEAN, John.
REID, Thomas. Sawyer. w Agnes.
THOMPSON, Robert. Bricklayer.

Main sources for party list
Correspondence of Russell and Monteith with the Colonial Department (Public Record Office, London, CO 49/14); Account of the loss of the Abeona in GM Theal, Records of the Cape Colony vol. 13; Memorial of Abeona survivors on board Sappho (Cape Archives CO 158,146).