New information about 'Pike' 29 Mar 09

New information has come to light about Bayley Pike and John Brewer Pike. Those who have read RRA will remember that he told the story of a young man called Pike, with whom he had been at school in Jersey, who was 'dismissed the Service' in Sierra Leone and put ashore from the notorious HMS Hound.

RRA remembered that Pike instantly got the job of Mate on an 'Indiaman' which was at Sierra Leone on her way home. Her captain had died, and Pike took her home in something like record time to be thoroughly congratulated and awarded plate by the owners. RRA then says that Pike continued with a very successful career in the Merchant Service.

In the 1841 census for Jersey there is indeed a Pike, born in 1833, the same year as RRA. So far so good. His name was Bayley Pike. And a Bayley Pike turns up in the service records of naval officers in the National Archives - and yes he was dismissed the Service at Sierra Leone in early 1851 from being Master's Assistant in HMS Hound. So clearly, that much of the story is true.

Next I looked for Pikes in the 1851 census, conveniently taken sometime after Pike would have got home in the 'Indiaman'. Lo and behold, there is a Pike, the right age, in Plymouth, at his father's house (a storekeeper at the Devonport dockyard), and describing himself as "Mate of the Talavera".

(All this is covered in much greater detail in the Appendix of RRA)

But (Oh dear) This Pike is called John Brewer Pike, and is recorded as being born in Plymouth, not Jersey like Bayley Pike in the census ten years before.

And the Talavera? Well, coincidence upon coincidence, she was an 'Indiaman', owned by Duncan Dunbar of Blackwall, and yes, she was on her way home from India at exactly the right time in early 1851!

There is no more trace of 'our' Bayley Pike in the England & Wales or Channel Islands censuses after that solitary appearance in 1841. John Brewer Pike, however, went on to have a successful career in the Merchant Marine as a Master Mariner, and appears in several more E&W censuses.

That's the story in a nutshell. When I wrote the appendix to RRA I became convinced, though there was no positive proof, that Bayley Pike had skippered the Talavera home, and for whatever reason, had 'become' John Brewer Pike, son of Anthony Pike of Plymouth. I had not been able to find the Plymouth Pikes in the 1841 census - but now I have.

There is, of course, the same Anthony Pike, naval storekeeper, and among his children is a boy, the right age, simply registered as 'John Pike'. So surely this must be the John Brewer Pike of ten years later? Mustn't it...? That effectively kicks my theory into touch.

And further mystery is provided by the discovery of a perfectly plausible Bayley Pike as a sheep station manager in the South Island of New Zealand in the late 1850s and early 1860s, and then as a 'sheep inspector' in Queensland in the late 1860s.

But wait a minute - the late 1850s and early 60s was exactly when RRA was first in the South Island of New Zealand! Did he bump into his old school friend from Jersey, the friend he hadn't seen for nearly ten years? Did he and the friend yarn about old times on the Slave Coast? Did Bayley Pike tell him about being dismissed the Service? And the other young officer dismissed from HMS Hound at exactly the same time? (There was one according to RRA's story - but so far untraced and unnamed.) Did RRA do his usual trick of muddling stories? Was the other young man John Brewer Pike? A cousin perhaps of Bayley Pike? Sounds fantastic, but fits the facts better than the suggestion that Bayley Pike changed his name to John Brewer... now that we know that the Bayley Pike from Jersey is almost certainly the very same as the sheep run manager in Canterbury.

One problem: there is no John Brewer Pike in RN Service Records. The quest goes on!