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1836 - 1917

 

Fourth son of John Alers Hankey and his wife Sarah Andrews nee Jameson, he was born on 13 Sep 1836 at Balham Hill, Clapham and baptised on 5 Dec at the Independent chapel at Kings Weigh House, Fish Street Hill.

He was named Jameson after his maternal grandfather William Jameson, who died shortly before he was born.

Jameson probably attended Blackheath Proprietory School, like his elder brother John. In 1851 he was at a boarding school in Rottingdean, with his younger brothers Robert and Ernest. He was a private pupil at Martyr Worthy from July 1852 to March 1853 and was at Lausanne from April to December 1853.

Destined for a career in India, he attended the East India College (Haileybury) from 1854 to 1856, and proceeded to India in 1856 at the age of twenty. His first appointment in the Bombay Civil Service was as Writer, and in 1858 he was appointed Assistant to the Collector and Magistrate at Ratnagiri and at Ahmednuggur (a hill fortress which had been stormed and taken by Wellington in 1803).

In India he met Minna Louisa, daughter of Humphrey Lyons of the Bombay Army (later Lieutenant-General), and they soon became engaged. The families were already known to each other, as Thomson Hankey acted for the remaining Lyons estates in Antigua, while Edmund Lyons and his sister Catherine (Minna’s uncle and aunt) knew Jameson’s father, Lady Emily Hankey and the Bathursts.

They were married on 3 Nov 1858 at Christ Church, Byculla, Bombay (he aged 22 and she only 17) and in 1860 or 1861 returned to England on furlough. Minna Louisa had been born at sea in 1841, on passage from India. Her uncle was Edmund, Admiral Lord Lyons, GCB, whose daughter Augusta was wife of the 14th Duke of Norfolk, and her brother was Admiral of the Fleet Sir Algernon McLennan Lyons, GCB.

 

Jameson was the father of eight sons and five daughters:

 

 

Jameson’s father, John Alers Hankey, retired from Hankey & Co. by the time of its merger with the Consolidated Bank in 1863. The advent of joint stock banks meant that the era of private banks was drawing to a close, and John’s six sons all followed other careers; John was a stock broker, Robert farmed in Australia, Henry was a merchant and building developer, while Charles and Ernest were merchants. Jameson evidently did not care for life as a civil servant in India, as he resigned the Service in May 1862, at the same time becoming a partner with Edward Gellatly and Frederic Sewell in Gellatly, Hankey, Sewell & Co., ship-owners and agents, of 109 Leadenhall Street. Frederic Sewell, who was also a partner in Taylor, Walker & Co.’s Limehouse Brewery, retired in 1896. Jameson was on the electoral registers from 1873 to 1895 in respect of various warehouses and a wharf at Limehouse, usually jointly with Frederic Sewell.

The Times reported on 22 May 1866 that ‘Messrs Gellatly, Hankey, and Sewell, a highly respectable mercantile and shipping firm, have, in consequence of disappointment in carrying out some outstanding negotiations, resolved to liquidate under inspection. Meanwhile, arrangements have been effected to secure the regular continuance of their important and well-known shipping business. It is understood that a hasty examination of their books by Mr C.F. Kemp, the accountant, shows an estimated surplus of at least from 50,000l. to 75,000l. The firm, it is believed could have gone on, but in the interests of all parties they determined in exceptional times like the present [when there was a financial crisis] to preserve their rights and other property intact for the security of it.’ The firm nevertheless survived, and still exists.

‘Fortunately, we still have an impression of Jameson Alers Hankey. The record runs ‘he looked what he was, a cultured fastidious gentleman - one might have said ‘Fellow of All Souls’. He was courteous to the junior staff and, when dealing with senior men, gave the impression that he regarded them as his own equal, which he certainly did not.’ .... If these notes convey the impression of a very superior person, that is corrected by one of Mr FV Smythe’s observations. He makes it clear that Hankey’s connections were invaluable and contributed greatly to the volume of brokerage business ....

”

The Mount, Upton, Bexley

 

 

Jameson and Minna Louisa were living at Wimborne Minster when their second child Algy was born on 9 Mar 1862, and they shortly afterwards moved to Widmore Road, Bromley, where seven more children were born. Jameson’s father died in 1872, and two years later Jameson bought The Mount, a Victorian mansion at Bexley, to accommodate his ever increasing family. His tenth child, Humphrey, was born in that year, 1874, and three more children were to follow. William Morris had been living nearby at Red House until he sold it in 1865.

Over the next few years Jameson acquired surrounding land to consolidate the estate; he let The Mount to the Bristow family, who were living there by 1891, and housing development on the property may have begun around 1899.

Jameson’s widow gave her address as The Mount when she made her will in 1922, although she normally lived in Eastbourne. Minna having died in 1926, The Mount was demolished in August 1927, and the site is at Fairway, over-looking Bexley Heath Golf Club.

 

Jameson Alers Hankey

 

 

Olga winning the Town Cup, 1876

 

 

Jameson’s true interest lay in the sea, and he began his yachting career in 1873 with the Sylph, a small screw schooner of 29 tons, which he kept until 1883. In 1874 he acquired the Olga, a schooner of 222 tons and 105 feet, built by Henderson and Coulburn and designed by Mr Lobnitz. The Olga did not start with a brilliant career, and many alterations were made with ballasting and rig before she was a prize-winner. She carried off a large number of prizes, and in 1875 came first eighteen times out of twenty-three starts, winning £205 prize money. In 1876 she won the Ocean Yacht Race from the Nore to Harwich.

 

Spinnakers Yacht Race, 1876 (Olga second from right)

(The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News – 1st July 1876)

 

 

On 26 June 1876, during the Royal Cinque Ports Yacht Club regatta, Olga won a race from Dover to Boulogne and back. The prize was a ‘120 guinea cup’ (known as the Town Cup) presented by the town of Dover, consisting of a large gold-plated flagon and four goblets. The Town Cup was run between 1870 and 1911, and among its famous winners were Britannia in 1894 and Sir Thomas Lipton’s Shamrock in 1909.

 

Vanadis

 

In November 1875 Jameson attended the first meeting of The Yacht Racing Association, whose object was to systematise yacht racing and to improve it. In 1880 he acquired (with C & H McIver of Liverpool) the new iron screw schooner Vanadis, 304 tons and 145 feet; one of the quickest passages made by this splendid boat was from Portland to Marseilles, which occupied six days and seven hours, and included an 18 hours stop at Gibraltar. Jameson sold Vanadis in 1890 and Olga in 1891, acquiring the 153 ton schooner Pantomime, which made the passage from Naples to Erith in 9 days.

Jameson much preferred life afloat, and as his large family grew up, he increasingly spent spent most of his life with his wife on one of his yachts. In April 1881 he was on the newly acquired Vanadis at Newport, Isle of Wight, with his widowed stepmother-in-law (Hon Adelaide Matilda Lyons) and his children Edith, Algy, Lil and Lionel (Syd, Humphrey, Tim and Eric were at Bexley with a tutor and seven household staff; Ethel was at a boarding school in Croydon; Harold and Gerald were at a boarding school in Leamington Priors; and their mother was elsewhere). Jameson himself was the master, and the crew of 15 consisted of first and second mate, boatswain, engineer, 2 firemen, 2 stewards, cook, carpenter and 5 able seamen.

 

 

Whisper

 

Jameson eventually gave up living in the mansion at Bexley and by 1891 had established his shore base at 105 Marina Street, St Leonards, which was handy for the harbour at Southwick. He was at St Leonards in 1891 with his wife, Helen, Ethel (shortly to be married), Tim and Eric; together with seven staff consisting of two lady’s maids, nursemaid, cook, kitchenmaid, housemaid and parlourmaid.

In spite of his love of sailing, Jameson had sold even Pantomime by 1893, and the impression is given that his finances were under pressure. The mansion, the steam yachts and the needs of his large family must have severely strained the resources provided from his interests in the volatile world of shipping. But in 1902 he bought the 108 ton ketch Whisper, and in 1905 the screw brigantine Francesca of 315 tons and 135 feet, which had been built in 1874 for the 7th Duke of Marlborough.

 

Minna & Jameson Alers Hankey – c.1914

 

Jameson wrote on board Francesca in 1907 ‘I find it suits my health better than living in a house, but Mrs Hankey is a very bad sailor & we don’t sail about nearly as much as I should do if I was alone & had no business matters to tie me’ - he had evidently inherited some of his mother’s peripatetic tastes. They would usually cruise in home waters, and Francesca was known

 

 

to have a winter berth at Southwick, between Shoreham and Hove.

Jameson’s business certainly had problems at this time, and in 1908 he wrote ‘For several months past, we have been struggling with a depression in shipping of altogether unprecedented severity & as I am through my firm considerably interested in this industry, I am having a fairly disastrous time of it. I had arranged to retire from the firm at the end of the year & I only wish I had done so some few years ago as I should have been much better out of it than I shall be now & the full extent of any possible losses will not be known or realised for at least 12 months or more after the end of this year. Of course there may be a recovery at any moment, but as trade is everywhere on the down grade, that is not so very likely.’ Jameson finally retired from Gellatly Hankey in 1909.

 

 

The barque Edwin Fox – 836 tons

 

Built at Bombay as a fully-rigged East Indiaman in 1853, the Edwin Fox is unique as the only surviving ship that transported convicts to Australia, brought settlers to both Australia and New Zealand and served in the Crimean War. She is the oldest surviving merchant sailing ship, and is now drydocked at Picton in New Zealand. In 1862 the Edwin Fox was bought by Edward Gellatly for £7600.  Gellatly later formed the partnership of Gellatly, Hankey and Sewell, who operated the ship until about 1873.

 

From 1913 Jameson had various addresses in Guernsey, and made his will there on 12 Aug 1914. It is unlikely that Francesca was any longer seaworthy, being by then forty years old. Jameson died on 23 Oct 1917 at Havelet House, Guernsey, aged 81, leaving an estate of £48,000. Minna Louisa died on 2 Sep 1926 at Eastbourne, aged 85.

 

 

Clubs:                Royal London, Royal Mersey, Junior Carlton

Addresses:        Gellatly Hankey & Co.

                      27 Leadenhall Street

                      109 Leadenhall Street

                      Dock House, Billiter Street (destroyed 1941)

              63 Widmore Road, Bromley, Kent (c.1862, 1871)

              The Mount, Upton, Bexley, Kent (1874)

[In Bexley, Mount Road runs between Alers Road and Upton Road;Mount Drive leads from Mount Road to Bexley Heath Golf Club]

              105 Marina Street, St Leonards-on-Sea (1891, 1899)

                      [1891 census entry for James Alers Hankey]

                      [Mount Lodge, Chesterfield Road, Eastbourne, 1899]

                      4 York Street, St James (an inn) (1901)

                      Havelet House, Guernsey (1917)