A. E. Powsey is awarded the RHS Bronze Medal in 1880




The obituary of A. E. Powsey notes that he won the Royal Humane Society's bronze medal when he was a boy. A few years back an internet search found pages of award winners, fortunately a copy of a page from 1880 was made ( they aren't online any more ) and sure enough, if you click on the above picture, under the 'P's you will find that Powsey, A. E., 'Boy T.S. Cornwall', of Sheerness received an award. More on the 'T.S. Cornwall' reference further below.



But what a surprise to discover, while searching for A. E. Powsey, that in 1887 a W. H. Powsey aged 13 also won the award. We have every reason to believe that W. H. is A. E.'s brother. Obviously being a resident of Sheerness would qualify W. H. as being a close relative. A search of Powsey in the 1881 census records finds this household of Powseys:


Dwelling: 50 Unity St.
Census place: Minster in Sheppey, Kent, England
William H. Powsey...Married...Age 42...Male... Born Wilmington, Kent, England
Sarah Powsey...Married...Age 45...Female...Sawston, Cambridge, England
Ann E. Powsey...Age 13...Female...Sheerness, Kent, England
William H. Powsey...Age 6...Male Sheerness, Kent, England


William H. Powsey the younger was age 6 at the time of this census and would have been 12 or 13 in 1887 when a R.H.S. Bronze medal was awarded to someone of the same name and age, so this is almost certainly him.

But there is no Albert Edward in this household...and in fact, no sign of him anywhere in the British Isles on the 1881 census list. So where is he? His obituary says he was born in 1866 and at the age of fourteen and a half he embarked to the West Indies on a merchant ship as a cabin boy. The math indicates that in 1881 he would have been approximately 15 years old and so would probably would have been away on that voyage and beyond reach of the census. There are so few Powsey's on the 1881 census, and so few hailing from Sheerness itself, that we're pretty certain that this household would be the family of Albert Edward Powsey.

Professor Powsey in a floating Borstal?

What!? Our branch of the family heard of many stories about Professor Powsey; about the R.H.S. Medal, about the lifesaving, about the voyage as a cabin boy, but we never heard this one. But there is a good chance that he found himself in such circumstances. As mentioned, A. E. Powsey is described as 'Boy, T.S. Cornwall' on the list of bronze medal winners for 1880. He would have been about 14 years old. We searched for 'T. S. Cornwall' and this is what we found:


Training Ship Cornwall

Here's a picture of the training ship Cornwall which was essentially a floating 'training school' or borstal for boys in trouble who would be in danger of becoming hardened criminals if sent to jail. It was moored at Purfleet on the Thames. Other training ships existed, mainly for poor boys to learn the discipline and skills required for seafaring life. But the T. S. Cornwall operated as a reformatory as well as a venue to provide those seafaring skills. The above picture is of the ship that apparently traded places with the Wellesley in 1868 so A. E. Powsey wouldn't have actually been on the ship shown above, although the names are the same. It would have been something similar, an obsolete tall fighting ship from earlier in the century. You can read more about the Training Ship Cornwall here.


Ensign of the Training Ship Cornwall. For more on training ship ensigns click here.

You can read even more about training ships here and here. Life was strict and by todays standards punishment brutal. Training ships continued to be used into the 20th century and there is a short clip from a documentary here in which a former 'boy' talks about his experiences including canings along with film footage from around the 1930's.

Below are some pictures taken from internet searches a few years back on training ships.







Reading some of the links indicates that boys interned on the T. S. Cornwall were between 13 and 15 years of age, sound and healthy, and had recieved sentences of 3 years detention. The aim of time spent of the T. S. Cornwall was to provide regular meals, activity, discipline and seafaring skills to it's boys to help them become useful members of society as adults. In the context of it's times, it may well have been a great success, as many of the young men indeed found positions after their internment. It would seem that A. E. Powsey was one of them; if he was on the Cornwall at about 13 or 14 it was shortly after this, at age 14 and a half, that he found employment as a cabin boy on a ship bound for the West Indies.

However, the training ships in general were not without controversy even during their time. You can read about it here. In brief, in 1891 an inquiry was launched into the Captain of the T. S. Clarence who had administered 4859 strokes of the birch over 3 years; he was cleared of excessive cruelty. Despite, or because, of the brutal discipline and punishment meted out on the ships there were regular crisis' over the years; absconding, mutinies, vandalism and attempts to burn the ships. Leaders were flogged. And in 1903 two boys stabbed a disliked officer as part of a conspiracy on the T. S. Cornwall.

One of the anecdotes about A. E. Powsey passed down to the Canadian contingent of Powsey's is that one of the reasons he left his position teaching swimming at Marleborough College was because of the exessive discipline inflicted on the boys. The suggestion was that he had a soft spot and was not a hard man; a good thing. That may well have been the case, and if indeed he had been a 'boy on the T. S. Cornwall' as the R.H.S. award suggests, witnessing cruelty against his charges at the College could have been difficult in light of what he might have experienced in his own youth.
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