TRAGEDY AT SEA
Remembered in verse
The Alert Packet left Dublin on 25 March 1823, but would never reach her destination of Liverpool take
Iwas suspicious of Robert. He had a son Henry baptised on 14 Jne 1818 at St James Church, Toxteth in Liverpool, but did not apparently marry the mother Eliza Edge until 4 July 1819 in Christchurch, Liverpool. A second son Henry was baptised on 18 March 1821 at Christchurch, who always gave his age to fit with an 1820-21 birth. Robert had disappeared without trace after March 1822 when his third child Harriot Jane was born. I wondered if he had deserted Eliza, which in a sense he had: he had left her to fend for herself for a whole year. Worse was to come, as I discovered when I searched for Robert in the British Newspaper Archive.