The Diary of William Whyte

I first started researching the Williamson family history back in 2019, feeling inspired after reading 'the Williamsons of Daisy Bank' by Jessie Williamson and a further road trip down south with my father, Brent Williamson.

After beginning teaching in 2020, I had much less spare time and attention for continuing research and put the project down for a few years. Fast forward to 2024 and I am in Canada during the winter with very little to do but stay inside and stay warm. At this stage, I decided it was time to make some edits to 'the Williamsons of Daisy Bank' to add new information and correct a few errors, however as I got writing, the project continued getting larger until it became something completely separate.

Now at this stage, I thought it unlikely to gain any more information about the Melbourne voyage than what I had already gained in 2019, all of which I have shared in previous blog posts, however in 2021, the National Library of Scotland added a shipboard diary to their archives from a man named William Whyte; a man who wrote every day on the voyage of the 'Melbourne'. When I did a quick search for some new information in 2024, this popped up and I hoped it may provide some new information about the voyage, or maybe even a reference to the Williamsons.

I sent a request to the NLS who sent back two quotes: one for 'personal use' and the other for wider use. As the personal use quote was significantly cheaper at £24.82, I knew for the time being, it would do. For this reason, I won't post any more than the front page from the full original file here on the blog. It is about 32 pages long and written in quite hard to discern handwriting from its day. However . . .

While looking for work here in Scotland, I spent some time transcribing the entire diary. It took quite some time, and even still there are a few words that I could not quite discern, and some points where the page had torn or folded in the scans. I have now completed the transcription to the best of my ability and it is available for you to read below for free, a day by day account of the voyage from Leith to Port Chalmers. Feel free to read it at your own leisure, there is much talk of weather and sadly no reference to the Williamsons, but there are accounts of many of the happenings on board such as a Christmas party, a ceremony featuring Greek gods, the death and birth of children, a crew member being put in cuffs, the theft of fermented milk salmon and much more. It is worth noting that William Whyte was traveling as an intermediate passenger so his experience likely differed greatly from that of the assisted passengers in steerage, however many accounts would likely have had a great impact on the Williamsons own voyage.

Finally, as mentioned earlier, there is a cost incurred by accessing some of these archives. All of this information will continue to be available to read for free as my goal is for this knowledge to be easily accessible by all Williamsons for many generations to come, especially so if I ever get around to publishing this book. However if you would like to contribute to further research and archival access, there is a button on this blog linked to my Ko-fi profile which you can use to donate any amount, even as little as $1, so that we can gain access to more archives and more information about the Williamsons.

My next few pieces of the puzzle include buying the birth certificates of two more of John Williamson's children to find out where they were living after moving to New Zealand ($25NZD ea), a paid subscription to the website Fold3 for 7 documents pertaining to Donald Williamson's time in the 79th Regiment of Foot (£8.99 per month), traveling to Fort George to access archives and the museum on the same matter (£30), and requesting the Maniototo Museum do a search through their archives for any Williamson related information, especially so for Kenneth, Charles, Roderick and Donald ($30 per hour of research committed).

If you think you would like to donate, please click the donate button to the left, or the 'Support me on Ko-fi' button at the top of the page. Any support would be greatly appreciated.

Without further ado, 

The Diary of William Whyte