Were the mysterious 3 Englishman connected to the remote Afrikaner farming community of Gamkaskloof (aka ‘Die Hel’) survivors of the Shipwrecked Convict ship Waterloo?, which sunk off the coast of South Africa on the 28 August 1842.
William John Worthington ’s descendants have a tale that he was shipwrecked and subsequently adopted by an Afrikaans-speaking family – with a sister and brother being adopted by two other families. William John Worthington married Martha Johanna Cordier of Gamkaskloof in Prins Albert on 25 June 1852.
http://www.genza.org.za/index.php/en/stories-29339/376-the-haystack.... John James Rosser believes that his gg grandfather William Rosser
escaped amid the confusion when the ship sunk. He believes that a prisoner by the name of Brookes also managed to escape at the same time. The reason for this theory is that on the 2 November in 1851, A William Rosser married Maryna Hendrina Maria Cordier in Ladismith, and on the same day in the same church a William Brooks married her mother the widower Anna Petronella (nee Hartman)
http://www.convictrecords.com.au/convicts/rosser/william/67064
Sounds like it would make a great novel :-)
Should we add the Waterloo story to the Shipwrecked Castaways on the SA Coast project as well?
http://www.geni.com/projects/Shipwrecked-Castaways-on-the-SA-Coast/...
Hi All
I am looking for information regarding my 4x GGF, William Henry.
He was born in Ireland in 1807 and married in Port Elizabeth in 1843.
I couldn't find a logical reason as to why he would come to South Africa and now I discovered that one of the passengers on the ship, Waterloo, was a William Henry.
Do you think it is possible that he escaped as well?
It's the only William Henry I could find that fits the timeline well.