This undated manuscript of pages numbered from 3 to 11
(pages 1 & 2 are missing), and annotated Our fam. on each
sheet, is in the hand of Thomas Runciman 1841-1909, artist
son of Walter & Jean.     Comment is in square brackets [].

.... for her early coolness.  She married a Kerr and was proud
of it.

At that time a boy of twelve ordinarily strong and healthy, was
thought fit to leave school and start the great fight for an
independent position in life.  At that age my father [Walter
Runciman 1810-1878] had had a life full of all kinds of boys'
pleasures.  He was then, and in all his life after, good nature
embodied, albeit at sight of impatience a flash of Scandanavian
ire would startle the wrongdoer.  Many were his memories of
village incidents and characters.  He delighted greatly in the
curious northern humour which had something akin to it in the
German mind.  On one occasion he had taken a boat and sculled
to his brother's smack in the offing.  A sudden storm forced
the old skipper to put out to sea.  All night long the winds
tore about the rocks and ruins that overlooked, and partly
enclosed the harbour.

When morning came crowds of acquaintances scanned the roaring
waters for Wallie R's smack.  It was early summer, and the sea
ware [seaweed] had been swept ashore in tons by the force of
the waves.  Geordie Lumsden and several friends looked ruefully
at these signs of the sea's turbulence, "Eh, mercy, puir
Wally's drooned I doubt, an' he's pu'ed up a' they ware
wassels".  The weather moderated and Uncle Wally sent the young
scamp to his granny.

The old grandfather acted as steward on a large farm and when
past his seventieth year he happened to be gossiping during the
interval for refreshment called "the ten o'clock", in a clover
field partly mown.  Discussion led to some one of the workers
declaring Mr. Wally could mow a rig asainst the leash young
fellows who had been at work there.  Quietly the old man smiled
and at a signal off they started.  Unlike many tall people the
grandfather was clean and decisive in his movements.  With a
long deliberate sweep - never bending his back, and never
pausing in his clean slow sweep, the old man finished his rig
side with a few minutes to spare, much cheering and banter
following his feat.

His two sons were sailors and were both taken out of their ships
and impressed into the "King's ships" as they used to be called.
They went through the Nelson wars and when near the end of them
my father's father Walter ran - [meaning] deserted.  "Why father
man", said my own pater to him once, "what on earth made you
run?  If you had stayed a few months more and been paid off in
proper form you would now have had a comfortable pension."
"Yes my son, that's true but liberty was sweet, liberty was
sweet."

My maternal grandfather [John Finlay, 1770-1854] who went
through the wars into the sweet end of them, was more fortunate
and had sufficient means when he was paid off to buy a schooner
and sail her between Dunbar and London and other parts, to his
considerable profit.

My father served his apprenticeship in the Helen Sharpe, a
large sloop or schooner which sailed in the Baltic trade, and
[he] became a smart seaman famous for good looks.  A Captain Hay
of the Coastguard urged him to join that body and he was thought
to have got into a good thing indeed when admitted.  He was
obliged to serve some short time on board a warship before he
could be entered, and having done so he remained a coastguard
until at sixty years he retired on a pension.

The frequent removals from station to station were a sore
annoyance and drawback to him and to all men in the service.
Soon after joining the service he came under the influence of
Wesleyan Methodism and became quite famous along the coast for
his gift of oratory, which he used when occasion offered as a
local preacher.

Early in his career as a preacher a certain Captain Boys or
Boyce was Inspecting Commander of his district, and this man by
much evidence must have been of a mean malign nature and as
ignorant as malign.  The coastguards of the day were really
civil service men and when off duty were out of uniform.  But a
vicious man as Captain could make matters unpleasant by surprise
visits to a station and a demand to see every man in uniform at
once.  He could also order a man to remove at a day's notice
quite regardless of the circumstances of wife and family.  His
delight was to entrap men and catch them napping.  On one
memorable occasion Billy Boys was foiled in an attempt to find
old rough-mouthed Bob Darling off his beat.  One of the men
conveyed him to the beat where he hoped to find Bob's absence.
The boat drew near and as the dusk [fell,] figures loomed in
Bob's vision.  He hailed them, "Who goes there?".  "It is
Captain Boys going to land", a voice shouted.  "Captain Boys
wouldn't come here without telling the lieutenant to let me
know; I doubt I know you.  If you attempt to land I'll fire on
you."  They persisted in drawing nearer; bang went Bob's pistol
and a bullet whstled unpleasantly near the captain's ear.
Needless to say Bob heard oars cutting sharply the water and saw
the boat swiftly disappear into the darkness, but not before he
had sent another leaden messenger singing past the traitor's
cranium, for in those days the old flintlock pistol was heavy
ordnance compared to the present-day revolver.

My father married in 1836 or 37 Jean Finlay [1812-1905]
daughter of John Finlay [1770-1854] who had been sailing master
perhaps in a false name in the Minotaur at the Battle of the
Nile.  He had a silver medal after it.  [Able Seaman John
Finley [sic] of HMS Minotaur is included in the Public Record
Office's muster roll for HMS Minotaur, so he did not sail under
a false name].

My mother's mother was named Ritchie, and there is a tale of
her being the child of the eldest son of the Earl (or Baron)
Hopetoun.  He having "misallied" himself was cut off with a
Shilling, there being no entail.  He took the name of Ritchie
and died early.  In Burke's Peerage up till about 1878 or so
he was always marked "died young and unmarried".  He was, in
fact, married, but none of us have thought it worthwhile to
look up the register.  He lived and died at Leith.  My
grandmother after his death was ill-treated by a stepfather,
and one morning at the age of fifteen she left the house
with only the clothes on that decency demanded, and walked
to Haddington and then Dunbar where eventually she married
Grandfather Finlay.  They both lived to be upwards of eighty
and died quietly at last in Dunbar where they lie at rest.

Their two sons Richard and James were lost in a hurricane
in the North Sea.  My aunt Mary dreamed she saw them
struggling in the waves, and told the dream to the family
after the storm.  She was then a girl of sixteen.  [Another
version of this tale involves only her twin Richard,
recorded on the Finlay tombstone as having been lost at sea
age 16 in January 1825.  The same tombstone records James
having been lost at sea age 29 in October 1843].  I once
possessed an exquisitely shaped full-rigged model ship by
Richard.  It disappered - left in Alnmouth somewhere when
we removed in the Mermaid, revenue cutter to Cresswell.

My own earliest recollections are of the usual childish
character - a bright outlook from a cottage at Spittal
next [to] Alexander's herring curing yard, over the Tweed
to Berwick.  Enchanting walks to the landing stage of the
first steam ferry.  Enchanting strolls in old-world Berwick
with the Town Hall chimes enrapturing with other sounds and
sights the awakening mind.  My father and mother were then
both impressed Methodists, converts from Presbyterianism,
both still under 32 years.  On Sundays my mother in black
silk dress, quakerlike cope and bonnet, all black and
white, took us in the steam ferry across the river to
morning service.  A beefsteak pudding left cooking on an
arranged fire in a large pot.  The hymns in chapel quite
of divine character as to music.  The ministers in white
chokers quite like divine messengers to me.  My father
when coastguard duties allowed turned up in our family
pew in the old civilian blue suit with brass buttons -
crown and anchor on the sailor jacket, [and] a stock and
upstanding collar on the neck.  He was a handsome looking
young man, fair ruddy cheeked, bluest of blue eyes and
[with] chestnut whiskers and hair; five feet eleven in
height and easy soldier-like bearing.

To show how easily a child's observation of natural
effects may begin, I had been placed by Mr. Harris on the
footboard of the coastguard boat as they were washing her
out etc., and I set afloat with a stick to guide me on
the shallow ripples through which I noticed with wonder
and rapture the sunrays curling many a wanton way on the
amber sand.  I tumbled into this dreamlike scene and was
carried dripping to father "Hayah's" house there to be
stripped and dried. My elder brother Richard and sister
Marion I took no note of until I was about five years of
age, and we were located in several dwelling rooms of
Holy Island Castle.  I entered the school kept by Mr.
Donaldson about 1 mile distant, and in the lunch hour of
one day I heard thunder - "God's voice" - as a few of us
sat in the schoolroom.  I remembered Richard laughing
and crying out "Oh, oh", while I faded into
unconsciousness at such proof of the Creator's
presence!  I had fainted.  It was from pure awe.

On summer evenings the other coastguards' children
gathered on the "the leads" above the "high battery", and
told tales of the dead calling.

[The manuscript ends abruptly at this point].

Memoir of John Finlay RUNCIMAN 1843-1902 contained in
Before the Mast - and After (1924) pp.288-9, by his brother
Sir Walter RUNCIMAN, Bart.

My brother John was five years my senior.  He went
to sea in a vessel called the Arethusa.  Her captain was one
of the racing men and landed her in a snowstorm on the
Cross Sands when under full sail, when he ought to have
had his topsails reefed.  As soon as she struck her royal
trucks kissed each other, and she became a total wreck.
The crew took to the boats and were rescued by the
Yarmouth lifeboat [Caister lifeboat in fact, 6th January
1861, John's 18th birthday] in an exhausted condition some
hours after.  The boats were half-full of water and some of
the men were frozen numb.  My brother had been three years
in this vessel and had a year to serve, but he had got
the reputation of being a first-class sailor, so he was given
an A.B.'s job on another vessel belonging to the same
owners.  He was a genial good-hearted fellow, with many
superstitions.  After being wrecked he adopted the habit
of wearing his left stocking inside out for luck - it had
saved him, he said - and carried this curious freak out to
the end of his life.  He soon rose to the rank of captain,
and commanded both large and small sailing vessels, some
of which were full riggers.  He subsequently obtained
command of steamers trading to all parts of the world,
and was much in the Chinese trade.  He left one of his
vessels out there and joined a Chinese gunboat as an officer
during one of the Tai Ping rebellions.  His tales of how
the rebels were mowed down by machine-guns made
gruesome stories.  Like my brother James, he had
inherited the roving, adventurous spirit and his tales of
thrilling adventure, always reluctantly told, were well
worth hearing.  He was nearly three years in China, and
I think nearly two in their navy.  When he came home
he took command of one of my steamers and later became
Marine Superintendent.  His hard life brought on an
illness, from which he never recovered, and he died
in 1900.

[In fact he died in 1902; the steamer of which John took
command was the Dudley, followed by Eslington].

Letter written by John Finlay Runciman 1843-1902,
Master Mariner son of Walter & Jean, to his artist brother
Thomas Runciman, describing a rough passage around
northern Scotland.     Comment is in square brackets [].

S. S. Eslington,                 Dublin, 25.1.89 [Friday]

Dear Tom,

It is in Dublin I am just now but will sail on Saturday
night for Newport (Mon[mouthshire]) the address there is
Mordey Jones & Co., Steam Ship Brokers.

Now you know that bit I will give you the other news I
have which is no news at all.  We jog along from pillar to
post as best we can.

We got no damage through grounding last trip and so far
this has not been a bad one.  A bit of a breeze crossing
the Moray Firth but I soon got into shelter and stayed
there till weather moderated, that was 24 hours after.  It
is a wild shop down North, nothing but rocks, wild and
grand.  There was a tremendous sea from the SW rolling in
and beating against the black high rocks.  It was sunrise
after I got through and I went as close in as possible so
as to make out the shape of the coastline and land behind.
It was a grand sight and would have suited you to kill
[perhaps a reference to Thomas's seascape artistry].  I
struck off from Cape Wrath to the Island of Lewis & got
there before dark.  It looked bleak, barren and wild, but
we were sheltered from the heavy Western Ocean seas and
although it is only a narrow passage through the Little
Minch, the vessel can go up alongside the rocks almost.
It was dark but I could see the Black Rocks as we came
close to them.  It must be a fine place for scenery in the
summertime, but I cannot say I enjoyed what I saw of it as
it was my first visit to these parts and therefore
required a good deal of navigation to keep clear of the
many sunken rocks, and that took away a lot of the charm
there to anyone who had no responsibility.

Well, after passing Barra Island at the SW end of Lewis,
we made for the North Channel to the Irish Sea, and on the
passage passed about 4 miles off the Skerryvore lighthouse.
It is a lonely looking pile, and the great seas that beat
against it makes me wonder however it can be fixed to
resist such tremendous force as it looks like a very high
factory chimney or monument rising out of the sea.  It
seems such a small structure to stand against such seas as
roll in from the Atlantic.  It has not the least shelter
from the westward.  After leaving it we came to another
island the name of which I don't remember.  Then Rathlin,
then Mull of Cantyre [Kintyre], all wild high rocky shores,
and then it was dark, and I saw nothing but the leading
lights till we got to Dublin.

I have seen nothing of it [Dublin] at all, the weather is
not nice to go sightseeing so I postponed the goose till I
get a Summer trip when it will be a pleasure to stroll
around and look at things.  I was at the pantomime last
night and a verse of a topical song almost brought down the
house with cheers, clapping & hissing.  The hissing was
almost as strong as the cheering, so that in Dublin at
least they don't all worship the Grand Old Man, but it was
grand fun.  What an excitable lot of beings the Irish are.
Everything is very quiet at present, no public meetings or
anything to make a stir.

We go to Newport to load for Tunis, and from there to some
place else, but where I do not know at present.  Tell
Mother [Jean RUNCIMAN, née FINLAY 1812-1905] I will send her
a line or two, perhaps tomorrow.  Hoping you are all well,
and doing well.  Oh-oh-ou-ou etc.

Your affect Brother, Jack.

RUNCIMAN, WALTER, first BARON
RUNCIMAN, of Shoreston (1847-1937),
shipowner, was born at Dunbar 6 July
1847, the fourth son of Walter Runciman,
master of a schooner, and later of the
coastguard service, by his wife, Jean,
eldest daughter of John Finlay, ship-
owner, of Dunbar.  He was elder brother
of James Runciman [q.v.].  In 1853 the
family moved to the coastguard station
at Cresswell, Northumberland, to which
the father had been appointed.  In 1859
young Walter ran away from home to seek
a career at sea.

Runciman was bound apprentice for six
years in the brig Harperley, 450 tons,
which sailed with coal from the Tyne to
Mozambique.  After a few voyages he
broke his indentures and tramped from
Troon to the Tyne and there joined the
brig Maid of Athens.  He later served in
four sailing ships, attended a nautical
school in 1867, and obtained a mate's
certificate.  After further sea service he
gained a master mariner's certificate in
1871.  In 1873 he was appointed master of
the barque F. E. Althausse, a command
which he held for four years.  In 1877 he
transferred from sail to steam in order to
become master of the steamer Coanwood,
1,650 tons, which he commanded for eight
and a half years.

In 1884, having then sailed the seas for
twenty-five years, Runciman was urged
by his medical adviser to live ashore, and
he began business as a shipowner at South
Shields in 1885, when shipping was in a
very depressed state.  His first purchase
was the steamer Dudley, 1,200 tons, which
had been laid up in the Tyne for three and
a half years.  His training in both sail and
steam proved of great value to him when
he entered the shipowning business.  The
Dudley did well for him and with the
flowing tide of better trade he bought at
various times eleven other second-hand
steamers.  In 1889 he had built at South
Shields his first new steamer, the Blake-
moor, which was the foundation of the
Moor Line, Ltd., the head office of which
was in due course removed from South
Shields to Newcastle.  By 1895 the Moor
Line owned twenty-five steamers and by
1914 the number had risen to about forty.
After the war of 1914-1918 the Moor Line
was wound up, and reserves and invested
assets were distributed among the share-
holders.  From 1919 to 1921 the Runciman
Company had no vessels, but a new Moor
Line was started and by 1924 a fleet of
twenty-three steamers was in service.

Runciman was senior partner in the
finn of Walter Runciman & company;
chairman and managing director of the
Moor Line, and chairman of the Anchor
Line, in which he acquired a controlling

interest in 1935.  He was president of the
Chamber of Shipping of the United King-
dom in 1910-l911, and in 1932, on the
death of James Lyle Mackay, Earl of
Inchcape [q.v.], he succeeded to the presi-
dency of the Shipping Federation until his
death.  This body had been formed in 1890
to combat the activities of the Seamen's
and Firemen's Union under their secretary
Joseph Havelock Wilson [q.v.], whose
courage Runciman admired and towards
whom he was sympathetically disposed.

In middle life Runciman was a strong
liberal of independent attitude.  For
twenty-two years he was chairman of the
Northern Liberal Federation Executive,
and was sometime president of the
Northern Liberal Federation.  He repre-
sented the Hartlepools division in parlia-
ment from 1914 to 1918; but in 1931 he
declared that 'free trade had outlived its
usefulness' and favoured tariff reform.

Runciman was a keen yachtsman.  His
first yacht of note was the Sunbeam,
bought in 1922, famous throughout the
world for the voyages of her former owner,
Thomas, Lord Brassey [q.v.].  She was
succeeded by Sunbeam II, an auxiliary
three-masted schooner built for Runciman
and launched in 1929.  He was a member of
several yacht clubs and commodore of the
Royal Northumbrian Yacht Club.  When
in his ninetieth year he intimated to the
Admiralty that he would like to join the
Royal Naval Volunteer Supplementary
Reserve, and was appointed honorary
commodore to date from 1 February 1937.

Early in the twentieth century Runci-
man bought Doxford, a beautiful estate in
Northumberland.  A subsequent purchase
was Shoreston, also in Northumberland.
He married in 1869 Ann Margaret (died
1933), daughter of John Lawson, of Cress-
well, Northumberland.  He was created
a baronet in 1906 and was raised in 1933
to the peerage as Baron Runciman, of
Shoreston.  He died at Newcastle-upon-
Tyne 13 August 1937.  His only child,
Walter, having been raised to the peerage
as Viscount Runciman, of Doxford, in the
previous June, the barony of Shoreston
became merged in the viscountcy.

Runciman was respected throughout
the shipping industry for his independence
of thought, his geniality, and his kindli-
ness.  In addition to his autobiography
Before the Mast, and After (1924), he wrote
several books on the sea.  An ardent
Methodist, of old Methodist stock, he
spoke in many Methodist pulpits in
Northumberland.

  [The Times 14 August 1937; Sir Walter
Runciman, Before the Mast, and After, 1924;
personal knowledge.]     A. E. JOHNSTONE.

This book was written in 1925 by a man in his late 70s whose active
seafaring began in the 1860s in small square rigged merchant sailing
vessels.  He had first-hand experience of industrial conditions and
circumstances quite remote from anything in the experience of
anyone alive today, in a world of almost no regulation of seamen's
conditions, and no load lines.  He had secondhand experience of a life
even more remote, for he tells in his autobiography Before the Mast
and After how, in 1855, his grandfather spoke to him of his own
experiences as a seaman at the Battles of the Nile, of Copenhagen,
and of Trafalgar.

He was Walter, fourth son of Walter Runciman, an official of the
coastguard and formerly a Sailing Master in the Royal Navy and
previously master of the schooner Ellen Sharpe.  Born in Dunbar in
1847, he grew up at Cresswell, Northumberland, where his father
lived from 1853, and it was from a cottage here that he ran away to
sea (at his second attempt) in 1859 to join the wooden brig Harperley.
His first voyage, very well described in his autobiography, was with
coal from the north-east coast of England to Mozambique.  From the
Harperley he went to another brig the Maid of Athens to which he
makes a number of references in Collier Brigs and their Sailors.
The contemporary painting of her in this book gives a good impression
of the class of vessel in which Walter Runciman began his sea career
and which is the principal subject of the present work.

Runciman's subsequent service took him to the brig Sagacia, a regular
deep-sea trading vessel, in the fo'c'sle of which he began his study of
navigation, and the brig Blake in which he experienced a narrow
escape from disaster.  From the Blake he went to the barque Bondicar
and then as an able-seaman to the brig Northumberland.  After a voyage
in another sailing vessel he took his mate's certificate in 1867 and then
a mate's berth in the brig Isabella in the West Indies trade.  He was
married the next year.

Subsequent voyaging brought him a Master's certificate of competence
in 1871 and immediate command of the barque F. E. Althausse,
433 tons, built in Jersey in 1855 and illustrated in this book.  It is
interesting to note that Runciman was only 24 years of age when he
was given charge of what was for those days a moderately sized
merchant ship engaged in general deep sea trade.  Runciman formed
a great attachment for this barque and recorded in later years that
his period in her was the happiest part of his life at sea.  This life went
on to cover a number of years as Master of the steamship Coanwood.
Much of Runciman's voyaging in this vessel was in the Black Sea trade.
Here and in the Mediterranean the local situation from time to time
gave him opportunities for unorthodox commercial activities which
he evidently greatly enjoyed.  He was able on some of these voyages
to be accompanied by his wife and son.

In 1884 a period of bad health forced Runciman to leave the sea and
a year later he took the considerable risk of setting up in business as
a ship owner in South Shields.  An exceedingly astute and energetic
business man, he built up a series of companies and in due course a
considerable private fortune.  He became a Baronet in 1906 and was
raised to the peerage as the first Baron Runciman of Shoreston in
1933.  He was President of the Chamber of Shipping in the United
Kingdom and President of the Shipping Federation.  He played a large
part in the establishment of the National Union of Seamen.  He owned
and sailed Lord Brassey's famous composite three-masted steam
auxiliary schooner yacht Sunbeam and subsequently had built a steel
three-masted schooner Sunbeam II (which is still afloat as the Greek
training ship Eugene Eurides).  He was one of the few former ship
masters of commercial sailing vessels who engaged in sailing for
pleasure.  He did not race, which he regarded as a needlessly risky
occupation, but he carried on sail unmercifully when making a
passage.  He gained considerable satisfaction from the discovery in his
later years that he had great ability as a writer and his autobiography
published in 1924 went into four impressions in its first two months
after publication.  It is still very well worth reading and still in demand.
Collier Brigs and their Sailors deals with the environment of
Runciman's earliest life at sea, before the success story described above
had really begun.  It is unique as a series of vignettes of aspects of the
merchant shipping industry of the mid-nineteenth century as seen at
first hand from the point of view of a seaman.  The vessels with which
it principally deals - small merchant sailing ships of the north-east
coast of England - which sailed all over the world but were centred
round a hard core of employment in the coal trade to London,
southern Britain and the Continent, were a feature of the maritime
world of their period.  Considering the scale of this part of the
merchant shipping industry at the time, very few visual records have
survived of it.  A few models, a few paintings and a very few photo-
graphs, indeed the collection of paintings reproduced in this book
comprises the most comprehensive body of illustration material
readily available.  These vessels employed thousands of seamen and
provided an income or part of an income for thousands of small
capitalists, owners of 64th shares, in Yorkshire, Durham and
Northumberland.  They provided a living for hundreds of ship-
building workers, sail makers, rope makers, workers in the timber
industry.  Their maintenance and their voyaging were largely
unregulated except by the requirements of local insurance bodies.
In some ways this record is complementary to W. J. Slade's Out of
Appledore, also recently reprinted by the Conway Maritime Press,
which deals with a comparable branch of the shipping industry half
a century later and also at first hand, although the details of the story
are very different.  Lord Runciman's picture is a most valuable record
of ordinary merchant shipping at the height of the era of the sailing
vessel, when nineteenth-century industrial and population expansion
had greatly increased the number of vessels and the scale of invest-
ment, and the competition of the economical steam cargo vessel was
only just beginning to be felt.

The value of these essays is enhanced rather than lessened by the
prejudices and personality of the writer, which come through so
clearly and which reveal the nature of the man and his background
which are themselves part of the history.  Runciman was an ardent
if rather unorthodox Methodist and was what was then called a
staunch advocate of temperance.  His fortune, the greater part of
which was made in the decade before the First World War, was the
product of tireless energy, sound judgement and a readiness to accept
new ideas--his companies were later in his lifetime to become the first
British tramp ship owners to purchase and operate diesel tonnage.
He maintained his energy and concern with his business into old age.
Only four days before he died his grandson, the present Viscount
Runciman of Doxford, had occasion to consult him on a matter of
business and found that he had by no means lost his touch.

Viscount Runciman, who worked with his grandfather for many years,
said of him recently that he "never knew a man who so immediately
impressed you with the force of his personality - you could not be
with him for five minutes without realising that here was a man who,
of his own kind, was quite outstanding".  He was a hard man but by
no means unkind.  He always remembered the grinding poverty of his
youth and this recollection was manifest in little economies - he would
never take a taxi - combined with generosity - he delighted in tipping
generously because he remembered what good tips had once meant
to him.  He retained to the end a great sense of comradeship with his
old friends of the days of sail and he could be unfailingly generous to
them in hard times.  Something of a tyrant to the end he had much
less use for his office staff than for his seagoing employees.  This
paternalistic attitude was expressed also in his relationship with his
own family, of which he was immensely proud.  He saw himself as the
founder of a dynasty, and he has been proved right in that his son
became a cabinet Minister and his two grandsons have both become
distinguished public figures.

Collier Brigs and their Sailors is a most valuable record of a
vanished world.

Vessel: "Coanwood"
 Census Place: Newport, Monmouth, Wales
 Source: FHL Film 1342267     PRO Ref RG11    Piece 5268    Folio 81    Page
 Marr Age Sex Birthplace
Walter RUNCIMAN M 33  M Dunbar, Scotland
 Occ: Master
John Finlay RUNCIMAN M 36  M Spittal, Northumberland, England
 Occ: 1st Mate
James FAIRNELL U 34  M Blyth, Northumberland, England
 Occ: 2nd Mate
Nickolas WILSON M 51  M Norway
 Occ: Carpenter
Thomas JACKSON M 28  M Nova Scotia Lancaster
 Occ: Steward
Joseph ADAMS U 23  M Cork, Ireland
 Occ: Cook
Ralph LAWSON U 28  M London, Middlesex, England
 Occ: Boatswain
John EVANS M 29  M Devon, Devon, England
 Occ: A B
Mathew O BRIEN U 26  M Cork, Ireland
 Occ: A B
George COLE U 27  M London, Middlesex, England
 Occ: A B
Christ CORNFORTH U 33  M Sunderland, Durham, England
 Occ: A B
W. R. BRICK U 17  M Hereford
 Occ: O S
Robt. PIKE M 26  M Bran Caster, Norfolk, England
 Occ: Chief Engineer
James HO... U 24  M Newcastle On Tyne, Northumberland, England
 Occ: 2nd Engineer
William W. PRATT U 22  M Appledore, Devon, England
 Occ: 3rd Engineer

RUNCIMAN, JAMES  (1852-1891),
journalist, son of a coastguardman, was
born at Cresswell, a village near Morpeth in
Northumberland, in August 1852.  He was
educated at Ellington school, and then for two
years (1863-5) in the naval school at Green-
wich, Kent, becoming afterwards a pupil-
teacher at North Shields ragged school.
After an interval spent at the British and
Foreign School Society's Training College
for Teachers in the Borough Road (now at
Isleworth), he entered the service of the
London School Board, acting as master suc-
cessively of schools at Hale Street, Dept-
ford, at South Street, Greenwich and at
Blackheath Hill.  While still a schoolmaster
he read for himself at night, and attempted
journalism.  He soon wrote regularly for the
Teacher, the Schoolmaster, and Vanity
Fair; of the last paper he became sub-editor
in 1874.  In January 1874 he matriculated
at the University of London, and passed the
first bachelor of science examination in 1876.
About 1880, while continuing his school-
work, he was sub-editor of London, a clever
but short-lived little newspaper, edited by
Mr. W. E. Henley.

Subsequently he confined himself solely to
the profession of journalism.  As a writer
on social or ethical topics, he proved him-
self equally vigorous and versatile, but his

best literary work described the life of the
fishermen of the North Sea, with whom he
spent many of his vacations.  An admirable
series of seafaring sketches, which he con-
tributed to the St. James's Gazette, was
reprinted in 1883 as 'The Romance of the
Coast'.  Of his 'Dream of the North Sea',
1889, a vivid account of the fishermen's
perils, the queen accepted the dedication.
He died prematurely, of overwork, at Tyne-
side, Minerva Road, Kingston-on-Thames,
Surrey, on 6 July 1891.

Besides the works already mentioned he
wrote:  1. 'Grace Balmaign's Sweetheart',
1885.  2. 'Skippers and Shellbacks', 1885.
3. 'School Board Idylls', 1887.  4. 'Schools
and Scholars', 1887.  5. 'The Chequers,
being the Natural History of a Public House
set forth in a Loafer's Diary', 1888.
6. 'Joints in our Social Armour', 1890;
reprinted as 'The Ethics of Drink and Social
Questions, or Joints in our Social Armour',
1892.  7. 'Side Lights, with Memoir by
Grant Allen, and Introduction by W. T.
Stead; edited by J. F. Runciman', 1893.

  [Mr. Grant Allen's Memoir in 'Side Lights',
1893; Schoolmaster, 11 Jul 1891, pp. 44-5;
Illustr. London News, 18 Jul 1891, p. 71, with
portrait; Pall Mall Gazette, 9 Jul 1891, p. 6.]
G.C.B.

Terry, Sir R(ichard) R(unciman) (b Ellington,
Northumberland, 3 Jan 1865; d London, 18 April
1938).  English organist and musical scholar.  He became
organist and music master at Elstow School in 1890,
organist and choirmaster of St John's Cathedral,
Antigua, in 1892, and in 1896 was appointed to a
similar post at Downside Abbey, Somerset, where he
began his work of reviving the music written for the
Latin ritual by early English composers.  He was the first
to perform liturglcally the three- and five-part masses by
Byrd, Tye's Euge bone, Tallis's four-part Mass and
Lamentations, Mundy's Mass Upon the Square and
motets by Morley, Parsons, White and others.  When
Westminster Cathedral was built he was appointed
organist and director of music, a post which he held
with great distinction from 1901 until 1924, when he
resigned after increasing criticism of his bold choice of
works.  Terry was able to establish at Westminster
Cathedral a tradition of musical treatment for the whole
of the Roman liturgy in England based on the principles
laid down in the Motu proprio, so that the Use of
Westminster offered an example to Roman Catholic
church musicians unequalled anywhere outside Rome
itself.  He set a high standard of performance and
demonstrated the great wealth of English liturglcal
music of the finest period.  He revived Peter Philips's
Cantiones sacrae, Byrd's Gradualia and Cantiones
sacrae, the Cantiones of Tallis and Byrd, White's
Lamentations, and motets by Dering, Fayrfax,
Sheppard, Tye and others.  He also performed the fourth
volume of Jacob Handl's Opus musicum.

Terry did much editorial work, especially of early
English church music (e.g. Byrd's Mass for five voices,
London, 1935; 24 motets in Novello's series of Tudor
motets, London, 1937).  He also published modern edi-
tions of Calvin's first psalter of 1539 (London, 1932)
and the Scottish Psalter of 1635 (London, 1935).  He
was the first chalrman of the Carnegle Trust's editorial
committee for Tudor Church Music, and his
Westminster Hymnal (London, 1912, rev. 3/1916,
7/1937) was for many years the standard hymnal for
Roman Catholic use in Britain.  He was awarded an
honorary MusD by Durham in 1911 and knighted in
1922.

WRITINGS
Catholic Church Music (London, 1907, enlarged 2/1931 as The Music
of the Roman Rite)
'The Music of the Byzantine Liturgy'.  PMA, xxxv(1908-9), 53
'Sea Songs and Shanties', PMA, xli (l9l4-lS), l35
'John Merbecke (l523(?)-l585)', PMA, xlv (19l8-t9), 75
'Giovanni de Palestrina (1525-1594)', The Heritage of Music, ed. H. J.
Foss, i (London, 1927), 3
On Music's Borders (London, 1927)
A forgotten Psalter and other Essays (London, 1929) [Scottish Psalter,
1635]
'Calvin's First Psalter, 1539'. PMA, lvii (1930-31), 1
Voodooism in Music and other Essays (London, 1934)
'Byrd'; 'Palestrina', Lives of the Great Composers, ed. A. L. Bacharach
(London. 1935).  131; 423; repr. in The Music Masters, ed. A. L.
Bacharach (London, 1948-54), i, 79; 291

BIBLIOGRAPHY
W. H. Hadow: Speech given at Terry's MusD conferment, MT. lii
(1911), 525
H. F. Andrews: Westminster Retrospect: a Memoir of Sir Richard
Terry (London. 1948)
J. A. FULLER MAITLAND/H. C. COLLES/PETER PLATT

[Richard Runciman TERRY (1864-1938) was eldest child of Thomas TERRY
(schoolmaster, b. 1837) and Marion Jane Ballard TERRY (1837 - 1875, the
eldest daughter of Walter RUNCIMAN 1810-1878).  The above entry in
New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians shows the wrong year for
his birth, which was actually 1864 (birth registered in 1st quarter of 1864,
baptised Cresswell, Northumberland, 31st January 1864)].

RUNCIMAN, WALTER, first
Viscount RUNCIMAN of Doxford (1870-
1949), statesman, was born at South
Shields 19 November 1870, the only child
of Walter (later Baron) Runciman [q.v.].
He was educated at South Shields High
School, privately, and at Trinity College,
Cambridge, where he was placed in the
third class of the history tripos in 1892.
He then entered his father's shipping
business and soon turned to politics,
contesting Gravesend unsuccessfully as
Liberal candidate in 1898.  The next year
he entered the House as Liberal member
for Oldham defeating (Sir) Winston
Churchill at the poll, but losing the seat
to him in 1900.  Runciman re-entered the
House of Commons through a by-election
in 1902 as member for Dewsbury and soon
attracted the attention of the Liberal
front bench by his forthright speeches-
especially on financial and fiscal matters
-which at once marked him as a rising
force.  In 1905 he was appointed parlia-
mentary secretary to the Local Govern-
ment Board.  Two years later he was
promoted to the position of financial
secretary to the Treasury, a stepping-
stone to Cabinet rank.

When Asquith became prime minister
in 1908 he singled out Runciman for the
onerous post of president of the Board of
Education which until then the Liberals
had been notably unsuccessful in filling.
Although he was a strong Methodist by
heredity, and his religious opinions, like
his views on temperance, were held with
conviction, Runciman won the confidence
of Church leaders, in particular Randall
Davidson, the archbishop of Canterbury
[q.v.].  When his education bill, which
many held to be the best of the four which
the Liberals unsuccessfully introduced,
was withdrawn, the prime minister, in a
vigorous protest, paid a special tribute to
Runciman's 'patient, considerate and
indomitable efforts'.  Three years later,
in a Cabinet reshuffle, Runciman was
appointed president of the Board of
Agriculture and Fisheries, where, although
the choice appeared at first to many
inappropriate, the modesty and sound
business sense with which he handled
agricultural affairs soon won him praise
even from his political opponents.

In 1914, on the resignation of John
Burns [q.v.], Runciman succeeded him as
president of the Board of Trade where he
became responsible for the unprecedented
and arduous organization of shipping in
war conditions.  It was an admirable
choice.  Runciman rendered conspicuous
service to the State as a master of both
the strategy and the tactics of economic
warfare and, in particular, by rescuing
the shipping industry from the ruin with
which it seemed threatened.  Lord Grey
of Fallodon [q.v.] was later to draw
special attention to Runciman's work at
the Board of Trade in the first two years
of war, not only because it was 'efficient
and valuable; but because it has received
so little recognition'.  After his resignation
with Asquith in 1916 Runciman devoted
himself to commerce.  Like most of his
Liberal colleagues he lost his seat in 1918,
but he returned to the House in 1924 as
member for Swansea West which he
represented until 1929 when he trans-
ferred to St. Ives.  From 1931 to 1937 he
sat for that constituency as a Liberal
National and again held office as president
of the Board of Trade.  He remained in
the ministry when other Liberals with-
drew, for unlike them he was a sup-
porter of the Ottawa agreements.  When
Chamberlain formed his Government on
Baldwin's resignation in 1937, Runciman
retired and accepted a peerage as Viscount
Runciman of Doxford.  On his father's
death, two months later, the barony of
Shoreston became merged in the
viscountcy.

In July 1938 Runciman was invited
by the foreign secretary, Lord Halifax, to
go to Prague as 'independent mediator'
between the Czechoslovak Government
and the Sudeten German party.  All that

he and his small staff could 'hope for in
the end', he reported on his arrival, was
'a little accommodation on some practical
problems'.  It was not forthcoming,
despite his patience and the personal
relationships which he established with
both sides.  Various concessions were
reluctantly offered by the Czechoslovak
Government at his instigation but these
led only to increased demands and the
artificial creation of 'outrages' by the
Germans.  Hitler's violent speech attack-
ing the Czechs at Nuremberg, 12 Sep-
tember, ended all attempts at mediation
and Runciman, who had confessed in a
letter to Lord Halifax as early as 18
August that 'if by a miracle an agreement
was reached, I would be astonished',
returned home on 16 September, a tired
man.  Nevertheless, a month later he
became lord president of the Council, but
he failed to recover his spirits or his
health, and resigned immediately after
war was declared, feeling his strength no
longer equal to the demands of office in
such times.  A long illness followed and
he died at Doxford 13 November 1949.

Runciman had a remarkable capacity
for understanding and marshalling eco-
nomic facts which brought him great
respect in the City where they particu-
larly valued his long chairmanship (1920-
31) of the United Kingdom Provident
Institution.  He was, however, always
conscious of the claims of public service.
The Liberal confusions and discords were,
in the upshot, to deny him the highest
political positions for which his promising
start seemed to have marked him out.
He never became chancellor of the Ex-
chequer, an office for which, by 1914,
many expected (and he himself perhaps
hoped) that he would at length be chosen.

If Runciman lacked the popular appeal
of a Lloyd George, he shared to a high
degree with Asquith, his own leader, the
art of expounding a complicated case in
language which all could understand.
His austerely handsome appearance and
gifts of exposition obscured from suffi-
cient public notice a capacity for fine and
moving speech, but could not rob him of
a reputation for integrity which was
universally recognized.  His rare personal
charm was revealed only to his friends
who knew him as a lively and delightful
companion, with a zest for country pur-
suits and anything to do with the sea,
who could talk or sing in perfect 'North-
umbrian' or organize a midnight raid to
the island of Milos, with an enthusiasm
and geniality which his apparently cold
manner would not have led the public to
suspect in him.  The arts, especially music,
were his abiding pleasure and consolation.
By the turn of politics, his very con-
siderable ability, especially in adininis.
tration, was never allowed sufficient
opportunity.  Not given his full chance
he was not given his full due.

Runciman received the honorary degrees
of D.C.L. from the university of Oxford
in 1934 and LL.D. from the universities
of Manchester (1911) and Bristol (1929).

He married in 1898 Hilda (died 1956),
daughter of James Cochran Stevenson,
for a time member of Parliament for South
Shields.  Her election for St. Ives early
in 1928 provided the first example of
husband and wife sitting together in the
House of Commons.  They had two sons
and three daughters, the elder son, Walter
Leslie (born 1900), succeeding him in his
titles.  The younger son, Sir Steven Runci-
man, contributes to this SUPPLEMENT.

A portrait of Runciman by R. G. Eves
hangs in the council-room of the Chamber
of Shipping.

[The Times, 15 November 1949; Viscount
Grey of Fallodon, Twenty-Five Years, vol. ii,
1925; Viscount Samuel, Memoirs, 1945;
Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919-
1939, third series, vol. ii, edited by E. L.
Woodward and R. Butler, 1949; private
information; personal knowledge.]
ARCHIBALD HURD.