| Notes |
- Robert was killed in the line of duty on 26 Apr 1860 while involved in fighting a fire at the Liverpool Sailor's home. The following account was written by Stephen P. McKay (with additions by Steve Howe).
The Fire
Despite the immediate successes of The Sailors' Home as a safe lodging place for seamen and as a force for their wider welfare, no one could have predicted the disaster which struck only a few years after its opening.
From the first day of operations, fire had been identified as a potential threat to the building. Fire plugs with hoses were provided on the two stairways, fed with water from the tanks in the four towers. The Home had only three rules regarding conduct; the third being, "No smoking can be allowed anywhere but in the general hall, nor must Lucifer or other matches be kept in the Home by the boarders." Despite these precautions disaster stuck the Home all too quickly.
At about half past twelve on the morning of Sunday, 29th April 1860, the Home's night watchman discovered a fire on the fifth floor which had started in the cabin of a seaman called Charles Jackson. As soon as the fire was discovered, the bedroom stewards roused the inmates. Initially, an attempt was made by Mr Williams, the Superintendent of the Home, to fight the fire using the Home's own equipment but this soon proved futile as the water pressure from the tanks housed in the towers proved insufficient to reach the fifth floor. When the fire spread to the stairways, the remaining occupants on the sixth floor were forced to break through the iron frames of their cabin windows and crawl along a two foot wide ledge which ran along the outside of the building to make their escape down ladders.
By one o'clock, the fire police, with 13 or 14 ladders of various lengths and fire engines belonging to the insurance companies, arrived on the scene. The water pressure around Canning Place was unexpectedly low so the water jets could not reach roof height and the iron frames of the windows, with their small panels, also prevented firemen from getting water to the seat of the flames.
The fire continued to rage furiously as it consumed the wooden cabins. At about two o'clock, a fireman, Robert Hardaker, fell 40 feet to his death on the stone pavement below when the ladder he was climbing broke. A second man, Joseph Clark, who was neither a boarder nor an employee of the Home but a kind-hearted volunteer, was killed whilst helping to save books and papers from the Savings Bank. He died from terrible injuries sustained when the floor of the dining room fell in and, although many others had a narrow escape, he was caught and crushed between the fallen wreck of the dining room and the floor of the bank.
As well as the fire police, many seamen and members of the public distinguished themselves with acts of heroism whilst endeavouring to help residents escape the flames. All the boarders and staff were saved. The number of boarders in the Home at the time was 97, the smallest for some twelve months (the average being about 200). Fortunately, the Spring ships and the easterly winds had almost cleared the port of seamen.
The fire finally died out towards six o'clock the following morning. The building was almost completely gutted; the shell was left filled with half-burnt rafters, staircases and stairs, window frames, portions of stonework and pieces of flooring. However, since the flames were able to escape up through the well of the central hall, apart from the north-west angle, the outer walls of the Home were relatively undamaged.
The cause of the fire was thought to be the ash from a lit pipe setting fire to bedclothes. A police officer said that he had seen a box of matches thrown from the building, possibly the third floor, just before the fire burst forth. Charles Jackson vehemently denied that he had been smoking in his room but a member of the staff said he knew him to be careless in such matters because he had seen Jackson, on the morning before the fire, with a lighted pipe burning a hole in his pocket.
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1816 - 1860 (43 years)
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