The Robinsons
This is the story of it. In my grandmother's possesions was a poem that she kept with a photo of him.
The last kiss of love the bosom is feeling
And warmly is given the last grasp of the hand
Captain Robert Robinson commanded a trading ship known as the 'Spitfire'. His nephew John was his first mate and my grandmother's first husband.
The anchor is weighed, white foam is lifting
Soon the swift craft will be miles from the land
They were married for three months and then he went off on a trading voyage 'round the horn and to India.
We strain our sad eyes for that speck on the ocean
And still forthe loved one our lone bosom yearns
He died of cholera in Calcutta and he was buried at sea.
We pray for the wand'rer with deepest devotion
And utter the words "he may never return"
She never saw him again. Her child, born while he was at sea, never saw her father. Their child, Alice, grew up never knowing her father.
A few years later her mother married Captain Robinson. He was twenty years older than she, but it seemed a suitable arrangement. It was Grandfather's responsibility to care for her. And so he did. The Civil war was making shipping risky in Southern waters and so he retired and married Grandmother. They had four children of their own - the youngest of whom was my mother.