HISTORIC BELL

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 7 January 1935, Page 8

HISTORIC BELL

STORY OF BEN BOYD RELIC NOW IN SYDNEY At a Christmas party given recently l,y Mr Henry Perdriau on his ninetieth birthday at Mosman, Sydney, many reminiscences of old Sydney were recalled and a bell which pealed to bring the numerous guests to luncheon took their memories back to the last centur. The bell was originally installed in the yacht Wanderer, on which the famous Ben Boyd first visited Australia as a passenger in June, 1842, and through which he was destined to meet his doom nine years later in the South Seas. This creator of Boyd Town, the owner of flocks of sheep, the director of a large shipping business, and one of tlie keenest minds associated with Australian whaling, had established a whale oil industry at Mosman and lost practically everything. TTis shareholders permitted him*to retain the Wanderer after deposing him from every other position of alfiuenee he had held. 'Mr Perdriau purchased the bell for £f>. He was subsequently ottered £OOO for it, but refused to part with it. In an interview, Mr Perdriau saul that the bell was inscribed with Ben Boyd's crest, said to be worked by Oswald Brierly, a fellow passenger on Ben Boyd’s first ship to Sydney, and who later was appointed marine painter to Queen Victoria. His first recollection of the bell was in 1852, when it was purchased by his father for a ferry steamer after the wreck of the Wanderer at Port Macquarie, following Ben Boyd’s unlucky gold fossicking trip to the Californian diggings. Boyd was clubbed to death in the Solomons and the Wanderer was being navigated bv her crew when she was wrecked.

Mr Perdriau’s father promised him that the bell would one day be his if he earned enough money to pay for it. How young Perdriau achieved his ambition might be realised by particulars of the ferry services he helped to make efficient and the rubber industry he pioneered.: