The Amazing Blowns of Dover - from Marine Pilot to Air Pilot

Dover Pilots Progression, 1817

George Gurr's story is documented in an earlier blog post, in which I mentioned his wife, Mary Ann (née) Blown.

Mary's family have an equally interesting story to tell. From at least 1812, members of the Blown family were Dover Pilots, high-status mariners with the skill to conduct ships through the straits of Dover and navigate the "Downs" off the coast of Deal.

This both corroborates (and refutes!) my own father's assertion that a Gurr had been the Dover harbour-master - he was nearly right! But the Blown family story ranges far and wide, from Kent to the far East, and from Marine Pilot to Air Pilot.

The earliest family record of pilotage is Henry Blown (1779-1839) and his brother William (1776-1838). Both are listed as Cinque Ports pilots at Deal in 1812, and then as Dover Pilots in 1817 (see picture at right). Their brother Thomas (1778-1830) was referenced as a Mariner in his widow's obituary.

But it was in the next generation, with Henry's sons, that the records start to become more detailed.




Henry's son Thomas Castle Blown (1807-1892) was the father of our Mary Ann Blown, wife of our George Gurr.

In 1830 he married Ann Arnold (1809-1885). The Arnolds were a large family of mariners in the Dover area.

Thomas was examined for the fellowship of Cinque Ports pilots by the Duke of Wellington on the 1st November 1833, as reported in the article opposite from The Times.

Starting his working life in Deal, he lived in Beach Street in the 1830's, moving to 60 Bulwark Street in Dover by 1847. No pictures exist of Bulwark Street, but nearby St. James Street is pictured in this engraving of the time.






Pilotage was a dangerous game - pilot boats were small, and the competition amongst pilots very fierce. On sighting a ship heading into harbour, the first pilot to reach it would win the commission. The painting opposite, from around 1847, shows a small pilot boat in a heavy swell heading out to win a prize.




As with many local worthies, Thomas had his portrait and that of his wife Ann painted by local artist William Richard Waters.

Thomas' brother, William Baker Blown (1810-??) was something of a traveller. Born in Deal in 1810  he's then found in Pennsylvania in 1835 as a passenger on a cargo steamer bound for New Orleans, listed as a distiller. He arrived in New Orleans in January 1836 and then moved a few hundred miles west before departing Quintana, Texas the same month, heading back to New Orleans. He is documented as purchasing land on the Duckenfield Estate in Jamaica in 1847. There is a William Baker Blown (parents unknown) recorded as born in Duckenfield in 1844 and a Mary Jane Blown also in Duckenfield in 1847. Mary Jane listed as the informant in her mother Rebecca's death record in Jamaica in 1895, so it seems likely that WBB(1810) bought the land for Rebecca and the children. Two of Mary Jane's children are recorded as "Quadroons" - an archaic term for someone who is a quarter-black. WBB(1810) and Rebecca Walker married in 1850, and her likely birth record shows her as being born in Kingston to unknown parents in 1817, with her status listed as "free quadroon". We then lose him until he arrives in New York in 1854 on a ship from Jamaica. No record of his death has yet been found.

His son, also William Baker Blown (1844-1902) was born in Jamaica, but isn't listed on board the same ship. He returned to England by age 7 (presumably with his father). After marrying aged 38 in 1882 he emigrated to Sydney, Australia in 1883 where he worked as a mariner until his death in 1902. Two further generations of Blowns are recorded in Australia, including two further William Baker Blowns, latterly in Western Australia.

Oliver Crompton Blown, c. 1954

Thomas' son, Edward James Blown (1842-1888) was also a Cinque Ports Pilot in Dover. But it's his son Oliver Crompton Blown (1880-1961) who has a more interesting story to tell.

His mother and father having died relatively young (his father when he was aged just 8, and his mother when he was aged 11), Oliver was separated from his siblings and brought up in the Merchant Seaman's Orphan Asylum in West Ham in London.

By age 21 he was Mate on board the brig William Cundall (pictured left). In 1909 aged 29 he was in Hong Kong, and in 1913 in Shanghai. There he met an English girl Helen Sweetingham (née Somme) and married in Shanghai in 1918 (Helen had been married to Arthur Sweetingham, and Philip was born in 1913 as Philip Sweetingham, though changed his name by deed-poll to Blown prior to his marriage in 1938; Arthur died in 1916).  Over the next 10 years Oliver's travels took him to Seattle WA, Vancouver BC, Shanghai (again), Yohohama Japan, England, Shanghai, and back again to England.


With Oliver and Helen's son Philip Blown (1913-2009), pictured right, the story takes a further turn. Coming for the first time to England with his parents from Shanghai in 1926 for only a few months before returning to Shanghai, he then settled back in England in 1928.

The wanderlust was clearly in the genes however, since in 1938 he married in Kiangsu, China. He must have stayed in the Far East, since in 1954 he was a captain for the just 8 year-old airline Cathay Pacific.



In July 1954, this is what happened to his flight:

"There was no radioed challenge; no warning shots. The Chinese fighters moved in on the Cathay Pacific Skymaster at 9,000 feet and opened up from both sides with cannon and machine-guns at about 150 yards range. They were cream-coloured, propeller-driven planes, each with a full red star on the side of the fuselage and a red nose. The Cathay co-pilot, Cedric Carlton, was the first to see the one on the starboard side. Captain Philip Blown glimpsed the second fighter immediately afterwards, just before the DC-4's No. 1 engine burst into flames. After that the aircraft was full of flying 50-calibre bullets, and the Radio Officer, Stephen Wong, began to yell out an emergency signal - 'Mayday! Mayday! Losing altitude, engine on fire!' Then the No. 4 engine and the No. 4 main fuel tank were ablaze, the radio aerial was shot away too and no one could hear Wong any more, though he continued to clutch his mike and shout his message to the world until the plan hit the water." - Beyond Lion Rock, the story of Cathay Pacific Airways

The plane had been shot down by fighter planes of the People's Republic of China. Nine passengers and crew were killed by the bullets and the subsequent ditching. The full story reads like something out of "Biggles meets Towering Inferno".


The story was widely reported, and on spotting a family resemblance in the newspaper photos of Philip, his father Oliver's long-lost sister Bertha managed to get in touch. Bertha herself had emigrated to Queensland, Australia in 1910. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that after an interval of 60 years since they were separated after their parents' deaths, they were at last reunited.




In June 1955 Philip Blown received the Queen's Commendation for Valuable Service in the Air from the governor of Hong Kong, Sir Alexander Grantham.




Oliver lived on until the age of 81, passing in 1961 at Bridge in Kent. Phil Blown died in 2009 in New South Wales, aged 96.