Charles Daly (merchant)

Charles Daly, Irish merchant and survivor of the HMS Birkenhead, 17th March 1832-April 1903.

A native of Gort, Daly emigrated from Ireland whilst still a young man. In 1849, aged seventeen, he landed at Durban, South Africa. About 1851 he had made sufficient savings to enable him to return home. However, he had to abandon the voyage at St. Helena due to fever. After recovery, he boarded the HMS Birkenhead as a civilian passenger when she made port at St. Helena while voyaging south, intending to travel with her as far as the Buffalo River. In February 1852 the ship was lost with all but one hundred and ninety-three survivors out of six hundred and foty-three.

Daly afterwards made him home in South Africa, establishing a business in Bloemhof, where a lucrative business selling arms and food to Transvall forces made him a wealthy man. He later branched into farming, which was also a success.

Daly was killed in April 1903 as a result of a blow from an ox to his head, while on his way from Vryburg to his home in the veldt at[Mosita, in Bechuanaland.

On the 50th anniversary of the shipwreck, the local paper, The Bechuanaland News stated of him:

• He was a good father generous to a fault a staunch Home Ruler and a through Irishman to the last, a keen sportsman, well educated , an aristocrat to the tips of his fingers, a man of many friends of whom it may be said "He had many friends and no enemies" for the last thirty five years of his life he was a total abstainer from alcohol liquor and tobacco.

External links

• http://www.btinternet.com/~palmiped/Daly.htm