At Sea With Bishop John Bede Polding: the Journals of Lewis Harding

The two shipboard journals recorded by Lewis Harding, Bede Polding’s fellow passenger in 1835 and 1846, and here published for the first time, present endearing glimpses of Australia’s first bishop as well as bringing to light the remarkable but largely unknown diarist.

John Bede Polding, during his more than forty years as a bishop in Australia, tallied a total number of days at sea equivalent to almost four years.In addition to his inaugural voyage in 1835, he sailed to and from Europe four times. The passage of two the voyages to Europe was eastward and around Cape Horn (1840 and 1846); twice the ship sailed across the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea, thence overland to Alexandria and then across the Mediterranean to Naples. The four return voyages to Australia were via the Cape of Good Hope.

In addition, he sailed several times to ports within his Province – to Newcastle, Hobart, Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane, Albany and Perth. When in Europe he regularly crisscrossed the Irish Sea and the English Channel. In his old age, in October 1869, he undertook a voyage intending to reach Europe in time for the opening of the Vatican Council at Rome in December. The steamer sailed via Melbourne and Albany into the Indian Ocean, thence into the Red Sea, heading to the Suez Canal, which was due to open in November. However, the Archbishop, sick and exhausted, turned back after reaching Aden, arriving in Sydney on Christmas Eve 1869.

Colin Francis Fowler is a member of the Australian Province of the Dominican Order. He has worked in parish and university ministry and lectured. He gained a doctorate in the history of philosophy. The thesis was published as Descartes on the Human Soul: Philosophy and the Demands of Christian Doctrine (Kluwer, Dordrecht, 1999). In 2017 he published the history of a Sydney parish in which he had ministered for nine years: 150 Years on Pyrmont Peninsula: the Catholic Community of Saint Bede (ATF Press, Adelaide, 2017). He has published articles on 19th century Australian Church history in the Journal of the Australian Catholic Historical Society, the Australasian Catholic Record, the Journal of the Cornwall Association of Local Historians and in the Irish journal An Choinneal.

ISBN: 9781925872736
Title: At Sea With Bishop John Bede Polding: the Journals of Lewis Harding
Author: Fowler, C. F.
Format: Paperback