William Mathews voyage across the ocean

Information on William Mathews' voyage from England to the United States, 

from the Immigrant Ancestors Project:

William Mathews
Age: 33
Origin: Caldecott
Occupation: Labourer
Departure: 2 October
City: Liverpool, England
Voyage Name: James Pennell
Church Leader: Christopher Layton and Wm. L. Cutler
Number of Passengers: 254
Arrival: 23 November
City: New Orleans, Louisiana

"Fiftieth Company -- James Pennell, 254 souls.  On Wednesday October 2nd, 1850, the ship James Pennell sailed from Liverpool England, with two hundred and fifty-four Saints on board, under the direction of Christopher Layton, an American elder, who had been in England on a visit.  After an ordinary passage, the ship arrived near the mouth of the Mississippi river, and the passengers were jubilant at the prospect of soon landing on the shores of the promised land, when a terrible storm met the ship and drove her far back into the gulf, breaking her main and mizenmasts, and washing part of her rigging overboard.  In this disabled condition, the emigrants, exposed to wave and wind, drifted about for several days, until the provisions on board were nearly all consumed, and starvation commenced to stare the emigrants in the face; but, finally, the crippled vessel was found by a pilot boat, and conducted to the mouth of the river, where, on the twentieth of November, she sailed up alongside of the Joseph Badger, which had sailed from Liverpool with another company of Saints,  over two weeks later than the James Pennell.  The two ships were now towed up together to New Orleans, where they arrived the twenty-second of November.  The next day the emigrants from the James Pennell continued the journey up the river to St. Louis, Missouri.  There and in the surrounding country, they found employment for the winter, and the following year a part of them wended their way to the Valley, while others remained in St. Louis for years before they continued the journey to Utah."

Sources: Millennial Star, Vol. XIII, page 9.
              Cont., 13:7 (Apri. 1892), p. 326

* Note: This is the spelling used in the record