The day of January 15, 1910 was just another day for the crew of the pilot cutter “Spirit” and the Master T. Bennett in the Weymouth Harbour. As time ticked away, the day would end in tragedy for James Richard Zelley.
He was lost when the Danish steamer “St.Jans” crashed into the cutter. The Master T. Bennett and crew members J. Bennett and W. Tizzard survived the crash, but Zelley was lost and never recovered.
James was born in Weymouth, Dorset in 1877 to Thomas Richard Zelley and Mary Symes. He married Mary Emily Longman in 1904. He is also a grandson to Weymouth’s Richard Zelley – Mary Ann White.
Ten years earlier, James lost his Uncle William John Simpson Zelley in the Nanaimo, BC, Canada area on Sunday, February 11, 1900. Zelley the Weymouth born mariner and two friends former Nanaimo council member Richard Kenyon and John Cordell were duck hunting in Zelley’s sailboat when they were caught in a storm. Of interest, the name of one of the search party members that helped recover the remains from the Nanaimo River tide flats was a Harry Bennett.
There is a photograph of James R. Zelley in the gallery.