The Early Voyages of Augustine Heard

Join Robert Gray, Heard descendant as he talks about his recent research on his family.

During the late 1830s Augustine Heard of Ipswich composed a list of his early voyages during 1805-1830, from ship “Eliza” to Leghorn from Eben Francis through barque “Lintin to Canton with Bennet Forbes.  This talk provides an illustrated embellishment of Heard’s list and the ships, people, and places involved—including the most famous of the voyages popularized in books by Robert Bennet Forbes, Thomas Franklin Waters, and Samuel Eliot Morison. Several contradictions and inconsistencies among the stories are resolved and reconciled with historical documents.