EDWARD (NED) HUDSON - 2671

Born - December 1820 Stockport, Cheshire, England.

Died - 17/8/1887 - Richmond, Melbourne, Australia.

Parents - Thomas Hudson - died 1826/Ann Hudson (nee Booth) - died 5/2/1833.

Siblings - Ann & William Hudson (died 5/2/1833).

Step siblings - Female N.K. Hudson; Thomas & Susanna Graham (died 5/2/1833).

Step father - Thomas Graham (1802 - 1871) m Ann Hudson - 14/1/1829 Manchester, England.

Marriages - #1 - 9/10/1851 - Anna Stagg (3 children, 2 child deaths).

               - #2 - 16/12/1884 - Sarah Osbourne (nee Clarke) - no children.

Following his mother's remarriage to Thomas Graham, the family decided to emigrate to Australia, leaving England in late 1832 aboard the ship Hibernia when Edward Hudson was 12 years old.

On 5/2/1833 the ship caught fire and from the 232 passengers only 79 survived in makeshift life boats.

Edward Hudson escaped in one boat and his step father Thomas Graham in another and they attempted to reach Brazil over 1000 miles away. After 6 days at sea in increasing desperate circumstances both boats were spotted and the survivors rescued and taken to Rio de Janeiro, thereafter travelling on to Hobart Town.

Sadly both Edward's mother Ann and his 6 brothers and sisters died in the tragedy.

Of the 50 children and young people on board the Hibernia, only 13 survived; Edward Hudson was incorrectly recorded as being Edwin Hudson in the list of survivors.

After four months of living with his step father Thomas Graham, Edward aged 12 years old was placed in the newly built Kings (later Queens) Orphan School on 20/9/1833 where he remained for nearly four years until his discharge on 15/5/1837 during which he was apprenticed to a shipwright. 

His step father Thomas Graham left Tasmania and settled in Melbourne in 1837 where he remarried in 1840. He became a highly successful businessman and entrepreneur and is acknowledged as being one of the early notable Victorian colonists.

Six other children who survived the Hibernia tragedy were also placed in the Orphanage in May/June 1833 though only one, William Broomhall, no. 514 was an orphan, the others all had a parent(s) or step parent who had also survived, but for a variety of reasons were unable to provide for their children and all would have arrived in Hobart Town penniless.

• William Broomhall -  no. 514 - orphan. His brother Vincent Broomhall also survived but strangely there is no record of his having been admitted to the Orphanage given that he too was an orphan.
• Eliza Campbell - no. 755
• James Campbell - no. 756
• Mary Ann Campbell - no. 757
• Thomas Campbell - no. 759 (their parents James and Adelaide Campbell survived but were unable initially to care for their children).
• Mary Bushton (Ann Bushton) - no. 706. Her father George Bushton survived, as did her brother Timothy but there is no record for his being admitted to the Orphanage.

Following his discharge Edward became a boat builder and carpenter in Hobart Town but then left on 10/10/1838 to reside in Melbourne for the rest of his life, living very close to his step father Thomas Graham, where he operated the Simpson's road ferry across the Yarra for seventeen years between 1870 and his death in 1887.

The ferry in East Collingwood, Melbourne adjoined the land on which Thomas Graham owned and ran his brewery, the Simpson's Road Brewery, later to become the Shamrock Brewery.

Keith Graham - g. g. grandson of Thomas Graham