“William Sanguily Garrite, The First Cuban Who Lived and Settled in Australia”

"William Sanguily Garrite, The First Cuban Who Lived and Settled in Australia”

By: Taimí Antigua Lorenzo, to my dear Carolyn Thompson and her relatives

Guillermo Sanguily Garrite was the first Cuban to arrive and to live in Australia. He was enrolled as a crewman at the American sailboat “General Grant” which arrived in Australia on March 13, 1866, after a three months voyage from the United States.

No one can assure that any Cuban had been in Australian land, before that

sailboat arrived to the Continent-Island. Once there, that sailboat, property

of Messrs Boyes, Richardson and Co., loaded 2,500 ounces of gold, wool,

leather, zinc, and 83 passengers departed Melbourne on 4 May 1866 bound

for London via the Cape Horn under the command of Captain William H.

Loughlin. In fact, the captain reported less gold that what they really loaded in order to avoid the pirate interest in his sailboat. Beside, many English men who had worked as miners in Australia were making their trip back with their private hoards.

Unfortunately, this ship collided against the cliffs and drifted into a

large cave where finally was sunk on Auckland Island's western shore.

The survivors, 13 in total, most of them crewmembers, were found alive in a

small island named “Disappointment Island”. One of them was the

Cuban William Sanguily Garrite.

After 18 months of hardship, surviving thanks to seal meat and mussels, and suffering a terrible cold weather which made to them to cover with sealskins, there was a group of 6 castaways who went out in a lifeguard boat without any navy instrument.

They were never seen again.Those who remained in the island were rescued by the whaling brig Amherst from Bluff, and they were taken to New Zealand.Then, William Sanguily Garrite, went back to Australia

on a ship.

It is known about his arriving thanks his statement to the Official Inquiry about

the sinking of the 'General Grant". In the newspaper “Otago Wittness” you

can see a drawing regarding the survivors, which was published to

illustrate an article on January 25, 1868.

William Murdoch Sanguily G. came back briefly to the United States and

there he got married with Sarah Dawes Randall on July 8, 1872 , in Philadelphia. Few time after that, he returned to Sydney, and he settled in the Woolloomooloo district. They had five children: Sara Agnes, Selina Gertrude, Mabel, Maude (twins who do not survived more after

they were one year old), Alice Margarte, and just one baby boy: R. ollins H. Winthrop. William M. Sanguily G. owned a small taxi company (carriages thrown by horses as was usual in those times), named “Handsome Cab”.

His son, Rollins H. Winthrop, worked for almost 50 years at the Sydney City Hall as a Lord Mayor’s Orderly.

There is no evidence whether William M. Sanguily G. wrote to his family

in Cuba, or his letters were lost in the long way between Cuba and Australia. By then, his parents, Julio and Mary, were already dead.

Julio died in the Havana’s neighbourhood of El Cerro in 1850, and Mary Garrite died in 1855 in a house located at the corner of the streets Neptuno and Consulado in the neighbourhood of Centro Havana.

But certainly, nor his brothers nor another relatives had any new from

him until several decades alter he castaway. It was in a very casual way that his son, who was visiting London, he learned through a newspaper about his uncle death. He wrote to Havana, and then, the family relationship was restarted again.

In the newspaper “The Sydney Morning Herald” from May 6, 1914, page

18, shows  an obituary regarding the death of the William Sangully (SIC) with the names of his wife Sarah, his grandchildren Thomas, William, the little Jack, his daughter Alice, and his son in law Thomas M’Laughlin.  

The note says that he died on May 6, 1909, at the age of 63 years old.

He was buried at the cemetery of Rookwood, Old Church of England, in Sydney. On his grave there is a plate with an inscription from his wife Sarah.

 Sarah Irene Pearson (Sanguily)

William Sanguily G. was the eldest brother of Julio and Manuel Sanguily Garrite. They were two famous Cubans heroes from the Independence Wars of Cuba during the XIX Century.Julio y Manuel Sanguily.At the end of the wars against Spain. They had attained the Major General rank. In particular, Julio Sanguily, is remembered because he was rescued by the General Ignacio Agramonte from Spanish troops. Approximately with 35 men, Ignacio Agramonte faced a Spanish regiment of 120 soldiers successfully.

In that battle, Julio Sanguily lost one leg, but even so he kept fighting

in the Liberator Army.That episode of the Cuban independence was immortalized in a famous painting of the same name by the painter Armando García Menocal. Today is it shown at the “Bellas Artes”

Museum in Havana, Cuba.

Before, during, and after the independence wars from Spain, both brothers lived

in the United States in different periods. They traveled to Cuba in several

expeditions, in order to bring weapons and supplies to the rebel troops.

William M. Sanguily Garrite is never mentioned in the Cuban

History books, maybe because he didn’t participated in the independence

wars like his brothers did. He went to live to the United States, and once

there, he changed his name to English: William. Since he was very young,

 he settled in Boston where he graduated from a nautical school. Shortly after, he enrolled in that tragic voyage to Australia on November 28,

1865. That was his first sailing, and he was just 18 years old.

How his ancestor arrived in Cuba?

The grandfather of the Sanguily brothers ,by his father side, was Jean-François Saint-Guily. When he was young, he traveled to “America” in the search of a good fortune like many others. In 1772, he got the American citizenship (24/09/1976), but nobody knows exactly when or why he traveled to Havana, city where he got marry and had his son Julio,

the father of our heroes.

When he settled in Havana, he tried to "hispanize"his French last name – seems

to be – because of the persecutions of Frenchs by Spanish authorities. It

is worth to remember that in those times, Cuba was a Spanish colony.

It is known that Jean- François Saint-Guily owned a coffee plantation in Havana

outskirts, in the area known as Catalina de Güines. He also had several slaves.

His son Julio Sanguily, when he was young, traveled to France to study

in the Real Military School of Sorrèze, in the South of France. So, we can imagine that Julio and Manuel had some kind of military influence from

his father. His mother, Mary Garrite, was natural from Manchester, England.

The couple lived in a house located in Obrapía 77, in the old Havana, nearby to the port. They had four children: William, Julio, Manuel, and

a girl who died in her earliest childhood. 

                                   

Some of the Australians descendants of William Sanguily, like Norma McPherson (the great granddaughter of William Sanguily, who is 92 years old now), Gary Pearson, and Carolyn Thompson, have been in contact with some of their relatives in France and the United States, but not to any relative from the Cuban branch. Also they had reached one of the great grandsons of Julio Sanguily, the Dr. Julio Sanguily Betancourt, from Miami, Florida, in the United States.

   Dr. Julio Sanguily Betancourt and his family, Florida, U.S.A.

Some descendants from Julio and Manuel live at the present

time in Florida, and also in many othersstates of the United States. They have been in touch with the French family branch since 1993 thanks when Grégorie Saint-Guily went to Havana.

Philip Boulton, descendant of the only couple who survived the shipwreck (Joseph Jewell y Mary Ann Jewell) created a website with all the information that he could found regarding the sinking of the “General Grant”. The website has some links to the newspapers from those times where William Sanguily G. is mentioned.

From then to our days, many people had tried to find out the debris of

the “General Grant”, and his gold cargo in different places of the Auckland Islands, but so far all of the attempts had been in vain.Today, we know that

the major treasure what William Sanguily G. took from that unfortunate ship was his own life.

Compliments

My special gratitude to the following people without their help this investigation couldn’t be possible:

-Alli Burness, Archivist from the Sydney City Hall.

-Moira-Antoinette, information officer from the Museum “Te Papa Tongarewa” in New Zealand.

-Philip Boulton, founder of the website Wreck of “The General Grant”.

 http://wreckofthegeneralgrant.com/page26.htm

- Society of Australian Genealogists 379 Kent St, Sydney 2000 (www.sag.org.au)