Rolling Home

Barnes was born in 1850 into a shipowning family in St Johns, Newfoundland, and first went to sea while still a schoolboy. His career seemed predestined, and by the age of 14 he was apprenticed to a Liverpool company, serving in their sailing ships working a triangular passage to St Johns, the Brazils and back to Liverpool. He tried to swallow the anchor when he married but running a grocery store was too mundane, and he soon went back to sea, transferring his skills to the now dominant steamshi