Thomas Parry of Parry’s Corner, Madras/ Chennai
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The Parry of Parry’s Corner
The ancestral Parry family comprised prosperous farmers near the Welsh market town of Welshpool and lived in some state in a large mansion called Leighton Hall. Here was born Thomas Parry in 1768, the seventh of eight children.
Why a boy of this background, comfortably off and reasonably well educated, should seek a career abroad is not known, but that’s what he decided to do when he was 20 years old. In 1788, he sailed from England in a troopship called the Manship, arriving in Madras Roads on July 14, 1788, after one of the fastest sailings till that time. The Manship’s log reads: “Run from the ship Thomas Parry and James Dixon, Seamen.” The words in the log, however, did not mean that he jumped ship, deserting it in Madras. Apparently, in the vocabulary of old English seafarers, it meant signing on as crew but with the captain’s knowledge that he (the signee) would leave the ship at a particular port of call. In other words, Thomas Parry worked as a seaman for his passage. Indeed, he collected £3 12s 8d before leaving the ship on July 17th for the work he had done during the 110 days of its voyage to Madras. The normal wage for a seaman at the time was £2 12s a month, all found. But Parry worked for £1 as a supernumerary; why, I wonder, was Parry in such a hurry to leave England that he chose this means of travelling in a ship with no accommodation for civilians when he could have taken a later sailing East Indiaman? However that may be, he must have had influential sponsors in the East India Company who could have wangled this place for him aboard the Manship. It rather reminds me of my getting a bench seat in a converted RAF Liberator bomber flying from Colombo to London in 1946 with British officers returning home; it was a six-day adventure for a 16-year-old trying to get to college in the US!
Parry’s voyage was not an uneventful one, though he was not involved in any of the incidents. The ship had aboard it 117 recruits for the Company’s ‘army’ in Madras. One of them fell overboard and was drowned even before the ship sailed. A few days into the voyage, two of the recruits, one “a young black boy”, started a minor riot after going for each other. Then, 16 weeks later, the ship was pounded by a heavy gale which laid low everyone aboard. Three weeks or so later, one seaman attacked another with a knife, badly injuring him, and received “3 dozen lashes for his transgressions.” Six days later, yet another recruit was lost aboard. Thereafter it was a quiet voyage to Madras. A friend familiar with British naval history tells me that there was nothing unusual about the Manship’s voyage; it was par for the course in those days.
When Parry landed in Madras he came with recommendations from his brother-in-law. He was met by Thomas Chase, his brother-in-law’s Madras representative. He then met a relative of his brother-in-law, Captain Patrick Ross, who was the Chief Engineer and had much to do with the rebuilding of the fort. The engineer soon got him the ‘Governor’s Permission’ to trade as a free merchant in Madras. Thomas Parry’s licence for this was registered on February 12, 1789, and he was on his way -- to setting up what is today the second oldest business house in India.
