The Swales
John Clemshaw Swales arrived in Auckland with his wife Lucy and two children in December 1859 on the Liverpool White Star Line fully-rigged ship Shalimar. John was a tin plate worker from inland Walsall, north of Birmingham. Metal working as a trade carried forward in the family.
The Swales first settled in Thames. John served in the New Zealand Wars, and became a senior officer in the Volunteers afterwards, but in 1874 the whole family, now with eight children, moved to Auckland. Living in Thames, it was inevitable that they all had been exposed to the sea and its life.
John Swales’ sons Job Horton (Joe), born 1855, John William (Bill), 1861 and Richard Henry (Harry), 1863, all got involved in yachting in their
