Maker: Shirley Synnott

Panel number: 164

Petition Sheet Number: 203

Person honouring: Caroline Clarkson

Relationship to makers: Great-great-grandmother.

Sailing alone from London to NZ in 1856, was Caroline Brighting (1838-1915), aged eighteen, who became my great-great-grandmother.

Her German mother, Mary Ann Weeber, was distantly related to composer Carl Maria von Weber and through him, to Mozart. Her father, Stephen Saul Brighting from Eastern Europe, a master shoemaker and also food taster to Queen Victoria’s German consort, Prince Albert. Caroline and her siblings were educated alongside the royal children. 

On arrival in Lyttelton, a young mariner, Thomas Nicholson Clarkson, bought passengers including Caroline ashore. She began to sing and charmed by her voice, Thomas fell in love; a year later they were married. The following year, aged twenty, Thomas gained his Master’s Certificate and began to sail the Southern seas on six-month trading voyages, with Caroline and the children by his side. Soon, Caroline’s family began emigrating to join her; her widowed mother who died on the day of her arrival, and brothers and sister.

Caroline and Thomas’s own family numbered fourteen; not all surviving infancy. In 1886, the family left for Timaru, when Thomas was appointed Harbourmaster. Many ships arrived at Timaru Harbour carrying ballast of sand, which was tipped out along the rocky shore; the resulting sandy beach was named Caroline Bay, after my great-great-grandmother. 

When Thomas died in 1909, a much-loved and respected figure, girls in white lined the road to honour him. Caroline Brighting Clarkson lived another six years, dying in 1915 aged seventy-seven. She is buried in Timaru, beside her husband. Caroline was variously described as ‘haughty’, ‘proud’ and ‘imperious’, but her life shows she was also adventurous, impetuous, passionate, talented, intelligent and determined.

Panel materials: My sister supplied a light white cotton, and assorted buttons. I had some embroidery silks and lace, though I purchased more, along with some ornamental buttons, blue rick-rack and extra lace.