John Dunlop Allison: a remarkable life and a distinguished naval family

Remembrance Sunday, 14th November 2010: Here, below, is the previously unpublished autobiographical story of John Dunlop Allison 1842-1928, from a Greenock family, born at sea and son of a master mariner trading under sail in the early nineteenth century, pictured above left, with his eldest son, William Dunlop Hamilton Allison,

A master mariner himself, John Dunlop Allison became the sire of a family which, through him, had a 200 year-long unbroken connection with the sea.

His grandson, William’s son, Captain JH Allison RN, DSO and Bar has a very distinguished naval career which we are now publishing here as a separate story. (Captain JH Allison: Captain D, Arctic Convoys, Dunkirk and the Soroy evacuation)

John Dunlop Allison’s own story is a quite extraordinary one, redolent of an age fuelled by a spirit of enterprise, adventure and individual acceptance of responsibility Britain has largely lost.

This never-published story was found in a trunk about a 100 years after it was written. It is John Dunlop Allison’s autobiography as we received it, transcribed at some point from a manuscript.

It seems that he probably wrote it around 1908-09 when he thought his life was nearing the end – in fact, he lived for another 20 years and there is the matter of wives. (Read for yourself.)

When we got the story we couldn’t put it down.

This is the authentic voice of a spirited and successful man from Greenock, but of another age, a man for whom the sea was his home before  birth, who had that tradition in his blood and who passed it down to his family.

This is a life well and fully lived and one that links to the seagoing, enterprising and colonial past of the Clyde.

We dithered about editing it but decided to publish it as it was written. This voice needs no interpreter.

Roy Elwood, whose own naval career story we have published (click on the Arctic Convoys box at the left side of this screen) was at the heart of the publication of JD Allison’s story.

JS Allison, son of Roy’s old captain on HMS Zambesi, JH Alllison, posted a comment on Roy’s story that he had infomarton on his father’s career.

Out of email exchanges on  this came the story on Captain JH Allison’s naval career; and came the story of the discovery of JD Allison’s autobiography.

The story in the autobiography, the social history embedded in it and the Greenock connection made publication irresistible and Roy arranged this for us with the Allison family.

Roy – ‘Lofty’ in the Navy and pictured above with two former shipmates on HMS Zambesi, Derek Hirst (see linked story above of the Soroy evacuation) and Roy Mander – says that this is one of the most remarkable stories he has read.

The opening sentence captured his attention at once: ‘I was born at sea on the Duke of Portland on her voyage southward from Ichebo in Peru bound for Ardrossan with a cargo of Guano on the 1st June 1842′.

Take it from there.

This is , as he wrote it, the story of John Dunlop Allison 1842-1928: The Life of John Dunlop Allison

Note: We will review this story ourselves (and we can’t wait) – in a comment to this article which we will publish after readers have had the chance to experience the tale first for themselves.