email: Richard Ball

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James Beeching 1 Notes: James Beeching came from a Bexhill family noted for its smuggling exploits. In 1809 he married 20-year old Martha Thwaites at St Clement's Church in Hastings. Her father was Thomas Thwaites, a prominent Hastings businessman who was also a shipowner. In the following years James and a partner ran a shipbuilding yard on the beach in front of the Castle. But then in 1816 this went bust and was sold up - to James's father-in-law. The Tom Thwaites shipyard then built many large com- mercial sailing vessels up to the early 1840s, but the expansion of the Old Town westwards made it more profitable for the Thwaites's to sell the land for what today would be called 'regeneration'. James, meanwhile, had emigrated in 1817 to Flushing in Holland, where he also built many craft, including a considerable number involved in the English smuggling trade, something he was not unfamiliar with. Later he and Martha briefly returned to Hastings, but then moved to Yarmouth, where James set up a respected boatbuilding yard. He introduced a type of fishing vessel which remained in use at that port until the development of steam. The above is quoted from: The history of the first lifeboats at Hastings, by Steve Peak, In: Hastings & St Leonards Observer, 5 April 2008, (no sources given for this information)

married 14 March 1809 at St. Clements, Hastings Martha Thwaites 1789-1831

Anne James Samuel Henry Molly Dungate Elizabeth Ann Charlotte Ann Thomas

children of James and Martha Beeching Anne Beeching James Beeching Samuel Beeching Henry Beeching Molly Dungate Beeching Elizabeth Ann Beeching Charlotte Beeching 2 Ann Beeching Thomas Beeching

click on names in blue to move around the family tree small blue numbers provide the source of the fact to which they are attached all material on this page copyright Richard Ball 2009

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