I searched Trove for the words Buring tobacconist (my 2x great grandfather Heinrich Franz Rudolph Buring was a tobacconist in Adelaide, South Australia) to see what I might find and the following article resulted. This is something I never knew about and a totally unexpected result from a search for tobacconists.
YOUNG "SEA-DOG" Seeking Adventure on Barque Next Week ADELAIDE, Thursday.
YOUNG "SEA-DOG"
Seeking Adventure on
Barque Next Week
ADELAIDE, Thursday
A 17-year-old Adelaide boy who has never been to sea before will leave as an apprentice in the four masted barque Lawhill when it sets sail from Port Adelaide next week for its freezing run round Cape Horn to England.
The young "sea-dog" is Philip R. Buring, son of Mr. Emil Buring, pro prietor of a Rundle street tobacconist firm.
The hope that Mr. W. Brusnahan, a returned soldier who is an inmate of Pirie Hospital, would have a speedy recovery was expressed by Mr. H. J. Edwards (.president) at a meeting of Pirie sub-branch of the Returned Sailors and Soldiers' Imperial League at Memorial Hall last night.
Source: Trove
Phillip Rushton Buring is my first cousin twice removed. I did a Google search on the Lawhill and was surprised to find results including this photo and wikipedia page. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawhill
It turns out this is a fairly well known ship.
From the SA Memory website
The Lawhill was one of the many ships involved in the Australian grain trade. Before that she had carried jute and then case oil for the Anglo-American Oil Company before being bought by Gustaf Erikson in 1917. After her first voyage for Erikson to South America he placed the ship in the South Australian grain trade and she continued in this right through the Second World War. However in 1941 she was taken over by the South African government and ended her career in 1947 under the South African Blue Ensign. From this we may assume that the date on the photograph is incorrect.
Lawhill was a steel four masted, bald-headed, stump-topgallant barque, a consistent sailer which earned the name the ‘Lucky Lawhill’; between 1921-39 Lawhill made 14 voyages to the Spencer Gulf with an average sailing time of 121 days.
There are terrific pictures of a scale model of the Lawhill on this site http://www.ahailey.f9.co.uk/lawhill.htm
Another Trove article
"LUCKY LAWHILL" SAILS ON Gallant Barque Defies War Perils
"LUCKY
LAWHILL" SAILS ON
Gallant Barque
Defies War Perils
With her delicate tracery of masts and yards towering above the more prosaic funnels and derricks of rusty tramps, the 50-year-old barque Lawhill lies at an Australian port.
Majestically defiant of storms and enemy action alike, Lawhill carries on the square-rig tradition in an age that has come to regard the sail- ing ship as a curiosity. Her skipper, Capt Sorderland, has already lost a ship through enemy action in the war, but, nothing daunted, he carries on,
"I was born free," he said yester- day , "and no Nazi or Jap is going to drive me from my liveli- hood. I first sailed aboard this ship as an AB more years ago than I like to remember. I came back to her
as captain early in the war after having had a ship blown from under me by a mine off the Dutch coast, and, except for a period before the South African Government (my pre- sent owners) took over, I have kept this old vessel sailing."
Lawhill, known to old salts the
world over as "Lucky Lawhill," shows little sign of her age. Spick and span in her black and white paint, she lies at her berth, tugging hard at the heart-strings of all old sailor-men who pass her by.
She's a different ship today from any that sailed the seas in the days of "wooden ships and iron men," however. Replete with steam, heat, and a Liesel winch to hoist sail, she carries on now under the 3-watch system. Three watches means 4 hours on duty and 8 off ; a bit dif- ferent from the old days when men did their 4 on and 4 off all round the clock.
The Lawhill publishes a paper twice weekly, too. Edited by the donkey man, Bert Speight, who returned to the sea after 20 years' ashore be- cause he felt that a sailor would be of better use to his country afloat than driving an. engine at a gold- mine, this sheet gives the latest shipboard gossip, as well as such news as can be picked up by radio. Speight first went to sea in 1904 in a Finnish ship, and he is a West Australian, and proud of it.
There are other Australians aboard. Boyd Thompson, the deck boy, has been on articles only for a few weeks, but he's fallen in love with the sea already. "It'll do me for a life," was Bert's terse comment. A crew of Finns, Danes, and 7 South Afri- can apprentices completes the ship's company, not forgetting, of course, the mate and second, who, like the skipper, are Nazi-hating Finns, and it would be hard to meet a jollier
and keener team.
"The old Lawhill's a lucky ship," the captain said, "lucky enough for me to have my wife and daughter Doris aboard with me, so that's that!"
Source: Trove
I haven’t been able to find Phillip’s apprenticeship records yet or the details of his service on the Lawhill, but I will continue searching.
I just found this photo which I had forgotten I had.
Phillip and his brother Ralph went into the tobacconist shop following after their father and grandfather. I’ve also found more articles, with this search, for further Trove Tuesday posts.














