Thirty-two letters relating to the disappearance of Percy Edwards, who worked for Bulloch's, and three historic photographic prints of Percy, Anne (his mother) and the Edwards family. The letters document the loss at sea of Percy Edwards on the ship BAY OF CADIZ in 1888 on a voyage from Sydney to San Francisco, and the attempts by his mother, Anne, to obtain news on her son’s disappearance. These include correspondence from many family friends in the shipping business: a San Francisco ship owner reassures Anne that it may be that the crew are safe ashore on a Pacific island, 'but being out of the run of mail communication, it would be a long time before they could report themselves'; while a director of Bulloch’s Line rebuffs her suggestion that a reward is warranted. She is also in correspondence with a woman whose husband was also on board the ship, who shares with her news of the ship’s rudder washing ashore on the New South Wales coast in June of 1889, the letter opening ‘I have received the death blow to any faint hope I had.’ Her final correspondence is with Bulloch’s, who inform her that 'the whole case is closed and should not be reopened unless on some very urgent grounds which at present do not exist'. This came in November 1889, 11 months after Percy’s disappearance.

Administrative / biographical background
Lloyd’s List, 1886-1890. The Bay of Cadiz is listed in the 1886 Lloyd’s Register, the year of Percy Edwards' joining, and listed as missing in the 1889-90 register.