My 90 year old grandfather is in the last few months of his life. He has asked me to find the British ship his great grandfather Robert M MacBeath sailed on. He would ultimately like to find a photo, a painting, anything that he can hang on his walls to look at during his last days.
My grandpa McBeth is a tough salt who was in the army during the Korean war and worked as a truck driver/mover for Mayflower. He even had the privilege of moving the home of Ronald and Nancy Reagan long before they were in the White House. He has many wonderful stories to tell and is one of the people who inspired me to start genealogy at the age of 12.
His great grandfather Robert M MacBeath was born in Glasgow Scotland in 1823. According to my grandfather, he was part of the crew on the HMS Martha, but jumped ship (ahem--deserted) in order to look for gold in California. They may have been docked in San Francisco when he left. The dates he would have been on the ship would be somewhere between 1836 and 1858 (these are the arrival dates estimated of his arrival to the US). I can find no record of this ship.
EDIT: I just found out this was not a naval ship, but a merchant vessel. It docked in Boston in 1849. And docked in San Francisco in 1850.
Any help would be appreciated even if it leads me to needing to pay for a record or such. Thank you!