J.J Curling

• Reverend Joseph J. Curling

Clergyman. Born England. Educated Harrow; Royal Military College; Oxford University. In 1865 he graduated from military college with a commission in the Royal Engineers. In 1869 he went to Bermuda as the aide de camp to the Governor, Sir F. Chauman, and returned to England in the following year. Shortly afterwards he offered his yacht, the Skylark, later known as the Lavrock, to Bishop Edward Feild qv, whose Newfoundland church ship, the Star, had been lost. The Bishop accepted the gift and in 1872 Curling sailed it to Newfoundland and presented it to Feild in St. John's. Curling was deeply affected by the conditions in the Colony and when he returned to England, he retired from the Royal Engineers and left England again to become a missionary in Newfoundland. In 1873 he was ordained a deacon in St. John's, and in that year he was sent to the Mission in the Bay of Islands qv. In the following year, he was ordained a priest, and in 1880 he was appointed Rural Dean for the Strait of Belle Isle. He was very active during his time in Newfoundland and used his engineering background to design and build a number of churches and schools on the west coast. In 1886 he left the Mission to return to Oriel College, Oxford. He visited Newfoundland in 1887 and 1889, and at the end of the latter visit he sailed the Lapper, a ship he had designed and built in Newfoundland, back to England.
In 1891 he returned to Newfoundland to take up a one-year position as Principal of Queen's College qv in St. John's. He did not return to the Colony after he left in 1892.
In 1904 the community of Birchy Cove in the Bay of Islands changed its name to Curling qv in honour of him.

Curling