Among the 131 men who sailed out of the Grand Harbour on board the Marine Perch, on May 8, 1948, and disembarked at Pier 22, Halifax, Nova Scotia, on May 19, was 35-year-old Paulo (aka Robert) Gaffan.

Wedding photo of Maria Zammit and Alfred ‘Robert’ Gaffan, taken at The Royal Studio, Strait Street, Valletta.

Paulo, then better known as Robert, was a barber from Vittoriosa but also listed himself as a carpenter and electrician. He was born, on April 28, 1913, in Zonguldak, Turkey, the capital city of Zonguldak Province in the Black Sea region and given the name Alfredo Paulo Gaffan. This is important to remember, as his given name and even his surname changed over the decades.

Paulo was a son of Giacomo ‘James’ Gaffan and his Greek wife Vasilea, or Basilica, Gaetano. Giacomo was born on December 16, 1880, in Valletta. Basilica was born in Smyrna (now Izmir), Turkey, in 1888, and was of Greek ancestry.

Giacomo’s father, Michele Gaffan, had brought the family from Malta to Constantinople (Istanbul), Turkey in 1881, where on October 1 of that year, Giacomo’s brother, Emmanuele, was born.

Passport no. 4240 issued to Alfredo Gafà, September 11, 1929. Photo: Courtesy of National Archives of Malta

Passport photo of Alfredo Gafà, 1929. Photo: Courtesy of National Archives of Malta

While the surname Gaffan appears to no longer exist in Malta, it has been traced back to at least 1815 to one Vincenzo Gaffan. Gafan is an old local form of the present Gafà, according to Mario Cassar’s The Surnames of the Maltese Islands (pages 163-64).

Meanwhile, Giacomo Gaffan left his pregnant wife and son Paulo in Zonguldak, Turkey, in 1914 and went to England. The Ottoman Empire, which included Turkey, had joined the Central Powers (Germany and Austria-Hungary) in August to form the Triple Alliance but did not formally enter World War I until late October.

Passport photo of Alfredo Gafà, aged 7, and his mother Vasilea, about 1920. Photo: Courtesy of Kay and Helen Gaffan

On August 24, 1914, Giacomo Gaffan was admitted to the Lower Clapton workhouse in London, UK, probably to get a meal as he appears to have been discharged after dinner the same day.

Over the next few years, we find him sailing on various ships as a merchant seaman. For example, he is listed as a greaser on the SS Anglo Australian, which sailed from Avonmouth, UK, and arrived in New Orleans, USA, on August 30, 1915.

After the war, Giacomo was awarded various medals for his service. His Mercantile Marine Medal was auctioned off in London, England, on May 6, 1998.

Giacomo was probably able to make arrangements for his wife and seven-year-old son to seek asylum in Malta by virtue of the fact that he was a British subject and native of the island

Meanwhile, his daughter, Helen, was born in Zonguldak in 1915 and died there in 1918.

From 1914 onwards, there was a fear among the Turks that Christians and various ethnic minorities, such as the Armenians and Greeks, would welcome liberation by the Ottoman Empire’s enemies. In this era, there was also a belief in nationalism – that it was necessary to purge the Turkish territories of all minorities who could threaten the integrity of an ethnically-based Turkish nation.

Some of 131 new arrivals in front of the recreation hall at the former Fingal Camp. The photo appeared in the St Thomas Times on May 21, 1948. Photo: Courtesy of Elgin County Archives, St Thomas

Vasilea Gaffan and her young son faced persecution and feared for their lives. Giacomo was probably able to make arrangements for his wife and seven-year-old son to seek asylum in Malta by virtue of the fact that he was a British subject and native of the island. As British subjects, they could have chosen any of the British possessions in which to seek refuge but he selected Malta as it was Giacomo’s native land, and perhaps relatives of his could still be found there.

No relatives of Giacomo were found in Malta, however, and it would appear that Vasilea and young Alfred, as the boy was then known, lived for the next several years in St Nicholas Refugee Camp at the Polverista Barracks, Cospicua. This was part of Polverista or St Nicholas Curtain, a casemated rampart with a continuous walkway in Cospicua that formed part of the Cottonera Lines. During World War I, it was a prisoner-of-war camp for women and children. Just after the war, it was used to intern Turkish dissidents and alleged war criminals.

Arrival of the men from the Marine Perch in London, Ontario, on May 21, 1948. Photo: The London Free Press

Meanwhile, Giacomo died in Liverpool, UK, on April 20, 1923.

At the age of 14, his son, Alfred, became an apprentice barber. The barber under whom Alfred trained thought he had said his name was ‘Albert’ and started calling him ‘Bert’. This soon morphed into ‘Robert’, and that became the name by which Alfred, or Paul, became known by those outside the family for the rest of his life.

Alfred and his mother, who referred to her son as ‘Freddie’, appear to have gone to Cyprus in 1929, probably to join members of Vasilea’s family.

Alfred is said to have also gone to Tripoli in Libya. It is interesting to note that on Alfred’s 1929 passport application the surname was spelt as ‘Gafà’ rather than ‘Gaffan’. Whether this spelling was dictated to Vasilea and her son by British authorities in Malta or whether she deliberately sought out the more common form then used in Malta is not presently known. In any case, the Gafà version of the surname later appears on some of the baptismal records of Alfred’s children and Gaffan on others.

An Ottoman era postcard view of Zonguldak’s port and breakwater.

Alfred (aka Robert) was married at St Lawrence church, Vittoriosa, on May 1, 1932, to Maria Zammit. Maria was born in that city in February 1908, to Giuseppe Zammit and his wife Giuseppa. Over the next several years in Malta, Robert, also known as ‘Bob’, and Maria were to have 11 children, including one who died just two days old and another at the age of seven months.

The couple lived in Vittoriosa where all 11 children, with the exception of Gloria, were born. Robert operated his own barber shop both before and after World War II. He also worked at the dockyards, probably as a carpenter and electrician, as those are the trades, along with barber, he said he practised on migrating to Canada. For three years during the war, an air raid shelter was often the family’s ‘home’, and Robert served in the home defence.

After the war, and unlike most wives at the time, it was Maria, not her husband, who desired to emigrate. She had her heart set on Canada. Thus, when the opportunity availed itself in the spring of 1948, Maria urged ‘Freddie’to apply.

Polverista Barracks, part of the Cottonera Lines forming the outer defences of the Three Cities. Photo: Courtesy of the National Archives of Malta

‘Freddie’ or ‘Robert’ boarded the Marine Perch and was officially registered as Paulo Gaffan. After arriving in Halifax, Nova Scotia, he, like most of the other Maltese immigrants who disembarked from the Marine Perch, took a special train to London, Ontario, and, on the afternoon of Friday, May 21, was transported by an army truck to the former World War II, Royal Canadian Air Force bombing and gunnery station at Fingal, a few miles southwest of nearby St Thomas.

Robert was in the country in which his wife wished to make a new home and find better economic opportunities.

It was now time for him to find employment and a place that could accommodate his large family before thinking of sending for his wife and children.

(To be concluded)

New arrivals playing their first game of checkers in the recreation hall at the former Fingal Camp. Paul Alfred Gaffan is second from the left. The photo appeared in the St Thomas Times on May 21, 1948. Photo: Courtesy of Elgin County Archives, St Thomas