George Bayley [Bailey] 

George Bayley [Bailey] was a Baptist layman living in Camberwell, London. Like Joseph Fletcher (see his entry on this site), he was serving at various times on the Committee of the Baptist Building Fund and the Baptist Theological Education Society. Bayley collected £1.9 for the BMS in November 1840, and paid £1.1 for his annual subscription to the BMS in February 1841 and March 1842. He may be the same Mr. Bailey who, along with a Miss Bailey, contributed £5 each to the Jubilee Fund in December 1842 as part of the donations from members of the Baptist church in Eagle Street, London. By trade he was a ship inspector for Lloyd’s Register (the title page for his 1844 book listed him as “surveyor to Lloyd’s Register of Shipping”), a company founded in 1760 to examine merchant ships and classify them according to the sea-worthiness (Lloyd’s Register should not be confused with Lloyd’s of London, the famous insurance company, though both originated from the same coffee house). Because of his expertise, Bayley played an important role for the BMS Committee in the acquisition of the Dove between 1842 and 1844. When John Clarke first proposed the purchase of a steam vessel for the BMS work at Fernando Po, a subcommittee was formed and was immediately asked by the Committee “to confer with Mr Bayley, of Lloyd’s, more specially in reference to the probable annual cost of such vessel.” Bayley proposed that the cost of a steamer would be between £800 and £1000 a year; he thus recommended instead that the Committee purchase a 70-ton schooner, which would only cost between £300 and £400 per year. Bayley would continue to serve as the advisor to the subcommittee that would eventually opt for a sailing schooner equipped both with a steam engine and an Archimedes screw. Bayley was involved in making judgments about the Chilmark, as well as the second version of the Dove, which was purchased in late summer 1844 and finally sailed for Africa in 1845. Bayley granted the ship a Certificate of Lloyds, describing it to the BMS Committee as “the first description of the First Class.”  He authored Tables Showing the Progress of the Shipping Interest of the British Empire, United States, and France (London: Smith, Elder, and Co., 1844). See Baptist Magazine 33 (1841): 59; 35 (1843): 535; 36 (1844): 656, 663; Missionary Herald (January 1841): 45; (April 1841): 207; (May 1842): 270; (January 1843): 52; BMS Committee Minutes, Vol. I (Jan. 1843-May 1844), ff. 27, 29-30, 33, 94; Vol. J (May 1844-July 1847), ff. 40, 43, 74.