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  • HMCS SPITFIRE: Australia’s first locally built warship

    The Spitfire, The first gun boat built in the colony of N. S. Wales. Image courtesy NLA nla.obj 138450394-1

    Launched in 1855, HMCS Spitfire has the distinction of being Australia’s first locally built naval vessel.   Originally conceived as a gunboat to bolster Sydney Harbour’s defences, she never fired a shot in anger. Nonetheless she went on to serve New South Wales and Queensland in a variety of important roles, some of which she was patently ill-suited to.  The Spitfire eventually saw out her days as a fishing boat operating in Far North Queensland waters in a career spanning some 43 years.   This is her fascinating story.

    In October 1853, war erupted between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, and in March the following year Britain joined on the side of the Ottomans.   Fearing that Sydney might come under attack from Russian naval forces based in the North Pacific, the colonial NSW government commissioned the Spitfire to help defend Port Jackson.

    The Spitfire glided into the untroubled waters of Darling Harbour at 10 o’clock in the morning on 7 April 1855. The proceedings were attended by great fanfare, pomp and the cheers from a large crowd of onlookers, though the NSW Governor was conspicuously absent from the ceremony.

    Built at Cuthbert’s Shipyard (in the vicinity of present-day Barangaroo), the Spitfire was a vessel of 60 tons, measuring 62 feet (18.9 m) in overall length, with a beam of 16 feet (4.9 m) and a draft of five feet six inches (1.7 m). The small ketch-rigged vessel was constructed of ironbark and blackbutt and sheathed with copper plate. She was built more robustly than usual to accommodate a 32-pound smooth-bore gun amidships on a traversing carriage. The bulwarks on either side could be lowered to allow the gun to engage targets to port and starboard.1

    Cuthbert’s shipyard, Darling Harbour. Image courtesy State Library of NSW.

    The Spitfire did not have its own full-time gunners. Rather, it was to rely on appropriately trained members from the local volunteer artillery should they ever be needed. However, though designated a “gunboat,” the main armament seems to have never actually been fitted.

    Even though the government had paid for the Spitfire’s construction, it was less forthcoming when it came to paying for its ongoing operational and maintenance costs. And there was some debate in the corridors of power as to just how a single vessel would be deployed in the event of a Russian attack. But, fortunately that soon became a mute point.

    Ten months after the Spitfire‘s launch, the Crimean War came to an end, as did any threat posed by Russia.   The Spitfire was then put to use as a general utility vessel, conveying stores and personnel to lighthouses dotting the New South Wales coast.  Then in July 1857 she was sent to Moreton Bay to maintain, set and recover that port’s navigation buoys. And when Queensland separated from New South Wales in December 1859, ownership of the Spitfire transferred to the new colonial government.

    She was stationed at the Moreton Island Pilot Station at Cowan Cowan. Primarily the Spitfire was used to ferry pilots out to ships so they could be safely guided into the bay. From there, she could also readily attend to the navigation buoys as needed. However, from the outset she proved ill-suited for that task as she lacked the necessary maneuverability.

    Between August and October 1860, the Spitfire was sent on a voyage of discovery under the command of Lt J W Smith, a Royal Navy officer seconded from HMS Herald. The party included the master of the Spitfire, Queensland’s Commissioner of Crown Lands, George Dalrymple, surveyor, R P Stone, and a botanical collector named Eugene Fitzalan. They were joined by seven seamen and two Aborigines, bringing the party to 14 in total.2

    Eleven years earlier, explorer Ludwig Leichhardt had crossed a wide river on his 1849 inland expedition to Port Essington. He named the river after one of his sponsors, Thomas Burdekin. The Spitfire’s job was to locate where the Burdekin River flowed into the Pacific Ocean.

    She returned to Moreton Bay in October, the voyage a resounding success. The mouth of the river was found to open into a bay north of Cape Upstart, Fitzalan returned with over 100 botanical specimens, and the future site of Bowen was surveyed. 

    While landed there, the party was confronted by a band of Aborigines. Thinking they had some hostile intent, the expeditioners drove them off. Years later, we would learn that the Aborigines had simply tried to alert Dalrymple and the others to the presence among them of James Morell, a sailor who had been shipwrecked back in 1846.3 See my blog “The Peruvian’s Lone Survivor” for his story.

    HMCS Spitfire. Image courtesy Naval Association Australia Queensland Section.

    Once back at Moreton Bay, the Spitfire returned to her routine duties, and it is probably a testament to the men who sailed her, that she continued in service for so many years. One critic wrote that she was “totally unfit for her work, as everything afloat can leave her astern.”4

    In January 1874, disaster struck which almost saw the end of the schooner and the lives of her seven man crew. After delivering a pilot to a ship waiting to enter the bay, the Spitfire was caught in a violent storm. As she approached the passage into Moreton Bay she was dismasted by huge seas and gale force winds. The crew battled to get a pair of anchors over the side as the maelstrom raging around them. Thankfully, they succeed and the anchors held, preventing the schooner from being driven ashore and smashed to pieces. 

    The captain and three volunteers then managed to get a whaleboat over the side and went in search of help while their shipmates remained with the Spitfire. They rowed for some 10 hours without a break and eventually reached the Lady Bowen anchored about 8 miles away. After the storm had subsided, the steamer took the Spitfire in tow and brought her safely into Moreton Bay.5

    However, by now the Spitfire was long past her prime and even the authorities had to acknowledge that she was no longer suitable for continued service as Moreton Bay’s pilot boat. But rather than scrap her, she was given a new role in Far North Queensland.

    Gold had been discovered on the Palmer River 100 km inland from what would become Cooktown on the banks of the Endeavour River. Thousands of miners flooded into the area, and the busy port was in want of a new pilot boat. The Spitfire was sent to fill the role.

    Though her limitations followed her, she still provided valuable service. She was regularly called upon to investigate reports of shipwrecks and to go in search of survivors in those remote waters.  One such instance occurred shortly after the Spitfire arrived in Cooktown. She was sent to search for a white woman rumoured to be living with Aborigines near Cape Melville, however, after a couple of weeks in the area, no such woman was found.  

    More typically, the schooner was tasked with maintaining the lightships and navigation beacons safeguarding vessels making their way along Queensland’s northern coast.

    Then, in January 1882, the Spitfire and her crew were given the melancholy task of retrieving the remains of Mary Watson (21), her infant son and a Chinese servant named Ah Sam. Mary’s husband Robert Watson and his business partner had established a Beche de Mer fishing station on Lizard Island. In September 1881, he and the rest of the men went in search of trepang, leaving his wife, son and two Chinese servants alone at the station. A party of Aborigines landed on the island and attacked them, killing one of the Chinese servants and wounding the other.

    Mary Watson fled in a metal boiling tank with her son Ferrier and the wounded Ah Sam.   Though adequately provisioned with food, they had left with only a small amount of fresh water. For the next eight days they drifted northwest with the current, and finally beached on one of the Howick Islands about 50 km away. However, before they were found, Ah Sam died from his wounds, and Watson and her son from dehydration. She left a poignant diary recording her final days.6

    Darling Downs Gazette, 10 Feb 1882, p. 5.

    Despite being solidly constructed, or perhaps because of it, she proved a fairly poor sailer. One critic wrote, “Although she is periodically pitched and patched, the old tub is growing more shaky and useless every year. … She can make about 5½ to 6 knots with the wind over her quarter, but in beating to windward she gains about 10 miles in 24 hours going crab-like on every tack.” 7

    In mid-July 1885, the Queensland government finally made the decision to auction off the now 30-year-old Spitfire.  The new owners paid £300 for her and fitted her out for Beche de Mer fishing.

    Over the next 14 years, she passed through several hands for Beche de Mer fishing was not for the faint hearted. Based out of Cooktown, the Spitfire would be gone for months at a time. The fishermen would establish a camp and a smokehouse on one of the Great Barrier Reef islands and harvest trepang from the surrounding waters.   When the hold was filled, the Spitfire would return to port to offload the dried Beche de Mer and stock up with supplies before heading back out again.

    In 1896, she was nearly lost off Hinchinbrook Island during a cyclone. With jury-rigged mast and sails, the Spitfire limped back to Cairns for repairs. But three years later her luck finally ran out.

    On 21 August 1899, the Spitfire sprang a leak during rough weather, and her captain had little choice but to run her aground on a reef about 15 km south of the Piper Island lightship. All hands were subsequently rescued and a Marine Board Enquiry found the captain blameless for the little schooner’s loss.8

    Thus ended the career of Australia’s first locally built gunboat. Although she was often criticised for being unsuited to many of the jobs she was called upon to do, she still provided valuable service for over four decades.

    SOURCES

    1.           Launch of the First Australian Gunboat, The Empire, 5 Apr 1855, p. 4.

    2.           Report of the proceedings of the Queensland Government schooner “Spitfire” in search of the mouth of the River Burdekin, on the north-eastern coast of Australia  … Brisbane: [Queensland Govt.], 1860

    3.           Gregory. Edmund, 1866, Sketch of the Residence of James Morrill among the Aborigines of Northern Queensland, Courier General Printing Office, Brisbane, p. 13.

    4.        The Courier, 23 Dec 1863, p. 2.

    5. The Telegraph, 31 Jan 1874, p. 3.

    6.         Darling Downs Gazette, 23 Jan 1882, p. 3.

    7.         The Brisbane Courier, 17 Jun 1884, p. 5.

    8.         The Telegraph, 10 Sept 1898, p. 7, Morning Post, 15 Sept 1898, p. 4, and Tasmanian News, 2 Nov 1898, p. 2.

    © Copyright C.J. Ison / Tales from the Quarterdeck, 2026.

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  • Betrayal in Paradise: The Phoebe’s Final Voyage

    In August 1828, the then Governor of NSW, Ralph Darling, received a tersely worded letter from the paramount chief of Huahine in the Society Islands, present-day French Polynesia. In it, Queen Maihara, through missionary intermediaries, implored him to send a ship and “fetch these thieves and take them back again to Botany Bay.”1

    The thieves she referred to were escaped convicts who had fled New South Wales on the 24-ton cutter Phoebe. And they were quite likely the first escaped convicts to reach any of the Pacific Islands.

    Early on the morning of 15 December 1827, fifteen convicts boarded the small cutter moored in the Shoalhaven River and forced the three-man crew to sail her out the heads into open water. The crew were then ordered into a dinghy and returned to shore.  

    The runaway’s leader was a prisoner named Frederick Hunter, who had been sent to New South Wales for housebreaking. A former seaman, he assured his comrades they could cross the Pacific Ocean and reach North America, 12,000 km away, in as little as 15 days. Then, relying on just a hand compass and a small-scale nautical chart covering the entire Pacific Ocean, they set out to sea.

    First, they bore due east, bound for New Zealand. There they stopped briefly to add several pigs and a quantity of potatoes to their supplies before setting off on a north-easterly course to cross the Pacific.

    There is no record of their voyage from New Zealand to the Society Islands (French Polynesia).   However, it was likely slow and arduous for it seems most, if not all, with the exception of Hunter himself, had any sailing experience. By the time they reached the Leeward Islands, 4,000 km away, provisions were running low. To extend their remaining rations, Hunter forced six of the runaways ashore. One of those was John Smith, who later said he was thrown overboard near the island of Rioteri, (most likely Raiatea).

    At Maupiti Island, Hunter and his eight remaining men traded the cutter’s cargo of cedar logs for food. But rather than continue on their way to North America, they appear to have remained among the islands of French Polynesia. Their voyage finally ended off Mai’ao Island when the cutter crashed onto a reef and had to be abandoned.   From there, the runaways broke into smaller groups and dispersed themselves across several neighbouring islands.2

    Four of them, possibly including Hunter, made it to Huahine Island where they were made welcome by the Islanders, many of whom were recent converts to Christianity.   But that hospitality ended around July or August 1828 after the convicts ransacked the paramount chief’s home and stole everything of value, including several muskets, a cask of gunpowder and lead shot. They fled the island with their haul in a whaleboat belonging to Reverend Barff, the island’s missionary. A canoe carrying over a dozen men was dispatched to chase down the thieves. But when they caught up to the whaleboat and demanded the return of the stolen property, the runaways opened fire, killing two and wounding six others.3

    HMS Satellite. Courtesy: Royal Museums Greenwich.

    Queen Maihara had had enough.   She wrote to Governor Darling, calling on him to apprehend the escaped convicts terrorising her people.    In December, Darling dispatched Commander John Laws and HMS Satellite to the South Pacific to round up the troublemakers.      The Satellite found six of the runaways and took them into custody.   As for the men who ransacked Queen Maihara’s house, killed two of her people and wounded six others, they were reported to have made for Tongatabu, present-day Tonga, some 2,000 kilometres away.   However, when the Satellite pulled in there, Captain Law learned that a boat and men matching their description had landed in “great distress” on one of the Navigator Islands, present-day Samoa.   He was also told that two of the men he was looking for had already been killed and there was little likelihood that the other two would have left the island alive.    With his mission complete, Commander Law returned to Sydney with his six prisoners in chains to stand trial.4

    As the trial date approached, the Attorney General decided not to charge the prisoners with the capital crime of piracy as they had not seized the Phoebe “on the high seas,” but in the sheltered waters of the Shoalhaven River.    He felt there was a chance the prosecution would not get a conviction based on that technicality. So, instead, the authorities charged them with the lesser crime of stealing the cutter and its cargo of 8,000 feet of cedar logs. Found guilty, five were sentenced to seven years’ transportation. The sixth prisoner, John Smith, who claimed to have been forced to join the bolters, was released after testifying against the others.

    SOURCES

    1.    Letter from Maihara, Queen of Huahine to Gov. Darling dated 25 Aug 1828, 1/14 HRA, p. 738.

    2.   Evidence provided by John Smith during the trial of other runaways. Sydney Monitor, 8 Jun 1829, p. 8.

    3.   Letter from Maihara, Queen of Huahine to Gov. Darling dated 25 Aug 1828, 1/14 HRA, p. 738.

    4.   Letter from Commander Laws HMS Satellite to Secretary Croker dated 11 Mar 1829, 1/14 HRA, p. 741.

    © Copyright C.J. Ison / Tales from the Quarterdeck, 2026.

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  • Who Robbed the Nelson gold ship?

    The Nelson Gold Robbery. The World’s News, 5 Aug 1950, p. 9.

    In April 1852, thieves stole a gold shipment bound for London from the barque Nelson anchored at Hobson’s Bay, Melbourne.  Arguably, it ranks among Australia’s largest robberies, as the gang got away with some £24,000 worth of gold weighing an astonishing 8,100 ounces, or 250 kg. That amount of gold would be worth around $50 million today in Australian currency.

    I wrote a blog about it back in 2024, but the story kept playing on my mind. I figured there was more to discover than I had then unearthed. The writer Marcus Clarke, author of “For the Term of His Natural Life,” wrote an article for the Sydney Morning Herald in 1879 where he outlined the basic facts, added some literary flourishes that could not have been true and proclaimed that, after the passage of 27 years, “it is now unlikely that the true story of the Nelson gold robbery will ever be told.”

    Well. Challenge accepted. I started digging through Trove’s digitised newspaper archives among other sources and came across several clues that shed light on who might have been behind the robbery. After the passage of 175 years, I might just have something approximating the truth.

    Ships, deserted by their crews, lying in Hobson’s Bay, By E Thomas.

    To quickly rehash my original blog: around 1.30 on the morning of Friday 2 April 1851, a gang of thieves climbed aboard the Nelson, overpowered the crew, and made off with the gold after locking everyone in the lazarette.   The plan worked flawlessly but for someone accidentally shooting the Nelson’s first officer, Henry Draper, in the leg.

    But most of the robbers quickly realised stealing the gold was the easy part. Getting away with the heist and holding onto their ill-gotten gains would prove far more challenging.

    Embarrassed that such an audacious crime was carried out right under their noses, the police rounded up scores of petty criminals and vagrants in the days that followed, hoping they would net the culprits.

    Then, only days later, constables swooped on seven of the robbers who were living it up in Geelong, a short 60 km from where the robbery had taken place. Police arrested four at the Ocean Child on Geelong’s outskirts, while two others were apprehended at the Union Inn moments before they left to join their mates. A pair of mounted troopers caught the seventh on the road shortly after.  He had been galloping towards the Ocean Child most likely to warn his mates of the arrests at the Union Inn.1

    Dan Fegan and Stephen Rawlings, two more robbers, travelled cross-country towards the South Australian border, but were caught in Portland while awaiting a ship to take them the rest of the way to Adelaide. Their undoing seems similar to that of their comrades in Geelong. As the Geelong Advertiser would report, “Every part of their apparel indicated something unnatural; their clothes new and unsuited to their station; … and on the line of road they came, they appear to have left an impression that they had formed two belonging to the gang of the Nelson robbers.”2

    The Argus 3 Apr 1852, p. 5.

    Of the nine detained, four faced court and only three were found guilty. James Morgan, James Duncan and Stephen Rawlings (aka Fox) would all be identified by one or other of the officers on the Nelson at the time of the robbery and sentenced to 15 years’ hard labour. A jury found insufficient evidence to convict Dan Fegan (aka William Smith).

    The other members of the gang who were arrested – James Grimes, John Hutchinson, Tom Quin, William Barnes, James Ball – were eventually released without charge.   However, the money they had on them, amounting to some £3,000 in total, was confiscated. A further £1,200 was taken from Rawlings and Fegan. That amounted to little more than 15 per cent of what had been stolen. The remainder was never recovered, and that begs the question: where did it go?

    For years, rumours swirled around Melbourne speculating on who else might have been involved in the robbery. After all, some £20,000 worth of gold was still unaccounted for.  One persistent rumour suggested that one or more of Melbourne’s more prominent citizens had orchestrated the robbery and had benefited enormously from it.

    Then, a light fell on the robbers’ inner workings from a very surprising source. Owen Suffolk, an educated man who befriended the Nelson robbers while serving time in Pentridge Prison, later wrote that an escaped convict named Dan Fegan (aka William Smith) had led the gang.    He was going by the name William Smith when he was captured in Portland, and later stood trial for the robbery. He would eventually be released for lack of evidence, but he was returned to Tasmania to stand trial for absconding. A search of Convict Records and the Tasmanian Archive confirms his existence.3

    Apparently, Fegan had learned from an ex-convict who had done carpentry work on the Nelson that the gold had recently been loaded onto the barque and that it was only lightly crewed. Realising the ship could sail any day, Fegan hastily got to work. According to Suffolk, the robbery was planned, and the robbers set out for the Nelson from an unnamed Melbourne public house. He also wrote that Duncan and Morgan were recruited as last-minute replacements for two gang members who had failed to turn up for the robbery.4

    The Sun, 30 May 1948, p. 3.

    So far, nine robbers have been identified. Suffolk says ten were in on the robbery. Other estimates ranged as high as 20 or more. But the balance of evidence suggests that the gang likely numbered about a dozen. The rest were hired to row the robbers out to the Nelson. Whether they were paid for their services or received a cut of the loot is anyone’s guess.

    One important name, however, is missing from the list of suspects: the “prominent citizen” rumoured to have taken part.    While Suffolk did not name the public house where the robbery was planned, and the robbers set out from, others have.

    For instance, Edmund Finn, writing as Garryowen in Chronicles of Early Melbourne, published in 1888, claims the Nelson robbery was planned at the Woolpack Inn. And he is not alone in linking the same pub to the robbery. At the time, John Milton Dascombe owned and ran that establishment.

    Dascombe is a very interesting character in this saga. He had served several years in Pentonville Prison in England before being exiled to Melbourne in 1846. Over the next five years, his fortunes and social standing rose quickly in his adopted home, and by late 1851 he was the proud proprietor of the Woolpack Inn. In that class-conscious era, that was no small achievement for a former “Pentonvillian.” After the robbery, Dascombe suddenly appears flush with money. He bought several more properties around Melbourne, including a prestigious commercial building on Collins Street. He later sold the Woolpack Inn and took his family to England, where he settled in the upmarket suburb of St John’s Wood in London. Dascombe was never charged in connection with the robbery, but a short while after his death in 1868, speculation arose that the missing proceeds from the Nelson gold robbery might yet be recovered.5

    In Fool’s Gold, I have taken the known facts and woven them together with the rumours and a degree of literary licence to tell the story of one of Australia’s greatest robberies.

    SOURCES

    1. See The Argus 10 April 1852, p.4.
    2. See Geelong Advertiser 20 Apr 1852, p. 2.
    3. Tasmanian Archives: Daniel Fegan convict conduct record – CON33-1-36 p. 84.  Fegan’s conduct record shows he absconded from Van Diemen’s Land before the robbery and was sent back shortly after.  
    4. See The Australasian, 5 Oct 1867, p. 5.
    5. See The Argus 14 Mar 1872, p. 5.

    © Copyright C.J. Ison / Tales from the Quarterdeck, 2026.

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  • The Mystery of the Missing Madagascar

    By Thomas Goldsworth Dutton (fl 1840) – National Maritime Museum Greenwich, London [1], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30836816

    In August 1853, the Madagascar set sail from Melbourne, Australia, and was never seen again.  On board were her full complement of crew and 62 passengers. Men, women and children all bound for England. She was not the first to vanish at sea, and she would not be the last. But her disappearance has fuelled keen interest over the years, not because of the tragic loss of life, but for her large and valuable cargo of gold.

    The Victorian gold rush was in its third year and was showing no signs of slowing. As well as wool and other cargo, the Madagascar had carried consignments of gold from gold traders and banks, totalling over 68,000 ounces, worth at least a quarter of a million pounds at the time.   Today, the missing fortune would be worth nearly half a billion Australian dollars.

    The Madagascar was a 950-ton fully rigged sailing ship commanded by an experienced and highly respected master mariner named Captain Fortescue W. Harris. He had a choice of three routes he could take on his return voyage to London.   Once clear of Port Phillip, he could have turned his vessel west to cross the Great Australian Bight and the Indian Ocean, then round the Cape of Good Hope before turning north up the East African coast towards home.  He could also have turned to port to cross the South Pacific, round Cape Horn, before again turning north through the Atlantic. Or he might have followed Australia’s east coast north, through the Coral Sea, Torres Strait, and on to Singapore, India, the Cape of Good Hope, and home.   Unfortunately, he left no clue as to which route he intended to take.

    The ship was only 15 years old, solidly built, well-maintained, and had made the passage out to Australia in just 87 days without incident. There was no reason to think the ship would not make the routine passage home in a similar time. But after six months had passed with no sign of the ship, people grew anxious, for she was now long overdue.

    In February 1854, a report reached London via the captain of the Jessica in Calla, Chile, that the Madagascar had put into Rio de Janeiro “in a very leaky state, near upon foundering.” It was thought that her passengers and the gold would have been loaded onto another vessel to complete the remainder of their voyage. However, nothing further was heard, and the report ultimately proved to be an unfounded rumour.

    Word that the ship was missing finally reached Melbourne nearly ten months after she had made her departure. Several theories immediately emerged.   Some thought her cargo of wool might have spontaneously combusted and engulfed the ship in fire. Others thought she might have been sunk by a Russian frigate operating in the southern seas. One experienced mariner dismissed both of these theories. He believed it was more likely that she had struck an iceberg in those freezing latitudes of the Southern Ocean.

    There were also fears that her disappearance might have been at the hands of a ruthless gang of bandits.  Three bushrangers had been taken off the Madagascar the day before she departed. They, and their mates, had robbed the McIvor Gold Escort of £10,000 worth of gold, shooting four troopers in the process.  It was widely believed that other dangerous outlaws had left on the missing ship as paying passengers or members of the crew. Once they were far from land, it was argued, they had plundered the ship and sank her, before taking to the boats with their ill-got gains.    Of course, there is no way to prove or disprove if this actually happened.

    Then, a year later, in May 1855, a gentleman in Geelong received a letter from an acquaintance in Cape Town telling him that the missing Madagascar had been found safe and sound. According to the letter writer, she had become trapped in ice while trying to round Cape Horn and had been stranded for some six months in those remote Antarctic waters. No other corroborating news came out of Cape Town or anywhere else, for that matter, and the rumour was dismissed. What’s more, Lloyds had since listed the ship as missing and had paid out on its insurance liability.

    The Madagascar, The Age, 6 APr 1929, p. 7.

    But some people never gave up hope of finding out what happened to the ship and their loved ones. Twenty-seven years after the ship had vanished, the crew of the ketch Rosebud found 15 skeletons on Bountiful Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria. On learning of the discovery, the nephew of one of the Madagascar’s missing passengers begged the Queensland government to find out if the remains might be linked to the missing ship.   An expedition was sent to Bountiful Island, and concluded the skeletons were likely those of Aborigines or Malay fishermen rather than survivors from the Madagascar. The report also noted that the island was some 350 miles (650 km) away from the regular shipping channel through Torres Strait.

    In 1889, the remains of an old ship were discovered off the New Zealand coast. So sure were some Sydney treasure hunters that they raised sufficient money to send an expedition, including an experienced diver, to New Zealand to examine the wreck. Needless to say, they did not come back with the gold or anything else that shed light on the fate of the Madagascar.

    But the most enduring theory as to the loss of the Madagascar centred on it being seized by desperate robbers who made off with the gold and sank the ship. Some stories came with elaborate details, although they were impossible to verify.

    In 1914, a New Zealand newspaper published a story claiming the Madagascar had been lost off the South American coast.  In a recently discovered written statement made to the police in 1867, a sailor named “Bully” Hayes said he had survived the wreck of a treasure ship off Peru.  Hayes claimed the ship was seized and set on fire by a band of robbers who escaped in the boats laden with thousands of pounds of stolen gold.  He had somehow managed to secure a seat on one of the boats, which later struck a reef. The gold was lost, and he was the only survivor.  Though he would not be drawn on the name of the ship, the man who took his statement believed he was referring to the Madagascar.

    Fifteen years later, another tale emerged regarding the missing ship. Supposedly, a clergyman said that years earlier, he had taken a deathbed statement from a woman who claimed to have survived the sinking of the Madagascar. Her story went thus. The Madagascar had been seized by mutineers who had locked everyone below deck, set fire to the ship, and taken to the boats with the gold and several young women, herself included. The boat was swamped by surf as they tried to land somewhere on the South American coast, and the gold was lost.   A handful of mutineers survived only to die of yellow fever on reaching a small town. Only she and one man survived, and he would later abandon her.   Unfortunately, the story makes no mention of her name or the priest who took her final confession, making it impossible to verify.

    After the passage of some 175 years, it seems likely that we will never know what befell the Madagascar.  Perhaps she struck an iceberg in the deep reaches of the Southern Ocean or perished in a powerful storm. Perhaps her cargo of wool did catch fire and she sank. It would not be the first time a ship had succumbed to such a tragedy. Or maybe an attempt was made to seize the gold, which ended with the loss of the ship. But one thing is for sure: piled among what remains of the ship and the final resting place of her passengers and crew, there is nearly half a billion dollars of gold sitting somewhere on the ocean floor.

    © Copyright C.J. Ison / Tales from the Quarterdeck, 2026.

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  • Four Years in Torres Strait: The Extraordinary Tale of Barbara Thompson

    HMS Rattlesnake circa 1848. Courtesy State Library of NSW.

    In 1845, a small cutter quietly slipped out of Moreton Bay, supposedly bound 300 km up the coast to salvage whatever they could from a ship reported to have been wrecked in that vicinity.  The three-ton vessel and her crew were never heard of again, at least not for nearly five years. Then, in late 1849, sailors from HMS Rattlesnake were ashore near the tip of Cape York when they were approached by a white woman seeking their protection.  In halting English, she claimed to be Barbara Thompson, the only survivor from the missing cutter. This is her remarkable story.

    Born in Aberdeen in the late 1820s. Barbara Crawford arrived in New South Wales with her parents as free settlers on the convict transport John Barry. Her father, a tinsmith by trade, had left Scotland to start a new life for himself and his children in Sydney. By 1845, Barbara had left the family home in Pyrmont, married a man named William Thompson and was living in Moreton Bay.

    Around the middle of 1845, it seems William Thompson thought he had found an easy way to make some money. He had learned that a ship filled with whale oil had run aground on Bampton Shoals, over 1,000 km away in the vast expanse of the Coral Sea. Despite having no salvage rights to do so, he decided to search for the ship and take as many barrels of oil as his tiny vessel could carry.

    A year earlier, in June 1844, the American whaler Clarence had run aground at Horseshoe Reef in the Bamptons. Unable to get his off, the captain made the difficult decision to abandon her and make for Moreton Bay in the boats.    Salvage rights to the Clarence and her valuable cargo were sold at auction in Sydney to a man named Cole. He quickly dispatched the schooner Elizabeth, under the command of Captain Riley, to Bampton Shoals to make good on his investment.   Purchasing the salvage rights to any wreck, sight unseen, in such a remote and dangerous part of the world, was always risky. Cole would have to wait to see if his gamble would pay off.

    Background map courtesy National Library of Australia.

    After Captain Riley arrived at the wreck site and carefully examined the damage to the Clarence, he was convinced he could not only retrieve the whale oil, but he could also save the ship and sail it back to Sydney.  So, he loaded the Clarence’s more valuable stores onto his schooner and sailed for home with the good news. He then returned to Bampton Shoals with a couple of shipwrights and the necessary equipment to repair the whaler’s hull and refloat her. However, Riley’s luck took a turn for the worse in January 1845, when a ferocious storm swept the Elizabeth from her moorings and out to sea. Captain Riley and six of his men were now stranded, having taken shelter on the Clarence during the storm. After waiting six weeks for the Elizabeth to return, Riley accepted that his schooner had likely sunk during the storm.  He had the shipwrights prepare their longboat for the hazardous open-ocean voyage to the Australian mainland by raising the freeboard and building a temporary deck. Once work was complete, they set sail for Moreton Bay with just an old hand compass to guide them. The passage would take them 37 gruelling days.

    At Moreton Bay, Captain Riley sold the longboat to William Thompson, who named the three-ton cutter-rigged vessel America. By now, it was mid-1845.   Thompson told people that he intended to salvage the remains of a ship Captain Riley said he had spotted aground on the northern end of Fraser Island (K’Gari).  In reality, Thompson planned to sail to Bampton Shoals and fill his hold with the Clarence’s whale oil before continuing through Torres Strait and on to Port Essington with his spoils.   While Thompson had bought the Elizabeth’s longboat, it’s unlikely he had also bought the salvage rights to the Clarence and her cargo. They would still have belonged to Cole.

    The America set sail from Moreton Bay around August or September 1845.  Joining Thompson were his young wife Barbara and four crew, one of whom was likely a man named Harris who had been on the Elizabeth and said he knew where to find the Clarence.  

    It seems to have been an unhappy vessel.  They were plagued by foul weather, and according to Barbara, there was much “quarrelling on board.”  Two of the crew even drowned during the voyage, though the circumstances remain a mystery.  As it turned out, Harris was unable to find the Clarence or even Bampton Shoals, for that matter. With their provisions almost depleted, Thompson abandoned the search and made for Port Essington via Torres Strait. Somewhere along the way, he put Harris ashore under circumstances that are not entirely clear.  Harris would spend eight months as a castaway somewhere on Cape York before being rescued by a passing ship and taken on to Hong Kong.  

    Meanwhile, Thompson, his wife and one remaining member of the crew cleared the tip of Cape York, but the America struck a reef off the eastern end of Prince of Wales Island (Muralag) during bad weather.  Thompson and the seaman drowned when they tried to swim ashore through the surging seas.   Barbara was left trapped on the cutter until she was rescued by Islanders returning from a turtle hunt after the weather had moderated.

    One of her rescuers, a man named Boroto, claimed Barbara as his wife, something she had no say in. Despite this, she also later claimed she had been well-treated by the Kaurareg. Her place in the community was assured after an elder declared that Barbara was the reincarnated form of his deceased daughter, Giaom. Barbara was renamed Giaom in her honour.

    Giaom, as she was now called, lived with the Kaurareg for the next four years. She learned their language, customs, and way of life. She shared their good times and bad and seems to have been well-liked. That is not to say her life was easy. Life with the Kaurareg would have been challenging for any white person of that era to adapt to. But adapt she did.  

    The only restriction placed on her was that she was barred from communicating with any of the scores of ships that passed through Torres Strait each year. It is quite likely that she always harboured a dream to return to her former life, and a few years later, she got her chance.

    In October 1849, a friend told her that a ship had stopped near the tip of Cape York.  She enlisted the help of several female friends, and they made the crossing to the mainland. She had assured them that she only wanted to meet the white men and shake their hands. Actually, she had already decided to leave the Kaurareg and hoped to do so on that ship. She figured this might be the only chance she had to make it back to Sydney to see her family again. When her husband, Boroto, was told what she was up to, he and several of his mates set off in pursuit.

    HMS Rattlesnake at anchor circa 1850. By Capt. Owen Stanley.

    On 16 October, Barbara Thompson and her friends stumbled on a party of seamen from the British survey ship HMS Rattlesnake.  Barbara was not immediately recognised as a white woman. For though naked but for a fringe of leaves strung around her waist, her skin was so deeply tanned and blistered by long exposure to the tropical sun as to make her indistinguishable from the other Aboriginal women. Barbara was reportedly “wretched in appearance,” and blind in one eye, and it was only when she spoke a few halting words that they realised she was a British subject. “I am a white woman. Why do you leave me?” she pleaded, wanting to be taken back to their ship. She was clearly awkward about her nudity in the company of white men, so the sailors gave her two shirts to cover herself and then took her back to the Rattlesnake.

    It was not long before Boroto was alongside in a canoe demanding that she be returned to him.   Meanwhile, Captain Owen Stanley had listened to her story and told her that the choice to stay or go was hers alone to make.  She chose to remain on the Rattlesnake. Captain Stanely remained at Cape York for several more days, and during that time, many of Barbara’s friends came out to visit her. Even Boroto was allowed on board to speak with his wife. At first, he tried using soft talk and promises to convince her to change her mind and come back home. When that didn’t work, he grew furious and threatened to kill her if she did not do as she was told. Boroto finally stormed off the ship empty-handed.

    While on the Rattlesnake, Barbara AKA Giaom was befriended by the Rattlesnake’s naturalist, John MacGillivray. Barbara proved to be a godsend when it came to understanding the ways of the local peoples. She added several hundred Kaurareg words and their English translations to his dictionary, and she also helped him to understand how Kaurareg grammar worked. She also freely shared her knowledge of the manners, customs, and daily life of her adopted people, giving MacGillivray insights he could never have gained on his own.   MacGillivray’s account of the Rattlesnake’s expedition, Narrative of the Voyage of HMS Rattlesnake, published in 1852, is dotted with references to Giaom’s contributions on the Kaurareg people of Torres Strait.

    Barbara Thompson’s health improved with medical attention and a return to a Western diet. The Rattlesnake arrived back in Sydney in February 1850, where Barbara was reunited with her parents.

    © Copyright C.J. Ison / Tales from the Quarterdeck, 2026.

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