The Loss of the Mandalay: Between a Rock and a Hard Place

    As Captain Emile Tonnessen saw the sheer granite walls of Chatham Island loom into sight, he knew his ship and crew of 12 men were in serious trouble. He had been pushed dangerously close to Western Australia’s southern coast by unrelenting gale-force wind and high seas for the past several days. And now his 913-ton iron barque Mandalay was in imminent danger. His chart showed that, should he escape crashing into Chatham Island, there was still an uninterrupted line of cliffs beyond which he knew he could not avoid

   The Mandalay had sailed from Delagoa Bay (now Maputo), Mozambique, in early April 1911, bound for Albany WA to take on a cargo of Karri logs destined for Buenos Aires, Argentina. It was to be the 68-year-old captain’s final voyage before retiring to spend time with his children and grandchildren, whom he had seen little of during his more than half a century at sea. But for a last-minute change of plan, he would have returned to his home in Norway directly from Southern Africa.

   The voyage was largely uneventful until Saturday, 13 May, when they neared the Western Australia coast in the vicinity of Cape Leeuwin. The weather had rapidly deteriorated. South-westerly winds grew to hurricane strength, and mountainous seas washed over the vessel. All canvas was taken in, and the Mandalay was swept along under bare poles. The ferocious weather continued for two days, pushing the helpless vessel towards the rugged and sparsely populated coast.

   The crew tried everything they could to get control of the ship. But the only sail they could put up was on the fore-top mast. It was insufficient to deviate the ship from the course the storm was relentlessly pushing them. They had no chance of putting out into open water.

   On Monday morning, 15 May, they cleared the kilometre-wide and 90-metre-high granite outcrop that is Chatham Island with only a few hundred metres to spare. Tonnessen later recalled that the waves were so large and powerful they crashed completely over the island as his ship raced past.

   While they had escaped being smashed against the granite slopes of the island, it was clear they would not be so lucky to get past the sheer cliffs of Long Point now lying somewhere ahead through the torrential rain. The captain took the only action he could.

   He would have to sacrifice his ship to give his crew a fighting chance of survival. In all his years seafaring, he had never been shipwrecked, but now he was going to deliberately run his vessel aground. It was no doubt made doubly hard for him, as he was a part-owner of the Mandalay, and he knew her to be underinsured.

   It was now about one o’clock in the afternoon. Tonnessen lined up to run the ship ashore on the only beach he could see, hoping for the best. The crew hoisted as much sail as they could, then donned their cork lifebelts and braced for the impact. About 100 metres from the beach, the bow struck the sand hard. The top main mast came crashing down, and the ship bounced along the seabed as successive waves lifted the ship and pushed it a little closer to shore. Then the Mandalay swung broadside to the ocean swells, and breakers crashed over the deck, sweeping it clean of anything not securely tied down.

   The crew lowered a lifeboat over the lee side, but the seas were too turbulent to safely cross the short distance to land. One of the young seamen, Knut Knutsen, tied a rope to his lifebelt and dived into the sea, intent on getting a line ashore.

   Unfortunately, the rope became entangled around his legs, and he floundered in the chaotic surf. Knutsen was close to drowning when a second sailor, Frank Ward, dived into the maelstrom to rescue him. Ward managed to get his friend to shore, and the two of them anchored their end of the rope. With one end of a line attached to the ship and the other end with Ward and Knutsen on shore, the lifeboat was able to ferry the rest of the men to safety.

   The castaways were able to get sufficient materials ashore to build a shelter using some of the ship’s sails and spars. Unfortunately, they soon discovered that most of the food they salvaged had been contaminated with seawater.  They ate it regardless, figuring it was better than starving.

   They spent several miserable days camped on the beach, hoping they might be rescued. They placed a pole high on a sand dune with a distress signal flying. Several ships were seen passing in the distance, but none deviated from their course. Thonnessen knew it would have been suicide to try to get a boat ashore in the appalling conditions. But he hoped that at least one of the ships had seen the wreck and the fluttering flags and reported the disaster to the port authorities in Albany.

   While Captain Tonnessen and the others remained camped on the beach, the first mate, Lars Gjoem, and two seamen set off on Tuesday, the day after the wreck, with compass and chart to see if they could find their way cross-country to the nearest settlement. Two days later, they returned to the beach cold, wet and exhausted, unable to find a path through the dense bush.

   On Friday, 19 May, the day after the party returned, the second mate, Frederick Fincki, climbed the highest hill behind the beach, and from that vantage point, he thought he could see a route through the maze of broken ground. He briefly returned to the camp to collect a staff and a knife and set off towards what he would later learn was Nornalup Inlet.

   He soon found himself wading through a swamp. But he doggedly pushed on for several hours, praying he would eventually reach dry land. Fincki made it to Nornalup inlet, arriving just as a local settler, Frank Thompson, was returning in his boat with supplies from Albany. Fincki was lucky, for that was a trip Thompson only did once every three months.

   Thompson, picked up Fincki and took him to his home, wondering to himself what would have happened had he not been passing when he did. It was bitterly cold, night was fast approaching, and the young Norwegian had been far from dry land. Thompson thought his chances of surviving would have been poor.

   The following day, Thompson, his son and the second mate returned to the beach to rescue the remaining men. Over the next several days, the shipwrecked sailors were cared for by Thompson and other settlers until they could be delivered to the small settlement of Denmark, located further down the coast. From there they were taken on to Albany, where they caught the train to Perth.

   Frank Thompson was presented with a gold fob watch by a grateful Norwegian Consul. Thompson and the other settlers who came to the crew’s aid earned the undying gratitude of Captain Tonnessen and his men. The Mandalay was never refloated and slowly rusted away on the beach that now bears her name. Its remains are periodically exposed when the conditions are right.

©Copyright C.J. Ison / Tales from the Quarterdeck, 2020.

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