Tales from the Quarterdeck

Category: Australian history

  • BOLTERS: An Unruly Bunch of Malcontents

    Convict crewed boats crossing the bar to unload ships at Norfolk Island. Courtesy National Library of Australia.

    More than 160,000 of Britain’s most unwanted souls were banished to Australia between 1788 and 1868.   These convicts ranged from petty thieves to hardened criminals.   Fraudsters, burglars and pickpockets rubbed shoulders with highway robbers, rapists and murderers in the fetid prison cells of transport ships bound for Australia.    Political prisoners, social reformers and ordinary men and women struggling to feed their families also found themselves trapped in a brutal judicial system determined to rid Britain of its undesirables.  

    The vast majority of these men and women made the best of the hand fate had dealt them.   They earned their freedom and took up land and farmed it, started businesses, married, raised children, and helped found the country we know today.   But this book is not about them.   Library shelves are lined with volumes praising the accomplishments of those worthy and not-so-worthy folk.   Rather, Bolters tells the stories of those unruly malcontents who stepped ashore and thought, “This place is not for me,” and began plotting their escape.  

    Those who tried to abscond and failed, or flout any of the many other rules and regulations governing their lives were often sent to places of “secondary transportation.”   These isolated penal settlements established at Newcastle, Port Macquarie, Moreton Bay and Macquarie Harbour were intentionally harsh.   They were places where floggings were frequent, work was backbreaking, living conditions were wretched and life expectancy was short.     Norfolk Island would later surpass them all for its brutality.  

    Hobart Town convict chain gang. Photo courtesy State Library of Victoria.

    Australia’s penal settlements were gaols without bars.   There was often very little to prevent anyone from taking their leave and hiding out in the bush.    But what could they do then?   The countryside was wildly unfamiliar, and the already dispossessed Aboriginal peoples were often hostile towards anyone encroaching further onto their land.   Despite this, there were several bolters who lived for many years in Aboriginal communities.   Alternatively, runaways could hole up on the outskirts of settlements, preying on whoever presented themselves as easy targets.   These “bushrangers” were the scourge of early administrators in New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land.   The authorities went to great lengths to hunt them down and bring them to justice, often at the end of a rope.   Eking out an existence on society’s fringes was not a viable long-term proposition.   Those truly serious about escaping had to look not towards the country’s interior, but out to sea.    Where townsfolk, farmhands, labourers and the like viewed the expansive ocean with justifiable trepidation, it was seen in a very different light by the many seamen and mariners in the convict ranks.

    A flogging as Illustrated in The Fell Tyrant published in 1836. Courtesy Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW

    Ships had brought them out to the colonies.   They could whisk them away.    Stowing away was the most frequent method of absconding, especially for those without seafaring skills.   A cat-and-mouse game soon developed, with stowaways finding ever more inventive places to hide while the authorities devised new ways of flushing them out.   Rarely did a ship leave Australia during the convict era without someone trying to stow away.

    For men of a more ruthless and violent temperament, seizing control of a ship and sailing to some far-flung port proved an irresistible temptation.    Ships transporting prisoners between settlements were always on alert for trouble, but that did not stop some desperate characters from trying their luck.  Captains of vessels, complacent of port regulations, risked their ships being taken by convicts ever vigilant for lapses in security.   A few enterprising convicts even built their own craft to make their escape.   Few of these endeavours ended well, for the distances to be traversed were vast and the ocean unforgiving to frail and unseaworthy watercraft.  

    Detail from an 1828 watercolour of Hobart by Augustus Earle showing the brig Cyprus (centre), which was seized by convicts en route to Macquarie Harbour. Courtesy State Library of NSW.

    Bolters tells the stories of many of those convicts who chanced their luck to regain their liberty.   The narratives draw heavily on the personal accounts left behind by those determined to escape and official reports written by the men whose job it was to stop them.    In 1791 William and Mary Bryant and a band of runaways made off with Governor Phillip’s cutter and sailed it to Timor in the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia).   To this day it is still recognised as an outstanding feat of seamanship and survival.    It was unfortunate for them that their luck ran out shortly after.   However, Mary and a handful of others reached England and were later pardoned. They proved escape was possible, inspiring many others to follow their lead.    In 1803, William Buckley fled from a short-lived settlement on the shores of Port Phillip Bay.   He was taken in by the local Aboriginal people and remained with them for the next 32 years.   Macquarie Harbour saw many inmates try to escape that god-forsaken place.   No story is more chilling than that of the infamous cannibal Alexander Pearce and the men who fled into the wilderness with him.  

    Sketches of Alexander Pearce made shortly after he was hanged. Artist: Thomas Bock. Courtesy State Library of NSW.

    When a group of determined prisoners captured the Cyprus in 1829, few could have imagined that they would sail the vessel to Japan before scuttling it off the coast of China.  Several men made it back to England before being arrested. Then, five years later, the prisoners entrusted with completing the Frederick at Macquarie Harbour took off for South America rather than deliver her to Port Arthur as supposed.    The book ends with the liberation of six Irish rebels from Fremantle Prison by the American whaler Catalpa in 1876.   This was arguably the most carefully planned and executed escape during the convict era.   Along the way, the book delves into many lesser-known but no less desperate and dramatic attempts to flee Australian shores.

    © Copyright C.J. Ison / Tales from the Quarterdeck, 2024.

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  • The search for the Sydney Cove – 1797

    On the night of 2 October 1797, fourteen convicts stole a boat and made their way down the Paramatta River across Sydney harbour and out through the Heads.  When the men were discovered missing, the authorities sent boats in pursuit, but they returned a few days later, having never caught sight of the runaways.    As a storm had swept the area shortly after they had escaped, it was thought the bolters had died at sea.   However, that was no more than wishful thinking.    Their story is one of desperation, betrayal, and ultimately defeat.

    The runaways’ leaders were John Boroughbridge and Michael Gibson.   They had been labouring away in the back blocks of Paramatta when they convinced 12 other desperate men to join them in an audacious escape.    Their plan was to find the remains of the 250-ton Sydney Cove, a ship that had recently been wrecked somewhere far to the south of Sydney.   Boroughbridge and Gibson were sure they could build a new vessel from the timbers and fittings and make for some distant port far from the clutches of British law.   That the Sydney Cove had been carrying a massive cargo of rum and other alcoholic spirits added to its allure.

    Painting of Sydney, Port Jackson. circa 1804.

    Boroughbridge was serving 14 years for some unspecified crime and had landed in New South Wales only four months earlier and was keen to leave at the first opportunity.  Gibson had already spent five long years there, but with nine more to serve, he was no less eager to put the place behind him.     It seems they had little difficulty finding 12 others willing to join them.

    With nothing more than a small pocket compass and the knowledge that the wreck lay somewhere far to the south, they headed out through Sydney Heads and turned right.    A day or so later, the weather turned nasty, but Boroughbridge and his mates ploughed on.   Twice, their boat was driven ashore, and both times, they were lucky to avoid serious damage.  

    In time, the weather eased, and they continued following the coast and unknowingly strayed into Bass Strait.   In 1797, no one knew that a body of water separated Van Diemen’s Land from the rest of Australia.    All Boroughbridge and the others would have known was that the Sydney Cove was aground on an island somewhere off the coast.   They likely had no accurate idea how far they had come or how much further they had to go.   They certainly could not have known that they needed to cross 200 km of open water to reach the beached ship.   By now, the compass would have shown that they were heading in a south-westerly rather than southerly direction as they doggedly follow the contours of the coast.

    Finally, they ran out of food and fresh water.   In desperation, they put ashore on one of the small islands in the vicinity of Wilson’s Promontory.   There, they found a ready supply of fresh water, while seabirds and seals made easy prey for the starving men.    But, the trying conditions took their toll.   By now, many of the runaways would have gladly returned to Sydney to face any punishment short of death if it meant an end to their suffering.  

    Any sense of common purpose they may have once possessed had since evaporated.   They could not agree on what they should do next.   Should they stick to their original plan and continue searching for the elusive Sydney Cove?   Or should they abandon the search and head back north?   Then, one night, in a callous act of betrayal, Boroughbridge, Gibson and five others quietly set off in the boat, abandoning the rest of the men as they slept. 

    After leaving their comrades to their fate and giving up the search for the Sydney Cove, they returned north again.   Bypassing the entrance to Sydney Harbour, they continued on to the mouth of the Hawkesbury River, where it emptied into Broken Bay.   It cannot have been lost on the weary men that after three or four months on the run, they were now barely a day’s sailing from where they had started.   

    After months at sea, their boat was in such a derelict state that they did not trust it to carry them any further.    The men agreed they would continue sailing north, but to do so, they would have to find another boat.     They did not have long to wait.

    Boroughbridge and his men seized a passing vessel and set a course north. Their plan now was to make for Timor in the Dutch East Indies as William Bryant, his wife Mary and others had done some six years earlier.   News that Mary and some of the other runaways had reached England and been pardoned had only recently reached Sydney offering hope for anyone contemplating following in their wake.   

    Nothing more was heard of them for another couple of months.  Then, in late March 1798, they returned to Broken Bay and hailed down a passing boat.  Boroughbridge handed a letter to the boatswain asking him to deliver it to the NSW Governor.   The letter, signed by Boroughbridge, Gibson and three remaining runaways, claimed they wished to give themselves up and begged for clemency.   They wrote that they had sailed about 400 nautical miles (750 km) north, which would have put them on either Stradbroke or Moreton Island.   Then, they claimed, disaster struck.    When they tried to run ashore, their boat was caught in the surf and driven hard onto the beach, where it broke apart with the pounding of successive waves.   They were stranded on an inhospitable stretch of coast.   But all was not lost.   They were able to salvage enough timber from the wreckage to build a smaller craft and put back out to sea.   However, by now, they had all had enough of life on the run.  They decided that rather than continue sailing north, they would return to Sydney and beg for mercy. 

    Their plea for mercy fell on deaf ears, for the Governor had learned that Boroughbridge and the rest of the men seeking clemency had callously abandoned half their mates to die on the island in Bass Strait.   In an unlikely turn of events, they had been found by George Bass while he was endeavouring to prove the existence of the body of water which now bears his name.   Unable to carry all seven back to Sydney on his small boat, he ferried five across to the mainland, gave them a compass, a musket and as much food as he could spare and told them to follow the coast north to Sydney.   They were never heard of again.   Two men, too weak to walk, remained with Bass.   He returned to Sydney on 25 February and handed the pair to the authorities and they reported what had befallen them.     

    In April, Boroughbridge and the four remaining runaways were returned to Sydney, where they were tried for piracy and found guilty.   Jonathon Boroughbridge and Michael Gibson were hanged, while their three companions were only given clemency at the last minute as they stood before the gallows contemplating their final moments of life.

    © Copyright C.J. Ison / Tales from the Quarterdeck, 2024.

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  • The Nelson Gold Heist – 1852

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

       In the early hours of Friday, 2nd April 1852, a band of villains climbed aboard the barque Nelson while moored in Melbourne’s Hobsons Bay and made off with over 8,000 ounces of pure gold, worth tens of millions of dollars in today’s money. The heist was as simple as it was audacious and ranks among the largest robberies in Australian history. Most of the thieves never saw the inside of prison, and only a fraction of the gold was ever recovered.

       The 603-ton barque Nelson had sailed from London on 4 July 1851, around the same time that prospectors discovered a vast quantity of alluvial gold near Mount Alexander. The barque dropped anchor in Hobsons Bay on 11 October, only for its captain, Walter Wright, to learn Victoria was in the midst of a gold rush.

       The Nelson disembarked its passengers and unloaded merchandise at Williamstown, then sailed across to nearby Geelong. There, the crew deserted the ship and headed off to the gold fields to try their luck, leaving just the captain and first mate behind. Over the next couple of months, the Nelson’s hold was filled with bales of wool, casks of tallow, and, most importantly to this story, 11 boxes of gold totalling 2083 ounces, all bound for London. By March 1852, the barque was once again anchored off Melbourne in Hobsons Bay, ready to return home as soon as enough men could be found to crew her.

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

       On Thursday night, 1 April, the Nelson was still anchored a short distance off the Point Gellibrand Lighthouse, along with scores of other ships stranded for lack of crew. Captain Wright was ashore for the night, leaving his chief mate, Henry Draper, in charge. With him were the second mate Carr Dudley, an officer from a neighbouring ship, plus a handful of seamen they had managed to recruit.

       Despite a fortune in gold being on board, no watch had been posted. The crew had refused Draper’s order to stand guard through the night, saying there were too few of them to do so, and besides, they had not signed on as night watchmen. All Draper could do was lock the boxes of gold in the lazarette, (a storeroom of sorts) for safekeeping. By now, the number of boxes had grown to over twenty as the captain continued to accept new consignments.

       Henry Draper, Carr Dudley, and two officers from nearby ships spent the evening playing cards and drinking. Then, sometime around 11 p.m., the card game wrapped up, and one of the visiting officers returned to his ship. Draper and Dudley tottered off to their cabin, leaving William Davis, the Royal George’s second mate, to sleep off the evening’s entertainment on the cabin’s lounge. Meanwhile, the rest of the crew had long since retired to their berths in the forecastle.

       Around two hours later, two boats carrying 22 men rowed up to the Nelson, the sound oftheir oars muffled by blankets to mask their approach. They pulled alongside, and a dozen of them, armed with pistols and swords, climbed onto the deck.

       Some went forward and secured the crew in the forecastle while the rest poured into the main cabin aft. As they swarmed onto the deck, Carr Dudley woke Draper up to tell him he thought he could hear movement above. Draper went on deck to investigate and was confronted by several well-armed men, all dressed in black with hats pulled low over their heads and handkerchiefs covering the lower portions of their faces.   

    “We’ve come for the gold,” the ringleader told Draper, “And the gold we’ll bloody well have.” Draper had gone on deck dressed only in his nightshirt and asked if he could return to his cabin to put on a pair of trousers. While he was fumbling to get dressed, a robber, still pointing a pistol at him, warned, “We’ve not come here to be played with, so make haste. ”Draper and Dudley were forced into the main cabin to join Davis, who had been rudely awoken with a gun pointed at his head. They were eventually joined by the rest of the crew brought aft from the forecastle.

    The Sun, 30 May 1948, p. 3.

       Draper was forced to unlock the lazarette, and the thieves helped themselves to 23 cedar boxes containing over 200 kilograms of gold. During the proceedings, one of the robbers’ pistols accidentally discharged, and the bullet grazed Draper’s thigh. Once the gold was loaded onto the boats, the slightly wounded Draper and the rest of the crew were locked in the lazarette. The robbers then hopped in their boats and were rowed back to shore.

       Draper and the others would have remained imprisoned in the lazarette until well into the day had they not had a minor stroke of luck. The cook had been woken by the noise of the thieves climbing on deck, and he had hidden in a dark recess under his bunk, remaining undiscovered during the robbery. He resurfaced once he saw that the robbers had left and went aft to find his shipmates locked in the lazarette. Once released, Draper wasted no time reporting the heist to the Williamstown water police office.

       Boats were sent out to scour Hobson’s Bay, but they were too late. The robbers had got away. Shortly after daylight, the water police found one of the whaleboats pulled up on the beach at Williamstown and the other across the bay near Sandridge (present day South Melbourne). Tracks were seen leading off the beach where the boat had been abandoned.   

    The police were galvanised into action. Mounted officers and constables fanned out across Melbourne looking for the robbers and the missing gold. The robbery was a severe embarrassment to the police and the colonial government, and both were widely condemned in the newspapers when it became public. The Governor offered a £250 reward, and that was matched pound for pound by the Nelson’s shipping agents.

    The Argus 3 Apr 1852, p. 5.

       The empty gold boxes were discovered by an employee of the Argus newspaper a few days later, hidden in scrubland not far from the beach at Sandridge, but most of the gold was long gone. Only some slight traces of gold dust could be seen mixed in the sand where the boxes had been busted open. Over the next several days, police rounded up anyone who looked remotely suspicious, and the watchhouses were filled to bursting.

       The police finally got a lucky break when a band of men turned up at a hotel in Geelong late one night wanting a room. They were dressed far beyond their station in life and spent their money freely. The publican alerted the Geelong police, and they were arrested a couple of days later. These seven men were detained while the police searched for evidence of their involvement in the Nelson robbery. Two more men were captured in Portland on Victoria’s western coast. Most of the individual suspects were found to possess more than £500, five times the average yearly wage at the time.

       Of these nine men, only three were found guilty of the robbery and sentenced to long terms in prison. The most compelling evidence against them was that they had been recognised by Henry Draper, or the Royal George’s second mate, William Davis. Drape and Davis claimed they recognised the robbers because their handkerchiefs had slipped down, revealing their faces. Draper and Davis also claimed they recognised two other men who likely had nothing to do with the robbery. One had a slew of witnesses testify at his trial that he had been on the gold fields at the time, but the jury did not believe them. However, he was quietly released a couple of months later when it was clear he and his witnesses had been telling the truth. The other hapless soul spent many years at hard labour for a crime he never committed.

       For years, rumours circulated around Melbourne about who might have been involved. Ongoing interest was fuelled by the fact that most of the gold was never recovered. But it remained a baffling mystery.

       Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald 30 years later, Marcus Clarke pondered some of the many rumours associated with the heist. It was often said that a gentleman of standing in Melbourne society had masterminded the robbery and paid thugs to steal the gold on his behalf. It was also rumoured that several prominent men about town had benefited financially from the robbery. Yet another rumour had it that a notorious publican had fenced the gold and then left the colony a very wealthy man. Clarke finally concluded that after the passing of so many years, the whole story would never be known.

       But was he right? Since first writing this blog post in April 2024, I have unearthed some tantalising clues that point to the identity of the brazen thieves. But more about that some other time.

    © Copyright C.J. Ison / Tales from the Quarterdeck, 2024.

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  • The Short Life of the SS Bessemer – 1875.

    The Bessemer. The Penny Illustrated Paper, 10 Apr 1875, p. 1.

    One September afternoon in 1874, Miss Bessie Wright cracked a bottle of champagne across the bow of a new steamer and sent it gliding into the Humber River.   Thus, one of the strangest vessels ever to come off a naval architect’s drawing board was launched.

    S.S. Bessemer Saloon Steamship was the brainchild of little Bessie’s grandfather, Sir Henry Bessemer.   He had found investors who stumped up some £250,000 to make his vision a reality.   The resulting paddle steamer measuring 350 ft (106.6m) at the waterline and had four paddle wheels, two on the port side and two starboard.   The fore and aft were identical, and there were two bridges and two helms meaning she could travel as quickly in either direction at an anticipated top speed of 20 miles per hour.    But what set the Bessemer apart from any other steamer was her swinging saloon.  

    Positioned in the middle of the ship was a 70 ft (21m) cabin, which would remain stable regardless of the pitch and roll of the rest of the vessel.   The gyroscopic apparatus powered by a dedicated steam turbine had been designed and patented by Henry Bessemer himself.   This complex piece of engineering was to ensure that the steamers’ first-class passengers were spared the indignity of mal de mer or seasickness in all but the roughest of sea conditions.   Second-class passengers were not so well catered for.  They would occupy a separate, more conventional cabin mounted upon the ship’s superstructure.  

    Sir Henry Bessemer.

    The Bessemer was purpose-built to negotiate the lumpy waters of the English Channel.   She would travel between Dover and Calais, and at her top speed, it would take just one hour to cross the 20-nautical mile gap.  Henry Bessemer was convinced that the first-class passengers would disembark as hail and hearty as they had boarded his modern marvel.    Nonetheless, the designers had thought to include two “retiring rooms” for ladies and gentlemen to “withdraw from the public gaze,” should anyone still feel the ill effects of the sea.

    Not surprisingly, the novel design attracted its fair share of sceptics.   Some naval architects felt the gyroscopic apparatus would do little to stop the saloon from pitching and rolling in rough seas.   Their main concern was that the mechanism would be unable to respond fast enough to the sea to ensure the saloon maintained its equilibrium.

    After the Bessemer had been launched it was moored in the Hull Roads while her plush interior was fitted out.   A Daily News reporter would later describe the Bressemer’s saloon akin to a “superbly furnished floating clubhouse.”   The steamer was furnished with a large smoking saloon, several staterooms on the upper deck, refreshment bars, an office for small parcels, umbrella and cloakrooms, and “delightful promenades high above the reach of ocean spray.”

    Deck of the Besser Saloon steamship. The Illustrated London News, 27 Mar 1875, p. 293

    The only hiccup while the steamer was being fitted out was when she dragged her anchors during a mighty gale that battered much of the UK on 21 October.   The Bessemer was driven onto a mudflat on the northern bank of the Humber River, but she was easily floated off at high tide on that same day.  

    By late January 1875, the Bessemer had completed her first set of sea trials on the Humber.   She reportedly steered well and reached a top speed of 18 knots (33 km/h).   Her gyroscopic apparatus was said to have performed splendidly, but that assertion would soon be brought into question.   

    In March, the Bessemer made the voyage from Hull to Gravesend on the Thames in 24 hours while steaming into a strong headwind. There, she underwent more sea trials, and on 12 April, the Bessemer Saloon Steamship made her much-anticipated first crossing to Calais. As the steamer had yet to receive her passenger certification from the Board of Trade, the only people on board were the crew and a handful of men connected with the company.

    The Bessemer. The Penny Illustrated Paper, 3 Oct 1874, p. 13.

    She left Gravesend at 8.30 on Saturday morning and made her way down the Thames and out into the English Channel.   There, she was buffeted by a strong easterly wind and heavy seas.   Despite the inclement weather, the passage was reported to have been “remarkably steady”, and there had been no opportunity to test the ship’s swinging saloon.   She averaged 11 knots (20km/h) for the 75 nm (145 km) passage and arrived in that French port at 3.30 in the afternoon.   There, a great many of Calais’ residents gathered on the pier to witness the arrival of the unique ship.   Unfortunately, as she was docking, one of her paddles was damaged when it struck the pier.  

    Finally, the big day arrived on 12 April 1875.   The Bessemer steamed out of Dover with 350 invited guests onboard anticipating being the first to see the swinging saloon in action.  Several members of the press were among them, no doubt there to extol the virtues of the fine new vessel.  However, the Observer’s correspondent, for one, was clearly underwhelmed by the experience.    

    He reported that the screws fastening the moveable saloon were never loosened, which would have allowed the passengers to witness for themselves the effect of Henry Bessemer’s invention.   Several reasons were put forward for why the gyroscopic apparatus was not employed, but the reporter wrote that he had been reliably informed that the equipment simply did not work.   It could shift the saloon from side to side, but it was not up to the task of “regulating the rise and fall of the saloon with sufficient precision to secure stable equilibrium.”

    S.S. Bessemer. By Henry Spernon Tozer – The Illustrated London News,

    To cap off the 90-minute non-event, the Bessemer entered Calais’s harbour far too quickly to manoeuvrer safely around the small, enclosed port.      The collision with the pier on her last visit to Calais had been attributed to the Bessemer’s poor response to her helm when travelling at low speed.   This time, the captain came in a little faster.   However, the steamer was caught in a tidal current and spun around.   The Bessemer struck the pier with considerable force but sustained little damage to itself.

    However, the same could not be said for the wharf.   “When at last the Bessemer was stopped, some 50 or 60 yards of the pier were knocked down like nine-pins in a skittle alley, and the water of the harbour was covered with broken planks and beams.”

    “The Bessemer is too long a vessel for Calais harbour,” the reporter opined, “there must always be a certain amount of risk in her entering so narrow a port with the velocity required to carry her across the bars.”   A month later, the Calais Municipality sent the Saloon Ship Company a bill for £2,800 to cover the cost of repairing the pier.

    The Bessemer saloon ship running foul of Calais Pier. The Illustrated London News, 15 May 1875, p. 20.

    That was the Bessemer’s final voyage but for her return to England.   The investors cut their losses, and the company was wound up.   The engines, the swinging saloon and other fittings were removed, and by the end of the following year, the remainder of the ship was sold off as scrap.   So ended the short but lively career of the Bessemer Saloon Steamship.

    © Copyright C.J. Ison / Tales from the Quarterdeck, 2024.

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  • The Foundering of the S.S. Alert – 1893

    Foundering of the SS Alert. Source: The Queenslander 13 Jan 1894, p. 71.

       On Friday, 29 December 1893, around 11 o’clock in the morning, two ladies were strolling along Sorrento Ocean Beach on the Mornington Peninsula when they discovered an unconscious man washed up on the sand. He would prove to be the sole survivor of the steamer Alert, which sank during foul weather.

       The SS Alert had left Bairnsdale on Victoria’s southeast coast at 4 p.m. two days earlier, bound for Port Albert and Melbourne. But a little more than 24 hours later, she would be lying at the bottom of Bass Strait off Jubilee Point.

       The Alert was a 16-year-old 243-ton iron screw steamer owned by Huddart and Parker. She had recently been refurbished and, for the past two months, had been carrying passengers and cargo between Gippsland and Melbourne. Prior to that, the Alert had been a favourite of the excursion fleet, which ferried passengers between Melbourne and Geelong.

       From the moment the little steamer cleared the Gippsland Lakes, she felt the full fury of a storm lashing the Victorian coast. Nonetheless, Captain Albert Mathieson thought the sea conditions were nothing his ship could not handle. They stopped briefly at Port Albert, 150 kilometres down the coast, to deliver some cargo and then continued on towards the entrance to Port Phillip Bay and respite from the atrocious weather.

    S.S. Alert. Source: Leader, 6 Jan 1894, p. 30.

       By 4 p.m. Thursday, they were off Cape Schanck, just 30 kilometres short of Port Phillip Bay. Owing to the trying conditions, Captain Mathieson had remained on the bridge the entire trip. Such were the conditions that it required two men at the helm to keep the steamer pointed on its course. Then disaster struck.

       About half an hour later, the Alert was struck by a massive rogue wave that swamped the deck with tons of water and pushed the steamer over onto her side. Then, they were hit by a second large wave before the water from the first had time to drain away. The saloon skylight and a porthole window were smashed, and the sea poured in. The helm was unresponsive by now, and the ship’s lee rail was pushed underwater. Another wave swept over the bridge as seawater snuffed out the struggling steamer’s engine fires.

       The captain ordered everyone to don their lifebelts as he vainly tried to head the stricken steamer into the wind, but to no avail. He ordered the lifeboats to be lowered, but one had already been swept off its davits, and the other had seas continuously sweeping over it. There was nothing anyone could do now.

    The Herald, 30 Dec 1893, p. 2.

       Robert Ponting, the ship’s cook, joined the rest of the crew on deck, and minutes later, the Alert went to the bottom. Ponting climbed onto a hatch cover, but in the turbulent seas, it kept turning over and flipping him into the water. He eventually lost hold of it altogether and began swimming. He spotted the ship’s steward nearby and kept pace with him. Ponting and the steward remained together until the poor fellow could no longer keep his head above water and drowned. Around this time, Ponting spotted Captain Mathieson swimming strongly, but lost sight of him again shortly after.   

    Ponting spent the night swimming about in the cold Bass Strait waters within view of the Cape Schanck Lighthouse. The cold water chilled him to the bone, and he eventually passed out. He continued drifting with the current, slowly pushing him towards land. Then, around daybreak, he felt himself being tumbled ashore and used the last of his strength to drag himself away from the pull of the surf. He had spent over 12 hours in the water and would spend another five or six hours passed out on the beach.

    Robert Ponting. Source. Weekly Times (Melb), 6 Jan 1894, p. 19..

       When, around 11 o’clock, he came too, he found he was surrounded by a group of ladies and a gentleman who had been walking along the beach. The first ladies to discover the unconscious man had called on the others to come to Ponting’s aid. Among his saviours was Douglas Ramsay, a doctor on holiday from his practice in Elsternwick. At first, Ramsay thought that Ponting was dead. He had tried to find a pulse but could not. and “his eyes were shut and all sanded over, his nostrils were also clogged with sand, and his body was stiff and cold,” he later recalled. The doctor didn’t give up, though. He opened Ponting’s mouth and poured some drops of brandy down his throat while vigorously working his arms “to restore animation.” After about ten minutes of this bizarre medical attention, Ponting began to show signs of life.

       Ramsay then dragged him behind a rock to shelter him from the cold wind and one of the ladies removed her jacket and wrapped it around his frozen feet. A couple of the other ladies began the long walk back to their carriage and headed to Sorrento for assistance. Meanwhile, Dr Ramsay continued with his ministrations. While they were waiting for help to arrive, another man happened on the scene while walking his giant St Bernard dog. He had his huge canine nestle up against Ponting for warmth. That, and a steady administration of medicinal brandy, brought some colour back to Ponting’s cheeks.   

    After a while, he was able to tell his rescuers his name and what had befallen him. He also asked that someone send his wife a telegram to tell her he was alive. He did not want her to think he had perished with everyone else when news of the shipwreck broke. Eventually, he was taken to the Mornington Hotel in Sorrento, where a couple of local doctors cared for him. As apparently was best practice in such cases during the late 1800s, the good doctors rubbed his entire body with mustard and poured hot brandy down his throat. In response – or perhaps despite it – Ponting made a full recovery.

    The Argus, 30 Dec 1893, p. 7.

       Over the next couple of days, several bodies and much wreckage washed up on Mornington Peninsula’s rugged ocean beaches. In all, 14 men lost their lives: 11 crew and three passengers. Robert Ponting was the only one to survive the catastrophe.

       A marine board inquiry concluded that the Alert had insufficient ballast for the prevailing sea conditions, which had made her ride higher in the water and less stable on her final voyage. The board also felt that Captain Mathieson should have found shelter in Western Port rather than continue down the coast to Port Phillip Bay. It chose not to give an opinion on the captain’s handling of the vessel in its final minutes due to insufficient evidence.

    © Copyright C.J. Ison / Tales from the Quarterdeck, 2024.

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