Tales from the Quarterdeck

Category: #Maritime History

  • Marooned for twenty months: the loss of the Grafton 1863.

    The last of the Grafton castaways are rescued. Source: Wrecked on a Reef, Raynal, 1874..

    On 12 November 1863, the 56-ton schooner Grafton sailed from Sydney on a sealing expedition among the islands of the Southern Ocean. Six months, 12 months, then 18 months passed without any sighting of the ship or its crew. Most people had given up hope of seeing them again, presuming they had been lost in that vast expanse of freezing ocean wilderness to Australia’s south. Then, on 27 July 1865, three of the lost mariners stepped ashore at Invercargill, New Zealand. Their leader was the missing ship’s captain, and he reported that his other two shipmates were still stranded on a remote island to the south. This is their remarkable tale of endurance and survival against the odds.

       The Grafton was ostensibly on a sealing expedition funded by a consortium of Sydney businessmen. But it also had a more secretive mission to investigate if tin could be found on Campbell Island. The Grafton was to visit the isolated scrap of land some 650 km south of New Zealand and determine if the rumoured tin was there in mineable quantity. An experienced master mariner named Thomas Musgrave was appointed captain of the Grafton, and one of the business partners, Francois Raynal, served as his first mate. Two seamen and a cook rounded out the five-mancrew.

       The weather was atrocious for most of the voyage south through the roaring forties and then into the furious fifties. During one particularly heavy gale, the Grafton was laid over on her side by the force of the wind. But after three weeks of hard sailing, they finally reached Campbell Island, at latitude 52.6°S.  

    Illustration of the Loss of the Grafton on Auckland Island, 1863. Source: Wrecked on a Reef, Raynal, 1874.

       Prospecting for tin came to nothing, and there were few seals to be had. After a month, they had little to show for their time there. They had been gone for almost two months and had consumed nearly half of the four months’ worth of rations they had left with. Captain Musgrave decided it was time to start heading for home. No one disagreed. They departed Campbell Island on 27 December 1863 with the wind blowing hard from the northwest. As they approached the Auckland Islands, Musgrave found that he could not sail past them without getting dangerously close to land. He decided the safest course of action would be to find shelter in one of the inlets and wait for the wind to shift. They dropped anchor in what they would later learn was Carnley Harbour on 31 December. But soon after arriving, their haven turned out to be anything but when it was lashed by a powerful storm. On the night of January 2, the wind shifted and blew at hurricane strength, as the seas foamed and grew mountainous around them.  

    Site of the Grafton wreck site, Auckland Island. Courtesy, Google Maps.

        For a time, the Grafton rode out the maelstrom. Then one anchor chain snapped, and the second anchor began to drag. At midnight, the schooner was driven up onto a rocky beach. “Within fifteen minutes, she was nearly full of water, with heavy sea breaking over her,” Musgrave later wrote of the ordeal.   

    The crew gathered provisions and warm clothing and piled it all on deck. Then everyone found shelter where they could, and waited for daylight as the storm raged around them. Francois Raynal had fallen ill sometime earlier, but his shipmates looked out for him during that bleak night. In the morning, they climbed into their small dinghy, which was already filled with supplies. Captain Musgrave tied a rope to the Grafton and slowly let it run out as the overloaded dinghy was pushed towards land. When they were close to the beach, one of the seamen, Alexander McLaren, jumped into the surf holding a rope tied off to the boat’s bow. He waded ashore and then wrapped the rope around a tree. As Musgrave let his line out, McLaren pulled his in, and the boat made it through the surf to land safely on the beach. It was that level of simple cooperating that would stand them in good stead during the months that followed.

    Captain Thomas Musgrave. Source: Castaway on the Auckland Islands, 1866.

        The castaways spent that night sleeping on the cold, wet ground, but were no doubt grateful that they had made it off the wrecked schooner alive. As for the Grafton, she was pounded to pieces, with no prospect of being repaired and refloated. After the weather had cleared sufficiently, they returned to the wreck. Their priority was to salvage the sails and timber spars, enough to build a small hut so they had shelter from the harsh elements. Despite being marooned on a remote island, Captain Musgrave and the others believed it would only be a matter of time before a ship passed by and they would be rescued.

       But as the months rolled by, their hopes of being found ebbed away and finally vanished completely. The small amount of water-damaged sea biscuit and salted pork they had saved from the schooner had run out long ago. Then, for the next 18 months, they survived on a diet comprised mainly of seal meat. Raynal, who over time recovered his strength, was able to brew a passable ale, which he believed would help keep scurvy at bay.

    Inside the hut on Auckland Island. Source: Wrecked on a Reef, Raynal, 1874.

         The castaways strengthened their hut, built a fireplace and chimney, and furnished it with stretchers, a table, and stools. Lanterns fuelled with seal oil gave the interior a warm, comforting glow. When not out procuring food and water or keeping vigil for any ship that might pass by, Musgrave taught his illiterate sailors how to read. The castaways also passed their time playing chess and dominoes with bone pieces Raynal had carved by hand. They also played cards for a time, but Raynal eventually destroyed the pack when it became evident that Musgrave was a poor loser. As their clothes deteriorated, they were replaced with seal-skin garments. In short, they made their home as comfortable as circumstances would allow.   

    After spending a second summer on Auckland Island without ever seeing another soul, the castaways decided to wait no longer to be rescued. It was now around March 1865, and another freezing winter was fast approaching. They considered constructing a new vessel from the Grafton’s wreckage, and they even built a forge to assist them. However, the venture was abandoned for want of an auger to drill holes through the timbers. Instead, they turned to making their twelve-foot (3.6 metre) dinghy more seaworthy. They extended its length by 76 cm, built up the sides and furnished it with a deck. When it was finished, Musgrave found it was so unstable that it would have been too dangerous to call all five of them to safety.

     

    Preparing the dinghy to escape from Auckland Island. Source: Wrecked on a Reef, Raynal, 1874.

       On 19 July 1865, Captain Musgrave set off in the dinghy with only two men, Francois Raynal and Alexander McLaren, promising to return quickly to rescue George Harris and the cook, Henry Brown. After five days of hard sailing through foul weather, they reached Stewart Island, 450 kilometres to their north. They put into Port Adventure and fell in with the Flying Scud. The next morning, Musgrave and his mates were taken the final 50 km across Foveaux Strait to Invercargill on New Zealand’s South Island.   

    After sufficient funds were raised by the good folk of Invercargill, a ship was chartered to take Captain Musgrave back to Auckland Island to retrieve his two shipmates. The Grafton’s story is a testament to what can be accomplished when a group of resourceful individuals, aided by a measure of good fortune, work together for their common good.

    As chance would have it, the survivors of another ship, the Invercauld, had washed up on the northern end of Auckland Island around the same time.   Unfortunately, theirs is a far different story and is the subject of a future blog.

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

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  • William Dampier: Navigator, naturalist, writer, pirate.

    Life and adventures of William Dampier. Source: Tales of Shipwrecks and Adventures at Sea, 1856.

    William Dampier visited Australian shores twice in the 17th Century. The first time was when he served on the Cygnet in 1688, and the second, 11 years later, when he commanded HMS Roebuck. Dampier was the first Englishman to describe the land, its fauna, flora and people to a European audience. While his contribution to Australia’s history is relatively minor, his story is nonetheless a fascinating look into the golden age of exploration. Navigator, naturalist, writer, and pirate are all words that describe aspects of Dampier’s colourful life.

       Born in Somerset in 1651, William was the son of a tenant farmer. He does not appear to have had any interest in following in his father’s footsteps. Instead, when he turned 17, he went to sea and began his apprenticeship as a mariner. He joined the Royal Navy around 1673 and saw action during the Third Anglo-Dutch War. When hostilities ceased, he left the navy and travelled to the West Indies. Then, when war broke out between England and Spain, he became a privateer, which could best be described as a state-sanctioned pirate. In 1678, now aged 27, he returned to England and married his fiancée. However, he would spend just one year with her before he put to sea again.   

    This time, he would be gone 12 long years. After hunting down Spanish ships off Central America, he joined another privateer and crossed the Pacific Ocean in search of plunder. He visited ports in the Philippines, China and Southeast Asia. Then, in January 1688, he was on the Cygnet when it stopped on Australia’s northwest coast. The ship had pulled in for repairs at King Sound north of present-day Broome and would remain there for a couple of months. Dampier spent his time documenting the unusual fauna and flora. He also wrote at some length about his observations on how the indigenous people lived, but not in particularly flattering terms. To his Eurocentric eye, they existed in appalling conditions, and he thought them to be the most miserable people he had ever encountered.

    A map of the world showing the course of Mr Dampiers voyage round it: From 1679 to 1791. By Herman Moll.

       In 1691, Dampier joined a very exclusive club of men who had circled the globe when he returned to England via the Cape of Good Hope. His various exploits and adventures became the subject of his hugely successful book, “A New Voyage Round the World,” published in 1697. Through his book, Dampier came to the attention of both the Royal Society and the Admiralty. They commissioned him to chart the east coast of New Holland, some 70 years before James Cook would eventually do so. Had Dampier succeeded, he may well have changed the trajectory of modern Australian history. However, as will soon become evident, circumstances would conspire against him.  

    HMS Roebuck sailed from England on 14 January 1699 with a crew of 50 and provisions to last them 20 months. Dampier originally planned to sail around Cape Horn and then cross the Pacific Ocean until he reached Australia’s east coast. However, his ship was long past its glory days, and its refit for this hazardous voyage had taken far longer than anticipated. By the time he reached the southern tip of South America, it was winter, the worst time to try rounding Cape Horn. Instead, he decided to cross the South Atlantic and round the Cape of Good Hope. He would then cross the Indian Ocean to New Holland’s west coast and begin his survey there.

    HMS Roebuck.

    They made landfall near Dirk Hartog Island in early August 1699.   On 7 August, he sailed past Cape Peron and into Shark Bay, where he spent a week exploring.   Dampier named it for the abundance of sharks he found in those shallow, enclosed waters. He made a detailed chart of the bay and described many of the fish, birds and plants he saw there. Though fish, fowl, and turtles were easily procured and made a welcome addition to the men’s diet, they were unable to find a supply of fresh water. On 14 August, Dampier left Shark Bay by the same passage he entered after encountering shoals and dangerously shallow water between Dorre and Bernier Islands and the mainland.

    A Pied Oyster Catcher. Source: A Voyage to New Holland, in the year 1699.

    They continued north along the coast for another 750 kilometres until they arrived at a small group of islands, now known as the Dampier Archipelago. Freshwater remained elusive, so they continued sailing north until they were at latitude 18° 21’ south, about 60 to 70 km south of present-day Broome. Again, they went in search of water. And, again, they returned empty-handed. Only this time, an encounter with the local inhabitants ended in violence. One of Dampier’s men was speared through his cheek while a Karajarri man was wounded by musket fire. In early September, Dampier resigned himself to temporarily abandoning New Holland and made for Timor to resupply.   

    From Timor, Dampier continued sailing northeast and charted the northern coast of New Guinea. By now, the Roebuck was in such poor shape that he abandoned his plan to locate New Holland’s east coast and turned back towards England. He stopped briefly at Batavia, then crossed the Indian Ocean, rounded the southern tip of Africa, and sailed north through the Atlantic. In February 1701, they reached Ascension Island, but HMS Roebuck would go no further. Her planking was riddled with seaworms. And she was taking on a lot of water. Dampier had to run her ashore to stop her from foundering in deep water. He and his crew would remain stranded there for five weeks until a passing East Indiaman rescued them. Dampier and his men returned to England in August 1701.

    1966 Australian postage stamp commemorating William Dampier.

    William Dampier was court-martialled on his return to England on a charge of ill-treating his first mate on the voyage out. Found guilty, he was stripped of the money the Admiralty owed him, and he was ruled unfit to command any of His Majesty’s ships in the future. Undeterred by the setback, he published a book about his most recent exploits and would go on to circumnavigate the world twice more. When Dampier died in London around 1715, he was the only person to have circled the globe three times.

    Sun sets over Flinders and Stanley Islands in Bathurst Bay with a fishing boat in the forground at Cape Melville on Cape York Peninsular, Far North Queensland. Photo Chris Ison / Wildshot Images.

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

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  • HMS Pandora: Queensland’s earliest recorded shipwreck – 1791

    H.M.S. Pandora in the act of foundering’ . An etching by Lt-Col. Batty after a sketch by Peter Heywood from ‘The Mutiny and Piratical Seizure of H.M.S Bounty’ first edition 1831. Photo courtesy SLQ.

    In August 1791, HMS Pandora was returning to England, having tracked down and captured 14 of the Bounty mutineers in Tahiti. But disaster struck on the night of the 29th, as the Pandora was trying to find a way through the Great Barrier Reef. The ship’s surgeon, George Hamilton, left a nerve-wracking account of the incident in his memoir, “A Voyage Round the World in His Majesty’s Frigate Pandora”, published in 1793 after his return to England.

       Hamilton wrote that on the night of 29 August, a boat sent earlier in the day by the Pandora’s captain, Edward Edwards, to scout for a passage through the maze of reefs had finally returned to the ship. As the crew was hauling it out of the water, the 24-gun frigate unexpectedly struck a submerged coral reef. Captain Edwards immediately ordered the crew to set the sails as he tried to back off the outcrop, hoping to use wind power alone. When that failed to dislodge his ship, he ordered a boat to be made ready to take an anchor out so he might kedge the vessel off. But by the time the anchor was in place and the crew ready to winch, it was already too late.

       The carpenter had examined the hold and found that the Pandora’s hull had sprung a serious leak. In the 20 minutes they had been aground, the water had risen to nine feet (2.7 m). All hands were immediately engaged in efforts to save the ship from sinking. Sailors began bailing at each of the hatchways, and several of the Bounty mutineers were unshackled to help man the bilge pumps.

    Map showing HMS Pandora wreck location (approx).

       “It blew very violently, and she beat so hard upon the rocks, that we expected her, every minute, to go to pieces,” Hamilton recalled. “It was an exceedingly dark, stormy night, and the gloomy horrors of death presented us all around, being everywhere encompassed with rocks, shoals, and broken water. About ten [o’clock] she beat over the reef, and we let go the anchor in fifteen fathoms of water.

       Not yet ready to give up on his ship, Captain Edwards ordered the guns thrown overboard and, at the same time, had some of his men prepared the topsail to be hauled under the ship’s bottom in a vain effort to stem the leak. But before they could get the sheet of canvas over the side, one of the bilge pumps failed, and the water began flowing into the hold faster than it could be bailed out. The topsail was abandoned as every hand was set to work, baling to stop the ship from sinking.

       Soon the Pandora began listing, and the crew experienced their first casualties. A canon broke loose and rolled across the deck, crushing a sailor, while a topmast came crashing down on deck, killing another. The crew laboured at the pumps and bailed with buckets through the night to keep the ship afloat. An ale cask was tapped, and its contents were regularly served out to the men to keep their spirits up.

    Bounty Mutineers accommodation on HMS Pandora. Source: Museum of Tropical Queensland, Townsville.

       Then, about half an hour before dawn, Captain Edwards called his officers together to discuss their next move. It was clear to all that the ship was doomed and that their efforts should shift from saving the ship to preserving the lives of the crew. The Pandora’s four boats had been put over the side earlier in the night, and they were sheltering in the lee of the reef, their coxswains awaiting further orders. Spars, booms, hen-coops and anything else that floated were cut free so that the men might find something to keep themselves from drowning when the ship inevitably sank.

       Hamilton wrote that Captain Edwards ordered that the remaining prisoners be released from their irons. However, it came too late for some of the mutineers who were still shackled in place in their makeshift prison they called “Pandora’s Box.” They went down with the ship.   

    The water began pouring in through the gun ports, causing the frigate to list even further. As the captain and crew scrambled to jump overboard, the Pandora heeled over and sank almost immediately. The boats came to the rescue of the sailors clinging to the wreckage in the water, but for many help came too late. “The cries of the men drowning in the water was at first awful in the extreme,” Hamilton wrote. But as the men disappeared below the surface, the screams faded and then died away entirely.

    Loss of the Pandora on the Great Barrier Reef. Source: Tales of Shipwrecks and Adventures at Sea, 1856.

       As morning heralded a new day, a small sandy cay could be seen about two and a half nautical miles (5 km) to the southeast. Edwards ordered the boats to make for the one tiny speck of land in that vast expanse of sea. The captain took stock of their provisions and ordered a guard to be placed over the remaining surviving mutineers. Fortunately, someone had the forethought to load a barrel of water, a small keg of wine, and some sea biscuits onto one of the boats. To that haul of supplies could be added a few muskets and cartouche boxes of ammunition, along with a hammer and a saw. Not much to preserve life in such remote and hostile waters. Edwards thought their only chance of survival would be to make for the Dutch trading outpost on Timor Island, some 1200 nautical miles (1400 km) away.

       Edwards forbade anyone from drinking on that first day, calculating that they would have only enough water to last 16 days at two small cups per person per diem. They spent two days on the cay preparing the boats for the voyage that lay ahead. Floorboards were torn out and affixed to the sides of the boats, around which canvas was wrapped to increase the freeboard.

       Before leaving, the sailing master, George Passmore, was sent back to the wreck site to see if anything might have floated free in their absence.   He returned two hours later with a small assortment of salvaged materials and a cat that he found clinging to the top-gallant mast-head.

       On the third morning, they set off west towards Torres Strait and beyond to the Dutch settlement of Kupang. Edwards had hoped to refill their water cask at one of the islands dotting Torres Strait before they headed into the expanse of the Arafura Sea. However, an encounter with Islanders, which began friendly enough, inexplicably ended abruptly with a volley of arrows and musket fire being exchanged. They stopped again at Prince of Wales Island (Muralag), where this time they were able to fill their water cask without incident. On 16 September, after an arduous voyage lasting about a fortnight, the four boats pulled into Kupang Harbour. From there, they were taken to Batavia (present-day Jakarta), where Edwards purchased a ship for the return to England.

    Canon recovered from HMS Pandora wrecked on the Great Barrier Reef on display at the Museum of Tropical Queensland, Townsville.

       The shipwreck directly cost the lives of 31 sailors and four mutineers. Another 16 died from disease during or after their stay in Batavia. Of the 134 men who left England on the Pandora, only 78 made it home alive. The ten prisoners who survived the wreck were tried for mutiny. Four were acquitted, two received pardons, one got off on a technicality, and three were hanged. Captain Edwards faced a court-martial to answer for the loss of his ship, but he was found not to have been at fault.   

    The Museum of Tropical Queensland in Townsville has a world-class exhibition of artefacts recovered from the wreck.

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

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  • Cyclone Mahina & the loss of the North Queensland Pearling Fleet, 1899.

    Pearling luggers at Thursday Island. Courtesy State Library of Queensland.

       On 2 March 1899, Cyclone Mahina formed near the Solomon Islands and began tracking south-west towards the Queensland coast. On the same day, a second weather system formed in the Arafura Sea northwest of Darwin. This “monsoonal disturbance” was named Nachon and began moving towards the southwest. Unbeknown to the Thursday Island pearling fleet anchored in Bathurst Bay, 400 kilometres down the Queensland coast, both of these powerful weather systems were bearing down on them. Mahina and Nachon would collide over Bathurst Bay, wreaking havoc on the fleet, resulting in the loss of as many as 400 lives.

    Cyclone tracks for Cyclone Mahina which devastated the Thursday Island Pearling fleet at Cape Melville on 5 March 1899

       The pearling fleet was based at Thursday Island in Torres Strait, but the pearlers regularly ventured across Queensland’s warm tropical waters in search of shells. Pearling schooners served as floating processing stations for their fleet of ten to 15 luggers and diving boats. It was those smaller vessels that ranged out over nearby reefs, collecting the lucrative shells from the sea floor.

       March 4 was a Saturday and, for the pearlers, the much-anticipated start to the weekend. After they had delivered their pearl shells to their respective station schooner, tending to any repairs and restocking with provisions for the next week, it was time to relax and catch up with friends and family whom they had not seen all week.

       The schooners Sagitta, Silvery Wave, and Crest of the Wave were anchored near Cape Melville just inside Bathurst Bay. As the prevailing winds had been blowing from the southeast for the previous three weeks, everyone was anchored close to shore where the mountains extending inland protected them from the worst of the wind.

    Opening and cleaning shell on the schooner Olive. Source: The Pearling Disaster, 1899.

       The schooners Tarawa, Meg Merrilees, Olive and Aladin were anchored about 75 kilometres away near Pelican Island on the northwestern end of Princess Charlotte Bay. The manned Channel Rock lightship and several other pearling vessels were scattered along the Great Barrier Reef in the path of the approaching storm. No one, including the local Aboriginal people, could imagine the violent mayhem about to be unleashed upon them.

       At 7 o’clock on Saturday evening, only a moderate breeze was blowing from the southeast. However, just four hours later, the wind had increased to hurricane strength. It had also begun shifting direction from the southeast to the southwest. As Cyclone Mahina tore towards Bathurst Bay, the wind continued shifting further to the west, and eventually it blew from the northwest. For much of the early hours of Sunday, 5 March, the pearling fleet was exposed to the cyclone’s full fury. Torrential rain lashed the vessels. Streaks of angry lightning arced across the night sky while peals of thunder, howling wind and crashing waves competed to drown each other out. The hundreds of men and women trapped on their boats could do nothing but pray that they survived the ordeal.   

    Then, around 4 a.m., a massive storm surge swept through the bay. By 10 o’clock on Sunday morning, the tempest had moved inland, and some sanity returned to the world. It was only then that the few survivors would learn the full devastating impact of the storm.

    Boats cleaning copper at Flinders Island. Source: The Pearling Disaster 1899.

       The Tarawa’s anchor cables had parted around 3 a.m., and she was swept onto Pelican Island. However, she was lucky for the damage would be easily patched, and she would limp back to Thursday Island. The Meg Merrilees dragged her anchors and ran onto a coral reef. All hands survived the wild night, but attempts to refloat the schooner were unsuccessful. The tender Weiwera was also lost. Of the 30 or so luggers anchored nearby, one-third sank with the loss of nine lives. The schooners Olive and the Aladin were more fortunate. Their anchors held, and they survived the night.

       The vessels lying off Cape Melville fared far worse. The 25-ton tender Admiral had only arrived in Bathurst Bay on the morning of the cyclone. She foundered at the storm’s height with the loss of her five crew and an unknown number of passengers brought down from Thursday Island to join the fleet. The Silvery Wave likewise was lost. Only a Japanese crew member named Sugimoto survived. The Sagitta was thought to have collided with the Silvery Wave and went to the bottom of Bathurst Bay with nearly 20 hands.   

    Captain W. Field Porter survived to give a harrowing account of that terrible night.  He recounted that his schooner, Crest of the Wave, was anchored near the other vessels off Cape Melville while about 40 luggers were in shallower water close to the beach. As the storm intensified, his anchors began dragging. Fortunately, the wind and current pushed the schooner into deeper water. “The intense darkness and driving rain prevented anything [from] being seen of the other boats or the land. The sea by this time was very rough, and enormous waves broke time after time on board,” Porter later wrote of his experience.

    “Mr Outridge, preparing for deep sea diving and assisted by Captain Porter of the Crest of the Wave.” Source: The Pearling disaster of 1899.

       The eye of the cyclone passed over his ship around 4.30 in the morning. After ten or fifteen minutes of dead calm, Captain Porter recalled, the wind suddenly came from the north-west, “with such terrific force that the schooner was thrown on her beam ends and [was] almost buried in the raging sea.” With much difficulty, the masts were cut away, and the ship righted itself. But by then, she had taken on a lot of water. The bilge pump was manned, and every spare hand bailed with buckets to keep the ship from sinking. Eventually, it was discovered that the water was entering through the rudder trunk. The leak was plugged with blankets and bags of flour, and the ship was saved. However, for 12 long and terrifying hours, the crew battled the elements, not knowing if each moment would be their last. Finally, the wind and seas started to ease, and Captain Porter and his men began to think they might just survive. As for the luggers, they either foundered at their anchorage or were driven ashore, where most were smashed to pieces. Some wreckage was found almost half a kilometre from the beach, taken there by the massive storm surge which swept several kilometres inland in places. Only a handful of the luggers were able to be refloated.

       The Channel Rock Lightship, moored between Cape Melville and Pipon Island, was nowhere to be seen after the storm passed and was believed to have sunk at her moorings with the loss of four lives. The bodies of Captain Gustaf Fuhrman and the mate Douglass Lee were later found near Cape Melville amongst debris from the lightship.

    Wreck of the Zanoni at Cape Melville, Source: The Pearling Disaster, 1899.

       It is estimated that some 300 pearlers lost their lives that night in Queensland’s most deadly natural disaster. While a dozen Europeans perished, most of the casualties were men and women from Torres Strait, the South Pacific, Japan and Malaya. Most were buried where their bodies were found with simple timber markers noting their final resting place. It was thought that as many as 100 local Aborigines were also killed during the storm and its massive tidal surge.

       On Flinders Island, several dolphins were found washed up on rocks almost five metres above the high tide mark. One witness painted a vivid picture of the destruction at Bathurst Bay. “There is quite a forest of mastheads and floating wreckage, the boats having evidently sunk at the anchorage. There are tons of dead fish, fowl, and reptiles of all descriptions, and the place presents the appearance of a large cemetery. All the trees have been stripped of their leaves.”

       Four schooners and 54 luggers were wrecked beyond repair, which devastated Thursday Island’s pearling industry. The human cost was even higher. With so many casualties, barely a family on Thursday Island escaped losing a loved one.

    Cyclone Mahina memorial at Cape Melville which marks the loss of 300 people during the storm. Photo: CJ Ison.

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

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  • Shipping Cleopatra’s Needle

    Cleopatra’s needle being brought to England, 1877. Courtesy, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London

    In September 1877, a most unusual-looking vessel left the Egyptian port of Alexandria bound for England.   She was the brainchild of engineer John Dixon and had been purpose-built to carry a 200-ton stone obelisk to London.   “Cleopatra’s Needle”, as it became known, had been gifted to Great Britain almost sixty years earlier, but until Dixon came along, no one had found a cost-effective way of transporting the massive monolith to its destination on the banks of the Thames River.    

    The obelisk had originally been erected at Heliopolis near present-day Cairo in 1450 BCE on the orders of Thutmose III.    Two hundred years later, Ramses II added inscriptions commemorating his victorious battles.  Then, in 12 BCE, Cleopatra had it, and a second obelisk carried down the Nile to Alexandria and installed outside a temple to Julius Ceasar and Mark Antony, where they were eventually lost to time.

    While visiting his brother in Egypt in 1875, Dixon devised a plan to get the needle to London.   There had been a couple of schemes suggested in the past.   One proposed dragging the heavy monolith through the narrow streets of Alexandria to the port where it could be loaded onto a ship.  Another was to dredge a channel from the waterfront to get a ship alongside the monolith where it lay.   Neither was particularly economical or practical.   But, after taking a look at the obelisk in situ, Dixon thought he had the solution.

    “Cleopatra’s Needle as it lay.” Penny Illustrated Paper, 29 Sept 1877, p. 13.

    The obelisk was lying on its side, covered in sand behind an old quay wall about 4 metres above sea level.   On the seaward side of the wall, the sand sloped down gently to the water’s edge, eventually reaching deep water a few hundred metres away.   Rather than move the obelisk to a ship, Dixon proposed building a cylindrical vessel around Cleopatra’s Needle and, after removing a portion of the quay wall, rolling it down the slope and into the sea.   He estimated the venture would cost no more than £5,000 to get it to London and another £5,000 to have it installed on the Thames Embankment.   The cost was a far cry from the £80,000 the French had apparently paid to have one delivered to Paris in the 1830s.  

    With the government showing no interest in wearing the cost, it was up to private enterprise to come to the fore.    Dixon even offered to contribute 500 guineas of his own money to get things started.   But after two years of stagnation, a benefactor in the form of the noted surgeon and philanthropist Professor Erasmus Wilson stepped forward and donated the full amount.

    Logitudinal section of the Cleopatra Needle-Boat, Penny Illustrated Paper, 8 Sept 1877, p. 9.

    By May 1877, Dixon was back in Alexandria and had begun work excavating around the buried obelisk.   It measured nearly 21 metres long and was slightly over 2 metres wide at the base.   He began encasing it in an iron cylinder 28 metres in length and 4.5 metres in width.   To prevent the stone and hieroglyphs from being damaged, Cleopatra’s Needle was cradled by several iron interior bulkheads lined with timber.

    The vessel resembled a giant cigar tube and was now ready to be floated.   A path was cleared and it was rolled towards the sea.   However, when tugs took the tube in tow, they discovered she had filled with water.    A stone had punctured a plate while the tube was being rolled down the beach.   The damaged plate was repaired, and the tube pumped dry.     Ballast was added, and the odd vessel was towed to a waiting dry dock where the rest of the work would be completed.

    Captain’s Cabin (left), Main cabin (right), Illustrated London News, 26 Jan 1878, p. 96.

    A cabin large enough to accommodate four men was mounted on the top of the tube and a keel below.   A stumpy mast and rigging were installed, along with a rudder, wheel and associated running gear.   The Cleopatra, as she was named, was ready to make the 6000-kilometre voyage to London.   Not having the means to propel herself, she was to be towed to England by the steamer Olga.   The sail and steering gear were only fitted to ease the strain on the steamer.

    On Friday morning, 21 September, Captain Booth gave the order for the Olga to get underway.   As she cleared Alexandria Harbour, the Cleopatra followed in her wake, tethered by a pair of tow cables.  They chugged along at a steady six knots, which was about as fast as the Olga could go towing her cumbersome load.    It cannot have been a pleasant cruise for Captain Campbell and his men on the Cleopatra.   At first, she yawed terribly, pulling one moment to port and the next to starboard.   However, once the Cleopatra’s steering chains were tightened and the towing cables lengthened, she finally ran true behind the steamer.   However, that did not stop her tendency to porpoise.   Dixon, who was travelling on the Olga, wrote, “I have counted as many as 17 times a minute that her nose has been underwater, and then ten or twelve feet above.” 

    First night out in the Bay of Biscay. From a sketch by our special artist on board the tug Anglia. Illusgtrated London New, 26 Jan 1878, p. 92.

    Apart from a few minor leaks, which were quickly plugged with cement, the voyage was uneventful until they were about to cross the Bay of Biscay.    On Sunday, 14 October the Olga and the Cleopatra were off Cape Finisterre when they were caught in a violent storm.  They were lashed by huge seas and a Force 7 to 8 gale blowing from the southwest.   That night, the Cleopatra’s ballast shifted and she was thrown onto her beam ends.   Captain Campbell cut away the mast, but the vessel did not right herself.   With the Cleopatra floundering around at the mercy of the wind and the waves, Campbell fired off his distress flares.  Captain Booth sent six men across to help in any way they could, but they were lost in the maelstrom before they reached the heavily listing vessel.   Eventually, Campbell and his men climbed into a boat and were hauled across to the Olga with the aid of a rope.  

    Captain Booth had no choice but to cut away the Cleopatra as he went in search of his six missing crew.   After spending some time searching the seas, the effort was abandoned, and the Olga headed for Falmouth to report the tragedy.   However, a couple of days later, the Cleopatra was found adrift about 170 kilometres off the Spanish coast by the crew of the Scottish steamer Fitzmaurice. They had been en route from Glasgow to Valencia when they happened upon the strange vessel bobbing in the water. They took it in tow and delivered it to the Spanish port of Ferrol and reported their find to the British Vice-Consul.  

    “End view of the pontoon.” Penny Illustrated Paper, 29 Sept 1877, p. 13.

    Dixon offered the salvors £500 for finding the Cleopatra and its priceless cargo and taking her to port.    However, the Fitzmaurice’s owners claimed salvage rights ten times that amount.   The case eventually headed to the Admiralty Court, where the sum of £2000 was decided upon.   Meanwhile, the Cleopatra was towed the rest of the way to England, and up the Thames River to London, where it was to be installed on The Embankment.   There, the Cleopatra’s hull was opened up, and the obelisk removed none the worse for its long sea voyage.   Cleopatra’s Needle was erected on a new plinth where it still stands to this day.   A plaque commemorates the six men who lost their lives trying to save the Cleopatra and her crew.

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

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