Tales from the Quarterdeck

Category: New South Wales

  • 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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  • Sydney’s First Convict Escape by Sea – 1790

    One of the first concerted efforts to escape from Sydney that did not involve trying to stow away on a homeward-bound ship took place in the latter part of 1790. Convicts, John Turwood, George Lee, George Connaway, John Watson, and John Strutton stole a boat and headed out to sea.

       Turwood and his mates had endured unimaginable hardships since leaving England, for they had come out on the infamous Second Fleet. Unsanitary living conditions and malnutrition had taken their toll on the voyage out. One-quarter of the 1006 convicts who left England died before ever reaching New South Wales. Of those who were put ashore, nearly 500 were immediately hospitalised. Of those, 124 would soon be dead. By September 1790, Turwood and his mates had been in the penal settlement for just eight weeks, but they had no desire to remain any longer to see if their fortunes might improve.

       Strutton had tried to escape once already. He had been smuggled aboard the Neptune and hidden among the firewood shortly before she was to sail back to England. However, sentries found his hiding place, and he was taken off the ship. He was flogged for trying to abscond, but the punishment only made him more determined to try again.

    Map of Sydney Cove Port Jackson, April 1788. Published by R. Cribb, London, 1789 original attributed to Fowkes, Francis – National Library of Australia, http://nla.gov.au/nla.map-nk276

    Soon after sunset on the night of 26 September, the five convicts stole a small flat-bottomed punt at Rose Hill and rowed down the Parramatta River into Sydney Harbour. Crammed in the small boat with them was one week’s supply of food, some cooking pots and other utensils, a few spare clothes and some bedding. At Watson’s Bay, just inside Sydney Heads, they put ashore and found another, much larger boat. Though it did not look particularly sturdy, it did have a mast and sail. Despite its shortcomings, the runaways thought they would have a better chance of surviving the open ocean in the larger boat. They transferred their belongings and headed out through Sydney Heads. By the time the bolters were reported missing and the two boats stolen, they were well on their way.

       Turwood had told friends before he had set off that they were going to sail to Tahiti, a place elevated in his mind to a tropical paradise where they could live freely among the Islanders. Tales from sailors who had visited Tahiti and other Pacific Islands had returned to England with fanciful stories about their time spent there. However, just how he intended to accomplish the 6,000-kilometre voyage without a sextant, charts, a compass, or any other navigation aids is a mystery.

       John Turwood was serving a life sentence for highway robbery. George Lee and George Connaway had stolen a pair of bullocks valued at £20. They had been sentenced to death, but that was later commuted to transportation for life. Watson and Strutton were each serving seven-year terms for stealing. Though nothing in their convict records suggests any of them had a nautical background, at least one of them knew how to handle a small vessel under sail.

        After leaving Sydney Harbour, they set a course north, always remaining close to the coastline. When the sheltered waters of Port Stephens beckoned, they pulled in, and that’s where they stayed. After sailing 150 km, that was as close as they got to Tahiti. The local Aboriginal people, the Worimi, made them welcome and adopted them into their community. Over time, Turwood and the others learned to speak their language and were given Worimi names. They also seem to have undertaken formal initiation rituals, and at least a couple of the men took wives and began raising their own families. However, life was a constant struggle for the men, who were unaccustomed to the diet and customs of the Worimi people, especially in the beginning. Strutton died, although the circumstances and date of death were never recorded. Nonetheless, the other four lived there for five years and would have remained longer had a British warship not shown up.

       HMS Providence pulled into Port Stephens in mid-August 1795. She had just crossed the Pacific Ocean but had been unable to enter the Heads because of a strong westerly wind blowing off the land. Captain Broughton thought he would wait a few days in these sheltered waters before trying again. While there, he discovered Turwood and the other three white men living with the Aborigines. Broughton described them in his log as “miserable, half-starved objects, depending on the hospitality of the natives for their subsistence …” He offered to return them to Sydney, assuring them that they would likely not face punishment. Lee, Connaway and Watson immediately accepted the offer; however, Turwood was initially reluctant, but Broughton was eventually able to convince him to return as well. The arrival back in Sydney after a five-year absence was met with considerable surprise and of the runaway convicts in Sydney caused some consternation among the authorities, for they had long been given up for dead. But, true to Broughton’s word, they appear to have escaped punishment. Perhaps the Governor thought five years in the wilderness had been punishment enough.

    Families camped in the Port Stephens area, New South Wales, 1826 by Augustus Earle. Courtesy National Library of Australia.

       John Turwood and George Lee would flee from Sydney again in September 1797. They joined 13 other runaways who seized the small colonial cutter Cumberland near the mouth of the Hawkesbury River. After putting the captain and crew ashore, they headed out to sea. Neither the Cumberland nor the runaway convicts were ever seen again.

      © Copyright C.J. Ison / Tales from the Quarterdeck, 2025.

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  • 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 Loss of the SS Cawarra: Bad luck or an avoidable tragedy?

    “Foundering of the S.S. Cawarra off Newcastle.’ Source: Australian News for Home Readers, 27 Aug 1866, p. 4.

       When, in 1866, the Board of Inquiry into the Loss of the Steam Ship Cawarra handed down its report, it was met with much incredulity. After poring over the evidence for six weeks, the commissioners could only conclude that the catastrophe was simply the result of bad luck. That was despite evidence presented to them that the steamer had been grossly overloaded when she had left port.

       The SS Cawarra was a 439-ton side paddle steamer owned and operated by the Australian Steam Navigation Company, and regularly made the passage between Sydney and Brisbane. On what would be her last voyage, she had a crew of 36 and 25 passengers. In all, there were 61 souls on board. Around 6 p.m. on Wednesday, 11 July 1866, she passed through Sydney Heads on her way to Rockhampton via Brisbane. The northern settlement of Rockhampton had not been visited for some time, and basic provisions had run low. So, when the Cawarra’s hold was packed to capacity and no more would fit below, the remaining cargo was stowed on deck.

       As soon as the steamer was heading north through open seas, she was assisted on her way by a strong south-easterly breeze. But during that first night, the weather steadily worsened. By morning, the winds were shrieking at gale force, the seas were mountainous, and the ship was being lashed by torrential rain. In the face of such foul weather, Captain Henry Chatfield decided to take shelter at Newcastle until it was safe to resume his journey.

       Chatfield sighted the distinctive outline of Nobby Head at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, and shortly after that, the steamer rounded the headland to enter the port. However, as the Cawarra was approaching the mouth of the Hunter River, she was struck by a series of large waves that swept over her deck and pushed her around so she was now facing back out towards Nobby Head.

    “Position of Cawarra previous to foundering …” Source: Illustrated Sydney News, 16 Aug 1866, p. 5.

       It is thought that when Captain Chatfield realised his ship was in grave peril, he ordered the foresail to be set and tried to steam back out to sea. However, before he could do so, the Cawarra was hit by several more huge waves. They would spell her end. Water poured through the hatchways snuffing out the steamers’ fires. Now she was dead in the water at the mercy of the large seas. The ship then began to sink by the bow. Chatfield ordered the lifeboats to be made ready, but the treacherous seas swirling around the steamer made abandoning the ship impossible.

       Around 3 o’clock, the Cawarra was driven onto Oyster Bank. The foredeck soon disappeared below the waves, and everyone had gathered on the poop deck or had climbed into the rigging to escape the rising water. Fifteen minutes later, the mainmast and funnel toppled into the sea, taking with them all those sheltering on the poop. The foremast went a few minutes later, tossing the remaining three or four men into the water, and the Cawarra quickly sank from sight. It was as if she had never been there to observers watching the horror unfold from Nobby Head. Only a few pieces of wreckage and cargo washed ashore to testify that a ship had been lost.

       Sixty people died, while one man somehow managed to survive. Frederick Valliant Hedges had only joined the Cawarra eight months earlier. As the steamer began sinking by the bow, he had climbed high into the mainmast rigging only to be flung into the sea when the mast came crashing down. Hedges was later found clinging to a red buoy by a boat sent out from the lighthouse. Ironically, one of the rescuers was a man named John Johnson, who had himself been the sole survivor of the Dunbar when it sank off Sydney nine years earlier.

    The Rescue of F.V. Hedges, the only survivor from the Cawarra. Source: Illustrated Sydney News, 16 Aug 1866, p. 4.

        The violent storm wreaked havoc on shipping up and down the coast between Sydney and Port Stephens. Four more vessels foundered or were driven ashore at Newcastle, and another was wrecked near Port Stephens, further north. Several more were lost around Sydney. In all, 15 vessels were wrecked or driven ashore, adding another 17 fatalities to the grim final tally.

       It is perhaps easy to blame the weather for the Cawarra’s loss. In fact, the commission established to investigate the circumstances found just that. Its report concluded: “We are of the opinion that the catastrophe was one of those lamentable occurrences which befall at times the best ships and the most experienced commanders, and which human efforts are powerless to avert.”

       However, that explanation did not sit well with many folk. It had the whiff of a cover-up. Accusations that the Cawarra had been overladen when she left Sydney flew around maritime circles. She was reportedly carrying 450 tons of coal and cargo, which was 50 tons more than recommended by the ship’s builders. An engineer and surveyor from the Steam Navigation Board testified at the inquiry that when he had seen the Cawarra shortly before her departure, he thought she was sitting lower in the water than usual and believed she had been overloaded. But when he had raised his concerns with his superior and the ship’s owners, they both dismissed his concerns, telling him the Cawarra was a strong ship.    The possibility that overloading could have contributed to the loss was even raised in the New South Wales parliament. The outspoken former clergyman and politician, Dr J.D. Lang, called for the Commission’s findings to be rejected, pointing out the contradictory evidence presented at the inquest. But it was all to no avail. The findings stood, and the loss was attributed to bad luck.

    Samuel Plimsoll. Wikimedia/creative commons.

       However, there were calls for a line to be marked on the hull of cargo ships to show when they were fully loaded. It would take another ten years before British parliamentarian Samuel Plimsoll was able to persuade his colleagues to take action. He was appalled by the number of ships and lives lost due to overloading. In 1876, the British Parliament passed legislation requiring markings on the sides of cargo ships, which would be submerged below the surface if the vessel was overloaded. This became known as the Plimsoll Line and is still in use today.

    © Copyright C.J. Ison / Tales from the Quarterdeck, 2023.

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