In August 1828, the then Governor of NSW, Ralph Darling, received a tersely worded letter from the paramount chief of Huahine in the Society Islands, present-day French Polynesia. In it, Queen Maihara, through missionary intermediaries, implored him to send a ship and “fetch these thieves and take them back again to Botany Bay.”1
The thieves she referred to were escaped convicts who had fled New South Wales on the 24-ton cutter Phoebe. And they were quite likely the first escaped convicts to reach any of the Pacific Islands.
Early on the morning of 15 December 1827, fifteen convicts boarded the small cutter moored in the Shoalhaven River and forced the three-man crew to sail her out the heads into open water. The crew were then ordered into a dinghy and returned to shore.
The runaway’s leader was a prisoner named Frederick Hunter, who had been sent to New South Wales for housebreaking. A former seaman, he assured his comrades they could cross the Pacific Ocean and reach North America, 12,000 km away, in as little as 15 days. Then, relying on just a hand compass and a small-scale nautical chart covering the entire Pacific Ocean, they set out to sea.
First, they bore due east, bound for New Zealand. There they stopped briefly to add several pigs and a quantity of potatoes to their supplies before setting off on a north-easterly course to cross the Pacific.
There is no record of their voyage from New Zealand to the Society Islands (French Polynesia). However, it was likely slow and arduous for it seems most, if not all, with the exception of Hunter himself, had any sailing experience. By the time they reached the Leeward Islands, 4,000 km away, provisions were running low. To extend their remaining rations, Hunter forced six of the runaways ashore. One of those was John Smith, who later said he was thrown overboard near the island of Rioteri, (most likely Raiatea).
At Maupiti Island, Hunter and his eight remaining men traded the cutter’s cargo of cedar logs for food. But rather than continue on their way to North America, they appear to have remained among the islands of French Polynesia. Their voyage finally ended off Mai’ao Island when the cutter crashed onto a reef and had to be abandoned. From there, the runaways broke into smaller groups and dispersed themselves across several neighbouring islands.2
Four of them, possibly including Hunter, made it to Huahine Island where they were made welcome by the Islanders, many of whom were recent converts to Christianity. But that hospitality ended around July or August 1828 after the convicts ransacked the paramount chief’s home and stole everything of value, including several muskets, a cask of gunpowder and lead shot. They fled the island with their haul in a whaleboat belonging to Reverend Barff, the island’s missionary. A canoe carrying over a dozen men was dispatched to chase down the thieves. But when they caught up to the whaleboat and demanded the return of the stolen property, the runaways opened fire, killing two and wounding six others.3
HMS Satellite. Courtesy: Royal Museums Greenwich.
Queen Maihara had had enough. She wrote to Governor Darling, calling on him to apprehend the escaped convicts terrorising her people. In December, Darling dispatched Commander John Laws and HMS Satellite to the South Pacific to round up the troublemakers. The Satellite found six of the runaways and took them into custody. As for the men who ransacked Queen Maihara’s house, killed two of her people and wounded six others, they were reported to have made for Tongatabu, present-day Tonga, some 2,000 kilometres away. However, when the Satellite pulled in there, Captain Law learned that a boat and men matching their description had landed in “great distress” on one of the Navigator Islands, present-day Samoa. He was also told that two of the men he was looking for had already been killed and there was little likelihood that the other two would have left the island alive. With his mission complete, Commander Law returned to Sydney with his six prisoners in chains to stand trial.4
As the trial date approached, the Attorney General decided not to charge the prisoners with the capital crime of piracy as they had not seized the Phoebe “on the high seas,” but in the sheltered waters of the Shoalhaven River. He felt there was a chance the prosecution would not get a conviction based on that technicality. So, instead, the authorities charged them with the lesser crime of stealing the cutter and its cargo of 8,000 feet of cedar logs. Found guilty, five were sentenced to seven years’ transportation. The sixth prisoner, John Smith, who claimed to have been forced to join the bolters, was released after testifying against the others.
SOURCES
1. Letter from Maihara, Queen of Huahine to Gov. Darling dated 25 Aug 1828, 1/14 HRA, p. 738.
2. Evidence provided by John Smith during the trial of other runaways. Sydney Monitor, 8 Jun 1829, p. 8.
3. Letter from Maihara, Queen of Huahine to Gov. Darling dated 25 Aug 1828, 1/14 HRA, p. 738.
4. Letter from Commander Laws HMS Satellite to Secretary Croker dated 11 Mar 1829, 1/14 HRA, p. 741.
The Nelson Gold Robbery. The World’s News, 5 Aug 1950, p. 9.
In April 1852, thieves stole a gold shipment bound for London from the barque Nelson anchored at Hobson’s Bay, Melbourne. Arguably, it ranks among Australia’s largest robberies, as the gang got away with some £24,000 worth of gold weighing an astonishing 8,100 ounces, or 250 kg. That amount of gold would be worth around $50 million today in Australian currency.
I wrote a blog about it back in 2024, but the story kept playing on my mind. I figured there was more to discover than I had then unearthed. The writer Marcus Clarke, author of “For the Term of His Natural Life,” wrote an article for the Sydney Morning Herald in 1879 where he outlined the basic facts, added some literary flourishes that could not have been true and proclaimed that, after the passage of 27 years, “it is now unlikely that the true story of the Nelson gold robbery will ever be told.”
Well. Challenge accepted. I started digging through Trove’s digitised newspaper archives among other sources and came across several clues that shed light on who might have been behind the robbery. After the passage of 175 years, I might just have something approximating the truth.
Ships, deserted by their crews, lying in Hobson’s Bay, By E Thomas.
To quickly rehash my original blog: around 1.30 on the morning of Friday 2 April 1851, a gang of thieves climbed aboard the Nelson, overpowered the crew, and made off with the gold after locking everyone in the lazarette. The plan worked flawlessly but for someone accidentally shooting the Nelson’s first officer, Henry Draper, in the leg.
But most of the robbers quickly realised stealing the gold was the easy part. Getting away with the heist and holding onto their ill-gotten gains would prove far more challenging.
Embarrassed that such an audacious crime was carried out right under their noses, the police rounded up scores of petty criminals and vagrants in the days that followed, hoping they would net the culprits.
Then, only days later, constables swooped on seven of the robbers who were living it up in Geelong, a short 60 km from where the robbery had taken place. Police arrested four at the Ocean Child on Geelong’s outskirts, while two others were apprehended at the Union Inn moments before they left to join their mates. A pair of mounted troopers caught the seventh on the road shortly after. He had been galloping towards the Ocean Child most likely to warn his mates of the arrests at the Union Inn.1
Dan Fegan and Stephen Rawlings, two more robbers, travelled cross-country towards the South Australian border, but were caught in Portland while awaiting a ship to take them the rest of the way to Adelaide. Their undoing seems similar to that of their comrades in Geelong. As the Geelong Advertiser would report, “Every part of their apparel indicated something unnatural; their clothes new and unsuited to their station; … and on the line of road they came, they appear to have left an impression that they had formed two belonging to the gang of the Nelson robbers.”2
The Argus 3 Apr 1852, p. 5.
Of the nine detained, four faced court and only three were found guilty. James Morgan, James Duncan and Stephen Rawlings (aka Fox) would all be identified by one or other of the officers on the Nelson at the time of the robbery and sentenced to 15 years’ hard labour. A jury found insufficient evidence to convict Dan Fegan (aka William Smith).
The other members of the gang who were arrested – James Grimes, John Hutchinson, Tom Quin, William Barnes, James Ball – were eventually released without charge. However, the money they had on them, amounting to some £3,000 in total, was confiscated. A further £1,200 was taken from Rawlings and Fegan. That amounted to little more than 15 per cent of what had been stolen. The remainder was never recovered, and that begs the question: where did it go?
For years, rumours swirled around Melbourne speculating on who else might have been involved in the robbery. After all, some £20,000 worth of gold was still unaccounted for. One persistent rumour suggested that one or more of Melbourne’s more prominent citizens had orchestrated the robbery and had benefited enormously from it.
Then, a light fell on the robbers’ inner workings from a very surprising source. Owen Suffolk, an educated man who befriended the Nelson robbers while serving time in Pentridge Prison, later wrote that an escaped convict named Dan Fegan (aka William Smith) had led the gang. He was going by the name William Smith when he was captured in Portland, and later stood trial for the robbery. He would eventually be released for lack of evidence, but he was returned to Tasmania to stand trial for absconding. A search of Convict Records and the Tasmanian Archive confirms his existence.3
Apparently, Fegan had learned from an ex-convict who had done carpentry work on the Nelson that the gold had recently been loaded onto the barque and that it was only lightly crewed. Realising the ship could sail any day, Fegan hastily got to work. According to Suffolk, the robbery was planned, and the robbers set out for the Nelson from an unnamed Melbourne public house. He also wrote that Duncan and Morgan were recruited as last-minute replacements for two gang members who had failed to turn up for the robbery.4
The Sun, 30 May 1948, p. 3.
So far, nine robbers have been identified. Suffolk says ten were in on the robbery. Other estimates ranged as high as 20 or more. But the balance of evidence suggests that the gang likely numbered about a dozen. The rest were hired to row the robbers out to the Nelson. Whether they were paid for their services or received a cut of the loot is anyone’s guess.
One important name, however, is missing from the list of suspects: the “prominent citizen” rumoured to have taken part. While Suffolk did not name the public house where the robbery was planned, and the robbers set out from, others have.
For instance, Edmund Finn, writing as Garryowen in Chronicles of Early Melbourne, published in 1888, claims the Nelson robbery was planned at the Woolpack Inn. And he is not alone in linking the same pub to the robbery. At the time, John Milton Dascombe owned and ran that establishment.
Dascombe is a very interesting character in this saga. He had served several years in Pentonville Prison in England before being exiled to Melbourne in 1846. Over the next five years, his fortunes and social standing rose quickly in his adopted home, and by late 1851 he was the proud proprietor of the Woolpack Inn. In that class-conscious era, that was no small achievement for a former “Pentonvillian.” After the robbery, Dascombe suddenly appears flush with money. He bought several more properties around Melbourne, including a prestigious commercial building on Collins Street. He later sold the Woolpack Inn and took his family to England, where he settled in the upmarket suburb of St John’s Wood in London. Dascombe was never charged in connection with the robbery, but a short while after his death in 1868, speculation arose that the missing proceeds from the Nelson gold robbery might yet be recovered.5
In Fool’s Gold, I have taken the known facts and woven them together with the rumours and a degree of literary licence to tell the story of one of Australia’s greatest robberies.
SOURCES
See The Argus 10 April 1852, p.4.
See Geelong Advertiser 20 Apr 1852, p. 2.
Tasmanian Archives: Daniel Fegan convict conduct record – CON33-1-36 p. 84. Fegan’s conduct record shows he absconded from Van Diemen’s Land before the robbery and was sent back shortly after.
In August 1853, the Madagascar set sail from Melbourne, Australia, and was never seen again. On board were her full complement of crew and 62 passengers. Men, women and children all bound for England. She was not the first to vanish at sea, and she would not be the last. But her disappearance has fuelled keen interest over the years, not because of the tragic loss of life, but for her large and valuable cargo of gold.
The Victorian gold rush was in its third year and was showing no signs of slowing. As well as wool and other cargo, the Madagascar had carried consignments of gold from gold traders and banks, totalling over 68,000 ounces, worth at least a quarter of a million pounds at the time. Today, the missing fortune would be worth nearly half a billion Australian dollars.
The Madagascar was a 950-ton fully rigged sailing ship commanded by an experienced and highly respected master mariner named Captain Fortescue W. Harris. He had a choice of three routes he could take on his return voyage to London. Once clear of Port Phillip, he could have turned his vessel west to cross the Great Australian Bight and the Indian Ocean, then round the Cape of Good Hope before turning north up the East African coast towards home. He could also have turned to port to cross the South Pacific, round Cape Horn, before again turning north through the Atlantic. Or he might have followed Australia’s east coast north, through the Coral Sea, Torres Strait, and on to Singapore, India, the Cape of Good Hope, and home. Unfortunately, he left no clue as to which route he intended to take.
The ship was only 15 years old, solidly built, well-maintained, and had made the passage out to Australia in just 87 days without incident. There was no reason to think the ship would not make the routine passage home in a similar time. But after six months had passed with no sign of the ship, people grew anxious, for she was now long overdue.
In February 1854, a report reached London via the captain of the Jessica in Calla, Chile, that the Madagascar had put into Rio de Janeiro “in a very leaky state, near upon foundering.” It was thought that her passengers and the gold would have been loaded onto another vessel to complete the remainder of their voyage. However, nothing further was heard, and the report ultimately proved to be an unfounded rumour.
Word that the ship was missing finally reached Melbourne nearly ten months after she had made her departure. Several theories immediately emerged. Some thought her cargo of wool might have spontaneously combusted and engulfed the ship in fire. Others thought she might have been sunk by a Russian frigate operating in the southern seas. One experienced mariner dismissed both of these theories. He believed it was more likely that she had struck an iceberg in those freezing latitudes of the Southern Ocean.
There were also fears that her disappearance might have been at the hands of a ruthless gang of bandits. Three bushrangers had been taken off the Madagascar the day before she departed. They, and their mates, had robbed the McIvor Gold Escort of £10,000 worth of gold, shooting four troopers in the process. It was widely believed that other dangerous outlaws had left on the missing ship as paying passengers or members of the crew. Once they were far from land, it was argued, they had plundered the ship and sank her, before taking to the boats with their ill-got gains. Of course, there is no way to prove or disprove if this actually happened.
Then, a year later, in May 1855, a gentleman in Geelong received a letter from an acquaintance in Cape Town telling him that the missing Madagascar had been found safe and sound. According to the letter writer, she had become trapped in ice while trying to round Cape Horn and had been stranded for some six months in those remote Antarctic waters. No other corroborating news came out of Cape Town or anywhere else, for that matter, and the rumour was dismissed. What’s more, Lloyds had since listed the ship as missing and had paid out on its insurance liability.
The Madagascar, The Age, 6 APr 1929, p. 7.
But some people never gave up hope of finding out what happened to the ship and their loved ones. Twenty-seven years after the ship had vanished, the crew of the ketch Rosebud found 15 skeletons on Bountiful Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria. On learning of the discovery, the nephew of one of the Madagascar’s missing passengers begged the Queensland government to find out if the remains might be linked to the missing ship. An expedition was sent to Bountiful Island, and concluded the skeletons were likely those of Aborigines or Malay fishermen rather than survivors from the Madagascar. The report also noted that the island was some 350 miles (650 km) away from the regular shipping channel through Torres Strait.
In 1889, the remains of an old ship were discovered off the New Zealand coast. So sure were some Sydney treasure hunters that they raised sufficient money to send an expedition, including an experienced diver, to New Zealand to examine the wreck. Needless to say, they did not come back with the gold or anything else that shed light on the fate of the Madagascar.
But the most enduring theory as to the loss of the Madagascar centred on it being seized by desperate robbers who made off with the gold and sank the ship. Some stories came with elaborate details, although they were impossible to verify.
In 1914, a New Zealand newspaper published a story claiming the Madagascar had been lost off the South American coast. In a recently discovered written statement made to the police in 1867, a sailor named “Bully” Hayes said he had survived the wreck of a treasure ship off Peru. Hayes claimed the ship was seized and set on fire by a band of robbers who escaped in the boats laden with thousands of pounds of stolen gold. He had somehow managed to secure a seat on one of the boats, which later struck a reef. The gold was lost, and he was the only survivor. Though he would not be drawn on the name of the ship, the man who took his statement believed he was referring to the Madagascar.
Fifteen years later, another tale emerged regarding the missing ship. Supposedly, a clergyman said that years earlier, he had taken a deathbed statement from a woman who claimed to have survived the sinking of the Madagascar. Her story went thus. The Madagascar had been seized by mutineers who had locked everyone below deck, set fire to the ship, and taken to the boats with the gold and several young women, herself included. The boat was swamped by surf as they tried to land somewhere on the South American coast, and the gold was lost. A handful of mutineers survived only to die of yellow fever on reaching a small town. Only she and one man survived, and he would later abandon her. Unfortunately, the story makes no mention of her name or the priest who took her final confession, making it impossible to verify.
After the passage of some 175 years, it seems likely that we will never know what befell the Madagascar. Perhaps she struck an iceberg in the deep reaches of the Southern Ocean or perished in a powerful storm. Perhaps her cargo of wool did catch fire and she sank. It would not be the first time a ship had succumbed to such a tragedy. Or maybe an attempt was made to seize the gold, which ended with the loss of the ship. But one thing is for sure: piled among what remains of the ship and the final resting place of her passengers and crew, there is nearly half a billion dollars of gold sitting somewhere on the ocean floor.
Sixty bite-sized stories from Australia’s maritime past
The melancholy loss of H.M.S Sirius off Norfolk Island by George. Raper. Source National Library of Australia 136507434-1
I have just launched a new book titled Tales from the Quarterdeck: Sixty bite-sized stories from Australia’s maritime past. Sixty of the most popular posts have been reedited. In some cases, I’ve rewritten a couple and updated a few where new information has come to light since first writing them.
For those who would value ready access to the stories in their bookcase, Tales from the Quarterdeck is available in Kindle ebook and paperback formats through Amazon.
The stories are organised in chronological order, starting with the Tryall shipwreck off the Western Australian coast in 1622, and finishing with the Second World War exploits of the Krait. See below for a full list of the stories covered in the book.
Sydney Gazette 22 May 1808, p. 2.
1622 – The Tryall: Australia’s earliest shipwreck
1629 – The Batavia Tragedy
1688 – William Dampier: Navigator, naturalist, writer, pirate
1770 – The Endeavour’s Crappy Repair
1788 – Loss of La Astrolabe and La Boussole, a 40-Year Mystery
1789 – Bligh’s Epic Voyage to Timor
1789 – HMS Guardian: All Hands to the Pumps
1790 – The Loss of HMS Sirius
1790 – Sydney’s First Desperate Escape
1791 – HMS Pandora: Queensland’s earliest recorded Shipwreck
1791 – William Bryant’s Great Escape
1797 – The Loss of the Sydney Cove
1803 – Loss of HMS Porpoise
1808 – Robert Stewart and the Seizure of the Harrington
1814 – Wreck of the Morning Star
1816 – The Life and Loss of HMSC Mermaid
1824 – The Brig Amity’s Amazing Career
1829 – The Cyprus mutiny
1831 – The Caledonia’s perilous last voyage
1833 – The Badger’s Textbook Escape
1835 – The Loss of the Convict Ship Neva
1835 – The Post Office in the middle of nowhere
1835 – The Tragic Loss of George III
1845 – The Cataraqui: Australia’s worst shipwreck
1846 – The Peruvian’s Lone Survivor
1847 – The Foundering of the Sovereign
1850 – The Loss of the Enchantress: A first-hand account
1851 – The Countess of Minto’s brush with Disaster
1852 – The Bourneuf’s Tragic Last Voyage
1852 – The Nelson Gold Heist
Woodbury, Walter B. (Walter Bentley), 1834-1885. Hamlet’s Ghost, Sourabaya [Surabaya], Java [Boat with Passengers and Crew], ca. 1865. Walter B. Woodbury Photograph Collection (PH 003). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries
1854 – Bato to the Rescue
1854 – HMS Torch and the rescue of the Ningpo
1856 – The Loss of the Duroc and the Rise of La Deliverance
1858 – The Loss of the Saint Paul and its Horrific Aftermath
1858 – Narcisse Pelletier, An Extraordinary Tale of Survival
1859 – The Indian Queen’s Icy Encounter
1859 – The Sapphire and Marina
1863 – The loss of the Grafton: Marooned for twenty months
1864 – The Invercauld shipwreck
1865 – The CSS Shenandoah: Victoria’s link to the American Civil War
1866 – The Loss of the SS Cawarra: Bad luck or an avoidable tragedy?
Example of a merchant Brig of the era. (Water colours by Frederic Roux 1827-1828)
By December 1833, the penal settlement at Macquarie Harbour in southwest Tasmania was all but deserted. Only a dozen convicts remained to complete the 120-ton brig Frederick. She would be the last of nearly 100 vessels to be built there. Once launched, they were supposed to sail her around to the newly established station at Port Arthur. However, ten of the convicts had a much more distant destination in mind.
But, to seize the ship involved overpowering the soldiers and officers left behind to watch over them. Tackling armed men with just bare hands was daunting, but they had a plan. One of the convicts, John Barker, happened to be a master blacksmith. He manufactured two flintlock pistols using discarded scraps of metal and a musket barrel found in the blacksmith shop. He also forged a pair of tomahawks to add to their small arsenal.
The Frederick was finished on 10 January 1834, and at 10 am the next day they set sail. Captain Taw sailed down the length of Macquarie Harbour but dropped anchor inside the heads. He judged the weather too foul to safely pass through the narrow passage of Hells Gate and out to sea. So they waited. Then, on Monday, 13 January, the wind eased, signalling their imminent departure.
For the ten convicts, the time to strike had arrived. If they did not seize the ship now, they likely never would. However, they were up against nine men, seven of whom were armed.
Then, good fortune smiled upon them, and the odds shifted in their favour. Two of the soldiers went fishing and took a boat out with a convict at the oars. He was one of two prisoners not in on the plan. So, with them gone, nine had been reduced to six.
Boat building Yard on Sarah Island, Macquarie Harbour by William Gould, 1833, Courtesy State Library of NSW.
Around 6 o’clock in the evening, a prisoner beckoned a sentry to join him by the forecastle hatchway. When the unsuspecting soldier obliged, he was jabbed in the chest with one of Barker’s pistols and ordered down the ladder into the crew’s cabin. Meanwhile, two other convicts armed with hatchets pounce on the only other two men on deck. They subdued the remaining soldier and the terrified mate, bundling them too into the forecastle cabin. A convict stood guard, and a heavy kedge anchor was dragged across the hatchway cover in case they tried to escape. The convicts now had control of the deck. Three men were confined in the forecastle, and another three were out fishing, oblivious to what was unfolding on the Frederick. This just left Captain Taw, David Hoy the shipyard supervisor, and the convict steward William Nicholls. All were in the captain’s cabin
The convicts, now armed with the soldiers’ muskets, were ready to confront the last men standing between them and liberty. Three men stormed down the ladder and attacked Captain Taw and the others, hoping to quickly get the best of them. However, Taw and Hoy fought back. Hoy wrestled a pistol from one of the convicts, and the attackers retreated back up the ladder, leaving Taw, Hoy and Nicholls trapped in the cabin, bloodied and bruised from the brief but violent encounter.
Taw and Hoy were trapped in the cabin. The convicts would pay dearly if they attacked again, but the captain knew he could not retake the ship. They were at a stalemate. But Captain Taw had one small bargaining chip. He had possession of the Frederick’s navigation instruments, items the convicts would need to escape. The impasse lasted about ninety minutes, with occasional shots fired through the cabin’s skylight and each side calling for the other to surrender.
The Globe (London), 9 Jul 1834, p. 4.
Around 7.30 in the evening, someone called for the pitch pot to be brought over and threatened to empty its boiling contents into the cabin if the trio did not immediately surrender. Hoy and Taw agreed there was nothing to be gained by holding out any longer and gave themselves up.
Meanwhile, the fishing party had returned to the brig after hearing gunfire, only to find the prisoners already in charge. The rest of Frederick’s men joined them in the boat, and they were sent ashore with half the ship’s provisions.
Taw and Hoy assessed their situation. There was plenty of food, so they would not be going hungry any time soon. However, how long would it be before a ship was sent to investigate the whereabouts of the Frederick? Taw had no intention of waiting to find out. They set off on foot for the nearest settlement, 150 kilometres away. It would take Taw over two weeks to eventually reach Hobart to report the incident.
In those two weeks, the mutineers did not waste any time making good their escape. James Porter, one of the convicts, wrote the only record of what happened to the Frederick next.
Porter was not a typical convict transported to Australia. For a start, he was born into a respectable middle-class family. When he was 12, he dropped out of school and, by his own account, began mixing with the wrong kind of people. Porter soon got himself in trouble with the law, but his father pulled some strings, and the charges were dropped. However, to prevent Porter from getting into any more trouble, he was sent to sea to serve an apprenticeship and found himself bound for Rio de Janeiro.
So began his career as a seaman. After changing ships several times, Porter claimed he had spent 12 months on the armed schooner Liberta helping the Chileans win their independence from Spanish rule. However, by late 1821, he had had enough of life in South America and returned to England.
A year later, Porter was caught breaking into a house and was transported to Van Diemen’s Land for life. He landed in Hobart in January 1824 but was soon caught stealing and sent to Macquarie Harbour.
When he was chosen to remain behind to finish work on the Frederick, a plan started to take shape in his mind, and South America once again beckoned. His companions comprised a mix of experienced seamen like himself, shipwrights and the blacksmith John Barker who had been schooled in celestial navigation, though he proved to be no seafarer.
The Frederick was sailed from Macquarie Harbour to South America where it was left to sink. Courtesy Google Maps.
The Frederick no sooner made it out to sea when the wind freshened to a heavy gale. It blew hard with mountainous seas for the next nine days as they bore south, then east under much-reduced canvas. The burden of sailing fell heavily on the shoulders of the seasoned sailors. The rest of the men, unused to such sea conditions, rarely left their bunks, suffering severely from sea sickness. Barker was particularly prone to the malady, only coming on deck periodically to make observations and plot their course.
After being at sea for about three weeks with few opportunities to take observations, Barker found they had strayed too far south into the dangerous icy waters of the “Furious Fifties”. He set a northeasterly course for the helmsmen and then retired to his quarters again. Shortly after this, their voyage nearly came to an end when the Frederick was heeled over on her side by a powerful wind gust.
Fortunately, the ship righted herself once the canvas had been brought in. Then, about six weeks out, they spotted land for the first time since leaving Tasmania. They had sailed nearly 5,400 nautical miles (10,000 km) and arrived off the coast of South America.
On 27 February, they boarded the longboat and left the Frederick to sink as, by now, she was taking on a lot of water. The next morning, they made landfall near the mouth of the Rio Bueno in Chile. A week later, they arrived at the provincial capital of Valdivia, where they were promptly thrown in gaol for entering the country in a “clandestine manner.”
It was obvious to the Chilean officials that the men claiming to be shipwrecked sailors were not what they claimed to be. Now that they were behind bars and facing an uncertain future, Porter and his comrades decided to admit to being runaway convicts and beg the Governor for asylum.
Illustration of a brig. Source: Nautical Dictionary by Arthur Young, published in 1863.
They found a sympathetic ear in Governor Sanchez, and he agreed to petition the President of Chile in Santiago on their behalf. They were released from gaol after promising not to leave town. All ten men found work at the local shipbuilding yard, where their skills were much in demand. As time passed, they settled into their new lives and felt their troubles had been put behind them.
But the British Consul in Santiago had learned of their presence in Valdivia unbeknownst to Porter and his colleagues. He, in turn, had called on the Royal Navy to dispatch a ship to apprehend the runaways.
Eight months later, in February 1835, HMS Blonde dropped anchor at the mouth of the Valdivia River to collect the runaway convicts. However, Governor Sanchez refused to hand them over, and the British warship left empty-handed. While Porter and the others had avoided arrest this time, it was clear to them that the British knew where they were.
Life settled back into its regular routines until a few months later, when Governor Sanchez was replaced by a man far less sympathetic to the runaway convicts. Within a month, three of the convicts departed on a merchant ship bound for North America. Then Barker and two others left in the dead of night in a whaleboat they had been building for the new governor. The governor was furious and gaoled Porter and the other three until they could be handed over to the Royal Navy.
They were put on board the next British warship that stopped at Valdivia and returned to England. As they had escaped from Van Diemen’s Land, it was decided to return them there to stand trial for piracy. They arrived back in Hobart on 29 Mar 1837 after an absence of more than three years.
In a novel legal argument, Porter contended that because the Frederick had never been officially registered, it could not be considered a ship. Instead, it was just a collection of timber, ropes, canvas and such like, which just happened to resemble a brig. Consequently, he argued, they could not be found guilty of piracy. The jury was unconvinced, and after 30 minutes of deliberation, they returned a guilty verdict, and the four men were banished to Norfolk Island for life.
