Tales from the Quarterdeck

Category: Ships

  • 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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  • The Norna and the Conman Commodore

    The Norna’s sister ship Cornet.

       In the early 1900s, many hard-working sailing vessels saw out their days plying the waters between Australia and the islands of the South Pacific. Few, however, would have had such a fascinating history as that of the Norna.

       The Norna was built in New York in 1879 as a luxury ocean-going schooner rigged yacht. She was lavishly fitted out and built to be a fleet-footed racer. For the next decade or more, she held her own in many long-distance ocean races.

       Then, in 1895, she was purchased by self-styled “Commander” Nicholas Weaver, who claimed to represent a Boston newspaper empire seeking to establish a presence in New York. He was, in fact, a brazen conman.

       A few years earlier, Weaver had fallen foul of the law and only escaped gaol by testifying against his partner. He then hustled himself off to the West Coast, where he no doubt perfected his craft.

    Nicholas J Weaver, The Pacific Commercial Advertiser (Honolulu), 17 April 1900, p. 7.

       Now back in New York, he planned to take the Norna on a round-the-world cruise, sending back stories of his adventures which would be syndicated in America’s Sunday newspapers. He found several financial backers willing to cover his expenses in exchange for a share of the syndication fees. They founded a company, and Weaver sailed for the warm climes of the Caribbean.

       There, he made himself a favourite among the members of the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club, representing himself as the “Acting Commodore” of the prestigious Atlantic Yacht Club. The good people of Bermuda were not necessarily any more gullible than anyone else whom Weaver had separated from their money. But when someone sails into harbour aboard a 115-foot luxury yacht with a sailing crew of ten plus a cook and steward, few questions are likely to be raised. It also helped that Weaver himself was handsome, self-assured, and very charismatic.

       Weaver lived life to the full and spared himself no expense. He began hosting poker parties on his yacht, inviting only Bermuda’s most well-heeled residents. Though he proved to be uncannily lucky at cards, the winnings could not have covered his expenses. He funded his lavish lifestyle by chalking up credit with local merchants where possible, passing dud cheques if necessary, or forwarding invoices to his financial backers in New York.

       However, it was only a matter of time before things began to unravel. But before the inevitable day of reckoning, Bermudans awoke one fine morning to find the Norna and its flamboyant owner had cleared out in the dead of night.

    Yacht Norna leaving Honolulu. The Pacific Commercial Advertiser (Honolulu), 17 April 1900, p. 7.

       Weavers’ backers eventually realised they had been scammed and that they would never recoup their money. They wound up the company and stopped sending him money. But that did not deter Weaver from continuing on his round-the-world cruise.

       He visited many ports over the next couple of years, where he dazzled the wealthy with his largesse, while taking them to the cleaners at the poker table. He cruised around the Mediterranean, stopping long enough to run his con but always skipping out before debts became due.

       At the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, in April 1898, he and his American-flagged Norna found themselves in hostile waters. Realising his yacht might be seized, he set sail at his best speed with the Spanish navy in hot pursuit. Despite Weaver’s many character flaws, he was a superb mariner. Thanks to his skill and the luxury yacht’s fast sailing lines, the Norna outpaced the Spaniards, crossing into the safe waters of British-owned Gibraltar. There, he repaid his welcome by passing a fraudulent cheque for $5,000 and was once again on his way.

       During his travels around Europe, Weaver made the acquaintance of a man named Petersen, a fellow grifter. Together, they would prove a formidable team.

       Weaver and Pedersen would arrive in a new city independently, only to be introduced to one another by someone local, or they would fabricate a chance meeting as if they were strangers. Regardless of how they met, the result was always the same. They would get a high-stakes poker game going where one or the other would clean up.

       When Weaver reached Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka), he was introduced to Petersen, who just happened to have recently arrived by steamer. They quickly got to work separating the wealthy from their wealth before moving on again. The pair repeated the same stunt in Sumatra, in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), as well as in Hong Kong and Yokohama, Japan. At each port, they fleeced the local high society and vanished before alarm bells rang.    In Yokohama, Weaver passed himself off as the commodore of the New York Yacht Club and flew its pennant from his vessel. Weaver and Pedersen befriended each other and enjoyed many an evening with others playing poker on the Norna. Then, one morning, the yacht was gone. Pedersen joined the chorus baying for Weaver’s blood, claiming he, too, had been taken for a fortune. He then quietly slipped away on the next steamer leaving port.

    Schooner Norna circa 1911 now sporting a cabin on her aft deck. The Sun, 17 July 1911, p. 1.

       From Yokohama, the Norna made its way to Honolulu, where Weaver and Petersen briefly reunited. But when Weaver left Hawaii, Petersen remained. It seems as though the partnership had come to an end. The Norna stopped at Samoa long enough for Weaver to fleece the locals, then sailed on to New Zealand. At Auckland, Weaver began his now well-honed con, though this time without the able assistance of Petersen.

       Weaver racked up considerable debts, but before he could make his departure, the Norna was seized as surety. Realising the game was up, Weaver caught the next steamer bound for Sydney, vowing he would return to Auckland with the necessary funds to have his beloved yacht released. Not surprisingly, he vanished, and the yacht was put up for sale. It was purchased by a Sydney merchant and brought across the Tasman in June 1900.

       The Norna was stripped of her luxurious fittings, and the cabins were removed to make way for a spacious hold more fitting for her new working life. The Norna passed through several hands over the next 13 years. She served as a pearling lugger in Torres Strait and a trading vessel among the Pacific Islands. One owner even used her to salvage copper and other valuables from old shipwrecks far out in the Coral Sea. But, in June 1913, she, herself, was wrecked on Masthead Reef 50 km northeast of Gladstone Harbour. So ended the Norna’s fascinating and colourful career.

    © Copyright Tales from the Quarterdeck / C.J. Ison, 2022.

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