In 1890 the Quetta sank bow first in just 3 minutes. Courtesy: State Library of Queensland.
In 1890 Queensland experienced one of its worst maritime disasters when the passenger steamer Quetta sank in Torres Strait in just three minutes with the loss of 133 lives.
The R.M.S. Quetta was a 3,300-ton coal-powered, iron-clad steamer measuring 116 metres (380 feet) in length and could travel at a top speed of 13 knots (24 kms per hour). She was built in 1881 and on this voyage from Brisbane to London she carried nearly 300 people – passengers and crew.
At 9.14 on the evening of 28 February a sharp jolt and a shudder ran through the Quetta as she was being piloted through the Albany Passage. Initially, the pilot and captain were more perplexed than alarmed. The pilot was sure they were miles from any known hazards and it didn’t feel like they had hit anything substantial. None-the-less Captain Sanders followed protocol and ordered the engines stopped, the lifeboats got ready and the carpenter to sound the wells.
The Quetta Saloon from The Illustrated London News, 1881.
Moments later the carpenter cried out “she’s sinking.” Water was pouring into the ship at an unimaginable rate. What no one realised at the time was they had struck an uncharted rock pinnacle right in the middle of the main shipping channel through Torres Strait. A gapping hole had been torn in the Quetta’s hull from bow to midship one to two metres wide.
The ship was already starting to settle by the bow as Captain Sanders ran aft encouraging passengers to make their way there. At the time many of the first-class passengers were in the saloon rehearsing for an upcoming concert and were oblivious to what was taking place outside. The crew were still frantically trying to get the lifeboats out when water began lapping at their feet only a minute or two later.
Then the stern reared up out of the water and the ship plummeted below the surface of the sea spilling scores of people into the water. Many others were trapped in the saloon, their cabins or under the ship’s sun awnings and drowned.
RMS Quetta showing the sun awnings covering the decks. Photo courtesy SLQ
The Quetta sank in just 3 minutes. Most of those who survived were already on the aft deck when the ship sank or were lucky to swim clear as she slid below the surface.
All was confusion in the water as people thrashed around in panic trying to find something to keep themselves afloat. Eventually a measure of order was restored and one of the lifeboats, now floating free, was used to rescue as many people as it would hold. A second lifeboat, though damaged, was filled with people and they all made their way to land a few kilometres away.
About one hundred people made it to safety on Little Adolphus Island where they spent an uncomfortable night but they were alive. Captain Sanders was among them. The next morning he set off in the lifeboat manned by some of his men and made for Somerset to report the loss of the ship and get help for those still missing. Apart from the people he had left on the island without food or water, there were many others who had washed up on other islands or were still clinging to pieces of wreckage out in the Strait.
When the news reached authorities on Thursday Island a government steamer was dispatched to search for survivors. Fishing boats from Somerset also combed the waters in the days that followed. In all, about 160 people were saved, many had stories of lucky escapes.
The full story of the Quetta’s loss is told in A Treacherous Coast: Ten Tales of Shipwreck and Survival from Queensland Waters, available as a kindle eBook or paperback through Amazon.
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.
Wood engraving published in The illustrated Australian news for home readers. Photo courtesy SLV.
On 24 February 1875 the steamer Gothenburg ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef and sank during a ferocious storm with the loss of over 100 lives. A fortune in gold also went to the bottom.
That the Gothenburg had sunk with 3,000 ounces (93 kgs) of gold belonging to the English, Scottish and Australian Chartered Bank did not go unnoticed when the ship was reported lost. Brisbane salvage diver James Putwain partnered with the owner of the small coastal steamer and the two started steaming towards Bowen as quickly as they could.
There, Putwain hired a small fishing boat and some local men to help with his air pump. By noon on 7 March, they were at the wreck site, only six days after hearing of the disaster. The steamer continued north, leaving Putwain and his team to bring up the gold.
Putwain first tried diving from the fishing boat but a strong current prevented him from reaching the wreck. He then built a platform attached to the wreck’s mainmast and set up his diving apparatus on that. Donning his heavy diving suit and helmet, he climbed down the rigging to the sunken ship’s deck and soon made entry into the captain’s cabin. On this first attempt his air hose became entangled in the wreckage. Putwain had some anxious moments until he cleared it and returned to the surface to give more explicit instructions to his new and inexperienced assistants.
S.S. Gothenburg docked at a wharf. Photo Courtesy SLQ
His third descent met with success. Putwain found the safe containing the gold in the remains of the cabin and had it hoisted to the surface. Before leaving the wreck he tried descending further into the ship but only got a little way before running out of hose. But there, he saw the haunting vision of two women suspended in the water seemingly embracing. Unable to get close enough to identify the bodies, he returned to the surface with the macabre image burned into his memory.
With the gold secured he returned to Bowen to report his find to the Harbourmaster and deposit the precious metal in the local bank.
Then the enterprise got mired in legal wrangling. The English, Scottish and Australian Chartered Bank offered James Putwain and his partner £1,000 for retrieving the £9,000 worth of gold. Putwain and his partner felt £4,000 was more appropriate compensation. The case went to the Vice Admiralty Court in Brisbane, where Putwain claimed he had spent nearly £500 in the salvage operation, that it had been a risky endeavour and that the box was found in a precarious position where it could have easily plummeted into deeper, inaccessible, water to be lost for ever.
The bank argued that the amount demanded by the salvors was excessive and Putwain’s account of the salvage operation was exaggerated. Nonetheless, the judge found in favour of the salvors, awarding them approximately one third the value of the gold, £3,000.
Not happy with the verdict, the bank appealed the decision before the Privy Council in London. Almost two years after the Gothenburg sank the Privy Council found in favour of the salvors and upheld the original judgement, ordering the bank to pay Putwain and his partner.
A second salvage operation was mounted in the weeks after the Gothenburg was lost. The diver Samuel Dunwoodie arrived on the wreck on 14 March, a week after Putwain, unaware that the gold had already been retrieved. Nonetheless, Dunwoodie recovered much of the cabin luggage and many of the personal effects belonging to the passengers. His team also removed the ship’s two steam winches before the weather turned foul, forcing them to abandon the wreck.
The tragic story of the Gothenburg shipwreck is told in A Treacherous Coast: Ten Tales of Shipwreck and Survival from Queensland Waters, available as an eBook or paperback through Amazon.
In September 1789, HMS Guardian sailed from Portsmouth, England, with much-needed supplies for the newly established penal settlement in New South Wales. But its voyage was cut short when it struck an iceberg in the Southern Ocean and began filling with water.
After an uneventful passage south, the Guardian had stopped at Table Bay (present-day Cape Town) for a fortnight in early December. There, they took on board plants and livestock destined for the colony before setting off across the Southern Ocean for Australia.
The sea conditions were almost ideal, except for a dense fog. There was little swell, and a gentle breeze filled the sails, pushing them east. Late on the afternoon of 24 December, when they were about 2,000 km away from the nearest land, the fog lifted, revealing an iceberg about six kilometres away.
After two weeks at sea, the ship’s water supply had been depleted by the additional animals and plants they were carrying. The captain, Lt. Edward Riou, seized the opportunity to resupply. He brought the Guardian to within 500 metres of the towering white mountain and sent two boats out to gather blocks of ice that were floating in the sea.
Captain Edward Riou, commander of the Guardian.
By the time the heavily laden boats returned it was about 7 p.m. and the fog had once again enveloped the Guardian. By quarter to eight, Riou could barely see the length of his ship.
Then, without warning, the Guardian crashed stern-first onto a submerged ice shelf projecting out from the berg. The force of the collision violently shook the vessel, causing the rudder to snap off. Riou was able to use the wind and the sails to back his ship off the ice, and for a brief moment, it seemed that disaster had been averted.
However, upon sounding the wells, the carpenter reported that they were taking on a lot of water. The ship had sustained serious damage below the waterline. Riou ordered the pumps manned and the ship lightened. The crew started by throwing the livestock penned on deck over the side. They then began bringing stores up from the hold, and they were also tossed into the sea.
By 10 p.m., it was clear that all the hard work was not going to save the ship. The water continued to gain on the pumps as the ship began to sit lower in the water. Soon she was so low that waves swept over the deck, threatening to pour into the hold through the open hatchways.
Efforts to save the ship continued through the night and the next day. By now, the weather had deteriorated. The wind was raging around them, and mountainous seas rose, crashing into the stricken ship. By now, the crew were exhausted from their continuous exertions at the pumps and jettisoning cargo. Lt Riou finally accepted the inevitable and gave the order to abandon ship.
There were 123 souls on board the ship, but the five lifeboats would only carry half that number. Riou, a maritime man to his core, had already decided he would remain with his ship to the end. But he encouraged anyone who wished to do so to take to the boats where they might stand some chance of surviving.
One lifeboat was lost immediately when it was lowered into the sea, but the other four got away and were soon out of sight. Sixty-two people chose to remain with the ship, including 21 of the 25 convicts being transported.
Illustration titled “Part of the crew of his Majesty’s Ship Guardian endeavouring to escape in the boats.” Courtesy: State Library of NSW.
To Riou’s and everyone else’s great surprise, the Guardian did not sink. Though she sat very low, her deck awash with frigid water, she remained afloat, barely. They would later learn that the cargo of barrels still trapped in the hold provided just enough buoyancy to keep the stricken vessel from sinking. Riou would also later discover that most of the ballast had been lost through a rent in the hull.
A sail was draped under the ship to stem the inflow of water. The pumps were manned around the clock, and they slowly limped back to Table Bay. The relentless cold and wet conditions and sheer physical effort made the passage brutal. However, nine weeks later, they made it to False Bay, where the Guardian would soon break up on the beach.
Of the 60 passengers and crew who had taken to the boats, only 15 survived. They were rescued by a passing ship after being adrift for nine days. The three other lifeboats that got away from the Guardian were never heard of again.
Map courtesy Google Maps.
Lt Riou was cleared of blame for the loss of his ship and was later promoted to the rank of Captain. He praised the performance of his officers and men and sought pardons for the convicts who had worked so resolutely to save the ship. But by the time the recommendation reached Port Jackson, one of the convicts had already been hanged for stealing, and six others had gone on to commit additional crimes and their pardons were revoked. But 14 men had their sentences overturned.
(C) Copyright Tales from the Quarterdeck / C.J. Ison, 2022.
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James Morrill. Source National Library of Australia 136099157-1.
In July 1846, word reached Sydney that a ship, the Peruvian, had been discovered abandoned on the remote Bellona Shoals far out in the Coral Sea. No one knew what had happened to those who had been on board. As the months passed with no word of any survivors, it was presumed they had all been lost at sea when the ship was wrecked or in a desperate attempt to reach land. Then, 17 years later, a naked lone survivor walked out of the bush with a remarkable story of survival.
His name was James Morrill, and he had been 22 years old in late February 1846 when the Peruvian sailed out of Sydney Harbour on her way to China. Morrill had only joined the crew a couple of days before they sailed. Captain Pitkethly and his crew, including Morrill, numbered 14. Pitkethly’s wife, Elizabeth, six passengers and two stowaways sailed with them. In total, there were 23 people on board.
The Peruvian had fine weather for the first three days and made an easy time of it sailing north under full sails. But during the third night at sea, the weather started to turn. The next morning, the ship was in the grip of a powerful storm. For the next several days, the Peruvian was blown north under bare poles. Then, after nearly a week, the weather began to ease again. Sail was heaped back on, and they started making up for lost time. Then, in the early hours of 8 March, an ominous line of white caps materialised out of the pitch black night directly in their path.
The Peruvian slammed into the reef before there was any chance to change course. The waves lifted the damaged ship onto the reef, where she stuck fast. Seawater swept the deck, washing away the lifeboat and the unsuspecting second mate who had just emerged from below deck.
The morning revealed an unbroken reef awash with turbulent white foaming water as far as the eye could see. No islet, sandbar or refuge of any sort lay in sight. Only jagged rocks jutted from the sea’s surface. Captain Pitkethly made the difficult decision to abandon his ship. When the crew lowered the jolly boat over the side, it was immediately smashed to pieces. They now only had one boat left. It was loaded with supplies and lowered away. Then the ropes got tangled and the boat filled with water. The first mate jumped in the boat to try to save it, but before he could bail it out, the stern broke away. The damaged boat plummeted into the water, and a strong current swept it away from the side of the ship. Resigning himself to his fate, the man bid the captain and crew farewell and was soon lost from sight.
Their situation had become dire with the loss of all three lifeboats. The ship could break apart at any time, and they were stranded over 1000 km off Australia’s east coast. But Pitkethley was not about to give up. The Peruvian’s masts were brought down, and cross planks were lashed and nailed in place, forming a platform. Then the remaining 21 castaways boarded the raft for a very uncertain future.
The raft drifted with the north-westerly current towards the Australian mainland. The days passed slowly under the blazing tropical sun. Water and food were carefully rationed, making thirst and hunger constant companions. Morrill would recall that one day blurred into the next. Had the captain not recorded the passing of each day by carving a notch into a piece of timber, no one could have said how long they had been adrift in that empty sea.
Morrill would later recall that after they had been adrift for a little over three weeks, they had their first casualty from the raft. Captain Pitkethly prayed over the man’s body, and it was lowered into the water. To everyone’s horror, as the body floated away, it was attacked by sharks and torn to shreds. The feeding frenzy, according to Morrill, only ended when the body was completely devoured.
By now, they had probably left the open ocean and were among the shoals of the Great Barrier Reef. Fish could be seen in the crystal clear water, and they were able to catch some with a lure they fashioned from a fish hook, a piece of tin and a strip of canvas. Nature also answered their prayers for fresh water when the skies opened up. Rainwater was collected in a sail, and they could fill their water container for the first time since abandoning the ship. However, their good fortune did not last.
Four weeks of starvation, thirst, and exposure to the elements had taken their toll on everyone. The castaways started dying in rapid succession. “At this time they dropped off one after the other very rapidly, but I was so exhausted myself that I forget the order of their names,” Morrill would later recall.
James Morrill. Photo courtesy State Library of Queensland.
By now, the raft was continuously circled by sharks drawn by the regular supply of corpses. Half-starved and desperate to fill their aching bellies, the survivors resolved to catch one of their tormentors.
“The captain devised a plan to snare them with a running bowline knot, which we managed as follows,” Morrill would later claim, “We cut off the leg of one of the men who died, and lashed it at the end of the oar for a bait, and on the end of the other oar we put the snare, so that the fish must come through the snare to get at the bait. Presently, one came, which we captured and killed with the carpenter’s axe.”
And so Morrill and a few others clung to life. After being adrift for about five weeks, they sighted land for the first time. When Captain Pitkethly examined his chart, he took it to be Cape Upstart. But with no way to steer the raft, they could only watch and pray that they reached shore sometime soon.
“Two or three days afterwards we saw the land once more, and were driven towards Cleveland Bay,” Morrill recalled, “but just as we were preparing to get ashore, in the hopes of getting water, a land breeze sprang up and drove us out to sea again.”
Then, around midnight, the raft washed ashore, likely on the southern point of Cape Cleveland. After so long at sea, no one had the strength to do anything but drag themselves off the raft and collapse on the beach. In the early hours of the morning, it began to rain. Morrill and the other castaways quenched their thirst by drinking directly from shallow depressions in nearby rocks. Cold and wet, they huddled together and waited for dawn.
They had been adrift on the raft for 42 days according to the captain’s tally of nicks in the piece of wood. Only seven of the 21 people who had left the Peruvian were still alive, and two of those would die from exhaustion within hours of reaching land.
For the next couple of weeks, the survivors sheltered in a cave and foraged for shellfish among the rocks. One of the castaways found a canoe pulled up on the beach one day. He would set off south in it alone after Morrill and everyone else refused to join him. Morrill would later learn that his emaciated body was found by Aborigines not far from where he had left.
Memorial to James Morril, the last survivor of the Peruvian shipwreck who lived with Aborigines for 17 years. Bowen Cemetery.
As their strength slowly returned, the castaways began ranging further afield in search of food. And their presence soon came to the attention of the local Aborigines, the Bindal and Juru peoples. One evening after Morrill and Captain Pitkethly had returned to the cave from a day’s foraging, they heard strange jabbering and whistling sounds. When they went to investigate, they found several naked black men staring at them with keen interest.
“At first they were as afraid of us as we were of them,” Morrill later said. “Presently, we held up our hands in supplication to them to help us; some of them returned it. After a while, they came among us and felt us all over from head to foot. They satisfied themselves that we were human beings, and, hearing us talk, they asked us by signs where we had come from. We made signs and told them we had come across the sea, and, seeing how thin and emaciated we were, they took pity on us. …”
By now, only Morrill, Captain Pitkethly, his wife Elizabeth and a young apprentice were left. They were taken in by the Aborigines and assigned to different groups. The captain and his wife never fully recovered and struggled to adapt to the arduous life among the Aborigines. They died within a few days of each other and were buried together. Morrill would also later learn that the apprentice had also died.
. Morrill would live among the Bindal people of the Burdekin region for the next 17 years. Every so often, his new friends told him that they had sighted a ship out on the ocean, but he was never close enough to try signalling for help. But the sightings served to remind him of his past life.
By 1863, the frontier of European colonisation had reached the lower Burdekin River. By then, he was nearly 40 years old. One day, Morrill approached a hut, calling out to its occupants, “What cheer, shipmates?” The shepherds came out, one of whom was armed with a gun, to find a naked, dark-skinned man standing before them. “Do not shoot me, I am a British object, a shipwrecked sailor,” Morrill yelled. He was invited inside and told the shepherds his story in broken English. He only then realised how much he wanted to return to his old life. Morrill made one final visit to his Bindal family and friends, begging them not to follow him. Aborigines were frequently shot on sight if they seemed to pose a threat, and Morrill did not want that fate to fall on his loved ones.
Morrill would eventually be taken to Brisbane, where he met the Governor. He asked that the Aborigines be allowed to live on their land unmolested by settlers, but his plea went unheeded. He was given a job as an assistant storeman in Bowen, where he married, fathered a child and became a much-liked member of the local community. But the hardships he had endured over the years had taken a toll on his body. An old knee wound, which had never properly healed, became inflamed, and he died, probably of blood poisoning, just two years later. A modest memorial to the last survivor of the Peruvian shipwreck can be found in the Bowen Cemetery.
James Morrill’s full story is told in A Treacherous Coast: Ten Tales of Shipwreck and Survival from Queensland Waters.
Tales from the Quarterdeck 