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.
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.
© Copyright C.J. Ison / Tales from the Quarterdeck, 2026.
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