Tales from the Quarterdeck

Tag: Australian history

  • The Nelson Gold Heist – 1852

    The Nelson Gold Robbery. The World’s News, 5 Aug 1950, p. 9.

       In the early hours of Friday, 2nd April 1852, a band of villains climbed aboard the barque Nelson while moored in Melbourne’s Hobsons Bay and made off with over 8,000 ounces of pure gold, worth tens of millions of dollars in today’s money. The heist was as simple as it was audacious and ranks among the largest robberies in Australian history. Most of the thieves never saw the inside of prison, and only a fraction of the gold was ever recovered.

       The 603-ton barque Nelson had sailed from London on 4 July 1851, around the same time that prospectors discovered a vast quantity of alluvial gold near Mount Alexander. The barque dropped anchor in Hobsons Bay on 11 October, only for its captain, Walter Wright, to learn Victoria was in the midst of a gold rush.

       The Nelson disembarked its passengers and unloaded merchandise at Williamstown, then sailed across to nearby Geelong. There, the crew deserted the ship and headed off to the gold fields to try their luck, leaving just the captain and first mate behind. Over the next couple of months, the Nelson’s hold was filled with bales of wool, casks of tallow, and, most importantly to this story, 11 boxes of gold totalling 2083 ounces, all bound for London. By March 1852, the barque was once again anchored off Melbourne in Hobsons Bay, ready to return home as soon as enough men could be found to crew her.

    Ships, deserted by their crews, lying in Hobson’s Bay, By E Thomas.

       On Thursday night, 1 April, the Nelson was still anchored a short distance off the Point Gellibrand Lighthouse, along with scores of other ships stranded for lack of crew. Captain Wright was ashore for the night, leaving his chief mate, Henry Draper, in charge. With him were the second mate Carr Dudley, an officer from a neighbouring ship, plus a handful of seamen they had managed to recruit.

       Despite a fortune in gold being on board, no watch had been posted. The crew had refused Draper’s order to stand guard through the night, saying there were too few of them to do so, and besides, they had not signed on as night watchmen. All Draper could do was lock the boxes of gold in the lazarette, (a storeroom of sorts) for safekeeping. By now, the number of boxes had grown to over twenty as the captain continued to accept new consignments.

       Henry Draper, Carr Dudley, and two officers from nearby ships spent the evening playing cards and drinking. Then, sometime around 11 p.m., the card game wrapped up, and one of the visiting officers returned to his ship. Draper and Dudley tottered off to their cabin, leaving William Davis, the Royal George’s second mate, to sleep off the evening’s entertainment on the cabin’s lounge. Meanwhile, the rest of the crew had long since retired to their berths in the forecastle.

       Around two hours later, two boats carrying 22 men rowed up to the Nelson, the sound oftheir oars muffled by blankets to mask their approach. They pulled alongside, and a dozen of them, armed with pistols and swords, climbed onto the deck.

       Some went forward and secured the crew in the forecastle while the rest poured into the main cabin aft. As they swarmed onto the deck, Carr Dudley woke Draper up to tell him he thought he could hear movement above. Draper went on deck to investigate and was confronted by several well-armed men, all dressed in black with hats pulled low over their heads and handkerchiefs covering the lower portions of their faces.   

    “We’ve come for the gold,” the ringleader told Draper, “And the gold we’ll bloody well have.” Draper had gone on deck dressed only in his nightshirt and asked if he could return to his cabin to put on a pair of trousers. While he was fumbling to get dressed, a robber, still pointing a pistol at him, warned, “We’ve not come here to be played with, so make haste. ”Draper and Dudley were forced into the main cabin to join Davis, who had been rudely awoken with a gun pointed at his head. They were eventually joined by the rest of the crew brought aft from the forecastle.

    The Sun, 30 May 1948, p. 3.

       Draper was forced to unlock the lazarette, and the thieves helped themselves to 23 cedar boxes containing over 200 kilograms of gold. During the proceedings, one of the robbers’ pistols accidentally discharged, and the bullet grazed Draper’s thigh. Once the gold was loaded onto the boats, the slightly wounded Draper and the rest of the crew were locked in the lazarette. The robbers then hopped in their boats and were rowed back to shore.

       Draper and the others would have remained imprisoned in the lazarette until well into the day had they not had a minor stroke of luck. The cook had been woken by the noise of the thieves climbing on deck, and he had hidden in a dark recess under his bunk, remaining undiscovered during the robbery. He resurfaced once he saw that the robbers had left and went aft to find his shipmates locked in the lazarette. Once released, Draper wasted no time reporting the heist to the Williamstown water police office.

       Boats were sent out to scour Hobson’s Bay, but they were too late. The robbers had got away. Shortly after daylight, the water police found one of the whaleboats pulled up on the beach at Williamstown and the other across the bay near Sandridge (present day South Melbourne). Tracks were seen leading off the beach where the boat had been abandoned.   

    The police were galvanised into action. Mounted officers and constables fanned out across Melbourne looking for the robbers and the missing gold. The robbery was a severe embarrassment to the police and the colonial government, and both were widely condemned in the newspapers when it became public. The Governor offered a £250 reward, and that was matched pound for pound by the Nelson’s shipping agents.

    The Argus 3 Apr 1852, p. 5.

       The empty gold boxes were discovered by an employee of the Argus newspaper a few days later, hidden in scrubland not far from the beach at Sandridge, but most of the gold was long gone. Only some slight traces of gold dust could be seen mixed in the sand where the boxes had been busted open. Over the next several days, police rounded up anyone who looked remotely suspicious, and the watchhouses were filled to bursting.

       The police finally got a lucky break when a band of men turned up at a hotel in Geelong late one night wanting a room. They were dressed far beyond their station in life and spent their money freely. The publican alerted the Geelong police, and they were arrested a couple of days later. These seven men were detained while the police searched for evidence of their involvement in the Nelson robbery. Two more men were captured in Portland on Victoria’s western coast. Most of the individual suspects were found to possess more than £500, five times the average yearly wage at the time.

       Of these nine men, only three were found guilty of the robbery and sentenced to long terms in prison. The most compelling evidence against them was that they had been recognised by Henry Draper, or the Royal George’s second mate, William Davis. Drape and Davis claimed they recognised the robbers because their handkerchiefs had slipped down, revealing their faces. Draper and Davis also claimed they recognised two other men who likely had nothing to do with the robbery. One had a slew of witnesses testify at his trial that he had been on the gold fields at the time, but the jury did not believe them. However, he was quietly released a couple of months later when it was clear he and his witnesses had been telling the truth. The other hapless soul spent many years at hard labour for a crime he never committed.

       For years, rumours circulated around Melbourne about who might have been involved. Ongoing interest was fuelled by the fact that most of the gold was never recovered. But it remained a baffling mystery.

       Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald 30 years later, Marcus Clarke pondered some of the many rumours associated with the heist. It was often said that a gentleman of standing in Melbourne society had masterminded the robbery and paid thugs to steal the gold on his behalf. It was also rumoured that several prominent men about town had benefited financially from the robbery. Yet another rumour had it that a notorious publican had fenced the gold and then left the colony a very wealthy man. Clarke finally concluded that after the passing of so many years, the whole story would never be known.

       But was he right? Since first writing this blog post in April 2024, I have unearthed some tantalising clues that point to the identity of the brazen thieves. But more about that some other time.

    © Copyright C.J. Ison / Tales from the Quarterdeck, 2024.

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  • The Foundering of the S.S. Alert – 1893

    Foundering of the SS Alert. Source: The Queenslander 13 Jan 1894, p. 71.

       On Friday, 29 December 1893, around 11 o’clock in the morning, two ladies were strolling along Sorrento Ocean Beach on the Mornington Peninsula when they discovered an unconscious man washed up on the sand. He would prove to be the sole survivor of the steamer Alert, which sank during foul weather.

       The SS Alert had left Bairnsdale on Victoria’s southeast coast at 4 p.m. two days earlier, bound for Port Albert and Melbourne. But a little more than 24 hours later, she would be lying at the bottom of Bass Strait off Jubilee Point.

       The Alert was a 16-year-old 243-ton iron screw steamer owned by Huddart and Parker. She had recently been refurbished and, for the past two months, had been carrying passengers and cargo between Gippsland and Melbourne. Prior to that, the Alert had been a favourite of the excursion fleet, which ferried passengers between Melbourne and Geelong.

       From the moment the little steamer cleared the Gippsland Lakes, she felt the full fury of a storm lashing the Victorian coast. Nonetheless, Captain Albert Mathieson thought the sea conditions were nothing his ship could not handle. They stopped briefly at Port Albert, 150 kilometres down the coast, to deliver some cargo and then continued on towards the entrance to Port Phillip Bay and respite from the atrocious weather.

    S.S. Alert. Source: Leader, 6 Jan 1894, p. 30.

       By 4 p.m. Thursday, they were off Cape Schanck, just 30 kilometres short of Port Phillip Bay. Owing to the trying conditions, Captain Mathieson had remained on the bridge the entire trip. Such were the conditions that it required two men at the helm to keep the steamer pointed on its course. Then disaster struck.

       About half an hour later, the Alert was struck by a massive rogue wave that swamped the deck with tons of water and pushed the steamer over onto her side. Then, they were hit by a second large wave before the water from the first had time to drain away. The saloon skylight and a porthole window were smashed, and the sea poured in. The helm was unresponsive by now, and the ship’s lee rail was pushed underwater. Another wave swept over the bridge as seawater snuffed out the struggling steamer’s engine fires.

       The captain ordered everyone to don their lifebelts as he vainly tried to head the stricken steamer into the wind, but to no avail. He ordered the lifeboats to be lowered, but one had already been swept off its davits, and the other had seas continuously sweeping over it. There was nothing anyone could do now.

    The Herald, 30 Dec 1893, p. 2.

       Robert Ponting, the ship’s cook, joined the rest of the crew on deck, and minutes later, the Alert went to the bottom. Ponting climbed onto a hatch cover, but in the turbulent seas, it kept turning over and flipping him into the water. He eventually lost hold of it altogether and began swimming. He spotted the ship’s steward nearby and kept pace with him. Ponting and the steward remained together until the poor fellow could no longer keep his head above water and drowned. Around this time, Ponting spotted Captain Mathieson swimming strongly, but lost sight of him again shortly after.   

    Ponting spent the night swimming about in the cold Bass Strait waters within view of the Cape Schanck Lighthouse. The cold water chilled him to the bone, and he eventually passed out. He continued drifting with the current, slowly pushing him towards land. Then, around daybreak, he felt himself being tumbled ashore and used the last of his strength to drag himself away from the pull of the surf. He had spent over 12 hours in the water and would spend another five or six hours passed out on the beach.

    Robert Ponting. Source. Weekly Times (Melb), 6 Jan 1894, p. 19..

       When, around 11 o’clock, he came too, he found he was surrounded by a group of ladies and a gentleman who had been walking along the beach. The first ladies to discover the unconscious man had called on the others to come to Ponting’s aid. Among his saviours was Douglas Ramsay, a doctor on holiday from his practice in Elsternwick. At first, Ramsay thought that Ponting was dead. He had tried to find a pulse but could not. and “his eyes were shut and all sanded over, his nostrils were also clogged with sand, and his body was stiff and cold,” he later recalled. The doctor didn’t give up, though. He opened Ponting’s mouth and poured some drops of brandy down his throat while vigorously working his arms “to restore animation.” After about ten minutes of this bizarre medical attention, Ponting began to show signs of life.

       Ramsay then dragged him behind a rock to shelter him from the cold wind and one of the ladies removed her jacket and wrapped it around his frozen feet. A couple of the other ladies began the long walk back to their carriage and headed to Sorrento for assistance. Meanwhile, Dr Ramsay continued with his ministrations. While they were waiting for help to arrive, another man happened on the scene while walking his giant St Bernard dog. He had his huge canine nestle up against Ponting for warmth. That, and a steady administration of medicinal brandy, brought some colour back to Ponting’s cheeks.   

    After a while, he was able to tell his rescuers his name and what had befallen him. He also asked that someone send his wife a telegram to tell her he was alive. He did not want her to think he had perished with everyone else when news of the shipwreck broke. Eventually, he was taken to the Mornington Hotel in Sorrento, where a couple of local doctors cared for him. As apparently was best practice in such cases during the late 1800s, the good doctors rubbed his entire body with mustard and poured hot brandy down his throat. In response – or perhaps despite it – Ponting made a full recovery.

    The Argus, 30 Dec 1893, p. 7.

       Over the next couple of days, several bodies and much wreckage washed up on Mornington Peninsula’s rugged ocean beaches. In all, 14 men lost their lives: 11 crew and three passengers. Robert Ponting was the only one to survive the catastrophe.

       A marine board inquiry concluded that the Alert had insufficient ballast for the prevailing sea conditions, which had made her ride higher in the water and less stable on her final voyage. The board also felt that Captain Mathieson should have found shelter in Western Port rather than continue down the coast to Port Phillip Bay. It chose not to give an opinion on the captain’s handling of the vessel in its final minutes due to insufficient evidence.

    © Copyright C.J. Ison / Tales from the Quarterdeck, 2024.

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  • The Banshee’s Terrible Loss, 1876.

    Australian Illustrated News, 15 May 1876.

       The Banshee steamed out of Townsville at 6 o’clock on the morning of Tuesday, 21 March 1876, bound for Cooktown, some 240 nautical miles (450 km) up the Queensland coast. Captain Daniel Owen had command of the 58-ton steamer and its crew of 10 men.   On this trip, the Banshee was carrying 30 paying passengers, and 12 stowaways.   Almost everyone was on their way to the Palmer River, where gold had recently been discovered.   But disaster would strike long before they reached their destination.

       A moderate breeze blew from the southeast, accompanied by some drizzling rain, as they left Townsville.   But nothing about the dismal weather hinted at the violent storm that would engulf them seven hours later.   At 1.30 p.m., when a few kilometres off the southern end of Hinchinbrook Island, they were lashed by hurricane-force winds, high seas, and torrential rain. Visibility was reduced almost to zero.

       Captain Owen did not see land again for over an hour as he steered a north-north-westerly course along Hinchinbrook’s east coast. In his 35 years at sea, he had never experienced such ferocious weather. So, he decided to exercise caution and seek shelter at Sandwich Bay. Once some normality had returned to the world, he would continue on to Cooktown. Captain Owen ordered the engines slowed to half speed and he placed a lookout forward to warn of any dangers.   

    Then, a little after 3 o’clock, the lookout sighted land dead ahead. The rocky cliffs of Cape Sandwich loomed out of the pelting rain before them. Captain Owen ordered the helmsman to steer “hard a port” and for the engines to increase to full speed. The bow started to come around, but it was too little, too late. The Banshee struck aft and was slammed broadside onto the rocks. Had they cleared that promontory, they would have made it safely into the sheltered waters beyond. But that was not to be.

    Map showing Banshee wreck site. Courtesy Google Maps.

       The ship almost immediately started breaking up. The saloon house gave way under Captain Owen’s feet. “I jumped from the saloon to the top of the steam chest, and from there to the top of the house aft,” Owen later recalled, “and stuck to the mizzen rigging.”

       Around the same time one of the passengers, Charles Price, grabbed hold of the boom as the ship ran aground, but when the funnel came crashing down, it knocked him onto the deck. From there, he climbed up on the side rail and leapt onto the rocks. Not all the passengers were so lucky. Many jumped into the sea in panic and drowned before they could scramble to safety. Price went to the aid of one female passenger clinging to the rocks as the waves crashed about her. He reached down but only got a handful of hair before she was swept away.

       The ship’s stewardess had a lucky escape. She was seen clinging to a piece of wreckage in that dangerous space between the ship and the rocks. Before anyone could get to her, she was dragged under the vessel before coming back up again. This time, she caught hold of a rope and was pulled to safety. Price tried to save another passenger who he saw struggling to get clear of the waves. But before he could reach the man, he was washed from the rocks and crushed by the ship.

       Another pair to have a lucky escape were the Banshee’s cook and a stowaway. They had remained with the ship until it was washed high on the rocks and then stepped off through a rent in the hull.

    Total Wreck of the Banshee. Mackay Mercury, 1 Apr 1876, p. 3.

       Captain Owen lost his perch in the mizzen rigging and found himself fighting for his life in the water. Twice he reached the rocks and twice he was washed back out into the cauldron. But on the third attempt, he got a firm hold and was able to clamber to safety above the pull of the waves.

       A passenger named Elliot Mullens was reading in the saloon when he heard someone call, “We are going aground.” He rushed onto the main deck just as the Banshee struck. Mullens climbed onto the bridge and, from there, launched himself across to a rock but was immediately washed off by a giant wave. Fortunately, he latched onto another rock, and despite being pummelled by successive waves, he scrambled out of the danger zone somewhat unscathed.

       “I turned, and just then the saloon … was smashed to atoms, burying beneath it four women and four children, whom we never saw again,” he later recalled. “Five minutes from the time of striking, all was over – all were saved or hopelessly gone from our sight forever.”

    In all, 17 people lost their lives, including all the children and women on board, except the stewardess. The survivors, most nursing deep cuts, bruises or broken bones, spent a cold, wet and miserable night on land. The next morning, two bodies were found washed ashore. Captain Owen held a brief service over them as they were buried where they lay.   

    By now, the storm had blown itself out, leaving a dead calm in its place. Six men volunteered to cross Hinchinbrook’s thickly forested and mountainous interior so they could signal the small settlement of Cardwell for help. Meanwhile, Captain Owen and everyone else remained where they were, but they did not have long to wait to be rescued.

    Hinchinbrook Passage circa 1880s. Source: Picturesque atlas of Australasia 1886.

       Around 6 p.m., someone cried out, “Sail Ho.” And, sure enough, there was a sailing vessel out to sea heading south. A large red flannel blanket was hastily hoisted on a makeshift mast, and everyone waited, praying that they would be seen.

       Five minutes later, the schooner The Spunkie turned towards land to investigate. But it was only by chance that the survivors had been spotted. The Spunkie’s mate had recently purchased a new telescope and was want to look through it at any opportunity. Luckily, when he brought it to his eye this day, he spotted the red flag and the bedraggled survivors lining the shore. By 10 o’clock that night, everyone had been transferred to the schooner, and they continued on their way to Townsville. The six men who crossed the island were picked up by the steamer Leichhardt as it was passing through the Hinchinbrook Passage.   

    A Marine Board Inquiry concluded the Banshee was lost due to the stress of the weather. Although they believed that Captain Owen had erred in not heading further offshore than he did, they found that “he acted as he believed for the best under very trying circumstances.”

    © Copyright C.J. Ison / Tales from the Quarterdeck, 2024.

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  • Capture of the Harrington, 1808

    Brig – similar to the Harrington.

    Robert Stewart was not your typical convict born into England’s poverty-stricken underclass and sentenced to transportation for committing some petty crime. Rather, he came from a comfortable though modest middle-class family. Born in 1771, the first ten years of his life would have likely been idyllic, but then his father died, and a year later, his widowed mother enrolled him into the Royal Mathematical Institution. There, he joined the ranks of boys learning maths and celestial navigation, preparing them for apprenticeships in the merchant marine or Royal Navy. Had he graduated, Stewart would have had a respectable and rewarding career that would one day see him master of his own ship. However, Stewart harboured ambitions of one day enjoying the sort of wealth and privileges that “higher-born” gentlemen took for granted.   

    In June 1785, Robert Stewart’s rebellious nature and frequent absences led to his expulsion from the institute.  He then joined the Royal Navy as an ordinary seaman and over the next 12 years rose to the rank of Petty Officer. But in 1798, aged 27, he deserted, likely embittered that he would never be promoted into the officer ranks.  Three years later, he stood trial on fraud and forgery charges. Stewart had purchased goods while posing as a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy and paid for them with a forged cheque. Caught, charged and found guilty, he was sentenced to transportation for life and sent to Van Diemen’s Land.

    Sydney Cove c1809. Courtesy State Library of NSW.

       Stewart arrived in Hobart on the Calcutta in 1803 and did not attract any undue attention for a year or so. However, twice, he attempted to escape by seizing small colonial vessels and setting sail. Both times ended in dismal failure, and he was returned to Hobart to face punishment. After his second attempt, he was sentenced to death. Stewart was only spared that punishment due to a blanket pardon given to all prisoners under capital sentence by the recently appointed Governor of NSW, William Bligh. However, in 1808, he was sent to Sydney to serve a period of time at hard labour.

       But Stewart never gave up hope of regaining his freedom. This time, he had his eye on the 180-ton brig Harrington anchored in Sydney Cove. She had recently returned to Port Jackson from China with her hold filled with tea after delivering a cargo of Fijian sandalwood. So lucrative was the trade that the Harrington’s captain was set to do it again.   The ship was stocked with enough supplies to last the crew several months and was to sail any day.   

    At 10 o’clock on the night of 15 May 1808, Stewart led as many as 30 fellow convicts out to the waiting ship in two boats they had just stolen. They came alongside as quietly as they could so as not to alert any sentries. But when Stewart climbed over the side, he found he had the deck to himself. The rest of the men swarmed over the gunwales. Some went forward to secure the crew. Others went aft to take care of the officers. The Harrington’s Chief Officer, Arnold Fisk, woke to the sight of Stewart holding a pistol to his head. The brig’s captain and owner could not be found, for he had gone ashore earlier that day. As Stewart and his men took control of the ship, the captain was blissfully asleep in his home overlooking Sydney Harbour.

    Sydney Gazette 22 May 1808, p. 2.

        With the ship’s company under guard, the convicts cut away the anchors and used the two stolen boats to tow the Harrington the length of Sydney Harbour. Once they reached the Heads, the sails were unfurled and the wind took them out to sea. By 7 a.m., they were about 20 nautical miles (40 kilometres) off the coast.

       Stewart ordered the Harrington’s crew into the two boats so they could make their way back to Sydney. They pulled into Sydney Cove later that afternoon to learn the alarm had already been raised. Earlier that morning, Captain Campbell had looked out across the Harbour to find his ship was not there.

       It took authorities three days to organise a ship, the Pegasus, to go in pursuit. By then, Stewart and the Harrington were long gone. The Pegasus cruised the Fijian Islands and then sailed on to Tonga before returning to Sydney via New Caledonia. She was gone nine weeks and arrived back empty-handed. For a time, it looked as if Robert Stewart and his band of bolters had made good their escape. Stewart had sailed the brig nearly 8000 kilometres north and was approaching Manila in the Philippines when their luck ran out. HMS Dedaigneuse spotted the unfamiliar vessel, and her captain sent a boarding party across to investigate. By then, the Harrington was flying American colours, and Stewart presented the officer with papers purporting that the ship was of American origin. The forged documents did not fool the officer in charge of the boarding party who seized the ship. Stewart, now calling himself Robert Bruce Keith Stuart, was taken back to the Dedaigneuse while the rest of the convicts were locked in the Harrington’s hold, now under the command of a British naval officer and a prize crew.

       Shortly thereafter, the Harrington ran aground off the island of Luzon. Most of the convicts were reported to have got ashore where they fled on foot. However, there is some evidence to suggest that their “escape” might have been fabricated, and they were actually press-ganged into Royal Navy service.

       Stewart, on the other hand, had a much easier time of it. He spoke and carried himself in a gentleman-like manner, professed to have enjoyed a liberal education and that he had connections to some of Britain’s most prestigious families. Stewart claimed to have once been a lieutenant in the Royal Navy before he fell victim to the penal system. As a result, he was accorded considerable leniency by the Dedaigneuse’s captain.    Captain Dawson allowed Stewart “every reasonable indulgence and forbade to place him under personal restraint.” That was until Stewart tried to escape and came very close to succeeding. After that, he was placed under close confinement. Stewart was eventually delivered to British officials in India, where he continued masquerading as a gentleman in need of help rather than the escaped convict that he was.

    Calcutta circa 1809.

       He knew he could not hide the fact that he had committed an offence serious enough to warrant transportation to New South Wales. So, instead, he fabricated a preposterous story about his conviction. Stewart claimed he had eloped with a young lady from a very respectable family, though chivalry required him to leave her unnamed. But, after they were secretly wed, a junior Baronet who also had desires for the lady broke into their apartment. Stewart said he had shot and injured the young aristocrat in what he described as an affair of honour. Stewart said he had been unfairly found guilty of attempted murder and sent to New South Wales. That sounded more in keeping with a gentleman than being caught for the more tawdry crime of passing a forged cheque. His tale garnered much sympathy from the colonial administrators in Calcutta. The Chief Magistrate even went as far as to champion Stewart’s cause, penning a letter to his superior suggesting he should be released.

       But then, in August 1809, Stewart’s time ran out. The British officials could not ignore that he was a fugitive from justice, and the Governor General ordered him to be returned to Sydney. He was placed on board a ship bound for Australia, but before it sailed, Stewart went missing. At first, the captain claimed he had jumped overboard and likely drowned, but it later transpired he had been whisked away in a boat by one of his many admirers and taken back to Calcutta.

       So, Robert Stewart may have escaped justice and settled in India under yet another assumed name, or caught the next ship leaving port. No one knows for the trail grows cold then. One thing is certain: he never returned to New South Wales to serve out his sentence. Nor did he face punishment for masterminding the seizure of the brig Harrington.

    © Copyright C.J. Ison / Tales from the Quarterdeck, 2024.

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  • The Invercauld shipwreck, 1864.

    Illustration of the Invercauld. Source: The Castaways, Andrew Smith, 1866.

       In recent years, the loss of the Invercauld and its tragic aftermath has been held up as an example of what can go horribly wrong when leadership fails. In contrast to the wreck of the Grafton, on the same island at the same time, where all five men survived, only three of the Invercauld’s 25-man crew lived through the ordeal. The considerable loss of life has sometimes been blamed on the captain’s failure of leadership. But that harsh criticism is based largely on a version of events contained in a memoir written by one of the survivors, some 60 years after the event. Robert Holding had little to say in praise of his captain, but his chronicle stands in stark contrast to the only contemporary account left by one of the other survivors. His story is one of grinding struggle against the elements, a hostile landscape, and a scarcity of food.

       The Invercauld was a 888-ton merchant ship under the command of Captain George Dalgarno. She sailed from Melbourne on 3 May 1864, bound for the Peruvian port of Callao to load up with guano.

       Almost from the outset, they were plagued by foul weather. As they bore southeast in a long, sweeping arc that would take them deep into the South Pacific, they battled strong winds, high seas, rain, sleet, and snow. Then, a week after leaving Melbourne, the lookout sighted the dim outline of land ahead through the pouring rain. Dalgarno took the sighting to be the Auckland Islands, south of New Zealand, at 61 degrees south. He had been unable to take any sightings due to the weather, but had calculated that he was likely approaching their southernmost point. He altered course a few degrees south to clear them with a safe margin.    To Dalgarno’s great surprise and alarm, the lookout called land ahead again. Dalgarno’s navigation had been off more than he had anticipated. He realised, too late, that his ship was in mortal danger, for they were being blown towards a lee shore. By now, the sun had set as the storm continued to rage around them. He spied what he thought was a narrow passage separating two islands and decided that this was his best chance to save the ship. He brought the Invercauld around to the north and heaped on as much sail as he dared, hoping to pass unscathed through the channel into calmer waters beyond.  

       High cliffs loomed out of the inky darkness on the starboard side, and then they were caught in breaking surf. Dalgarno lost all control of the ship. She ran aground broadside on a rocky shore. Huge waves crashed over the deck. There was no time to get the lifeboat over the side, for the Invercauld almost immediately broke apart under the pounding. The men ditched their boots and heavy oilskins as the ship came apart under their feet. Twenty-five men were swept into the turbulent sea to be washed ashore in a small cove backed by towering cliffs. Only 19 men survived the sinking, and all were battered and bruised from being bashed against rocks and wreckage.

       The sodden survivors huddled together for warmth during that first freezing night as the sea spray, rain, and sleet beat upon them. In the early hours, they gathered some of the wreckage to build a lean-to, which gave them some shelter from the worst of the elements. When the sun rose, they got their first proper look at where they had been tossed ashore. They were trapped on a narrow crescent of rocky beach hemmed in on three sides by towering cliffs. The only food they had been able to find washed ashore from the wreck was a kilogram of salt pork and a kilogram bag of sea biscuits, not much to sustain 19 cold and hungry men. One item that would aid them in the future, once it had dried out, was a soggy box of matches that the steward had found in his pocket.   

    To remain where they were would spell the end of them all. The only option they had was to scale the cliffs and see what lay at the top. The climb would claim another sailor who slipped and fell to his death. When Dalgarno and the 17 surviving crew reached the top, they found an inhospitable landscape of dense scrub and coarse grass as far as they could see. Dalgarno thought they would have a better chance of surviving on the more sheltered eastern side of the island. So, off they set, barefoot through the thick vegetation. It took them two weeks to cross the island. Two weeks of pushing through dense scrub, of being lashed by freezing wind and rain, of barely subsisting on a diet of roots and leaves, but for one day, when they caught a small pig.

    Newcastle Journal, 1 Aug 1865, p. 3.

       Four men died from fatigue and exposure during the long trek. Six others broke away from the main group led by Dalgarno, wanting to return to the shipwreck site. Holding was one of them, but he rejoined the main group a few days later. The other five were never seen again.

       By the time they reached a bay on the eastern shore, the party had been reduced to just nine men. There, they found an abundance of limpets fixed to the rocky shore and feasted as only starving men could. But even that plentiful supply was eventually exhausted. They decided they would cross a ridge to the south, hoping they would find another bay filled with shellfish.

       As they crested the ridge, Dalgarno saw two huts on the edge of a bay. They were the first signs of civilisation they had seen since being tossed ashore. When they reached the huts, they found them to have been abandoned, but they provided welcome shelter from the winter elements and the hope that someone might return during the summer months. In fact, the huts were the remains of Endeby’s short-lived whaling station on Ross Bay, which had lain abandoned for the past decade.

       For a time, their fortunes improved. For men who had nothing, the huts were a treasure trove of rubbish that could be repurposed into useful tools of survival. Empty tin cans became boiling pots for limpets. A sheet of iron served as a hotplate over their cooking fire. The discovery of an old adze and hatchet made cutting firewood so much easier. On their first day, they caught a seal, which they feasted on that night. Unfortunately, that was the only one they found, so their diet primarily consisted of limpets, wild roots and greens.

       When they had exhausted this bay of shellfish, remaining any longer seemed pointless. Dalgarno and three others remained at Ross Bay while Andrew Smith, the chief mate and narrator of the only contemporary account of the wreck and its aftermath, Robert Holding and the other two sailors set off to find a better source of food further along the coast. By the time they found a suitable cove and returned to collect the others, only Captain Dalgarno was still alive. The others had succumbed to the cold and starvation. Two more would die in the coming months, leaving just Dalgarno, Smith and Holding still alive.

       Again, their fortunes seemed to improve, at least for a while. After hunting down a couple of seals, they constructed a canoe by stretching the skins over a sapling frame. Now they were able to venture further afield in their relentless search for food. Surviving on a diet of fish, sea birds and the occasional seal, they made it through to summer, but that brought a new set of miseries. Sandflies savaged them, and any seal meat or fish left uneaten for more than a day or so became fly blown.

    …With rescue looking unlikely, the trio realised their only chance of escape lay in building a boat. It was a move born of desperation, for the nearest port was Invercauld in New Zealand, nearly 500 km away. They returned to the huts and pulled them apart using the timbers to construct a boat. However, no sooner had they finished building it than a storm lashed the island and swept it out to sea. They built a second boat with the remaining timbers and, over the next couple of months, used it to travel around Ross Bay and to nearby islands in search of seals and other food sources. They found that one island was thickly populated with rabbits, which eventually proved to be an easy source of meat and skins.

       As their second winter loomed, they built a sturdy sod-walled hut complete with a fireplace and chimney to see them through the coldest months. Then, on 21 May 1865, one year and ten days after being cast upon the island, a vessel dropped anchor in Ross Bay. It was the Portuguese ship Julian, which had pulled in for repairs while on a voyage from Macao to South America. The Julian’s captain had seen Endeby’s whaling station marked on his chart and had hoped to get some help repairing his badly leaking ship. All he found were the Invercauld’s three castaways. When the Julian set off for South America, Dalgarno, Smith, and Holding went with her.

    Main sources: The Castaways: A Narrative of the Wreck and Sufferings of the Officers and Crew of the Ship “Invercauld” of Aberdeen on the Auckland Islands by Andrew Smith, 1866; Captain Dalgarno’s letter to the ship’s owners published in the Birmingham Daily Post, 31 July 1865, p. 8; and A Narrative of the wreck of the “Invercauld” among the Auckland Islands by Captain Dalgarno in Wrecked on a Reef by Francois Raynal, 1874.

    © Copyright C.J. Ison / Tales from the Quarterdeck, 2024.

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