Tales from the Quarterdeck

Tag: Captain Cook

  • Wreck of the Morning Star – 1814

    Example of a Brig. Source: Winston’s Cumulative Loose-Leaf Encyclopedia 1918

       On Sunday, 3 July 1814, the merchant ship Morning Star sailed out of Sydney Harbour bound for Calcutta by way of Torres Strait and Batavia.  However, her voyage north ended abruptly on a coral reef south of the Forbes Islands off the far north Queensland coast. The vessel was a 140-ton Calcutta-built brig owned by the Indian-based trading house Lackersteen and Co. When she left Sydney, the crew numbered 37 men, a mix of European and Indian seamen, all under the command of Captain Robert Smart. Only six of them would survive the ordeal.

       No account exists of how the ship was lost, but from the location of the wreck site, it appears that Captain Smart was sailing within the Great Barrier Reef when he ran aground and had to abandon ship.

       Lieutenant James Cook had charted the route back in 1770, and he had only narrowly avoided total disaster on what he would name Endeavour Reef, some 450 km south of where the Morning Star was lost.

       The passage was fraught with danger. Thousands of reefs, many hidden just below the surface, dotted the coastal waters inside the Great Barrier Reef. However, the route had two distinct advantages. Rarely did a ship have to stray far from land, so refuge could be sought should disaster strike. There were also ample safe anchorages where ships could lay up overnight or when the conditions made it difficult to detect hazards lying in their path. Later, mariners would prefer a route that took them far out into the Coral Sea as they made their way north. They would cross the Barrier Reef near Raine Island or other similar narrow passages to pass through Torres Strait. This “outer passage” avoided the labyrinth of reefs but came with its own set of dangers.

    Booby Island. Image courtesy National Library of Australia

       On 30 September, the fully rigged Ship Eliza was sailing through Torres Strait when the lookout spotted a white flag flying from a staff on Booby Island.   The captain heaved to and sent a boat across to investigate. When it returned, she carried five marooned sailors from the Morning Star. This is the first recorded instance of shipwrecked sailors seeking refuge on Booby Island. Later, it would be stocked with food and water to assist shipwrecked sailors. A primitive post office with a logbook would also be established, so passing mariners could pass on the location of any uncharted reefs they may have discovered.

       The castaways had been among 15 men who had taken to the Morning Star’s longboat and made the perilous journey north after abandoning the wreck. They reported that Captain Smart and nine other sailors had left Booby Island five days earlier, intending to make for the Dutch port of Kupang on Timor Island. There is no record of them ever arriving there or anywhere else, for that matter.

    Morning Star reported wrecked on a reef south of Forbes Islands. Courtesy: Google Maps.

       The remaining 22 members of the Morning Star’s crew were thought to have perished as a result of the wreck or some calamity that befell them sometime afterwards. But four years later, another Morning Star survivor was found living with the Islanders on Murray Island on the Eastern entrance to Torres Strait.   

    The Claudine had anchored off Murray Island in September 1818 and sent a jolly boat ashore to meet with the islanders. To the astonishment of all, an Indian sailor was there to greet them in Hindustani. Fortunately, one of the sailors in the jolly boat spoke the language and was able to translate for the others. He told the sailors from the Claudine that he had been on the Morning Star when it ran aground and that since then he had been living with the Murray Islanders. He had learned their language and been accepted into their community, but the circumstances of his arrival on the island and the fate of his shipmates were not recorded. When the Claudine set sail, the Indian castaway was with them.

       The Morning Star is just one of many hundreds of vessels, large and small, that came to grief in Queensland’s northern waters from the late 18th and into the early part of the 20th Century.

    © Copyright C.J. Ison / Tales from the Quarterdeck, 2025.

    Please enter your email address below to be notified of future blogs.

  • The Endeavour’s Crappy Repair

    The Endeavour being towed off the reef into deep water by Samuel Atkins (1787-1808).

    As the Endeavour famously made its way up Australia’s east coast in 1770, there was a moment when the success of Cook’s voyage hinged on a pile of sticky animal dung, and some handfuls of wool and rope fibre. The incident occurred shortly after passing Cape Tribulation, so named by Cook because that was where his troubles began.

       All of Monday, 11 June, the Endeavour had been sailing about 15 kilometres off the coast, pushed along by an east-southeasterly breeze. At 6 in the evening, Cook ordered the sail to be shortened, and he instructed the helmsman to steer to the seaward of two small islands lying directly in their path. He also had a seaman in the bow constantly sounding the depth, for he was literally sailing into the unknown. Then, shortly after 9 o’clock, as he and his officers sat down to supper, the seabed suddenly rose to within 15 metres of the sea’s surface. Cook called the crew to their stations and was prepared to drop anchor or adjust sail, but as suddenly as the seabed had risen, it dropped away again. They had just passed over a coral reef.

       Then, an hour or so later, the Endeavour ran up on a coral reef and stuck fast. Cook was about to discover he had stumbled into a dangerous labyrinth of reefs and shoals where the Great Barrier Reef pinched in close to the Australian mainland.

    “The Endeavour on the Reef” Source: Picturesque atlas of Australasia, 1886.

    An anchor was taken out aft in the hope that they might be able to kedge the Endeavour back off the reef on the high tide. But when the time came for the men to heave, she would not budge. The next high tide would be at 11 a.m., so he ordered the crew to lighten the ship for the next attempt. Cannons, ballast, water casks, stores of all sorts were tossed over the side.  At high tide, they tried kedging off the reef a second time, but again she would not budge.  Yet more stores went over the side, and on the third attempt, the Endeavour floated free, but the hull had been breached, and water was pouring into the hold.

       All three working bilge pumps were manned non-stop to stop the Endeavour from sinking. Everyone, sailors, officers, civilian scientists, and even Cook himself, took fifteen-minute turns at the pumps. Cook knew their survival hinged on finding a suitable place to beach the stricken vessel so they could make repairs. But there was no guarantee he would find such a place before his ship foundered.

       Then, a young midshipman, Jonathan Monkhouse, suggested fothering as a means of plugging the leak and buying them some much-needed time. He had seen it done with great effect on a ship he had previously served on. With nothing to lose, Cook set him to work, aided by as many men as he could spare from pumping and sailing duties.

       Monkhouse took a spare canvas sail and spread it out on the deck. He gathered up a large quantity of rope fibre and wool and had his men chop it up finely. The short fibres were mixed with dung from the animal pens and formed fist-sized sticky balls of odorous matting. These were slopped onto the sail about six to eight centimetres apart until a sizeable portion of the canvas had been covered.

       The sail was then lowered over the side of the ship forward of the hole in the hull, and then drawn back along the side. As the fother – the particles of oakum and wool – were sucked in through the rents in the hull, they caught on the edges, and in no time at all, they plugged the holes and slowed the leaks to a trickle.

    Map showing Endeavour Reef when the ship went aground. Source: Google Maps.

       “In about half an hour, to our great surprise, the ship was pumped dry, and upon letting the pumps stand, she was found to make very little water, so much beyond our most sanguine expectations had this singular expedient succeeded,” Joseph Banks would later write in his journal.

       For the first time since striking the reef, the Endeavour was out of immediate danger.  She was now taking on less than half a metre of water each hour, and that could be easily managed using just a single bilge pump.

       The Endeavour sailed a bit further up the coast until they reached what is now named Endeavour River. There, Cook found a steeply sloping sandy beach ideally suited to careening his ship. And, after several days’ delay waiting for safe conditions to enter the river mouth, he ran the barque onto the beach to examine the damage.

    The Endeavour beached for repairs. Photo courtesy SLQ

    At 2 a.m. [on 23 June] the tide left her, which gave us an opportunity to examine the leak, … the rocks had made their way [through] 4 planks, quite to, and even into the timbers, and wounded 3 more. The manner these planks were damaged – or cut out, as I may say – is hardly credible; scarce a splinter was to be seen, but the whole was cut away as if it had been done by the hands of man with a blunt-edged tool,” Lieutenant James Cook later wrote.

       Cook also found a fist-sized lump of coral lodged in the hull, along with pieces of matted wool and oakum, which so successfully stemmed the leak.

       At low tide the next day, the ship’s carpenters began replacing the damaged planks and the armourers got the forge going to manufacture replacement bolts and nails to secure the new timbers in place. In all, Cook and his crew spent six weeks there making repairs and re-provisioning.

    HMB Endeavour. Photo Courtesy SLV.

       Once the hull was repaired, the Endeavour put back out to sea on 4 August and gingerly made her way north. But they were still trapped in the same dangerous stretch of water that had come so close to ending the voyage. It would take several days of careful and nerve-wracking sailing before they escaped the intricate maze of coral shoals.

    The full story of the Endeavour’s stranding on the Great Barrier Reef is told in A Treacherous Coast: Ten Tales of Shipwreck and Survival from Queensland Waters.

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

    Enter your email address below to be notified of new posts.