Tales from the Quarterdeck

Tag: Castaway

  • Four Years in Torres Strait: The Extraordinary Tale of Barbara Thompson

    HMS Rattlesnake circa 1848. Courtesy State Library of NSW.

    In 1845, a small cutter quietly slipped out of Moreton Bay, supposedly bound 300 km up the coast to salvage whatever they could from a ship reported to have been wrecked in that vicinity.  The three-ton vessel and her crew were never heard of again, at least not for nearly five years. Then, in late 1849, sailors from HMS Rattlesnake were ashore near the tip of Cape York when they were approached by a white woman seeking their protection.  In halting English, she claimed to be Barbara Thompson, the only survivor from the missing cutter. This is her remarkable story.

    Born in Aberdeen in the late 1820s. Barbara Crawford arrived in New South Wales with her parents as free settlers on the convict transport John Barry. Her father, a tinsmith by trade, had left Scotland to start a new life for himself and his children in Sydney. By 1845, Barbara had left the family home in Pyrmont, married a man named William Thompson and was living in Moreton Bay.

    Around the middle of 1845, it seems William Thompson thought he had found an easy way to make some money. He had learned that a ship filled with whale oil had run aground on Bampton Shoals, over 1,000 km away in the vast expanse of the Coral Sea. Despite having no salvage rights to do so, he decided to search for the ship and take as many barrels of oil as his tiny vessel could carry.

    A year earlier, in June 1844, the American whaler Clarence had run aground at Horseshoe Reef in the Bamptons. Unable to get his off, the captain made the difficult decision to abandon her and make for Moreton Bay in the boats.    Salvage rights to the Clarence and her valuable cargo were sold at auction in Sydney to a man named Cole. He quickly dispatched the schooner Elizabeth, under the command of Captain Riley, to Bampton Shoals to make good on his investment.   Purchasing the salvage rights to any wreck, sight unseen, in such a remote and dangerous part of the world, was always risky. Cole would have to wait to see if his gamble would pay off.

    Background map courtesy National Library of Australia.

    After Captain Riley arrived at the wreck site and carefully examined the damage to the Clarence, he was convinced he could not only retrieve the whale oil, but he could also save the ship and sail it back to Sydney.  So, he loaded the Clarence’s more valuable stores onto his schooner and sailed for home with the good news. He then returned to Bampton Shoals with a couple of shipwrights and the necessary equipment to repair the whaler’s hull and refloat her. However, Riley’s luck took a turn for the worse in January 1845, when a ferocious storm swept the Elizabeth from her moorings and out to sea. Captain Riley and six of his men were now stranded, having taken shelter on the Clarence during the storm. After waiting six weeks for the Elizabeth to return, Riley accepted that his schooner had likely sunk during the storm.  He had the shipwrights prepare their longboat for the hazardous open-ocean voyage to the Australian mainland by raising the freeboard and building a temporary deck. Once work was complete, they set sail for Moreton Bay with just an old hand compass to guide them. The passage would take them 37 gruelling days.

    At Moreton Bay, Captain Riley sold the longboat to William Thompson, who named the three-ton cutter-rigged vessel America. By now, it was mid-1845.   Thompson told people that he intended to salvage the remains of a ship Captain Riley said he had spotted aground on the northern end of Fraser Island (K’Gari).  In reality, Thompson planned to sail to Bampton Shoals and fill his hold with the Clarence’s whale oil before continuing through Torres Strait and on to Port Essington with his spoils.   While Thompson had bought the Elizabeth’s longboat, it’s unlikely he had also bought the salvage rights to the Clarence and her cargo. They would still have belonged to Cole.

    The America set sail from Moreton Bay around August or September 1845.  Joining Thompson were his young wife Barbara and four crew, one of whom was likely a man named Harris who had been on the Elizabeth and said he knew where to find the Clarence.  

    It seems to have been an unhappy vessel.  They were plagued by foul weather, and according to Barbara, there was much “quarrelling on board.”  Two of the crew even drowned during the voyage, though the circumstances remain a mystery.  As it turned out, Harris was unable to find the Clarence or even Bampton Shoals, for that matter. With their provisions almost depleted, Thompson abandoned the search and made for Port Essington via Torres Strait. Somewhere along the way, he put Harris ashore under circumstances that are not entirely clear.  Harris would spend eight months as a castaway somewhere on Cape York before being rescued by a passing ship and taken on to Hong Kong.  

    Meanwhile, Thompson, his wife and one remaining member of the crew cleared the tip of Cape York, but the America struck a reef off the eastern end of Prince of Wales Island (Muralag) during bad weather.  Thompson and the seaman drowned when they tried to swim ashore through the surging seas.   Barbara was left trapped on the cutter until she was rescued by Islanders returning from a turtle hunt after the weather had moderated.

    One of her rescuers, a man named Boroto, claimed Barbara as his wife, something she had no say in. Despite this, she also later claimed she had been well-treated by the Kaurareg. Her place in the community was assured after an elder declared that Barbara was the reincarnated form of his deceased daughter, Giaom. Barbara was renamed Giaom in her honour.

    Giaom, as she was now called, lived with the Kaurareg for the next four years. She learned their language, customs, and way of life. She shared their good times and bad and seems to have been well-liked. That is not to say her life was easy. Life with the Kaurareg would have been challenging for any white person of that era to adapt to. But adapt she did.  

    The only restriction placed on her was that she was barred from communicating with any of the scores of ships that passed through Torres Strait each year. It is quite likely that she always harboured a dream to return to her former life, and a few years later, she got her chance.

    In October 1849, a friend told her that a ship had stopped near the tip of Cape York.  She enlisted the help of several female friends, and they made the crossing to the mainland. She had assured them that she only wanted to meet the white men and shake their hands. Actually, she had already decided to leave the Kaurareg and hoped to do so on that ship. She figured this might be the only chance she had to make it back to Sydney to see her family again. When her husband, Boroto, was told what she was up to, he and several of his mates set off in pursuit.

    HMS Rattlesnake at anchor circa 1850. By Capt. Owen Stanley.

    On 16 October, Barbara Thompson and her friends stumbled on a party of seamen from the British survey ship HMS Rattlesnake.  Barbara was not immediately recognised as a white woman. For though naked but for a fringe of leaves strung around her waist, her skin was so deeply tanned and blistered by long exposure to the tropical sun as to make her indistinguishable from the other Aboriginal women. Barbara was reportedly “wretched in appearance,” and blind in one eye, and it was only when she spoke a few halting words that they realised she was a British subject. “I am a white woman. Why do you leave me?” she pleaded, wanting to be taken back to their ship. She was clearly awkward about her nudity in the company of white men, so the sailors gave her two shirts to cover herself and then took her back to the Rattlesnake.

    It was not long before Boroto was alongside in a canoe demanding that she be returned to him.   Meanwhile, Captain Owen Stanley had listened to her story and told her that the choice to stay or go was hers alone to make.  She chose to remain on the Rattlesnake. Captain Stanely remained at Cape York for several more days, and during that time, many of Barbara’s friends came out to visit her. Even Boroto was allowed on board to speak with his wife. At first, he tried using soft talk and promises to convince her to change her mind and come back home. When that didn’t work, he grew furious and threatened to kill her if she did not do as she was told. Boroto finally stormed off the ship empty-handed.

    While on the Rattlesnake, Barbara AKA Giaom was befriended by the Rattlesnake’s naturalist, John MacGillivray. Barbara proved to be a godsend when it came to understanding the ways of the local peoples. She added several hundred Kaurareg words and their English translations to his dictionary, and she also helped him to understand how Kaurareg grammar worked. She also freely shared her knowledge of the manners, customs, and daily life of her adopted people, giving MacGillivray insights he could never have gained on his own.   MacGillivray’s account of the Rattlesnake’s expedition, Narrative of the Voyage of HMS Rattlesnake, published in 1852, is dotted with references to Giaom’s contributions on the Kaurareg people of Torres Strait.

    Barbara Thompson’s health improved with medical attention and a return to a Western diet. The Rattlesnake arrived back in Sydney in February 1850, where Barbara was reunited with her parents.

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

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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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  • Marooned for twenty months: the loss of the Grafton 1863.

    The last of the Grafton castaways are rescued. Source: Wrecked on a Reef, Raynal, 1874..

    On 12 November 1863, the 56-ton schooner Grafton sailed from Sydney on a sealing expedition among the islands of the Southern Ocean. Six months, 12 months, then 18 months passed without any sighting of the ship or its crew. Most people had given up hope of seeing them again, presuming they had been lost in that vast expanse of freezing ocean wilderness to Australia’s south. Then, on 27 July 1865, three of the lost mariners stepped ashore at Invercargill, New Zealand. Their leader was the missing ship’s captain, and he reported that his other two shipmates were still stranded on a remote island to the south. This is their remarkable tale of endurance and survival against the odds.

       The Grafton was ostensibly on a sealing expedition funded by a consortium of Sydney businessmen. But it also had a more secretive mission to investigate if tin could be found on Campbell Island. The Grafton was to visit the isolated scrap of land some 650 km south of New Zealand and determine if the rumoured tin was there in mineable quantity. An experienced master mariner named Thomas Musgrave was appointed captain of the Grafton, and one of the business partners, Francois Raynal, served as his first mate. Two seamen and a cook rounded out the five-mancrew.

       The weather was atrocious for most of the voyage south through the roaring forties and then into the furious fifties. During one particularly heavy gale, the Grafton was laid over on her side by the force of the wind. But after three weeks of hard sailing, they finally reached Campbell Island, at latitude 52.6°S.  

    Illustration of the Loss of the Grafton on Auckland Island, 1863. Source: Wrecked on a Reef, Raynal, 1874.

       Prospecting for tin came to nothing, and there were few seals to be had. After a month, they had little to show for their time there. They had been gone for almost two months and had consumed nearly half of the four months’ worth of rations they had left with. Captain Musgrave decided it was time to start heading for home. No one disagreed. They departed Campbell Island on 27 December 1863 with the wind blowing hard from the northwest. As they approached the Auckland Islands, Musgrave found that he could not sail past them without getting dangerously close to land. He decided the safest course of action would be to find shelter in one of the inlets and wait for the wind to shift. They dropped anchor in what they would later learn was Carnley Harbour on 31 December. But soon after arriving, their haven turned out to be anything but when it was lashed by a powerful storm. On the night of January 2, the wind shifted and blew at hurricane strength, as the seas foamed and grew mountainous around them.  

    Site of the Grafton wreck site, Auckland Island. Courtesy, Google Maps.

        For a time, the Grafton rode out the maelstrom. Then one anchor chain snapped, and the second anchor began to drag. At midnight, the schooner was driven up onto a rocky beach. “Within fifteen minutes, she was nearly full of water, with heavy sea breaking over her,” Musgrave later wrote of the ordeal.   

    The crew gathered provisions and warm clothing and piled it all on deck. Then everyone found shelter where they could, and waited for daylight as the storm raged around them. Francois Raynal had fallen ill sometime earlier, but his shipmates looked out for him during that bleak night. In the morning, they climbed into their small dinghy, which was already filled with supplies. Captain Musgrave tied a rope to the Grafton and slowly let it run out as the overloaded dinghy was pushed towards land. When they were close to the beach, one of the seamen, Alexander McLaren, jumped into the surf holding a rope tied off to the boat’s bow. He waded ashore and then wrapped the rope around a tree. As Musgrave let his line out, McLaren pulled his in, and the boat made it through the surf to land safely on the beach. It was that level of simple cooperating that would stand them in good stead during the months that followed.

    Captain Thomas Musgrave. Source: Castaway on the Auckland Islands, 1866.

        The castaways spent that night sleeping on the cold, wet ground, but were no doubt grateful that they had made it off the wrecked schooner alive. As for the Grafton, she was pounded to pieces, with no prospect of being repaired and refloated. After the weather had cleared sufficiently, they returned to the wreck. Their priority was to salvage the sails and timber spars, enough to build a small hut so they had shelter from the harsh elements. Despite being marooned on a remote island, Captain Musgrave and the others believed it would only be a matter of time before a ship passed by and they would be rescued.

       But as the months rolled by, their hopes of being found ebbed away and finally vanished completely. The small amount of water-damaged sea biscuit and salted pork they had saved from the schooner had run out long ago. Then, for the next 18 months, they survived on a diet comprised mainly of seal meat. Raynal, who over time recovered his strength, was able to brew a passable ale, which he believed would help keep scurvy at bay.

    Inside the hut on Auckland Island. Source: Wrecked on a Reef, Raynal, 1874.

         The castaways strengthened their hut, built a fireplace and chimney, and furnished it with stretchers, a table, and stools. Lanterns fuelled with seal oil gave the interior a warm, comforting glow. When not out procuring food and water or keeping vigil for any ship that might pass by, Musgrave taught his illiterate sailors how to read. The castaways also passed their time playing chess and dominoes with bone pieces Raynal had carved by hand. They also played cards for a time, but Raynal eventually destroyed the pack when it became evident that Musgrave was a poor loser. As their clothes deteriorated, they were replaced with seal-skin garments. In short, they made their home as comfortable as circumstances would allow.   

    After spending a second summer on Auckland Island without ever seeing another soul, the castaways decided to wait no longer to be rescued. It was now around March 1865, and another freezing winter was fast approaching. They considered constructing a new vessel from the Grafton’s wreckage, and they even built a forge to assist them. However, the venture was abandoned for want of an auger to drill holes through the timbers. Instead, they turned to making their twelve-foot (3.6 metre) dinghy more seaworthy. They extended its length by 76 cm, built up the sides and furnished it with a deck. When it was finished, Musgrave found it was so unstable that it would have been too dangerous to call all five of them to safety.

     

    Preparing the dinghy to escape from Auckland Island. Source: Wrecked on a Reef, Raynal, 1874.

       On 19 July 1865, Captain Musgrave set off in the dinghy with only two men, Francois Raynal and Alexander McLaren, promising to return quickly to rescue George Harris and the cook, Henry Brown. After five days of hard sailing through foul weather, they reached Stewart Island, 450 kilometres to their north. They put into Port Adventure and fell in with the Flying Scud. The next morning, Musgrave and his mates were taken the final 50 km across Foveaux Strait to Invercargill on New Zealand’s South Island.   

    After sufficient funds were raised by the good folk of Invercargill, a ship was chartered to take Captain Musgrave back to Auckland Island to retrieve his two shipmates. The Grafton’s story is a testament to what can be accomplished when a group of resourceful individuals, aided by a measure of good fortune, work together for their common good.

    As chance would have it, the survivors of another ship, the Invercauld, had washed up on the northern end of Auckland Island around the same time.   Unfortunately, theirs is a far different story and is the subject of a future blog.

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

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  • The Loss of the Convict Ship Neva – 1835

    Loss of the Neva. Source: Tales of Shipwrecks and Adventures at Sea, 1846.

       Between 1788 and 1868, more than 162,000 convicts were loaded onto transport ships and banished to the colonies to serve out their sentences. Such were the living conditions onboard some of these vessels, coupled with the hazards of sailing such vast distances in isolated waters, perhaps as many as one in one hundred perished before ever setting foot on Australian soil. When the Neva struck a reef in Bass Strait, of her 226 casualties, nearly 150 of them were convicts.

       The 337-ton barque Neva set sail from the Irish port of Cork on 8 January 1835, bound for Sydney, New South Wales. On board were 153 female prisoners of the crown, 55 children and nine free female emigrants. The crew, under the command of Captain Benjamin H. Peck, numbered 26. During the passage, three people died and one baby was born, so by the time they were nearing their destination, the ship’s complement numbered 241, passengers and crew.

       By 12 May, the Neva had rounded the Cape of Good Hope, stopped briefly at the island of St Paul for fresh supplies and was about to enter Bass Strait. At noon, Captain Peck calculated they were about 90nm (170 km) west of King Island. As daylight faded into night, he posted a lookout to warn of any dangers lying in their path. He would remain on deck through the night, but for a two-hour break, as his ship negotiated that dangerous stretch of water.   

    A stiff breeze was blowing, and the ship was being pushed along under double-reefed topsails. Around 2 o’clock in the morning, the lookout sighted the dark silhouette of land against the lighter night sky in the distance. Peck ordered the course altered a little to the north to ensure he safely cleared King Island. Then, about two or three hours later, the frantic call came from the lookout, “breakers ahead,” as a line of white water emerged from the pre-dawn gloom. 

    Neva Shipwreck. illustration from The Capricornian, 26 May 1927.

       Captain Peck immediately gave the order to tack, but it came too late. As the Neva was turning into the wind, she struck a rock and lost her rudder. With the wheel spinning freely, the stricken ship was now at the mercy of the wind and current. They had likely struck Navarine Reef about three kilometres northeast of Cape Wickham, the northernmost point of King Island.

       Suddenly, the Neva struck hard a second time. She hit on her port bow and swung broadside against the reef and immediately started taking on water. Below decks, the prison cages collapsed under the violent force of the collision, and the terrified female convicts rushed on deck.

       The gig, one of the four available lifeboats, was lost as it was being lowered into the water. Captain Peck then ordered the pinnace over the side, and he, the ship’s surgeon, several sailors and some of the female passengers climbed in. But before they could put away, it was overwhelmed by a deluge of terrified women, frantically trying to escape the ship. The boat sank under their weight, and everyone was spilled into the churning water. Only Peck and the two seamen made it back to the ship alive.

       The captain then set about launching the longboat. However, this time, as he boarded, he made sure his panicking passengers were kept at bay. But this time, as soon as the boat was lowered, it was swamped by the surging seas crashing around the ship. Everyone was tossed into the water. Only Captain Peck and his first mate made it back to the ship this time.

       After the loss of three boats, the cutter was their only remaining lifeboat. It is not clear from reading survivor accounts why it was never launched. Considering the sea conditions it would likely have met with the same fate as the longboat. The most likely reason the cutter was never launched is that the Neva began to break up before it could be lowered.

    Account of the Neva shipwreck. Courtesy, State Library of NSW, FL3316306

       Part of the deck sprang away from the superstructure and then split in half, effectively forming two rafts. Captain Peck, some of the crew and several women made it onto one of them while the first mate and several other people were lucky enough to find themselves on the second. The two rafts drifted clear of the wreckage, leaving the remaining convict women clinging to those parts of the ship still jutting out of the surging seas.

       The rafts and several other pieces of wreckage with people clinging to them drifted with the currents for several hours before they came to ground in a sandy bay at the northern end of King Island. The mate’s raft rode the surf in and washed up high on the beach, and most of the people who had clung to it survived.

       The captain’s raft was not so lucky. The timber platform had come away with a large section of the foremast protruding below the surface. As they entered the shallows, the mast caught on the bottom some distance from the beach. Waves swept everyone from the raft, drowning anyone who could not swim. Only the captain, a seaman and one woman made it through the pounding surf to reach shore alive.

       Twenty-two people made it onto King Island, but seven of them died within 24 hours either from exposure or from injuries sustained during their escape from the wreck. The remaining 15 survivors used sails and spars washed ashore to build makeshift shelters, and then they began collecting what provisions had been washed ashore. Over 100 bodies were found scattered among the debris, and they were buried in several mass graves in the coming days.

       Having resigned to waiting it out until they could be rescued by the next passing ship, Peck and the others began foraging for food to supplement the provisions that had washed ashore from the Neva. But unbeknown to them, there was another party of castaways on King Island. They had been shipwrecked earlier on the south-eastern end of King Island and had come to investigate when they saw wreckage drifting down the coast. They eventually came upon the Neva survivors. A short time later all the survivors were discovered by a sealer and his Aboriginal wife who lived permanently on the island. They cared for the castaways until help finally arrived.

       After being marooned for a month, the castaways were found by Charles Friend, the master of the schooner Sarah Ann. He had touched at King Island on his way back to Launceston after delivering provisions to a whaling station elsewhere in Bass Strait. He took off all the survivors except two of the Neva’s sailors and a convict woman, who had been out foraging for food at the time. Unable to find a safe place to anchor, he was not prepared to risk losing his ship waiting for them to return.

       The Sarah Ann reached Launceston on 27 June, and a cutter was immediately dispatched to King Island to collect the remaining three castaways. In all, just fifteen of the 241 passengers and crew survived, making it one of Australia’s worst maritime disasters.

    © Copyright C.J. Ison / Tales from the Quarterdeck, 2023.

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  • HMS Torch and the rescue of the Ningpo castaways

    HMS Torch rescuing crew and passengers from the wreck of the Ningpo, 1854. Illustration courtesy NLA.

       As Lieutenant William Chimmo was making HMS Torch ready for a return to sea, he was unexpectedly tasked with an urgent mission. Word had just reached Sydney that nearly 20 people had been marooned for two months on a remote island far out in the Coral Sea. By chance, his paddle steamer had just completed repairs and was eminently suited to the task at hand.

       Second Mate William Tough of the 150-ton junk-rigged schooner Ningpo had arrived in Sydney on 2 October 1854. He had staggered in to Moreton Bay with a tale of personal heroism and a plea for help to save his stranded shipmates, but there was no vessel there that could go to the Ningpo’s rescue. Tough was patched up and sent to Sydney on the next ship heading south.

       The Ningpo had departed Hong Kong on 15 April 1854, bound for Melbourne to take up new duties as a lighter in Hobson’s Bay. The voyage south had been a difficult one, plagued by storms, rough seas and a nagging leak which just kept getting worse. To add to Captain Billings’ woes, his chronometer stopped working. Unable to determine his longitude, accurate navigation had been reduced to nothing more than an aspirational stab in the dark. Billings decided they should pull into the French settlement at the Isle of Pines for repairs the Ningpo’s hull. But while still north of New Caledonia, he inexplicably changed his mind, opting to head for Moreton Bay instead.

       This meant sailing dangerously close to the D’Entrecasteaux Reef, a two-thousand-square-kilometre maze of submerged coral reefs, small islets, and sandbars. Its discoverer, French Admiral Antoine Bruni D’Entrecasteaux, called it “the most dangerous reef he ever saw.”

    Map of D’Entrecasteaux Reef

       By 8 p.m. on 28 July, Billings estimated that he was clear of those dangerous waters, but he was wrong. Minutes later, the Ningpo ran onto a submerged coral outcrop and began filling with water.

       Unable to get the Ningpo off, Captain Billings made the decision to abandon ship. He, his crew and two passengers made for a small sand island a few kilometres away. They set up camp using timber spars and canvas sails. They fabricated a still to distil fresh water from the sea. Food proved plentiful, as the waters surrounding the island teemed with fish, and the island itself was a nesting ground for turtles and was also home to thousands of seabirds.

       With their immediate necessities well catered for, thoughts turned to how they might escape. Their only means of leaving the island was a four-metre (13 ft) dinghy, the only lifeboat the Ningpo carried. Billings wanted to try to make the Isle of Pines about 600 km away, but his crew refused, fearing they would be killed by the inhabitants of New Caledonia long before they reached their destination. They wanted to send a small party to Moreton Bay, despite it being twice as far away. The captain and his crew were at an impasse.

       Even after they had been stranded for more than a month, they sill could not agree where they should go to seek help. Frustrated with the inaction, Tough and two others set off in the dinghy to make the perilous voyage to Moreton Bay without first seeking the captain’s permission. Billings was furious when he discovered that his boat, compass, and nautical chart were all missing. He was convinced that they would fail, and in so doing, Tough’s recklessness had condemned the rest of them to an endless stay on the island. However, most of the crew held on to the belief that they would soon be found by a passing ship. Billings was not so optimistic, for he knew he had taken his ship far from regular shipping routes and that no sailing ship would intentionally venture into these treacherous waters.

       But, despite Billings’ doubts, Tough and his companions reached Wide Bay on the Australian mainland 14 days later. As they beached their dinghy, a party of Aborigines attacked them, stole the boat and left them for dead. Ten days after that, however, the seriously injured Tough staggered into Brisbane, assisted by a couple of more hospitable Aborigines. Unfortunately, his companions were not so lucky, having died along the way. With no vessel available in Moreton Bay that could go to the rescue, Tough was sent to Sydney with a letter addressed to the Colonial Secretary, seeking assistance. After being stranded for more than 10 weeks, there was no guarantee that the Ningpo castaways would be found alive, but the authorities believed they were duty-bound to try.

    HMS Torch at anchor, (probably in Sydney Harbour), by Conrad Martens. Courtesy State Library of NSW.

       Lt. Chimmo was ordered to steam out of port as soon as possible. Fortunately, his preparations to return to Fijian waters to continue his survey work were well advanced, so he was able to clear Sydney Heads the following night. He stopped in Newcastle only long enough to fill his coal bunkers before continuing north.

       Chimmo only knew that the Ningpo had run aground near a small island in the vicinity of latitude 18° 36’ South, the coordinate supplied by Tough and presumably recorded by Billings. The only charts available in Sydney that covered that stretch of ocean showed that the Ningpo was probably stranded somewhere near the Huon Islands. But the scale of the map offered little detail. HMS Torch would have to carefully pick its way through the reefs and shoals to find the castaways.

       The Torch battled unseasonal north-westerly winds for the first 11 days. Then the south-easterly trades finally resumed, and they made much faster progress. By mid-October, they had arrived at the search area, but then another delay beset them. Storm clouds began gathering, and Chimmo had no choice but to make for deeper waters until the weather cleared or risk the destruction of his ship.

       Meanwhile, Billings had finally convinced his men that they should wait no longer for help to arrive. After three months, it was clear that if they were ever to get off the island, it would be by their own means. He proposed building a boat from the remains of the Ningpo, and had already manufactured some rudimentary shipwright’s tools from cutlasses, knives and other metal objects they had salvaged from the schooner. Finally, his men realised they had a chance of success and embraced the idea. Unfortunately, the same storm that chased the Torch away also lashed their island, and Billings was forced to put their plans on hold for the time being.   

    When the storm finally cleared, Chimmo began his search of the Huon Islands. He sent search parties out in small boats to inspect each sandbar and islet they came across, but none showed any sign of recent habitation. Frequent rain squalls and strong winds hampered the search, and on one occasion, a boat capsized in the choppy seas, but no lives were lost. Then on the morning of 26 October, he spotted two islands in the distance.  

    The Ningpo wreck site. Map courtesy NLA.

       After the storm had passed, Billings and his men began preparing to go out to the Ningpo in a dugout canoe found in the bushy interior of the island. How it got there was a mystery, but it had been a godsend to the stranded sailors. But before they headed off to the wreck, a lookout spotted a ship in the distance, the first such sighting since they had landed. Signal fires were lit, and everyone lined the beach in anticipation of being rescued.

       As Lt Chimmo drew near to one of the islands, he saw two columns of smoke. Then, he spotted the stranded ship further off in the distance. Finally, he could make out people clustered on the beach. He fired a cannon to let them know they had been seen and gingerly made his way through the reef-strewn lagoon.

       Fearing the weather could deteriorate at any moment, boats were sent across the last couple of kilometres to collect the castaways. One of the first to step ashore was the Ningpo’s second mate, William Tough, who had volunteered to accompany the rescue. He had brought help, as promised, to the utter amazement of Captain Billings.   

    The whole boarding operation was completed that day. The Torch then sailed for Sydney, arriving on 10 December 1854, having completed a round trip of more than 4000 km.

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

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