Tales from the Quarterdeck

Tag: Grimeneza

  • Queensland’s Ten Worst Maritime Disasters

    The wreck of the Steamer Gothenburg. Source: Australasian Sketcher, 20 Mar 1875, p. 13.

    TEN: SOVEREIGN, 1847.

    The Sovereign. Image courtesy Stradbroke Island Heritage Museum.

    The paddle steamer Sovereign, with 54 persons on board, sailed from Moreton Bay via the southern channel on 11 March 1847.   As she ploughed through the large swells funnelled into the passage between Moreton and Stradbroke Islands, her engines failed at a critical moment.      The force of the breaking waves quickly drove her onto a sand spit projecting from the southern point of Moreton Island, where she broke up.    Forty-four people lost their lives.   The owners of the vessel would later claim the engines had been working fine and blamed the captain for the loss.     

    NINE: MERSEY, 1804.

    On 24 May 1804, the 350-ton merchant ship Mersey sailed from Sydney bound for Bengal, India, via Torres Strait.     In mid-June she was wrecked while trying to negotiate the dangerous waters of Torres Strait.   Neither the location or the circumstances of the tragedy are known, other than the captain and either 12 or 17 of the crew took to the longboat and made it safely to Timor Island to report the loss.   She reportedly sailed with 73 hands which means 56 or 61 people lost their lives.

    EIGHT: PERI, 1871.

    HMS Basilisk and the Peri. Image Courtesy the British National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.

    In early February 1871 HMS Basilisk discovered a schooner, later identified as the Peri, adrift and seemingly abandoned a short distance off the Queensland near Cardwell.   When a boat was sent across to investigate, they discovered 14 emaciated Solomon Islanders, three corpses, no food or fresh water and five feet of putrid seawater in the hold. The Peri had last been seen about six weeks earlier in Fiji carrying around 80 or 90 blackbirded Islanders bound for Fijian cotton plantations.   It seems that the Islanders had overpowered their kidnappers and taken control of the schooner.   They then sailed or drifted west across almost 3,000 km of open ocean, withstood at least one severe tropical storm, and passed through a gap in the Great Barrier Reef before being found.      As many as 75 people likely died during the ordeal.

    Map showing 10 worst maritime disasters off Queensland. Courtesy Google Maps

    SEVEN: SYBIL, 1902.

    The labour schooner Sybil disappeared sometime after leaving the Solomon Islands on 19 April 1902 bound for Townsville with a fresh batch of South Seas labourers.    By August, grave fears were held for the Sybil, for the voyage should not have taken more than two or three weeks.    Searches were made of the islands along the outer Great Barrier Reef and in the Coral Sea but no trace of the vessel or any of those on board were found.   She had a crew of 12 and on the previous two voyages, she had carried 90 and 98 labour recruits, so it is thought no less than 100 lives were lost.

    SIX: GOTHENBURG, 1875

    Gothenburg. Photo Courtesy SLQ

    The steamer Gothenburg sailed from Darwin on 17 February 1875 bound for Adelaide via Australia’s east coast.   On 24 February the Gothenburg was steaming down the coast in the vicinity of Cape Bowling Green.   Bad weather meant they could not see the regular landmarks to aid their navigation. The captain was unaware strong currents were pushing the ship towards the Great Barrier Reef until it was too late. The Gothenburg ran aground on Old Reef.   The ship and all aboard her would likely have been saved but for a powerful cyclone bearing down on them.   As the storm worsened, the captain ordered the evacuation of the passengers, but as the women and children were being loaded into the lifeboats a succession of huge waves swept over the ship.    Only 22 people survived.  As many as 112 passengers and crew lost their lives.  

    FIVE: YONGALA, 1911

    S.S. Yongala. Photo Courtesy SLQ.

    The Yongala sank during a tropical cyclone near Cape Bowling Green on 11 March 1911 with the loss of all 122 people on board.    When the ship failed to arrive in Townsville as scheduled, concerns were raised.   Then, wreckage began washing ashore along the coast as far away as Hinchinbrook Island.   However, there was no sign of the ship or any hint as to where she might have sunk.   Nearly half a century would pass before the final resting place of the Yongala was conclusively located. 

    FOUR: QUETTA, 1890

    RMS Quetta. Photo courtesy SLQ

    While the Mail Steamer Quetta was steaming through Torres Strait on the night of 28 February 1890, it struck an uncharted rock pinnacle as it passed Adolphus Island.   The Quetta had departed from Brisbane bound for London carrying nearly 300 people comprising the passengers and crew when disaster struck.   The collision tore a gaping hole in the hull from bow to amidship, and the ship sank in just three minutes.    One hundred people made it safely to Little Adolphus Island where they were later rescued.   Dozens more were pulled from the water the following day.    133 people lost their lives in the tragedy.

    THREE: AHS CENTAUR, 1943

    AHS Centaur. Photo Courtesy State Library of Queensland

    At 4 am on 14 May 1943, the Australian Hospital Ship (AHS) Centaur was torpedoed and sunk by a Japanese submarine.    The Centaur was about 35km off Moreton Island having departed Sydney with medical staff from the Army’s 2/12 Field Ambulance bound for Port Moresby.   In all, there were 332 people on board.   268 lost their lives.   64 survived by clinging to debris and two damaged lifeboats until they were rescued 36 hours later.

    TWO: CYCLONE MAHINA, 1899

    Cyclone tracks for Cyclone Mahina.

    On the night of 4/5 March 1899, a powerful cyclone crossed the coast at Bathurst Bay on Cape York Peninsula. Lying directly in its path was the North Queensland pearling fleet which had sought shelter there.     Nearly 60 vessels – from large schooners to pearling luggers – were sunk or driven ashore with horrendous loss of life.    Between 300-400 people died in what is no doubt Queensland’s worst natural disaster.    The loss was most keenly felt on Thursday Island where the pearling fleet was based.

    ONE: GRIMENEZA, 1854

    Artists impression of the Grimeneza . Image Courtesy SLQ

    The worst shipwreck off the Queensland coast occurred on 3 July 1854.   The Peruvian ship Grimeneza was sailing from China with some 600 Chinese labourers bound for the Callao guano mines in Peru.   When they struck a reef at Bampton Shoals in the Coral Sea, the captain and six others immediately abandoned the ship leaving the rest of the crew and the passengers to their fate.  The rest of the crew tried to back the ship off, but when that failed, they too took to the lifeboats and were picked up 12 days later.   Miraculously, the Grimeneza floated off with the next high tide.   The labourers sailed the damaged ship west towards the Queensland coast with the pumps being worked around the clock.   But after three days of exhausting work, she foundered.   Six men were found clinging to a piece of wreckage 300 km off the coast a few days later.   The rest had all drowned or been taken by sharks.

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

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  • The Appalling loss of the Grimeneza

    Artist’s impression of the Grimeneza lost on Brampton Shoals. Courtesy: State Library of Queensland.

    On 3 July 1854, the Peruvian ship Grimeneza struck a reef at Bampton Shoals in the Coral Sea.    The Captain, first mate, ship’s surgeon, and four sailors immediately abandoned the ship leaving the rest of the crew and about 600 Chinese passengers to their fate.

    Twenty-eight days later Captain M.H. Penny and five others reached safety at New Ireland after a gruelling 4,000kms passage in an open boat.   They had suffered severely from hunger, exposure, and disease, but they had survived their ordeal. The first mate was not so fortunate for he had been killed at New Britain when they stopped seeking food.

    Captain Penny reported that the Grimeneza had been sailing from Shantou in China bound for Callao (present day Lima) in South America when its voyage was cut short. The night his ship crashed onto the reef it was blowing a gale. He claimed to have done all that was possible to ensure the safety of everyone on board before he and the others were forced to abandon the ship.   Justifying his hasty departure, Penny said the Chinese passengers panicked and had tried to attack him and the rest of the crew.   And had no one else made it off alive, that is all anyone would have known of a disaster that claimed over 600 lives.

    The Courier (Hobart), 5 Mar 1855, p. 2, Shipping News.

    But others also survived.   One was the second mate, who later reported that the captain fled the ship immediately after she struck the reef stopping only to secure the hatch’s leading to the hold where the passengers were accommodated.    After the captain’s departure, the remaining crew tried to back the vessel off the reef but when that failed, they too left in the remaining two lifeboats leaving the passengers to their fate.   After six days at sea without food or water the castaways contemplated killing a 12-year-old cabin boy for food to keep the rest of them alive.   Fortunately, they were discovered by a passing ship and the boy’s life was spared.

    Back on the Grimeneza, the Chinese passengers eventually broke out of the hold to find they had been deserted.    Sometime after that the ship slipped off the reef on the high tide and immediately started filling with water.    The passengers manned the pumps and baled for all they were worth to keep the vessel afloat.    For three days they toiled as they sailed before the wind towards the Queensland coast.   They could have come within a few hundred kilometres before disaster struck.   After three days of unrelenting effort, everyone was exhausted, and some began giving up.   They could not or would not keep going.   The sense of common purpose that had got them thus far broke down.   A few began plundering what they could from the ship as water filled the hold.  Others made preparation for the inevitable.

    Map showing Grimeneza’s likely sailing route. Courtesy: Google Maps.

    The Grimeneza soon foundered.   A few men took to small rafts they had hastily built, others jumped into the sea with nothing more than a single timber plank to keep themselves afloat.    According to one of only six Chinese passengers to survive, most drowned or were soon taken by sharks.   The lucky few were rescued by a passing ship after several days in the water.   They were cared back to health and taken on to Madras where their appalling story came to light through the aid of an interpreter.

    Captain Penny briefly touched in Melbourne on his return to South America but was never held to account for his callous actions.    Years later it was revealed that the Chinese “coolies” had boarded the Grimeneza believing they were being taken to the Californian goldfields.   Instead, they had been bound for Peru to work in the Chincha Island guano mines as indentured labourers.

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

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