Tales from the Quarterdeck

Tag: history

  • The Short Life of the SS Bessemer – 1875.

    The Bessemer. The Penny Illustrated Paper, 10 Apr 1875, p. 1.

    One September afternoon in 1874, Miss Bessie Wright cracked a bottle of champagne across the bow of a new steamer and sent it gliding into the Humber River.   Thus, one of the strangest vessels ever to come off a naval architect’s drawing board was launched.

    S.S. Bessemer Saloon Steamship was the brainchild of little Bessie’s grandfather, Sir Henry Bessemer.   He had found investors who stumped up some £250,000 to make his vision a reality.   The resulting paddle steamer measuring 350 ft (106.6m) at the waterline and had four paddle wheels, two on the port side and two starboard.   The fore and aft were identical, and there were two bridges and two helms meaning she could travel as quickly in either direction at an anticipated top speed of 20 miles per hour.    But what set the Bessemer apart from any other steamer was her swinging saloon.  

    Positioned in the middle of the ship was a 70 ft (21m) cabin, which would remain stable regardless of the pitch and roll of the rest of the vessel.   The gyroscopic apparatus powered by a dedicated steam turbine had been designed and patented by Henry Bessemer himself.   This complex piece of engineering was to ensure that the steamers’ first-class passengers were spared the indignity of mal de mer or seasickness in all but the roughest of sea conditions.   Second-class passengers were not so well catered for.  They would occupy a separate, more conventional cabin mounted upon the ship’s superstructure.  

    Sir Henry Bessemer.

    The Bessemer was purpose-built to negotiate the lumpy waters of the English Channel.   She would travel between Dover and Calais, and at her top speed, it would take just one hour to cross the 20-nautical mile gap.  Henry Bessemer was convinced that the first-class passengers would disembark as hail and hearty as they had boarded his modern marvel.    Nonetheless, the designers had thought to include two “retiring rooms” for ladies and gentlemen to “withdraw from the public gaze,” should anyone still feel the ill effects of the sea.

    Not surprisingly, the novel design attracted its fair share of sceptics.   Some naval architects felt the gyroscopic apparatus would do little to stop the saloon from pitching and rolling in rough seas.   Their main concern was that the mechanism would be unable to respond fast enough to the sea to ensure the saloon maintained its equilibrium.

    After the Bessemer had been launched it was moored in the Hull Roads while her plush interior was fitted out.   A Daily News reporter would later describe the Bressemer’s saloon akin to a “superbly furnished floating clubhouse.”   The steamer was furnished with a large smoking saloon, several staterooms on the upper deck, refreshment bars, an office for small parcels, umbrella and cloakrooms, and “delightful promenades high above the reach of ocean spray.”

    Deck of the Besser Saloon steamship. The Illustrated London News, 27 Mar 1875, p. 293

    The only hiccup while the steamer was being fitted out was when she dragged her anchors during a mighty gale that battered much of the UK on 21 October.   The Bessemer was driven onto a mudflat on the northern bank of the Humber River, but she was easily floated off at high tide on that same day.  

    By late January 1875, the Bessemer had completed her first set of sea trials on the Humber.   She reportedly steered well and reached a top speed of 18 knots (33 km/h).   Her gyroscopic apparatus was said to have performed splendidly, but that assertion would soon be brought into question.   

    In March, the Bessemer made the voyage from Hull to Gravesend on the Thames in 24 hours while steaming into a strong headwind. There, she underwent more sea trials, and on 12 April, the Bessemer Saloon Steamship made her much-anticipated first crossing to Calais. As the steamer had yet to receive her passenger certification from the Board of Trade, the only people on board were the crew and a handful of men connected with the company.

    The Bessemer. The Penny Illustrated Paper, 3 Oct 1874, p. 13.

    She left Gravesend at 8.30 on Saturday morning and made her way down the Thames and out into the English Channel.   There, she was buffeted by a strong easterly wind and heavy seas.   Despite the inclement weather, the passage was reported to have been “remarkably steady”, and there had been no opportunity to test the ship’s swinging saloon.   She averaged 11 knots (20km/h) for the 75 nm (145 km) passage and arrived in that French port at 3.30 in the afternoon.   There, a great many of Calais’ residents gathered on the pier to witness the arrival of the unique ship.   Unfortunately, as she was docking, one of her paddles was damaged when it struck the pier.  

    Finally, the big day arrived on 12 April 1875.   The Bessemer steamed out of Dover with 350 invited guests onboard anticipating being the first to see the swinging saloon in action.  Several members of the press were among them, no doubt there to extol the virtues of the fine new vessel.  However, the Observer’s correspondent, for one, was clearly underwhelmed by the experience.    

    He reported that the screws fastening the moveable saloon were never loosened, which would have allowed the passengers to witness for themselves the effect of Henry Bessemer’s invention.   Several reasons were put forward for why the gyroscopic apparatus was not employed, but the reporter wrote that he had been reliably informed that the equipment simply did not work.   It could shift the saloon from side to side, but it was not up to the task of “regulating the rise and fall of the saloon with sufficient precision to secure stable equilibrium.”

    S.S. Bessemer. By Henry Spernon Tozer – The Illustrated London News,

    To cap off the 90-minute non-event, the Bessemer entered Calais’s harbour far too quickly to manoeuvrer safely around the small, enclosed port.      The collision with the pier on her last visit to Calais had been attributed to the Bessemer’s poor response to her helm when travelling at low speed.   This time, the captain came in a little faster.   However, the steamer was caught in a tidal current and spun around.   The Bessemer struck the pier with considerable force but sustained little damage to itself.

    However, the same could not be said for the wharf.   “When at last the Bessemer was stopped, some 50 or 60 yards of the pier were knocked down like nine-pins in a skittle alley, and the water of the harbour was covered with broken planks and beams.”

    “The Bessemer is too long a vessel for Calais harbour,” the reporter opined, “there must always be a certain amount of risk in her entering so narrow a port with the velocity required to carry her across the bars.”   A month later, the Calais Municipality sent the Saloon Ship Company a bill for £2,800 to cover the cost of repairing the pier.

    The Bessemer saloon ship running foul of Calais Pier. The Illustrated London News, 15 May 1875, p. 20.

    That was the Bessemer’s final voyage but for her return to England.   The investors cut their losses, and the company was wound up.   The engines, the swinging saloon and other fittings were removed, and by the end of the following year, the remainder of the ship was sold off as scrap.   So ended the short but lively career of the Bessemer Saloon Steamship.

    © 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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  • COSPATRICK: A tale of fire, cannibalism and a desperate fight for survival

    The burning of the Cospatrick at sea. Penny Illustrated Paper, 09 January 1875, p. 1. (Detail)

    On 27 November 1874, a lookout on the British ship Spectre spotted something floating in the water deep in the Indian Ocean.   As they drew near, they realised it was a small boat holding six men.     When they came alongside, they found one man was already dead. The other five were barely clinging to life and two of those would soon die.   They were the only survivors from the emigrant ship Cospatrick, which had caught fire and sank with the loss of nearly 470 people.

    The 1200-ton  Cospatrick had sailed from London bound for Auckland with 433 passengers, most of whom were assisted migrants looking forward to starting life afresh in New Zealand.   But, just after midnight on 17/18 November, when they were about 750 km southwest of the Cape of Good Hope, smoke was seen coming from the forehatch.  

    The alarm was immediately raised, and Captain Elmslie rushed on deck.   The whole crew were turned out to tackle the blaze thought to have started in the Boatswain’s Locker, where many flammables were stored.     Pumps poured water down the forescuttle, hoping to extinguish the fire before it spread.    Meanwhile, the captain was trying to turn the ship before the wind in a vain attempt to keep the fire contained to the fore part of the vessel.

    Cospatrick, source: London Illustrated News, 9 Jan 1875.

    As the crew battled the fire, almost all the passengers rushed on deck, fearing for their lives, and screaming for help.    Then the Cospatrick swung head to the wind, “which drove the flames and a thick body of smoke aft, setting fire to the forward boats,”* 2nd mate Henry McDonald recalled.  He and the sailors fighting the fire with pumps and buckets were forced to retreat aft with the flames licking at their heels.    With half the ships’ lifeboats lost Macdonald asked Captain Elmslie if he should lower the remaining two.   Elmslie told him “no” but instead to continue fighting the fire.

    But, by then, terrified passengers had taken matters into their own hands.   As many as 80 people, many of them women, climbed into the starboard boat meant only to carry 30 while it was still suspended in its davits.   They buckled under the weight, and when the boat dipped into the sea, it capsized, spilling everyone out.   Under the circumstances, no crew could go to their assistance, and they all drowned.

    A guard was placed on the port lifeboat, but it was also swarmed by panicked passengers.   Flames burnt through the ship’s rigging, and the foremast collapsed and fell over the side.   By now, the captain realised his ship was lost.   Standing by the helm with his wife and son beside him, he told the few men assembled around him to do what they could to save their own lives.  

    The Rush to the Boats. The Australasian Sketcher, 20 Mar 1875, p. 9.

    Macdonald and a couple of the seamen tried launching the pinnace which was stored upside down on the deck.   But before they could get it over the side, its bow caught fire, and they abandoned it.   Macdonald then ordered the port-side lifeboat to be lowered, and as it descended, he jumped on board.    Moments later, he was joined by the Chief Mate, who leapt from the Cospatrick as it was fully ablaze.  Captain Elmslie was last seen jumping into the sea with his wife.  The ship’s doctor followed, carrying Elmslie’s young son.  

    The boat, carrying 34 people, remained by the Cospatrick throughout the night as it continued to blaze.   The main and mizzen masts fell, and then an explosion deep in the hold blew out the stern under the poop deck.   This was probably caused by the large quantities of alcoholic spirits, and other volatile liquids stored in the hold.

    The next morning, Macdonald found that some of his shipmates had managed to right the starboard boat, and it, too, was full of survivors.   They found a few other people clinging to wreckage and hauled them onto the two boats.    They remained with the Cospatrick until it finally burned to the waterline and sank on the evening of 19 November.   Then, Macdonald took command of the starboard boat while the Chief Mate remained in the portside boat.  

    They divided the surviving people between the two boats and shared out the available oars.   The Chief Mat’s boat carried around 35 people while Macdonald’s carried 30.   Neither boat had a mast or sail, but Macdonald got a petticoat from a female passenger, which he used as a makeshift sail fastened to an upright plank.    Neither boat had any freshwater or any other provisions.   Nor does it seem they had so much as a compass to steer by.  

    Sail Oh! Rescue of the Survivors. The Australasian Sketcher, 20 Mar 1875, p. 9.

    They set a course for where they thought the southern tip of Africa lay some 750 kilometres away.    The boats remained together for the next two days, but on Sunday night, 22 November, a gale blew up, and they became separated.    The Chief Mate’s boat was never heard of again.

    Henry Macdonald kept a daily log of their voyage as any good office would.   “Sunday 22, … thirst began to tell severely on us all. … three men died, having first become made in consequence of drinking salt water.”*   Four more men died the following day, but before their bodies were dispatched over the side, Macdonald wrote that “we were that hungry and thirsty that we drank the blood and ate the liver of two of them.”*  Over the next several days, they would continue to live off the dead.

    The weather raged around them, and deaths were a daily occurrence.   Early in the morning of Thursday, 26 November, a barque sailed past but failed to spot them among the white caps.    They continued drinking the blood of the dead, but they were getting weaker by the day.  

    On Friday, 27, two more men died, but they had only the strength to throw one of them overboard.   “We are all fearfully bad, and had drunk sea water,” Macdonald entered in his log.*

    There were now just five men still alive, but only barely.   They were all dozing when Macdonald was woken by a passenger, who had gone made with delirium, biting his feet.   When Macdonald looked up, he saw that an end to their suffering was at hand.    The Spectre, returning home to Scotland from Calcutta, was bearing down on them.   The five men were taken aboard, but two of them died soon after being rescued.   The three survivors, including Henry Macdonald, were put ashore at St Helena when the barque stopped there for supplies.

    The Survivors, L-R Cotter, Macdonald, Lewis. The Illustrated London News, 16 January 1875, p. 61.

    An inquiry held in London into the loss was not convinced the fire had started in the boatswain’s locker.   It concluded that the blaze was likely caused by a careless match or candle carried by someone breaking into the hold in search of liquor the ship was known to be carrying in large quantities.    It recommended that a more robust bulkhead be installed in ships but did not consider whether highly flammable cargo should be carried on the same vessel as so many passengers.

    Nor did the inquiry make any firm recommendations regarding the number of lifeboats carried by passenger ships.    Even had the crew been able to launch all the Cospatrick’s boats, fewer than half the people on board could have been saved.   It simply advised that ship owners should consider some increase in lifeboat carrying capacity.   It would take another 40 years and the loss of the Titanic before laws mandated that all ships have enough lifeboats to evacuate everyone in an emergency.

    (*) Henry Macdonald’s log was published in the Sydney Morning Herald on 26 Feb 1875, p. 3.

    © 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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