Tales from the Quarterdeck

Tag: history

  • The Post Office in the middle of nowhere

    Booby Island. Image courtesy National Library of Australia

       It might seem strange that one of Australia’s earliest post offices was also one of its most remote. It was set up on Booby Island in Torres Strait in 1835. However, the practice of passing mariners leaving correspondence on the island was already well established.

       Booby Island (Ngiangu to the Torres Strait Islanders) lies west of the tip of Cape York, about 1,800 nm or 3200 km by sea from Sydney. The nearest European settlement was the Dutch outpost of Kupang on Timor Island, 2000 km west across the Arafura Sea.

       Cook named the small outcrop Booby Island after the birds he saw nesting on its rocky slopes. The island would go on to serve as a crucial navigation landmark, especially for those mariners who had sailed up Australia’s east coast and were bound for Timor and beyond. Reaching Booby Island meant they had made it safely through the labyrinth of dangerous coral shoals plaguing the Torres Strait.  

       The earliest record of shipwrecked sailors finding refuge on Booby Island dates to 1814. The merchant vessel Morning Star, sailing from Sydney to Batavia, struck a reef and sank in Torres Strait. The crew abandoned the ship and made for nearby Booby Island. They were stranded there for five months, living in one of the island’s caves and surviving on rainwater and the seabirds that resided there. Then a sharp-eyed observer on a passing ship noticed a white flag being vigorously waved by one of the survivors. Five men were rescued. Twenty-two of their shipmates, including the captain, lost their lives.

       By the 1820s, ships were regularly passing through Torres Strait on their way from Sydney and Hobart bound for ports in India, China and England. Too many ran aground or sank in those remote and treacherous waters.

       In 1822, a flagstaff was erected on Booby Island’s summit, and a logbook was placed in one of the island’s caves so ships’ captains could register their safe passage through the Great Barrier Reef and Torres Strait. Those same mariners also began leaving sailing reports in the ledger to aid their fellow seafarers. The location of uncharted reefs or the strength and direction of hazardous currents were all recorded, sometimes at the cost of the vessel. Much of this information would be used to update later naval charts of the region.

    From an unidentified illustrated newspaper depicting Booby Island in the Torres Strait. Illustration Courtesy State Library of Queensland.

       Shortly after taking up duties as the Governor of New South Wales in 1824, William Bligh had the island stocked with barrels of fresh water, preserved meat and sea biscuits. Bligh knew stocking the island with provisions would go a long way towards saving the lives of sailors unfortunate enough to come to grief in those remote northern waters. He had first-hand knowledge of just how dangerous they could be. As a young Lieutenant, Bligh had sailed a small open cutter through Torres Strait after he had been unceremoniously relieved of his ship, HMS Bounty, by its mutinous crew.

       Then, 11 years later, in 1835, Captain Hobson of HMS Rattlesnake established the unmanned “post office” in one of the island’s small caves. The practice of leaving details of sailing hazards continued. But mariners also began leaving letters in the box in the hope they might be taken on to various destinations by other passing ships. For example, someone on a ship bound for India might leave a letter addressed to a recipient in Canton, China. The next ship bound for that port would take it on to its destination.   

    When the Upton Castle stopped briefly at Booby Island in 1838, one of its passengers visited the post box and described it thus,“[it is] covered with canvas and well secured, and supplied with a quantity of pens, paper, and ink, and pencils in excellent order.”

    Early illustration of the Booby Island Post Office.

    It is worth remembering that the only other post office in Australia at the time was in Sydney.    Melbourne would not get a post office for another couple of years and it would be seven years before another post office appeared in what would become Queensland.

    In the span of just 15 years castaways from at least ten ships owed their lives to Booby Island.   The Coringa Packet, and Hydrabad (1845) Ceres (1849), Victoria (1853), Elizabeth, Frances Walk   It is worth noting that, at the time, the only other post offices in Australia were located in Sydney and Hobart. Melbourne would not get a post office for another couple of years, and it would be seven years before Brisbane got one.

       In the span of just 15 years, castaways from at least ten ships owed their lives to supplies left at Booby Island. Survivors from the Coringa Packet, and Hydrabad (1845), Ceres (1849), Victoria (1853), Elizabeth, Frances Walker and Sultana (1854), Chesterholme (1858), Equateur, and Sapphire (1859) and many more before and since made for the island after their ships were lost.

       Booby Island remained a vital refuge for shipwrecked mariners and a place to exchange information until the 1870s, when a government outpost was established on nearby Thursday Island.er and Sultana (1854), Chesterholme (1858), Equateur, and Sapphire (1859) and many more before and since made for the island after their ships were lost.

    Booby Island remained an important refuge for shipwrecked mariners and a place to exchange information until the 1870s when it was supplanted by a government outpost on Thursday Island.

    Copyright © C.J. Ison, Tales from the Quarterdeck, 2021.

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  • The Loss of the Mandalay: Between a Rock and a Hard Place

    Postcard of the Mandalay of Farsund Norway which was shipwrecked at Mandalay Beach near Walpole Western Australia in 1911.

        As Captain Emile Tonnessen saw the sheer granite walls of Chatham Island loom into sight, he knew his ship and crew of 12 men were in serious trouble. He had been pushed dangerously close to Western Australia’s southern coast by unrelenting gale-force wind and high seas for the past several days. And now his 913-ton iron barque Mandalay was in imminent danger. His chart showed that, should he escape crashing into Chatham Island, there was still an uninterrupted line of cliffs beyond which he knew he could not avoid

       The Mandalay had sailed from Delagoa Bay (now Maputo), Mozambique, in early April 1911, bound for Albany WA to take on a cargo of Karri logs destined for Buenos Aires, Argentina. It was to be the 68-year-old captain’s final voyage before retiring to spend time with his children and grandchildren, whom he had seen little of during his more than half a century at sea. But for a last-minute change of plan, he would have returned to his home in Norway directly from Southern Africa.

       The voyage was largely uneventful until Saturday, 13 May, when they neared the Western Australia coast in the vicinity of Cape Leeuwin. The weather had rapidly deteriorated. South-westerly winds grew to hurricane strength, and mountainous seas washed over the vessel. All canvas was taken in, and the Mandalay was swept along under bare poles. The ferocious weather continued for two days, pushing the helpless vessel towards the rugged and sparsely populated coast.

       The crew tried everything they could to get control of the ship. But the only sail they could put up was on the fore-top mast. It was insufficient to deviate the ship from the course the storm was relentlessly pushing them. They had no chance of putting out into open water.

    Chatham Island viewed from Mandalay beach. Photo C.J. Ison.

       On Monday morning, 15 May, they cleared the kilometre-wide and 90-metre-high granite outcrop that is Chatham Island with only a few hundred metres to spare. Tonnessen later recalled that the waves were so large and powerful they crashed completely over the island as his ship raced past.

       While they had escaped being smashed against the granite slopes of the island, it was clear they would not be so lucky to get past the sheer cliffs of Long Point now lying somewhere ahead through the torrential rain. The captain took the only action he could.

       He would have to sacrifice his ship to give his crew a fighting chance of survival. In all his years seafaring, he had never been shipwrecked, but now he was going to deliberately run his vessel aground. It was no doubt made doubly hard for him, as he was a part-owner of the Mandalay, and he knew her to be underinsured.

    The Mandalay stranded on the beach.

       It was now about one o’clock in the afternoon. Tonnessen lined up to run the ship ashore on the only beach he could see, hoping for the best. The crew hoisted as much sail as they could, then donned their cork lifebelts and braced for the impact. About 100 metres from the beach, the bow struck the sand hard. The top main mast came crashing down, and the ship bounced along the seabed as successive waves lifted the ship and pushed it a little closer to shore. Then the Mandalay swung broadside to the ocean swells, and breakers crashed over the deck, sweeping it clean of anything not securely tied down.

       The crew lowered a lifeboat over the lee side, but the seas were too turbulent to safely cross the short distance to land. One of the young seamen, Knut Knutsen, tied a rope to his lifebelt and dived into the sea, intent on getting a line ashore.

       Unfortunately, the rope became entangled around his legs, and he floundered in the chaotic surf. Knutsen was close to drowning when a second sailor, Frank Ward, dived into the maelstrom to rescue him. Ward managed to get his friend to shore, and the two of them anchored their end of the rope. With one end of a line attached to the ship and the other end with Ward and Knutsen on shore, the lifeboat was able to ferry the rest of the men to safety.

    L-R Frank Ward and Knut Knutsen at Fremantle after the wreck of the Norwegian barque Mandalay. Photo published in the Western Mail, 3 June 1911, p. 27.

       The castaways were able to get sufficient materials ashore to build a shelter using some of the ship’s sails and spars. Unfortunately, they soon discovered that most of the food they salvaged had been contaminated with seawater.  They ate it regardless, figuring it was better than starving.

       They spent several miserable days camped on the beach, hoping they might be rescued. They placed a pole high on a sand dune with a distress signal flying. Several ships were seen passing in the distance, but none deviated from their course. Thonnessen knew it would have been suicide to try to get a boat ashore in the appalling conditions. But he hoped that at least one of the ships had seen the wreck and the fluttering flags and reported the disaster to the port authorities in Albany.

    The crew of the barque Mandalay. Photo courtesy Walpole Nornalup and District Historical Society.

       While Captain Tonnessen and the others remained camped on the beach, the first mate, Lars Gjoem, and two seamen set off on Tuesday, the day after the wreck, with compass and chart to see if they could find their way cross-country to the nearest settlement. Two days later, they returned to the beach cold, wet and exhausted, unable to find a path through the dense bush.

       On Friday, 19 May, the day after the party returned, the second mate, Frederick Fincki, climbed the highest hill behind the beach, and from that vantage point, he thought he could see a route through the maze of broken ground. He briefly returned to the camp to collect a staff and a knife and set off towards what he would later learn was Nornalup Inlet.

       He soon found himself wading through a swamp. But he doggedly pushed on for several hours, praying he would eventually reach dry land. Fincki made it to Nornalup inlet, arriving just as a local settler, Frank Thompson, was returning in his boat with supplies from Albany. Fincki was lucky, for that was a trip Thompson only did once every three months.

       Thompson, picked up Fincki and took him to his home, wondering to himself what would have happened had he not been passing when he did. It was bitterly cold, night was fast approaching, and the young Norwegian had been far from dry land. Thompson thought his chances of surviving would have been poor.

       The following day, Thompson, his son and the second mate returned to the beach to rescue the remaining men. Over the next several days, the shipwrecked sailors were cared for by Thompson and other settlers until they could be delivered to the small settlement of Denmark, located further down the coast. From there they were taken on to Albany, where they caught the train to Perth.

    Mandalay Beach with Long Point in the background. The wreck lies approximately in the centre of the photo. Photo C.J. Ison.

       Frank Thompson was presented with a gold fob watch by a grateful Norwegian Consul. Thompson and the other settlers who came to the crew’s aid earned the undying gratitude of Captain Tonnessen and his men. The Mandalay was never refloated and slowly rusted away on the beach that now bears her name. Its remains are periodically exposed when the conditions are right.

    ©Copyright C.J. Ison / Tales from the Quarterdeck, 2020.

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