Tales from the Quarterdeck

Tag: Nautical

  • The Sapphire and Marina: Three Months in a Leaky Boat

       At midday on 8 September 1859, the 749-ton merchant shipSapphire weighed anchor and began slowly making her way out of Port Curtis (present-day Gladstone, Queensland). She was ultimately bound for India via Torres Strait, with a consignment of 60 Australian horses purchased by the British Indian Army. But before the ship could clear the natural harbour, she ran aground on a sandbar and had to wait for the rising tide to lift her off.  So began a voyage that would cost 18 men their lives and last five gruelling months, only for the few survivors to wind up back where they had started. Their story is a remarkable one of perseverance in the face of unimaginable hardship, served with a healthy measure of good luck.   

    The Sapphire bore out into the Coral Sea and then headed north outside the Great Barrier Reef. On 23 September, Captain Bowden calculated he was somewhere off Raine Island. That afternoon, the lookout sighted a line of breaking surf heralding the outer edge of the reef. Bowden had the ship put about, and they tacked back and forth through the late afternoon. Captain Bowden intended to hold his position in deep water overnight and make his way through the reef first thing in the morning.

    Illustration of Booby Island, Torres Strait – Otherwise, Post Office. From the Illustrated Sydney News, Fri 16 Dec 1864, Page 9.

        But shortly after sunset, the alarm was raised. A lookout sighted a long, uninterrupted curve of white water directly in their path. By the time the ship responded to the call to pull hard about, the breakers were just 500 metres off the leeward bow. There was now insufficient sea room to turn the ship around and point her back out to sea.  The Sapphire struck the coral reef broadside. Huge waves swept her deck. The force of the collision brought down the fore-top-gallant mast, and one of their lifeboats was swept from its davits. The ship heeled over, and all seemed lost. Captain Bowden ordered the main mast cut away, hoping the vessel might right itself. When the mast came down, it landed on the deck, smashing the longboat to pieces. It also brought down the mizzen mast, which in turn crashed onto the lifeboat, damaging it. Within minutes, three of the Sapphire’s five boats were lost. Everyone spent a harrowing night sheltering as best they could while the terrified horses remained trapped in the hold.

       Breaking with maritime convention, by leaving his ship, Captain Bowden set off in the morning to search for somewhere to land. First Mate William Beveridge was left in charge of the stranded vessel. Beveridge began preparations to abandon the ship and also had the carpenters try to repair the two badly damaged boats, only half expecting that Bowden might return. It seems that Beveridge and Bowden did not see eye to eye, and the first mate may even have blamed his captain for running aground. However, Bowden did return to the Sapphire, having found a suitable refuge on Sir Charles Hardy Island about 85 km away.

       The Sapphire’s crew of 28 men took to the two surviving boats and headed to the island, abandoning the ship and the 60 horses still trapped below. Captain Bowden decided they should return to Port Curtis, 1,500 kilometres to the south, and they left messages in a bottle hung from a tree telling of their intentions. They set off south on October 6 but immediately encountered strong headwinds. Bowden soon gave up on heading south, turning his boat around to head north, through Torres Strait, intending to make for Booby Island. In another unusual turn of events, Beveridge did not follow suit. He continued trying to push south for another day or two before he also gave up and turned around.

    Sapphire survivors route through Torres Strait from leaving the Sapphire and finding the Marina.

       Beveridge reached Booby Island in mid-October to find Bowden and the rest of the men already there. By now, they had been roaming the seas around Torres Strait for almost a month. The provisions they found there were a godsend for the hungry sailors, but they would not last indefinitely. Bowden and Beveridge agreed that they would have to leave there sooner or later. It was approaching cyclone season, and they had not seen another vessel since becoming marooned. They would likely not see another ship pass by Booby Island until April or even May the next year.

       Bowden and Beveridge put their differences aside and decided to make another attempt to return to Port Curtis, despite their recent failure. But as soon as they got clear of the island, they were struck by the same contrary winds that had plagued them earlier.

       While Beveridge and his boat were off Friday Island, they were set upon by Torres Strait Islanders and one of the men was speared to death. Meanwhile, Captain Bowden’s boat was off Hammond Island. They had stopped to trade with a party of Islanders, but in what seemed like an unprovoked attack, a volley of spears and arrows was launched into their overcrowded boat. Only one man was able to jump clear and swim away. He would later be rescued by Beveridge, who had gone in search of Bowden’s boat.

       Beveridge and his men continued pushing back east and eventually made it around the tip of Cape York. They then picked their way through the maze of coral reefs, and their luck finally changed for the better.

       They spotted a ship in the distance, the first they had seen since abandoning their own vessel some six weeks earlier. But, as they drew closer, they found it was deserted. The ship proved to be the barque Marina, which had run aground around the same time the Sapphire had been wrecked. It too had been abandoned by its crew, and they had also made it to Sir Charles Hardy, reaching it only hours after the Sapphire castaways had left. Miraculously, the Marina had floated off the reef on a spring tide only to drift around Torres Strait for the next several weeks.

    Marina’s course down the Queensland Coast. Source Google Maps.

       The Marina’s crew had then set off south for Port Curtis, and after 43 days of arduous sailing, they made it safely to port and notified the authorities of the loss of their own ship and also of the Sapphire. HMS Cordelia was dispatched north to search for the Sapphire’s missing men. However, she only steamed as far as Cape Upstart, thinking the lost sailors could not still be any further north. But they were wrong. By now, it was late January 1860, and the Sapphire’s crew was anchored off Lizard Island in the Marina, 500 km further north.

       Back in late November, Beveridge had decided they should sail the Marina to Port Curtis rather than try to do so in their small pinnace. Setting off on the 26th, they battled the same contrary winds and currents that had previously frustrated them. For the next two months, they made painfully slow progress. They anchored for days and weeks at a time, waiting for the south-easterlies to fall off. In the first month, they travelled just 180 km.

       They spent tiring Christmas Day kedging the stranded barque off a sandbar, and they would run aground twice more in the weeks that followed. The Marina’s hull was so damaged that water flowed freely in and out of the hold. The only thing keeping the ship afloat was her cargo of tightly packed Kauri logs.

       On 9 February, they were anchored off Palm Island.   In the past two and a half months, they had covered a little more than half the distance to Port Curtis. They still had another 800 km or more to go.   All seemed lost.   Their food had all but run out, and they were slowly starving to death.    

    Finally, their luck turned around. The wind started blowing from the north. They put to sea and made steady progress south. Three days later, Beveridge sighted Cape Upstart off the port bow. The next day, they were cruising through the Whitsundays. They were now only 400 km from Port Curtis. A couple of days after that, they crossed Keppel Bay, and the next day, 17 February, they anchored off Facing Island just outside Port Curtis. No one had the strength to manoeuvre the crippled vessel into port. They took to the Sapphire’s pinnace again and surprised everyone with their return, for they had long been given up for dead.

    The Sapphire’s full story is told in A Treacherous Coast: Ten Tales of Shipwreck and Survival from Queensland Waters, available as an eBook or paperback through Amazon.

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

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

  • The Spanish Silver of Torres Strait

    Example of a mechant brig, similar to the Sun. Source: “L’Album De Marine Du Duc D’Orleans,” 1827.

       Sometime around 1891, a group of beche-de-mer fishermen stumbled upon a huge hoard of Spanish silver coins. The men had been fishing in the shallow waters of the Eastern Fields at the eastern approach to Torres Strait when they made the surprise discovery.

       At low tide, when much of the reef was exposed, they spotted an old, coral-encrusted anchor fluke jutting from the reef’s surface. The shoals of Torres Strait had claimed many a ship during the 19th Century, and the fishermen were keen to see what else they might find.

       They began chipping away at the decades of accumulated growth until the anchor finally broke free from the surrounding coral. When it was rolled clear, a mass of silver coins, all fused together by time and saltwater, was revealed. Buoyed by the find, the fishermen forgot about the beche-de-mer and extended their excavations. Each day, as soon as the falling tide exposed the reef, they got to work chipping away at the coral. In the end, they uncovered a staggering 410 kgs (900 pounds) of silver. It took them two trips to carry it all back to Somerset, the fishing and cattle station near the tip of Cape York owned by the early pioneering family of Frank Jardine.

    Spanish silver coins as circulated in the early days of New South Wales.

       At the time, it was supposed that the coins might have been carried on a Spanish ship on her way to Manila to pay the wages of the civil and military staff. Either that, or it was to be used to purchase spices from traders in the Indonesian Archipelago, further to the west. Regardless, the ship that had been carrying the fortune in silver had ended its voyage on that remote coral outcrop many decades earlier. They knew it was an old wreck, for by 1891, the timbers had long since rotted away.

       The mystery was only solved years later. It turned out not to have been a Spanish galleon at all. Instead, the fishermen had stumbled upon the remains of the English brig, Sun, which had been lost in Torres Strait in May 1826. Earlier that same year, the Sun had delivered a cargo of tea from China to merchants in Hobart and Sydney. In Sydney, a local businessman had entrusted the ship and her captain with a new cargo of between 30,000 and 40,000 Spanish silver dollars. At the time, one Spanish dollar was worth 4 shillings and 4 pence, which would have valued the somewhere between £7,000 and £10,000. In today’s money, the silver content alone would be worth well over one million Australian dollars.

       The Sun sailed from Sydney on 7 May, bound for Singapore by way of Torres Strait. But it never arrived. The voyage was cut short three weeks later when the Sun struck a submerged reef as it attempted to navigate the dangerous waters separating Cape York from New Guinea.

    Torres Strait. Source: Google Maps.

       The ship broke up almost immediately. Captain Gillet and his crew took to the longboat and jolly boat and made for Murray Island, about 30 nm (60 km) away. Such was the haste with which they were forced to abandon the ship that there was certainly no time to save the silver. The crew didn’t even have time to provision the boats with food or water before they pushed away from the wreck. Fortunately, they would only be at sea for two days before sighting land.

       As fate would have it, just as their safety seemed assured, the longboat struck a reef and capsized, spilling all the occupants into the water. The first and second mates, plus 22 lascar sailors, drowned. Only the jolly boat with the ship’s captain and 11 remaining seamen reached Murray Island, where they were looked after by the Islanders. Three days later, Captain Gillet and his men were rescued by a passing ship and eventually delivered to Calcutta, where he reported the loss of his ship.   

    So, there the Spanish silver dollars remained undisturbed for the next 65 years as the Sun slowly disintegrated around them. As the employer of the fishermen, Frank Jardine claimed the lion’s share of the haul. He reportedly had at least some of the coins melted down and made into silver tableware and cutlery for the Jardine Homestead.

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

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

  • The Macabre case of the Mignonette

    Illustration of the yacht Mignonette.

       Genuine verifiable instances of cannibalism among shipwreck survivors are remarkably rare. But when they have occurred, those involved have often been met with revulsion and sympathy in equal measure. Such was the case with the survivors of the small yacht Mignonette, which foundered in the Atlantic Ocean on its way to Australia in 1884.

       The Mignonette was a small yacht of about 33 tons. It had been purchased in England by Sydney barrister and Commodore of the Sydney Yacht Club, John Want. He hired a respected master mariner named Thomas Dudley and a crew of three to sail the vessel to Australia while he returned home by a regular steamer service in more salubrious surroundings.

       The Mignonette sailed from Southampton on 19 May 1884 and briefly stopped at Madeira off the Moroccan coast around the middle of June. Then, nothing further was heard of her until 6 September, when Dudley and two of his crew returned to England after being rescued at sea by the German barque Montezuma.    The world then learned the horrifying truth of their ordeal. Six weeks after leaving England, they were far from land, some 3000 kilometres south of the equator and 2500 kilometres off the Namibian coast. By now, the weather had turned foul. The seas ran high, and Captain Dudley was running before a strong wind, taking them further south. On the afternoon of 5 July, the Mignonette was struck by a gigantic rogue wave that had risen from nowhere and crashed into her side. The yacht’s hull was stoved in.

    As the Mignonette went down, The Illustrated London News, 20 Sept 1884, p. 268.

       The mate, Edwin Stevens, was at the wheel and barely had time to call out a warning before the monster wave struck. Fortunately, Dudley grabbed hold of the boom and held on as a wall of water swept across the deck.

       The Mignonette immediately started filling with water. Dudley ordered the men to prepare to abandon ship. They got the lifeboat over the side while he went below to gather provisions. By then, seawater was already swirling around the cabin interior. He only had time to grab a couple of tins of what he thought was preserved meat, before he raced back on deck and leapt into the dinghy as the Mignonette sank below the waves.

       Dudley, Stevens, Edward Brooks, and seventeen-year-old Richard Parker spent a frightening night in the tiny four-metre dinghy as the storm raged around them. When Dudley opened the tinned provisions, he discovered they contained not meat but preserved turnips. Even worse, they had no fresh water.   

    For the next five days, they subsisted on morsels of turnip and tiny quantities of rainwater, but it was never enough. Then their luck improved, at least for a short while. They captured and killed a turtle that had been basking on the sea’s surface.

    “Sailing Before the Wind.” The Illustrated London News, 29 Sept 1884.

       By day 19, the last of the turnips and the turtle meat had long gone, and the young cabin boy, Parker, had started drinking seawater to quench his burning thirst. He was now lying in the bottom of the boat in a delirious state.

      Wracked with hunger and despair, that night, Thomas Dudley suggested drawing lots to see who should be killed to provide sustenance so the rest might live. Brooks wanted no part of it and told the others he believed they should all live or die together.

       Dudley and Stevens discussed their options and felt that, as they were both married men with families to support, it should be Parker they butchered, as he was already close to death. The matter was settled.

       Dudley prayed for forgiveness for what they were about to do, then, as Stephens held Parker down, Dudley pulled out his knife and slit the boy’s throat. Brooks turned away, covering his eyes with his hands, but he could not block out Parker’s feeble pleas for mercy.    As Parker’s blood drained from his body, they caught it in an empty turnip tin and drank it. Brooks, despite his horror, was unable to resist taking a share. The three men fed on Parker until they were rescued by the passing barque Montezuma, five days later.

    Newspaper illustration showing the “terrible tale of the sea. and the horrible sufferings,” of the shipwrecked sailors.

       When Captain Dudley returned to England, he reported the loss of his vessel and the hardships they had endured afterwards, including the death of the delirious Parker. As abhorrent as his actions were, he believed he had committed no crime. In his mind, he had sacrificed one life to save three. But the police saw it otherwise. He and Stephens were remanded in custody to stand trial for the capital crime of murder.

       There was widespread interest in the tragic story in both Britain and Australia. Many people were sympathetic towards the captain and his first mate. But there were also those who felt the pair had acted prematurely in killing the dying Parker.

       At their trial, Dudley and Stephens pleaded not guilty, their barrister arguing they had acted in self-defence. He used the analogy that if two shipwrecked men were on a plank that would only support one, one or the other could be excused for pushing away the other man to drown. For, he argued, were both men to remain on the plank, both would perish.

    FEARFUL SUFFERINGS AT SEA. LAD KILLED AND EATEN. Courtesy State Library of Scotland.

         The judge didn’t see things that way. In summing up the case, he told the jury:

       “It was impossible to say that the act of Dudley and Stephens was an act of self-defence. Parker at the bottom of the boat was not endangering their lives by any act of his. The boat could hold them all, and the motive for killing him was not for the purpose of lightening the boat, but for the purpose of eating him, which they could do when dead, but not while living. What really imperilled their lives was not the presence of Parker, but the absence of food and drink.”

       The jury found the pair guilty, and the judge sentenced them to death, but it appears there was little likelihood that the death sentence would ever be carried out. Even Parker’s family had forgiven the two men on trial. After waiting on death row for six months, both sentences were commuted to time served, and they were released from custody.   

    It was generally agreed that they had acted as they did under the extreme duress of being lost at sea for so long without food or water. No one felt that justice would be served by punishing the two men any more than they had already suffered.

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

    To be notified of future blog posts please enter your email address below.

  • 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.

    To be notified of future blog posts, please enter your email address below.

  • The Brig Amity’s Amazing Career

    Brig Amity replica at Albany Western Australia. Photo: C.J. Ison.

       All Australian school children learn of the Endeavour’s role in the history of Australia. Some people may have heard of the First Fleet’s flagship, Sirius, or the Investigator, which Matthew Flinders used to chart much of Australia’s coastline. But, I would wager few have ever heard of the brig Amity or know of her contribution to our colonial past.

       During the brig Amity’s six years as a colonial government vessel, she was employed to establish two new settlements in what would one day become Queensland and Western Australia. She went to the rescue of the Royal Charlotte survivors after that ship ran aground on Frederick Reef in Australia’s dangerous northern waters. She regularly transported convicts, soldiers, and supplies from Sydney to outlying settlements and circumnavigated the continent on two occasions.   

    The Amity was built in New Brunswick, Canada and launched in 1816. She was a modest-sized vessel even by the standards of the day, at 148 tons, measuring a fraction over 23 metres (75 feet) in length. But she was a sound ship and could handle rough weather.

    Officer’s stateroom with tiny individual sleeping cabins leading off the main room. Photo: C.J. Ison.

       The little brig spent the first few years of her life hauling cargo back and forth across the North Atlantic between North America and Britain. In 1823, a Scotsman named Robert Ralston purchased her, having decided to emigrate to Van Diemen’s Land with his large family. He fitted the vessel out for the long voyage and filled its hold with cargo and livestock for his new adopted home.

       After a five-month voyage, the Amity sailed up the Derwent River and dropped anchor in Hobart Town on 15 April 1824. Ralston and his family purchased land and established several businesses in Hobart and Launceston, and a few months after their arrival, he put the vessel up for sale.   

    The New South Wales colonial government purchased the Amity in August 1824. The brig’s first assignment was to establish a new settlement at Moreton Bay. Two years earlier, the Bigge Report had recommended establishing a place of secondary transportation somewhere far north of Sydney for convicts who had committed additional crimes in the colony.

    The Moreton Bay Penal Settlement about 10 years after its founding. Photo Courtesy SLQ.

       On 1 September, the Amity and her crew sailed with a military officer, 20 soldiers, plus wives and children, a handful of civilian administrators, plus 30 convicts. The journey took 11 days and was marked by severe storms. Accommodation between decks measured just 1.5 metres (5 feet) high. Here, the seasick soldiers, wives, and convicts spent a miserable time packed in with the new settlement’s pigs, goats and poultry. Nonetheless, they made it at Moreton Bay and her passengers and stores were disembarked at Redcliffe, where John Oxley decided the new settlement would be established.

       Later in the month, the ship was nearly wrecked. She had been anchored out in Moreton Bay when a storm blew up. The Amity’s anchors started to drag as she was pushed towards shore. A third anchor was dropped, and the ship was held in place, averting disaster. Soon after that, she left the new settlement and returned to Sydney for more stores. On her third trip to Moreton Bay, in mid-1825, she helped relocate the settlement. Redcliffe had proved not as suitable as Oxley had thought it would be. The new location, on the north bank of the Brisbane River, was thought to be a far more suitable one.

       While anchored in Moreton Bay, one of the crew spotted an unfamiliar longboat coming towards them. This turned out to be the first mate and several survivors from the ship Royal Charlotte, which had run aground a month earlier on Frederick Reef, some 720 km (almost 400 nautical miles) north in the Coral Sea.

       The first mate reported that there were still nearly one hundred souls, many of them women and children, stranded on a small sand cay which was almost awash at high tide. The Amity was immediately sent to rescue the castaways and arrived off the reef on 28 July. Getting close to the survivors proved a dangerous operation with powerful breakers crashing into the reef, threatening any vessel that got too close. The Amity eventually anchored several miles distant and its whaleboat was sent to evacuate the survivors and salvage as much as they could from the wreck. With an additional hundred people squeezed into the small brig, she sailed directly for Sydney, arriving there ten days later.

    A view of the encampment of the shipwrecked company of the Royal Charlotte on Frederick’s Reef. Illustration by Charles Ellms (circa 1848)

       For the next 18 months or so the Amity was in constant use ferrying convicts and supplies between Sydney and the outlying settlements at Norfolk Island, Moreton Bay and Port Macquarie. But, in late 1826, Governor Darling, who had recently replaced Governor Brisbane, had another important mission for the Amity and her crew.

       She was ordered to take three officers and a small detachment of soldiers, 23 convicts, plus a handful of civilian officials under the overall command of Major Edmund Lockyer to establish a new settlement. This one was to be located in the remote south-west of the continent at King George Sound (Albany).

    Convicts and other passengers were accommodated between decks which measured just five feet in height. Photo: C.J. Ison.

       Until then, Australia’s southern coast from Bass Strait to Cape Leeuwin was little known outside its indigenous peoples and the haunt of sealers who lived largely outside the law. Darling was increasingly concerned that the French, whom he had learned had recently visited the area, might try to establish a permanent presence there. 

       The small brig weighed anchor on 9 November 1826, but she soon ran into a severe storm, which saw her put into George Town on the Tamar River in Van Diemen’s Land for repairs. She finally anchored safely in King George Sound on Christmas Day, and the next morning, she began disembarking her passengers and cargo. A month later, the Amity returned to Sydney and resumed her regular resupply duties.   

    In May 1827, she accompanied HMS Supply and the brig Mary Elizabeth on a voyage via Torres Strait to Fort Dundas on Melville Island, not too far distant from present-day Darwin in the Northern Territory. Fort Dundas had been established three years earlier to facilitate trade with visiting Macassan fishermen, but it was eventually abandoned, due in part to the determined resistance put up by the indigenous Tiwi people.

    Sketch of Fort Dundas – 1824 by JS Roe. Picture courtesy State Library of Western Australia.

       Leaving Fort Dundas and the other two ships, the Amity continued circumnavigating the continent, stopping to drop off supplies at King George Sound before returning to Sydney via Bass Strait.

       In 1828-29, she paid another visit to the remote northern and western settlements when she dropped off stores before returning to her home port of Sydney, thereby completing a second circumnavigation.

       The following year, December 1830, the New South Wales government sold the brig off. She made her way back to Hobart and passed through several hands over the next decade. A couple of owners tried whaling while others employed her as a cargo ship, but they all seemed to struggle to turn a decent profit.

       In 1842, the Amity was now 26 years old and no doubt past her prime. Her new owner, a Hobart butcher named Gilbert, used her to transport livestock across Bass Strait from the mainland to Van Diemen’s Land.

       On 18 June 1845, she was driven onto a shoal off Flinders Island during one of the ferocious storms Bass Strait is rightly known for.   The ship was destroyed, but fortunately, the captain, owner and crew, numbering 11 in all, survived.    In 1976, a full-size replica of the Amity was completed in Albany to celebrate that town’s 150th anniversary. The replica provides a fascinating close-up look at an early 19th-century sailing ship and to stoop around below decks highlights just how small she really was.

    Brig Amity replica at Albany Western Australia. Photo: C.J. Ison.

    For more interesting stories from Australia’s maritime past check out A Treacherous Coast, Bolters and Tales from the Quarterdeck. All are available now as a Kindle eBook or paperback through Amazon.

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

    To receive notifications of future blog posts please enter your email address below.