Rediscovering moments from Australia's maritime past.
It is an odd piece of Australian history that the first people to repeat Captain Cook’s voyage up Australia’s east coast were not other intrepid navigators or explorers, but a motley band of prisoners bent on escaping penal servitude. On 28 March 1791 William Bryant, a fisherman by trade, his wife Mary and two childrenContinue reading “William Bryant’s Great Escape – 1791”
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Some people might be surprised to read that the oldest shipwreck recorded off Australia dates back to 1622. That is 148 years before Cook plied his way up the east coast. Twenty years before Abel Tasman partially circumnavigated Tasmania. Or just six years after the Dutch navigator Dirk Hartog nailed a pewter plate to aContinue reading “The Tryall: Australia’s earliest recorded shipwreck.”
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Far out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, a seaman on board a small schooner thought his imagination was getting the better of him. It was daybreak on 5 February 1850. His ship, the 140-ton schooner Wanderer was en route from Sydney to San Francisco and still under storm canvas having just survived aContinue reading “The Wanderer and a Miraculous Rescue”
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In the 19th Century ship captains were often considered undisputed masters of their domain, especially while they were at sea. Most, to varying degrees, kept a rein on their power, others ruled their vessels with an iron fist, and a few, like Neil Peter Sorensen, went completely rogue. In August 1885 a portion of theContinue reading “The Douro and its Piratical Captain”
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In late 1914 HMAS Sydney was accompanying the first convoy of AIF troops leaving Australia to fight in the First World War. However, a few days after the convoy left Albany WA, the Sydney was ordered to investigate the presence of a suspicious vessel near the Cocos Islands. The ship turned out to be theContinue reading “HMAS Sydney and the sinking of the Emden”
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Tales from the Quarterdeck