Tales from the Quarterdeck

Tag: Port Phillip Bay

  • Who Robbed the Nelson gold ship?

    The Nelson Gold Robbery. The World’s News, 5 Aug 1950, p. 9.

    In April 1852, thieves stole a gold shipment bound for London from the barque Nelson anchored at Hobson’s Bay, Melbourne.  Arguably, it ranks among Australia’s largest robberies, as the gang got away with some £24,000 worth of gold weighing an astonishing 8,100 ounces, or 250 kg. That amount of gold would be worth around $50 million today in Australian currency.

    I wrote a blog about it back in 2024, but the story kept playing on my mind. I figured there was more to discover than I had then unearthed. The writer Marcus Clarke, author of “For the Term of His Natural Life,” wrote an article for the Sydney Morning Herald in 1879 where he outlined the basic facts, added some literary flourishes that could not have been true and proclaimed that, after the passage of 27 years, “it is now unlikely that the true story of the Nelson gold robbery will ever be told.”

    Well. Challenge accepted. I started digging through Trove’s digitised newspaper archives among other sources and came across several clues that shed light on who might have been behind the robbery. After the passage of 175 years, I might just have something approximating the truth.

    Ships, deserted by their crews, lying in Hobson’s Bay, By E Thomas.

    To quickly rehash my original blog: around 1.30 on the morning of Friday 2 April 1851, a gang of thieves climbed aboard the Nelson, overpowered the crew, and made off with the gold after locking everyone in the lazarette.   The plan worked flawlessly but for someone accidentally shooting the Nelson’s first officer, Henry Draper, in the leg.

    But most of the robbers quickly realised stealing the gold was the easy part. Getting away with the heist and holding onto their ill-gotten gains would prove far more challenging.

    Embarrassed that such an audacious crime was carried out right under their noses, the police rounded up scores of petty criminals and vagrants in the days that followed, hoping they would net the culprits.

    Then, only days later, constables swooped on seven of the robbers who were living it up in Geelong, a short 60 km from where the robbery had taken place. Police arrested four at the Ocean Child on Geelong’s outskirts, while two others were apprehended at the Union Inn moments before they left to join their mates. A pair of mounted troopers caught the seventh on the road shortly after.  He had been galloping towards the Ocean Child most likely to warn his mates of the arrests at the Union Inn.1

    Dan Fegan and Stephen Rawlings, two more robbers, travelled cross-country towards the South Australian border, but were caught in Portland while awaiting a ship to take them the rest of the way to Adelaide. Their undoing seems similar to that of their comrades in Geelong. As the Geelong Advertiser would report, “Every part of their apparel indicated something unnatural; their clothes new and unsuited to their station; … and on the line of road they came, they appear to have left an impression that they had formed two belonging to the gang of the Nelson robbers.”2

    The Argus 3 Apr 1852, p. 5.

    Of the nine detained, four faced court and only three were found guilty. James Morgan, James Duncan and Stephen Rawlings (aka Fox) would all be identified by one or other of the officers on the Nelson at the time of the robbery and sentenced to 15 years’ hard labour. A jury found insufficient evidence to convict Dan Fegan (aka William Smith).

    The other members of the gang who were arrested – James Grimes, John Hutchinson, Tom Quin, William Barnes, James Ball – were eventually released without charge.   However, the money they had on them, amounting to some £3,000 in total, was confiscated. A further £1,200 was taken from Rawlings and Fegan. That amounted to little more than 15 per cent of what had been stolen. The remainder was never recovered, and that begs the question: where did it go?

    For years, rumours swirled around Melbourne speculating on who else might have been involved in the robbery. After all, some £20,000 worth of gold was still unaccounted for.  One persistent rumour suggested that one or more of Melbourne’s more prominent citizens had orchestrated the robbery and had benefited enormously from it.

    Then, a light fell on the robbers’ inner workings from a very surprising source. Owen Suffolk, an educated man who befriended the Nelson robbers while serving time in Pentridge Prison, later wrote that an escaped convict named Dan Fegan (aka William Smith) had led the gang.    He was going by the name William Smith when he was captured in Portland, and later stood trial for the robbery. He would eventually be released for lack of evidence, but he was returned to Tasmania to stand trial for absconding. A search of Convict Records and the Tasmanian Archive confirms his existence.3

    Apparently, Fegan had learned from an ex-convict who had done carpentry work on the Nelson that the gold had recently been loaded onto the barque and that it was only lightly crewed. Realising the ship could sail any day, Fegan hastily got to work. According to Suffolk, the robbery was planned, and the robbers set out for the Nelson from an unnamed Melbourne public house. He also wrote that Duncan and Morgan were recruited as last-minute replacements for two gang members who had failed to turn up for the robbery.4

    The Sun, 30 May 1948, p. 3.

    So far, nine robbers have been identified. Suffolk says ten were in on the robbery. Other estimates ranged as high as 20 or more. But the balance of evidence suggests that the gang likely numbered about a dozen. The rest were hired to row the robbers out to the Nelson. Whether they were paid for their services or received a cut of the loot is anyone’s guess.

    One important name, however, is missing from the list of suspects: the “prominent citizen” rumoured to have taken part.    While Suffolk did not name the public house where the robbery was planned, and the robbers set out from, others have.

    For instance, Edmund Finn, writing as Garryowen in Chronicles of Early Melbourne, published in 1888, claims the Nelson robbery was planned at the Woolpack Inn. And he is not alone in linking the same pub to the robbery. At the time, John Milton Dascombe owned and ran that establishment.

    Dascombe is a very interesting character in this saga. He had served several years in Pentonville Prison in England before being exiled to Melbourne in 1846. Over the next five years, his fortunes and social standing rose quickly in his adopted home, and by late 1851 he was the proud proprietor of the Woolpack Inn. In that class-conscious era, that was no small achievement for a former “Pentonvillian.” After the robbery, Dascombe suddenly appears flush with money. He bought several more properties around Melbourne, including a prestigious commercial building on Collins Street. He later sold the Woolpack Inn and took his family to England, where he settled in the upmarket suburb of St John’s Wood in London. Dascombe was never charged in connection with the robbery, but a short while after his death in 1868, speculation arose that the missing proceeds from the Nelson gold robbery might yet be recovered.5

    In Fool’s Gold, I have taken the known facts and woven them together with the rumours and a degree of literary licence to tell the story of one of Australia’s greatest robberies.

    SOURCES

    1. See The Argus 10 April 1852, p.4.
    2. See Geelong Advertiser 20 Apr 1852, p. 2.
    3. Tasmanian Archives: Daniel Fegan convict conduct record – CON33-1-36 p. 84.  Fegan’s conduct record shows he absconded from Van Diemen’s Land before the robbery and was sent back shortly after.  
    4. See The Australasian, 5 Oct 1867, p. 5.
    5. See The Argus 14 Mar 1872, p. 5.

    © Copyright C.J. Ison / Tales from the Quarterdeck, 2026.

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  • The Mystery of the Missing Madagascar

    By Thomas Goldsworth Dutton (fl 1840) – National Maritime Museum Greenwich, London [1], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30836816

    In August 1853, the Madagascar set sail from Melbourne, Australia, and was never seen again.  On board were her full complement of crew and 62 passengers. Men, women and children all bound for England. She was not the first to vanish at sea, and she would not be the last. But her disappearance has fuelled keen interest over the years, not because of the tragic loss of life, but for her large and valuable cargo of gold.

    The Victorian gold rush was in its third year and was showing no signs of slowing. As well as wool and other cargo, the Madagascar had carried consignments of gold from gold traders and banks, totalling over 68,000 ounces, worth at least a quarter of a million pounds at the time.   Today, the missing fortune would be worth nearly half a billion Australian dollars.

    The Madagascar was a 950-ton fully rigged sailing ship commanded by an experienced and highly respected master mariner named Captain Fortescue W. Harris. He had a choice of three routes he could take on his return voyage to London.   Once clear of Port Phillip, he could have turned his vessel west to cross the Great Australian Bight and the Indian Ocean, then round the Cape of Good Hope before turning north up the East African coast towards home.  He could also have turned to port to cross the South Pacific, round Cape Horn, before again turning north through the Atlantic. Or he might have followed Australia’s east coast north, through the Coral Sea, Torres Strait, and on to Singapore, India, the Cape of Good Hope, and home.   Unfortunately, he left no clue as to which route he intended to take.

    The ship was only 15 years old, solidly built, well-maintained, and had made the passage out to Australia in just 87 days without incident. There was no reason to think the ship would not make the routine passage home in a similar time. But after six months had passed with no sign of the ship, people grew anxious, for she was now long overdue.

    In February 1854, a report reached London via the captain of the Jessica in Calla, Chile, that the Madagascar had put into Rio de Janeiro “in a very leaky state, near upon foundering.” It was thought that her passengers and the gold would have been loaded onto another vessel to complete the remainder of their voyage. However, nothing further was heard, and the report ultimately proved to be an unfounded rumour.

    Word that the ship was missing finally reached Melbourne nearly ten months after she had made her departure. Several theories immediately emerged.   Some thought her cargo of wool might have spontaneously combusted and engulfed the ship in fire. Others thought she might have been sunk by a Russian frigate operating in the southern seas. One experienced mariner dismissed both of these theories. He believed it was more likely that she had struck an iceberg in those freezing latitudes of the Southern Ocean.

    There were also fears that her disappearance might have been at the hands of a ruthless gang of bandits.  Three bushrangers had been taken off the Madagascar the day before she departed. They, and their mates, had robbed the McIvor Gold Escort of £10,000 worth of gold, shooting four troopers in the process.  It was widely believed that other dangerous outlaws had left on the missing ship as paying passengers or members of the crew. Once they were far from land, it was argued, they had plundered the ship and sank her, before taking to the boats with their ill-got gains.    Of course, there is no way to prove or disprove if this actually happened.

    Then, a year later, in May 1855, a gentleman in Geelong received a letter from an acquaintance in Cape Town telling him that the missing Madagascar had been found safe and sound. According to the letter writer, she had become trapped in ice while trying to round Cape Horn and had been stranded for some six months in those remote Antarctic waters. No other corroborating news came out of Cape Town or anywhere else, for that matter, and the rumour was dismissed. What’s more, Lloyds had since listed the ship as missing and had paid out on its insurance liability.

    The Madagascar, The Age, 6 APr 1929, p. 7.

    But some people never gave up hope of finding out what happened to the ship and their loved ones. Twenty-seven years after the ship had vanished, the crew of the ketch Rosebud found 15 skeletons on Bountiful Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria. On learning of the discovery, the nephew of one of the Madagascar’s missing passengers begged the Queensland government to find out if the remains might be linked to the missing ship.   An expedition was sent to Bountiful Island, and concluded the skeletons were likely those of Aborigines or Malay fishermen rather than survivors from the Madagascar. The report also noted that the island was some 350 miles (650 km) away from the regular shipping channel through Torres Strait.

    In 1889, the remains of an old ship were discovered off the New Zealand coast. So sure were some Sydney treasure hunters that they raised sufficient money to send an expedition, including an experienced diver, to New Zealand to examine the wreck. Needless to say, they did not come back with the gold or anything else that shed light on the fate of the Madagascar.

    But the most enduring theory as to the loss of the Madagascar centred on it being seized by desperate robbers who made off with the gold and sank the ship. Some stories came with elaborate details, although they were impossible to verify.

    In 1914, a New Zealand newspaper published a story claiming the Madagascar had been lost off the South American coast.  In a recently discovered written statement made to the police in 1867, a sailor named “Bully” Hayes said he had survived the wreck of a treasure ship off Peru.  Hayes claimed the ship was seized and set on fire by a band of robbers who escaped in the boats laden with thousands of pounds of stolen gold.  He had somehow managed to secure a seat on one of the boats, which later struck a reef. The gold was lost, and he was the only survivor.  Though he would not be drawn on the name of the ship, the man who took his statement believed he was referring to the Madagascar.

    Fifteen years later, another tale emerged regarding the missing ship. Supposedly, a clergyman said that years earlier, he had taken a deathbed statement from a woman who claimed to have survived the sinking of the Madagascar. Her story went thus. The Madagascar had been seized by mutineers who had locked everyone below deck, set fire to the ship, and taken to the boats with the gold and several young women, herself included. The boat was swamped by surf as they tried to land somewhere on the South American coast, and the gold was lost.   A handful of mutineers survived only to die of yellow fever on reaching a small town. Only she and one man survived, and he would later abandon her.   Unfortunately, the story makes no mention of her name or the priest who took her final confession, making it impossible to verify.

    After the passage of some 175 years, it seems likely that we will never know what befell the Madagascar.  Perhaps she struck an iceberg in the deep reaches of the Southern Ocean or perished in a powerful storm. Perhaps her cargo of wool did catch fire and she sank. It would not be the first time a ship had succumbed to such a tragedy. Or maybe an attempt was made to seize the gold, which ended with the loss of the ship. But one thing is for sure: piled among what remains of the ship and the final resting place of her passengers and crew, there is nearly half a billion dollars of gold sitting somewhere on the ocean floor.

    © Copyright C.J. Ison / Tales from the Quarterdeck, 2026.

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  • The Bourneuf’s Tragic Last Voyage

    Cross section of emigrant ship Bourneuf. From Illustrated London News 10 July 1852.

       On 3 August 1853, the 1500-ton Bourneuf sank in Torres Strait as she was returning to England. It was ironic that her return was cut short, for her voyage out to Melbourne, Victoria, had been no less tragic. She had left Liverpool in mid-July the year before carrying some 800 impoverished emigrants keen to start new lives in Australia. But one in ten would never make it.

       Convict transportation to New South Wales had ceased two years earlier, and the recently constituted Victorian Government had introduced an assisted migration program to try to solve a chronic labour shortage. The colony had long been short of domestic servants, farm labourers, and other workers, but the recent discovery of gold had only exacerbated the problem. Meanwhile, England was still grappling with the social dislocation brought about by the Industrial Revolution. There were more people than there was jobs. On the surface, the migration program appeared to solve both intractable problems; however, transporting the migrants halfway around the world proved costly. Not surprisingly, there was an incentive to transport the largest number of people at the lowest cost to the Government.

    Emigration Depot at Birkenhead, Liverpool. A ship, possibly the Bourneuf, about to depart for Australia in 1852.

       The emigrants, many of them families with young children, were crammed into the Bourneuf’s two tiers of tiny cabins. Passengers were required to prepare their own meals in tightly packed communal kitchens. Bathing and toilet arrangements were rudimentary at best and maintaining good hygiene was impossible from the outset in the overcrowded confines of the ship. The close, fetid conditions were the ideal environment for the spread of communicable diseases. And, it was not long before people started coming down with dysentery. By mid-voyage, measles and scarlet fever were sweeping unchecked through the ship, taking a terrible toll.

       Isolating the sick proved impossible, and for much of the passage, ten or more people, mostly children, died every week. By the time the Bourneuf dropped anchor off Geelong on 20 September, disease had claimed the lives of 83 passengers. The ship was immediately placed in quarantine while 20 desperately ill passengers recovered.

       It would be nice to think that this had been an incident, but that was not the case. Four ships packed with assisted migrants made the long passage out to Victoria in 1852; the Wanota, the Marco Polo, the Ticonderoga and, of course, the Bourneuf. All were grossly overcrowded, even by the standards of the day. Disease outbreaks raged on all four ships with terrible consequences. No fewer than 279 passengers died on the four voyages. Many more passengers had to be hospitalised and quarantined on arrival. However, the lesson was eventually learned, and the Emigration Commissioners limited future migrant ships to carrying no more than 350 passengers.

    Example of immigrant accommodation on the 1874 James Craig barque at the Maritime Museum in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Photo C.J. Ison.

       The Bourneuf remained in Port Phillip Bay for ten months, eventually setting sail on 18 July 1853 divested of her passengers. She sailed from Melbourne bound for Bombay before continuing back to England.

       Captain Bibby made his way up Australia’s east coast, pushed along by a south-easterly trade wind. After first passing through the Tasman Sea, he continued north into the warm tropical waters of the Coral Sea. The Bourneuf remained several hundred kilometres off the coast and well outside the Great Barrier Reef. This had become known as the “outer passage” and was considered by mariners to be safer than navigating close to land inside the reef. Captain Biddy intended to cross through the Great Barrier Reef at the Raine Island entrance so he could carefully pick his way through the labyrinth of shoals that lay in Torres Strait.

       Unfortunately, it appears that Captain Biddy had miscalculated his run towards the entrance. At 1 a.m. on 3 August 1853, a lookout spotted a thin white line of breaking surf looming out of the darkness. By the time the danger had been seen, it was too late to take evasive action. The ship slammed into the Great Detached Reef about 15 kilometres south of the Raine Island entrance. Unrelenting swells from the Pacific Ocean pounded the stranded vessel. Captain Bibby gave the order to abandon ship. Thirty-nine people took to three lifeboats that night.

       Two of the boats managed to get clear of the stricken vessel, and the survivors were later rescued by the Dutch ship Everdina Elizabeth. Captain Biddy, his wife, sister-in-law, and five crew drowned when huge waves capsized their lifeboat while they were still alongside the Bourneuf.

       The Bourneuf is just one of 37 ships known to have been lost in or near the Raine Island Entrance during the 19th Century.

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

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