HMCS Protector at Heron Island during low tide. Photo: C.J. Ison.
There lie the remains of an old ship on the Southern Great Barrier Reef which holds a fascinating story spanning almost 140 years. The rusting hull now serves as a breakwater protecting the entrance to the boating channel accessing Heron Island, but its history goes back to 1884.
Her Majesties Colonial Ship (HMCS)Protector was launched at Newcastle on Tyne in 1884 to see service in South Australian waters. The colonial government had sought the ship at a time when there were heightened fears of a Russian invasion. The 55metre long F1 flat-iron gunboat displaced 920 tons and had a top speed of 14 knots (26km/h). Originally she was crewed by about 90 men.
South Australian gunboat Protector circa 1885. Photo Courtesy SLV.
Her armaments included one 8-in breech-loading gun on the bow, as well as five 6-in guns, four 3-pounder quick-firing (QF) guns and five Gatling machine guns. From 1914 that was changed to three QF 4in MkIII guns, two QF 12-pounder guns and four QF 3-pounders.
HMCS Protector regularly patrolled the South Australian coast for the next fifteen years and not surprisingly made an uneventful time of it. Then, on the eve of Federation, she was called upon to join the international force assembled to suppress the “Boxer Rebellion” in China.
HMCS Protector. Courtesy State Library of South Australia, B18116.
In August 1900 she farewelled Adelaide and was commissioned as HMS Protector for the duration of her overseas service. She arrived in Shanghai in late September but was not needed for combat operations. She spent a few weeks carrying out surveys and running despatches between Shanghai and forces in Pechili Gulf further north. Then, in November she was released to return home to Australia.
In January 1901 HMCS Protector was transferred to the Commonwealth Government and stationed in Sydney where she mainly functioned as a training ship for Naval Militia Forces. Then, with the formation of the Royal Australian Navy in 1913, she was renamed HMAS Protector and for a period served as a tender to HMAS Cerberus stationed at Williamstown in Port Phillip Bay.
With the outbreak of the First World War, HMAS Protector was sent to Sydney and served as a depot ship to Australia’s two submarines, AE1 and AE2. In August 1914 she and her submarines were sent to help capture the German colonies in New Guinea. HMAS Protector remained based at Rabaul until October when she was ordered to return to Sydney.
HMAS Protector after being rearmed in 1914. Photo Courtesy SLV.
Then, in October 1915 she was dispatched to report on the wreck of the German cruiser Emden which had been destroyed by HMAS Sydney at the Cocos Islands almost a year earlier. See my blog Australia’s first “ship on ship” naval action.
On 1 April 1921, the Protector was briefly renamed HMAS Cerberus, before being decommissioned three years later. Her guns and engines were removed and she was sold off. In November 1929 she was converted to a lighter and renamed Sidney. But her military service was not quite over yet. In July 1943 the Protector was brought back into service as a lighter for the U.S. Army in New Guinea. However, as she was being towed north she collided with a tug off Gladstone, Queensland. The wreck was abandoned on a beach until a local businessman bought it reputedly for £10. He floated it off and towed it to Heron Island where it was used as a breakwater. HMAS Protector’s rusting hull is still there today.
1930s era illustration of the 1791 convict escape led by William Bryant. Source: The World’s News 9 Sep 1931 Page 9.
It is an odd piece of Australian history that some of 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 escape.
In March 1791, nine convicts stole Governor Phillips’ six-oared whaleboat and made their way out through Sydney Heads. That was the start of a 5000 km voyage that would take them up Australia’s east coast, around the tip of Cape York and across the Arafura Sea. On 5 June, after 69 days at sea, they sailed into the Dutch settlement of Kupang on Timor Island. It was a remarkable achievement then, and remains so to this day.
Their leader was a 34-year-old fisherman from Cornwall called William Bryant. He had been sent to New South Wales for impersonating Royal Navy sailors so as to collect their wages. That was back in December 1783. Bryant had been sentenced to transportation for seven years, and by the end of 1790, he had technically completed his sentence and should have been released. However, no one had thought to send the appropriate documentation out with the convicts on the First Fleet, so he had no way to prove his claim. What’s more, the colony was still struggling to feed itself, and Bryant was a valuable man to Governor Phillip and his administration. Bryant kept the colony supplied with fish, even when other sources of sustenance failed.
Map showing their approximate route from Sydney to Timor. Source: Google Maps.
It seems likely that Bryant had started planning his escape shortly after the seven-year anniversary of his sentence. Even had he been allowed to leave, he probably could not have done so. His wife, Mary, still had a couple of years to serve, and there were two young children to consider. He shared his plans with seven trusted mates, and they began preparations to escape. Those seven were all members of the colony’s fishing fleet, and all had years of maritime experience to draw on.
In the weeks and months leading to their departure, they began stashing away provisions for the long journey. That must have been no easy task, for flour, rice, salted pork, and other staples were all in limited supply. Sydney was starving, and all food was closely monitored and carefully rationed out. However, Bryant was known to have skimmed fish from the catch before handing it over to the Government store. Perhaps he used some of that to trade for the supplies he needed. He also purchased a couple of muskets, a compass, a quadrant and a chart from the captain of a Dutch ship which had recently delivered supplies to Sydney. He likely also paid for these by selling or trading fish on the black market.
William Bryant and the convicts in the six oar Governor’s cutter which they sailed from Sydney to Kupang. Source: Smith’s Weekly 23 Oct 1937 Page 18
On the night of 28 March, they were ready to leave. The Bryants, their two children and the rest of the runaways gathered together everything they had amassed for the voyage and carried it down to Sydney Cove. There, they loaded it into Governor Phillips’ cutter, which happened to be the largest and the sturdiest of the boats in the colony’s small fishing fleet. They then headed across Sydney Harbour and out to sea.
It is hard to imagine what was passing through their minds as they put Sydney behind them. They must have known that the voyage they were embarking on would be fraught with danger. None of them would have been naïve enough to think it would be smooth sailing. They could only rely on their own resourcefulness and a bit of luck to make it to Kupang. On the one hand, remaining in Sydney was hardly a safe alternative. Conditions had grown dire in the struggling colony. Starvation and disease were constant companions. In the previous year alone, 143 people had perished; all but a handful had been convicts.
The first place they pulled in to replenish water and look for fresh supplies was the Hunter River. There, they were visited by the local inhabitants, the Awabakal people, and after being given a few gifts, the convicts were left unmolested. However, that would be the only time they received a friendly reception. The next time they pulled in to make repairs to the cutter, they were run off by the local Aborigines. A little while later, they were blown far out to sea, and by the time they had returned to the coast, they found few opportunities to put ashore due to the dangerous surf conditions.
One month after leaving Sydney, they had travelled about 540 nm (1000 km) or only one-fifth of the way to Kupang. This would have placed them somewhere between the Sunshine Coast and Fraser Island (K’gari), where they were forced to land to make urgent repairs to the cutter. It had been taking on water and needed to be recaulked before they continued on their journey north. They were soon heading into Australia’s tropical waters, where they were caught in an unseasonal storm that lashed them for several days without mercy. They were kept bailing continuously to keep afloat, but they survived. They were blown far out into the Coral Sea, and it would take them more than one full day’s sailing west until they found a small deserted island. This was likely Lady Elliot or one of the islands in the Bunker Group a little further north. After weeks of struggle and misfortune, they seized the opportunity to recuperate and escape the cramped conditions on the boat.
The sailing conditions finally improved, and they made steady progress up the Queensland coast, pushed along by the prevailing southerlies. Shortly after rounding Cape York, they replenished their water and then headed out across the Gulf of Carpentaria. It would take them four and a half days to reach East Arnhem Land. Bryant then followed the coastline for several days, looking for a place to refill their water casks. The search proved fruitless, so he decided to head out to sea and make a direct course for Timor. Thirty-six hours later, they made it to Timor Island. It was now 5 June. They had completed their 5000 km voyage in 69 days with no loss of life. That was no mean feat of seamanship and tenacity. Unfortunately, things would soon turn against the runaways.
Bryant and the others passed themselves off as shipwrecked sailors to the Dutch authorities, and for a while, they were treated as such. But then it seems someone blabbed about who they really were, and the Governor locked them in gaol. Shortly after Captain Edwards and his crew arrived in the settlement, genuine survivors of HMS Pandora wrecked on the Great Barrier Reef. When Edwards left for England, Bryant and the rest of the bolters went with him.
William Bryant and his son would die in a Batavia gaol. Three other convicts, plus the Bryants’ daughter, perished on the voyage back to England. Mary Bryant and the four remaining prisoners were put on trial, charged with returning from transportation. They could have been sentenced to death or returned to New South Wales for the rest of their lives. Instead, news of the atrocious conditions in Sydney and their ordeal trying to escape them touched a nerve. They were allowed to serve out their original sentences in England, and by November 1793, Mary Bryant and the four other convicts had all been pardoned and allowed to walk free. A detailed account of the voyage from Sydney to Kupang can be found in “Memorandums” written by James Martin, one of the convicts who made it back to England.
The long and perilous voyage remains one of the great feats of seamanship in an open boat. It is told in more detail in Bolters: An Unruly Bunch of Malcontents.
Example of a fully rigged ship of the early 17th Century, similar to the Tryall. Source: Sailing Ships by Chatterton, 1909.
Some people might be surprised to learn that the oldest recorded shipwreck off the Australian coast dates back to 1622. That predates Cook’s voyage up the east coast by 148 years. It occurred 20 years before Abel Tasman partially circumnavigated the island of Tasmania. Or just six years after the Dutch navigator Dirk Hartog nailed a pewter plate to a post near Shark Bay, recording his discovery of a big lump of land that had until then been unknown to anyone but its inhabitants.
The Tryall* was a 500-ton East India Company merchant ship launched in 1621. Her maiden voyage was meant to take her from England to the East Indies to deliver cargo before returning home with her hold filled with spices. The East India Company chose a master mariner named John Brooke to command the vessel on this most important voyage.
The Tryall departed from Plymouth on 4 September 1621 with a crew of about 140 men. Captain Brooke sailed down the west coast of Africa and pulled into Table Bay for water and fresh supplies. While there, he learned that a new route across the Indian Ocean had been established, cutting the sailing time to Batavia by several months. The traditional route to the East Indies had ships follow the coast around Africa’s southern tip, then pass through the Mozambique Channel. Once north of Madagascar, they would venture out into the Indian Ocean. The new “Brouwer Route,” as it was called, took full advantage of the roaring forties, which swirled around the bottom of the world unimpeded by any significant land mass. Captain Brooke received orders to take the Tryall below 35 degrees South and use the Brouwer Route. Brooke tried to hire a sailing master for this leg of the voyage, for neither he nor anyone else on the ship had sailed the southern route before. He was unable to recruit anyone, so on 19 March 1622, Captain Brooke sailed the Tryall out of Table Bay and into the unknown. Six weeks later, they were off the coast of Western Australia.
Map of Western Australia coast. Courtesy Google Maps.
Brooke likely sighted land in the vicinity of Point Cloates around 22.7 S 113.6 E, mistaking it for Barrow Island about 200 km further north. It would appear that he had underestimated the strength of the roaring forties and had been blown too far east before he turned his ship north, something easily done with the rudimentary navigation instruments of the day. But it was an error he would never admit to having made.
For the next couple of weeks, the Tryall struggled to make progress against fresh northerly winds, but when the wind swung around to the south again, they got underway. Then, on the night of 25 May 1622, disaster struck.
The Tryall slammed into submerged rocks near the Montebello Islands. Stuck fast on the reef and being smashed by powerful swells, the Tryall began to break apart. Brooke and a handful of men, including his son, managed to get a small skiff over the side and escaped the doomed ship, apparently leaving everyone else to their fate. Soon after, some of the crew were able to launch the ship’s longboat, and 35 sailors clambered aboard and got clear of the Tryall. They landed on one of the Montebello Islands, where they remained for about a week, preparing the boat for the 2,000 km-long voyage to Batavia. Ninety-three men lost their lives. Captain Brooke reached Batavia on 5 July, where he penned a letter to the ship’s owners reporting the ship’s loss. In it, he claimed that he had followed the proscribed route precisely, but had struck a reef not laid down on his chart. Brooke probably thought that they were the only survivors, and his version of events would go unchallenged. His letter, he hoped, would absolve him of any blame for the loss of the ship, its valuable cargo, and so many lives.
Translates to read “Here the English ship Trial was wrecked in June 1622” from copy of Hessel Gerritsz’ 1627 map of the north west coast of Australia. Source: National Library of Australia.
When the longboat finally made it to Batavia, those survivors had a very different story to tell. One of them, a trader named Thomas Bright, wrote his own scathing letter to London condemning Captain Brooke. Bright blamed the wreck on Brooke’s poor navigation that had brought them so close to New Holland and the fact that he had not posted a lookout despite knowing he was in those dangerous waters. He also claimed that Brooke had abandoned the wreck as quickly as he could in the partially filled skiff, leaving the rest of the men to their fate.
In his report to the ship’s owners, Brooke had also recorded that the wreck site was much further west than where it had occurred to mask his error in navigation. For the next three centuries, the non-existent rocks caused some confusion and uncertainty among navigators sailing those waters. It was not until 1936 that the historian Ida Lee established that the wreck site was likely to be off the northwest of the Montebello Islands. Then, in 1969, amateur scuba divers found the wreck site where Lee had said it would be.
Schooner Wanderer. Painting by Oswald Brierly From the collections of the State Library of New South Wales, a128927.
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 a powerful storm.
They had sailed from Sydney three months earlier and were slowly island-hopping across the Pacific. The ship’s owner, Scottish entrepreneur Benjamin Boyd, was in no great hurry. He was still licking his wounds after the spectacular failure of his grandiose enterprises centred around Boydtown at Twofold Bay (near present-day Eden on the NSW south coast). He now hoped to turn his luck around on the booming California goldfields.
Most recently the Wanderer had departed Papeete in the Society Islands (French Polynesia) bound for Hawaii. It was on this leg of their voyage that they weathered the cyclonic conditions and performed a miraculous rescue.
Benjamin Boyd portrait. Source: Australian Town and Country Journal 29 Aug 1906 Page 28.
The sailor reported that he thought he had glimpsed something bobbing in the mountainous seas even though they were hundreds of miles from land. A man was sent aloft with a telescope and after a few minutes he called down that there was a whaleboat in distress several miles to windward. The Wanderer bore down on the stricken craft and discovered it contained six occupants.
The seas were still running high and it was not until their third attempt that a line was got across to the boat. The only words the men on the Wanderer could discern were plaintive cries for water. Then all six passengers, three men, and three women were hauled across and safely got aboard the schooner, very lucky to be alive.
It turned out the whaleboat belonged to Jose Davis, “a Brazilian man-of-colour”1 who had since resided in Hawaii for the past 17 years. With his wife and four others, (all South Pacific Islanders) he had set off from Oahu nine days earlier intending to reach Maui. They were only about 50kms from home when disaster struck.
The whaleboat was caught in a severe storm that raged for days. The sail was ripped to shreds and they lost their rudder during the tempest which made the whaleboat uncontrollable. What’s more, the planking had sprung so they were also taking on water. The boat drifted at the mercy of the wind and waves for nine days and it was ultimately pushed some 600kms south. They had no drinking water and the only food Davis and his comrades had was a few pumpkins.
Map of the Pacific Ocean showing where the whaleboat was found.
But Jose was not one to give up hope. Once the weather abated, he planned to use the women’s dresses to make a new sail and then bear east towards the South American coast using the sun and stars to guide him.
With the new passengers on board and being cared for, the Wanderer continued north to Hawaii. The whaleboat sank shortly after it was abandoned. In time Jose and the others were landed at Maui to be reunited with their astonished and grateful families and friends who had since given them up for dead.
The Wanderer continued on to San Francisco, but Boyd failed to strike it rich on the goldfields and decided to return to Australia. On the homeward voyage, they stopped at Guadalcanal where he vanished while out hunting. His body was never found.
A typical trading schooner in the South Seas. Source: Picturesque atlas of Australasia, 1886.
In the 19th Century, the ship’s captain often considered himself the undisputed master of his vessel, especially when they were at sea. Most, to varying degrees, kept a rein on their power, while others ruled with an iron fist. Then there were those tyrannical few, like Neil Peter Sorensen, who went completely rogue. And, out among the South Pacific islands where the Royal Navy only sporadically patrolled, there were few restraints on those bent on causing trouble.
In August 1885, a portion of the crew from the schooner Douro put ashore in Cooktown with a harrowing tale of kidnapping and piracy. The culprit, they said, was their own former captain. The Douro’s first mate, Otto Ashe, and two other seamen told authorities that Captain Sorensen was out of control and terrorising communities in the Solomon Islands. They had grown so concerned with Sorensen’s behaviour that they preferred to risk being charged with deserting their ship than to be implicated in their captain’s depredations.
As he and the others had only joined the Douro in Sydney four months earlier, they had no idea what they were signing on for. Until recently, the Douro had been registered as a British vessel named the Albert, and as such, had been subject to British laws. The ship’s owner registered her as a Portuguese-flagged ship at that country’s Sydney Consulate. They claimed they had done so to save their ship from being seized in the event of war breaking out between Britain and Russia, a genuine concern at the time. In reality, the change in registration and name had more to do with placing the ship and its captain outside the bounds of the British legal system. Sorensen was installed as the Douro’s new captain. He was formerly the Albert’s first mate and was no stranger to the South Pacific or operating outside the law. But this would be his first taste of command.
Map showing Australia and the Solomon Islands.
The Douro sailed from Sydney in late April, on a fishing venture around the Solomon Islands. Pearl shell and beche-de-mere both commanded high prices in Sydney, but Sorensen needed to hire local divers. Sorensen landed at a village on San Cristobal Island for recruits, but the village chiefs remembered him from a previous visit. Sorensen had promised to return the men at the end of his last fishing trip, but he never did. Now, no one trusted him.
Sorensen was forced to go further afield to find his much-needed divers and fishermen. The Douro stopped at a couple of other islands and was able to recruit men on the promise that they would be gone from their villages for only four or five months. This was a lie, for Sorensen expected to be away for at least a year and probably longer.
As time passed, the situation on the Douro became intolerable for the crew. Otto Ashe claimed that Sorensen relentlessly bullied and threatened his men. While anchored off Guadalcanal, he beat the schooner’s cook senseless over some perceived infraction of his rules. None of the crew was prepared to stand up to him, for Sorensen was always heavily armed. But as bad as the treatment of his white crew was, it was nothing compared to how he treated most of the Solomon Islanders.
Newspaper coverage at the time.
At Isobel Island, he had two chiefs forcibly brought out to the schooner and only released them in exchange for six recruits. Off Wagina Island, the Douro came across a chief and several of his men out fishing in their canoes. He welcomed them aboard and then invited the chief to dinner in his cabin. Sorensen clapped the chief in irons and kept him hostage. He then went back on deck armed with a rifle and ordered the rest of the Islanders to leave. Sorensen only released the village chief after his people had handed over 4000 beche-de-mer, 24 sea turtles, a pig and three “boys,” whom he would exploit as unpaid labour.
On one of the Carteret Islands, he took his plundering to a new level. Sorensen kidnapped four girls and brought them back to the schooner for the men’s entertainment. He then went ashore, armed to the teeth, at the head of a band of Solomon Islanders who had no qualms about following his orders. Sorensen forced the local chief to sign over possession of the island to him. Sorensen and his men then went from hut to hut, gathering up all the weapons. The haul included an assortment of traditional spears, clubs, and tomahawks, as well as an old Snider rifle and two shotguns. After everyone had been disarmed, he forced the menfolk to collect pearl shell and beche-de-mer on his behalf.
A typical South Sea Islands trading schooner circa 1885.
By now, the first mate had seen enough and wanted no part of it. Fearing that Sorensen would continue his reign of terror through the islands, he took the first opportunity to escape. On 23 June, he took off in the schooner’s longboat with two other white seamen and seven Solomon Islanders. They landed in New Britain and reported Sorensen’s crimes to the German Consul there. They then set off in the boat for Australia, eventually landing at Cooktown, where they told the Queensland authorities the same story.
When the Douro finally sailed into Brisbane in March the following year, the police were waiting. The schooner was seized, and Sorensen was charged with assault and robbery and placed under arrest. He was also charged with sodomy, but that was later dropped because the principal witness was “now in a lunatic asylum,” as the Brisbane Courier reported it at the time. Sorensen denied all the allegations, but a jury found him guilty, and he was sent to prison for ten years. While this episode was particularly heinous, it is a sad indictment that the conviction and hefty sentence were unusual for the times.
Tales from the Quarterdeck 