Tales from the Quarterdeck

Tag: Survival

  • The Countess of Minto’s brush with Disaster

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       In 1851, two men accomplished a sailing feat that few thought was possible. They had been the only hands on board the barque Countess of Minto when she was driven from her anchorage during a violent storm. The captain and the rest of the crew were left stranded on a remote desert island. Everyone thought the ship had foundered in the storm, but four weeks later, she sailed into Sydney Harbour. To everyone’s astonishment, the two men had survived and sailed their ship over 1000 kilometres to safety.

       On 25 August 1851, the 300-ton Countess of Minto was anchored off Lady Elliot Island on the Great Barrier Reef to collect guano, a valuable commodity at the time. John Johnson and Joseph Pass had just returned to the ship after taking the captain and the rest of the men ashore to dig for guano. Soon after the pair returned to the ship, the weather began to deteriorate.

       By midday, the wind was howling through the rigging, the seas boiled around the ship, and the deck was being lashed by torrential rain. It was now far too dangerous to take the jolly boat ashore to join their shipmates on the island. Johnson and Pass had no choice but to ride out the storm where they were.

       The two seamen let out the anchors as far as they would go, hoping they would remain firmly dug into the seabed. The ship surged and the chains strained with each powerful swell, and for a time they held.

       Then, around 11.30 that night, a very thick squall struck. The force of the wind and the seas was too great, and the anchors started dragging along the sea floor. The barque was swept out into the deep water of the Coral Sea, somehow missing the island and the nearby reefs. Johnson and Pass had no control over the ship as it bucked and tossed in the tumultuous seas. They could only pray that the vessel would not founder and they might survive the night.

       Johnson was the ship’s carpenter, and Pass was the steward. Neither was part of the regular sailing crew, but it is evident that one or perhaps both men possessed a wealth of sailing experience. And, at least one of them knew how to navigate using a sextant and a chronometer.

       The pair survived the wild night, and by the next morning, the wind had eased and the men could take stock of their situation. Lady Elliot Island was nowhere to be seen. In fact, no land at all interrupted the horizon in all 360 degrees. They checked for damage to the sailing gear and hull and were relieved to find the Countess of Minto had survived the storm with only superficial injury. The hull, masts, and sails were intact, but they were now drifting aimlessly under bare poles at the mercy of the wind and current.

       Both anchors were still dangling at the ends of 45 fathoms (90 metres) of chain. The deck was littered with ropes and other gear that had broken loose but had not been washed overboard. The longboat had been swept off the forward hatch and was now full of water and being dragged along behind the ship. The jolly boat, likewise, was trailing behind.

       They released the anchors after being unable to haul them up on their own. They set up a boom with a block and tackle and retrieved the two boats. Then they tidied up the deck. At midnight, they pumped eight inches of water out of the bilge and continued working through til dawn.

       They finally hoisted some canvas from the main mast and bore towards the south-east. For the first time since being swept from their anchorage nearly 36 hours ago, they had control of the ship.

    Sydney Morning Herald, 25 Sept 1851, p. 2.

       On Wednesday evening, 27 August, the winds picked up again after a day of blowing a gentle breeze. They now tried to set a north-westerly course so they could return to Lady Elliot Island and rescue their shipmates. But in the face of contrary winds and hampered by a lack of manpower, they struggled to get back.

       For the next eight days, the pair battled the wind and the seas, trying to make it back to Lady Elliot Island. However, despite their efforts, the ship continued to be pushed southward and away from the coast. The winds were blowing from the north, and each time they tried to beat to windward, they would be pushed further south. By Friday, 5 September, Johnson and Pass were utterly exhausted and were now further away from their shipmates than ever.   

    They finally decided to go with the wind and make for Sydney so they could get help. Now with the wind behind them ,they made good time. The Countess of Minto was off Port Macquarie four days later and only had another 300 km to go before reaching Sydney. There, they fell in with another ship, and its captain came over to see what assistance they needed. Stunned to discover there were only two men on board, he offered to crew the ship and take it the rest of the way to Sydney as long as they officially handed control to him. Johnson and Pass refused, knowing full well that the captain would then be entitled to claim salvage rights. Despite their exhaustion, they figured that they could make it the rest of the way by themselves. The captain left and later returned with a few of his men, offering their help with no strings attached. This time, Johnson and Pass accepted.

    Approximate course of the Countess of Minto.

       On 20 September, the Countess of Minto sailed into Sydney Harbour to be greeted by their captain, who had just arrived and reported his ship lost. Johnson and Pass were commended for their “meritorious conduct,” and the insurance underwriters rewarded each of them with £10.

    As fate would have it, the Countess of Minto would be lost a couple of months later after striking ground off Macquarie Island as the captain sought to finish filling his hold with guano.

    The Countess of Minto’s incredible 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, 2022.

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  • The Peruvian’s Lone Survivor

    James Morrill. Source National Library of Australia 136099157-1.

       In July 1846, word reached Sydney that a ship, the Peruvian, had been discovered abandoned on the remote Bellona Shoals far out in the Coral Sea.   No one knew what had happened to those who had been on board. As the months passed with no word of any survivors, it was presumed they had all been lost at sea when the ship was wrecked or in a desperate attempt to reach land. Then, 17 years later, a naked lone survivor walked out of the bush with a remarkable story of survival.  

       His name was James Morrill, and he had been 22 years old in late February 1846 when the Peruvian sailed out of Sydney Harbour on her way to China. Morrill had only joined the crew a couple of days before they sailed. Captain Pitkethly and his crew, including Morrill, numbered 14. Pitkethly’s wife, Elizabeth, six passengers and two stowaways sailed with them. In total, there were 23 people on board.

       The Peruvian had fine weather for the first three days and made an easy time of it sailing north under full sails.   But during the third night at sea, the weather started to turn. The next morning, the ship was in the grip of a powerful storm.   For the next several days, the Peruvian was blown north under bare poles.  Then, after nearly a week, the weather began to ease again. Sail was heaped back on, and they started making up for lost time. Then, in the early hours of 8 March, an ominous line of white caps materialised out of the pitch black night directly in their path.

       The Peruvian slammed into the reef before there was any chance to change course. The waves lifted the damaged ship onto the reef, where she stuck fast. Seawater swept the deck, washing away the lifeboat and the unsuspecting second mate who had just emerged from below deck.

       The morning revealed an unbroken reef awash with turbulent white foaming water as far as the eye could see. No islet, sandbar or refuge of any sort lay in sight. Only jagged rocks jutted from the sea’s surface. Captain Pitkethly made the difficult decision to abandon his ship. When the crew lowered the jolly boat over the side, it was immediately smashed to pieces. They now only had one boat left. It was loaded with supplies and lowered away. Then the ropes got tangled and the boat filled with water. The first mate jumped in the boat to try to save it, but before he could bail it out, the stern broke away. The damaged boat plummeted into the water, and a strong current swept it away from the side of the ship. Resigning himself to his fate, the man bid the captain and crew farewell and was soon lost from sight.

       Their situation had become dire with the loss of all three lifeboats. The ship could break apart at any time, and they were stranded over 1000 km off Australia’s east coast. But Pitkethley was not about to give up. The Peruvian’s masts were brought down, and cross planks were lashed and nailed in place, forming a platform. Then the remaining 21 castaways boarded the raft for a very uncertain future.

       The raft drifted with the north-westerly current towards the Australian mainland. The days passed slowly under the blazing tropical sun. Water and food were carefully rationed, making thirst and hunger constant companions. Morrill would recall that one day blurred into the next. Had the captain not recorded the passing of each day by carving a notch into a piece of timber, no one could have said how long they had been adrift in that empty sea.

       Morrill would later recall that after they had been adrift for a little over three weeks, they had their first casualty from the raft. Captain Pitkethly prayed over the man’s body, and it was lowered into the water. To everyone’s horror, as the body floated away, it was attacked by sharks and torn to shreds. The feeding frenzy, according to Morrill, only ended when the body was completely devoured.

       By now, they had probably left the open ocean and were among the shoals of the Great Barrier Reef. Fish could be seen in the crystal clear water, and they were able to catch some with a lure they fashioned from a fish hook, a piece of tin and a strip of canvas. Nature also answered their prayers for fresh water when the skies opened up. Rainwater was collected in a sail, and they could fill their water container for the first time since abandoning the ship. However, their good fortune did not last.

       Four weeks of starvation, thirst, and exposure to the elements had taken their toll on everyone. The castaways started dying in rapid succession.  “At this time they dropped off one after the other very rapidly, but I was so exhausted myself that I forget the order of their names,” Morrill would later recall.   

    James Morrill. Photo courtesy State Library of Queensland.

       By now, the raft was continuously circled by sharks drawn by the regular supply of corpses. Half-starved and desperate to fill their aching bellies, the survivors resolved to catch one of their tormentors.

       “The captain devised a plan to snare them with a running bowline knot, which we managed as follows,” Morrill would later claim, “We cut off the leg of one of the men who died, and lashed it at the end of the oar for a bait, and on the end of the other oar we put the snare, so that the fish must come through the snare to get at the bait.   Presently, one came, which we captured and killed with the carpenter’s axe.”

       And so Morrill and a few others clung to life. After being adrift for about five weeks, they sighted land for the first time. When Captain Pitkethly examined his chart, he took it to be Cape Upstart. But with no way to steer the raft, they could only watch and pray that they reached shore sometime soon.

       “Two or three days afterwards we saw the land once more, and were driven towards Cleveland Bay,” Morrill recalled, “but just as we were preparing to get ashore, in the hopes of getting water, a land breeze sprang up and drove us out to sea again.”

       Then, around midnight, the raft washed ashore, likely on the southern point of Cape Cleveland. After so long at sea, no one had the strength to do anything but drag themselves off the raft and collapse on the beach. In the early hours of the morning, it began to rain. Morrill and the other castaways quenched their thirst by drinking directly from shallow depressions in nearby rocks.   Cold and wet, they huddled together and waited for dawn.

       They had been adrift on the raft for 42 days according to the captain’s tally of nicks in the piece of wood. Only seven of the 21 people who had left the Peruvian were still alive, and two of those would die from exhaustion within hours of reaching land.

       For the next couple of weeks, the survivors sheltered in a cave and foraged for shellfish among the rocks. One of the castaways found a canoe pulled up on the beach one day. He would set off south in it alone after Morrill and everyone else refused to join him. Morrill would later learn that his emaciated body was found by Aborigines not far from where he had left.

    Memorial to James Morril, the last survivor of the Peruvian shipwreck who lived with Aborigines for 17 years. Bowen Cemetery.

       As their strength slowly returned, the castaways began ranging further afield in search of food. And their presence soon came to the attention of the local Aborigines, the Bindal and Juru peoples. One evening after Morrill and Captain Pitkethly had returned to the cave from a day’s foraging, they heard strange jabbering and whistling sounds. When they went to investigate, they found several naked black men staring at them with keen interest.

       “At first they were as afraid of us as we were of them,” Morrill later said. “Presently, we held up our hands in supplication to them to help us; some of them returned it. After a while, they came among us and felt us all over from head to foot. They satisfied themselves that we were human beings, and, hearing us talk, they asked us by signs where we had come from. We made signs and told them we had come across the sea, and, seeing how thin and emaciated we were, they took pity on us. …”

       By now, only Morrill, Captain Pitkethly, his wife Elizabeth and a young apprentice were left. They were taken in by the Aborigines and assigned to different groups. The captain and his wife never fully recovered and struggled to adapt to the arduous life among the Aborigines. They died within a few days of each other and were buried together. Morrill would also later learn that the apprentice had also died.

    .   Morrill would live among the Bindal people of the Burdekin region for the next 17 years. Every so often, his new friends told him that they had sighted a ship out on the ocean, but he was never close enough to try signalling for help. But the sightings served to remind him of his past life.

       By 1863, the frontier of European colonisation had reached the lower Burdekin River. By then, he was nearly 40 years old. One day, Morrill approached a hut, calling out to its occupants, “What cheer, shipmates?” The shepherds came out, one of whom was armed with a gun, to find a naked, dark-skinned man standing before them. “Do not shoot me, I am a British object, a shipwrecked sailor,” Morrill yelled.  He was invited inside and told the shepherds his story in broken English. He only then realised how much he wanted to return to his old life. Morrill made one final visit to his Bindal family and friends, begging them not to follow him. Aborigines were frequently shot on sight if they seemed to pose a threat, and Morrill did not want that fate to fall on his loved ones.

       Morrill would eventually be taken to Brisbane, where he met the Governor. He asked that the Aborigines be allowed to live on their land unmolested by settlers, but his plea went unheeded. He was given a job as an assistant storeman in Bowen, where he married, fathered a child and became a much-liked member of the local community. But the hardships he had endured over the years had taken a toll on his body. An old knee wound, which had never properly healed, became inflamed, and he died, probably of blood poisoning, just two years later.    A modest memorial to the last survivor of the Peruvian shipwreck can be found in the Bowen Cemetery.

    James Morrill’s full story is told in A Treacherous Coast: Ten Tales of Shipwreck and Survival from Queensland Waters.

    © Copyright C.J. Ison, Tales from the Quarterdeck, 2022.

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  • The Tragedy behind the Gothenburg Medals

    L-R Robert Brazil, John Cleland, and James Fitzgerald. Photo: Adelaide School of Photography, 1876.

       In September 1875, the South Australian Government honoured three men for the courage they displayed when the Gothenburg sank with fearsome loss of life. James Fitzgerald, John Cleland and Robert Brazil had risked their lives to save other survivors from the ill-fated steamer.

       The Gothenburg was a 501-ton steamer, and on this, her final voyage, she carried 37 crew and 88 passengers, 25 of whom were women or children. She departed Darwin on Tuesday, 16 February 1875, bound for Adelaide via Australia’s east coast. By the evening of the 24th, Cape Bowling Green just south of Townsville, would have been visible off the starboard side had it not been obscured by thick weather.

       The steamer had been followed by bad weather for most of the voyage down the Queensland coast. With usual landmarks hidden from view, the captain, James Pearce, was relying on his patent log to plot their progress. He thought he now had open seas ahead of him until they reached Flinders Passage, where he would pass through the Great Barrier Reef. It was early evening, and the Gothenburg was cutting through the water at 10 knots (19 km/h). Large swells made the ship roll uncomfortably, upsetting many of the passengers. But then the seas flattened.  It should have alerted the captain that they were in the lee of a large reef. But before any action could be taken, the Gothenburg ran onto a vast coral shoal hidden just under the sea’s surface.

    Illustration a the Human Society medal awarded to survivors of the Gothenburg shipwreck. Source: The Illustrated Adelaide News 1 Sep 1875, page 8.

       The impact was not particularly violent. The iron-hulled steamer had glided along the top of the reef, coming to a halt in less than her own length. By the time she stopped, her stern was still hanging out over deep water. It would transpire that the Gothenburg had drifted further east than Pearce had reckoned on, and they had struck Old Reef just north of Flinders Passage.

    Pearce was not particularly concerned at first; the hull had not been breached, and he thought he would be able to back the steamer off. However, when the engines were put in reverse, the ship didn’t budge. Pearce ordered the crew to move cargo from the fore hold and bring it aft. He also asked all the passengers to congregate on the stern. With the bow raised and the stern lowered, he hoped the ship would easily slide back off the reef. As the tide peaked, the engines were turning at maximum speed, but the vessel remained firmly stuck. The passengers and most of the crew retired for the night, expecting they would try again on the next high tide.

       Meanwhile, the weather continued to deteriorate. A powerful storm was fast approaching over the northern horizon. Through the rest of the night, the Gothenburg was lashed by high seas, torrential rain, and a gale-force wind.The steamer bumped and ground on the hard coral until the hull sprang leaks and she began taking on water, a lot of water.

       In just a few short hours, the situation became dire. Captain Pearce began preparations to abandon the ship, starting with the evacuation of women and children. It was now around 3 a.m., and pitch-black. Most of the passengers were already up on deck despite the atrocious weather. Few wished to remain in their cabins below.

       Pearce only had four lifeboats at his disposal, but two of them were swept away before he could get a single passenger off the ship. The third boat, only partly filled with passengers, capsized and broke apart as soon as it was lowered into the water. Then the ship heeled over, and a mountainous wave swept many of the passengers from the deck to drown in the turbulent sea.

    The wreck of the Steamer Gothenburg. Source: Australasian Sketcher, 20 Mar 1875, p. 13.

       A lucky few managed to swim back to the ship and were rescued by those who had climbed into the ship’s rigging before the wave struck. There they clung, hoping to ride out the storm. James Fitzgerald, John Cleland, both passengers, and one of the crew, Robert Brazil, were among the survivors.

       Fitzgerald would later recall, “We had seen illustrations of shipwrecks, but on this frightful morning … before daybreak, we saw the dreadful reality of its horrors. The ship was lying over on the port side, awfully listing, a hurricane was blowing, rain was coming down as it does in the tropics, and unmerciful breakers were rushing over the unfortunate vessel, seldom without taking some of the people with them.”

       John Cleland, a gold miner returning to Adelaide, spotted the fourth lifeboat floating upside down, still attached to its davits. He knew that if they were to have any chance of survival, they needed that boat. He climbed down from the rigging, tied a rope around his waist and swam through the breaking waves to better secure it.

    The Gothenburg. Photo Courtesy State Library of Queensland.

       Cleland’s first attempt failed, and he swam back through the surging seas to the relative safety of the main mast. James Fitzgerald then joined him, and together they repeatedly swam out to the boat, cut away at the tangled mess of ropes, and then swam back to the mast to rest. Finally, they cut through the last of the ropes securing the boat to the davits. They then tied it off again with a length of rope attached to the mast. But the boat still floated upside down. They had been unable to right the craft on their own.

       Seeing the pair struggling, Robert Brazil swam out and joined them, and with their combined weight, they were able to flip the lifeboat over. Cleland and the others were relieved to see that the oars were still securely locked in place.

       The trio then returned to the mast and tied themselves to the rigging high above the waves. They stayed there all that day and the following night, tied to rigging so they would not fall when they dozed off. Then, the following morning, the weather began to ease.

       The three men returned to the boat and bailed it out. Cleland, Fitzgerald, Brazil and eleven other men climbed into the lifeboat and eventually made it to the safety of Holbourne Island. They were rescued by boats sent out from Bowen to search for survivors the next day. Over one hundred people lost their lives in the disaster, Captain Pearce among them.

       A marine board enquiry found that the captain had not exercised sufficient care in the navigation of his ship. They felt that had he made the effort to sight Cape Bowling Green lighthouse or Cape Upstart as he steamed south, he might have more accurately fixed his position, and the disaster could have been averted.

    The full story of the Gothenburg shipwreck is told in A Treacherous Coast: Ten Tales of Shipwreck and Survival from Queensland Waters, available as a Kindle eBook or paperback through Amazon.

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

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  • 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.

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