Rediscovering moments from Australia's maritime past.
If ever there was a cautionary tale warning of the perils of going to sea ill-prepared, it is that of the tragic loss of the Maria in 1872. The Marine Board inquiry blamed the captain’s poor navigation and equally poor character for the loss of the ship and so many lives. But, the underlying causesContinue reading “The Loss of the Maria: A Cautionary Tale”
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When Captain George Browning sailed the small schooner Caledonia from Sydney in December 1831, he intended to follow the coast north as far as the Tropic of Capricorn. There he was to collect salvage from a ship that had been wrecked in the Bunker Islands and return it to Sydney to be sold. But onContinue reading “No Charts, No Worries”
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In 1845 the trading schooner Ariel was seized off the coast of China while carrying a valuable cargo worth millions of dollars in today’s money. This act of piracy was unusual because it was not carried out by a band of desperate cutthroats but by two of the ship’s own officers. The schooner Ariel wasContinue reading “Mutiny on the Ariel”
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In January 1918, Donald Mackenzie found himself marooned on a tiny uninhabited island after his schooner sank during one of the most powerful cyclones to hit Central Queensland. The tough 56-year-old Scott was a seaman on the Orete which had sailed from Maryborough bound for Mackay with a cargo of sawn timber. They had noContinue reading “The Orete’s Robinson Crusoe-like Castaway”
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On a stormy December night in 1831, eleven desperate convicts seized a small ship at Moreton Bay and forced its captain to take them to a South Pacific Island. But as the prisoners turned pirates climbed aboard the vessel, little could they have imagined that most of them were escaping one reign of terror forContinue reading “The Caledonia’s perilous last voyage”
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Tales from the Quarterdeck