Sixty bite-sized stories from Australia’s maritime past
The melancholy loss of H.M.S Sirius off Norfolk Island by George. Raper. Source National Library of Australia 136507434-1
I have just launched a new book titled Tales from the Quarterdeck: Sixty bite-sized stories from Australia’s maritime past. Sixty of the most popular posts have been reedited. In some cases, I’ve rewritten a couple and updated a few where new information has come to light since first writing them.
For those who would value ready access to the stories in their bookcase, Tales from the Quarterdeck is available in Kindle ebook and paperback formats through Amazon.
The stories are organised in chronological order, starting with the Tryall shipwreck off the Western Australian coast in 1622, and finishing with the Second World War exploits of the Krait. See below for a full list of the stories covered in the book.
Sydney Gazette 22 May 1808, p. 2.
1622 – The Tryall: Australia’s earliest shipwreck
1629 – The Batavia Tragedy
1688 – William Dampier: Navigator, naturalist, writer, pirate
1770 – The Endeavour’s Crappy Repair
1788 – Loss of La Astrolabe and La Boussole, a 40-Year Mystery
1789 – Bligh’s Epic Voyage to Timor
1789 – HMS Guardian: All Hands to the Pumps
1790 – The Loss of HMS Sirius
1790 – Sydney’s First Desperate Escape
1791 – HMS Pandora: Queensland’s earliest recorded Shipwreck
1791 – William Bryant’s Great Escape
1797 – The Loss of the Sydney Cove
1803 – Loss of HMS Porpoise
1808 – Robert Stewart and the Seizure of the Harrington
1814 – Wreck of the Morning Star
1816 – The Life and Loss of HMSC Mermaid
1824 – The Brig Amity’s Amazing Career
1829 – The Cyprus mutiny
1831 – The Caledonia’s perilous last voyage
1833 – The Badger’s Textbook Escape
1835 – The Loss of the Convict Ship Neva
1835 – The Post Office in the middle of nowhere
1835 – The Tragic Loss of George III
1845 – The Cataraqui: Australia’s worst shipwreck
1846 – The Peruvian’s Lone Survivor
1847 – The Foundering of the Sovereign
1850 – The Loss of the Enchantress: A first-hand account
1851 – The Countess of Minto’s brush with Disaster
1852 – The Bourneuf’s Tragic Last Voyage
1852 – The Nelson Gold Heist
Woodbury, Walter B. (Walter Bentley), 1834-1885. Hamlet’s Ghost, Sourabaya [Surabaya], Java [Boat with Passengers and Crew], ca. 1865. Walter B. Woodbury Photograph Collection (PH 003). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries
1854 – Bato to the Rescue
1854 – HMS Torch and the rescue of the Ningpo
1856 – The Loss of the Duroc and the Rise of La Deliverance
1858 – The Loss of the Saint Paul and its Horrific Aftermath
1858 – Narcisse Pelletier, An Extraordinary Tale of Survival
1859 – The Indian Queen’s Icy Encounter
1859 – The Sapphire and Marina
1863 – The loss of the Grafton: Marooned for twenty months
1864 – The Invercauld shipwreck
1865 – The CSS Shenandoah: Victoria’s link to the American Civil War
1866 – The Loss of the SS Cawarra: Bad luck or an avoidable tragedy?
Example of a Brig. Source: Winston’s Cumulative Loose-Leaf Encyclopedia 1918
On Sunday, 3 July 1814, the merchant ship Morning Star sailed out of Sydney Harbour bound for Calcutta by way of Torres Strait and Batavia. However, her voyage north ended abruptly on a coral reef south of the Forbes Islands off the far north Queensland coast. The vessel was a 140-ton Calcutta-built brig owned by the Indian-based trading house Lackersteen and Co. When she left Sydney, the crew numbered 37 men, a mix of European and Indian seamen, all under the command of Captain Robert Smart. Only six of them would survive the ordeal.
No account exists of how the ship was lost, but from the location of the wreck site, it appears that Captain Smart was sailing within the Great Barrier Reef when he ran aground and had to abandon ship.
Lieutenant James Cook had charted the route back in 1770, and he had only narrowly avoided total disaster on what he would name Endeavour Reef, some 450 km south of where the Morning Star was lost.
The passage was fraught with danger. Thousands of reefs, many hidden just below the surface, dotted the coastal waters inside the Great Barrier Reef. However, the route had two distinct advantages. Rarely did a ship have to stray far from land, so refuge could be sought should disaster strike. There were also ample safe anchorages where ships could lay up overnight or when the conditions made it difficult to detect hazards lying in their path. Later, mariners would prefer a route that took them far out into the Coral Sea as they made their way north. They would cross the Barrier Reef near Raine Island or other similar narrow passages to pass through Torres Strait. This “outer passage” avoided the labyrinth of reefs but came with its own set of dangers.
Booby Island. Image courtesy National Library of Australia
On 30 September, the fully rigged Ship Eliza was sailing through Torres Strait when the lookout spotted a white flag flying from a staff on Booby Island. The captain heaved to and sent a boat across to investigate. When it returned, she carried five marooned sailors from the Morning Star. This is the first recorded instance of shipwrecked sailors seeking refuge on Booby Island. Later, it would be stocked with food and water to assist shipwrecked sailors. A primitive post office with a logbook would also be established, so passing mariners could pass on the location of any uncharted reefs they may have discovered.
The castaways had been among 15 men who had taken to the Morning Star’s longboat and made the perilous journey north after abandoning the wreck. They reported that Captain Smart and nine other sailors had left Booby Island five days earlier, intending to make for the Dutch port of Kupang on Timor Island. There is no record of them ever arriving there or anywhere else, for that matter.
Morning Star reported wrecked on a reef south of Forbes Islands. Courtesy: Google Maps.
The remaining 22 members of the Morning Star’s crew were thought to have perished as a result of the wreck or some calamity that befell them sometime afterwards. But four years later, another Morning Star survivor was found living with the Islanders on Murray Island on the Eastern entrance to Torres Strait.
The Claudine had anchored off Murray Island in September 1818 and sent a jolly boat ashore to meet with the islanders. To the astonishment of all, an Indian sailor was there to greet them in Hindustani. Fortunately, one of the sailors in the jolly boat spoke the language and was able to translate for the others. He told the sailors from the Claudine that he had been on the Morning Star when it ran aground and that since then he had been living with the Murray Islanders. He had learned their language and been accepted into their community, but the circumstances of his arrival on the island and the fate of his shipmates were not recorded. When the Claudine set sail, the Indian castaway was with them.
The Morning Star is just one of many hundreds of vessels, large and small, that came to grief in Queensland’s northern waters from the late 18th and into the early part of the 20th Century.
A ship passing through the Great Barrier Reef at Raine Island. Illustrated Australian News for Home Readers.
Passing through the Great Barrier Reef during the age of sail must have been both terrifying and exhilarating in equal parts. The following account, written by an anonymous passenger on a ship sailing through Torres Strait in 1829, was published in the Sydney Times on 19 Sept 1834. It is a fascinating read and has been posted with only minor alterations to improve readability.
A Narrative of a Voyage Through Torres Strait – 1829
“Perhaps there is no part of the navigable world which offers the adventurous mariner a more terrific picture than the passage through Torres Strait — none more mis-represented — and none contemplated with greater horror. … There are three routes by which the passage through Torres Strait can be made, known among nautical men as the Inner, Middle, and Outer passages.
Of these, the preference is generally given to the first, both because it affords convenient anchorage for the night, when it would be dangerous for a vessel to continue her course among the reefs, and because the mainland of New Holland is constantly in sight, and consequently easily attainable in case of wreck. Yet this of all is the most dangerous and intricate, and never could be preferred were it not for the reasons just mentioned.
The middle passage was that through which the writer of these remarks passed in 1829, and if ever a satisfaction from disappointment were realised, it was in the accomplishment of this voyage, which had been before regarded as holding out but a mere chance of escape from the miseries of shipwreck.
Detail of the 1846 Barrier Reef chart showing Pandora, and Raine Island Entrances – Courtesy: National Library of Australia.
On the fourteenth day after our departure from Sydney, the man at the mast head called out reefs on the “starboard bow.” Everyone was anxiously looking for this intelligence, for on that morning, the altitude of the sun proved we were within a few leagues of them.
The reef soon proved to be the “great barrier” in latitude 11° 54 south, reaching across the ocean in a direction from the N. W. to the S. E. until the surf created by its breakers was lost to the sight beneath the horizon.
All sail was immediately crowded on the vessel in order to make the entrance of the reef by noon, when the sun would not prevent the bed of the shoals from being distinctly marked.
By noon, we had reached the spot we had desired and were within half a mile of the reef, which from its immense extent seemed to shut out all intercourse with the opposite part of the ocean.
As we approached it more closely, we discovered that it contained two or three small openings, or passages of about a cable’s length in breadth, and through one of which our course was directed.
The wind, was high, and there was a considerable swell, but beyond the wall-edge of the mighty reef, which served as a breakwater to the ocean, and upon which the whole volume of water was thrown, all was calm as a basin; — upon its broad surface there was but a ripple, while the rush and roar of waters, breaking as it were in anger on its side, presented a scene of mingled horror and beauty.
In 1770, Cook charted what would become known as the Inner Passage. The Endeavour was nearly lost in the attempt. Painting by Samuel Atkins (1787-1808). National Library of Australia.
We sailed on, we were close upon it and could fully discover the small opening through which our vessel was to pass. There was a breathless silence throughout the ship, save at intervals the voice of the captain giving instructions to the man at the helm.
A deviation of a hair’s breadth and we might be lost forever. On either side the narrow passage was total and instant destruction; our vessel entered, and as she glided into the smooth channel, she felt the force of the current more powerfully, which being concentrated and brought into so close a space, swept her through with a velocity that no wind, however violent, could effect.
It occupied but a quarter of an hour to pass through this channel, which formed the great danger of our voyage; but during that time, I had gone to the main top with a military officer who was on board to look upon the reefs.
What a splendid scene was there; I had seen nothing like it before in nature or art, and perhaps never shall again. As far as the eye could reach, the sea was filled with white coral reefs, whose surface was just covered with water, and partaking of its hue, presented to the view the appearance of beautiful meadows so slightly inundated as to preserve their colouring.
HMS Pandora came to grief when it tried to pass through the Great Barrier Reef in 1791. Photo courtesy SLQ.
The shades of green produced by the sea flowing upon the white coral were most beautiful and variegated, and in proportion as the reefs deepened or became shallow, the colouring was diversified.
But the most striking feature in the scene was the snow-like bordering which encompassed the whole, keeping out as it appeared, all influx of the ruder wave, while that upon the surface of the reef was as a calm lake. This was produced by the breaking of the sea on the sides of the reefs, and became more conspicuous in proportion as the coral approached the surface of the water.
What a field was here for the contemplation of the artist or the philosopher, whether their time were given to look on Nature’s beauty, girt as it was with desolation, or in searching on the reefs, amid the conflux of currents, for the materials of science, they would be alike repaid for the anxiety the anticipated danger of such a route might produce.
For myself, I can say that the impression of that picture is fresh upon me, and rests alone within a memory filled with the recollections of that beautiful voyage.”
H.M.S. Pandora in the act of foundering’ . An etching by Lt-Col. Batty after a sketch by Peter Heywood from ‘The Mutiny and Piratical Seizure of H.M.S Bounty’ first edition 1831. Photo courtesy SLQ.
In August 1791, HMS Pandora was returning to England, having tracked down and captured 14 of the Bounty mutineers in Tahiti. But disaster struck on the night of the 29th, as the Pandora was trying to find a way through the Great Barrier Reef. The ship’s surgeon, George Hamilton, left a nerve-wracking account of the incident in his memoir, “A Voyage Round the World in His Majesty’s Frigate Pandora”, published in 1793 after his return to England.
Hamilton wrote that on the night of 29 August, a boat sent earlier in the day by the Pandora’s captain, Edward Edwards, to scout for a passage through the maze of reefs had finally returned to the ship. As the crew was hauling it out of the water, the 24-gun frigate unexpectedly struck a submerged coral reef. Captain Edwards immediately ordered the crew to set the sails as he tried to back off the outcrop, hoping to use wind power alone. When that failed to dislodge his ship, he ordered a boat to be made ready to take an anchor out so he might kedge the vessel off. But by the time the anchor was in place and the crew ready to winch, it was already too late.
The carpenter had examined the hold and found that the Pandora’s hull had sprung a serious leak. In the 20 minutes they had been aground, the water had risen to nine feet (2.7 m). All hands were immediately engaged in efforts to save the ship from sinking. Sailors began bailing at each of the hatchways, and several of the Bounty mutineers were unshackled to help man the bilge pumps.
Map showing HMS Pandora wreck location (approx).
“It blew very violently, and she beat so hard upon the rocks, that we expected her, every minute, to go to pieces,” Hamilton recalled. “It was an exceedingly dark, stormy night, and the gloomy horrors of death presented us all around, being everywhere encompassed with rocks, shoals, and broken water. About ten [o’clock] she beat over the reef, and we let go the anchor in fifteen fathoms of water.
Not yet ready to give up on his ship, Captain Edwards ordered the guns thrown overboard and, at the same time, had some of his men prepared the topsail to be hauled under the ship’s bottom in a vain effort to stem the leak. But before they could get the sheet of canvas over the side, one of the bilge pumps failed, and the water began flowing into the hold faster than it could be bailed out. The topsail was abandoned as every hand was set to work, baling to stop the ship from sinking.
Soon the Pandora began listing, and the crew experienced their first casualties. A canon broke loose and rolled across the deck, crushing a sailor, while a topmast came crashing down on deck, killing another. The crew laboured at the pumps and bailed with buckets through the night to keep the ship afloat. An ale cask was tapped, and its contents were regularly served out to the men to keep their spirits up.
Bounty Mutineers accommodation on HMS Pandora. Source: Museum of Tropical Queensland, Townsville.
Then, about half an hour before dawn, Captain Edwards called his officers together to discuss their next move. It was clear to all that the ship was doomed and that their efforts should shift from saving the ship to preserving the lives of the crew. The Pandora’s four boats had been put over the side earlier in the night, and they were sheltering in the lee of the reef, their coxswains awaiting further orders. Spars, booms, hen-coops and anything else that floated were cut free so that the men might find something to keep themselves from drowning when the ship inevitably sank.
Hamilton wrote that Captain Edwards ordered that the remaining prisoners be released from their irons. However, it came too late for some of the mutineers who were still shackled in place in their makeshift prison they called “Pandora’s Box.” They went down with the ship.
The water began pouring in through the gun ports, causing the frigate to list even further. As the captain and crew scrambled to jump overboard, the Pandora heeled over and sank almost immediately. The boats came to the rescue of the sailors clinging to the wreckage in the water, but for many help came too late. “The cries of the men drowning in the water was at first awful in the extreme,” Hamilton wrote. But as the men disappeared below the surface, the screams faded and then died away entirely.
Loss of the Pandora on the Great Barrier Reef. Source: Tales of Shipwrecks and Adventures at Sea, 1856.
As morning heralded a new day, a small sandy cay could be seen about two and a half nautical miles (5 km) to the southeast. Edwards ordered the boats to make for the one tiny speck of land in that vast expanse of sea. The captain took stock of their provisions and ordered a guard to be placed over the remaining surviving mutineers. Fortunately, someone had the forethought to load a barrel of water, a small keg of wine, and some sea biscuits onto one of the boats. To that haul of supplies could be added a few muskets and cartouche boxes of ammunition, along with a hammer and a saw. Not much to preserve life in such remote and hostile waters. Edwards thought their only chance of survival would be to make for the Dutch trading outpost on Timor Island, some 1200 nautical miles (1400 km) away.
Edwards forbade anyone from drinking on that first day, calculating that they would have only enough water to last 16 days at two small cups per person per diem. They spent two days on the cay preparing the boats for the voyage that lay ahead. Floorboards were torn out and affixed to the sides of the boats, around which canvas was wrapped to increase the freeboard.
Before leaving, the sailing master, George Passmore, was sent back to the wreck site to see if anything might have floated free in their absence. He returned two hours later with a small assortment of salvaged materials and a cat that he found clinging to the top-gallant mast-head.
On the third morning, they set off west towards Torres Strait and beyond to the Dutch settlement of Kupang. Edwards had hoped to refill their water cask at one of the islands dotting Torres Strait before they headed into the expanse of the Arafura Sea. However, an encounter with Islanders, which began friendly enough, inexplicably ended abruptly with a volley of arrows and musket fire being exchanged. They stopped again at Prince of Wales Island (Muralag), where this time they were able to fill their water cask without incident. On 16 September, after an arduous voyage lasting about a fortnight, the four boats pulled into Kupang Harbour. From there, they were taken to Batavia (present-day Jakarta), where Edwards purchased a ship for the return to England.
Canon recovered from HMS Pandora wrecked on the Great Barrier Reef on display at the Museum of Tropical Queensland, Townsville.
The shipwreck directly cost the lives of 31 sailors and four mutineers. Another 16 died from disease during or after their stay in Batavia. Of the 134 men who left England on the Pandora, only 78 made it home alive. The ten prisoners who survived the wreck were tried for mutiny. Four were acquitted, two received pardons, one got off on a technicality, and three were hanged. Captain Edwards faced a court-martial to answer for the loss of his ship, but he was found not to have been at fault.
The Museum of Tropical Queensland in Townsville has a world-class exhibition of artefacts recovered from the wreck.
The French steamer Duroc wrecked on Mellish Reef. Source: Wikicommons.
On the night of 12-13 August 1856, the French Naval steam corvette Duroc was wrecked on Mellish Reef about 800 km off the Queensland coast. After the ship ran aground, her passengers and crew, numbering 70 people, made it onto a small sand cay where they were safe for the time being. However, they were stranded far from regular shipping channels, and the chance of their being rescued was remote. Captain Vissiere thought their only chance of getting off the islet was to build a new boat from the wreckage of the old.
The Duroc had set off from Port de France (Noumea), New Caledonia, five days earlier, but on that night she ran aground on a submerged coral reef and could not get off. Each passing swell pounded the hull onto the reef, and she began taking on water. Fearing the ship might break apart during the night, Captain Vissiere ordered the crew to start bringing all stores, provisions, and water casks up on deck. He also had the four lifeboats prepared in case they had to abandon ship during the night. Then Vissiere had an anxious wait until morning, when he could better assess their situation.
Daylight revealed the ship was well and truly lodged on the reef, and they were surrounded by breaking seas. But about four kilometres away, there was a small, low-lying sandy islet which seemed to offer a place of refuge. So began the laborious task of ferrying all the ship’s stores and personnel to dry land. Over the next 10 days, they stripped the Duroc of its masts, bowsprit, sails, spars, blacksmith’s forge, a water distillation plant and the cook’s oven. By 23 August, they had emptied the stranded vessel of anything useful and established a comfortable camp on the tiny cay. Captain Vissiere was satisfied that their immediate survival was assured, but they were stranded nearly 800 km from the nearest land, and rescue seemed unlikely.
Survivors of the wrecked Duroc on Mellish Reef building the La Deliverance. Source: Wikicommons.
Vissiere prided himself on being a competent master mariner, and he could not account for how his ship had run aground. He took several unhurried astrological observations on the island and would later claim that the reef he had struck was, in fact, some distance from where it was laid down on his chart. Feeling vindicated, the captain then turned his mind to finding a way back to civilisation, for not only was he responsible for his crew, but his wife and baby daughter accompanied him.
Captain Vissiere felt that his best course of action would be to make for Australia’s east coast, where he could expect to find help from a passing ship. However, the lifeboats could carry only a fraction of those stranded on the small island. So, Captain Vissiere opted to send his First Mate, Lieutenant Vaisseau, off with the three largest boats and about half the crew. He would remain on the island with his wife, daughter, and about 30 others. They would construct a new vessel from the timber they had salvaged from the Duroc and make their escape if no one had come for them in the interim.
The three boats set off on 25 August with instructions to make for Cape Tribulation, where, with any luck, they would meet a British ship sailing the Great Barrier Reef’s inner passage. Cape Tribulation was probably chosen because it was easily recognisable and it was where the reef pinched in close to the coast, funnelling any passing ships close to land.
Mellish Reef. Courtesy Google Maps
After setting off from Mellish Reef, the three boats encountered rough weather, which threatened to capsize the heavily overloaded craft. Lt Vaisseau tried tethering the three boats together so they would not become separated, but in the rough seas, this proved dangerous, and the lines were cut. After weathering the conditions for two days, Vaisseau decided they should jettison everything non-essential to lighten the load and raise their freeboard.
Then, one day, while Lt Vaisseau was taking his noon observation, his boat was struck by a rogue wave, tossing him into the sea. Unable to swim against the current to make it back on board his lifeboat, he would have drowned had another boat trailing astern not been able to come close enough to rescue him. Vaisseau had a lucky escape, for he was only plucked from the water as his strength was beginning to fail him.
After five days at sea, on the evening of 30 August, they crossed through the Great Barrier Reef near Cape Tribulation and anchored in calm waters for the night. The men thought the worst of the ordeal was behind them, and they would soon fall in with a passing ship. Lt Vaisseau noted they still had 72 kgs of sea biscuits, 20 litres of brandy and 60 litres of wine when they reached the Australian coast. However, shared among 36 hungry men, that would last them only another few days.
The next day, they made land, filled their water casks, and then bore north, hugging the shore, pushed along by the prevailing southerly winds. They stopped each night in the lee of islands, foraged for roots, greens and shellfish, and cast out lines hoping to catch fish. They only delved into the supply of sea biscuits when their efforts failed to find enough food.
By 9 September, they had reached Albany Island in the Torres Strait. They continued sailing past Booby Island, unaware that there was an emergency store of food and water there to aid shipwrecked sailors. Having sighted not a single ship while off the Australian coast, they ventured out into the Arafura Sea. Lt Vaisseau decided they should head for the Dutch settlement of Kupang on Timor Island. The three boats finally arrived on the evening of 22 September, and not a moment too soon, for their food had run out several days earlier.
Construction of a new vessel La Deliverance from the wreckage of the Duroc on Mellish Reef. Source: Wikicommons.
Meanwhile, Captain Vissiere and the remaining men had been kept busy constructing the new vessel, which they named La Deliverance. Under the directions from the ship’s master carpenter, they sawed the Duroc’s lower masts into planks and fixed them to a frame. The new craft measured 14 metres in length and was completed around the time Lt Vaisseau and his party reached Timor Island.
On 2 October, La Deliverance was launched, and they sailed away from the island they had called home for the past six weeks. Captain Vissiere intended to make for the Australian mainland, just as his lieutenant and the three boats had done. Once off land, he would decide whether they should head north, through Torres Strait and on to Kupang, or turn south towards Port Curtis (Gladstone), which was the most northerly settlement on the east coast at the time. When he reached the Australian coast, he found the same southerly trade winds that Lt Vaisseau had.
Despite the seemingly optimistic start, the passage was arduous, hampered as it was by unpredictable weather. Prolonged calms left them stranded for days at a time. The doldrums were only relieved by violent storms that lashed them mercilessly and threatened the safety of the vessel. By the time they were rounding Cape York, the boat was leaking alarmingly. Captain Vissiere pulled in at Albany Island so urgent repairs could be made before they left the relative safety of the Australian mainland. Once the leaks were plugged, they got underway, ready to cross the Arafura Sea. On 30 October, four weeks after setting off from Mellish Reef, La Deliverance sailed into Kupang harbour.
Though they suffered greatly during the ordeal, Captain Vissiere did not lose a single person as a result of the wreck or the 4000 km voyages undertaken by the survivors to reach Kupang.
Tales from the Quarterdeck 