Tales from the Quarterdeck

Tag: Yongala

  • Queensland’s Ten Worst Maritime Disasters

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

    TEN: SOVEREIGN, 1847.

    The Sovereign. Image courtesy Stradbroke Island Heritage Museum.

    The paddle steamer Sovereign, with 54 persons on board, sailed from Moreton Bay via the southern channel on 11 March 1847.   As she ploughed through the large swells funnelled into the passage between Moreton and Stradbroke Islands, her engines failed at a critical moment.      The force of the breaking waves quickly drove her onto a sand spit projecting from the southern point of Moreton Island, where she broke up.    Forty-four people lost their lives.   The owners of the vessel would later claim the engines had been working fine and blamed the captain for the loss.     

    NINE: MERSEY, 1804.

    On 24 May 1804, the 350-ton merchant ship Mersey sailed from Sydney bound for Bengal, India, via Torres Strait.     In mid-June she was wrecked while trying to negotiate the dangerous waters of Torres Strait.   Neither the location or the circumstances of the tragedy are known, other than the captain and either 12 or 17 of the crew took to the longboat and made it safely to Timor Island to report the loss.   She reportedly sailed with 73 hands which means 56 or 61 people lost their lives.

    EIGHT: PERI, 1871.

    HMS Basilisk and the Peri. Image Courtesy the British National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.

    In early February 1871 HMS Basilisk discovered a schooner, later identified as the Peri, adrift and seemingly abandoned a short distance off the Queensland near Cardwell.   When a boat was sent across to investigate, they discovered 14 emaciated Solomon Islanders, three corpses, no food or fresh water and five feet of putrid seawater in the hold. The Peri had last been seen about six weeks earlier in Fiji carrying around 80 or 90 blackbirded Islanders bound for Fijian cotton plantations.   It seems that the Islanders had overpowered their kidnappers and taken control of the schooner.   They then sailed or drifted west across almost 3,000 km of open ocean, withstood at least one severe tropical storm, and passed through a gap in the Great Barrier Reef before being found.      As many as 75 people likely died during the ordeal.

    Map showing 10 worst maritime disasters off Queensland. Courtesy Google Maps

    SEVEN: SYBIL, 1902.

    The labour schooner Sybil disappeared sometime after leaving the Solomon Islands on 19 April 1902 bound for Townsville with a fresh batch of South Seas labourers.    By August, grave fears were held for the Sybil, for the voyage should not have taken more than two or three weeks.    Searches were made of the islands along the outer Great Barrier Reef and in the Coral Sea but no trace of the vessel or any of those on board were found.   She had a crew of 12 and on the previous two voyages, she had carried 90 and 98 labour recruits, so it is thought no less than 100 lives were lost.

    SIX: GOTHENBURG, 1875

    Gothenburg. Photo Courtesy SLQ

    The steamer Gothenburg sailed from Darwin on 17 February 1875 bound for Adelaide via Australia’s east coast.   On 24 February the Gothenburg was steaming down the coast in the vicinity of Cape Bowling Green.   Bad weather meant they could not see the regular landmarks to aid their navigation. The captain was unaware strong currents were pushing the ship towards the Great Barrier Reef until it was too late. The Gothenburg ran aground on Old Reef.   The ship and all aboard her would likely have been saved but for a powerful cyclone bearing down on them.   As the storm worsened, the captain ordered the evacuation of the passengers, but as the women and children were being loaded into the lifeboats a succession of huge waves swept over the ship.    Only 22 people survived.  As many as 112 passengers and crew lost their lives.  

    FIVE: YONGALA, 1911

    S.S. Yongala. Photo Courtesy SLQ.

    The Yongala sank during a tropical cyclone near Cape Bowling Green on 11 March 1911 with the loss of all 122 people on board.    When the ship failed to arrive in Townsville as scheduled, concerns were raised.   Then, wreckage began washing ashore along the coast as far away as Hinchinbrook Island.   However, there was no sign of the ship or any hint as to where she might have sunk.   Nearly half a century would pass before the final resting place of the Yongala was conclusively located. 

    FOUR: QUETTA, 1890

    RMS Quetta. Photo courtesy SLQ

    While the Mail Steamer Quetta was steaming through Torres Strait on the night of 28 February 1890, it struck an uncharted rock pinnacle as it passed Adolphus Island.   The Quetta had departed from Brisbane bound for London carrying nearly 300 people comprising the passengers and crew when disaster struck.   The collision tore a gaping hole in the hull from bow to amidship, and the ship sank in just three minutes.    One hundred people made it safely to Little Adolphus Island where they were later rescued.   Dozens more were pulled from the water the following day.    133 people lost their lives in the tragedy.

    THREE: AHS CENTAUR, 1943

    AHS Centaur. Photo Courtesy State Library of Queensland

    At 4 am on 14 May 1943, the Australian Hospital Ship (AHS) Centaur was torpedoed and sunk by a Japanese submarine.    The Centaur was about 35km off Moreton Island having departed Sydney with medical staff from the Army’s 2/12 Field Ambulance bound for Port Moresby.   In all, there were 332 people on board.   268 lost their lives.   64 survived by clinging to debris and two damaged lifeboats until they were rescued 36 hours later.

    TWO: CYCLONE MAHINA, 1899

    Cyclone tracks for Cyclone Mahina.

    On the night of 4/5 March 1899, a powerful cyclone crossed the coast at Bathurst Bay on Cape York Peninsula. Lying directly in its path was the North Queensland pearling fleet which had sought shelter there.     Nearly 60 vessels – from large schooners to pearling luggers – were sunk or driven ashore with horrendous loss of life.    Between 300-400 people died in what is no doubt Queensland’s worst natural disaster.    The loss was most keenly felt on Thursday Island where the pearling fleet was based.

    ONE: GRIMENEZA, 1854

    Artists impression of the Grimeneza . Image Courtesy SLQ

    The worst shipwreck off the Queensland coast occurred on 3 July 1854.   The Peruvian ship Grimeneza was sailing from China with some 600 Chinese labourers bound for the Callao guano mines in Peru.   When they struck a reef at Bampton Shoals in the Coral Sea, the captain and six others immediately abandoned the ship leaving the rest of the crew and the passengers to their fate.  The rest of the crew tried to back the ship off, but when that failed, they too took to the lifeboats and were picked up 12 days later.   Miraculously, the Grimeneza floated off with the next high tide.   The labourers sailed the damaged ship west towards the Queensland coast with the pumps being worked around the clock.   But after three days of exhausting work, she foundered.   Six men were found clinging to a piece of wreckage 300 km off the coast a few days later.   The rest had all drowned or been taken by sharks.

    © Copyright, C.J. Ison / Tales from the Quarterdeck, 2024.

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  • The Long Search for the Yongala

    Postcard showing the SS Yongala, circa 1905. Courtesy State Library of Queensland.

    In March 1911 the SS Yongala sank during a powerful cyclone with the loss of 122 lives making it one of Queensland’s worst maritime disasters.   Despite efforts to locate the wreck, the ship’s final resting place would remain a mystery for almost half a century.

    The Yongala departed Brisbane on 21 March bound for Townsville.   On 23 March she stopped briefly at Mackay to disembark passengers but by now the weather was rapidly deteriorating.   When she got under way again, she unwittingly carried 50 passengers and 72 crew towards a powerful storm brewing somewhere to the north.    

    Later the same day the Dent Island lighthouse keeper noted the Yongala passing through the Whitsunday Passage.     She soon faded from sight, enveloped by a curtain of rain and sea mist, as she ploughed towards Townsville.

    When the Yongala failed to arrive as scheduled there was no immediate concern.   It was assumed the captain had sought shelter to escape the cyclone and the ship would soon make its appearance.   But then reports reached Townsville of wreckage washed ashore on Palm and Hinchinbrook Islands 50 and 100 kilometres to the north.

    “The Missing Steamer Yongala” The Australasian, 1 Apr 1811, p. 41.

    It was clear the debris, including hatch covers, parts of lifeboats, ornate cabin fittings and other miscellanea, had come from the Yongala.   It spoke of a terrible tragedy having befallen the passenger steamer and all those onboard.   Oddly, not a single body was ever recovered.

    The waters and coastline between Townsville and the Whitsunday’s were scoured in hopes of finding survivors or the wreck but nothing but more debris was found.  A Marine Board Inquiry investigated the loss of the ship as best it could under the circumstances. With no eyewitnesses to what happened and no wreck to inspect, they had little to go on.   The Inquiry concluded that rumours about the ship’s stability were groundless and it found no fault with the ship’s construction or the competency of its captain.    A £1,000 reward was even offered for anyone who could pinpoint the wreck.

    In October 1911 Dr Cassidy believed he and his crew on the salvage schooner Norna had located the Yongala in deep water about 20kms off Cape Bowling Green.   They had discovered traces of oil bubbling up from the depths and believed that marked the resting place of the lost ship.   However, owing to the depth of the water and strong currents, they were unable to put a diver down to confirm the find or collect the reward.  

    Map showing location of the Yongala wreck. Courtesy Google Maps.

    For decades mystery surrounded the disappearance of the ship.   There were even far-fetched sightings of a “ghost ship” steaming through North Queensland waters periodically reported in the tabloid press.  

    Then in 1947, the navy survey ship HMAS Lachlan located the wreck using “anti-submarine instruments,” more commonly known today as sonar.    Three years earlier a minesweeper had snagged something they thought to be a reef rising steeply from the seabed in the middle of the regular shipping lane south of Townsville.   They had marked the spot on their chart as an unknown obstruction and reported it to Naval Headquarters.   They were about 20kms east of Cape Bowling Green where the Norna had found the oil slick all those years ago.

    After HMAS Lachlan made several passes over the “obstruction” the sonar operators were convinced they had found the remains of a “fair-sized steamer.”   It was thought to be the Yongala for it was the only such vessel to have been lost in the vicinity.  

    HMAS Lachlan. By Allan C. Green, Courtesy State Library of Victoria.

    However, it would be another 11 years before anyone visually confirmed that what the Lachlan had found was in fact a shipwreck.   In 1958 a diver named George Konrat finally descended into the deep and found the ship sitting on its keel in 30 metres of water with a distinct list to starboard.   He recovered a Chubb safe with part of the serial number still evident which would later prove to have been installed in the Yongala during her construction.

    Konrat speculated that the steamer had struck another vessel during the storm and sank for he also saw the remains of an old sailing ship nearby.   However, with the passage of so many years and no survivors to recount what happened, the actual reason why the ship foundered during the cyclone will likely never be known.

    Yongala Bell, Courtesy wikimedia commons.

    Today, some artifacts collected from the wreck and other memorabilia can be found in the Townsville Maritime Museum which is well worth a visit.   The Yongala, itself, is a popular dive site.

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

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