September 2015 – Edition

This is the story of a lifeboat used in a famous rescue in the 1850s on the southern coast of Victoria. A member of the crew (John Dusting) was a relative of one of our readers, the former Marion Dusting.

The lifeboat, shown in the above photo, was based at Portland, a major port on the south coast of Victoria, in Australia.

By the early 19th century, whalers and sealers were working the treacherous waters of Bass Strait, and Portland Bay provided good shelter and fresh water.

Edward and Francis Henty settled there in 1834. A post office opened there in 1841 and a Presbyterian Church in 1842.

Portland developed to become an important fishing port providing for the town and later, with the connection of the railway in 1877, to the region as far afield as Ballarat and eventually Melbourne.

The Portland lifeboat. The boat was specifically built for rescue work, following a British design, involving the use of very strong diagonal planks. It also had watertight bulkheads at each end for flotation purposes.

This extremely robust method of construction was essential for the boat to withstand heavy seas and bumping against obstacles like the sides of stricken ships. The lifeboat crews were legendary for setting out from port in conditions where no other boat crews would dare to do so, and for rowing long distances.

A mast allowed the crew to hoist a sail when conditions were favourable.

The crew of thirteen comprised ten oarsmen, a skipper, a cox and a poleman. They were volunteers recruited from the town, similar to volunteer firemen.

I will now take you on a conducted tour of picturesque Cornwall where the Dusting families lived for at least three centuries. I will start with Penzance in southern Cornwall where John Dusting was born. He came from a family of experienced boatman whose ancestors had also been boatmen for a number of generations. It has even been rumoured that some of his ancestors were smugglers.

The name Dusting was an anglicised version of a Huguenot name “Dystyn”.

Penzance

Penzance was a port dating back to the 1200s. It has been made famous by the Gilbert and Sullivan musical “The Pirates of Penzance”. The reason for Penzance’s relative success probably stems from the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries when King Henry IV granted the town a royal market, Henry VIII granted the right to charge harbour dues, and King James I granted the town the status of a Borough.

Across Mounts Bay from St Michael’s Mount is the quaintly named coastal village of Mousehole (I kid you not!). It is pronounced “Mou-zel” and I am assured that it has a good pub, imaginatively named “The Ship Inn”.

This is one of the most amusing village names I have ever encountered. With a name like this I would expect a Beatrix Potter mouse to be peeping out from behind the curtains of the pub.

The book “The Mousehole Cat” written by Antonia Barber is based on the story of Tom Bawcock and has made Mousehole famous around the world. The book tells the tale of how Tom’s cat sang to the sea to allow Tom’s safe return in a storm with fish to feed Mousehole’s starving villagers.

At last, I can hear you say, our tour reaches St Michael’s Mount, where some of the Dusting families lived for at least two centuries.

The island is connected to the mainland by a stone causeway which is covered by water except at low tide.

The island’s early history included occupation by Stone Age people and an Iron age trading port for Cornish tin. The origin of the island’s name is that St Michael led the army of God, defended Christians and is patron saint of high places. It is said that St Michael appeared to local fishermen in 495 AD.

With such an illustrious heritage it is not surprising to learn that the earliest building on the summit was a Benedictine monastery dating back to the 12th century. The close similarity of its name to the famous French island of Mont Saint Michel is not a coincidence, the monks from the French island founded the Cornwall monastery.

The boat harbour was built in the 15th century. The island’s military importance led to fortifications being constructed by Henry VIII in the early 16th Century

It was from the Mount that the Spanish Armada was first spotted some years later in 1588, and the signalling beacon lit there was the first of a chain started along the south coast to warn of the threatened invasion.

The island, which is elaborately terraced with sub-tropical gardens, was bought by the St Aubin family in 1659. The British National Trust bought it from them recently.

Prior to the 18th Century, the main buildings were the monastery, and its associated church and the fortifications (all on the top of the island). There were also some fishermen’s cottages and monastic cottages.

After improvements to the boat harbour in 1727, St Michael’s Mount became a flourishing seaport, and by 1811 there were fifty-three houses and four streets. The pier was extended in 1821 and the population peaked in the same year, when the island had 221 people. There were three schools, a Wesleyan chapel, three public houses, (mostly used by visiting sailors), and a dairy.

The village went into decline following major improvements were carried out to nearby Penzance Harbour (primarily the construction of the north-south Albert Pier which protects Penzance Harbour) and the extension of the railway to Penzance in 1852. This decline resulted in many of the houses and buildings on the island being demolished.

The north side of the island is now home to around 30 people who live in cottages overlooking the boat harbour, with at least one person from each household working on the island in the gardens, the buildings or on the water.

The decline in the economy of St Michael’s Mount in the 1850s (referred to previously) may have provided some of the motivation for their migration.

Additionally, the brothers had probably lived in the tin mining town of Redruth, inland from Penzance, where they married their respective wives. There were outbreaks of cholera in the town in 1849 and 1853. Although outbreaks of cholera were not uncommon (there was an outbreak in Gainsborough in the 1830s) this may have given further impetus to their decision.

The itinerary of the Panama was to call in at Portland on the way from England to Melbourne. No doubt this was the reason why they travelled in that ship.

It is interesting that they chose Portland, because it had similar attributes to St Michael’s Mount and Penzance (port facilities, fishing, boat building etc). It is also interesting that they chose a town that had no connection with the goldmining boom which had attracted tens of thousands of migrants to Melbourne and Sydney in the previous three years.

Their contribution to the local economy was quite tangible because between them they had about 25 children. They also brought useful skills with them due to the fact that Joseph and Martin were carpenters.

The brothers’ families and their descendants stayed in Portland for a considerable time, with some descendants still living there.

Next time

The story of the celebrated rescue carried out by the crew of the Portland Lifeboat is certainly worth a separate article to do it justice. It involves what has been described as one the most tragic shipwrecks in Australian colonial history, I will tell you about it in a later article