November 2016 Edition 140
COLONIAL SHIPWRECKS ARTICLE
Introduction by Ray Jerrems

This article tells the dramatic stories of shipwrecks which occurred in colonial times on the notorious “Shipwreck Coast” of Victoria on the southern coast of Australia.

The photo shows a heavily dissected part of the Shipwreck Coast in the vicinity of The Twelve Apostles and Loch Ard Gorge.

As you will see, the Shipwreck Coast became the graveyard of many proud sailing ships and their unfortunate passengers and crews.

For our Australian readers and most of our American readers this article is particularly relevant because our forbears ran the gauntlet of this coast in the 1850s and 1860s.
The Shipwreck Coast

The term “Shipwreck Coast” has been coined to cover the section of the Victorian Coast between Princeton and Port Fairy, along the western part of the coast of the mainland, where there were a total of 25 shipwreck sites, however I have extended my narrative to include King Island (the island shown on the map with a brown flag on the southern side of Bass Strait between the Shipwreck Coast and Tasmania) because that island in fact had the worst record for loss of life.

The Shipwreck Coast area had been the route taken by convict ships since their inception, but it was also frequented by whalers hunting the Southern Right Whales which migrated from the Antarctic in winter (they were up to 15 metres long and weighed up to 50 tonnes), sealers, and local trading boats.

Port Fairy had been established in the late 1820s as one of the earliest whaling stations in Australia, and by the 1840s was the second largest port in Australia.



Low incidence of shipwrecks before 1850

From a statistical viewpoint prior to 1850 a low proportion of ships were wrecked in Bass Strait. This is largely attributed to the fact that the ship captains were not under pressure to make fast voyages so they were more careful, possibly hugging the northern shoreline before entering the Strait. It also occurs to me that they may have been much more cautious by waiting for daylight (if visibility was a problem), or waited for bad southerly storms to abate (if storms were a problem).

Editor’s Note:  The red A marks the location of the Cape Wickham lighthouse on King Island.
Major shipwrecks

In 1835 the sailing ship “Neva”, bound from Ireland for Melbourne with 241 convict women and children, was wrecked on King Island. In one of the worst losses of life only 19 of the 241 people on board reached the desolate shore, and seven of them subsequently died of starvation.

But worse was to come in 1845 when the Cataraqui, bound from Liverpool for Melbourne with 370 passengers and 38 crew was also wrecked on King Island. Only nine people survived.

Finally, 78 people died when the “British Admiral” was wrecked on the southern part of King Island in 1874.

Construction of lighthouses

It had been obvious for some time that a lighthouse was needed at Cape Otway, on the rugged shores of Bass Strait, to guide ships into the Strait.

It took several years to start building the lighthouse owing to the heavy forests of the Otway Range, which made access by land from the north very difficult, and the surrounding cliffs which were 100 metres high made access from the sea very dangerous. Finally it was completed in 1848.

Although it was also obvious that a lighthouse was needed on the southern side of the Strait this was not built until 1861 at Cape Wickham on King Island. At a height of over 50 metres it was the tallest lighthouse in Australia.

Wreck of the Schomberg 1855

This is an illustration of the biggest ship to be wrecked, the Schomberg. At 2600 tonnes, 288 feet long and masts 210 feet high, it was “state of the art”, having 60 large staterooms, a library and bathrooms.

Its captain, Captain “Bully” Forbes, was somewhat of a legend, having previously gained fame for very fast previous trips on the “Marco Polo” and the “Lightning”.

In one of the most bizarre shipwrecks in Australian maritime history the ship ran aground in moderate seas on Christmas Day (surely a very poor Xmas present!) on a sandbank in good visibility after the captain had mysteriously done nothing to retrieve the situation. The 300 passengers and the mail was transferred without difficulty to the coastal steamer “Queen”.

The crew was ferried to the shore, and in a novel touch the unscathed ship’s crew, led by its brass band, walked 30 miles to the nearby town of Warrnambool.

The beaches along the nearby coast were littered with the ship’s cargo, which technically still belonged to the insurers. The local residents had a field day, drays and carts loaded with loot were seen leaving the area. For weeks afterwards, according to a newspaper report, “local Aborigines were seen wearing dresses in ways never envisaged in London fashion houses”.

Three days after the ship ran aground a storm came up and the ship was swept into deep water and sank, not be discovered until 1972, with its bow section missing. Meanwhile the bow of the ship had reputedly been washed ashore in New Zealand, some 2000 km (1200 miles) away.

Wreck of the Loch Ard

The most famous shipwreck was that of the “Loch Ard” in 1878. The ship was 260 feet long, 1700 tons and had 150 foot masts, which was quite large for those times, and it was very fast. With 54 people on board it left England in March 1878 with Captain George Gibb in charge. Included in the crew as surgeon was Dr Evory Carmichael. Aged 45 he was migrating from Ireland with his family for health reasons, having contracted TB.

When the ship was some distance south of Cape Otway on 30th June there was a heavy haze which resulted in a poor “sight” which initially placed the ship’s longitude in doubt, and later obscured the coastline. At 4 am the haze lifted and Captain Gibb saw high cliffs straight ahead in the moonlight. The southerly wind was driving the ship towards the cliffs so he tried unsuccessfully to bring the ship about by using the sails, and followed this by throwing out the anchors, which did not find any purchase on the sandy bottom. The ship hit a reef and was swept into a gorge, smashing against the cliffs and then sinking.

Only two survivors

Here is a photo of the Gorge, with Eva Carmichael’s Cave (see later) at the foot of the towering cliffs on the mid right.

There were only two survivors, the surgeon’s daughter Eva and Tom Pearce, an apprentice. Tom swam to shore through the raging waves and debris and a short time later despite a nasty head injury swam out to save Eva, who was clinging to a spar (earlier she had been holding on to a chicken coop). He swam to shore, towing her by holding her nightie in his teeth. It was midwinter and the water was freezing. Tom dragged her over the debris on the beach (no mean feat because she weighed 12 stone) and laid her in her soaked clothes in a cave (now called Eva Carmichael’s Cave). He then scrambled out of the Gorge to get help.

Fortunately Tom located a stockman, George Ford, who went for help to the nearby Glen Ample homestead where he worked. Meanwhile Tom went back into the Gorge to look for Eva (who had wandered from the cave), after which he collapsed from exhaustion. In due course Eva was found nearby and was taken to the homestead.

As soon as Eva was found in the Gorge the homestead owner (Hugh Gibson) had composed some notes for the authorities and had given them to Ford to take to the town of Camperdown. Ford’s ride must be counted as one of the outstanding feats of horsemanship in early Victoria. On a horse he had ridden all day he then covered a total of 90 miles over a rough and hilly track, half of it in darkness.

When the people of Warrnambool learned that Tom had lost all his clothes they outfitted him and in addition presented him with 100 pounds.

Graves

Here is a photo of the Carmichael grave.

Sadly Eva’s parents, two brothers and three sisters perished.

The bodies of Mrs Carmichael and her daughter “Raby” (Rebecca) were recovered quickly and were hoisted up to the top of the cliffs, followed the next day by the bodies of Arthur Mitchell and Reginald Jones.

The bodies were placed in coffins made out of piano cases (the ship’s cargo included about 20 pianos) and buried not far from the rim of the Gorge at a funeral service. Hugh Gibson later erected a cross of spars at the site.

A year later Eva’s sole surviving sibling, William (a chief officer on the Loch Ness clipper) erected a tall headstone over the Carmichael grave to the memory of the lost members of his family. Nearby a later stone was erected for Mitchell and Jones.

The Great Ocean Road, constructed in the 1920s, now passes near the Loch Ard Gorge locality. Even now it has a bleak outlook in winter. In those days it would be difficult to imagine a more desolate place than the graveyard, set on a scrubby plateau overlooking the sea, silent except for the thumping of waves in the gorge and the shrieks of seagulls.
Other bodies

Some other bodies were located and buried on the nearby beaches. Eleven bodies were trapped in a nearby blowhole and could not be retrieved.

Later article

In a later article I will give you more details of the Loch Ard disaster.