The Best Australian Sea Stories Read online

  ‘It is beautiful, of course it’s beautiful—the Harbour; but that isn’t all of it, it’s only half of it; Sydney’s the other half, and it takes both of them together to ring the supremacy-bell. God made the Harbour, and that’s all right; but Satan made Sydney.’

  Of course I made an apology; and asked him to convey it to his friend. He was right about Sydney being half of it. It would be beautiful without Sydney, but not above half as beautiful as it is now, with Sydney added. It is shaped somewhat like an oak leaf—a roomy sheet of lovely blue water, with narrow off-shoots of water running up into the country on both sides between long fingers of land, high wooden ridges with sides sloped like graves.

  Handsome villas are perched here and there on these ridges, snuggling amongst the foliage, and one catches alluring glimpses of them as the ship swims by toward the city. The city clothes a cluster of hills and a ruffle of neighbouring ridges with its undulating masses of masonry, and out of these masses spring towers and spires and other architectural dignities and grandeurs that break the flowing lines and give picturesqueness to the general effect.

  The narrow inlets which I have mentioned go wandering out into the land everywhere and hiding themselves in it, and pleasure-launches are always exploring them with picnic parties on board. It is said by trustworthy people that if you explore them all you will find that you have covered 700 miles of water passage. But there are liars everywhere this year, and they will double that when their works are in good going order. October was close at hand, spring was come.

  It was really spring—everybody said so; but you could have sold it for summer in Canada, and nobody would have suspected. It was the very weather that makes our home summers the perfection of climatic luxury; I mean, when you are out in the wood or by the sea. But these people said it was cool, now—a person ought to see Sydney in the summer time if he wanted to know what warm weather is; and he ought to go north ten or fifteen hundred miles if he wanted to know what hot weather is. They said that away up there toward the equator the hens laid fried eggs . . .

  If we look at a map of the world we are surprised to see how big Australia is. It is about two-thirds as large as the United States was before we added Alaska.

  But whereas one finds a sufficiently good climate and fertile land almost everywhere in the United States, it seems settled that inside of the Australian border-belt one finds many deserts and in spots a climate which nothing can stand except a few of the hardier kinds of rocks . . .

  This stupendous blank is hot, not to say torrid; a part of it is fertile, the rest is desert; it is not liberally watered; it has no towns. One has only to cross the mountains of New South Wales and descend into the westward-lying regions to find that he has left the choice climate behind him, and found a new one of a quite different character. In fact, he would not know by the thermometer that he was not in the blistering Plains of India . . .

  One is sure to be struck by the liberal way in which Australasia spends money upon public works—such as legislative buildings, town halls, hospitals, asylums, parks, and botanical gardens . . .

  The botanical garden of Sydney covers thirty-eight acres, beautifully laid out and rich with the spoil of all the lands and all the climes of the world. The garden is on high ground in the middle of the town, overlooking the great harbour, and it adjoins the spacious grounds of Government House—fifty-six acres; and at hand also, is a recreation ground containing eighty-two acres. In addition, there are the zoological gardens, the race-course, and the great cricket grounds where the international matches are played. Therefore there is plenty of room for reposeful lazying and lounging, and for exercise too, for such as like that kind of work.

  There are four specialties attainable in the way of social pleasure. If you enter your name on the Visitor’s Book at Government House you will receive an invitation to the next ball that takes place there, if nothing can be proven against you. And it will be very pleasant; for you will see everybody except the Governor, and add a number of acquaintances and several friends to your list.

  The Governor will be in England. He always is. The continent has four or five governors, and I do not know how many it takes to govern the outlying archipelago; but anyway you will not see them. When they are appointed they come out from England and get inaugurated, and give a ball, and help pray for rain, and get aboard ship and go back home. And so the Lieutenant-Governor has to do all the work. I was in Australasia three months and a half, and saw only one Governor. The others were at home.

  The Australasian Governor would not be so restless, perhaps, if he had a war, or a veto, or something like that to call for his reserve-energies, but he hasn’t. There isn’t any war, and there isn’t any veto in his hands. And so there is really little or nothing doing in his line. The country governs itself, and prefers to do it; and is so strenuous about it and so jealous of its independence that it grows restive if even the Imperial Government at home proposes to help; and so the Imperial veto, while a fact, is yet mainly a name.

  Thus the Governor’s functions are much more limited than are a Governor’s functions with us. And therefore more fatiguing. He is the apparent head of the State, he is the real head of Society. He represents culture, refinement, elevated sentiment, polite life, religion; and by his example he propagates these, and they spread and flourish and bear good fruit. He creates the fashion, and leads it. His ball is the ball of balls, and his countenance makes the horse-race thrive. He is usually a lord, and this is well; for his position compels him to lead an expensive life, and an English lord is generally well equipped for that.

  Another of Sydney’s social pleasures is the visit to the Admiralty House; which is nobly situated on high ground overlooking the water. The trim boats of the service convey the guests thither; and there, or on board the flag-ship, they have the duplicate of the hospitalities of Government House. The Admiral commanding a station in British waters is a magnate of the first degree, and he is sumptuously housed, as becomes the dignity of his office.

  Third in the list of special pleasures is the tour of the harbour in a fine steam pleasure-launch. Your richer friends own boats of this kind, and they will invite you, and the joys of the trip will make a long day seem short.

  And finally comes the shark-fishing. Sydney Harbour is populous with the finest breeds of man-eating sharks in the world. Some people make their living catching them; for the Government pays a cash bounty on them. The larger the shark the larger the bounty, and some of the sharks are twenty feet long. You not only get the bounty, but everything that is in the shark belongs to you. Sometimes the contents are quite valuable.

  The shark is the swiftest fish that swims. The speed of the fastest steamer afloat is poor compared to his. And he is a great gad-about, and roams far and wide in the oceans, and visits the shores of all of them, ultimately, in the course of his restless excursions. The people of Sydney ought to be afraid of the sharks, but for some reason they do not seem to be.

  On Saturdays the young men go out in their boats, and sometimes the water is fairly covered with the little sails. A boat upsets now and then, by accident, a result of tumultuous skylarking; sometimes the boys upset their boat for fun—such as it is with sharks visibly waiting around for just such an occurrence. The young fellows scramble aboard whole—sometimes—not always. Tragedies have happened more than once. While I was in Sydney it was reported that a boy fell out of a boat in the mouth of the Parramatta River and screamed for help and a boy jumped overboard from another boat to save him from the assembling sharks; but the sharks made swift work with the lives of both.

  The government pays a bounty for the shark; to get the bounty the fishermen bait the hook or the seine with agreeable mutton; the news spreads and the sharks come from all over the Pacific Ocean to get the free board. In time the shark culture will be one of the most successful things in the colony.

  ‘The Bonny Port of Sydney’

  Henry Lawson

  The lovely Port of Sydney


  Lies laughing to the sky,

  The bonny Port of Sydney,

  Where the ships of nations lie.

  You shall never see such beauty,

  Though you sail the wide world o’er,

  As the sunny Port of Sydney,

  As we see it from the Shore.

  The shades of night are falling

  On many ports of call,

  But the harbour lights of Sydney

  Are the grandest of them all;

  Such a city set in jewels

  Has ne’er been seen before

  As the harbour lights of Sydney

  As we see them from the Shore.

  Duty is the great business of a sea officer; all private considerations must give way to it, however painful it may be.

  Lord Nelson

  Star of the southern seas

  JIM HAYNES

  WHENEVER I VISIT LONDON I like to make a pilgrimage to the National Maritime Museum at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. There you can stand astride the Prime Meridian, longitude zero, from where all time on the planet is measured.

  I tend to spend most of my time at Greenwich looking at one object. It’s an object that has so much to do with Australia’s history that I wish we owned it. It’s a truly magical object to my mind. It circled the globe twice on the Resolution—with James Cook on his second exploration of the South Pacific, and on his third, when he didn’t make it back. It led the First Fleet to our shores, and it circumnavigated the world in the good ship HMS Sirius.

  It’s a clock, shaped like an enormous pocket watch. It’s thirteen inches across and weighs 1.5 kilograms. It’s called ‘K1’.

  The Sirius carried an unusual cargo when she led the First Fleet to Botany Bay. There were the usual provisions of food: bread, beer, salted beef and pork, peasemeal, oatmeal, cheese, biscuit, vinegar and water, but in far greater quantities than a normal escort ship. She also carried goods for setting up the new colony: carpenters’ tools and timber, hardware of all kinds, smithy material—even the surgeon’s piano, and Peruvian bark to treat malaria. The Sirius also carried an assortment of valuable astronomical instruments, along with a young astronomer, trained by Sir Nevill Maskelyne, the Astronomer Royal.

  Lieutenant William Dawes of the Royal Marines was an excellent astronomer who volunteered not only to serve with the First Fleet but also to set up an observatory in the new colony. Maskelyne supported the proposal and Dawes was attached to the contingent and entrusted with a number of very valuable instruments and telescopes, which were part of the Sirius cargo.

  But the Sirius carried a treasure even greater than that collection of scientific devices. She carried the Admiralty’s most prized possession— K1, the Kendall chronometer.

  The invention of the marine chronometer by John Harrison had solved the problem of calculating longitude. After a lifetime spent perfecting the device, Harrison was finally awarded part of the prize of £20,000 offered by the Board of Longitude. A copy of Harrison’s fourth and final model was made by Larcum Kendall. Known as K1, this device cost the princely sum of £450. It was carried by James Cook on his second and third voyages of discovery and referred to by him as ‘our never failing guide’.

  The very fact that K1 was on board the Sirius when she sailed for Botany Bay indicates just how important the expedition was to the Admiralty and the British government.

  Captain Arthur Phillip was instructed that K1 was to be wound every day at noon. When he transferred from the Sirius to the Supply, after leaving Cape Town, Phillip took K1 with him, much to the annoyance of John Hunter, who lamented its loss when he became captain of the Sirius. Unfortunately the chronometer was not wound regularly and it took the expertise of William Dawes to reset the device to Greenwich Mean Time.

  To calculate Greenwich Mean Time, Dawes used the incredibly complex ‘lunar distance’ method, from tables that Maskelyne had computed in 1767. The tables listed the angular distance of the moon from nearby stars for every three hours of the year in Greenwich time; by measuring the angles at night with a sextant, Greenwich time could thereby be calculated.

  K1 was the first item taken ashore to safety when HMS Sirius ran onto the reef at Sydney Bay, Norfolk Island on 19 March 1790, while attempting to land convicts and cargo in a gale. It was an ignominious and undeserved end for the gallant ship that founded our nation. What remains of her is still there today, under a rocky ledge not too far offshore, near the first line of breakers in what is now called Slaughter Bay.

  HMS Sirius began her career as the HMS Berwick. She was built between 1780 and 1781 at Rotherhithe shipyards, on the Thames River near Deptford dockyards, which had been established in the time of Henry VIII as the Royal Navy dockyards. Although the vessel was constructed privately by Christopher Watson & Co., it was purchased by the navy, while under construction, for £5856.

  The Berwick was built for the Baltic trade; her design was a cross between a frigate and a barque, perfect for carrying timber from Scandinavia to Britain and for general freight. If you looked at her bow and stern she appeared very like a warship with her full head, bowsprit, rails and figurehead of Lord Berwick at the bow, and her square rear, galleries and transom at the stern: plenty of places for guns.

  Between the bow and stern, however, she was more like a barque, or merchant ship. She was shorter than a warship or East Indiaman and wider, with flat floors, rounded bilges and a wide hold with vertical sides. The ships designed for the Baltic trade had to carry massive amounts of timber, mostly for the Royal Navy, and they were often commissioned or purchased by the navy as store-ships.

  Her deep holds, barquentine mid-section and shallow draft made the Berwick look not unlike the Endeavour, which began life as the trading barque Earl of Pembroke, although the Berwick/Sirius was considerably larger than Cook’s famous ship. The Endeavour was 370 tons, the Sirius 520.

  Just why the navy purchased the Berwick before completion is unknown, but it seems a fire damaged the vessel during construction and the navy, busy fighting the French, Spanish and Dutch fleets in the American War of Independence, decided to take charge of the final stages of construction, rather than waiting until the ship was completed and then paying for her conversion. The navy was desperate for store-ships and troopships, so she became the HMS Berwick and was never used as a merchant ship.

  Taken to the Deptford Dockyard in December 1781, the HMS Berwick was fitted out as an armed transport and store-ship. Like all Royal Navy vessels at the time, she was painted with an anti-corrosive composition and then sheathed with copper. She was launched on 14 January 1782 and commissioned seven days later.

  Armed with four eighteen-pound carronades (short-range, inaccurate but powerful cannons), 22 nine-pounders and six four-pounders, she was commanded by Lieutenant Edward-Baynton Prideaux, younger brother of a baronet, and she sailed in convoy to Nova Scotia in April 1782.

  Although she was not a warship, the HMS Berwick needed to be well armed to take supplies and troops into the war zones across the Atlantic, and to repel enemy ships and privateers if attacked. The Americans had no warships, but the combined French, Spanish and Dutch fleets comprised 150 ships of the line, against Britain’s 95.

  During the war, HMS Berwick made four trips across the Atlantic carrying troops and supplies, two to Nova Scotia and two to New York. After the Treaty of Paris ended the war with the US in 1782, she made a voyage to the West Indies, where war against the Dutch continued until 1784, and another voyage to the friendly Portuguese island of Madeira in early 1786. No-one knows what cargo she brought back for the naval stores on that voyage; perhaps it was a supply of the famous fortified Madeira wine for the officers’ mess.

  That was to be the last voyage of the HMS Berwick. She was refitted and modified in 1786 and some of her iron fittings were replaced with copper. It had been discovered that the copper sheathing, fitted to all British naval ships to prevent marine growth and allow them to stay longer at sea without maintenance, produced an electro
lytic reaction with the vessels’ iron bolts and fittings, causing them to rot. Most of the ships of the British Navy were leaking badly in the 1780s due to this unforeseen reaction. Unfortunately not all of the Berwick’s iron fittings were replaced—an oversight that would come back to haunt her during the most incredible voyage of her lifetime, when she circumnavigated the world to save a starving colony in 1789.

  She was still being refitted, at a cost of over £7000, when the following order came from the First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Howe:

  We direct you to ensure to cause His Majesty’s store-ship Berwick to be registered on the list as a sixth-rate by the name of the Sirius and established with the number of guns and complement of men mentioned . . .

  The store-ship and transport HMS Berwick was about to become a ship of the line, HMS Sirius.

  This had to happen. The Admiralty had very strict rules about expeditions and commanders. A commodore had to command a ‘ship of the line’; you couldn’t be a commodore in charge of a store-ship. However, most of her below-deck modifications made the Sirius even more of a store-ship than she was as the Berwick: storerooms were enlarged, two more were added, and shelves, lockers, and a sail room were created to make her fit for what was known as ‘foreign service’. In other words, her home port was no longer to be in Britain.

  Arthur Phillip had a second captain on board the Sirius, John Hunter. This meant that either Phillip had the status of a commodore, or the Admiralty needed the permission of the Privy Council for the vessel to carry two captains. This approval was granted, but it is a matter of conjecture as to whether Phillip was ever officially approved as Commodore.

  It was complicated. Technically Phillip was Commodore as he had another captain below him on a ship of the line. However, Lord Howe was reluctant to give Phillip official commodore status, as on arrival in New South Wales, Phillip was to become Governor of the new colony and be answerable to the Secretary of State, not the Admiralty. So Lord Howe granted him the power of a commodore, but refused him the right to fly a commodore’s pennant.