The Best Australian Sea Stories Page 8

Just over a week out, icebergs and pack ice were sighted, so Riou sent boat crews to gather fresh ice to water the animals. That same night, Christmas Eve 1789, fog descended and Guardian struck the ice. Riou and his crew and some of the convicts worked desperately pumping; next day an attempt was made to repair the damage by ‘fothering’, wrapping the hull in two sheets of sailcloth. Now the weather changed again and a dreadful storm came on, the sails were ripped away and more water flooded into the ship, which was slowly sinking, stern first.

  Riou jettisoned most of the cargo and livestock and announced that he would stay with his stricken ship, but all others were free to leave in the ship’s boats.

  Two hundred and sixty people left in the ship’s five boats. Fifteen of them were later picked up by a French merchant ship; the rest were never seen again.

  Riou and 62 others stayed on board and attempted to repair and steer the crippled vessel. Among them were the boatswain, carpenter, three superintendents of convicts, including Phillip Schaffer and his daughter, 30 sailors and 21 convicts.

  With 16 feet of water in the hold, Riou, whose hand had been crushed attempting to move cargo, had the gun-deck hatches sealed and caulked, making a watertight air-filled space between the top deck and the gun deck. He then set sail as best he could. The floating wreck, with the pumps going non-stop, gradually drifted back towards Cape Town. It took nine weeks.

  When the disabled wreck was sighted from Table Mountain, ships were sent out to help. Riou finally moored the ship off a beach near Cape Town and all on board were rescued. A storm drove the Guardian onto the beach several weeks later, and what was left of the ship was sold for salvage the following year.

  Those survivors who had originally been bound for New South Wales eventually arrived on other ships of the Second Fleet. On advice from Captain Riou, fourteen of the convicts received full pardons from Arthur Phillip. Riou himself later served with Nelson and was killed at the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801.

  While the Guardian was drifting back towards Cape Town in February 1790, Sirius and Supply were being prepared for sea once again. Phillip had decided he could not just sit and wait and hope, so he told Hunter to prepare to sail with 275 convicts and marines to Norfolk Island, where crops were reported to be growing well.

  Sirius and Supply sailed on 6 March.

  Hunter’s journal gives the usual clear, detailed report of the arrival and landings:

  On the 13th, at two o’clock in the morning, we made Norfolk Island . . . I well knew there could be no landing in Sydney-bay, where the settlement is fixed, on account of the high surf, which southerly winds occasion. I therefore bore away, and ran round to the north-east side of the island into a bay called Cascade-bay; where . . . it is possible to land; but that only on one spot, which is a rock that projects some distance into the sea, and has deep water to it: on that rock I landed, on the afternoon of the 13th, all the marines, and a considerable number of the convicts, but being set to the eastward in the night, I did not land the remainder until the 15th . . .

  The weather, however, worsened into a savage storm, which uprooted trees on the island and made landing stores impossible:

  We had put on shore from the Sirius and Supply 270 people, and had no opportunity of sending any stores with them, as we were now driven out of sight of the island.

  On the 19th, a slant wind from the south-east brought me again in with the island . . . finding we could fetch the windward part of the island, I steered in for Sydney-bay; and as we drew near, I observed the Supply lying to in the bay, and the signal upon the shore was flying, that long-boats, or any other boats might land, without any danger from the surf.

  Anxious to avail myself of this favourable signal, I steered in as far as I judged safe . . . hoisted out the boats, loaded them with provisions, and sent them in; but observing that the ship settled fast to leeward, we made sail, and immediately hauled on board the fore and main tacks . . .

  Landing cargo and passengers on Norfolk Island is a risky business. There is no safe anchorage, and the island’s two landing points are never both safe—and often neither is safe. Even today it is a skilled job using large landing boats to unload cargo from the island’s trading ships. The methods used today differ little from those used by Hunter in 1790. La Perouse sailed around the island and found it impossible to get ashore. It seemed a beautiful island, according to La Perouse, but he deemed it fit only for ‘angels and eagles’.

  Hunter immediately saw the danger the wind shift had placed him in. Supply was a more agile craft and was able to tack away, but HMS Sirius was ponderous by comparison and when her anchors failed to hold her away from the reef, Hunter cut the cables and attempted to tack away—only to be bedevilled by another wind shift, which saw the gallant ship hit the reef stern on.

  When the carpenter reported to me, that the water flowed fast into the hold; I ordered the masts to be cut away, which was immediately done. There was some chance, when the ship was lightened of this weight, that by the surges of the sea, which were very heavy, she might be thrown so far in up the reef, as to afford some prospect of saving the lives of those on board, if she should prove strong enough to bear the shocks she received from every sea.

  Hunter immediately set about anchoring the disabled ship in position and getting the stores ashore. A cable was set up from ship to shore, and this enabled cargo and men to be taken off using a rope pulley system, called a ‘traveller’. Over the next few days all the stores came ashore, except private belongings, which came last. Many of these were lost as the weather worsened and the ‘traveller’ dragged in the sea. As the ship lightened, the cable holding her became less effective; eventually it broke and she went broadside onto the reef and began to break up.

  Due to Hunter’s calmness and skilful handling of the situation, no lives had been lost.

  Now the Supply was the only means of leaving the island. The crew of the Sirius were stranded there, along with the marines, the convict residents and the newly arrived convicts. The danger in which this placed the non-convict population was apparent to all, especially John Hunter:

  We were now upon this little island 506 souls, upon half allowance of provisions; and that could, with our present numbers, last but a very short time . . .

  In fact the population of Norfolk Island now exceeded that of Port Jackson. It was the largest British colony in the Pacific. Hunter was worried about law and order and referred to the convicts as ‘some of the worst characters ever sent from Great-Britain’.

  He was relieved when Major Ross, who had accompanied him to take over from Lieutenant King as Governor on the island, declared martial law. ‘By this proclamation of the law martial,’ Hunter said, ‘much mischief I am of opinion was prevented.’

  Most of the Sirius crew remained on Norfolk Island until 1792, but Hunter returned to Port Jackson on the Supply and eventually went to London to face mandatory court martial for losing a ship of the line. He was exonerated and praised for his efforts to save the Sirius. He returned to New South Wales as Governor in 1795.

  The wreck of the Sirius shifted slightly down the reef towards the west in a storm some months later, and then disappeared below the breakers; what is left of her is still there today. One of her anchors was raised in 1906, taken to Sydney and set on a pedestal in Macquarie Place, off Bridge Street. Many artefacts from the wreck are in the museum on Norfolk Island.

  So the ship that led the First Fleet had saved the colony from starvation once, and finally met her end trying to do it a second time.

  The first object taken ashore from the wreck of the Sirius was the precious K1.

  Hunter had doubted the chronometer on the voyage around the world, but later relented and remarked how accurate it had been:

  . . . it appeared to be a degree or little more to the westward of the Truth, but we expected, upon our arrival at Port Jackson, to examine its error more particularly.

  He decided the main error was in his calculations, not the timepiece. He
did believe that extreme cold had affected it slightly, and that another small inaccuracy was caused by the violence of the storm they sailed through returning from Cape Town.

  A man ahead of his time in many ways, Hunter suggested the chronometer be given the type of suspended shock-resistant carriage that is now used for many delicate measuring instruments:

  . . . the violent agitation of the ship . . . was the cause of that change in the watch, and which I own I was not at all surprised at, but think it highly probable, as the watch lay in a box upon soft cushions, and that box screwed down to a place securely and firmly fixed for that purpose: I cannot help thinking but that so very valuable a piece of watch-work (for I do really think, from the experience I have had of it, that a superior piece of work was never made) would be better fixed upon a small horizontal table, made on purpose, and well secured; and under the box which contains the watch, a kind of spiral spring or worm, which, with every jerk or pitch of the ship, would yield a little with the weight of the watch, and thereby take off much of that shock which must in some degree affect its going.

  So, HMS Sirius ended her life on the reef at Norfolk Island.

  Whenever I visit the island (which I have seven times, to date), I make a few visits to Slaughter Bay and watch the waves wash over the site of the wreck. Then I think fondly about the gallant store-ship that became a rather cumbersome ship of the line and founded our nation.

  K1 found its way back to Britain and remains there, in the National Maritime Museum. Both Cook and Hunter developed a great affection for it, which is not surprising as it is a remarkable and beautiful thing. As Hunter said, ‘a superior piece of work was never made’.

  I only wish that our nation owned K1 and it was here in Australia— I’d visit it more often.

  ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  (excerpt)

  And now the Storm-blast came, and he

  Was tyrannous and strong:

  He struck with his o’ertaking wings,

  And chased us south along.

  With sloping masts and dipping prow,

  As who pursued with yell and blow

  Still treads the shadow of his foe,

  And forward bends his head,

  The ship drove fast, loud roar’d the blast,

  The southward aye we fled.

  And now there came both mist and snow,

  And it grew wondrous cold:

  And ice, mast-high, came floating by,

  As green as emerald.

  And through the drifts the snowy clifts

  Did send a dismal sheen:

  Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken—

  The ice was all between.

  What shall we tell you? Tales, marvellous tales

  Of ships and stars and isles where good men rest.

  James Elroy Flecker, ‘The Golden Journey to Samarkand’

  The ablest seaman in the French navy

  FROM THE WRITINGS OF ERNEST SCOTT

  JEAN-FRANCOIS DE GALAUP, COMTE de La Perouse, was born in 1741 at Albi, France. He entered the French navy at 15 and was wounded and captured in the battle with Admiral Hawke’s fleet off Belle-Isle in 1759. Repatriated from England and promoted lieutenant in April 1775 and captain in 1780, he fought the British with great success after France joined the American War and distinguished himself as a naval commander, capturing British ships and settlements but demonstrating his humanity and sense of honour by leaving the settlements enough arms and provisions to survive the oncoming winter, and allowing prisoners to return to Britain after promises that French prisoners would be released.

  In 1783 Louis XVI decided to send an expedition to the Pacific to complete Captain Cook’s unfinished work and explore the passages in the Bering Sea. La Perouse was selected to lead the expedition in La Boussole with L’Astrolabe under the command of Captain de Langle. He left in August 1785 for Brazil, rounded Cape Horn, refitted in Chile, then sailed to the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), Alaska, California, across the Pacific to Macao and Manila, and surveyed the coasts and territories north of Korea. He sailed up the Gulf of Tartary, put in to Kamchatka to replenish his supplies and sailed south to Samoa, where natives attacked a party from L’Astrolabe seeking water and killed de Langle and eleven others. His longboats were destroyed by the natives, but he had on board the frames of two new ones. A safe anchorage was required where they could be put together, so he sailed to Botany Bay, having read a description of the bay in Cook’s Voyages, and his ships were sighted off the coast on 24 January 1788 by the First Fleet.

  When, in 1787, the British government entrusted Captain Arthur Phillip with a commission to establish a colony at Botany Bay, New South Wales, they gave him explicit directions as to where he should locate the settlement. ‘According to the best information which we have obtained,’ his instructions read, ‘Botany Bay appears to be the most eligible situation upon the said coast for the first establishment, possessing a commodious harbour and other advantages which no part of the said coast hitherto discovered affords.’

  But Phillip was a trustworthy man who, in so serious a matter as the choice of a site for a town, did not follow blindly the commands of respectable elderly gentlemen thousands of miles away. It was his business to found a settlement successfully. To do that he must select the best site. After examining Botany Bay, he decided to take a trip up the coast and see if a better situation could not be found.

  On 21 January 1788, he entered Port Jackson with three boats, and found there ‘the finest harbour in the world, in which a thousand sail of the line may ride in the most perfect security’. He fixed upon a cove ‘which I honoured with the name of Sydney’.

  While he was making the search, the eleven vessels composing the First Fleet lay in Botany Bay. He returned on the evening of the 23rd, and immediately gave orders that the whole company should as soon as possible sail for Port Jackson.

  To the great astonishment of the Fleet, on the 24th, two strange ships made their appearance to the south of Solander Point. What could they be? Some guessed that they were English vessels with additional stores. Some supposed that they were Dutch. The more timid speculated on the possibility of attack, and there were according to Phillip, ‘temporary apprehensions, accompanied by a multiplicity of conjectures, many of them sufficiently ridiculous’.

  Phillip remembered hearing that the French had an expedition of discovery either in progress or contemplation. He was the first to form a right opinion about them, but, wishing to be certain, sent the Supply out of the bay to get a nearer view and hoist the British colours. Lieutenant Ball, in command of that brig, after reconnoitring, reported that the ships were certainly not English. They were either French, Spanish or Portuguese. He could distinctly see the white field of the flag they flew, ‘but they were at too great a distance to discover if there was anything else on it’.

  The flag, of course, showed the golden lilies of France on a white ground. This information satisfied Phillip, who was anxious to lose no time in getting his people ashore at Sydney Cove. He, therefore, determined to sail in the Supply on the 25th, to make preliminary arrangements, leaving Captain Hunter of the Sirius to convoy the Fleet round as soon as possible. The wind, just then, was blowing too strong for them to work out of the Bay.

  Meanwhile, La Perouse, with the Boussole and the Astrolabe, was meeting with heavy weather in his attempt to double Point Solander. The wind blew hard from that quarter, and his ships were too heavy sailers to force their passage against wind and current combined. The whole of the 24th was spent in full sight of Botany Bay, which they could not enter. But their hearts were cheered by the spectacle of the pennants and ensigns on the eleven British vessels, plainly seen at intervals within, and the prospect of meeting Europeans again made them impatient to fetch their anchorage.

  The Sirius was just about to sail when the French vessels entered the Bay at nine in the morning of 26 January, but Captain Hunter courteously sent over a lie
utenant and midshipman, with his compliments and offers of such assistance as it was in his power to give. ‘I despatched an officer,’ records La Perouse, ‘to return my thanks to Captain Hunter, who by this time had his anchor a-peak and his topsails hoisted, telling him that my wants were confined to wood and water, of which we could not fail in this Bay; and I was sensible that vessels intended to settle a colony at such a distance from Europe could not be of any assistance to navigators.’

  At Kamchatka the French had learned that the British were establishing a settlement in New South Wales; but La Perouse, when he arrived at Botany Bay, had no definite idea as to the progress they had made.

  Relations between the English and French were most pleasant. It does not appear that Phillip and La Perouse ever met, or that the latter ever saw the beginnings of Sydney. His ships certainly never entered Port Jackson.

  La Perouse expressed his gratification at the friendly relations established. He spoke of ‘frequent intercourse’ with the English, and said, ‘To the most polite attentions they have added every offer of service in their power; and it was not without regret that we saw them depart, almost immediately upon our arrival, for Port Jackson, fifteen miles to the northward of this place. Commodore Phillip had good reason to prefer that port, and he has left us sole masters of this bay.’

  On 1 February Phillip sent Lieutenant King, afterwards Governor of New South Wales (1800–6), in a cutter, in company with Lieutenant Dawes of the Marines, to visit La Perouse, ‘and to offer him whatever he might have occasion for’. King relates that they were ‘received with the greatest politeness and attention by Monsieur de La Perouse and his officers’. He accepted an invitation to remain during the day with the French, to dine with the Commodore, and to return to Port Jackson next morning.

  The complete history of the voyage was narrated to him and, after dinner on the Boussole, King was taken ashore, where he found the French ‘quite established, having thrown round their tents a stockade, guarded by two small guns’. This defence was needed to protect the frames of the two new longboats, which were being put together, from the natives; and also, it would appear, from a few escaped convicts, ‘whom he had dismissed with threats, giving them a day’s provision to carry them back to ye settlement’.