Monday, May 28, 2012

THE WARREN REGISTER OF COLONIAL TALL SHIPS


   THE WARREN REGISTER
                                                               OF
                          COLONIAL TALL SHIPS. 
 

Introduction;
Copyright Raymond J Warren 2012

Welcome to all researchers, historians and readers, this blog has been created for you so that you might more easily find that part of history that you seek. This Blog requires members and followers to support it's existence so please feel free to become a member and give this Blog the support it needs. 


This historic work is a unique compilation of the great sailing ships that sailed the world’s oceans from the 15th to the 20th century. It has taken some thirty years to complete and is only now in it's final edit stages.

Enriched by many wonderful tales from the period, it is unique in that it has combined files stored by Lloyds Register, newspaper articles, advertisements and personal diaries from throughout the colonies. Included are many enjoyable tales from those intrepid sea folk and pioneers, who traveled abroad in tall ships.

The Warren Register is centered on those vessels that played an important role in Australia and New Zealand.xs colonial history. Many tall ships are also listed, that were not so well known but never the less, transported people and stores to Australia and New Zealand.

The Register offers the family researcher a more comprehensive work that will is a source of information, not only for famous vessels, but also for the lesser known ships, that brought our ancestors to their new lands. Major focus has been placed upon shipping that had a role to play in the settlement of Australia and New Zealand. Albeit oceanic protector, coastal protector, convict ship, passenger liner or cargo carrier.

There has been no attempt to enter the domain of the professional historian in regard to specialized information on Naval battles or vessels, only data on those vessels that had a direct or in some cases, a little indirect influence on the colonies, have been recorded.

The Warren Register, covers the period beginning with the rise of British naval strength [from about 1500 AD] to the final grain carrier leaving Australia in 1949. The colonial period for Australian and New Zealand bound sailing ships, is of course dated from 1768, to about 1950.

Ships that assisted in the settlement of Australia and New Zealand, including shipboard tales and historic events, dominate the Register. American, African and French Pacific convict settlements or the history of how convicts established those areas, are not included in this colonial work.


Convict Register:
A full and concise work is included herewith, on the 80-year period between 1788 and 1868, for those vessels that were involved in the transportation of people and supplies to the new settlements. Included also, is a small number of convict lists for a selection of vessels that were used as transports.

A section covers the early Battle frigates and Coastal protectors that were important to the colonies and their citizens. These though, are only touched upon as an added enjoyment to the reader, for many wonderful books have been written on the old fighting ships and their heroic deeds.

The colonization of Africa, America, Australia and New Zealand by British stock, is
the result of the English ability to control the worlds oceans. Although other countries did organise their own colonies throughout the world, nothing compared to the empire that Great Britain created.

To many people, Australia stands out as, ‘The’ country that was settled by convicts, the fact is that without convicts; none of the world’s colonies [including America] would have been started. Africa and America, were the main areas for transportation of convicts before the East Coast of Australia was claimed by Captain Cook in 1768, the Americans later rebelled for economic reasons and formed their own nation.

Young men and women from all parts of Great Britain were sent to Australia, where they began new lives in a new country. Boys and girls as young as twelve years, were transported for petty crimes that ranged from the theft of a piece of bread, a handkerchief or stealing a shaving brush from a stable. There were of course, those who committed the worst possible crimes included among them but those who did murder usually ended their days upon the gallows.
.
Britain, needed a base in the Southern latitudes, so once Australia was seen as a military and naval base that would easily control the South Pacific, England was quick to establish ownership over the great south land, this was done just in advance of French explorers.

Britain’s loss of the American colonies was due purely the political problems of the time. She would not have lost their loyalty had the circumstances been different. The same problems almost arose in Australia during the time of the Eureka Stockade.

Whilst this work has not covered every passenger and cargo vessel that ever sailed upon the worlds oceans, It does try to include the more notable and as many of the not so notable ships as could be found. One should remember that many smaller vessels such as brigantines, schooners, snows and even cutters, were able to sail to Australia quite easily and many families settled for a little more comfort on a small vessel, than the crowded conditions aboard the larger sailing ships. Some Cape Horners have also been included perhaps because of their ability to sail through such powerful seas and also because many of these American ships were bought by the English for use in Australia building.

If perchance, the researcher is unable to find the vessel on which his forebears arrived, it is likely that they came by one of the smaller vessels that were not recorded. These vessels could be as small as a cutter or as large as a Brigantine. After the Suez Canal opened in 1869, steamers and auxiliaries were able to make the journey in much faster time. When steamships arrived upon the scene, the extremes of cold in the southern latitudes were avoided and sea voyaging improved.

Soon even small paddle steamers were making the voyage and as the wealth of the new nation began to trickle back to England, so the emigrant flow to the colonies, became a flood. Although the age of sail had been upstaged by steam and then oil. People still are and perhaps always will be attracted to that wonderful era, when only the thump of wave against hull, winds high in the rigging and the slap of canvas could be heard. Especially whilst it was only these wonderful tall ships, that sailed the worlds oceans.

It is hoped that the Warren Encyclopedic Register of Colonial Tall Ships will ultimately be seen as a very handy work for those who need to know.
May you all enjoy the histories contained herein.
Raymond J Warren.
Tall Ship Historian.




HOW TO USE THE REGISTER.
Using the Warren Register is a simple act to accomplish. Simply click on ‘Edit’ at the top of the page and click again on ‘Find’. This will bring up the ‘Find’ box perhaps at bottom left. Type in the name of the ship or subject required and in an instant you will be transported to your destination. You may find that your ship is mentioned more than once and in that case, keep going until your ship is written in capitals with the year of its construction alongside. If you are seeking a particular year of arrival for a convict ship, keep clicking on ‘Find Next’ until you arrive at the correct subject material.

                                 THE SILENT GREEN  
By Raymond J. Warren.

Foreword
My own experiences at sea, have come from perhaps today’s most rugged sea-going work, the humble fish trade. During the late 1960’s, I found my way to Western Australia and joined the Cray fishing [Lobster] fleet at the small coastal town of Geraldton on the central coast of that state. I have recorded my experiences and hope that those who have served aboard any Australian fishing vessel, will be able to find some brotherly sympathy for a would be fisherman and sailor.

Chapter 1 
From dust to spindrift. 
 Whilst still in my early twenties and working amid clouds of dust and flies in the West Australian bush, I decided that it had to be much better and cooler work aboard a fishing boat and so I headed for the deep blue briny to tackle life at sea. Having left my position as a Jackaroo on a central Western Australian sheep station, I arrived at the small town and fishing port of Geraldton, Western Australia at the beginning of the red Crayfish season of 1968.

Almost immediately I began searching for a position as deckhand on one of the local crayfish [lobster] boats. The passage of time has dispersed from memory the exact date I arrived in that quiet little town but it was at the beginning of the red [coastal] crayfish season while most of the cray boats were undergoing their usual clean up and repair work during the lull between seasons.

 It appears that the Crayfish change their color at different times of the year, perhaps due to shell growth or maybe it’s the color they choose for the coastal reef sojourn. At any rate, they're color was an already-cooked deep red and that is all to be said on that point. Months later, while taking off for deeper waters at the end of the red season, they change their shell color to a pinkish white and maybe the deeper waters have something to do with that. 

I had recently been employed on a desert sheep station and after the dust and flies of the Western Australian outback, I was certainly looking for something a little cooler and different to do. On my first day in town, I spent some hours marching along the waterfront past fishing vessels laden with what seemed to be wooden cages with pieces of railway line tied inside them. Ropes and floats were neatly bundled on top of each of these contraptions, so I assumed rightly, that these were what were used to capture hungry Crayfish.

 I had been born and raised in the mining town of Broken Hill, NSW and had little time or experience in, around or with the sea, except for the Christmas holidays. In those years, we spent an ideal two weeks splashing about at Adelaide [South Australia] beaches. Any boating was usually restricted to floating around in a rubber dinghy near the little river town of Menindee on the Darling River. This though, only happened on very rare occasions when our father decided to go fishing for Murray Cod.

I had always dreamed of going to sea as do most young lads who fancy watery excitement. Why, had I not spent my first walking years, strutting around in a Popeye the Sailor suit? I was ready to give a sea-going career a go, I was 23 years old and just crazy enough to think that a life at sea would be easy and much less skin destroying than the bush. Why, if the sun got too warm, you could just slide over the side of the boat and enjoy a leisurely swim for an hour or two and who cared if there were countless fathoms [and countless sharks] beneath your feet.

All round the little seaside town of Geraldton, with its rocky man-made-harbor wall, sounds of hammering and the intermittent flash of brilliant blue light that came from portable welders, gave one the feeling that the fishermen were gearing up for a heavy season of plenty.

After perhaps two hours asking and wandering among the many fishing boats, I eventually found myself directed toward a vessel that turned out to be a thirty six foot Catamaran. The vessel appeared to look very much like a pair of Dutch wooden shoes with wooden planks holding them together and it sat almost completely ashore whilst its owner pottered about the two hulls. 

I had never seen such a weird looking vessel [except while making little wooden rafts out of icy-pole sticks as a child]. After stepping over and around tools, boxes and buckets, I was able to broach the owner of this enterprise while he was dabbing red paint onto one of the two steel hulls of his very strange looking craft.

When I first arrived in Geraldton, I was told that it would be very hard to find work as a deckhand or for that matter, any work at all to do with the fishing industry. Each vessel had its regular crew and they did not like having to train new men during the coastal season. Time always seemed to be the problem, for work was hard and was done just as quickly as the sea and weather would allow.

Taking a very deep breath, I introduced myself to the big Australian [whom I was later to find was of very Irish extract] and told him that I had come in from the bush and although I did not know much about being a deckhand, I was strong and an extremely good worker. I told him that he would not regret hiring me, especially if, [as I had been told] he had a position available. 

The man looked me up and down as if I were somewhat mad, there seemed to be a kind of quizzical look in his eyes [his name was Kelly] and I could not quite make out what his eyes were saying or just what was going on in them. But then a flicker of a grin touched at the corners of his mouth, it was as if he had realized that a joke had been played on him. Suddenly, he turned away and after a moment with his back still toward me said, “Yeah, okay, your hired, be here tomorrow at 6am to help me get this boat ready”. He then strode away with a stray sand fly trailing like a dutiful sucker fish, behind him. 

Up early the following morning, I sat waiting at the beach where the Catamaran lay with its dual bows still perched on the sand like a cat awaiting its breakfast. I watched the sun rise  while I slowly counted my lucky stars at having found a job so quickly. Then finally, at about 6am, the skipper arrived and my anticipation was relieved..

Some months later I would realize why the job was so easily found, one thing I did notice about this man was that he was always very quiet when on land. He did not say much to me nor I to him, other than to ask the odd question as to where should I put this or where would I find that and he certainly spoke even less to other men involved in fishing..

Kelly had purchased some drums of foul smelling chemicals and was engaged in preparing some kind of mixture which when combined, had to be poured hurriedly into each hull. This seemed very strange to me, why was he trying to sink the damned thing before we even got it back in the water? 

After a few hours of making guesses at just what we were achieving, he suddenly burst out and told me that “These hulls are going to be unsinkable with this stuff inside them!” He then told me that the chemicals were hardening into a type of Polystyrene, the same type of material that the cray boats used for the bowling ball sized floats that were used to hold the ropes that were connected to the crayfish pots. 

This of course should have sent warning messages to me, why the hell was he worried about
making his boat unsinkable, why such cautious preparations to save from sinking his boat? Where would we be sailing that could or would cause such concern while pulling up cray pots from the deep?

After two more days of maintenance work that lasted from the early hours of the morning to late into the evening, the repairs and additions were gradually overcome and we were ready to go to sea. 

This was the moment I had been waiting for and the closer we came to leaving on our first day of fishing, the more excited I became. One thing I should have noted was that there was no sunshade on the Cat and any bushman will tell you that it is always best to have something around to keep the sun off.

Kelly [my skipper] had been a policeman in his younger years but he did not appear to have the proper authoritative strength required for that line of work, he hardly spoke to anyone at all. But he was a very good worker when it came to manual labor and it was not long before we were off to give the vessel a tryout. She had been given an engine overhaul on the twin Perkins diesels and she needed a good test run for the grueling workdays ahead.

We spent perhaps an hour getting clear of the little harbor and out onto a bowling green flat sea that made me feel like we were sailing on glass except for a slight nudge occasionally to left or right from a small rogue wave or two. This tended to give one the suggestion that the Catamaran was somewhat feminine in the way she wiggled her hips as she danced this way and that across the swell. 

Suddenly I realized why sailors have always referred to their vessels as “She”, this realization made me feel that I had suddenly become one with all those who had gone to sea before me. Oh what a chest full of pride I had, here was I, a desert nomad who had found his sea legs and without the slightest touch of sea sickness!

Heading South
The following morning, we set out with our many cray pots stacked high on the deck of our pot carrier which Kelly conveniently named “It”. If ‘It’ could have been a bit longer, "It" would have passed for a ‘Palais de Dans’ floor. The Catamaran was about 36 feet long with wood planking running the whole length of the vessel and “It” had what looked like a Podium behind which the skipper or helmsman stood to steer the vessel. 

This is where the wheel had been set, otherwise, the vessel was as flat as a pancake with no cover against the sun or weather. In front of the Podium, there was what  Kelly called "the Well” which was a 4 foot square area that housed the two Perkins Diesels. This pit was about 3 or 4 feet deep and was covered by a wooden hatch that kept sea spray off the engines but still allowed air to reach them.

The Podium was set aft, about ten feet from the stern and it was about 5 feet high. There was a rope railing round the vessel which was about 18 inches above the deck and this was all one could take hold of if one happened to get into nasty circumstances. At the rear of the well and below the deck, two outboard “legs” with propellers drove the vessel along.

Fishing Begins
We had been making our way down the coast for about two or three hours when he announced that we had arrived in our fishing area, withing minutes I spotted a line of floats off our starboard side and promptly let him know of their existence, to which he replied that I should not come up with damned nautical sayings until I had been at sea a while. 

He told me that the cray pots I could see were in fact ours and that they had been laid very early [about 1 am] that morning by the skipper of a large deep sea cray boat that had left Geraldton the night before. Kelly had done a deal with the Captain and had the pots dropped overboard where we would now commence our red crayfish season. I knew that this was not a legal exercise and that Kelly had far too many pots out but I suppose he felt that he had to compete.

Now it was my turn to learn how to lay pots and how to tie the half sheep heads securely inside them. Hopefully, this would attract and then lure the crayfish inside the pots to their doom. After baiting and pot laying had ended, I began to feel queasy, it had now been sixteen hours since I had been on land and my stomach decided that whatever was still inside should not be there. Suddenly I did not feel the proud sailor anymore and any fish following the Cat did not have to wait long for dinner. I was left with a somewhat weird feeling that continued for the rest of that day, right up until and long after we arrived back at Geraldton.

One of the more noticeable effects my first day at sea had on me, was the odd way my world seemed to be going up and down and from side to side. I could not understand why it continued on, without being still for a single moment, surely my brain knew we were back on land. Before going to bed, I took a nice hot shower thinking that would settle my motion sickness. But no, the shower cubicle seemed to have a rock and roll movement all of its own and I resigned myself to the fact that this must all be part of being a sailor.

The next day, we drove south in two vehicles so that we could leave his four-wheel drive near where we would moor the Catamaran a little south of the town of Greenough, about twenty miles from Geraldton.

After passing through Greenough, we turned in off the main road and headed toward the coast to a place the skipper called Flat Rocks. Here we left the four-wheel drive near a beach house owned by a friend of his and we drove back to Geraldton in my old 1948 Vauxhall, before retiring for an early night in preparation for the hard day to come.

At 5am next morning we headed back to Flat Rocks but this time in the Catamaran and we had loaded up with sacks of sheep heads that we had purchased the evening before from the local slaughter house. We were carrying the last of Kelly’s official allowance of pots and these I baited on the way down to Flat Rocks. I then stacked them ready for throwing overboard. There were about 30 or so pots ready on deck when we finally arrived so I felt that I was in for an easy time.

Sailing on the Catamaran had its pleasures. In fact when there was little to do, it became so enjoyable with the fresh sea breeze in my face and the smell of salt in the air, that soon all the hard work was forgotten, it was so easy then to be at peace with everything and everyone.

Flat Rocks Fishing
When we arrived at our site, I was shown how to retrieve a float with a grapple and how to run the rope around the winch until the pot was dragged up onto a wheelbarrow shaped contraption. The handles of this were pulled back and down and the pot slid aboard a metal plate where it could be emptied, re-baited or taken aboard ready to be transported to a new site.

Once the pot came aboard, it was vacated of whatever was inside, if the catch was good then it would be heaved over board for another try at them. Some of the most amusing scenes took place during this fast and furious work. 

This amusement happened mostly because the skipper wanted to keep the vessel moving. He also wanted the job done quickly so we could get the days catch back to the Cray Factory and in his case, to spend as little time at sea as possible.

That evening we left the Catamaran at her mooring just inside the two reefs that ran parallel to the shore and went home in the four-wheel drive. The trip from the mooring to the vehicle took the best part of an hour due to the fact that we had two full bags of crayfish to carry half a mile up through the sand hills to the car.

Chapter 2
Seeing Kelly in action

During the months ahead I would come to realize that the skipper had no real affinity with the sea and I am sure that it hated him just as much as he disliked being on, in or around the ocean. I also believe that he had only given up his career in the police force because of the lure of big money from the cray fishing industry. 

The Protagonists [ or ‘Kelly and the Octopus’] 
 One of the many very funny episodes that occurred during my new career happened one day while we were taking in our catch. I, for the first time ever, found a rather morbid looking, large brown octopus inside one of the pots. This ugly slimy denizen of the deep had a head about the size of a football, with tentacles at least two or more feet long. It kept slithering from one end of the cray pot to the other and the longer I took to catch it, the angrier the skipper became. Finally, in exasperation he bellowed at me to stand by the helm, while he would show me how to handle the situation.

Well now, he did just that, n’all, n’all. He reached in and took hold of that ugly thing and dragged it out of the pot and into what looked like a bad situation for the many-legged creature. The Skipper had, in his other hand, a very evil looking sheath knife.

Well that Octopus had only one thought and that was to get back into the deep blue briny and not to be severed from connection with its eight thrashing tentacles. Then, for some reason, it thought that the quickest way back to the ocean, was along the arm that held it. In seconds, the suckers on that slimy slippery thing were dragging its slimy body out of Kelly's grasp. Suddenly and to my great mirth, the eight arms were wrapped tightly around Kelly's head while the octopus had pressed itself hard up against Kelly's face while it surveyed the area for an escape route. 

Astaire and Kelly 
At that very moment, began one of the strangest dance routines one could ever see. First the knife clattered to the deck as the skipper reached up in horror with both hands, trying to tear the slippery despicable looking animal from his face. Then a slow beginning to an odd dance, somewhat like a Sailors Hornpipe, evolved to open the ledger on a jig that even professional hoofers would have been proud to do as Kelly's legs kept trying to maintain their footing on the cat until his staggers degraded into god knows what kind of movement.

Round and around they went in a stumbling sprawling version of a wild tribal dance, “Yagrh, Yagrhh, Yagrh, Yah, Yaaaah” he roared, while I tried with all my might to cut the engines down to slow while wiping away the enormous amount of tears rolling down my cheeks. My stomach ached so bad from laughing that even though I was doubled over I could not take my eyes off the incredible scene that was taking place on our promenade deck.

Here I was, witnessing one of the great love hate relationships of all time; Kelly and his Octopus whirled and flapped about in gay abandon like two lovers in a passionate embrace. The glugs and gurgles coming from somewhere within the tightly wound arms of the Octopus almost drove me into hysterics, to which of course, I could not allow sound effects. So all I could do was watch and cry with mirth as the two danced around and around, from one end of the boat to the other.

Finally after what seemed like long minutes, Kelly managed to rid himself of his dance partner, he did so not by pulling at it but by stopping his dance in exhaustion at which time the Octopus decided to beat a hasty retreat. After falling sloppily to the deck, the creature gave him one last glowering look from between the scuppers and then it appeared to bow slightly, before dropping joyfully over the side.

The skipper looked at me so red-faced and angry that I had to bite my lip quickly for he always found little humor in his own mistakes. He glowered and said, “I’ll hear nothing more of this” or words to that effect and returned to the helm. I guess there really was nothing that I could say but for the rest of that day at least and every so often, I would start chuckling and then struggle to suppress it in case the Skipper heard me. I am sure that no greater dance will I ever see no matter how long I live, than that which I will always call ‘Kelly’s Octopus Polka’.

Pottering about
No matter what occurred on a day to day basis, work went on as usual and long hours at sea passed by and each trip brought a new adventure. We would set our pots along one section of the coastal reefs or another and whenever we shifted, something would happen to make the trip interesting.

One morning during the coastal season, we arrived at Flat Rocks and began carting the usual five cray bags of sheep heads down to the beach. We would carry one each for about 100 metres and then return for the others, backward and forwards until we got them to the boat. Thankfully, most of the journey was down hill but it was very sandy, so much so, that the four wheel drive was unable to get over the first ridge of sand and therefore the only way we could get to and from the beach was to walk.

For perhaps two hours we toiled, carting the sheep heads down to the mooring. When we had completed this task one could easily say that a days work had already been done. But into the dinghy we jump with our several hundred pounds of sheep heads and off we did row. Merrily we went, with the Skipper sitting on the stern like Admiral Lord Nelson and directing me this way and that, as I rowed patiently out to the Cat some two hundred meters offshore.

The Skipper told me to swing out and around to the seaward side of the Cat. At this, I protested, we were very low in the water and the waves coming over the reef were about twelve to eighteen inches high. This left me a little concerned that we might be swamped. It was not that I felt that I was more knowledgeable of the sea than the Skipper, it was just plain commonsense. The sea was going to swamp us because we were running too low but the Skipper refused to see what I meant.

‘But no,’ Kelly said. ‘The gate is on the other side and it was easier to unload the bags there’. So instead of trying to manhandle them over the rope, it would be better, in his opinion, to try our luck against the little waves. So I did what I was told but no sooner were we in position at the gate, than sure enough, a two footer came bounding over our side and down we went like a stone.

Perhaps in afterthought I could have placed the dingy stern first against the side of the Catamaran thereby allowing the dingy to face the waves but this was the first time I had ever rowed a boat on anything more than a slightly choppy river.

The dingy tilted over on its side as she went under and all five bags of bait sank ten feet to the bottom along with our food and drinking water. The Skipper had grabbed hold of the Cat as we were going down. He hauled himself out of there without wetting his boots while I was left floundering about cursing silently under my breath. The skipper looked down at me with the churlish look one gets when he has realized his mistake but all he said was; “Well, go down for the bags then, hurry up!”

So down I went with the grapple and one at a time they were retrieved from the bottom. I went back down and brought up our water but the food was ruined and not at all edible. As I pulled myself from the water, I turned to help lift the dinghy up and empty her out. It was then that I saw the large amount of blood in the water. I blessed the fact that it was all from the sheep heads and not from me. Within minutes, two or three sharks were swimming around our Catamaran each of them seemed to be looking up at me, with what appeared to be disappointment in their glassy eyes.

Perhaps I am not the most experienced sailor in the world but commonsense should have prevailed in this matter and it was about now in my cray fishing career, that I began to go on the defensive. We were at sea when we heard that one of the very large crayfish boats had lost one of her deckhands overboard and by the time we were retrieving our catch, there was already an air-sea search taking place in the area where they thought he had gone overboard. He was declared missing at 4am but no one was sure and the vessel had been hurrying to get to her pot site and it was some hours before they noticed he was not on board. 

Chapter 3
Tightrope

Now I became somewhat concerned for my own well being, Kelly was not all that safe in his seamanship. I had not thought about death or dying until about this time but my concern turned to dread one morning as we were heading out to lay pots in an area well off-shore in about 35 fathoms of water. The Skipper seemed peeved about something as we came up on a line of pots and I yelled at him to steer away as we were heading straight at the float lines.

The Skipper paid no attention to my yells and just plowed straight into the first line, in fact he seemed to be aiming to cut as many ropes as he could when suddenly, we came to a halt with both engines shutting down. The big ex cop began marching up and down the deck in a rage and he looked at me and said,” What are you waiting for, over the side you go and see what fouled our props”. Well now, I just knew something was going to happen and I also knew damn well what had fouled our outboard legs, so I grabbed the big knife we had for cutting the heads off octopus and slid into the sea alongside the Cat. 

I went under the starboard hull and came up in the outboard legs chamber. I found both propellers had been wrapped very tightly with half-inch pot ropes, so tightly in fact, that they were extremely tough to cut.

Slowly, after about twenty minutes, with the Skipper persistently asking how it was coming, I eventually managed to free one of the legs from its bindings. The Skipper kept calling  intermittently, “have you finished yet”? After a while, I yelled back to him that that I had completed one side and that I was cutting into the second lot, when suddenly, right in front of my eyes, the freed prop began to rotate.

Slowly at first then faster it went and then my bottom half began being drawn upward toward the spinning metal dervish. I pushed away and downward with my arms using the leg that was still hog-tied, as a lever, while trying to keep my legs from being drawn in toward the propeller. I then commenced screaming at the top of my lungs for Kelly to turn the bloody engine off. My yells though, seemed to go unheeded. Closer and closer the devilish device came, soon I began to fear, first for my manhood and then for my life. I could see myself being completely castrated and gutted by this little metal monster, for I was slowly being dragged closer and closer. 

Finally my frantic yelling must have caught his ear for the engine stopped and his disembodied voice inquired as to what all the bellowing was about. It was at this moment that I decided to tell him about his real parentage while deep inside, my thoughts were of the fact that the red season end was coming and that I would begin looking for a new boat as soon as we took our break.

Chapter 4
The Silent Green
Time rolled on until one afternoon as we were heading back to our mooring in fairly bumpy seas; danger reared its head again. The wind had risen dramatically, increasing the swell which was running at about three to four feet on the incoming tide. This was a usual situation at that time of the afternoon on the West Coast of Australia. But this day there appeared to be a little more tension in the air, I could not define it but something was making me feel nervous.

Twin reefs about 100 feet apart, ran the length of the shoreline at Flat Rocks. If my memory serves me well, there was an opening at the northern end of the outer reef, through which we had to pass to run about 800 meters south to a gap in the inner reef. This then, allowed us to pass through to our mooring site. We were about a mile offshore when our troubles began. One of the engines lost its electrical power and we were forced to shut it down. We then had to continue in on one engine and this would make the going a little bit dicey as the seas were getting up. We would be unable to maintain normal steerage with only one prop operating, while trying to make it through the outer reef, it could be done but it would be a difficult operation.

Then, as we were approaching the gap, the skipper had to turn us beam on to the seas. He had misjudged the entrance due to the surf covering the reef and hiding the gap until we were very close. We came up about fifty metres short of the gap and the Skipper then elected to run alongside the reef until we could get through. We were about fifty yards off the rocks as we motored slowly along with both of us praying that we would be able to swing her in through the gap in the reef.

The good engine was now running hot and on his orders, I had to open the hatch and run water directly into her from the pump. I was crouched in that position when I heard a dull roaring sound. When I lifted my eyes, there was a wall of translucent green right there in front of me, then it was surrounding me, then no noise, just a peaceful silence. It was a serene sort of silence, which took hold of me and smothered out all sounds of wind and sea.

There was absolutely no feeling for the need of air; not even a wish for air came to mind, I just marveled at how peaceful it was inside that silent green envelope. There was no feeling of damp not even fear, just peace and quiet. How strange that my thoughts were not for survival or even to breathe. For what seemed an eternity, I seemed to float as if weightless in that pale green world, is this what a child in the womb might feel, was this the same sensation?

Perhaps the shock of seeing such a large wave towering over me had turned on my adrenaline. I still find it hard to understand why I felt no concern at all for my safety or the predicament I was now in, perhaps ignorance is bliss.

Suddenly, like thunder the noisiness of the real world returned. It came crashing in around me like the thunderous fury of an electrical storm. The Skipper had obviously seen it coming and though soaked, was still on his feet except now he was running up and down in the one place yelling “The anchor the anchor”. Kelly had also received a good ducking but had held onto the helm which was extremely solid and his only sufferance, was to look like a large half drowned cat. I was down in the engine well soaked and oily and trying to regain my feet so I could drag myself out of the flooded and very cramped well space.

We now had no engines and we were being driven relentlessly toward the reef, which was about 30-40 meters, distant, and it looked like we were in deep trouble. I looked at his pointing arm and drew myself up out of the well to stagger drunkenly toward the anchor, which I threw overboard while fervently hoping it might catch before we struck. Luckily, it did and we sat there some 20 meters from the reef wondering what would transpire next. 

For the first time, the Skipper showed some seamanship or rather mechanical sense that surprised even me. He sprang into the well and began working on the tired and wet little engine while I bailed the well out. The one working engine had seized so he changed the battery leads over to the powerless engine. After an hour or so of salty duckings and showers, we were able to get underway.  With no further trouble we made it through the entrance and once that was achieved, we were in waters that were much calmer and we made it safely back to the mooring. There we tiredly unloaded our catch of two well-soaked crayfish laden bags. It had grown dark while we were tying up at our mooring and by the time we got our catch back to the vehicle, it was almost ten o’clock at night, another hour to get home and this day would be well done with.  

Chapter 5
The End of Kelly and me 

I did not sail with my skipper Kelly for much longer, I had been told on many occasions that I was taking a chance with his seamanship but I always did like a challenge and frankly, I knew that I was no seaman either, I just went with the flow and tried to learn as I went. As I have previously stated, ignorance is bliss. I was surprised some weeks later when the very first boat I approached for the white cray season asked me for whom I had worked. When told, they hired me without the slightest hesitation, my new Skipper had only one question and this he asked in wonderment. “ You worked the whole season on that Catamaran? When I nodded, he only shook his head and smiled.

My memories of the many things that happened while aboard that intrepid Cat, have not dimmed, it is a part of my life that I shall not forget, as sole deckhand I had manhandled 165 cray pots each time we went out and only extremely bad weather stopped us being there. I had lugged up to five full cray bags [150 pound Potato sacks] a half mile up sand hills at the end of tiring days at sea. I received [if my memory is correct] $10 per bag for my effort. We had good days and we had bad days but the experiences that I had, have served to remind me of the joys of just being alive. 

Chapter 6
My final days with Crays 
My next vessel proved to be one of those special joys, the ‘Helen C’ carried three deckhands and the workload was so much less, I felt extremely lucky to be aboard. I was receiving the same amount per bag but the best we ever pulled in on the Catamaran was five bags [once or twice] and on my new vessel we were doing that almost every day. Sure there were quiet days but deckhands earned a very good wage if they got the right boat. Although I did miss the Catamaran and the quiet companionship of my Skipper, I had not too many feelings of danger and was much less tired at the end of a day aboard this new vessel, besides, the crew were all about my own age and we soon became friends and shipmates. The only time we had danger on board that vessel was when a pot rope from a pot going out wrapped round my foot and dragged me down, my shipmates were on that rope until the skipper slowed enough for me to be set free of the pot.

What happened to our Mr. Kelly? Well the last I heard of him, was about three years later. This was when I met a cray fisherman from Geraldton who was on holiday in Adelaide, to which place I had moved a year or so before. He told me that one of the boats had come across Kelly standing waist deep on a reef near the Abrolhos Islands, he was slapping the water while trying to keep a shark away. The Cat was bottom up and had been put that way by his sailing beam on again, to much heavier surf.

Apparently, they picked him up and he asked them to help him right the Cat which they attempted to do by partially sinking one of the hulls and then tying ropes to the other in the hope of pulling her over. One of the ropes [with a float attached] unwound itself and the float flew through the air like a guided missile and struck our Mr. Kelly right on the forehead knocking him senseless. Kelly was a tough man though and he was soon up and about trying to salvage his boat.

I have never tried to verify the truth to the above event but for the most part, I believe that this is something that would have quite probably eventuated. I myself hold Kelly fondly in my memory and often wonder if he too, had at the time, shared in the eerie feelings aroused by the silent green.
                                                             FIN

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

NAVAL VESSELS AND OTHER SHIPS THAT HELPED PAVE THE WAY

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  BATTLE FRIGATES THAT PAVED THE WAY TO             


                                        SETTLEMENT                                                                                                                                                              The change in ship design that led to the speedy clippers and powerful windjammers of the 19th century began some four hundred years earlier during the 15th century and this gave form to the wonderful vessels that took us to the end of the tall ship era. One wonders at the seamanship of those intrepid sailors of two or three thousand years ago and of their courage in facing the unknown. We can ponder what type of ship was used by the Phoenician seamen when the Pharaoh Necho of Egypt, sent these hardy explorers to circumnavigate Africa circa 700 bc, we also wonder if these vessels reached the shores of Indonesia and perhaps even Australia while following the spice trail. Evidence is slowly building up in support of the idea that the equatorial nations achieved a trading system long before we had imagined.

From the 12th century onward, only one or two masts were still being used in coastal sailing vessels but by the 15th century, three and four masts became the fashion, as larger ships were required to protect the trade routes.

The battles for Supremacy.
As ships ventured further from their own shores, they needed protection from prize takers and piracy. Warships were sent to establish trade and to protect the trading vessels, allowing trading ships to become larger and faster.
The warships also evolved quickly and were soon equipped with archers, javelin throwers and fighting men who fought from all parts of a ship; some were stationed at the top of each mast in a box known as the ‘Fighting Top’. It was from here that they threw heavy objects down into enemy vessels once they had pulled alongside. Grapples were used to hold a vessel in place while the fighting went on. Heavy stones and lumps of metal, then iron balls or blocks were hurled down into the bottom of the enemy boats by the marines in an effort to sink or badly damage the boat or its occupants. Defensive works were built, as the ships grew larger and the first item used in defence was the decking, this was used to protect the bottom of the boat. Protection for the men who did the fighting quickly followed and all types of breastwork were built onto the vessels. Miniature castles were erected at each end of a ship where archers and javelin throwers were stationed; this caused the builders to enlarge the hull design to make more room for the defenses.

James IV of Scotland.
In 1511, James the 4th of Scotland launched the ‘Great Michael’ which was a wood ship of approximately 1200 Tons. Her length was 200 ft and she was 36 ft in breadth. Her sides were protected with 5-ft thick timbers along her waterline in the form of a belt. She carried 300 seamen, 120 gunners and 1000 men at arms.
When James the fourth was killed in 1513, the ‘Great Michael’ was sold to the French. The building of this mighty ship is said to have taken all the timber left in Fifeshire.

Henry VIII of England.
Henry the 8th of England built his ship, ‘Grace a Dieu’ in 1514; she was a wood ship of 1000 Tons. The figurehead seems to have been of the Mother and Child. [This is based on a very hazy view of the ship's beak shown in her portrait]. She was nicknamed ‘Great Harry’ after King Henry and was the first British built four-mast ship to be launched in England. Her masts were named, Fore, Main, Mizzen and Bonaventure. Her fore and main masts were square rigged and her mizzen and bonaventure were rigged with lateen sails. She had topsails on all four masts with topgallant sails on the first three masts. She went for a refit in 1540 and at that time, she had her guns set in two tiers, which fired through ports cut into her side. She thereby became the forerunner of the battle frigates, which were to rule the seas until the late 19th century. [The ship, ‘Mary Rose’ may have been the first ship to have been given gunports but she did not stay afloat long enough to prove their worth] The ‘Grace a Dieu’ is shown in her portrait at some time between 1540 and 1553 before she was totally destroyed by fire at Woolwich .She had been a favorite ship of the King, as he used her to travel abroad on official business.

Defense and Attack.
Another invention which proved to be of benefit to seamen, the detachable top mast, Captain John Hawkins had the topmasts of his ship set into a cap which was supported by trestle trees which were set fore and aft of the mast to support the cross trees. This in turn supported the spread of the sails in the upper mast areas.


The‘Fighting Top’ was a square or rounded box in which men could stand and that was situated at the top of the main section of each mast. This was the area from which men could throw, fire or ‘put’ missiles onto or into enemy craft.


On a more personal level, the Poop deck got its name from the toilet facilities, which were built out from and around the stern usually below the level of the captain’s cabin. Seats with holes were set out from the hull and these too, evolved to offer more privacy as time went by.

Sails and gunnery;
At first, single sails were used on vessels up to and including the time of the Viking longships. Eventually, the need for faster ships gave rise to more sails on more masts. A second, third and then, a fourth mast were added to the ships of the 16th century. The early masts carried a single sail followed by topsail; royals and etc followed these in turn.

The Spritsail.
By the 17th century, the spritsail had been introduced to the area beneath the bowsprit and this enabled the Mizzenmast to be set further aft, then a small mast was added to the front end of the bowsprit and a topsail spritsail was rigged in place. Through trial and error, three masts came to be preferred and it remained so, with few exceptions until the 19th century.

During the 16th century, new and more powerful ships were built by British ship builders for the East India trade, most were well armed and although really merchantmen, would have been quite a handful for some of the secondary ships of the European naval countries. They were at times, called upon to help the British navy when pirate or other ships intruded into English waters or were harassing coastal towns or vessels.

These events regularly occurred in English waters and the frigate built ships came to resemble naval ships of the line. Soon, the armament lessened considerably as fewer ships challenged them. The outcome was a passenger ship that was painted and arranged to look like a man-o-war but really carried only one or two guns for protection and even these were phased out in a few short years.
Naval armament. The British navy had the honour of being the first to have Muzzle loading cannon aboard their ships. King Henry VII of England was the first Monarch to create a naval fleet and he armed them as well as could be done for the time.

Gunports were at first initiated in the waist section of the vessels but soon they were set along the full broadside [Henry VIII] giving rise to the true multigun warship. The Stern was then rounded so that even the quarters could be protected with cannon. As more armament was added to each vessel, so too, were each ship's defense increased in strength. Some naval battles had ships fighting for many hours, cannonball after cannonball slowly chipping away at the thick protective timbers while new forms of shot were fired at the rigging in the hope of the opponent being desailed or even dismasted.

The early type vessel went from an armament of five short barreled cannon, which operated only at very close range, with an iron cannonball… that weighed about 50 pounds. They also carried the smaller demicannon, which fired a 32-pound ball. Finally there was the ‘Culverin’ which had a long barrel and fired a smaller shot over a longer range though not anywhere like later armaments. The even smaller ‘Demiculverin’, the ‘Saker’, supported them in turn [which was a quarter culverin]. The Falcon gun [which was a half saker], Falconett and Robinett with each bird name, descending with the shot size until shot weighed as little as two or three ounces. These, were the ship destroyers and coastal protectors of the early 16th century Although the number of guns on each of the fighting ships could be as many as 180, most of these were only small weapons and did not operate from gun ports. By the 17th century, ships and their weapons had become more sophisticated. The sum total of 16th century knowledge came with the launching of the ‘Prince Royal’, which was built in 1610.

Then, during the 1630’s the first ever 100 gun Battle Frigate, ‘Sovereign Of the Seas’ arrived on the scene. Both the ‘Prince Royal’ and the ‘Sovereign of the Seas’, had broadside guns on each side of them and on all three decks. The ‘Sovereign of the Seas’ was considered ‘the most formidable fighting ship of her time’. In fact she was one of the largest vessels ever seen and it was said that six men could stand upright in her stern lantern. She weighed in at 1500 Tons and did away with the Bonaventure mizzen, which from that time was to disappear and she now carried the standard three masts. The three masts remained until the demise of sail in warships and acted as the standard rig for British warships

Gun decks too, were changing and the calibre of cannon with them, by the end of the century the larger men-o-war were carrying 32 pounder cannon on their upper decks and 42 pounders on the lowest deck. This was by no means the standard for all three deckers of the time, though it became more popular as time went by.


Rating a naval ship.
When James the first came to the English throne, he arranged his ships into four different ratings and by the middle of the 17th century, six ratings were the accepted idea. The number of guns were the determining factor with a 100 gun ship being a 1st rater and an 18 gun ship being classified a 6th rater. This, applied only to naval vessels, [ratings for frigates, passenger and cargo ships were rated under a different system]. Improvements came with guns being standardized on each deck, rather than having mixed gun sizes as with the ‘Sovereign of the Seas’.

In the 18th century, ships became known by the number of guns they were rated to carry, the great ship, HMS‘Victory’ was rated a 108 gun ship. The great naval battles that took place between the English and the major sea powers of Europe helped to maintain the widely improving naval systems and with the advent of true steam power, naval shipping continued on to the modern fighting ships of the 20th century. The ships shown below, are more an extract from a very long line of naval vessels than a precise list. I have also included some of the heroic deeds [which no historian can disregard] that these noble ships performed.

                                                   
TOPICAL TIPS.
Why Port and Starboard?
For the researcher who may need to know which end of a ship is which, the front of a vessel is known as the bow or for’ard end and the rear is known as the stern or aft [after] end.
The Port [or lee] side of a vessel got its name from exactly that, the Port or left hand side of the ship [which was the opposite to the steering side or starboard side]. Port side was also known as the Larboard [or loading] side. The starboard side got its name not from the stars but from the large manned ‘Steering board’ or rudder that was to the right hand or seaward side of a ship. The first stern rudder appears to have been British built about 1200 AD and was manned to suit the size of each ship.
                                                              ===========

                                               BATTLE FRIGATES
                                 The Naval Register



HMS ‘REVENGE’ Built c1577. Wood ship of 500 Tons. Length; approx. 165 ft. Breadth; 32 ft. Depth; approx. 21 ft. She was the flagship of Admiral Drake when his fleet defeated the massive Spanish Armada. She was designed and built by Phineas Pett and Matthew Baker and carried 34 guns and 22 demi-cannon, cannon-perriers, culverins and demi-culverins and twelve sakers. She also had small arms made up of Arquebuses and Hackbuts along with many archers with longbows and arrows. Her cannon fired 32 pound shot down to 9 pound shot. She carried 150 seamen and 24 gunners along with 76 soldiers. This vessel is perhaps the same vessel as the ‘Revenge’ of 1591 as it was only three years after the Armada had been harassed almost out of existence and Drakes flagship [‘Revenge’] was certainly not injured by the Spanish fleet. The fact that Sir Richard Grenville had command of the vessel in 1591, does not in any way, diminish the likelihood of her being the same vessel.

HMS ‘REVENGE’ Built 1577. Wood ship of 500 Tons. Length of keel: 92 ft. Breadth: 32 ft Depth: approximately 27 ft. [probably the same vessel that was Drakes Flagship during the Spanish Armada of 1588]. She was part of a fifteen vessel fleet in the year 1591, that while under the command of Admiral Lord Thomas Howard and Vice-Admiral, Sir Richard Grenville, was sent to intercept a treasure fleet returning from South America. The English had been suffering for sickness was rife among the crews. Many men were down with fever and dysentery and most of the ships had discharged their crews, onto a nearby island to let the men regain their health. It was at this moment that the Spanish fleet was sighted and there was a rush to get the men back aboard their ships.

The British were extremely surprised to find that a force of about 54 Spanish ships had been sent to escort the treasure fleet. On the evening of September 9th, 1591, the two fleets came together at Flores Island in the Azores group. The ships involved on the British side were, HMS ‘Defiance’ [Lord Howard] which was Admiral. HMS ‘Revenge’ [Sir Richard Grenville] Vice-Admiral, then the frigate HMS ‘Bonaventure’ [Captain Crosse] HMS ‘Lion’ [Captain George Fenner] HMS ‘Forsight’ [Captain M. Thomas Vavisour] HMS ‘Crane’ [Captain Duffield] and HMS ‘Raleigh’ a wood bark commanded by Captain Thin. The rest of the English fleet was made up of vessels too small to be of consequence.

The English ships had been taking on ballast when the Spaniards were first seen and it was with difficulty that most of the fleet got underway. The Spanish had two squadrons of ships and this made them a formidable opponent, even if the English had been underway with room to move.

It was soon realised though, that the English were at a great disadvantage, as they had ‘scarce time to weigh their anchors’. So close were the fleets that the escaping English ships sailed across the bows of the oncoming Spaniards. The ‘Revenge’ was found to be in so great a predicament that the officers entreated Sir Richard Grenville to cut his mainsail and cast about, hoping that this would placate a far superior foe. Of course, it was beneath the honour of Sir Richard Grenville to shirk a fight and he ordered his men to arms.

Grenville decided that the best way to fight the Spanish was to drive straight through the centre of the two Squadrons. He had two main reasons for this course of action, the first being that all enemy fire would be directed at the ‘Revenge’ giving the rest of the fleet time to escape. The second being due to the time it had taken to bring those of his men who were ashore, back to the ship. It could be seen that the ‘Revenge’ would have no hope of escape and that she would survive only if she struck her colours. Sir Richard Grenville took the foremost course in an English naval commander’s mind and decided on attack.

The first Spanish vessel to make contact with ‘Revenge’ was the ‘San Philip’ of the Seville squadron. This 1500-Ton ship took the air out of the sails of ‘Revenge’ and she could make no way nor even feel the helm. The ‘San Philip’ was a three decked ship, which carried 11 guns of different ordinance on each deck. She went in to board the ‘Revenge’ at the same time as the ‘Admiral of the Biscaynes’, commanded by Admiral Brittan Dona.

Three more Spanish ships then got alongside the ‘Revenge’ and the fighting intensified. The ‘San Philip’ took a broadside from ‘Revenge’ that shook the Spaniard. Then after she brought down the sails on the ‘Revenge’, the ‘San Philip’ made haste to get off the side of the English vessel. She had received heavy punishment and did not wish to risk more. The Spaniards then decided to continue the attack from all quarters giving ‘Revenge’ no respite.

The Spaniards had many soldiers aboard their ships. After spending much time trying to board the ‘Revenge’ unsuccessfully, they elected to use sniper fire to do as much damage as possible. Sir Richard was wounded while on deck and then was again wounded while his surgeon was attending to him and finally, he was shot in the head with what proved to be a mortal wound. The surgeon was also killed by gunfire at about 11 p.m. The battle raged on all around them and the ‘Revenge’ repulsed one Spanish Galleon after another. When one retired from her side, another took its place.

The battle had begun at three in the afternoon and slowly the ‘Revenge’ was being shot to pieces. Of her 100 fit men and 90 sick that were aboard when the fighting began, forty men of the ‘Revenge’ were dead and little remained of that ships superstructure. Her masts were gone and her sides were shot full of holes. An English brig, the ‘Pilgrim’ under Captain Jacob Whiddon, sat off nearby and watched the fighting until she also came under threat as the new day dawned. Captain Whiddon could scarce believe the extraordinary battle that was taking place but now it was time to run. The little English Brig was fast and she happily escaped the Spaniards, being able to report the events of the battle up until she had to leave.


It was estimated that ‘Revenge’ had received over 800 shot into her tough wooden hull, this did not include small arms fire and by the morning, she had run out of powder. Her supplies were all gone by this time and. Sir Richard Grenville had ordered his Master at arms to fire a shot through the bottom of ‘Revenge’ and sink her when she was done so that the Spaniards might not have any part of her as souvenir. 
 
She had endured 15 hours of continuous light and heavy bombardment and was still not put down while her gallant commander lay dreadfully wounded but still lucid enough to give some orders. Finally, a flag was struck to enable a truce to be negotiated. A few of the officers were sent aboard the Spanish ship, ‘Generale Don Alphonso Bassan’ to negotiate at the behest of the officers of the ‘Revenge’, who deemed that Sir Richard was too badly done to keep the fight going.

The Spaniards accepted the terms and the fighting ceased. They could only marvel at the carnage aboard the ‘Revenge’ and they could not believe that one ship could so gallantly attack so many of her enemy, especially all on her own and with such arrogance. The fight had caused the loss of over 2000 Spanish seamen and soldiers.

Two large Spanish warships, the ‘Admiral Of The Hulks’ and the ‘Ascension’ of Seville were both sunk alongside the ‘Revenge’. One other ship went down as it made it to the road of St Michael and another ran herself ashore so as not to sink, thereby saving her sailors. Sir Richard Grenville, who was born on June 15th 1542, died of his wounds a few days after the surrender. He was presumably buried at sea, on or about September 13th 1591. His ship and crew had enabled the English fleet, time to escape from a large and well-armed enemy. Theirs was a sacrifice that surprised even the most hardened fighters in the Spanish Navy.

PRINCE ROYAL’ Built 1610. Wood ship of approx. 1400 Tons. Length: approx. 230 ft. Breadth: 44 ft. Depth: approx. 22 ft. She was the largest ship of her time and was the first English three decked ship to be part of the Royal Navy. She carried 56 guns and was beautifully decorated and carried the Royal Plumes of the Prince of Wales, she was designed by Phineas Pett who also designed the ship ‘Sovereign of the Seas’ which was launched almost 30 years later. ‘Prince Royal’ is also said by some, to have been a two decked ship, but a painting by the Dutch marine artist, Henrik Cornelius Vroom shows her to be a three-deck ship with four masts.

HMS ‘SOVEREIGN OF THE SEAS’ also known as ‘Royal Sovereign’. Built 1637 for King Charles I. She was a wood ship of 1500 Tons. Length: approx. 232 ft. Breadth: 46.5 ft. Draught: 22.2 ft. She was used in the battles against the Dutch during the time in which that nation proclaimed itself ruler of the seas. This though, was during a period when England had its own civil wars, thus leaving the seas more or less open to any claimant. Phineas Pett and his son Peter designed this vessel for King Charles the 1st. Her keel was laid down in the presence of the king on the 16th of January 1636 at Woolwich. Gerard Christmas the master-carver ornamented her, from drawings done by Van Dyck and her figurehead, was of Edward the Peaceful astride a horse trampling seven conquered kings.



‘SAMSON’. Built c 1585. Wood ship owned by George Clifford, the third Earl of Cumberland. He was ordered by his Queen, ‘not to lay any Spanish vessel aboard her Royal ships lest they be consumed by fire. The Earl was annoyed at this and proceeded to hire ships for use against the rich Spanish galleons. He hired the ‘Tiger’ of 600 Tons and along with the ‘Golden Noble’ and a few smaller vessels, he set out to plunder a few of the ships coming from the East Indies. His first conquest was the Portuguese ship ’Santa Cruz’ and hearing from her captured crew that more of these rich East Indiamen were coming. Clifford was met by one of Sir Walter Raleigh’s ships, HMS ‘Roebuck’, which aided in the capture of the ‘Santa Cruz’. They conveyed the good news that more of Raleigh’s ships were arriving on the scene and that one of the Queens ships, ‘HMS ‘Forsight’ under Sir Robert Cross had also arrived.

Five days later, the ‘Madre de Dios came up and a battle began with one of Sir John Hawkins ships under Captain Thompson making the big royal Portuguese ship slow down until the other ships could get into position. The Queens ship with an over zealous Sir Robert Cross charged into the fray only to lose way by getting too near the Portuguese and the ‘Forsight’ was quickly lashed to the ‘Madre de Dios’ by her shrouds and the larger vessel sailed off with her alongside. It took a few hours before the English could come up to the two trussed ships and while one boarded the Portuguese on one side the ‘Tiger’ boarded through the ‘Foresight’ in the ensuing fight, the ‘Forsight’ managed to free herself.

The 'Madre de Dios’ was captured and it was one of the largest ships that the English had ever seen. Her Captain, Don Fernando de Mendoza was perhaps one very unlucky gentleman, he had been twice before captured by the Moors and held to ransom by their king. His ship was a rich prize and was of an unusual dimension, so much so that a Mr. Robert Murray who was a ‘Geometrical Observer’ was given the task of getting the exact size of the big ship.

The ‘Madre de Dios’ turned out to be 165 ft long, her breadth was 46 ft 10 inches and she drew 31 ft of water when laden and she carried a height of seven stories. One main orlop, three close decks, one Forecastle, a spar deck of two floors apiece. Her keel was 100 ft and her mainmast was 121ft. Her mainyard was 106 ft long and was so large that the English felt that she would be too unwieldy to work so they took her to Dartmouth for use as a Hulk. The events took place in 1592.

HMS ‘TRIUMPH’ Wood ship of app 900 Tons. Admiral Blake commanded her when the Dutch fleet was challenged near the Shetland Islands in 1652. The weather turned foul and the English watched as the Dutch fleet was decimated by gale force winds. Admiral Blake and the Dutch Admiral Van Tromp, were to have running battles up and down channel for some time until Blake finally got he upper hand with victories over the Dutch during the period 1652 through 1655. The great ship ‘Sovereign Of The Seas’, which was built by King Charles I of England, also fought during the action.


HMS ‘RESOLUTION’ Wood Ship that was laid down at Harwich. Sir George Ascue who was a member of Admiral Robert Blake’s fleet commanded her. They fought the Dutch over numerous petty items. Although the most likely reason for fighting the Dutch was that they, [the Dutch] felt that they were the true sea power and they had the Admirals to prove it, should England like a fight.


‘BONHOMME RICHARD’ Wood ship that was commanded by the American war of independence hero, Captain John Paul Jones. In an insignificant battle between two American and two English warships, the Americans pulled off a victory when Captain Jones left his sinking vessel and transferred to the British ship ‘Serapis’ which he was able to cause to surrender even though his own vessel was sinking. The losses were heavy, with the American flagship losing over 300 men killed and wounded with British losses thought to be similar. The American boarding parties won the fight. Although the Americans give this battle as one of the great naval battles of history, in reality, it was decided by, as usual, greater fire power which the Americans on this occasion possessed.

The ‘Bon Homme Richard’ was accompanied by the American Frigate ‘Alliance’ and three smaller French ships when they came into contact with a British merchant fleet led by the ‘Serapis’ and the ‘Countess of Scarborough’ both of which were smaller than the two 44 gun vessels commanded by the Americans.

Captain John Paul Jones [originally Captain John Paul] was a Scottish sea captain [born July 6th 1747 at Kirkbean, Kirkcudbrightshire, Scotland.] who had fallen foul of British justice when he murdered one of his crew in cold blood during an attempted mutiny. He changed his name to avoid detection and when the Americans opted for independence, he became a captain in the new American navy.

Although he fought for his adopted country, he did not remain there long as he seemed to prefer Europe as his home after 1787. He accepted a role, as Rear Admiral in the Russian Navy in 1788 and this period of his life was not one of his best. He returned to Paris in 1790 and died there in 1792. The Americans shipped his remains back to Annapolis, Md. over a century later and created a national shine for their hero. This vessel is included here due to its historic importance and in regard to its effect upon the British transportation policies. The American war of Independence gave rise to a much faster settlement of the great South land and its island neighbors. England could not afford to lose its supremacy on the high seas.

HMS ‘VICTORY’ Built 1765 at Chatham. Wood three-deck 108-gun ship of 2162 Tons. Length: 186 ft. Breadth: 44 ft Depth: approx. 29 ft. This ship was laid down in 1759, on the 23rd of July. She was given her name on the 28th of October 1760. She became the flagship of Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson during the battle of Trafalgar. Her launch was on the 7th of July 1765. In his victory at the well documented battle, Admiral Nelson received a mortal wound when he was shot by musket fire from the rigging of the French ship ‘Redoubtable’ which vessel Captain Hardy had selected from among the French fleet as the target of the ‘Victory’. Sea battles of this type sometimes lasted for hours as the vessels sat along side each other [on board] and proceeded to blast the timbers off their opponent. In their fight, four vessels actually sat aboard one another, ‘Victory’, ‘Redoubtable’, ‘Temeraire’ and an un-named French vessel that sat ‘on board’ the ‘Temeraire’.

The ‘Redoubtable’ only fired one salvo from her heavy or ‘great’ guns before closing the ports for fear of being boarded through them. Then the ‘Victory’ ran ‘on board’ the French ship and commenced her firing. The French ship ‘Bucentaure’ and the big Spanish ship, ‘Santissima Trinidad’ began their attack on the ‘Victory’ from the other side and the English flagship began to fire incessantly from both sides as she drummed shot into all three vessels.

The English ship ‘Temeraire’ [Captain Harvey] fell on board the ‘Redoubtable’ from the other side and in quick time, another French vessel had fallen on board the ‘Temeraire’ so that all four ships lay side by side and all facing the same way as they poured shot into one another. The gunnery master on the ‘Victory’ had to depress the charges in his guns on the middle and lower decks to avoid the possibility of shot hitting the ‘Temeraire’.


And so the battle raged, the Admiral’s secretary was having converse with Captain Hardy, when a cannonball, killed him [the secretary] instantly. He was one of the first to fall in the battle and shortly afterward, a party of marines who were gathered on the poop deck, were struck by a double-headed [chained] shot which cut down and killed eight of them in an instant.

To gain insight to what type of commander Admiral Nelson was, can be shown in his effort to have all his men act as one. He made them feel proud to be Englishmen fighting for their country. When having Baron Cuthbert Collingwood aboard the day before the battle at Trafalgar, Nelson was surprised to see that the captain of his second in command's ship was not with Collingwood. When he heard that Collingwood and Captain Rotherham were not on good terms, Nelson sent for the captain immediately and when he arrived he met Rotherham and took him to where Baron Collinwood was looking out over the French fleet. ‘Look, yonder at the enemy’ then he bade them, ‘now shake hands with an Englishman’.

Admiral Nelson did not like to put snipers in the rigging and neglected to do so at Trafalgar feeling that even though it might get a commander or two, it would not decide the battle. It did cost him his life though. Had he also placed snipers they would have been able to keep the enemy pinned down and Nelson would not have been shot from above. The bullet that struck him hit his shoulder epaulet and drove down into his back breaking his spine and dropping him onto his face. Even though this injury should have been enough, he still gave orders for some minutes being held up by three of his men.

Nelson was shot at approximately 1.20pm on the 31st of October 1805. A young man, [Midshipman Pollard] who had seen the Frenchman who fired the fatal shot went after the sniper and managed to bring him down at 1.30pm. For this service, he was rewarded with a silver watch given by Lady Emma Hamilton and Captain Thomas Masterman Hardy. The watch is presently held [among other relics of the battle] by the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, England.

The ‘Victory’ was taken back to England and repaired after the battle was won. Many years after the epic battle, a cannon ball was taken out of her timbers. The ball having been found buried deep from the force of the shot. She was brought out on special occasions to be paraded as one would expect her to be, dressed in her finest war paint which included a black hull with yellow strakes [strips along the side where her gun ports were situated].

Her stern was painted mauve or violet according to the old artists who portrayed her after the battle. In the early days of naval warfare, it was considered the done thing to have your vessel as gaily painted as possible. The French and the Spanish were masters at doing just that. Soon, shipbuilding came to a peak, with more powerful cannon and stronger hulls that could stand the terrible battering from cannonballs for hours on end.

The ‘Victory’ has shown just how strongly built these vessels were and even 50 years after the great battle she was still capable of sailing. She is now part of English history forever and will remain in dock for as long as she can be kept into the future. For as the glory of the British Empire fades and each colonies rises to even greater futures, the ‘Victory’ will commemorate the strength of a nation that has become a mother and grandmother of nations.


USS ‘CONSTITUTION’ Built 1797. Wood ship of the United States Navy. Rated as a 44 gun Frigate, she displaced 2200 Tons. Length: 204 ft. Breadth: approx. 42ft. Depth: approx. 31 ft. She was nicknamed ‘Old Ironsides’ because of the thickness of her hull. This ship was perhaps the best known of all the vessels of the American colonies.


‘SHENANDOAH’ ex ‘Sea King’. Built c1860. British ship that was captured by the Confederate States of America during the civil war. She had her named changed to ‘Shenandoah’ and went on to cause much distress to Union shipping. She was sold to North African interests [To the Sultan of Zanzibar, for use as his royal yacht] and she disappears from that time onward.


HMS ‘WARRIOR’ Built 1860. Iron ship of 9500 Tons. Length: 420 ft [overall] 380 ft 2 inches [between perpendiculars] .She was the first iron hulled naval ship ever built and although she never had to go into battle, she was used very well as a deterrent. She had two telescopic funnels and for two thirds of her length, wrought iron plates protected her 4½ inches thick and these were bolted onto her 18-inch thick teak backing. She had a gunnery officer named Jacky Fisher whose wry comment on the new vessel was ‘it is not appreciated that this, the first armour clad ship of war, would cause a change in what has been the way for over a thousand years’. This ship ended her days as an oil pontoon in South Wales until rescued and made a museum ship.

HMS ‘BOUNTY’ Wood ship of 220 Tons. Length: 94 ft. Breadth: app 18 ft. Depth: app 14 ft. She carried a crew of 44 men and a botanist under the command of Captain Bligh. She left England on the 23rd of December 1787 from Spithead, Hampshire, bound for Tahiti. The voyage was not meant to be a hurried one, she had been sent to transport Breadfruit plants to the West Indies as a source of food supply.

On the 28th of April 1789, the crew under the master's mate, Fletcher Christian, decided to mutiny. It is thought that after many months enjoying the savories of Tahiti that the men did not wish to leave their women behind and so the mutiny took place. Captain Bligh had certainly allowed the men plenty of good time at Tahiti and every English sailor knew where his duty lay but mutiny the men did.

Bligh was put into a longboat with those who wished to remain with him. The mutineers took the ‘Bounty’ back to Tahiti, secured their women and a few helpers and left for the most distant and safest hideout they could find. This turned out to be Pitcairn Island in the Far Eastern Pacific Ocean. The ‘Bounty’ was unloaded and burned and the group of mutineers settled down to an idyllic lifestyle.

HMS ‘TERRIBLE’ Built c1845. Wood paddle steamer of the British navy. She was one of the first steam-driven naval ships of the British navy and helped signal the decline of the true naval sailing ship




                                                         ==============


            ISLAND AND COAST PROTECTORS OF
                         THE SOUTH PACIFIC.




HMS ‘SIRIUS’ Wood ship that was used as the flagship of the first convict fleet to Australia in 1788. [See First Fleet Register]


HMS ‘HYAENA’ Wood Frigate that was used as escort to the First Fleet while the eleven vessels were on the run down channel. She broke away and left the Fleet to its own devices once they had cleared land.


HMS ‘NELSON’ Built 1814. Wood battle frigate that was designated 120 guns and was a first rate ship of the line. She was larger and carried twelve more guns than HMS ‘Victory’, the flagship of the Admiral after whom the ‘Nelson’ was named. The ‘Nelson’ was transferred to the Victorian Navy about 1868 and was known as the HMVNS ‘Nelson’ She was then cut down from a three deck ship to a two-decker and she also had her gun numbers reduced. She spent many years in the role of coastal protector and even made visits to New Guinea and some of the South Pacific islands. She was finally broken up in Hobart, Tasmania in 1929.


HMS ‘BASILISK’ Wood Frigate of the English navy that was used as a coastal protector and as a deterrent to the Blackbirder trades. It was this naval vessel that found the drifting 25 Ton schooner ‘Peri’ that had been recruiting natives at Malaita in the Solomons when an uprising by the natives ended the lives of all the white crew while the vessel was at sea. This left the natives with one big problem; no one knew how to navigate the little vessel.

Although it was ‘Taboo’ to eat humans in many of the Solomon islands, the natives aboard the ‘Peri’ were forced through hunger to do just that, they began by killing the women and devouring them one by one until all of them were gone. They then proceeded to kill young and the weaker men while they drifted around the Pacific. After two months, they arrived off the coast of Queensland near Townsville at which point, HMS ‘Basilisk’ found them. Only thirteen of the original eighty persons, who were aboard when they left Malaita, were still alive when they were found on the 5th of February 1872.


HMS ‘CONFLICT’ Wood 120 Ton Sloop of the English navy that was used in keeping the Blackbirder trade under control. She was called to the scene of the murder of an Englishman named William Easterbrook at Tanna Island in 1877. Two other warships arrived, the HMS ‘Beagle’ and HMS ‘Renard’, they called on the Tannese to surrender the murderer which they accepted would happen on the following day. The killer was a man named Yumanga and he did not wish to be hanged for killing the white man so he decided to resist. The British sailors were sent to arrest him and after some running battles in which eight Tannese were killed; they were only able to return with the murderer's brother. As this man had also been on the scene when the murder took place, he was duly tried and hanged from the yard arm and as everyone was now satisfied, the little gunboats left the area. A footnote to this story is that Yumanga was soon after, recruited to Queensland and never did get tried for killing the trader.


HMS ‘FORTITUDE’ Wood ship of approx. 600 Tons. She brought settlers to Brisbane; Queensland in 1849.So close was the association of this ship with Brisbane that the suburb of Fortitude Valley was named after her.


HMS ‘ROYALIST’ Wood ship of the English navy that was used in the South Pacific during the late 1800’s. She was a very good looking and well-presented ship.


HMS’ CONWAY’ ex HMS ‘NILE’ Wood ship of the English navy. She paid a visit to Australian waters during the late 1800’s or early 1900’s.She was used extensively as a training ship.


‘S.S.’ALERT’ Steel twin screw Oiler of 941 Tons. Length; 196.7 ft, Breadth; 31.4 ft, Depth; 20.1 ft. Built by Swan, Hunter and Wigham Richardson at Newcastle Northumberland for the Post Master General. She was a clipper bowed ship that was well used during the Second World War. She was lost with all hands in 1945. Reg. England as a Cable Vessel. G.R.V.B Engine; 106 Nhp. [General government carrier and Cable layer]


HMS ‘FANTOME’ British warship that was transferred to the Australian squadron to serve in the South Pacific in the 1860’s. She was a 1070-Ton wood sloop and was paid off in the 1920’s in New Zealand. [Coastal Protector]


HMS ‘BEAGLE’ Wood brig of 242 Tons. Length: 100 ft. Breadth: approx. 25 ft. Depth: approx. 17 ft. She was famous for her voyage with Charles Darwin on which, she took him to the Galapagos Islands


HMS ‘BEAGLE’ Wood 120 Ton Sloop that was built between 1873 and 1877 along with four others, the ‘Alacrity’ the Conflict’, the ‘Renard’ and the ‘Sandfly’. They were built in Sydney for the Admiralty and were all fast little schooners with plenty of fire and manpower. They carried a Lieutenant, a Sub-lieutenant and thirty sailors. These vessel were designated the Anti-kidnapping squadron but even they were unable to maintain the law in the region for money speaks louder than any other language.


HMS ‘CORMORANT’ Wood ship of the British navy. Maser: Captain Bruce. She was ordered to Mandoliana Island in the Florida group where the 50 Ton Schooner HMS ‘Sandfly’ had lost her Lieutenant and three of her sailors to Head hunters. Lieutenant Bowers and four of his men had gone ashore to bathe and were enjoying themselves when they were surprised by a war party. Three of the bathers were killed in the first attack and both Bowers and a seaman escaped separately into the Jungle. The Lieutenant hid in the hollow trunk of a tree but was found dragged out and had his head taken.

Captain Bruce aimed to get the matter resolved quickly and sent out a proclamation: ‘In consequence of an English officer and boat crew being murdered by Florida men. The Queen of England declares war on all the tribes of the Florida’s, unless the actual murderers are given up within fourteen days’. The missionaries convinced the tribes to hand over four of the five guilty killers. Only the son of the chief, who had been out to get his first head to make his father proud, was not given up. The others were hung and the matter was considered resolved.


HMS ‘CURACAO’ Wood Steam Frigate that was commanded by Commodore Sir William Wiseman who was commander of the Australian Station in 1865. Captain Jenkin Jones later commanded her.


HMVS ‘CERBERUS’ Built 1870. Iron ship of 2107 Tons. Length: 225 ft. Breadth: 45 ft. Depth: 16 ft 6. Engines: Dual Maulsday, Son and Field horizontal 2 cylinder double action steam engines. Bore 43 inches. Boilers: Four. Twin screws 250 Nhp.
Armament;
Guns: 4 muzzle loading 10 inch Armstrong guns. Range: Four miles. Charge; 60 Lbs. Shot: 400 Lbs. Gun weight: 18 Tons.
Secondary Armament: 4 Nordenfeld 1-inch machine guns.
2 six pounder cannon.
She was to enjoy a 53-year career before being scuttled at Black Rock, Victoria on the 2nd of September 1926.


HMS ‘DART’ Wood ship that was sent to Malaita island in 1883, to take revenge on the villages of the east coast of Malaita for an attack on the vessel ‘Janet Stewart’. The reprisals were extremely severe and many villages were burned.


HMS ‘FALCON’ Wood ship that was sent to the New Hebrides during her period of service in the South Pacific. Master: Captain William Blake.


HMS ‘MIRANDA’ Wood ship that was sent to the South Pacific on a tour of duty. She went to Oba Island when a feud between the natives and resident traders broke out. The ‘Miranda’ sent a party of seamen overland to burn villages in retribution for the killing of nine men from the blackbirder, ‘May Queen’.


HMS ‘OPAL’ Wood vessel that was also involved as a protector of native interests and upholder of the peace in the South Pacific in 1884.


HMS ‘PEGASUS’ Wood ship of the British navy that went in a combined operation against the Malkulan islanders in 1905. The Malekulans decided to rid themselves of all white men and proceeded to kill and eat the whites that had made their home on Malekula. For this the British sent ‘Pegasus’ with he French ship ‘Meurthe’. The operation was a failure and the natives taunted the seamen who were unable to catch them.


HMS ‘RATTLESNAKE’ Wood vessel of app 200 Tons that was used in survey and exploration of the northern waters of Australia and New Guinea. Captain Owen Stanley who was at sea for over 20 years commanded her. He took ill on his last voyage in her in 1849 when her men brought Barbara Crawford Thompson aboard at Cape York. She had been trapped on Prince of Wales Island for almost five years.
Owen Stanley suffered a stroke at the beginning of the return journey to Sydney and this was sufficient to lay him low until ‘Rattlesnake’ was almost into Sydney Harbour. Captain Owen Stanley raised himself from his sick bed and managed to bring his ship through the heads. Stanley died at 8am on Wednesday the 13th of March 1850. He had been already informed of the death of his brother on the 13th of August 1849 and of the death of his father, the Reverend Sir John Thomas Stanley who died on the 6th of September 1849. All three died within months of each other.


HMS ‘RENARD’ Wood sloop of 120 Tons. She was built in Sydney for the British Navy. The Admiralty arranged for five small Schooners to be built so that they would have a fast and efficient fleet that could negotiate the reefs and islets much faster than the larger frigates. She carried a crew of 30.


HMS ‘SANDFLY’ Wood sloop of 120 Tons. She was one of the fleet of schooners that were built in Sydney for the Admiralty. She carried a crew of 30 men with a Lieutenant commanding.


HMS ‘SWINGER’ Wood ship that was used during the blackbirding years. She was active around New Guinea during the middle 1880’s


HMS ‘WOLVERINE’ Wood ship that was in the Australian Squadron 1873-76. Commodore John Wilson commanded her. She was sent to investigate the murder of John Renton and some of his crew from the ‘Mystery’. The capture of the killer brought reprisals from the local natives on Oba Island and many whites were killed before the feud was settled.


HMS ‘ALECTO’ Wood paddle steamer that was used in an experiment to decide the better between paddlewheel and screw operated steamers. The HMS ‘Rattler was fitted with screw propulsion and the two vessels were pitted against one another in an even duel over three races. The screw propulsion won the day easily but supporters of the paddlewheeler stated that the screw driven vessel would not be able to tow as well as the paddlewheeler. This prompted a new situation in which the two vessels were harnessed together and pulled away in opposite directions. No one vessel seemed to be winning until eventually the screw steamer again won the day by towing the paddlewheeler backward over a marked distance. [British naval vessel]


‘HMVNS ‘VICTORIA’ Wood ship that was brought into the Victorian [state] navy in 1873. She was previously of the British navy. [Coastal Protector]


HMS ‘SUPPLY’ Built c1760. Wood Brig or Snow of 170 Tons. Length; approx. 80 ft. Breadth; approx. 24 ft. Depth; approx. 14 ft. [see First Fleet Register]


HMS ‘TORTOISE’ Wood Frigate of approximately 700 Tons. [See Convict Ships Register]


HMS ‘COROMANDEL’ Wood Frigate of approximately 500 Tons. [See Convict Ships Register]


HMS ‘ANSON’ Wood Frigate of approximately 800 Tons. [See Convict Ships Register]


HMS ‘BUFFALO’ Wood Frigate of approximately 450 Tons. Master: John Hindmarsh. She was used in varied occupations during her life and was constructive in delivering the first settlers to South Australia. [See also; Convict Ships Register]


‘GAYUNDAH’ Built c1870. Iron gunboat of app 150 Tons. Length; app 120 ft. Breadth; app 18 ft. Depth; app 12 ft. Queensland's naval gunboat of the latter quarter of the 19th century. Sister ship to the ‘Paluma’. She was to see many changes in her time and was involved in a ruckus when her first captain decided that he did not like the Queensland Government telling him what to do. He threatened to blow the roof off Parliament house if he could not have his unlimited expenses to fund his high life and carousing. This was something that he must have felt befitted his rank. For a while, things were tense as he positioned the ‘Gayundah’ near Parliament house. After some hasty negotiations, the captain [in a frustrated mood] sailed ‘Gayundah’ to Sydney where he was promptly decommissioned and his ship returned to its primary duties in Queensland. [Coastal Protector]


SS ‘PALUMA’ Built c1875. Iron Gunboat and sistership to the ‘Gayundah’, she was almost lost during the 1893 flooding of the Brisbane River when she was washed ashore with several other vessels. [Coastal Protector]


‘SS ‘CHILDERS’ Built 1883. Steam driven torpedo boat that was rigged as a tall ship for its maiden voyage to Australia. She proved very hard to handle and deemed unsafe by the time she got to Gibraltar. She was towed from Gibraltar to Australia to begin her career. [Torpedo Boat]


HMAS ‘SYDNEY’1914. This ship fought a famous battle with the German raider ‘Emden’ in 1914. The Australian vessel forced the master of ‘Emden’ to run his ship ashore after terrible damage was sustained. The German marines that had been sent ashore to take the wireless station on the Cocos Islands made an incredible escape back to Germany when they commandeered the vessel ‘Ayesha’ from the Clunies-Ross family. They sailed to Sumatra where they waited for seven months before boarding a Chinese steamer on which vessel, [The ‘Choising’] they made it back to Germany.


‘EMDEN’ German raider that was really a well armed light cruiser that disguised itself as a merchant ship. She captured and sank many cargo vessels before biting off more than she could chew when she went in to battle with HMAS ‘Sydney’ in 1914.




HMAS ‘SYDNEY’ 1941. Battle cruiser that became involved in a fight with the German raider ‘Kormorant’ during the early days of World War Two. The German vessel was destroyed but the ‘Sydney’ sustained mortal wounds and sailed off into mystery. She disappeared with all hands after the fight and it is believed that a massive explosion in her magazines blew her to pieces. She has been re-discovered off the West Australian coast c2009.


‘KORMORANT’ German raider of the Second World War, like her sister, ‘Emden’, She went into battle with the Australian warship, HMAS ‘Sydney’. This was a new and faster HMAS ‘Sydney’ and the two vessels were evenly matched in armament. The Australian vessel was destroyed along with the ‘Kormorant’. Kormorant has also been discovered lying not far from her nemesis


                                                      ==============




                       AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND


Charting the Nations.
It is well known that European sailors had already visited Australia and New Zealand long before Captain James Cook arrived on the scene. Many maps had already been drawn showing the existence of a great southern continent.

When Captain Cook and other European ships made inroads toward finding the great continent, they did so, using maps that already gave them a very good idea of the size and scope of Australia. In fact the early mapmakers believed fervently, that the great southern continent rivaled Europe in size.

Cartographers had already mapped the Northern Hemisphere by the time Marco Polo began his voyages to Cathay via the Straits of Malachi. His descriptions of the southern islands seem to be more relevant to Indonesia than to anything further south for he talks of elephants and of people speaking a Persian language.

His description seemed to be based more on hearsay than on fact, as he did not venture southward from the China Seas. When Magellan visited the Pacific Ocean in 1520, he invariably opened the way for voyages of discovery by many of the seafaring nations of Europe; all were seeking financial reward and strategic prominence in the Southern Hemisphere.

Captain Alvaro de Mendana de Niera [Captain Mendana] of Spain discovered the Solomon islands in 1568 and then the Santa Cruz group almost thirty years later in 1595. His pilot for that voyage was a young man named Pedro Fernandez de Quiros and he discovered the New Hebrides in 1606. He thought that he had found the great southern continent that was much talked about at the time and he named that part of the New Hebrides, Austrialia del Espiritu Santo after his Austrian king who ruled Spain. This he believed, was the outer section of the Southland, in fact, part of the name stuck and Australia had its identity.

Quiros had Torres as his pilot for that voyage and a few months later, Torres himself discovered the straits above Australia. If the Spanish king had kept his seamen at work in the south, Australia surely would have been Spanish owned.

The Dutch too, were almost owners of the vast expanse of land that lay quietly waiting. They mapped the West Coast, part of the south coast and even some of western side of Cape York in the northeast. They discovered Tasmania and even touched on Staten Land, which eventually became New Zealand. For some reason, the Dutch did not want the southern continent and it was left to the British to secure and chart the last unknown part of the Australian coast, the east.

Only the French were to give England any competition in the race for the great Southland. The French captain Bougainville, arrived at the Great Barrier Reef in 1768 but did not try to get past it to the mainland which he probably saw and recognized as a continent.

The English Admiralty gave Captain James Cook a mission in 1768, he was told to arrange a voyage to the South Pacific to observe the transit of the planet Venus. They also gave him instructions to discover and chart the eastern side of the southern continent. Cook took with him, the Astronomer Green, Naturalist Solander and the Botanist Joseph Banks along with a ships complement of over ninety men.

From that point onward, the British held sway in the South Pacific and Cook, Matthew Flinders, George Bass and others made great discoveries. The settlement of the southern lands now became the only problem the British had to face and in only twenty years, the first settlement would be laid out at Sydney Cove.


                    LETTERS WRITTEN HOME BY THE OFFICERS. 
When the First Fleet arrived in Port Jackson, many of the Officers began recording their day by day trials in letter and diary form. Some of these officers even sketched the new settlement with the first buildings in position.

Captain Watkin Tench [Marines] wrote; “Our passage to Port Jackson from Botany Bay took but a few hours, which were spent far from unpleasantly. The evening was bright and the prospect before us such as might justify sanguine expectation. Having passed between the capes, which form its entrance, we found ourselves in a port superior, in extent and excellency, to all we had seen before. We continued to run up the harbour about four miles, in a westerly direction, enjoying the luxuriant prospect of its shores, covered with trees to the waters edge, among which many of the Indians were frequently seen. Till we arrived at a small snug cove on the southern side, on whose banks the plan of our operations was destined to commence.

The armed tender, ‘Supply’ had arrived the previous day and its crew were set to work clearing the ground for the erection of the tents that were to serve as temporary homes for the officers until more elaborate accommodation could be put in place.

Surgeon John White wrote: ‘A number of convicts from the different transports were landed to assist in clearing the ground for the encampment. His Excellency marked the outlines, as much as possible to prevent irregularity. And to keep the convicts from straggling, the provost Marshall, aided by the patrol, had orders to take into custody all convicts that should be found without the lines and to leave them in charge of the main or quarter guard.

 A convenient place for the cattle being found, the few that remained were landed. The frame and material for the governor’s house, constructed by Smith in St George’s Fields, were likewise sent on shore, and some preparations made for erecting it’.

This day, Captain Hunter and Lieutenant Bradley began to take a survey of the harbor....The laboratory and sick tents were erected and, I am sorry to say, were soon filled with patients afflicted with the true camp dysentery and the scurvy. More pitiable objects were perhaps never seen. Not a comfort or convenience could be got for them, besides the very few we had with us.

The sick have increased since our landing to such a degree, that a spot for a general hospital has been marked out and artificers already employed on it. A proper spot, contiguous to the hospital, has been chosen to raise such vegetables as can be produced at this season of the year; and where a permanent garden for the use of the hospital is to be established.’ Surgeon White. 

Into the head of the cove, on which our establishment is fixed, runs a small stream of fresh water, which serves to divide the adjacent country to a little distance, in the direction of north and south. On the eastern side of this rivulet, the Governor fixed his place of residence, with a large body of convicts encamped near him; and on the western side was disposed the remaining part of these people, near the marine encampment.”Captain Watkin Tench. 

On the point of the land which forms the west side of the cove…a small observatory has been raised under the direction of Lieutenant Dawes who was charged by the Board of Longitude with the care of observing the expected comet.Captain Arthur Phillip.                                                         
                        THE WAY TO SETTLEMENT 

Convict ships to Australia
In the years following the voyage of discovery by Captain James Cook, it was decided that a settlement should be arranged for the East Coast of New Holland [now Australia]. That convicts should first people the settlement, in the same way Britain had populated their colonies in America and South Africa.

It was also decided that upon Captain Cooks recommendation, the island known as Norfolk Island in the South Pacific, should also be populated and used for its timber and strategic position. 
Copyright R.J.Warren 2012