by David Vernon
He gets to our place at dusk. He’s wearing a T-shirt, shorts and thongs. That’s all he has with him. In the hurry to get his plane to Brisbane before the airport closed, they didn’t wait to load any luggage.
At about the same time, in Melbourne, David is seeing Val and the baby onto a plane. He is planning to follow them back to Brisbane in a couple of days. On the way to the airport they have seen billboards announcing “Brisbane floods” but they haven’t taken much notice. Newspapers like to blow things out of proportion. As David walks back through the airport, he notices a new billboard with a photograph of a football field. Only the tops of the goalposts are clear of the water, but he recognises it. It’s at the top of his parents’ street. He turns back and races for the booking desk but he’s too late. All remaining flights to Brisbane have been cancelled.
All through Saturday night the rain falls. I lie in bed and listen to its steady assault on our iron roof. Several times I think, “It can’t possibly get any heavier,” and then it does. Its intensity is frightening, but we are safe and dry. Our rented house is perched on high stumps, well up the side of one of Brisbane’s many steep ridges.
Hundreds of people aren’t so lucky. High tide in Moreton Bay is some time after midnight. Floodwaters streaming down from sodden catchments meet tidewater surging upstream, and there is nowhere for the River to go except sideways. No one has realised how far it will rise, or how fast. People who have moved their possessions — so they thought — to safety, upstairs or uphill to a neighbour’s, now see them engulfed. People who live out of sight of the River, who have scarcely given it a thought, wake to find themselves awash.
Sunday morning, we wake to a city in chaos. Even the radio partakes of the disorder.
The ABC studios are flooded but a few brave souls, marooned on the top floor, are keeping the station on air. They have snatched a couple of records from the water and they play these, over and over, between updates on the situation and messages from people who want to help. “Mrs Smith, of Hill Street, Toowong, has a drier if mothers need to dry babies’ nappies.” (We are not yet in the era of disposables.) “Ted Jones in Chelmer has a truck if anyone needs to move furniture.”
“It’s just an overgrown country town,” people are accustomed to say about Brisbane, and they mean it disparagingly. But there are virtues in a country town. People help one another. All through the night neighbours have helped neighbours, often while their own houses are going under. Strangers have appeared with trucks and vans, loaded them with household goods and disappeared into the night. When this is over the loads — most of them — will reappear as anonymously as they went.
There’s no flooding in our immediate area so there seems little we can do. Ken, Mike and I walk down to Indooroopilly Bridge. The banks here are high; they are still above water, but a foamy brown mass is surging under the bridge only a few feet beneath the roadway. Trees and debris whirl past, appearing and disappearing. It could be worse though. In 1893, the railway bridge here was washed away.
Later in the morning, Libby and Geoff ring to ask for help moving things in the office of a charity near the University. The next high tide is due this afternoon, and the peak is going to be even higher than last night’s. The authorities have got their act together now and are giving accurate predictions of how high the water will come. Geoffrey and Ken put their heads together over a contour map and decide we can keep papers out of the water by stacking them on chairs on top of desks. Mike works with us. If his stay in Brisbane is not quite the usual tourist experience, at least it will be memorable.
Behind the office, where the ground falls away steeply, brown water is swirling around the outback dunny. It’s a sobering thought that this must be happening all over Brisbane — but then the dilution factor is pretty large. Down the road is a hump of high ground covered in cars, all more or less submerged. Locals parked them there yesterday thinking they’d be safe. By the time they realised their mistake, there was no way to get them out.
The final peak — “twenty-two feet at the Port Office” — comes in the small hours of Tuesday morning. Tuesday is, theoretically, a work day but not many people make it to work. Ken rings the office of the solicitor handling our house sale. A voice at the other end says, “I don’t know where he is, but he’s probably making your house over to himself because his own has been washed away.” There’s no point ringing our bank; it’s in the city near the Port Office, well and truly under water.
By Wednesday the water is going down. The trains are running again. Mike manages to leave us and get to his friends. David finally gets a plane from Melbourne and, having missed all the excitement, is faced with the hard work and heartache of helping his parents clean their flooded house. On the following Saturday we drive over to see if we can help. They live just over the Indooroopilly Bridge but it takes us an hour to get there. A huge queue of cars is waiting to cross because everyone is heading over to help with the clean-up. There is no official organisation of volunteers; people just turn up. The next bridge upstream is closed. It was damaged when a gravel barge slammed into it at the height of the flood. It will be closed for months and, since our new house is also over the Bridge, we are going to get very used to queuing.
The scene in the flooded areas is horrible. The River has left a thick layer of black, evil-smelling mud over everything. A workmate of Libby’s finds something worse than mud: a drowned man caught in a tree. Even after everything has been washed down and, as far as possible, dried off, the smell still lingers in the houses. As does the stress.
Our new house has stayed high and, if not exactly dry, no damper than any other in Brisbane. There is a problem, though: the lady we are buying it from can’t move out. She’s due to move into a unit but the person who sold her the unit is moving into a house that has been flooded. Goodness knows how they cope with that. All we know is that eventually the logjam is shifted and the move takes place.
A few years later, the joint household having served its purpose, some of us began house-hunting again. “Nothing below flood level,” we told the real estate salesmen.
“Oh, you don’t need to worry about that,” they assured us, “not now they’re building the Wivenhoe Dam. There’ll never be another flood.”
The facts:
On the weekend of Australia Day, 1974, Brisbane experienced its worst flood since 1893. The Brisbane River overflowed and inundated large areas of the city and many suburbs. Approximately seven thousand homes were flooded, some totally destroyed, and several people were killed. Many people believed that the subsequent construction of the Wivenhoe Dam, upstream of Brisbane, would prevent future floods, but in January 2011 floodwaters rose to within a metre of the 1974 level and caused widespread damage. My experience of the flood was as described, although I have changed names.
Janeen Samuel lives in South-West Victoria and could be described as a vet with literary ambitions. She has had poems and short stories published in various magazines and anthologies, including two previous Stringybark Publishing anthologies — A Visit from the Duchess and The Seven Deadly Sins.
The Drift of the Jenny
— Michael Wilkinson
That was the story. Question the manner of telling
But be sure at least of ice and pain and silence.
Of Time? Well, there one can never be certain —
For you a thing to be measured, perhaps — for me, a searching,
And for seven alone on a frozen ship? I wonder.
However it was, is beyond our chance of knowing.
— from The Ship of Ice by Rosemary Dobson.
One of Australia’s best-known poets of the twentieth century, Sydney-born Rosemary Dobson, came to national attention when she won £50 in the Sydney Morning Herald poetry competition in 1947. Her poem, The Ship of Ice, tells the story of the meeting between the Captain and the crew of a whaling ship, the Hope, and a ghost ship, the Jenny, that had been trapped in the Antarctic many years before. Dobson based her
poem on an earlier article in the Sydney Morning Herald entitled “The Phantom Schooner,” (12 October 1946) written by one of Australia’s foremost folklorists, Bill Beatty. Where Beatty obtained the story is unknown, but Beatty’s version is a highly imaginative retelling of an article that appeared in the prestigious German geography journal, Globus in 1862.
The Globus article was anonymous and searches of Lloyds Register and contemporary reports show that the Schooner Jenny and the Whaler Hope did not warrant mentioning. A Google search on “Schooner Jenny” will find many hundreds of results and many of them will state with certainty that the Whaler Hope, while sailing through the Drake Passage came upon a ghastly visage — a ghost ship with ice-bound sails, a frozen crew and a captain who had written in his log “May 4, 1823. No food for 71 days. I am the only one left alive.” The captain’s quill was frozen in his hand. The provenance of this story was, until now, a mystery.
I am pleased to share with you extracts from a diary written by a relative of mine, who worked as a freelance correspondent in 1861, which recently came into my hands. These extracts solve a long-running nautical mystery.
12 June 1861
It was with trepidation that I entered The George, although I shouldn’t have worried. In Southwark nobody asked questions of strangers — strangers in this part of London are common. I was a little desperate, as I hadn’t sent a report to my publisher in weeks. I had no inspiration. Not that there wasn’t much ado here, but Globus didn’t want further news items about London poverty, the corruption of the land owners or discussion of Bazalgette’s new sewer system.
I bought an ale and surveyed the room. It was a typical London ale house — dark wooden benches, small tables and a fug of smoke hanging low over the scene. Men of all nationalities huddled together sharing yarns. Sharing yarns! Of course, that would give me inspiration. I spoke to the barman and explained my need — he pointed to a group of sailors sitting near the snug.
“The old, bearded man’s your best bet. He’s Captain Darkton of the whaler, Faith. He’s always got a yarn. I’ll make you known to him.”
Darkton was an interesting man and after I bought him several drinks, he was loquacious. His stories were entertaining but none of them rang true. They, to me, sounded like the drinking stories of any sailor, in any bar, in any port, in any country. Globus was a serious journal and even though I was the correspondent for the news section, visions of sea monsters were only ever published about once every year; any more and my publisher thought it demeaned the journal.
On returning to my lodgings after too many ales with Captain Darkton I was accosted by my landlord, who reminded me that I was weeks in arrears. While it was late, I knew I had to write. Perhaps it was the beer or perhaps the laconic captain, but after weeks of drought, my pen finally flowed:
THE DRIFT OF THE JENNY, 1823-40
In September 1840, the whaler, Hope was heading for the spring whaling grounds in the Drake Passage, south of Cape Horn. For weeks she had battered her way back and forth without any sighting of the desired sperm whale (Pyseter macrocephalus). The weather had been typically foul and the crew was exhausted from the constant cold and wet. The rigging was both salt- and ice-encrusted and the men’s hands were torn and bleeding from the constant climbing and adjusting of the storm sails.
Captain Brighton was an experienced whaler and understood crews well. He knew that his crew would soon be spent and he would have to sail into higher latitudes to give them a break from the grinding work. He decided that by the first of the month he would head to Valparaisio and refit and hope that on the way he would be able to put out a few whale boats and return with some financial gain. However, before that time could come, the wind took a change for the worse and for three days blew continually from the nor’ west.
The seas were correspondingly huge and when the staysail blew out at first watch he decided to run before the wind. His crew was too exhausted to fit a new staysail in such conditions. On day three the wind dropped to the barest whisper, which was fortunate for only a few miles to the south, Captain Brighton could observe sea-ice and beyond that the icebergs delineating Palmer’s Land. Fearing the wind would blow up again and knowing that strong wind and sea-ice boded poorly for the Hope he dropped sail and with all hands alert, headed south east, praying that he would shortly be taken up by the southerly current that sweeps over the tip of Palmer’s Land and take them safely past the castles of ice.
Soon a fog descended and in the blinding whiteness the crew stared desperately for icebergs that might loom out of the mist and destroy them. Fortune smiled on Hope, however, and she inched for three days and nights through the ice-littered sea, keeping the largest icebergs to the south with only the sea ice scraping the hull providing evidence of their passage. On the fourth day, just as the sun broke through the white fog, from the foremast the lookout cried, “Ship larboard!”
Captain Brighton put his telescope to his eye and saw to the south east the masts of a ship. A nearby iceberg obscured the hull. The masts were in bad condition. There were nothing but scraps of sails and the sheets were as thick with ice as a man’s thigh. Ordering the helmsman to change course, Brighton was able to bring the Hope within five fathoms of the mystery ship. It was clear that she had been abandoned.
Captain Brighton ordered the midshipman, Harris and the bosun, McClure, to swing out the ship’s boat. The men rowed to the mystery ship and boarded her. The deck was deep in ice and snow. Barely a board was showing and she lay low in the water. It could only be her cargo keeping her from a watery grave. A yell of fear from McClure, a big tough man, brought both Brighton and Harris slipping and sliding to his side. McClure had forced open the Captain’s cabin and inside was a man, his head, lying on the ship’s log, his face turned towards a cold, dark lamp. Captain Brighton stepped over to the man and touched his pale hand. It was frozen solid. The man’s eyes were wide open and stared sightless at the three men. In his right hand was a quill; on the table a frozen pot of ink and in the log was spidery writing:
January 17th, 1823. Today is the seventy-first day that we have been beset by ice. In spite of our efforts the fire went out yesterday. I have tried to relight it but to no avail. We are without lucifers, we are without fuel, everything is damp or wet or frozen and the flint won’t spark. Our food is gone. Four of the crew are dead. Our hope lies with God, who until now despite our pleas and cries, has forsaken us. I am so tired.. Mary says that God will see us through. She lies in bed and prays. I think we are no longer in God’s care and wish that I have the faith that Mary has. It is so cold. Boy died yesterday. We haven’t had the strength to bury him… Our own son. I can hear him now. Father come and get me he says. God has forsaken me but I will not forsake Boy. Mary and I will…
There the log ended.
Seventeen years had passed since the Captain had written those last words. Behind him in the bed, was his wife. She was in a perfect state of preservation with a smile upon her lips — the kind of smile one has when one meets a cherished child. Under the covers was a little boy. His hand tightly wrapped around his mother’s. In the fo’csle were four hammocks, all containing frozen sailors, their lips pulled back in grimaces at the ice that had taken them from this earth. A cursory search found the half-butchered remains of a dog in the galley but there was no other food anywhere.
Captain Brighton was keen to give the crew a Christian sea burial but his crew were superstitious and would allow no additional time on the ship. The ship was, according to the log (for the ice had long obscured the transom), the Jenny, and her home port was the Isle of Wight. Her last port of call had been Callao and she had a cargo of timber.
Captain Brighton took the logbook with him to return to the ship’s owners. As they headed north again and the Jenny receded into the distance, they prayed for it to be crushed by ice and thus consign the bodies of the brave seafarers to Neptune.
18 August 1861
Today I received payment from Globus for my article ab
out the Jenny and the proof to approve. My Landlord was satisfied that I had finally met my debts. I was pleased with the proof, although a little disappointed that my publisher had taken the liberty of removing my references to ‘Boy’. I had thought that the lad gave a particular poignancy to the story. In addition, he had removed my name from the article. Perhaps a wise move. Ah well, no doubt the story will disappear into the annals of myth and lore and, like the Jenny, will be heard of no more.
• • •
History is made of such stories. Thanks to my relative’s keen recording of events we finally know the truth about the genesis of the Jenny tale.
Clearly, Australia’s great poet, Rosemary Dobson, was prescient in her stanza:
That was the story.
Question the manner of telling …
The facts: The facts are those outlined in paragraphs one to three.
Michael Wilkinson is an Australian writer with a love of the bush. He has been writing since the age of twelve and now, three decades later is still writing. He writes both fiction and non-fiction. He has been published in the Stringybark Stories anthologies: The Heat Wave of ’76, The Road Home, Between the Sheets, Tainted Innocence, The Seven Deadly Sins, Behind the Wattles, Hitler Did It, Fight or Flight and Valentine’s Day.
Ted Trounson’s Kid