by Rob Mundle
When Ticonderoga sailed from Liverpool on 4 August 1852, there were 795 migrants on board, the majority being Highland Scots. Commanded by Thomas H. Boyle, the ship’s crew comprised forty-eight men, including Dr J.C. Sanger, the surgeon superintendent, and his assistant Dr James Veitch.
Within days of departure, it was apparent that the health of all on board was being compromised by the cramped conditions. Second-class passengers were complaining that there was barely room for one person in cabins intended to accommodate four people. It was so bad for some that they chose to sleep elsewhere on boxes and bags of produce, instead of having to endure the stifling proximity of other passengers in their tiny sleeping quarters.
But it was the design of the ship’s interior that was the root of the problem: each time the decks were washed in a bid to maintain some level of hygiene, there was not sufficient circulation of air to dry out the accommodation areas. Water would constantly drip through the gaps in the planking, so that the atmosphere remained moist and damp: the perfect breeding ground for disease.
Two weeks into the voyage, there were signs that typhus – with its debilitating symptoms of fever, red rashes, diarrhoea and ultimately delirium bordering on insanity – was taking hold. Unbeknown to the medical world at the time, the disease was spread by lice.
Within a month, it was approaching epidemic proportions among the almost 800 passengers on board Ticonderoga. One passenger later described how ten of the deceased were bundled together in a fabric shroud and buried at sea as one.
With so many falling ill, the ship’s medicos – both of whom succumbed to the disease at some stage – were quickly running out of the necessary medical supplies. However, Captain Boyle pressed on regardless.
After ninety horrible days at sea, Ticonderoga was finally in sight of Port Phillip. A crewman went to the mainmast and hoisted to the masthead the yellow flag signifying that there was a serious medical emergency on board. By then, 100 passengers and crew – men, women and children – had contracted typhus and died; another 300 were still suffering from it, which meant that more than half of all on board had been infected by the disease.
Once inside Port Phillip Bay, Captain Boyle turned his ship to the east and anchored off Point Nepean, which he deemed to be a safe anchorage and suitably isolated for quarantine requirements. He immediately sent a boat ashore so crew members could mark out a not-to-be-entered quarantine area by setting up yellow flags on stakes and painting white marks on trees. He also had makeshift tents erected using some of the ship’s spars and sails.
The moment news of Ticonderoga’s plight reached Melbourne, the colonial government organised for doctors, medical supplies and food to be rushed to the area by boat. Two privately owned homes at Point Nepean were also requisitioned and placed under government control until the crisis was over. Despite these efforts, another eighty-two passengers died onshore.
Subsequently, a report prepared for the Immigration Board in Melbourne relating to conditions aboard Ticonderoga stated:
The ship, especially the lower part, was in a most filthy state, and did not appear to have been cleaned for weeks, the stench was overpowering, the lockers so thoughtlessly provided for the Immigrants’ use were full of dirt, mouldy bread, and suet full of maggots.
Another report, prepared by the Port Health Officer, Dr Hunt, confirmed that the mortality had been occasioned by the crowded state of the ship’s decks and want of proper ventilation, particularly through the lower deck. A report in the Melbourne Argus on 5 November 1852 declared: ‘this case clearly exhibits the cruelty and ill-judged policy of crowding such a number of people on board a single ship, no matter her size, for a lengthened voyage’.
Around this same time, passengers on two other ships sailing from England to Melbourne were also ravaged by typhus. When the news of Ticonderoga’s fate and the loss of life on the other ships reached England, the Colonial Land and Emigration Commission announced that it would no longer use twin-deck vessels for its voyages to Australia.
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As is evident above, whether it was fire, ice or fever that claimed so many vessels, at least their destruction could be put down to a tangible cause. But in the era when the clippers ruled the seas, there were many occasions when only the unfathomable hand of fate could account for a ship’s mysterious disappearance, or the miraculous rescue of her passengers and crew in the face of seemingly certain death.
CHAPTER 7
Miracles and Misadventure
Strange disappearances and extraordinary rescues
It is safe to say that through misadventure, or the force majeure that comes when the weather is in its foulest mood, thousands of passengers and crew disappeared without trace during the period of mass migration to the Antipodes in the mid- to late nineteenth century.
To peruse historic documents detailing ships lost sailing to or from Australia during the days of the clippers can seem like reading an abridged horror story. All too often the references make it clear that the ship simply vanished: ‘not seen again’, ‘did not arrive’, ‘lost without trace’ or ‘believed to have foundered off Cape Horn’.
The disappearance of Blervie Castle – a wooden ship of 616 tons, built in 1857 for Duncan Dunbar – fell into this category. She sailed from London in late 1859, bound for Adelaide with fifty-seven passengers and crew aboard. Her first port of call was to be Plymouth, just 300 nautical miles south of London, but she didn’t arrive. It wasn’t until wreckage, and some personal possessions belonging to passengers, washed up on the coast of France some time later that it became apparent the ship had foundered somewhere in the English Channel.
Then there was Ariel, a 197-foot, 853-ton clipper ship that had achieved international fame in the 1860s for her remarkably fast passages when carrying tea between China and England. On 31 January 1872, she set out from London bound for Sydney with a load of cargo but never reached her destination. The only clue to her fate was the discovery in August 1872 of a wooden lifeboat on King Island that featured a brass mounting marked with the letter ‘A’ in gothic script.
There were two theories as to what happened: she either struck an iceberg and sank, or foundered when pooped by a marauding and monstrous wave while running down her easting, having rounded the Cape of Good Hope. The latter possibility seems more likely bearing in mind what Captain Keay wrote of his experiences in the southern seas when in command of Ariel:
Running east, about 42° S latitude, carrying main topgallant sail, gale and sea quarterly with a turbulent confused swell she began to sit down aft and the sea, curling over both quarters, filled the decks to the rails [the top of the bulwarks]. I quickly took in the main topgallant and all sail off the mizzen, and she rose kindly to her work like one relieved of a load.
He went on to elaborate the challenges he faced as captain when sailing a clipper through the night in a bitterly cold gale in which he and his men were soaked to the skin:
. . . the gale burst forth from the south. I called all hands and we struggled for fully two hours to furl all [sails] except fore and mizzen topsails, but had to let the foresail hang in the gear . . . and call the men down from aloft. To see – as well as the dismal darkness and blinding seas and spray would allow us – how she went into and over the mountainous nor-west seas as we steered about N.N.W. was a caution. The log was hove after the men came down from aloft, and she was going 10 knots, with only her lower topsails at fore and main [masts], into a howling gale against that fearful sea.
I was secured near the helmsman, and he had a rope round him with scope enough for his arms. The binnacle light was washed out several times, but the splendid man at the wheel kept her going all right. He steered with the feel of the wind on his back and his neck and a little help [from a standby helmsman] now and then till we could see the compass again.
When the first green seas came along the deck, the hen coops, which, under the monkey poop close aft, were snug enough in most weathers, were in an instant all swept overb
oard; and the piteous, loud screams of the fowls was like a human cry in agony, tough hushed in a moment.
’Twas very eerie, I assure you, and never to be forgotten.
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The vanishing of Madagascar is a mystery that has led to great speculation for more than 150 years – almost as baffling, in fact, as the famous disappearance of Mary Celeste two decades later. Madagascar, a large Blackwaller launched in 1837 for the trade to India and China, set sail from Melbourne on 12 August 1853 bound for London, and was never heard of again.
When she reached Melbourne with a nearly full complement of migrants on board, fourteen of her sixty crew members had immediately jumped ship and headed for the goldfields. By the time she had been prepared for her return voyage – with 110 passengers and a cargo of wool, rice and more than 2 tons of gold, valued at £240,000 – only three of the absent crew had been replaced.
When Madagascar failed to arrive in London, speculation abounded relating to her fate. Some suggested that spontaneous combustion had set aflame the wool she was carrying in her cargo area below the lower deck, while others were sure she had hit an iceberg. The most controversial theory of all, however, is that she was seized by criminals disguised as legitimate travellers; after murdering all on board, they sailed to land, removed the cargo of gold then scuttled the ship.
Popular legend has it that this mutiny was connected with an extraordinary event that delayed Madagascar’s departure from Melbourne. The captain, Fortescue William Harris, had planned to leave two days earlier than when the ship eventually departed – but as he was preparing to sail, Victorian police went aboard and arrested one of the passengers, John Francis. They returned to the ship the following day to arrest another passenger, and a third man who was preparing to board. They were soon identified as Francis’s brother, George, and friend George Wilson.
These three men were wanted in connection with what became known as Australia’s first big gold heist: the McIvor Gold Escort Robbery. On 20 July 1853, a horse-drawn dray laden with gold from the McIvor diggings (modern Heathcote) was attacked by bushrangers. At the time, it was on a trip of about 80 miles along rough dirt roads from Heathcote to Kyneton then south to Melbourne. A report of the incident in the Goulburn Herald read:
The Private Gold Escort in charge of a sergeant and three constables left McIvor Diggings for Kyneton en route to Melbourne. About 20 miles from the diggings they encountered a log over the road. As the escort slowed, a volley erupted from nearby cover. The driver, Thomas Flookes, received a mortal wound. The police galloped off, three of them injured. The robbers seized 2223 ounces of gold and £700 in notes. The larger part was not recovered, nor were those responsible identified at the time.
Initially it was considered to be the perfect crime, one that would never be solved . . . until one of the perpetrators turned traitor.
Following their arrest aboard Madagascar, the Francis brothers and Wilson were to be transferred to a lockup in Melbourne, but during the journey from the docks a very aggressive George Francis broke free from the police on two occasions. Each time, he was rearrested, and eventually he was put into a cell at the police station. It appears that the police then negotiated an amnesty for him should he turn Queen’s evidence and provide all the proof needed to convict the others – an offer he readily accepted, even providing evidence against his brother John.
In a follow-up article, the Goulburn Herald informed its readers that George Francis ‘went with Chief Detective Officer Ashley, Sergeant Simcock and Detective Murray from Melbourne to McIvor to the Goulburn Diggings, looking for William Atkins, George Melville, Edward McEvoy, Robert Harding, George Shepherd, one named Billy, boarding at the Bush Inn, Joe Grey (alias Nutty) and George Elson (fighting man who had one tooth out)’.
Most of them were eventually found by the police, but George Francis gave them the slip. He was arrested again at Maiden’s Punt.
It appears that guilt overtook him at this time. While in police custody on the way back to Melbourne, he was allowed to ‘visit the water-closet’. Instead, he went around to the rear of the convenience, took out a razor he had somehow managed to obtain and cut his own throat from ear to ear.
Atkins and Melville, along with their respective wives, were also arrested in Melbourne aboard ships bound for England. They and their fellow felons were committed to trial. Atkins, Melville and Wilson were all sentenced to be hanged, which occurred on 3 October 1853. This event would change the laws relating to the entitlement of relatives to the bodies of executed felons. The Tasmanian Colonist newspaper reported:
The execution was not entirely successful, the hangman being compelled to draw the legs of Melville down with considerable force before life was extinct.
Until that time, relatives of executed felons could claim the body. Mrs. Melville claimed her husband’s cadaver and took it to an oyster shop in Bourke Street which she was evidently leasing. She placed the body on public display, enticing customers into the shop. Thereafter such bodies were, as a matter of policy, buried within the gaol wall.
In an ironic twist, by being arrested the Francis brothers and George Wilson avoided being aboard Madagascar when she disappeared to a fate unknown. George Francis and Wilson would end up dead, but John Francis and his wife were given free passage out of the colony, and went on to a better life elsewhere.
According to folklore, some of their fellow bushrangers were still aboard Madagascar when she departed, and could have been responsible for her fate.
In 2014 three researchers, two French and one Australian, claimed to have discovered the wreck of Madagascar on an island in French Polynesia, but while they presented evidence of a shipwreck more than a century old, it was deemed unproven that it was Madagascar.
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The clipper era also featured an ongoing litany of amazing survival stories, in which passengers and crew given up for dead after their ship failed to arrive at its destination were found alive through a miraculous series of events. One such miracle involved the 1005-ton, 179-foot-long clipper General Grant, which was built in Maine and launched in 1864.
On 4 May 1866, the ship sailed away from Hobson’s Bay near Melbourne bound for London, under the command of Captain William H. Loughlin, with sixty-three passengers and crew on her manifest, including about twenty children. Her cargo hold was filled to capacity with wool and hides, and there was also a considerable amount of gold on board, though no one would say how much.
Once out of Bass Strait her course was to the south-east so she would clear New Zealand’s South Island. From there it was an almost 4500-nautical-mile charge into the Roaring Forties and across the southern seas to Cape Horn.
A week into the voyage, the westerly wind began to fade and a dense fog closed in. For two days there was no opportunity to take a sextant sight to aid navigation, so the captain ordered that a lookout be kept from aloft.
At half past ten on the second foggy night, when the ship was barely making headway in very light winds, the lookout shouted that land was just visible off the port bow. The course was changed to starboard and the sails and yards trimmed to suit so the land would be cleared. But then there was a most alarming call: land was obvious off the starboard bow, between 3 and 4 miles away. A passenger, James Teer, later provided a narrative of what followed:
The wind was fast falling away, and in a few minutes it was dead calm, the ship was totally unmanageable. The captain did all in his power, with every flaw [gust] of wind from the flapping sails, but his attempts were useless. The yards were hauled in every possible direction that might enable the getting his ship off the shore, but all to no purpose, as the heavy S.W. swell was constantly setting her nearer and nearer the fatal rocks.
By 1am General Grant was at the mercy of the current and the thrust of the seas, drifting haplessly and helplessly just a few boat lengths from vertical cliffs about 400 feet high. Then came one mighty thump that sent earthquake-like shocks through the entire ship. Seconds later, an agony-laced
shout came from the man at the wheel: another impact had caused the rudder to turn so violently that he had been hurled to the deck and suffered broken ribs.
It was quickly realised that the backdrop to the drama was the uninviting western shoreline of Auckland Island, 250 nautical miles south-west of the southern tip of New Zealand’s South Island. But what wasn’t known, until the very last moment, was the existence of a cavernous opening in the cliff-face – an enormous cave towards which the ship was being washed.
It was as if the massive opening in the cliff-face were a gigantic monster that had its mouth wide open, waiting to catch and swallow its prey . . . and that was exactly what happened. The cave was so large – 250 feet deep and with an entrance higher than the mainmast and a downwards sloping roof – that the entire ship was swept into it by the relentless surge of the seas. It was a situation that almost defied belief.
The foremast was the first to strike the roof of the cave, and within seconds it came crashing onto the deck, along with huge pieces of rock, some of which smashed through the top of the forecastle. Seconds later, the main topgallant broke and also crashed to the deck, along with more large chunks of rock.