Dunbar Case

by Peter Corris

  The dark lettering on the monument had suffered some attrition at the edges but most of it had remained clear enough: WITHIN THIS TOMB WERE DEPOSITED BY DIRECTION OF THE GOVERNMENT OF NEW SOUTH WALES SUCH REMAINS AS COULD BE DISCOVERED OF THE PASSENGERS AND CREW WHO PERISHED IN THE SHIPS ‘DUNBAR’ AND ‘CATHERINE’. THE FORMER OF WHICH WAS DRIVEN ASHORE AND FOUNDERED WHEN APPROACHING THE ENTRANCE TO PORT JACKSON ON THE NIGHT OF THE 20TH OF AUGUST THE LATTER ON ENTERING THIS PORT ON THE MORNING OF THE 24TH OF OCTOBER.

  AD 1857 was engraved at the base of the tomb.

  A mass grave is a sad thing, it seems to me, but if Wakefield had entertained such feelings he’d got over them.

  ‘Quite a few of the victims, those they could identify, are buried here,’ he said, ‘and a couple in this spot, but you’d be hard put to read the headstones now, apart from that one.’

  He pointed to a well-preserved white headstone for John Steane, a naval officer who’d lost his life when the Dunbar went down.

  ‘A hundred and fifty-odd years is a long time,’ I said.

  Wakefield took care not to brush against the fence. ‘You’re thinking it’s a long time-lapse to be tracking something down.’

  I shrugged. ‘It’s what, five generations?’

  ‘Fewer in this case; four in fact. It’s a great-grandson of the survivor I’m interested in. That’s not a very long stretch as these things go. Some of the people claiming Aboriginal or convict ancestry have to push back a lot further than that.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘My sister found a convict ancestor for us way back. She was a London prostitute.’

  ‘Colourful,’ Wakefield said, moving away from the monument. ‘As you may or may not know, we academics get our postgraduate students to do some of our research. They earn their degrees and go on to bigger and better things and . . .’

  ‘You write your books. I’ve heard of it.’

  We moved between the headstones back to the path.

  ‘You object?’

  ‘No. I suppose it’s subject to abuse, but what isn’t?’

  ‘Just so. I was able to discover a reliable list of the passengers aboard the Dunbar. That took time and effort, let me tell you. There were many uncertainties. I set some students to tracing descendants of the victims—direct descendants. One of them found a record of a child born to one of the passengers in 1883. You see the implication of that date?’

  ‘Yeah, if it’s not a clerical error.’

  ‘It isn’t. You’re interested?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Fair enough. What I propose is this—I show you the fruits of my research so far, on an understanding of complete confidentiality, and the . . . direction in which it’s heading and, if you’re still interested, we come to an arrangement.’

  I thought he might be going to invite me back to the university but he didn’t. When I said I was in the car park behind the supermarket we stopped there and shook hands. He asked for my card and I gave it to him. He said he’d email me a document and that I should read it and get back to him with my thoughts. I thanked him for the lunch and watched him stride away—straight-backed, head up, one of the winners.

  Or was he? I decided I had a fair bit of checking to do on him, on the university and on the Dunbar before I took this assignment. It might amount to no more than a good, a very good, lunch.

  I went to my office in Pyrmont, paid a few bills, wrote the dates due on a couple of others and placed them where they’d stare at me. The office has no views to speak of, which is how I like it. My previous offices, in Darlinghurst and Newtown, carried a lot of memories, of clients good and bad, encounters pleasant and unpleasant, so that sometimes I could sit there reliving the experiences. A bad habit and it didn’t operate here where I hadn’t been very long and the memories were too recent to dwell upon.

  I Googled the Dunbar and was soon immersed in details of the ship and its unhappy fate. While the whole episode didn’t have the dimensions of the Titanic disaster, the ship was luxurious for its time, with some very smart cabins, and it had been custom-built as a fast ship to compete with American vessels in the era of the gold rushes. The crew was said to be first class and the captain, James Green, was a veteran of eight previous voyages to Sydney.

  Wakefield’s uncharitable account of Green’s navigational error was more or less accurate. The Dunbar slammed broadside into the cliffs between the Gap and the Macquarie Lighthouse, which wasn’t completely effective in bad weather, and her solid construction of British oak and Indian teak couldn’t save her.

  I read through the accounts of the inquiries and the exoneration of Green that attributed the tragedy to the extreme weather, and James Johnson’s testimony that seemed to have, understandably, a shell-shocked quality to it. Survivors carry a burden of guilt no matter how innocent they are, and Johnson was defensive and anxious to withdraw from the limelight. He later distinguished himself by brave actions in connection with another wrecked vessel and, interestingly, accounts of this carried a flavour of rehabilitation, as if the poor bugger had lived something down. I’d been there.

  I printed out a few pages and sat back from this pretty superficial research thinking how unfair history could be. I had to admit to being very interested, even intrigued. Wakefield’s claim to be able to track another survivor and another account of events was as compelling as a treasure island map.

  I didn’t learn much more about Wakefield from the web. He’d written a few articles in minor journals and a book for a small Californian publisher on Australians in the California gold rush. You could pick it up very cheap on Amazon.

  There was no email from Wakefield by late in the afternoon so I did my usual workout at the Redgum Gym in Leichhardt. I’d had a quadruple bypass a few years before and had to take various medications at various times under different conditions that annoyed me and made me feel fragile. I tended to work too hard in the gym to prove I wasn’t.

  Then I paid Megan and Ben a visit. Megan was working on her laptop while keeping an eye on Ben, who was watching a DVD of The Gruffalo. I gave him a gingerbread man and he gave me a thumbs-up without taking his eyes off the screen.

  ‘He particularly likes the scary bits,’ she said. ‘Should I be worried?’

  ‘I liked Mr Hyde better than Dr Jekyll,’ I said.

  ‘Look where it got you. But I have to say, Cliff, you’re more like yourself today than you have been lately.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘You’ve looked bored, now you look almost excited. Something on your plate? Tell me you’re not going undercover for ICAC.’

  I laughed and told her about Wakefield. She remembered the tomb in the cemetery and the wording ‘such remains as could be discovered . . .’ The mass grave had had the same effect on her as me. They’d had to do something similar in Christchurch after the earthquake and even more extensively in Japan after the earthquake and tsunami.

  Megan shut down the laptop. ‘Is he fair dinkum?’

  ‘I don’t know. He’s from Queensland, although you wouldn’t know it from his accent. He’s got these degrees from little US colleges and a few publications in not very impressive places. I don’t think you’d want Ben to go to the Independent University. It’s mostly online stuff and the thrust is for personal achievement and organisational management. Apparently there’s a lot to learn about the dynamics between those two.’

  ‘I bet. Still, it’s got you in and it’ll pay.’

  ‘It might. How’s Hank?’

  Hank Bachelor was Megan’s partner and Ben’s father. He’d given his genes to the boy. Hank stood 190 centimetres and when they measured Ben at two years of age and doubled the figure, a formula which is supposed to give you the fully grown height of a child, he clocked in at 195. Hank had worked for me in the past and now he was on his own, specialising in surveillance equipment.

  ‘He’s fine,’ Megan said. ‘Busy, but he misses the street stuff he used to do with you.’

  ‘There’s not
much of it around these days.’

  ‘You usually manage to find some. Take care of yourself, Cliff, you’re not . . .’

  ‘As young as I look. I know.’

  I kissed her and said goodbye to Ben, who gave me a double thumbs-up.

  The email was there when I got to my home computer in the morning. I couldn’t open the attachment. An hour later Wakefield rang.

  ‘You got my email?’

  ‘Yes, I can’t open the attachment.’

  ‘Of course not. You need a password.’

  ‘I tried Dunbar just for fun.’

  He chuckled. ‘The password is Twizell.’ He spelled the word. ‘Call me when you’ve read what I’ve written.’

  I opened the attachment. It had no heading and ran to twenty pages. Wakefield’s prose was functional rather than elegant:

  Research has revealed that William Dalgarno Twizell may have survived the wreck on the Dunbar. Twizell was born in South Shields, Durham, 17/8/1808. A master mariner, who had captained vessels in the British merchant marine for twenty years, he was a skilled navigator who had also worked as a pilot in various ports around the world as a break from his captaincy responsibilities. He was fit, single and had taken passage on the Dunbar to Australia, where he had been several times before, to take up the command of a coastal trading vessel. He had no family connections in Australia. His body was not discovered after the wreck.

  The document went on to say that a birth certificate had been discovered registering the birth of a Robert Dalgarno Twizell in Newcastle on 3 March 1883. The mother, Catharine Lucy Tanner, had registered the birth and the father’s name was given as William Dalgarno Twizell with the birth date of 17 August 1808; the birthplace was Durham, England. An entry on the certificate noted that the father was deceased.

  Wakefield, or his students, had traced Robert Twizell, who appeared to have been a man of some means, the owner of a couple of ships and himself an experienced mariner. Robert Twizell married late and fathered a son and a daughter. The son, born in 1925, also Robert, did not prosper. He had a spotty criminal record as a youth, joined the 2nd AIF in 1944, was invalided out in 1945 and fought a long battle with the authorities over his entitlement to a serviceman’s pension. The matter was unresolved when he died of lung cancer in 1988.

  I made some notes as I read, forgetting that I could print out the whole thing. Old habits die hard. Despite his claimed service disabilities—damage to hearing and eyesight and malaria contracted during his brief time in the catering corps in New Guinea—Twizell married and had three sons, all born close together in the early 1970s. One son, Robin, was drowned off Newcastle beach in 1980; another, Hunter, was killed in a car accident when driving drunk after his father’s funeral in 1988. The surviving son, John Dalgarno Twizell, was in gaol.

  3

  I rang the university when I’d finished reading and asked for Professor Wakefield in the History Department.

  ‘History? Oh, that’d be Human Studies, I suppose,’ the switchboard operator said. ‘I’ll put you through.’

  ‘Wakefield.’

  ‘This is Hardy.’

  ‘Good. Well?’

  ‘It’s compelling.’

  ‘I imagine you have questions.’

  ‘A few. No death certificate for William Twizell, I take it?’

  ‘No. He must have used another name.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘In your experience, why do people adopt other names?’

  ‘Because they have something to hide.’

  ‘Exactly. What you’ve read is just an outline. There’s a good deal more to tell you that I’m not prepared to commit to writing just at the moment. We should meet again and I’ll tell you more. Then we can get things on a business footing. I see you have an office in Pyrmont.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Not far from the Maritime Museum where the Dunbar exhibit is. I propose that we meet there.’

  ‘You’re assuming . . . ?’

  ‘I’m assuming that you want me to sign a contract, agree to your terms, pay you a retainer, and enlist your help on this fascinating project.’

  I didn’t like him or his manner but the curiosity bug had bitten me. I said that I’d hold off until he’d told me a bit more and I’d bring a contract with me.

  ‘That’s reasonable,’ he said.

  We agreed to meet at the Maritime Museum at 2pm.

  He tried for a light touch. ‘There’s no admission fee. You can’t claim it as an expense.’

  ‘I might decide to make the deal retrospective to the beginning of our meeting yesterday. Charge you for the time and research.’

  ‘Touché,’ he said.

  I remember when Darling Harbour was a derelict jumble of disused goods lines, sagging sheds and machinery rusted beyond recognition. They got to work in the late ’80s and transformed it into the people-friendly precinct it is now. It’s money-friendly too, of course. A flat white’ll set you back four bucks and what it costs to hire one of the display areas or conference set-ups I don’t like to think. But the layout, with the paved walkways, the water features and grassy bits, is tasteful and calming, a big plus in a modern city.

  I enjoyed the walk from Pyrmont and the feeling that, although the city was humming around me, I could access some tranquillity with a little exercise. The Maritime Museum was one of those modern light and airy structures that looked as if they could float away but was actually all solid concrete, glass and steel.

  Wakefield, in a grey suit more appropriate to the duller day, was standing outside the museum talking on his mobile phone. He raised a hand in greeting and I hung back until he’d finished. Some people are happy to carry on a mobile phone and a live conversation at the same time or to text while they’re talking to you. Not me.

  He slid the phone into his pocket and patted himself to make sure it hadn’t disturbed the line of the jacket.

  ‘Good afternoon, Cliff. I hope we’re on those terms now.’

  ‘Henry.’ We shook hands.

  ‘Fine structure, isn’t it?’ He gestured at the museum.

  ‘It looks right for what it is.’

  ‘True. Let’s go inside and I’ll show you what they’ve got on the ship.’

  We were given stick-on visitor tags and went up a series of ramps into the heart of the building.

  ‘It’s part of the Age of Sail section,’ Wakefield said. His tone was condescending. ‘Nicely done, I’d say.’

  He conducted me unerringly through a succession of rooms and passages with muted light and stopped in front of a large glass showcase. The exhibit contained a sizeable painting of the vessel in full sail and a collection of items brought up from the wreck—coins, buttons, bottles, a watch, rings.

  ‘The water’s turbulent at that spot,’ Wakefield said. ‘A great deal of the material would have been carried away immediately. The bottom is sandy and sand shifts. This is all the divers retrieved.’

  I leaned close to the glass. ‘It’s effective, I’d say. It’s modest, but I reckon it captures the sadness of the event.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  I took a good look at the painting. ‘It was a beautiful ship.’

  ‘Yes it was and it cost a lot to travel in the best cabins. There were some wealthy people aboard. That’s an important part of the story. Let’s get on with things.’

  We retraced our steps and walked to the nearest café. Wakefield asked to see my contract. He looked through it quickly and took out a silver pen and a chequebook.

  ‘Very professional,’ he said.

  ‘Hold on. You were going to fill me in some more before we signed up.’

  ‘I’ve never met anyone so reluctant to get his hands on serious money. Okay, to pick up from where we left off—a man with something to hide and wealthy people aboard the ship.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘One of the passengers was a man named Daniel Abrahams. A Jew, of course, he was born in America and had spen
t some time in South Africa. I can’t begin to tell you how difficult it has been to trace his story through various sources but the upshot is this—he found diamonds in South Africa about ten years before anyone else. He’d been hired to prospect for them by one of the companies that eventually established the huge diamond mines in that country, but he . . . broke faith with them. He failed to report his discovery, took a large cache of diamonds and fled to England.’

  ‘Bloody diamonds,’ I said.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘They’ve caused more trouble in the world than they’re worth.’

  ‘If you say so. The point is, Abrahams seems to have thought he was in danger in England and he took a ship to Australia.’

  I’d ordered coffee. Wakefield ignored it when it arrived and went on with his story.

  ‘Abrahams was aboard the Dunbar with a fortune in diamonds in his possession. He was in one of the premium cabins and Twizell was right there beside him. Both were single; they would have hobnobbed.’

  I drank some coffee. ‘I feel you’re stretching things a bit.’

  ‘Not so. Almost everything I’ve said is documented.’

  ‘Almost.’

  ‘Just listen. Twizell’s son owned three ships. How did he acquire them?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘From his father, who bought them on the proceeds of selling Daniel Abraham’s diamonds.’

  ‘A fifty-year-old man swam ashore when the waves were smashing the boat to bits?’

  ‘No. He left the ship at Bega when she offloaded a sick passenger. I believe that was Twizell.’

  ‘There was an inquiry, wasn’t there? Was this mentioned?’

  ‘Who was there to mention it?’

  ‘The survivor.’

  ‘He wasn’t asked.’

  ‘People at Bega.’

  ‘Ah, there you have it. An obscure report in a local newspaper about a sick passenger being transferred to a whaling vessel at the mouth of the bay.’