The Best Australian Sea Stories

by Jim Haynes

  Phillip was annoyed at Lord Howe’s pedantic technicality, but wanted John Hunter on the expedition, and was worried that persisting in his request for official commodore status would result in Hunter being left behind.

  There is no record of Lord Howe relenting on his decision, but there is evidence that Phillip flew a commodore’s pennant on the voyage, when he entered the harbour at Rio de Janeiro.

  The name ‘Sirius’ was probably chosen because Sirius is known as the ‘southern star’, the brightest in the southern sky and much relied upon by mariners. The HMS Sirius was now an ‘armed escort vessel’ and a sixth-rate ship of the line.

  At around 520 tons after modification, she was a large ship in an age when ninety per cent of British merchant ships were under 200 tons. Her main-mast towered 78 feet (24 metres) above her decks, and her fore and mizzen-masts were only slightly shorter. She was 110 feet (33 metres) long by 33 feet (10 metres) across. However, as a sixth-rater, she was the lowest-grade ship of the line. Sixth-rated ships had to carry between 20 and 32 guns and required a crew of about 160 men.

  By comparison, a first-rate ship of the line, like the 2000-ton Victory, carried more than 100 guns and had a crew of 800. Even third-rated warships, such as the 1600-ton Bellerophon, carried 74 guns and a crew of 550.

  HMS Sirius was a fighting ship in name only; she was a store-ship and escort for the First Fleet. On her decks she carried less than the minimum requirement of 20 guns for a sixth-rated warship (six carronades, four six-pounders and eight swivel guns) but she carried ten more in storage, deep in her hold, and thus qualified, technically, as a warship.

  Even though the expedition was a peaceful one, Phillip found it near impossible to secure a full crew for the Sirius. Years of war had made men reluctant to serve before the mast and the idea of escorting convicts to an unknown land at the end of the earth was not particularly attractive to sailors. The Gordon Riots had destabilised the social fabric of London and times were uncertain.

  Despite using every method available, including ‘pressing’ men into service, the crew of HMS Sirius numbered only 135—25 short of the required number—when she sailed from Portsmouth. Many men had already deserted the ship in the two months it took to assemble the fleet.

  The fleet departed on 13 May 1787 and sailed to Cape Town via Tenerife and Rio de Janeiro. A month was spent at Cape Town stocking the boats with food, animals and plants, before the eleven ships embarked on the last leg of the journey on 13 November 1787.

  Two weeks into the final leg of the voyage, Phillip decided to split the fleet in two. He handed command of the Sirius to John Hunter, who would remain her captain until she was lost on the reef at Norfolk Island in 1790.

  From the Sirius Phillip took most of the marines, who were transferred to the Scarborough. Onto HMAT Supply he took the precious K1 and the best navigator on the fleet, Lieutenant William Dawes.

  HMAT Supply and the three fastest transports sailed ahead to check that Botany Bay was a suitable site for a settlement and prepare a landing place.

  Supply was not a ship of the line. She was in fact the armed tender to the Sirius and was designated HMAT—His Majesty’s Armed Tender—not HMS, His or Her Majesty’s Ship. She was quite a small ship, just 70 feet (21 metres) in length and 170 tons, but she was faster than the Sirius and handled much better.

  Phillip assumed he would arrive several weeks ahead of the other ships led by the Sirius. As it happened, Supply arrived first at Botany Bay, on 18 January 1788; the three fastest transports arrived the following day; and Sirius and the rest of the fleet arrived just one day later, on the 20th.

  Captain Hunter had his own reliable timepiece, manufactured by John Brockbank of London. Although he lamented the loss of K1, he thought his watch would suffice:

  After the time-keeper was taken from the Sirius I kept an account of the ship’s way by my own watch which I had found for a considerable time to go very well with Kendall’s.

  On arriving at Botany Bay, Hunter was annoyed to find the precious K1 had been neglected:

  On the 25th we received the time-keeper from the Supply which, I am sorry to say, had been let down while on board . . .

  Sirius had led the First Fleet safely on a voyage of 15,000 miles (25,000 kilometres) that lasted 250 days. No ships were damaged or lost, no mutinies had occurred (although at least one had been averted), 48 people had died and 28 had been born.

  When the ships were moved to Port Jackson, Sirius anchored at the entrance to Sydney Cove to prevent any escape attempts by sea. Activities ashore took up all the time and energies of her carpenters and other skilled crew, and for seven months maintenance of the tired vessel was neglected. More iron fittings corroded and, under the copper sheathing, the Sirius was developing some serious leaks.

  Some unsupervised recaulking and repairs were done by a carpenter’s assistant and an old convict, but the work was woefully inadequate to keep her seaworthy. Soon, a string of events would see the unseaworthy vessel embark upon her most hazardous and daring voyage; it would be her proudest achievement.

  By September 1788 things were looking grim in Port Jackson. The cattle had wandered away and been lost in June when their keeper, a convict named Corbett, had absconded and attempted to live in the bush with the Aborigines. He eventually returned and was hanged for losing the cattle.

  Phillip realised the colony was in danger of starving. Few crops had grown from the seed carried on the First Fleet, much of which had spoiled on the voyage; these crops, planted out of season in late summer, produced only enough grain for seed.

  With the crop failure, the Governor could see famine looming. By September 1788, the situation was desperate, rations were cut and theft of food was a constant problem. Phillip decided to send the Sirius to Cape Town, ‘in order to procure grain and . . . what quantities of flour and provisions she can receive’.

  The Sirius’ stoic captain, John Hunter, knew his vessel was in poor shape; ‘much neglected’ was his term. Hunter had already noted that the ship had been poorly prepared and refitted in Britain and had problems with rotten fittings and leaks. He also knew his crew had been on salted rations for over a year and would be prone to scurvy.

  However, Hunter was not a man to question orders. Hunter was a loyal friend to Arthur Phillip and followed his instructions to the letter. He had the ever-reliable Lieutenant William Bradley—a teacher from the Royal Naval Academy, who had signed on as first mate on the Sirius to further his scientific knowledge—and he had K1.

  Eight guns, with cannon balls and powder, were taken off the Sirius; reluctantly, her longboat was also left behind. It was decided to follow the southern gales eastward and so, on 2 October 1788, Sirius, already leaking badly and without a longboat, headed out of Port Jackson and sailed south towards the Antarctic.

  Ten days later she passed the southern tip of New Zealand. Within days, scurvy had appeared among the crew and the ship was leaking badly. Passing under Cape Horn, she sailed through masses of icebergs and experienced gale force winds, snow, sleet and hail.

  Hunter’s meticulous notes give some idea of the stoic nonchalance of the brave Scottish mariner:

  We now very frequently fell in with high islands of ice. On the 24th, we had fresh gales with hazy and cold weather, and met so many ice islands, that we were frequently obliged to alter our course to avoid them. On the 25th, we had strong gales with very heavy and frequent squalls: as we were now drawing near Cape Horn . . . we passed one of the largest ice-islands we had seen; we judged it not less than three miles in length, and its perpendicular height we supposed to be 350 feet.

  The strangeness and danger of such a voyage would prove too much for one man. Third Lieutenant Maxwell became insane as the ship passed under Cape Horn and, while on watch, began cramming on all sail in a gale. Apparently, from his ravings, he had decided that he wanted to see if the ship would sail underwater and emerge from hell ‘with the same set of damned rascals she was carrying’.

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p; Hunter came on deck in his shirt and reefed the sails himself while Maxwell was restrained and confined to his cabin. Maxwell never regained his sanity.

  Watkin Tench, the captain of marines whose journals are a great source of information on the colony, wrote:

  The Sirius had made her passage to the Cape of Good Hope, by the route of Cape Horn, in exactly thirteen weeks. Her highest latitude was 57 degrees 10 minutes south, where the weather proved intolerably cold. Ice, in great quantity, was seen for many days; and in the middle of December water froze in open casks upon deck.

  The first death from scurvy occurred just after Cape Horn, and another four men died before Cape Town was reached. By then forty men were too sick to move and another ten worked their watch without the use of at least one limb due to scurvy.

  On sighting Table Mountain, Hunter was anxious to make port as quickly as possible to save as many of the crew as he could.

  The weakly condition of that part of the ship’s company, who were able to do duty upon deck, and the very dejected state of those who were confined to their beds, determined me, if possible, to bring the ship to an anchor before night; as the very idea of being in port, sometimes has an exceeding good effect upon the spirits of people who are reduced low by the scurvy; which was the case with a great many of our ship’s company; and indeed, a considerable number were in the last stage of it.

  On arrival at the Cape, Hunter needed to repair both his ship and his crew. A hospital was set up on shore and the men rested and ate fresh fruit and vegetables for a month until all were well again.

  An attempt was made to repair the ship, but Hunter realised it was futile.

  Before we embarked any of the provisions, we heeled the ship, to endeavour to stop the leak, which had kept the pumps so much employed during the voyage . . . it proceeded from an iron bolt, which had been corroded by the copper, and by the working of the ship had dropt out, and left a hole of more than an inch in diameter. A wooden plug was put in, and covered again with copper. But beside this leak, there were many other smaller holes, which were occasioned by the decay of long spikenails . . . All were closed, as far as we examined, and the ship for the present made less water, but was not so tight as formerly; it was therefore my intention, upon my arrival at Port Jackson, to lighten and examine the ship . . . that such defects as we might find might be remedied while they were trifling.

  The trip back was a nightmare. The crew pumped constantly as the overladen ship leaked steadily and a gale arose with mountainous seas, which threatened to blow them onto a lee shore and wreck the ship on the wild west coast or southern tip of Van Diemen’s Land. The sun disappeared for days at a time and the ship was awash as fierce winds and heavy seas bore away her top-masts, and even the figurehead of Lord Berwick. Captain Hunter even began to doubt the accuracy of his beloved K1 and was fearful that his calculations of longitude were wrong:

  The time-keeper, which I have already mentioned to have an error of 1°31', seemed, during the time we lay in Table-Bay, to have gradually recovered its original rate . . . this served to convince me . . . that it had been considerably affected by the very cold weather we had near Cape Horn.

  Hunter was well aware that the ship was in grave danger of striking the shore, as he could not rely on his best efforts at calculating their position. His dour understated journal entry belies the reality of the danger:

  It may not be improper here to observe, that three days had now elapsed without a sight of the sun during the day, or a star during the night, from which we could exactly determine our latitude . . .

  Hunter then casually relates how the ship was caught on a dead lee shore, and her destruction seemed imminent.

  . . . we set the reefed main-sail, and at half past six we saw the land again, through the haze close under our lee bow, and the sea breaking with prodigious force upon it, it was impossible to weather it . . . I now found that we were embayed, and the gale not in the least likely to abate, and the sea running mountain high, with very thick weather, a long dark night just coming on, and an unknown coast . . . close under our lee; nothing was now left to be done but to carry every yard of canvass the ship was capable of bearing, and for every person on board to constantly keep the deck, and attentively to look out under the lee for the land . . . but as we knew not what bay, or part of the coast we were upon, nor what dangerous ledges of rocks might be detached some distance from the shore; and in our way, we had every moment reason to fear that the next might, by the ship striking, launch the whole of us into eternity.

  Lieutenant Bradley noted that the surf breaking on the rocks ‘could not be distinguished from that of the sea which was all breakers to the horizon’. What is truly remarkable to me is how understated is the captain’s account of how they survived the situation:

  Fortunately at this instant the wind favoured us near two points, and the ship lay better up upon this tack, than her course upon the other had promised, but still the weather was so thick, the sea so high, the gale so strong, and so dead upon the shore, that little hope could be entertained of our weathering the land. We stood on to the eastward, and the ship, to my astonishment, as well as to that of every person on board, bore such a press of sail wonderfully.

  Even when the end seemed inevitable, Hunter declined to worry the crew with his realisation that the ship appeared doomed.

  We now stood on, and I had hopes that this might be the most projecting land; but at two in the afternoon, as I was looking from the quarter deck very anxiously to leeward, I observed the looming of a high and very steep point of rocky land, and the sea foaming with frightful violence against it. I made no mention of it; but just at that instant it was discovered by the sailors stationed forward, and they called out, ‘Land, close under our lee’; I replied it was very well, I had seen it some time, and that as it was now upon our beam . . . there could be no danger from it, we should soon pass it . . . The ship was at this time half buried in the sea by the press of sail, since she was going through it (for she could not be said to be going over it) at the rate of four knots.

  All through the storm, with the constant fear of being run aground, the ship continued to leak badly:

  In this trying situation, the ship being leaky, our pumps during such a night were a distressing tax upon us; as they were kept constantly at work.

  In his dour fatalistic style, Hunter put their survival down to divine providence, with a little help from skilled navigation and seamanship.

  I do not recollect to have heard of a more wonderful escape. Every thing, which depended upon us, I believe, was done; but it would be the highest presumption and ingratitude to Divine Providence, were we to attribute our preservation wholly to our best endeavours . . .

  On 8 May 1789, Sirius, having circumnavigated the globe in an unseaworthy condition, limped back into Port Jackson, minus her top-masts and figurehead, with seed grain and four months supply of food. It was 219 days since she had left the colony.

  Watkin Tench, like all the colony’s inhabitants, was overjoyed to see the Sirius return and reported in his diary:

  May 1789 . . . the arrival of the Sirius, Captain Hunter, from the Cape of Good Hope, was proclaimed, and diffused universal joy and congratulation.

  They were very kindly treated by the Dutch governor, and amply supplied by the merchants at the Cape, where they remained seven weeks. Their passage back was by Van Diemen’s Land, near which . . . they were in the utmost peril of being wrecked. But it falls to the lot of very few ships to possess such indefatigable and accurate observers as Captain Hunter and Lieutenant Bradley . . .

  Phillip was relieved and grateful. He invited the ship’s officers to dinner to express his gratitude. Rations were still in force and food scarce—so scarce in fact that the officers were told to bring their own bread rolls to the Governor’s dinner.

  One officer not invited was poor mad Lieutenant Maxwell, who was confined in the hospital on his return to Sydney Cove and was later discovered to have buried
the 70 guineas his family sent for his care in the hospital garden, in order that his fortune might grow with a good crop of guineas next year.

  The Sirius was now in desperate need of substantial repairs.

  The ship was careened in what became known as Sirius Cove, later Mosman Bay, from June to November 1789. A temporary wharf was built and a platform levelled on the beach. Carpenters replaced much of the decking and planking with new timber. Her copper sheathing was partly removed, and the rotten bolts replaced as best as could be done with the limited resources of the new colony. On 7 November she sailed back to Sydney Cove.

  Soon the Sirius was once again called upon to save the colony for, by January 1790, the colony was again facing starvation.

  Phillip was anxiously awaiting the supply ship, which the Admiralty had promised would sail ahead of the Second Fleet. A beacon and tower had been built at South Head, and a constant watch was kept for the eagerly awaited supplies, which would save the starving settlement.

  In fact the supply ship HMS Guardian had set sail from Spithead, on the south coast of England, loaded with livestock, crops, hardware and other supplies, in September 1789.

  Among the 320 or so on board were a small number of convicts, a group of skilled convict artisans, and a number of convict superintendents, including the first non-British free settlers to our shores: Hessian soldier and farmer Phillip Schaffer and his ten-year-old daughter Elizabeth. In command was Captain Edward Riou, who had served with Cook on his third voyage.

  Guardian took on more livestock and supplies at the Cape of Good Hope in December, then sailed south to pick up the strong winds which would take her to Port Jackson.