Al Finegan

FROM THE TIME OF THE FIRST SETTLEMENT IN NSW IN THE LATE 18TH CENTURY, SAILING SHIPS RETURNING TO ENGLAND HAD TO PASS THROUGH THE FORMIDABLE TORRES STRAIT, SITUATED IN THE SEAWAY BETWEEN CAPE YORK PENINSULA AND PAPUA NEW GUINEA. NOT ONLY WAS PASSAGE THROUGH THE STRAIT A DANGEROUS EXERCISE FOR EUROPEAN MARINERS NEGOTIATING A MAZE OF LARGELY UNMAPPED REEFS, BUT ALSO, CAPTAINS KNEW THAT ANY MISHAP WOULD LEAVE THEM AT THE MERCY OF THE TERRIFYING GAUNTLET OF HEAD-HUNTERS, WHOSE REPUTATION FOR BRUTAL ATTACKS AND CRUEL TREATMENT OF CASTAWAYS WAS LEGENDARY. SHIPWRECKS WERE FREQUENT, AND FEW MARINERS SURVIVED. Charles Eaton The

Charles Eaton was reputedly a fine-looking wooden barque. She was built in a shipbuilding yard at Coringa, near Madras in India where she was launched in January 1833. Registered in London at 313 tons to carry 350 tons burden, she was built of the best teak, and had two flush decks, forecastle, bust head, and quarter galleries. She was named after a Captain Charles Eaton, a former ship's captain, trader and owner of several ships, who gave up the sea to settle ashore as the Port Master of Coringa. Charles Eaton’s first trading voyage from Saint Katharine's Dock in London was to the Australian penal colonies. The ship's company of 26 consisted of her Commander, Captain Frederick George Moore, first, second and third mates, surgeon, carpenter, steward, two midshipmen, 13 seamen and two cabin boys, John Sexton and John Ireland. She cleared the Thames River on 20 December 1833 and set sail the next day, beginning her passage to Australia. After a stopover in South Africa, she headed for Hobart Town where she off-loaded cargo then took on new cargo and passengers. Mr Armstrong, a barrister, boarded for return to London as well as Captain D'Oyly of the Bengal Artillery, his wife Charlotte, their two sons George and William aged seven and two, and their female Indian nanny. Captain D'Oyly had completed two years’ leave of absence from India recuperating from illness. He had just received advice of a recall and promotion to a senior position in Delhi. D'Oyly had served 20 years in the Artillery Service of The Honourable, The East India Company. In early July 1834, Charles Eaton departed Hobart for Sydney Town. After docking in Sydney Cove, the crew headed for the delights of “The Rocks”. Steep steps gouged out of rock led up from the dock to streets and yet more streets. Here the thirsty crew could take their choice of any number of hotels, or cosy cottages used as grog shops. They offered as additional charms, reel-playing fiddlers, obliging young ladies of the night, heavy-footed dancers and raunchy, out-of-tune singers. In contrast, the D’Oylys disembarked and went in search of a classy hotel room with a hot bath, comfortable beds and decent meals. After only eight days at sea, Charlotte was already tired of living in cramped cabins with two little boys. The family moved into rooms at Cumming’s Hotel on Church Hill. After a week of off-loading cargo and taking on goods destined for England, Captain Moore went in search of his boatswain and four of his crew who had disappeared in the boozy delights of The Rocks. It became obvious that they had deserted. In desperation to get moving, he interviewed six new men to replace them. This group included George Piggott,

BY: Al Finegean

a boatswain. Despite being warned by another captain that Piggott and his crew had deserted a ship previously and were not reliable, Moore went ahead and hired them. Mariners were well aware of Torres Strait’s reputation as a ship-wrecker and they greatly feared it. It cried out for a properly surveyed chart, with every obstacle and deep-water channel laid down. No such chart yet existed. Most mariners knew, however, that one of the easiest ways to reduce the risk was to pass through the strait in the company of another ship. If one vessel foundered on a reef, the other would be on hand to rescue the crew. Another ship, Jane and Henry, under command of Captain Cobern, had originally planned to sail on 25 July for Batavia. The two captains met and after reaching an agreement of the best route, decided to depart Sydney together. They planned their route for Surabaya Java, via Torres Strait. Thus, on 29 July 1834, Charles Eaton and Jane and Henry headed up the eastern coast of Australia on the ocean side of the Great Barrier Reef. The alternative route between the reef and the coast had been well surveyed by wellrespected naval hydrographer Phillip Parker King. King was a vigorous advocate of the inner route. Despite this, most British merchant ships used the outer route. They were exposing their ships to boisterous weather, but the open sea was largely free of hidden hazards. All mariners agreed, however, that the main drawback to the outer route was the great risk involved in finding a safe passage through the Great Barrier Reef to the Torres Strait. If, at the time of approach, bad weather blew up and reduced visibility, the chance of dashing the ship against a reef was very high. For the first week of their voyage, the crews aboard the ships enjoyed fine weather and favourable winds. Then strong winds replaced the pleasant breezes. Jane and Henry was too slow to keep up with the much larger barque, whose sails soon vanished below the horizon. If the two ships really were sailing together for safety, as reported in the Sydney press, then Moore’s action in forging ahead of his companion vessel was foolhardy to say the least. On 14 August, with Charles Eaton alone and well out to sea off Cape Grenville, Moore calculated her latitude and decided to head west to where, by his reckoning, he should find a passage through the reef near Sir Charles Hardy’s Island. As the day unfolded, he watched with some trepidation as a line of black clouds closed in from the east. Just as the lookout shouted that he had sighted a distant Island to the west, the ship was hit by a violent storm that threatened to rip her canvas to shreds. it continued raining and blowing a gale until darkness closed in. Not wishing to pass through the Great Barrier Reef at night, he ordered the reefing of the sails to reduce canvas and slow his vessel down. ‘However, at

again set sail,’ John Ireland said later, ‘although the wind was very

Even the cabin boy, blessed with the wisdom of hindsight, thought that the captain was being foolhardy. There were so many heavy clouds that Moore was unable to take a reading for latitude. With lookouts at the mastheads, Moore steered boldly to the west, then ran north, parallel to the line of breakers, crashing onto the reef. The Barrier Reef is a magnificent spectacle. The closer you get to it, the more it presents itself as an unbroken line of white surf, as waves hit the coral and shoot up into the air in clouds of spray. Nineteenth-century mariners, with no accurate charts to guide them, sailed parallel to the white spray and the foaming waves at a safe distance until they encountered a wide gap of calm sea. Moore found such a gap in the surf and assumed from his charts that it was an entrance. He was mistaken. Reefs bend and twist and this must have created the illusion that there was a gap that he could safely pass through. The ship churned through the gap when the lookout suddenly shouted in alarm, “Breakers! - dead ahead!”. Moore immediately ordered the crew to change course, but before she could gather way on a new tack, the barque ploughed into the reef with a splintering, sickening crunch. The entire crew and passengers shrieked in fright as their ship reared up onto the jagged reef. Their screaming continued as they felt and heard the terrible sound of the keel and rudder being dragged and splintered across the coral until the ship finally fell broadside, and the sea briefly swallowed her, before she rolled back upright. Charlotte and Tom D’Oyly had been in their cabin, trying to drink coffee, while William and George slept beside them in one of the bunks. They would have known that the barque was approaching the most perilous part of the journey, would have heard the roar of the waves. John Ireland was checking his passengers when the crash knocked him over, and the sea flooded into the lower deck. “I

splashing for survival.” Fearing he would drown, John carried the boy to his mother who, “…

up to the deck in alarm,’ he later reported, “and thereafter never

Tom staggered through the flooding cabin and passageway searching for, and then seizing, a struggling George. Faced with such overwhelming and immediate peril, Tom, clasping his son, pushed hard through the surging water to join Charlotte on the top deck. John grabbed the terrified nanny by the hand and dragged her up to the deck. All crew and passengers had soon made it to the open deck and stood, staring about, terrified of what would happen next. After a few minutes passed, it became obvious, the ship was held fast. Moore ascertained that they were wrecked just off Sir Charles Hardy Island. When the waves receded, debris littered the upper deck. The large longboat, carelessly tethered, had slid across the deck and been dashed to pieces against the bulwark. The tiny jolly boat had suffered a similar fate. The two small cutters on the quarterdeck, were secure and both survived the collision intact. It seemed that there was no immediate danger unless the weather worsened. Unfortunately, the gale did increase in force and, when the captain ordered the long-boat to be launched to investigate how much buffeting the hulk would stand, a giant wave smashed it to splinters against the coral. During a momentary calm, a smaller cutter was launched, manned by seaman James Price. Tragedy struck again when another hissing green mountain of water bore down, crushing man and boat in the coral studded sea. Neither were seen again. Only one boat, a cutter capable of holding no more than eight persons, remained. The bosun George Piggott, carpenter Lawrence Constantine, and a seaman quickly loaded it and the three of them pushed clear of the wreck. As it began to move away, two other mates of Piggott leapt from the slowly disintegrating hull, swam to the boat and were dragged aboard. Then the five deserters pulled away, leaving passengers and the rest of the crew marooned on the doomed barque. All through that stormy day and into the night, those on the wreck suffered agonies of mind, wondering whether they would live to see the next day, but dawn broke on clear skies and calm waters. As the immediate fear of death from drowning subsided, so another took its place. Everyone on board knew where they were, and a sense of dread pervaded the ship, as all recalled the stories of horror that the mere name of “Torres Strait” wrought.