15 October 1936

NOT BORN TO BE DROWNED

Remarkable Escape Of Two Men When Vessel Founders

That Captain Emanuel Underwood [1805-1888] had surprising adventures in South Australian waters is not as remarkable as the fact that he lived through them. He started trading in South Australia soon after he arrived in 1840, in a small craft of 15 tons, which he had brought from England with him.

This was put together at Port Adelaide, and was named the Governor Gawler. In 1845, however, he became more ambitious and went from the Governor Gawler to a craft not much different, the Victoria. He traded in it for eight months, along the coast, but in June, 1845, it almost caused his death.

He sailed for Rivoli Bay, on which Beachport is now situated, with stores, principally flour, for the residents of the South-East. Underwood had built a store there, and already there was an hotel. He ran into a heavy westerly gale. On the second day, the gale was blowing as strongly, and from the masthead could be seen breakers at Cape Jaffa, which was eight miles away. The gale was so strong that he was doubtful whether it would be possible to keep the small vessel off the shore. A sounding showed 15 fathoms, and all tackle was made ready in case the vessel was run aground. The entire crew, three men besides Captain Underwood, went on deck, and the captain went to the masthead to give directions to the steersman. For half an hour they travelled fast before the wind, with a close-reefed topsail and foresail.

Then they saw a huge wave rise, and as it approached them it increased in altitude. The captain ordered the helm to be put hard up, but nothing could be done. With a roar like thunder, the wave broke over the craft, capsizing it in an instant, and throwing the four men into the sea.

'I went down under the mast, how far I don't know,' says Captain Underwood in his reminiscences; 'I let go, and came to the surface. I saw all was over. The weather rail was just out of water, so was the upper foreyardarm. I instinctively swam under the lee of the wreck. I neither heard nor saw anyone, but I saw the boat still at the water's edge, nearly full of water. It must have been below water, but how it partly got out again I cannot tell. I got into the boat, found the stern was lashed to something below water. I tried so hard to get a knife out of my pocket to cut the lashing, but could not. Then I saw another mountain sea coming on with a roar like thunder. For a moment I waited to see it cover me. but it spent its fury before reaching me, and the jerking motion of the wreck snapped the lashing and sent me in the boat, about 20 yards away from the wreck. This second wave had rolled the wreck keel up, but did not fill the boat any fuller. The boat was built entirely of red gum, and when full of water would sink at once.'

Lying in the waterlogged boat without oars or anything else, as he puts it, his plight was desperate. He lay down in the water, just keeping his face above the surface to allow him to breathe. He expected at any moment to disappear under the waves. In a minute or two he heard a voice on a wave a short distance away. He saw a seaman struggling to reach the boat. The seaman saw that the boat was full of water, and exclaimed, 'I may as well go down now.'

Underwood, however, encouraged him, and told him to lie down in the boat. Sea after sea rolled by, but still the boat did not fill sufficiently to sink. The men's spirits rose. Underwood said to the seaman, 'Do as I do, but don't move,' and, taking off his hat, began to bail water. They both took off their hats, and tried to push the water over the gunwale. Underwood's hat soon went to pieces, but the seaman's hat was a painted sou'-wester, admirably adaptable for the new work. Presently the seaman felt something against his leg, and found it to be a pannikin, which he threw to Underwood. Bailing seemed to make little difference, and Underwood found that there was no plug in the boat's bottom. There was just one whole pin in the gunwale. He wrenched it out, and stopped the plug hole with it.

In half an hour the boat was dry. The wind and sea drove them towards the land. Captain Underwood tore up the middle bottom board and put it over the stern through the scull hole to allow them to steer the boat. After running about four miles they noticed heavy breakers straight ahead, and watched to see what was causing them when they were on top of the next wave. It was a rock, but they man aged to steer round it and went into comparatively calm water. Low sand hills took the place of the rocks they had feared they would meet on the shore, and they landed without difficulty. They were certainly safe from drowning, but in their sodden clothes, and exposed to a storm on an unknown beach on a particularly dark night, they could see little prospect of early comfort.

They left the boat and began wandering along the beach to the north east. They had little to eat for 30 hours before the wreck, and that added to their discomfort. The part of the coast on which they had been wrecked had never been inhabited by white men, and not far from the spot the crew and passengers of the brig Maria had been murdered by the natives.

They soon left the beach, far too fatigued to continue, and tried to find shelter in the sandhills. They broke down boughs to make a breakwind at the base of a tree, but with squalls of rain passing over them, and soaked through from head to foot, the bed they made was not what it might have been.

When morning came, their limbs were numb and stiff. They had no means of lighting a fire, and walked briskly to keep themselves warm. They found rainwater in the curled bark of trees, but they began to feel the need of food. They had to decide whether they would make for Adelaide or Rivoli Bay. Adelaide was, of course, the more desirable, and they had gone six miles in that direction during the night, but lakes and the River Murray presented great difficulties. They retraced their steps to the boat, and sat in it, as Captain Underwood puts it, as if it were their coffin.

Wandering along the beach for about a mile in their new direction, they came across a sea bird, evidently just dead, lying on the beach. Apart from the bird, which they decided to keep until the last emergency, they found nothing edible on the beach. They crossed the sandhills and travelled inland to the southward. Among the sandhills they came on a bed of what they thought were mushrooms. Captain Underwood ate two of them, and his companion one.

About an hour afterwards they began to feel strange symptoms — dimness of sight, cold sweat, swelling of the hands, and strange hallucinations of sight and hearing. They could see buildings, coaches, and could hear sheep bleating, dogs barking, and so on. Eventually they came to a waterhole, and both drank deeply — and then thought they were dying. Captain Underwood told his companion that if he did die, as he thought he would, he was to report where he had left the body. The companion wept bitterly at the thought of being left alone. Before long both were violently sick, and felt much better. They went on their way, but their senses were distorted all the time.

At nightfall, when about to break some boughs to make a breakwind for their bed, they thought they heard a dog bark. Before this they could never agree as to what they heard and saw, but both were certain that they had heard this sound. Then they thought they saw a man approaching, but to Underwood, with his sight distorted by the poison, it appeared that this man had his throat cut from ear to ear, and his head was bound up in rags.

He was a shepherd, and took them to a near-by hut, which he shared with another shepherd. Tea, mutton and damper, a log fire and sheepskins to lie on were precious luxuries to Underwood and his companion.

Next morning, although Underwood was very ill, the four men returned to the wreck to try to find any articles which had been washed ashore. They were disappointed. They could see an object about seven miles from the shore which they thought must be the wreck, and decided that they would return to the hut, and go down again the next day with axes to make oars for the boat. They rowed out next day, and found that the hull was almost perpendicular, with the masts and yards floating round it. Captain Underwood had some money on board as well as other valuables. He knew where he had left them, and decided to dive down into the wreck to try to enter the cabin where they were. He stripped off. and stood on part of the wreck before diving down to the cabin, about breast high in the water. He stood pondering until a large shark went so close to him that he touched it with a stick he had his his hand. Salvaging was abandoned, and all that the four men had obtained for their long row were some small pieces of rope.

Their friends, the shepherds, told them that there was no chance of getting back overland to Adelaide, since lakes and swamps made the track impassable before the summer. They had made some rough paddles for the boat, and rowed off to the south of Cape Jaffa, where they would pick up the shepherds again, nearer their hut. The shepherds returned in their cart. The sea was calm, but when they arrived at the appointed spot they found a strong swell bursting on the shore. They determined, however, to try to beach the boat, but before they could get in, an other swell overtook them, and threw them into the boiling surf. They scrambled ashore, and the boat was beached, as desired, but they had lost their oars, and they slowly recovered from a near drowning. They left the boat in the surf, vowing never to enter it again.

When they arrived at the shepherd's hut, however, they realised that they could not stay there. The shepherds had been provided with only enough food for their own use until the next supplies arrived. The shepherds were willing to help them, but all realised how impossible it would be for the refugees to remain there. So, despite their recently-made vow, they decided to take to the boat again. It was none the worse for its recent buffeting, but had no more equipment than Underwood and his companion had found in it when they were first wrecked. A broad paling was fixed to a round handle, and two paddles were made in this way. A sail was made out of a woolpack and fixed to a sapling mast: A piece of board became a tiller, and with damper; mutton and matches hoisted in a bag to the mast head to keep them away from the breaking surf at the launching, they set out for Rivoli Bay, their original objective.

But they were not out of trouble yet, and when they had to land at Guichen Bay, which is now Robe, they ran short of food. They saw six sea lions, nearly as large as oxen, on the beach, but they threw themselves over the rocks before any could be captured. It was too cold for either man to sleep, and they roasted gulls' eggs during the night to amuse themselves. In the morning they found their boat 100 yards from the water's edge, and had to pull it over a level but rocky beach and then let it drop several feet into the water before they could launch it.

They wound in and out of rocks along the sea coast, and had got to within a mile or two of Rivoli Bay when the sky became overcast and the breeze freshened, blowing strongly off the land, with a heavy swell rolling in against it. They were a mile or more from land, and had to strike their sail and take to the paddles to try to get inside the bay. A gigantic swell came rolling in, and just as it passed them, tossing the craft on its curling top, it burst with a roar like thunder, and al most frightened them out of their wits. Had it burst a moment before it did. Captain Underwood says, they would never have been heard of again. They landed, and gathering some dead wood in the scrub, lit a fire and remained there for the night. They reached Rivoli Bay the following morning. It took Captain Underwood ten days to reach Adelaide on horseback, and the adventures on that trip make another story.— C.V.H.

Real Life Stories Of South Australia (1936, October 15). Chronicle (Adelaide, SA : 1895 - 1954), p. 16. Retrieved January 21, 2022, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article92348455

Mysterious Loss Of The Ketch Emu

There were two vessels, named Emu, in the early days of the State. One was wrecked at Port Elliot in 1853, and the other was lost off the southern coast in 1861. All hands on both were drowned. The first was a schooner, and the other a ketch.

The latter was a trader to South Eastern ports, and on the completion of the first portion of the jetty at Port MacDonnell, was given a commission to convey a cargo of piles to Lacepede Bay. As the piles were too long to stow in the hold, they were put down the hold butt end first with the other ends pointing skyward. The Emu sailed from Port MacDonnell about December 12. 1861.

The cook on her was Mr. D. S. Lannam, who for many years afterwards was the well-known baker of that name at Guichen Bay, and later at Millicent. He missed the boat at Port MacDonnell, and was left behind. Mr. Eager, foreman carpenter for the construction of the Port MacDonnell jetty, was to have taken passage by the Emu, to fill a like capacity at Lacepede Bay, but for some reason he did not go by her. Another young man, named Hugh MacCallum, an employe of Mount Schank Station, desired to get to Adelaide, but finding that the Emu was only going as far as Kingston, he decided to wait for a boat that would take him all the way.

The vessel left Port MacDonnell with one passenger and three or four in the crew. As the Emu did not turn up at Lacepede Bay, the coast was patrolled between the two ports for weeks, but no sign of her could be found. At the time the wool ships Alma and Livingstone were lying in Guichen Bay. The latter, with 2,000 bales of wool on board, almost ready to sail for London. Both were wrecked in a storm, and it was concluded that the Emu had foundered in the same gale, which was a very heavy one.

It was not until July, 1875, or 14 years later, that Mr. James Keogh, an employe of Coola Station, happened on some wreckage brought ashore in a recent storm near Rivoli Bay south. By marks on it, the wreckage was identified as portion of the hull of the ill-fated Emu, which had lain at the bottom of the ocean during all those years. That was all that was ever known of her.— 'TANTA TYGA.'

Mysterious Loss Of The Ketch Emu (1936, October 15). Chronicle (Adelaide, SA : 1895 - 1954), p. 16. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article92348457