2. Ships prior to 1836

SHIPS IN SOUTH AUSTRALIAN WATERS PRIOR TO 1836

Bob Sexton

To set the scene for the considerable number of European ships visiting these shores prior to 1836, it might be remembered that it was in 1606 that the Dutch yacht Duyfken was the first to sight the southern continent. Others followed, adding to knowledge of the western coast, but it was the voyage of the Gulden Zeepaardt in 1627 that covered the southern coast as far as the head of the Great Australian Bight in one fell swoop.

Detailed exploration along this coast did not proceed until the visit of the Recherche and Espérance under D’Entrecasteaux in 1792. However, D’Entrecasteaux left off at much the same spot, and our coast was not sighted again until the brig Lady Nelson made a landfall at Cape Banks in 1800 while on her way to pass through Bass Strait, which had been recently discovered by Matthew Flinders with his friend George Bass in the Norfolk sloop. Flinders soon afterwards returned to Britain and convinced the Admiralty that he should lead an expedition to continue the survey, amongst other things to establish whether or not the New Holland of the Dutch and the New South Wales of the British formed one land mass. He set off in the Investigator in 1801, and after examining the gulfs and Kangaroo Island, was astonished to meet another ship approaching from the east. This was the Géographe under the French explorer Nicholas Baudin, and led to the locality being named Encounter Bay.

The sealers soon followed, but not by pure coincidence. Baudin, eventually continuing west, found the New York brig Union at King George Sound. He told Captain Pendleton of the seals that had been seen at Kangaroo Island. Pendleton proceeded there and while at the Island built a small schooner, the Independence, to facilitate their work. The locality became known as American River. Word soon spread of the possible rich pickings, and Joseph Murrell set off for the Island from Sydney in a whaleboat in 1805. Although receiving a setback when speared at Jervis Bay, he persevered and left four of his party at Kangaroo Island when he himself returned to Sydney, bringing both kangaroo skins and seal skins. Significantly, the next visitors also brought back salt. However, life could be precarious. Murrell again visited the Island, this time in the schooner Governor Hunter, but the vessel was returning to Sydney with salt and skins when lost with all hands.

Many of the early visitors were small, 50 to 60 feet long and say 60 tons burthen, but the Campbell Macquarie, calling in 1812 on her way to Macquarie Island where she was wrecked, was no less than 248 tons.

Some vessels just passed by, trace in the records being casual mention of observations they made on their way. For instance, the Baring in 1815 understandably failed to find a non-existent island off Cape Banks that had been reported by the Albion in 1802. And in 1819, Philip Parker King in His Majesty’s cutter Mermaid saw the land north of Cape Northumberland. On the other hand, the Endeavour of Norfolk Island, so-called even at the time to differentiate her from the Endeavour of Sydney, was a regular visitor between 1810 and 1818 and reported seeing what is clearly the Margaret Brock reef, off Cape Jaffa.

There is sometimes doubt whether vessels setting off for the sealing grounds actually reached Kangaroo Island, but an indication that they did so is the frequent mention of salt as well as skins and oil amongst the return cargo. The brig Spring is in fact recorded as being delayed by the need to wait for the salt to crystallise at the Bay of Shoals. Sometimes accounts of a voyage hold internal evidence of a visit, such as the report of Captain Sutherland of the Governor Macquarie that he had seen the rock carved by the French in 1803. Such reports can however be somewhat roundabout. A woman who had survived a massacre by Maoris in New Zealand had been originally taken from Kangaroo Island by the American ship General Gates, and her story and thus its visit there only became known when she returned to Sydney from the sealing grounds.

A shipping arrival of a completely different character in 1830 was Charles Sturt in his whaleboat after his long voyage down the Murray. His long absence led to the dispatch of a search party in the government cutter Dart, and Captain Barker’s ill-fated visit in the Isabella, during which the River Sturt was named and the ‘16-mile inlet’—better known now as Port Adelaide—was observed from Mount Lofty.

Where previously sealers had predominated, in 1832 the brig Socrates set off from Launceston with a party of whalers for Port Lincoln. Although it was reported they had been there for the previous three seasons, no record of such visits or the vessels employed has been noticed, and in the event they instead set up a whaling station on Kangaroo Island. However the Henry, and the Elizabeth—the latter commanded by John Hart, who was later to become Premier of South Australia—were small coasters which are certainly known to have taken further whalemen and provisions, and brought back whale oil and whalebone.

I have given scant justice here to the cavalcade of vessels that visited these shores prior to 1836, but will end by mentioning just two. The cutter Royal William returned to Hobart in 1834 from a sealing cruise which had taken her to King George Sound, but a visit to Kangaroo Island is indicated by a cargo including salt. Her particular interest lies in the fact that she survived into the photographic era. The other vessel is the definitely non-royal cutter William, which left Launceston on a sealing cruise to the ‘N.W. Islands’ in October 1835 and again a year later, disposing of provisions to the survey party at Rapid Bay in December 1836. Thereafter she was chartered by the South Australian Company, thus providing a solid link between the ships of the sealing and colonizing eras.