From the Edge Page 3

  Within a few months, Robert Campbell and William Clark had found a suitable vessel, the Begun Shaw, a recently repaired, 30-metre, ‘two-decked, three masted’ country trader captained by another intrepid Scot, Gavin Hamilton. Expecting this would be the first of many voyages to Sydney, they decided to re-christen the ship Sydney Cove. Hamilton was born on the small island of Arran, barely twenty kilometres across the water from William and John Clark in Campbeltown, and had moved to Glasgow as a young man to make his career at sea. In his late thirties, he was already an experienced commander, having sailed trading vessels from port to port in India and west to the Persian Gulf for nearly a decade. The Sydney Cove venture was very much a family affair: three Scottish highlanders who had joined forces in Calcutta with the expectation of making a handsome profit by establishing a permanent trade connection with the colony at Port Jackson.9

  By November 1796, Hamilton, Campbell and Clark had appointed the ship’s crew and assembled its heady cargo: including well over one hundred casks of rum, ‘Pipes’ of Madeira wine and cases of beer, champagne, gin and brandy; barrels of tar, chests of Chinese porcelain, textiles, tea, tobacco, soap, vinegar, candles, bags of rice and sugar, several horses and cattle, one buggy and one organ. It was a shipment guaranteed to deliver sweet music to the marines and convicts at Sydney Cove. At twenty-seven, William Clark was entrusted with the position of ‘supercargo’. Assisted by his Bengali ‘man-servant’, he was responsible for all the goods on board. Hamilton chose Hugh Thompson as his first mate together with second mate Leisham, seamen John Bennet and two other Europeans, several of whom had probably served under his command before. The bulk of the crew comprised forty-four Lascars, who were given ‘blankets’ in preparation for their first experience in southern oceans. Both Muslim and Hindu, Lascars were often recruited from Sylhet, a region in the north-east of Bengal, and contracted through a middleman who then appointed an overseer to manage them for the duration of the voyage. Perceived as compliant and ‘industrious’, they received less than half the wage of European sailors, an inequality sanctioned by the British government. Barefoot, and wearing their ‘loose drawers made of white cotton, a white frock or jacket, and … turbans’, they were the backbone of British trade in India, ‘Burma, China, the Malay archipelago and East Africa, as well as Britain’.

  On 10 November 1796, with their Lascar underlings in tow, Gavin Hamilton and William Clark set sail from Calcutta bound for Sydney. After negotiating the notorious sandbanks and fast-rising tides along the Hooghly River, their ark of alcoholic delights and assorted luxuries would have to sail 12 000 kilometres to its namesake, Sydney Cove.10

  Although Hamilton was an experienced navigator, he had never overseen such a long-distance journey before, and the Sydney Cove was far from freshly minted. With a pocket marine chronometer to calculate his longitude, a sextant to indicate his latitude, and a logline and sand-glass to tell his speed, Hamilton would have to rely on Dutch maps and Cook’s chart of the east coast of Australia. Because ‘square-rigged ships’ like the Sydney Cove sailed ‘best with the wind behind them’, he needed to look for the most ‘favourable routes’. Hamilton left Calcutta in the north-east monsoon season, sailing south with the prevailing winds, down the Bay of Bengal and across the equator, until he hit the roaring forties and turned east, then crossing the Indian Ocean towards the south-west coast of Australia. He would round the south-west corner of the continent and cross the Great Australian Bight, sailing east until he reached the west coast of Tasmania, which his maps indicated was still attached to the mainland. Finally, after rounding Tasmania’s southern coast, he could head north along the east coast to Sydney. Hamilton would need all his experience, the full cooperation of his crew and a fair share of luck.11

  Four weeks out from Calcutta, already well south of the equator on the eastern fringe of the Indian Ocean, yet still more than a thousand kilometres from the west coast of Australia, Hamilton encountered the first of several setbacks. A ‘severe’ south-easterly gale and a ‘tremendous sea’ saw the ship ‘labour so much as to make water at the rate of six Inches per hour’. For the next four days, leaking from the starboard bow, the ship struggled under its storm sails against the sea’s fury. Forced to use both pumps to remove the water that he could hear pouring in yet was unable to reach because the leak was behind a large ‘timber’, Hamilton tried in vain to stem the water’s flow. ‘Strong gales and heavy seas’ continued to batter the Sydney Cove until 30 December. When they finally eased, he attempted to use the sail he had prepared for ‘fothering the ship’. This desperate measure involved stuffing the hole with a sail sewn together with other materials, then positioning it with great difficulty over the starboard bow and hoping that the water pressure would then force the sail into the hole and if not stop the leak, at least moderate it to a manageable level. Somehow, they succeeded in getting this makeshift cork into position but that same night, it was ‘torn to pieces by the heavy pitching of the ship’. Still ‘making six inches of water per hour’ the crew managed to drag the remains of the sail back on board. Two weeks later, on 16 January 1797, Hamilton finally succeeded in plugging the hole, ‘which reduced the leak to four inches of water per hour’. By this time many of the Lascars were already close to exhaustion.

  The Sydney Cove rounded the south-west coast of Australia on 25 January and met ‘a perfect hurricane’ from the south-west. Taken by surprise, Hamilton immediately ‘handed the top sails in’. Leisham was the unlucky man chosen for the task. In a raging storm, while four others assisted him on the yard, he climbed up the rigging and out along the yardarm with his feet on the ratlines and his body bent over the timber yard as he tried to pull up the sail and bunch it against the yardarm. His job was to tie the sail off, thereby reducing the area exposed to wind and decreasing the sail’s propensity to heel the ship over and cause it to broach. As the ship rolled and pitched in the gale, the motion was magnified several times over for Leisham high above. His hands numb from the freezing wind, his eyes barely focusing in the dark, he struggled with the stiff canvas sail, which was wet, heavy and flapping violently. In one terrifying moment, as the Sydney Cove plummeted yet again in the huge seas, Leisham lost his grip and fell from the ‘Main Top Sail Yard Arm’. Hamilton was so preoccupied with saving the ship that he was unable to rescue him. Leisham drowned within minutes.

  Still, the tempest showed no sign of abating. With the sea ‘running dreadfully high’, the topsail ‘in rags’, and the ‘mizzen top sail’ and driver ‘blown to pieces’, the leak continued to worsen. Hamilton ordered the Lascars to man the pumps on deck but they had reached the limits of their exertion. ‘The weather was intensely cold with hard rain which so frightened the Lascars that they absolutely refused to touch the pumps’. Hamilton tried to convince them of the urgency of the situation to no avail. He resorted to ‘force’ but still they refused. He could see that they were ‘benumbed and frightened’. So he ordered all but the sick on deck and ‘secured the hatches’. There was now over a metre of water in the pump well and Hamilton was forced to compromise. He insisted they bail the water out directly from the well below, which at least meant they were sheltered from the worst of the weather. They agreed and with ‘much good will’, bailed throughout the night, managing to keep the water level below the point of no return. The next morning, the ‘gale still blowing with the utmost fury’, the ship was under intense strain. Hamilton was forced to keep all hands bailing and pumping into the second night. But within the space of the next five hours, he lost five of his crew. In their ‘sick and weakly state’, battered by the ‘severity of the weather’, they had ‘drop’t down Dead at the Pumps’. With no time for formalities, their bodies were thrown overboard. The gale subsided the following morning just in time to allow Hamilton to get ‘a new Fore Sail Bent’ and put the ship ‘in a little better order’. He sailed on, the westerly winds pushing him along the bight towards Tasmania. Yet after all they had endured, their final ordeal was still to come.
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  On 27 January, Hamilton succeeded in placing a new ‘piece of canvas over the starboard bow where the leak was’ but still the water came in at the rate of ‘eight inches per hour’ with a ‘constant heavy sea running’ until the Sydney Cove ‘rounded Van Diemen’s Land’ five days later. By 4 February, they had passed Maria Island, which had been marked on Tobias Furneaux’s chart of Tasmania’s east coast during Cook’s second journey in 1773. These waters could be treacherous in normal conditions, let alone in gale-force winds with a leaking ship manned by an ailing crew. After sailing under great difficulty for thousands of kilometres, Hamilton was now only a few hundred kilometres from his destination. But at 3 p.m. on 8 February, approximately one hundred and fifty kilometres east of Cape Barren Island, tossed again in heavy seas, the ship sprang such a serious leak that Hamilton, after consulting his carpenter and his chief mate, Thompson, was left with only one alternative. Their pumps could not keep pace with the inrushing water. If they were to ‘save the lives of the crew’ then he had to ‘bear up for the Land’ and manoeuvre the ship into a sheltered position before he could have any hope of fixing the leak.

  Forty kilometres to the west of Cape Barren Island, with all men, both ‘sick and well’, either ‘employed at the pumps or bailing’, Thompson urged Hamilton to throw their bags of sugar and heavy bales and boxes overboard, but the water continued to pour in at such a rate that by 8 p.m. there was over one and a half metres of water in the well. Pushed in by roaring south-easterlies, the ship was foundering fast. At midnight the water had reached the ‘lower deck hatches’ and Hamilton finally sighted land at ‘two miles distance’. In the darkness, he could make out the ‘high perpendicular rocks’ with the ‘heavy surf breaking upon them’. To avoid ‘instant destruction’ he hove the ship to until morning, re-positioning the sails as the ship performed yet another lumbering dance until it finally ceased sailing, further stressing the hull and making the leak even worse. By daybreak the Sydney Cove was lying on its side. Spotting ‘an opening in the land’, Hamilton did his best to bring her ‘head around’ and made all the sail he could towards a ‘small island’ but the ship would hardly respond because she was almost completely waterlogged. The horses in between decks were up to their knees in water. Aware the ship was about to go down, Hamilton sent the longboat on shore with rice, ammunition and firearms. Only a matter of minutes after the longboat left, the ship struck a sandbar in 6 metres of water. As soon as the longboat returned he landed the sickly part of the crew while others followed the next day. The Sydney Cove had reached its final resting place nearly five hundred nautical miles from Sydney. Hamilton, Clark, Thompson and their exhausted crew found themselves standing on the uninhabited, isolated patch of earth that would later be named in memory of their experience—Preservation Island—the damaged longboat or a passing ship their only hope of salvation.12

  On the morning of 9 February 1797, Hamilton and Clark surveyed the scene. They had passed through a narrow channel and were stranded on the edge of the Furneaux Archipelago. The east coast of Tasmania was less than forty kilometres away. Standing on a small beach on the southern side of Preservation Island and looking out on the jagged peaks of the nearby islands, they could have been forgiven for thinking that by some miracle they had landed on the west coast of Scotland. The landscape was strangely reminiscent of their homeland. Every piece of land was prey to the sea; there was a fierce, untamed majesty in these islands that demanded respect. Yet before they had time to even contemplate their surroundings there were more pressing matters to attend to. Hamilton noted that ‘not a drop’ of water could be ‘got from the wreck’ and they had only torn sails from which to erect makeshift tents. Many members of the crew were so exhausted they were unable to move. The ship was a few hundred metres offshore, slowly sinking into its watery grave, and Hamilton had only a short time to salvage what he could from the wreck. After combing the island in search of water, he eventually dug a well of 2 metres depth and found brackish water that ‘answered the purpose’. He then landed the horses and stock and led them to the water. Many years later, some historians would make much of the fact that these animals were ‘the first cow and the first horse to be brought ashore in Van Diemen’s Land’.13

  The next morning, Hamilton sent all his able hands, hungry and tired, their clothes still damp, to retrieve and dry the ‘wet rice out of the wreck’ while others erected tents and brought back whatever cargo they managed to drag in from the ship. In the maelstrom of the wreck the longboat had been severely damaged. Hamilton knew that he had only a few months before ‘the winter set in’ and given the weak state of so many of the survivors, they would surely perish in such exposed conditions. He had to repair the longboat quickly, send it to Sydney, request assistance and ‘save the crew and cargo’. For the next two weeks, ‘the carpenter and a gang of hands’ attempted to raise a ‘strake’ on the longboat—adding another piece of timber so as to raise the hull’s sides in preparation for the arduous voyage ahead—while ‘all the others who could work’ hoisted ‘spirit casks out of the ship’. As supercargo, Clark was determined to assist Hamilton in retrieving as much of the ship’s merchandise as possible. No effort was spared. As the spirits and wines were hauled ashore, many of the crew found the temptation too great, breaking open the barrels and indulging in drunken reveries that Hamilton found ‘very improper’. The warmth of the alcohol at least deadened their cold and pain and allowed them to momentarily forget the dire situation they were in. But Hamilton could see his precious cargo being drunk before it reached the auction room floor. He commanded that the wine and spirits be ‘saved to a small adjacent island’ which could only be reached by boat except during very low tides when the reef that linked the two islands was almost dry. There were now two island prisons: one for the survivors of the wreck and one for the rum. When I walked the northern shoreline of ‘Rum Island’ in 2013, it was still possible to find the rusted iron castings from the Sydney Cove’s rum barrels lying in the sand.

  One of the most difficult transitions for Hamilton was to ensure the transfer of his command from the sea to land. No longer bound by the rituals and constraints of the ship’s world, the hierarchy that existed at sea was much harder to maintain on the island. Although he probably rang the bells each morning, marked each day off the calendar and held a meeting to allot the tasks for the day ahead, he could not monitor his crew’s every move as he could at sea. At the same time, while it was his duty to protect his cargo, he also had to be careful not to exacerbate the emotional and physical distress of the survivors. Well-liked and respected by nearly all who recorded their impressions of him, Hamilton appeared to be the ideal person for the challenge that lay ahead of him. Despite the hellish 3-month voyage of the Sydney Cove, he had lost only a handful of men. It was a remarkable feat of seamanship to have got them this far. But this knowledge was tempered by their extreme isolation. By the end of their second week on the island, the survivors could see their ship offshore lying ‘much on one side’. The wreck was ‘almost covered very high’. Only at low tide was there any chance of retrieving any more cargo. The sight of their listing ship sinking slowly into the sand only reinforced their utter desolation.

  View from Rum Island, Preservation Island in mid-foreground, 2013

  The longboat was now their best hope of rescue. By Sunday 26 February, after two weeks’ work, the repairs were complete and the boat was in ‘good order’. Hamilton placed the vessel under the command of his chief mate, Hugh Thompson, assisted by William Clark. The Sydney Cove’s carpenter, seaman John Bennet, one other British seaman and twelve of the strongest Lascars made up the rest of the boat’s crew. A gathering was probably held that Sunday to pray for their safe passage to Sydney. They would sail the next day. Seventeen in all, they were crammed into a tiny vessel no bigger than a surfboat, equipped with oars and rigged with a single small sail. There was little room for much besides their essential gear and the meagre provisions they’d managed to procure from th
e wreck. The longboat was entirely exposed to the elements but they were well primed: they had already endured many days of exposure for the last two months. Knowing that they were sailing for Sydney and the ultimate hope of rescue steeled them for the journey ahead. Before they departed, Hamilton handed Thompson a letter he had written to Governor Hunter in Sydney, in which he explained their ordeal, informed him of their valuable cargo and asked for a merchant or government vessel to render him assistance and ‘get the crew to Port Jackson’. Clark carried a pencil and journal or ship’s manifest with him that contained an inventory of the ship’s cargo and would enable him to record their progress. He turned twenty-eight that day. That night, together with Hamilton and the others, Clark organised the final plans and agreed on particular courses of action depending on what happened. They were well aware how dangerous the voyage would be.