Four days later, an alarming headline would greet readers of the late morning edition of The Argus newspaper: ‘Terrible State of Affairs on board an Emigrant Ship at the Port Phillip Heads!’
Their attention well and truly grabbed, groups of people going about their business stood still alone or in huddles along busy Bourke and Elizabeth Streets, holding open the large sheets of newspaper, close by the paper boys and newspaper stands where they had just been bought and, with growing alarm, read on:
Intelligence was brought to Williamstown, on Wednesday evening last, by Captain Wylie, of the brig Champion, from Adelaide, that a large ship named TICONDEROGA, ninety days out from Liverpool, with upwards of 900 Government emigrants on board, had anchored at the Heads. A great amount of sickness had occurred amongst the passengers, more than a hundred deaths having taken place, and almost a similar number of cases (Typhus fever) being still on board. Nor was this all. The doctor’s health was so precarious that he was not expected to survive, and the whole of the medicine, medical comforts, etc., had been consumed …
Passers-by, or those who could not afford the thruppence for their own copy, paused and shuffled close to hear the words spoken aloud by readers who found themselves with an instant and captivated audience. In colonial Victoria, where the single artery to the outside world was the arrival of ships, any new emigrant vessel was worthy of attention. Who was on board? What news, fashions and innovations would soon be arriving from the place that, although on the far side of the globe, was the colony’s cultural and economic epicentre: Britain? Ships also brought other, less welcome things, however, and as they listened, one word stuck like a thorn, compelling people shake their heads and raise a protective hand to the throat. Typhus. Muttering quietly, the shock felt by some quickly hardened to a sense of anger. This, they said, had long been predicted.
* * * *
Having sighted the Otway light, Captain Boyle could momentarily relax. He had, after all, managed to steer his large ship, undamaged across the ferocious seas of one of the longest and most dangerous shipping routes in the world. Moreover, despite neither he nor any of his crew having ever sailed these waters before, he had managed it in 90 days, which—while not a record—was an excellent time nonetheless. As navigators, Boyle and his first mate had proved themselves to be exemplary, missing not a mark, and successfully negotiating by far the most dangerous part of the voyage: the final days before reaching Port Phillip. It was at this point that the dreaded ‘threading the needle’ needed to be negotiated, with the approach to Bass Strait requiring seamen to slip through the narrow gap between the north-west–south-east running line of the Victorian coast and the rocky northern tip of King Island, Cape Wickham out in Bass Strait. After emerging from the whiplashing of the frigid Southern Ocean, this was no easy feat.
As Boyle, and every other seaman afloat, would have been all too aware, the coastlines of both places—Victoria and King Island—were strewn with the remains of both ships and lives. Seven years earlier (as he would have been reminded during many meetings held leaning over charts, protractor and compass in hand, with the representatives of the Board), the emigrant vessel Cataraqui, a large barque, had slammed into a rock shelf on King Island’s south-west shore, her skipper having erred tragically in estimating his position, convinced himself that he was actually much further to the north. Over three ghastly days, in a fierce storm, the ship was torn to pieces by the breakers, and though just metres from shore, no more than a pitiful four survivors remained alive from a passenger and crew list numbering 500 souls. The Cataraqui was, and remains still, Australia’s worst peacetime maritime disaster. Amazingly, a lighthouse at Cape Wickham was not built and activated until 1861.
Any glow of self-congratulation was short-lived, however, as Captain Boyle was brought back to reality by the sobs of the grieving and the wailings of the demented among his poor afflicted passengers and crew. As much as he would like to believe otherwise, his ordeal was far from over.
Staying on deck for the rest of the night to navigate the remaining 70 or so nautical miles to the entrance of Port Phillip Bay, Captain Boyle took the Ticonderoga north-east into a stiff spring breeze. After a few hours, almost in front of him, the first signs of his first day in Australia became visible on the eastern horizon.
Being completely unfamiliar with Australian landscapes, he took in the rich dark olive of the foliage, the undulating hills and the sweeping beaches of the Victorian coastline as it became slowly visible with the dawn—not unlike, he thought, some parts of America, with which he was far more familiar.
A new stirring began to be heard among the passengers. Finally, after weeks of the most terrible turmoil, of praying constantly for this nightmare voyage to be over, all sensed that they were finally nearing its end. Those in good health came onto the upper deck, braving the chilly wind to take in for themselves the first sights of their new country, no longer confined to the imagination but now real, there in front of them.
People who had lived and worked on farms all their lives came on deck and gripped the handrail. It was lush land, they thought to themselves, green and fertile. After what they had been through, this at least they needed to believe.
On a clear and bright early morning, after a journey of nearly 13,000 miles, the Ticonderoga arrived outside the entrance to Port Phillip Bay. Negotiating the formidable Heads was not a task to be taken lightly, particularly for those unaccustomed to its tricks and peculiarities. Beyond its entrance stretched a vast, almost entirely landlocked, inland bay measuring nearly 800 square miles. But first, the infamously treacherous passage between its two guarding promontories, known appropriately to sailors everywhere as ‘the Rip’, needed to be navigated. Although 2 miles of water separated the Heads—Point Lonsdale on the west and Point Nepean on the east—the intervening Rip was riven by a chaotic pattern of reefs reaching out from both points, reducing the true navigable distance to a gap little more than half a mile wide. A mistake made here would not be forgiven. So treacherous was the Rip, in fact, that even the government pilot vessels were reluctant to traverse it to bring vessels in. That risk, in most cases, would have to be undertaken by the captains themselves. According to his Notes to Mariners, Boyle was required to make his own way through the Rip to a small outcrop on the western arm near the fishing village of Queenscliff named Shortland’s Bluff. Once here, he was to signal for a pilot to guide him through the fairways to the shipping channel and eventually up to the port of Melbourne, Port Phillip itself. With the sandy floor of the bay at an average depth of only 26 feet, this was not a course Boyle wanted to tackle unaided.
He would have appreciated that same help with tackling the Rip itself, where unpredictable waves, eddies and currents abounded. Then there were the tidal streams that ran through it at up to 6 knots, and vastly differentiating depths—between 5 and 100 metres—making for surges that had already trapped scores of vessels, such as the 500-ton Isabella Watson. Eight months previously, this passenger barque had come to grief, taking nine lives with her, executing exactly the manoeuvre that Boyle, in a much larger ship, was now about to attempt. He could clearly see the Isabella Watson’s broken carcass washed up on a tiny cove just inside Point Nepean, as if placed there as a warning of the dangers that confronted him.
Boyle had studied his Notice to Mariners for the approaches to Port Phillip. Likewise he recalled the warnings to take particular care with the Rip. Slack water between the surge of the tides, he had been advised, would be the safest time to make his approach, but even then a sudden squall or current from below could drag a ship onto a reef or into the infamous natural feature of Corsair Rock, which lay guarding the Rip’s entrance like a sentinel.
Until deemed safe, it was customary for ships to pause outside the Rip, sailing back and forth under half-sail several miles out into Bass Strait, awaiting the most opportune moment to enter, then picking up the pilot to Melbourne. Captain Boyle, however, did not have time on his side. With his passengers dying like flies and 300 suffering various degrees of illness, his priority had to be delivering them to better care, and quickly.
A mate then announced that one of the sailors had in fact sailed to Melbourne several times previously—albeit not recently. Conditions were not ideal, but the water looked calm, a breeze was blowing in his favour and so Boyle decided to make the attempt. Even approaching the entrance from the ocean side was dangerous, as jutting nearly a kilometre into Bass Strait was the Rip Bank, another obstacle that needed to be avoided. A brief conference took place on the upper deck, with charts and notes consulted once again. Standing by the captain and behind the helmsman stood the unnamed seaman who, several years before, had likewise attempted the passage, the weight on his shoulders now feeling much heavier than he would have liked. Boyle looked up and ordered more sail. When all was ready, he then gave the command to bring the Ticonderoga about, and with men placed fore and aft giving soundings, in the great ship went.
Even in calm weather such as this, Boyle felt the surge of eddies tugging at the ship as it negotiated the bottleneck. Around him was a true patchwork of ocean temperaments: white water here, a smooth glassy upsurge from deep below there. Shadows flitted by as she glided over alternating patches of dark reef and pale sand. Boyle quickly appreciated the reputation of this torrid piece of water among sailors the world over. Running before the wind, the shore now began to move past. A line of little white stone cottages became visible, the first signs of habitation of this new land.
Then the soundings indicated more water beneath them and the sea settled to its dark bluey grey. They were past the Heads and through the Rip of Port Phillip Bay. Rounds of ‘Well done! Well done!’ made their way along the upper deck from the captain and first mate. Boyle trimmed the yards as the Ticonderoga’s bow edged towards the low hump of Shortland’s Bluff. Then came the order that every soul on board had, for 90 agonising days, longed to hear, ‘Come to anchor!’
‘Ay, Cap’n,’ came the response, and the magnificent clanking of the great anchor chain, finally released, reverberated throughout the ship. Finding a sound bottom, the Ticonderoga swayed for a moment, then rode at her anchor, still.
* * * *
Henry Draper had been part of the Port Phillip pilot service for less than a year, but his time thus far had been anything but uneventful. As first mate of the barque Nelson, he had arrived in Melbourne from England in 1851, disembarked a load of privately paying passengers, and was preparing to load up for the return journey with a cargo of 2600 bales of wool and 9000 ounces of gold, which arrived under escort by steamer. After loading, his skipper, a Captain Wright, unwisely chose this moment to go ashore for a last carouse before their departure the next morning. Riding at anchor at Hobson’s Bay, Draper was awakened in his cabin during the night by sounds of scuffling on the deck. Emerging, he soon found himself surrounded by an armed gang who were preparing to liberate the ship’s store of gold. In the drama, a pistol was discharged at one of the mates, the ball missing him but grazing Draper’s hip. The bandits then locked the entire crew up and made off with the gold.
The ship’s cook, who had escaped attention by hiding under his bunk, released Draper, who then swiftly raised the alarm upon rowing ashore. The bandits were soon rounded up. Draper would have liked nothing better than to have simply left as planned the next morning, but as a witness to a robbery, he was now compelled to cool his heels for several weeks awaiting a trial. He was in the meantime feted as a minor hero, awarded a total of £170 for his troubles and visited by Port Phillip’s Chief Harbour Master, Charles Ferguson, who promptly offered him a job. ‘I received the request with astonishment,’ Draper later wrote, ‘as I considered my position far above that of a pilot’s.’ His pride quickly recovered, however, when told that his salary would be in the range of £100 per year.1
A year into the job, Draper was being kept busy at the pilot station at Shortland’s Bluff. The discovery of gold had seen a huge increase in shipping entering the bay, but his small group of pilots still had just two oared whale boats and a cutter at their disposal to guide as many as ten vessels a day both through the Rip and into the shipping lanes that cut their way through the shallow sandy banks up to the busy port of Melbourne. Early November was a particularly active time, and the records show that on the day the Ticonderoga came in, another nine ships also entered, many needing assistance. Few days of his career, however, would be as dramatic as this bright November morning when he answered the request of a large, dark emigrant ship lying at anchor off Shortland’s Bluff. She was, he could see, an unusually fine clipper, but as he approached her in his pilot’s cutter, he sensed all was not well. He could see people on deck, but they were few in number and appeared unsettled. Then, as he came within earshot, a series of desperate shouts could be heard, ‘Don’t come on board, pilot,’ he was told. ‘We are dying of fever!’
Standing off, Draper assessed the situation. The large ship could not remain where it was, but to come aboard to steer her into the lanes was apparently a risk. After examining her formidable sides, he directed his helmsman to come close. Making a perilous grab for one of the mizzen chains and shields on the side of the hull, built to take the great strain of the mizzen mast shrouds and stays, he hauled himself up. Avoiding setting foot on the deck, he continued scrambling up into the network of ropes, which took him eventually into the rigging from where he then looked down upon a scene of despair.
Under a tarpaulin lay a group of bodies. Passengers stood or lay around, their faces pale, red-eyed and exhausted beyond caring. The ship herself was unkempt, the deck a mess, the rigging around him untidy, the yards badly reefed, as if done by amateurs. Then there was the smell: a terrible, decomposing stench that rose up sickeningly into his nostrils. What on earth, he asked, had these people been through?
Captain Boyle appeared below him, explaining the terrible sickness that had broken out on the voyage, which had already taken a hundred of his passengers. More were bound to die, he said, and even more remained ill. The senior ship’s surgeon, too, was incapacitated, his medicines exhausted. Supplies of fresh food and water, as well as proper care, were desperately needed. ‘I was informed they had 1000 passengers and that they had lost 102 on the passage,’ Draper later recalled in a brief memoir, although his memory may have exaggerated the numbers slightly.2
In an instant, Draper knew that the Ticonderoga would not, for the foreseeable future, be going anywhere near Melbourne, and that it was of the utmost urgency that news of her arrival be sent to those in authority as quickly as possible. He explained to Captain Boyle that, given the grave situation on board, he could not permit her to proceed to Melbourne and that, regretfully, she would have to remain here until further instructions were received. On hearing this, a further wave of despair washed over the small group of passengers. Not wanting to stay on board a moment longer than necessary, Draper climbed back down towards his waiting cutter. ‘And Captain, Sir,’ he added solemnly as he departed, ‘I would advise you to hoist the Yellow Jack.’ Boyle said he understood, and thanked the pilot.
Returning to his cutter, Draper proceeded as quickly as possible back to the shore station to seek the advice of his colleagues. The Ticonderoga, meanwhile, would continue to lie at anchor, the situation on board deteriorating by the hour. Boyle called over his first mate and a brief but solemn conversation took place. The mate nodded, and proceeded immediately below to a storage locker containing the ship’s signal flags, rolled up neatly in their respective wooden pigeon holes. At the very bottom, the mate drew out the one flag no ship’s master ever wanted to give the order to fly, the dreaded ‘Yellow Jack’, a simple square of yellow signalling catastrophe. Returning to the deck, he instructed one of the crew to climb the mainmast and hoist it at its highest point. Now every passing vessel, as well as everyone on shore, would see that the mighty clipper Ticonderoga was a ship of disease, a plague ship, which should under no circumstances be approached.
With Sanger in the grip of the fever, it was now Dr Veitch, the young physician on his first sea voyage and the only fit surgeon on board, who would take on the mantle of his superior. For the time being, it was he Captain Boyle would consult on the daily updates of the passengers’ state. Sadly, however, Veitch could offer his captain no good news.
Since the ship’s arrival the previous day, death had continued to ravage the Ticonderoga. Helen Bowie, the only child of a young couple from Edinburgh, George and Helen Bowie, died on the first day of the month, making their arrival into the bay a melancholy affair. Two-year-old Jemima Grant, whose family had travelled from Inverness, at the other end of Scotland, was next. Nor was the new month’s tally confined to the very young.
With the death of her husband, John, twenty, Jane Sievwright was suddenly a widow. Janet Stevenson, 35 from Stirling, left her husband, Alexander, and their two daughters, Christina, seven, and Jane, four, to face their new world without a wife or a mother. Three or four deaths were now taking place each day, and with burials at sea forbidden inside the bay, the bodies could only be laid out on the deck under canvas. However, even more horrifying to Henry Draper than this macabre tableaux he had spied from his perch in the rigging was the apparent disinterest shown by the other passengers. It seemed to Draper that they were people pushed to a point beyond caring.
A desperate Dr Veitch remonstrated with Captain Boyle. Surely, he pleaded, they were not expected to simply sit there as a floating morgue while the fever took even more victims? But Boyle’s hands were tied. For the time being, there was nowhere for them to go, and no one to take them.
Henry Draper had in fact been doing all in his power to help. Soon after returning to his shore station, he reported to his colleagues what he had seen on board the Ticonderoga. None of them had faced a situation like it, and felt further instructions from Melbourne were urgently required as taking a ship in her wretched condition into Hobson’s Bay was out of the question. All agreed that the passengers needed to come ashore, but to where? Port Phillip was a full day’s sailing away. Draper again regarded the eerily still ship, which seemed to have taken on a more menacing appearance. As the small group of men spoke in urgent circles about the ship and her plight, Draper went to the window and with a spyglass surveyed a long low stretch of beach and scrub that stretched away a mile or so from the bay’s eastern head, Point Nepean. ‘There,’ he announced. ‘There is where she will go.’
* * * *
A short time later, by luck, the familiar sight of the 225-ton Champion, a coastal brig that regularly plied the southern coastal waters between the ports of Fremantle, Adelaide and Melbourne, came into view. Making one of her regular entrances into the bay, she was this day carrying six passengers and a load of general cargo.3 Her skipper, the well-known Captain Wylie, needed the help of no pilot to slip into the fairways and up the lanes to Melbourne. Upon spotting the small two-masted brig, Draper hailed him with a signal that he should prepare to be approached. A short time later, the pilot cutter came alongside the surprised Captain Wylie.
Indicating the big dark clipper anchored of Shortland’s Bluff behind him, Draper told Wylie what he had seen on board, just as the older man caught sight of the Yellow Jack fluttering from her topmast. One hundred already dead, said Draper to an increasingly shocked Wylie, with many more sick and no medical supplies. The harbour authorities must be informed, he continued, and help must be sent—urgently. Wylie did not need to be told twice. Putting on more sail, he set off and made his way north to Melbourne as quickly as possible.
The next morning, 3 November, Draper again approached the Ticonderoga and, by the same means he had employed the previous day, came aboard. Another night spent out on the water had not improved her situation. After requesting that the captain weigh anchor and put on some sail, Draper directed the helmsman to the other side of the bay, and into the small cove that had come to be known as Abraham’s Bosom, from where the two lime-burners, William Cannon and Patrick Sullivan, watched her stately but eerie approach.
In a decision the Governor of Victoria, Charles La Trobe, would later praise, Henry Draper took it upon himself to direct the Ticonderoga to an area of land that he understood to have only recently been set aside as a future quarantine station. There were as yet, he knew, few resources to be found there: only the two limestone cottages built by the lime-burners themselves, and one or two other small structures, but fresh water wells had been sunk, and a secure anchorage was to be had not far off the beach. From here, the sick could be evacuated and help could be delivered relatively easily. Getting those people off that ghastly ship, he had decided before approaching the Ticonderoga that morning, had to be the first priority. As he later recalled—indeed, with some pride—in his memoir:
I piloted her to the Quarantine Station at Point Nepean, let go the anchor, gave her 60 fathoms of chain, came down the rigging, and slipped back into my boat … by taking the precaution of going into the mizzen-top I could state to the Health Officer that I had not had any communication with the ill-fated people. Getting up into the mizzen-top was considered quite a masterpiece of ingenuity and forethought.4
Closer to the shore they may have been, but if the poor passengers on board the Ticonderoga had thought that their ordeal was nearing its end, they were sadly mistaken.