The adventures of the South AustralianThe adventures of the South Australian 

South Australian was launched as Marquess of Salisbury at Falmouth, England in 1819. Originally rigged as a ship, it was one of only a handful of three-masted vessels to enter service as a Falmouth packet, a unique class of vessel designed to carry mail between Great Britain and overseas ports within its far-flung empire. Its builder, owner and master, Thomas Baldock, was a former Royal Navy officer who served with distinction in North America during the War of 1812 and was invalided in 1816. Marquess of Salisbury was registered at Falmouth on 13 November 1820 and had an overall length of 87 ft., 2 ½ in. (26.6 m), breadth of 25 ft., 2 in. (7.7 m), and carrying capacity of 23575/94 tons O.M. (Old Measurement). According to the vessel’s first entry in Lloyd’s Register, its loaded draught was 13 ft. (4.0 m), and the hull was sheathed in copper. It was outfitted with two decks, and the height between them was 6 ft. (1.8 m).

In 1821, Marquess of Salisbury embarked upon the first of three transatlantic voyages, departing Falmouth for Halifax, Nova Scotia on 20 April. It returned to Falmouth four months later, after stops in New York and Bermuda. These same ports-of-call were visited again towards the end of 1822. The vessel’s final trans-oceanic run as a civilian packet commenced in November 1823, this time under acting command of Lt. Robert Bradley Roe. Following multiple transits during which it again delivered mail to Halifax, New York and Bermuda, Marquess of Salisbury returned to Falmouth on 12 March 1824.

Shortly thereafter, the vessel was purchased by the Royal Navy, renamed Her Majesty’s Packet (HMP) Swallow, and commissioned in the Admiralty Packet Service. The vessel was armed with six guns, and although the type and calibre are not specified in archival sources, they were most likely carronades. Swallow was also identified as a ‘brig’, although it retained three masts and was alternately rigged as a barque or a ship while in naval service. The terms ‘brig’ and ‘packet brig’ were both used by the Royal Navy to describe packets, with the latter generally referring to three-masted vessels with barque rigs.

The Admiralty took control of the Falmouth Packet Service from the General Post Office in April 1823 to keep surplus naval vessels and crew employed and ‘ready for active service in the future’ following the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Under the new regime, existing agreements between Falmouth packet captains and the Post Office were transferred to the Navy Board, and naval packets gradually replaced privately-owned vessels as each contract expired. However, the replacements were often armed brigs and sloops that were repurposed as packets, and ill-suited to the role. The fact Marquess of Salisbury was accepted into the Admiralty Packet Service rather than replaced suggests its design, construction and sailing qualities met—or exceeded—the Royal Navy’s expectations.

Baldock was reappointed a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy in September 1824 and put in command of his former ship shortly thereafter. On 14 September 1825, Swallow departed Falmouth on the first of seven transatlantic voyages to North and Central America and the Caribbean as a naval packet. The vessel’s hull had recently been re-clad in copper sheathing and outfitted with two Proved Iron Cables. Baldock commanded the vessel on four voyages that included stops in Bermuda, New York, and Halifax. In 1829, Swallow commenced operating between Falmouth and South America, with additional stops in Mexico, Cuba, and British possessions in the Caribbean.

Baldock departed Swallow in 1832 and was replaced by Lt. Smyth Griffith. Griffith’s inaugural voyage as commander was to South America in late 1832, followed by another to Halifax during the latter half of 1833. Between the two voyages, Swallow underwent repair and refit at Devonport and was back in Falmouth by the end of April 1833. The vessel was then assigned to the North America and West Indies Station at the beginning of 1834 and made a round-trip voyage between Falmouth and Halifax between April and June.

It was during the latter half of 1834 that Swallow nearly met its end. Having taken aboard a consignment of specie worth $800,000 in Veracruz, Mexico, the vessel departed on 11 September for Tampico. It returned to Veracruz and was bound for Havana and then Falmouth when it encountered what was alternately described as a ‘terrific gale’ or ‘very severe hurricane’ on 16 October about ‘six leagues’ (33 km) north of Veracruz. The tempest put Swallow on its beam ends, and Griffith ordered the fore and mizzen masts cut away and all guns thrown overboard to prevent it from capsizing. Able Seaman Henry Elgan died during the storm and—incredibly—was buried at sea during a brief lull in the weather. After the storm subsided, the crew rigged jury masts and sailed the crippled vessel to Havana so its hull could be repaired at the naval shipyard there and ‘properly righted’. Swallow finally arrived back in Falmouth on 15 January 1835.

Only two months later, Swallow was again bound for the Caribbean. It returned to Falmouth in May 1835 and departed for South America on 10 July. While in Rio de Janeiro, the vessel’s hull was re-caulked between 11 and 19 September by crewmen from the South America Station’s flagship HMS Dublin. It then took aboard one passenger, four prisoners, and a consignment of ‘treasure’ with a combined value of £8,756 before departing for England at the beginning of October. This would prove to be Swallow’s final voyage as a naval packet; following its return to Falmouth at the end of 1835, the vessel was placed in ordinary at Plymouth and paid off on 14 January 1836. It was reportedly still in commission on 1 February but no longer classed as a packet. Years of transoceanic voyaging had undoubtedly taken a toll on Swallow’s nearly two-decade-old hull, and the Royal Navy’s investment in a new fleet of purpose-built packet brigs meant its days as a naval asset were numbered.

On 1 September 1836, Swallow was put up for sale at Plymouth by order of the Admiralty. Seven days later, it sold for £1,000 to Edmund John Wheeler, the manager of the South Australian Company, a British mercantile enterprise developed in 1835 with the purpose of establishing a colony of free European settlers in what is now South Australia. Swallow was sold with the proviso that the hull ‘be broken up, and all articles marked with the broad arrow…returned to Dock-yard and paid for according to a certain scale’. However, this condition was negotiated and ultimately cancelled, and ownership officially transferred to the South Australian Company on 20 October 1836.

After the South Australian Company acquired Swallow, it was refitted and renamed South Australian. The hull underwent some repairs and was clad in felt and a new layer of copper sheathing. Although ‘admirably fitted…for the conveyance of passengers’ to Australia, the South Australian Company’s ultimate intention was to send the vessel to the British Southern Whale Fishery in the South Pacific Ocean upon its arrival in the colony. South Australian departed Plymouth on 22 December 1836 under the command of Alexander Allen, with a contingent of 70 British and German emigrants, including David McLaren (the South Australian Company’s second Commercial Manager) and Henry Richard Mildred (Superintendent of the colony’s first shipyard). Skilled labourers were included among the passengers and at least three of South Australian’s crew were listed as ‘harpooners’ to remain with the vessel once the passengers were discharged and its whaling activities commenced.

Following a largely uneventful voyage, South Australian arrived at Kangaroo Island’s Nepean Bay on 23 April 1837. The passengers and cargo were discharged, after which the hold was cleaned, and the vessel prepared for whaling. On the morning of 23 May, South Australian departed Kangaroo Island for Rosetta Harbor, where it would serve as a cutting-in vessel for the South Australian Company’s shore-based whaling station. The crew ‘fired a gun’ to mark the vessel’s departure, which suggests it was armed with a complement of artillery, or at the very least outfitted with a signal gun.

Twelve hours after its departure from Kangaroo Island, South Australian arrived at Encounter Bay. The barque’s two bower anchors were deployed, and a hawser was bent on the kedge, which was placed astern. The following day was spent mooring the ship and attending to its sails. Although first mate John Anthony disembarked from South Australian at Nepean Bay, most other hands and several passengers stayed on to work at the whale fishery. Fourteen of South Australian’s crewmen worked as whalers and were joined by two passengers. Alexander Allen died of a ‘severe and protracted illness’ four months later, and command of South Australian passed to John Boyd Thorburn MacFarlane, a headsman at the South Australian Company Fishery.

On 25 May, several activities were undertaken in preparation for whaling, including discharging tryworks bricks and grinding harpoons. Preparations made to the whale boats may have included checking the caulking in their hull planking, and certainly would have required stocking them with harpoons, neatly coiled ropes, lances, buckets for bailing, and anchors. South Australian’s topgallant masts and yards were sent down, and the fore and mizzen topmasts were struck. Cutting blocks and falls were also fitted to the vessel’s mainmast, readying it for its role as a cutting-in platform during the whaling season.

Cutting-in, or flensing, was the process of removing blubber from whales, and in 1837 South Australian was used exclusively for this purpose. Dead whales were brought alongside the vessel, and the crew used blubber spades to cut four-foot (1.2-m) wide strips of blubber, called blanket pieces, from the carcass. A rope attached to tackle on the main yard was used to pull the blubber on deck as the whalers cut it free. For each large strip cut away, the carcass turned a full revolution. The oil-rich tongue and a thick piece of blubber from the underside of the whale’s jaws were removed, and finally baleen was cut from the gums.

South Australian was part of a network of interrelated localities within the maritime extractive landscape of Encounter Bay. Blanket pieces were towed to a blubber room onshore where they were cut into smaller ‘horse pieces’ and sliced with a mincing knife to help release the oil from the fat. The minced blubber was rendered in the tryworks, a small brick furnace with large cast iron trypots, built on the foreshore. There were two trypots at the South Australian Company Fishery, one of which was unloaded from South Australian. Blanket pieces were difficult to handle on land and became coated in sand, which contaminated the oil. Consequently, from 21 July 1837 additional processing was carried out aboard South Australian in which blubber was cut into smaller horse pieces before delivery to shore for rendering. During the four months it was stationed at Encounter Bay, South Australian’s crew removed the blubber from 24 whales.

In the early morning hours of 8 December 1837, South Australian was struck by a strong southeasterly gale while moored in the southwest corner of Encounter Bay near Rosetta Head. The barque was in the final stages of preparation for departure to Kangaroo Island and then on to Hobart, and riding on its two bower anchors, which were outfitted with Proved Iron Cables. The chain attached to the starboard bower anchor parted shortly after 5 A.M., and the crew used one of the boats to deploy the stream anchor to ‘prevent the ship from swing[ing] on [nearby] shoals’. To reduce top hamper, MacFarlane ordered the yards, topmasts and topgallant masts lowered to the deck. Despite these measures, South Australian ‘labour[ed] and pitch[ed] very heavy’ and dragged anchor as the storm’s intensity increased over the course of the day. At 5:30 P.M., the vessel struck Black Reef—a line of rocks that bisects Encounter Bay from northeast to southwest—which caused the hawser attached to the stream to break. The remaining chain to the starboard bower was bent on to the port bower cable and veered out to keep the vessel’s bow pointed seaward as it bounced over the reef.

Crippled but still afloat, South Australian was driven into calmer waters in the lee of Black Reef. Shortly thereafter, the port anchor cable parted, and the vessel drifted towards shore. It briefly turned ‘broadside on for a few minutes’ before grounding in shallows in front of the Fountain Inn, one of the few permanent structures then standing along Rosetta Harbor’s shoreline. The stern struck first, with enough force that it ‘unshipped the rudder and carried away the pintles and gudgeons’. Three prominent passengers, David McLaren, John Hindmarsh, Jr. (son of South Australia’s first Governor Sir John Hindmarsh) and Sir John Jeffcott (the first judge appointed to South Australia’s Supreme Court), were aboard South Australian when it wrecked. Once the vessel went hard aground, a boat was lowered and the passengers and their luggage were ferried ashore, followed by the crew. By 8:30 P.M., South Australian had heeled over on its port beam ends and was driven ‘farther up on shore’ as the night wore on. The logbook notes the wreck was extensively salvaged over subsequent weeks, but also that the lower hold was flooded, and the crew encountered ‘great difficulty’ recovering casks of provisions and other articles stowed there.

Following the crew’s salvage activities in December 1837, South Australian’s wrecked hull was condemned and ultimately abandoned. What remained of the vessel was still visible above the water’s surface for a few years, as evidenced by its appearance in a watercolour painted by artist E.C. Frome when he visited Rosetta Harbor in 1841. Although no supporting evidence is known to exist in historical sources, there is little doubt the wreck was targeted for opportunistic salvage and scavenging by the crews of nearby whaling stations, as well as local Aboriginal people and the earliest inhabitants of Yilki, the area’s first permanent European settlement.

By the 1850s, South Australian had completely disappeared from view, as it does not appear on hydrographic charts of Encounter Bay produced from the mid-19th century onwards. However, anecdotal evidence indicates the wreck’s location was long known to local fishers. This suggests at least some structure intermittently protruded above the seafloor and created a suitable habitat for marine life. These periods of exposure alternated with burial episodes, as hull elements were visible as recently as the 1940s but completely covered until shortly before the site’s eventual discovery.