The multi-reported 100th anniversary of the Titanic tragedy has sparked a revived recall of maritime disasters, including those on Tasmania’s shores (and they have been many). But there have been others that happened far away and had an impact on Tasmania’s early development, yet they seem to have been overlooked in the wake of the Titanic attention.
Such a tragedy was the loss of a former famous clipper ship, the Northfleet, in the English Channel late in January of 1873. Of the 379 people who were onboard 320 drowned – and most of them were bound for Tasmania, as was much of the cargo that went down with the ship. The significance is that it was carrying railway material – the Northfleet was on charter taking railway lines and men, their wives and children to Hobart for railway construction and to settle as migrants (the assisted migrant numbers were 248 men, 42 women and 52 children). The ship was heavily laden with 340 tons of iron rails and 240 tons of other equipment for the railway.
The Northfleet had been built in 1853 as one of the fast clipper ships for the China trade and had set records, sailing from Woolwich in England to Hong Kong in 88 days in 1857, and just a half day longer on its next voyage out. But with the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 and the development of steamships it was the beginning of the end for the magnificent ships of the sail era. They carried on, though with mixed fortunes.
It was on the voyage to Hobart that the Northfleet (named after a Kent town) left from Gravesend on January 13, 1873, only to run into foul weather that forced the captain to eventually anchor several miles off Dungeness, and it was here that tragedy struck on the night of January 22, for the Northfleet was rammed by a Spanish steamer, the Murillo, which then fled the scene (reports were that despite the Northfleet’s earlier enforced anchoring because of the bad weather on that fatal night the sky was clear and the ship’s lights were brightly burning).
The Northfleet’s captain, Edward Knowles, had to fight to keep back the passengers in the panic that followed and try to save the women and children. But the Northfleet had been badly damaged – hit amidships and down to the waterline – and sank within an hour, with Captain Knowles among those drowned. His wife and one migrant were the only women to survive and just two of the children.
The Murillo was eventually arrested, off Dover, although this was eight months later. A Court of Admiralty hearing severely censured the crew and ordered the ship to be sold.
