The tragedy of the Northfleet was just one of many maritime disasters that impacted on Australia during the era of the sailing ships. And in the context of the Northfleet there were other notable losses involving ships of the same type – three-masted, full-rigged ships known as the Blackwall Frigates, built at the Blackwall Yard on London’s River Thames (120 had been built when production ended in 1875).
Loss of the Northfleet was a blow for Tasmania, but there was an even bigger impact on Sydney in 1857 with another Blackwall ship wrecked – the Dunbar, still regarded as the worst peacetime disaster in New South Wales. After an 81-day voyage from England the Dunbar arrived off the Sydney Heads on the night of August 20. The weather conditions were terrible, with heavy rain and a strong gale lashing the ship, the seas rough. The rain obscured the cliffs and the Dunbar smashed into them.
There was just one survivor of the 122 people on board, a crewman, James Johnson, who managed to scramble up the cliffs but wasn’t discovered for two days.
Turn the clock back to four years earlier and Melbourne with the loss of a Blackwall, the Madagascar, its mysterious disappearance the stuff of legend. It vanished to become one of the great maritime mysteries of the 19th century and was said to have caused more speculation than any other, apart from the Mary Celeste.
It was in the days of the Victorian gold rush for the ship had sailed in with migrants eager to grab their share of the riches. After an uneventful voyage from England, the Madagascar arrived in Melbourne on June 10 – where 14 of the crew jumped ship to head for the diggings (and it is believed just three were signed on as replacements).
For the journey back, the Madagascar took on wool, rice and some two tonnes of gold (to the reported value of 240,000 pounds), plus 110 passengers for London. Many were heading home with their own gold wealth. The story then took an intriguing twist when police boarded the ship and arrested a bushranger, John Francis, just before the Madagascar was due to sail on August 10. Next day there were two more arrests at the ship and as a consequence it didn’t get away until August 12 – and was never seen again.
When it was overdue in London the theories began to surface: that there had been spontaneous combustion of the wool cargo, that the ship had hit an iceberg (shades of the Titanic!), and, more sinister, that some criminally-inclined among the passengers and/or the crew seized the ship, the gold, killed the remaining crew and passengers and scuttled the Madagascar.
Many stories about the unresolved fate of the Madagascar appeared over the years and it was reported in 2009 that a team of international researchers, after 15 years of painstaking study, said it had found the ship (but whatever happened subsequently to that development I haven’t traced, although it could be linked to the team’s plans to mark the 160th anniversary next year of the 1853 mystery).
Just as dramatic to Australia of the Northfleet, Dunbar and Madagascar losses so was the sinking of a further Blackwall ship to New Zealand. The Cospatrick was sailing from England to Auckland in 1874 when it caught fire far from land south-west of the Cape of Good Hope on November 17. Of the 429 migrant passengers and 44 crew only three people survived. Those who perished included 17 villagers from the Cotswolds town of Shipton. It was one of the worst shipping disasters to a merchant ship in the 19th century.
A lack of lifeboats and an inability to launch them successfully at sea caused public outrage, but it seems little was done about these shortcomings – until after the Titanic tragedy.
