Passengers slaved night and day to save leaky Australia

Press, 28 March 1981, Page 15

Passengers slaved night and day to save leaky Australia

By

C. F. AMODEO

Low freight rates, high insurance and running costs, the inevitable cry of "greedy owners” — these are some of the causes of shipping accidents. If a master sails in an unsound ship who is to blame: the owner or the local Customs official who allows the vessel to leave port? An episode from Canterbury’s maritime history was to pose such a question with the case of the 168-tonne brig Australia. Captain Hughes, Australian master and part-owiier of the Australia, sailed from Bluff Harbour on May 15, 1854, with 30 cabin and 170 steerage passengers. Five days later he beached his vessel on the sand in front of the old Bank of New Zealand building at Akaroa, after a voyage of sodden and hungry misery.

■ For safety measures the brig was equipped with one lifeboat and one bucket. The Captain’s log revealed that on the first day out the Australia was being pumped every two hours after leaving Bluff, with the comment •”no more water than usual.”

Akaroa residents were to learn how gangs of passengers had been detailed to bail out the ship with

12 extra buckets taken from their own luggage. The Court of Inquiry was to reveal that while the waterlogged brig was making in to Akaroa on the fifth day out from Bluff, 190 buckets an hour were passed through the main hatch by men working in more than a metre of water.

Misfortune had struck the Australia almost on leaving Bluff Harbour. The steam-tug Aphrasia had towed the brig away from the wharf, and then at 9 a.m. on the Sunday morning she collided with the Bombay Rock. Witnesses were to say later that she bumped several times, but the steward working in the cabin was not sufficiently disturbed to come on deck.

In working her off, the pilot had failed to notice that she had lain on one of the anchor flukes, and the wood being rotten, a 50mm hole was punched in. Off Cape Franklin, Captain Hughes noticed the water rising in the ballast. When both pumps began choking he tried to run for Port Chalmers. The ballast began to shift and he was unable to wear the brig around to make the bar at the entrance to the Otago Heads. As

he began to run into a heavy sea, with, file ballast shifting on every tack, he decided to head for Banks Peninsula, under doublereefed topsails and in a strong gale. Down in the hold, with their baggage covered in bilge muck, the steerage passengers showed a team spirit which was to save their lives. They began bailing on the Wednesday morning, aided in their half-hour shifts with occasional tots of grog, and stopped only when the brig finally beached four days later. The cabin passengers, paying first-class fares, took matters more easily, and the Second Mate at one stage had to roust one man out of the cabin for refusing to do his share of the work. James Taylor, in an irate letter to “The Press,” revealed the plight of the poorer passengers and challenged the captain to contradict him publicly. He had, he wrote, helped to ballast the ship on May 10 and the vessel had to be pumped night and morning to keep it dry. From the Wednesday morning there had been no

cooked food, shelter, or dry clothing as the berths in the hold had been broken down by the water.

It was an angry group of passengers who filled the Akaroa hotels and overflowed into the Oddfellows Hall. Seventy, who had demanded the return of part of their passage money, had to refer their claim to the Resident Magistrate, John Watson. The captain had denied all responsibility and later claimed that thev had left the ship voluntarily and could therefore expect nothing from him. They countered that they had been forced to leave in order to find food and shelter.

They further claimed that the captain, yielding to their demands to hoist a distress flag, had not stood towards a steamer coming to their aid for fear that without any passengers to continue bailing, the Australia would have sunk in deep water.

The case of the Australia's passengers was to have further repercussions. The Provincial Solicitor had advised that the Provincial Government was under no obligation to aid the distressed passengers. The Akaroa officials could do no more than provide some rations. “The Press” commented on the inhumanity of their Provincial Government in no uncertain terms.

Mrs Watson, wife of the Resident Magistrate, began a public subscription to which Captain Hughes reluctantly contributed twenty pounds, and the schooner Undine was chartered to take some of the passengers on the next stage of their journey to the Marlborough goldfields. The question of responsibility was to prove a thorny one. The Magistrate's refusal to hear the passengers’ claim against Captain Hughes, on the grounds of having insufficient jurisdiction, prompted “The Press” again to support the passengers’ cause with an outspoken criticism of the Summary Jurisdiction Ordinance whic’ prevented the Magistrate from deal-

ing with cases of more than 100 pounds. Yet the Amendment to the 1855 Passengers Act, in operation since October, 1863, had stated that shipwrecked passengers should be lodged and maintained on board in the “same manner as if they were at sea,” or paid “one shilling and sixpence a day for each statute adult” as subsistence money. Passengers were also entitled" to recover from the master or owner their passage money if alternative transport could not be provided. Perhaps it was the definition of the word “passengers.” The Australia was no overseas immigrant ship; simply a means of transport for miners hoping to make their fortunes at Canvastown. Did the Provincial. Councillors argue that their ailing provincial finances were not to be used for mere transients?

Perhaps Watson, the Akaroa magistrate, realised that Captain

Hughes, as a one-man operation, was unable to meet the passengers’ demands, and thought to dismiss the case. He had applied the law by fining the captain for failing to provide adequate lifesaving devices and he was, some days later, to fine the captain a further twenty pounds for allowing the mate to attempt to remove the Australia to deep wafer to pick up an anchor previously unshipped. Some said that Captain Hughes had been punished for trying to slip away without paying his debts.

Both the Lyttelton “Times” and “The Press” took the Southland customs officers to task for allowing the Australia to sail in such unseaworthy condition. Comments were made about the gross overloading of a small brig with more than 200 passengers and crew. Finally, the Australia sailed from Akaroa, repaired and probably seaworthy. Captain Hughes

would have made little profit from this voyage. He had agreed finally to carry the remaining passengers to Picton and refund them one pound a head.

The Australia’s repair bill cannot have been cheap either, as the passengers’ quarters had been badly knocked about and the ship’s sand ballast had got into everything below decks. New provisions were required and the brig had to be supplied with adequate life-saving equipment. ,

The end of the affair was welcomed; the whole thing had been an embarrassment to various officials. The Australia did not return to Canterbury waters for quite a time as Hughes found cargo freighting better than carrying passengers and was seen more along the West Coast goldfields. As a rider to the story, the Australia foundered during a

heavy gale off Cape Campbell m May," 1873, while racing the brig Scotsman to Timaru. The Australia had every sail set and probably struck the Cape Campbell reef, tearing out her bottom and drowning her eight-man crew. |

The case of the Australia was typical of the shoestring shipping ventures of New Zealand’s gold rush days. “For charter should sufficient inducement offer” was the usual shipping advertisement in the daily papers.

The Australia had been on the New Zealand coast to make a profit At three or five pounds a head for 200 passengers, Captain Hughes stood to clear enough to * make a down payment on a ? better ship. Anti if conditions were rough, well, prospective goldminers were , not too particular. Nor, it seems, were certain port officials.