ABOARD A HELL-SHIP

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 59, 2 December 1933, Page 18

ABOARD A HELL-SHIP

Career of the Golden City

Many old salts will tell yon it is not wise to look too searchingly into the past history of many of the sailing ships which brought out immigrants to Australia 70 or 80 years ago (writes Mr. A. G. Davis in the Brisbane “Courier-Mail”). There was a ship called the Golden City, which came three times to Moreton Bay, and by which some 1600 new settlers arrived in Queensland. How many of those people who came out joyously and hopefully to a new land knew that the ship which had been their home for three months or so had previously been one of the worst hell-ships ever afloat under Die American flag—and one whose decks had often been drenched with blood in clashes between “bucko” officers and mutinous crews?

The Golden City, originally known as the Challenge, was built at New York in 1851. She was the largest ship launched from that seaport up to that time, aud had been designed and constructed regardless of cost, with the avowed object of outsailing any clipper then afloat in the China tea trade. Her first commander, Robert H. Waterman (commonly known as “Bully” Waterman), had made a name for himself as a skilful navigator and a desperate sail carrier, with some astonishing sailing records to his credit. Unfortunately he also had gained an unenviable reputation for his brutal and callous treatment of the men under him. He is said to have been a sanctimonious, smoothtongued hypocrite while ashore, but a fiend in human form immediately he got to sea. He was a crack revolver shot, and one diversion he sometimes indulged in was to fire at the sailors when they were up aloft on the yards. On one occasion, it is alleged, he let go the lee main brace, jerking half a dozen men into the sea and leaving them to their fate.

In July, 1851, the Challenge sailed from New York, bound to San Francisco. Before she was out of the harbour “Bully” Waterman turned on the negro steward and laid opeu his scalp with a carving knife, and after that a day never passed without the decks being stained with blood. _ Serious trouble came when the mate, Jim Douglas, set about searching the sea chests of the crew. An old English navy man, resenting this action, attacked the mate, and knocked him down. The captain jumped down from the poop, and laying about him vigorously with a belaying ]jin killed two of the seamen aud knocked others senseless. In the melee Douglas received no fewer than twelve knife wounds. Three of the men were tied up by their thumbs to the mizzen rigging and flogged. Meanwhile. the old man-o’-war’s man, who had first attacked the mate, had vanished. Although it was generally be-

lieved he had gone over the ship's side and been drowned, the mate had a shrewd suspicion that be had merely hidden himself. Some days later the unfortunate man’s place of concealment was discovered. He begged for mercy, but the stony-hearted mate, with a volley of curses, struck him with a heaver, breaking his arm in two places. He was put in irons and kept on bread and water for the rest of the passage, his broken arm being callously left without attention.

The Challenge had a second mate, Cole by name, who was just as brutal as the captain and his chief officer — truly a fiendish trinity. One day, when off Cape Horn, Cole was up aloft with the men, trying to furl the mizzentopsail in stormy weather. Flying into a sudden passion, Cole sprang on to the yard, and holding on by the tye. booted three men off the weather footropes. Two of them fell into the sea and were callously allowed to perish. The third had a worse fate, for he fell on the poop deck, where he lay groaning with many bones smashed. The inhuman mate had him hurriedly stitched up in a blanket and thrown overboard, still breathing. A little later in the voyage, after n violent altercation. Cole struck the captain a blow which sent him to the deck. He also knocked out the mate who attempted to intervene. Then addressing the crew, he urged them to mutiny and take possession of the ship. However, no one responded, and Cole was left badly in the lurch. He was put into heavy irons nnd thrown into a boat, where he was kept on bread and water for the rest of the voyage.

Waterman’s crowning iniquity was the murder of an old Italian sailor, and when San Francisco was reached he got ashore before the ship came to anchor just in time to escape lynehiny by a mob of infuriated miners, who had heard of his atrocities. Both Waterman and Douglas were brought to trial, and the story of their alleged misdeeds, as already related, was told in evidence. They managed to escape a conviction though it was significant that neither the owners of the Challenge nor the underwriters said a word in Waterman’s defence.

When purchased by Sir. James Baines, of ■ Liverpool, for the famous Black Ball Line, the Challenge was renamed the Golden City; and under Captain W. Brown she left Queenstown (Cork) towards the end of 1862 with 515 immigrants for Queensland. She made the run out in 75 days, a record which was never afterwards beaten, though it bad been equalled nine years earlier by the ship Genghis Khan. The Golden City again came to Sioretou Bay in 1865 and 1866. and on the latter occasion was in command of Captain W. C. Sargent, who, as chief officer of the ship Fiery Star, in the previous year, had played so heroic a part when that vessel was on fire at sea.