MUTINY ON HIGH SEAS

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXXI, Issue 4960, 25 February 1937, Page 7

MUTINY ON HIGH SEAS

TRAGEDY OF THE MADAGASCAR.

Homeward bound. The passengers of the Madagascar were a happy crowd. The weather was fine, the ship well found, she was making good progress and her stem was turned towards England. Aboard her were many young people —men who had made money in Australia were taking their wives home to England, planning holidays and reunions with their families.

But the Madagascar was destined never to reach port. Aboard her were to take place deeds rarely equalled for ferocity in the history of the sea, and her name is destined to be for ever coupled with mystery, murder, and rapine. During the great Australian gold rushes, when colossal fortunes were being taken out of the diggings, there were few luxuries on which successful miners could spend their money. Those who craved the beautiful things which money can buy shipped their gold out of Australia and sent it to England. The vessels employed in those shipments were the famous old “Blackwallers,” of which the Madagascar was one. About three weeks after she had sailed from Melbourne disaster fell upon her like a thunder clap. It was about eight bells in the dog watch. Suddenly the cabin passengers were alarmed to hear loud voices raised in altercation; a second later, shots rang out, and there was a rush of armed men down into the passengers’ quarters. It did not take anyone long to realise what was afoot. It was mutiny. The crew had risen to a man. They had, in fact, shipped aboard the Madagascar with the intention of seizing her and the gold she carried in her lazarette, and now they were putting their plan into execution with thoroughness and brutality. The shots the passengers had heard were the death knells of the captain and the first mate. They had been shot down without mercy at the first sign of resistance. Panic-stricken, the men and women huddled aft, but they were ordered to their cabins. Those who resisted were shot.

Locked in their quarters, they heard the shouts and laughter of the crew, and preparations for the lowering of the boats and the raising of the cargo. For two hours the work went on. The mutineers had the deck to themselves, and rapidly put case after case of bullion into the boats ready for deserting the ship. The plight of the passengers was perilous, but there was still hope that there might be some one left aboard who could manage the ship in some fashion until they fell in with assistance.

Suddenly even this hope was driven from their minds. While the crew were battening down the hatches above their heads they heard the sound of augurs busy in the ship’s bottom, and in case they were in any doubt what their fate was to be the mutineers brutally told them. The Madagascar was to be scuttled and the passengers, imprisoned aboard, were to drown like rats. Loud and pitiful cries rose on all sides, but the affair might have been a joke as far as the crew were concerned. They had shipped aboard the vessel to get the gold, and they were not going to leave a soul alive to bear witness.

The men laughed and jeered at the appeals for mercy of the imprisoned passengers, and fired without hesitation at any who tried to break out. Soon their work was done. Water was pouring into the ship, and the crew were manning the falls in preparation for departure. Then, as if things were not bad enough, one member of the crew made a further suggestion for the torture of the harmless beings at their mercy. His suggestion was that they should take with them some of the younger women, and it was greeted with cheers. Thus it was that wives were torn from their husbands, daughters from fathers, sisters from brothers, to be flung into the boats and compelled to watch the fearful end of the Madagascar, to hear the cries of those slowly drowning as she disappeared beneath the waves. True, life was granted to them, but at what a price! The sea was calm when the. Madagascar went down. Slowly her top deck was submerged. The cries became fainter, and at last ceased. Then her masts and yards sank to the water level. Her topmast at last alone remained, and then with quickening velocity they, too, disappeared. Surf surged to and fro for a few moments on the spot where the ship had gone down and then the sea became still. The Madagascar had gone and only a dozen women, prisoners of the mutineers, remained of the scores of passengers and officers she had borne. This tragedy occurred in 1856, and it may be asked how the world ever learned of this terrible crime of the sea. Revelations came about in strange circumstances, and not for many years.

In 1895 there died in a small South American town an Englishwoman who had been married to an Australian. They had settled on a small ranch which he bought on their arrival in the country 40 years before.

On her deathbed this woman confessed that she had been one of the passengers of the Madagascar, and had been picked out by a member of the crew who turned out to be less villainous than the rest. He swore that he had been forced into the mutiny plot, and this was possibly true since from the outset he treated the woman kindly and spared her many indignities. On their arrival on the coast, she said, some of the boats had been wrecked in the surf and the gold lost. The men got ashore, but were bitterly resentful at the loss of their gold and said that the other men should share with them. Quarrels broke out, there was fighting, and some of the men were killed.

Escaping at the first opportunity, the woman and her man fled into the interior with such gold as they could carry, and after wandering for months, at last settled down in a place where they thought they would be safe from suspicion of having been concerned in the scuttling of the Madagascar. And there, the woman said, they had lived ever since. She had not been unhappy, and out of gratitude for the way in which he had treated her, she did not betray the mutineer, whose choice of her had saved her life. He had died some months before, and she was feeling that death was soon to claim her, when rhe unburdened her soul of the terrible secret it had held for so long.