Young Australia (1872)

Friday 31 May 1872, a little before eleven in the morning. The Young Australia is four and a half hours out of her anchorage and going home. She has 812 bales of wool below, thirty-one passengers aboard, and a fair south-westerly on her quarter. Three quarters of an hour ago the senior pilot went over the side off the Yellow Patch, satisfied; the master signed his certificate and the yards were filled to round North Point and stand away for London.

Then the wind swings into the north-north-east, and Captain Cooper braces up and stays her — and as the main yard comes round, the breeze stops. Not moderates. Stops.

What happens next takes about twenty minutes and involves nobody making a mistake that anyone could see at the time. A heavy easterly swell is running in and the flood tide is making. The ship goes astern, then begins to pay off. There is wind on the water to windward, close enough to see, and Cooper waits for it, because a clipper that gathers headway will walk clear of North Point in a couple of minutes. It never reaches him. By the time the port anchor goes down in five and a half fathoms she is already in the broken water; before the cable brings her up her heel touches the rocks, the next swell takes her broadside on, and one of the fastest ships ever to enter Moreton Bay is a wreck in daylight, in fine weather, in sight of the lighthouse, two hundred yards from a beach.

Everybody got ashore. Almost all of the cargo came off. The Marine Board handed the captain his certificate back with a mild ticking-off. And a small brass-and-iron cannon that had been firing salutes from her deck since 1862 began a hundred and fifty years of falling into the Brisbane River and being fished out again.

Summary

The Young Australia was a wooden extreme clipper of about 1020 tons, launched at Portsmouth, New Hampshire on 27 October 1852 as the American ship Red Rover and sold to the Liverpool house of James Baines & Co. — the Black Ball Line — in 1861, when she took her Australian name^[1][2]. She was registered at London, official number 42591^[3].

For a decade she was one of the best-known ships on the Queensland run. Brisbane papers called her "the Black Ball clipper ship", credited her with "one of the fastest, if not the fastest, runs ever made between Great Britain and Moreton Bay", and used her to bring out immigrants in hundreds at a time^[4][5]. The AUCHD records that she had completed ten trips by January 1872^[3].

She cleared the Customs at Brisbane for London on Thursday 23 May 1872 with wool, cotton, tallow, preserved meat, hides and tin ore^[6]. She was then held up in the Bay for a week — the Courier offered rough weather and the desertion of several men shipped in Sydney to complete her crew as the two possible reasons, without choosing between them^[6] — and finally weighed from abreast the Pilot Station at Moreton Island at 6 a.m. on Friday 31 May, with Mr Sholl, the senior pilot, in charge^[7].

The pilot left her at about 10.30 a.m. off the Yellow Patch, the lighthouse bearing E.S.E. and the ship a mile and a half to two miles off shore, in a steady S.S.W. breeze^[8][7]. At 11.15 a.m. the wind flew round to N.N.E.; Cooper braced up and stayed her; and as she came round the wind fell to a dead calm. A heavy easterly swell and a strong southerly set carried her onto the rocks at North Point. She struck on her heel, swung broadside on, and became a wreck^[7].

Nobody died. All thirty-one passengers and the crew were landed on the beach inside North Point, along with most of their luggage — and, according to one later account, the ship's cat^[7][9].

The wreck and cargo were auctioned in Brisbane a week later for £7100^[10]. A fleet of steamers and lighters worked her for weeks and got most of the cargo off^[11]. The Marine Board reported on 12 June: the pilot was justified in leaving, the master was acquitted of wilful default but found to have committed an error of judgment in waiting for a breeze instead of anchoring earlier, and his certificate was returned with an admonition^[7].

The site was reported to the authorities again in April 1993 by a diver who had found it while diving off the rocks, and inspected on 17 April 1993^[3]. What survives lies in 3 to 6 metres of water in the extended surf zone, progressively covered by sand^[3].

From Red Rover to Young Australia

She began as an American, and a fast one.

Red Rover was launched on 27 October 1852 at the yard of Fernald & Pettigrew at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, for Robert L. Taylor & Co. of New York, with Captain W. O. Putnam in command. She measured 172 ft × 35.9 ft × 23 ft, and 1021 tons old measurement, 766 tons new^[1].

Her career under that name was the classic California-clipper career of the 1850s:

In 1861 she was sold to James Baines & Co. of Liverpool for $25,000 and renamed Young Australia, with Captain William Lowrie appointed to her^[1][2]. Baines's Black Ball Line was then the dominant emigrant carrier to Australia, and Brisbane papers used the house name without explanation — "the Black Ball clipper ship Young Australia"^[4]. In 1867 Bruzelius records a further sale, to J. P. Foulks of Liverpool^[1].

Where she was built is worth stating plainly, because the official record gets it wrong. The AUCHD's own narrative correctly calls her "originally an American built clipper called the 'Red Rover'"^[3] — but its Construction tab records Country in which built: Canada and Construction locality: Portsmouth, Vancouver^[3]. There is no such shipyard. Fernald & Pettigrew are recorded in every account of the ship at Portsmouth, New Hampshire — although, pleasingly, the yard itself stood a few hundred metres away on Badger's Island at Kittery, Maine, on the other side of the Piscataqua, where Frederick Fernald bought Badger's yard in 1837 and took William Pettigrew into partnership in 1844^[12]. Either way the tonnages and dimensions in the AUCHD record match that ship almost exactly^[1]. A 1956 Queensland Historical Society article compounds the confusion from the other direction, saying she was "launched at New York" — that was her owners' port, not her building place^[9].

The measurements very nearly agree, and where they don't the reason is measurement rules, not disagreement about the ship:

The one real gap is depth of hold, 23 ft against 20 ft. American "old measurement" and British register tonnage used different assumed depths, and a vessel re-registered in Britain in 1861 would have been re-measured; the discrepancy is what you would expect, not evidence of a different ship. A third figure appears in the Queensland press: the Guardian gave her as 776 tons in 1863^[13], and the Brisbane shipping column of September 1871 listed her plainly as "Young Australia, 767, J. Cooper, from London … J. and G. Harris, agents"^[14] — the register figure.

The immigrant years

Between 1862 and 1872 the Young Australia was one of the ships that built the population of southern Queensland. Her arrivals were reported as events.

1862 — her first Moreton Bay passage. Plymouth 15 May, Moreton Bay Saturday 9 August: 84 days with 277 passengers, "including all classes of free and assisted immigrants and 23 cabin passengers". The Guardian called it "the second-best voyage on record, the first being that of the Jenghis Khan, 65 days". The health officer found her "in the highest state of efficiency"; there had been no sickness and no deaths at sea, and two children were born on the passage. Captain J. D. Phillips commanded; the surgeon-superintendent was Dr Frederick Beverly Dickson; the agents were G. Raff and Co.^[5]

1863 — the record run, and the cotton famine. London 25 April, Plymouth 1 May, Brisbane Roads Tuesday 21 July: 82 days from Plymouth, "one of the fastest, if not the fastest, runs ever made between Great Britain and Moreton Bay", with 272 passengers and 500 to 600 tons of general merchandise. A number of them were "cotton operatives, from the distressed districts in the North of England" — Lancashire mill hands thrown out of work by the American Civil War, coming to a colony that was itself trying to grow cotton. Whooping cough was aboard; three people died on the passage, one of them, William Greenwood, aged 26, by drowning^[4][13].

1864 — under Captain Gray. London 8 May, Plymouth 14 May, anchored in the roadstead on the night of 12 August: 286 passengers, of whom 18 were in the saloon, 53 in the second cabin and 215 in the steerage. Two deaths — an infant of nine months, and the ship's carpenter, lost overboard in a gale on 8 July in latitude 41°30′S — and three births. Thirty single women travelled under the matron, Mrs Smith^[15].

1866 — the clean voyage. She anchored in the Brisbane roadstead at 7.30 on a Sunday evening in September and was cleared on the Monday: "No accident of any kind, or sickness whatever, occurred during the voyage, with the exception of two births. Not a stitch of canvas was lost."^[16]

1870 — the voyage in the register. Queensland State Archives holds the manuscript Register of passengers on immigrant ships arriving in Queensland, No. 1, and the Young Australia's pages in it head the voyage in a single line of copperplate: "Sailed 17 May 1870, Arrived in Moreton Bay 25th August 1870 … Immigration Act 1869. 2nd Ship."^[17] A hundred days out. The master is James Cooper — the man who would lose her — the surgeon is Dr Mondelet, and the matron is Mrs Ann Jane Mills^[17]. The columns run Saloon, Second Saloon and Steerage, each name against a land-order number, an age, and a tick in one of the boxes for married adults, single adults, children one to twelve, and infants^[17].

That last detail is the whole immigration system in one page: the Queensland Immigration Act of 1869 paid for passages against land orders, and the register was the accounting document. The Young Australia was the second ship out under it.

A Brisbane man writing his recollections in 1924 remembered her exactly as her masters would have wanted:

I can distinctly remember the Young Australia, as she was considered quite a "clipper," and usually made record passages from Land's End to Cape Moreton.^[18]

He also remembered, wrongly, that she was lost "late in '73 or during the first half of '74" — a useful reminder of how quickly a very well-known ship becomes approximately dated in living memory^[18].

Her masters, so far as they can be traced: Captain William Lowrie from 1861^[1]; Captain J. D. Phillips in 1862 and 1863^[5][13]; Captain Charles Grey, R.N.R., who was her chief officer in 1862–63 and her master from 1864 to 1867^[19][15]; Captain D. R. Bolt for two voyages after Grey left for the Omar Pasha in 1868; and Captain James Cooper for the last two^[19]. That sequence fits the Queenslander's statement that the fatal passage was "the second voyage she had made under the command of Captain Cooper"^[10].

Timeline

The last voyage

She cleared at the Customs for London on Thursday 23 May 1872, and on Saturday the 25th the steamer Nowra took her passengers down the river to her^[6]. Then she sat in the Bay for the better part of a week. The Courier gave two possible reasons and declined to choose between them:

At that time Captain Cooper anticipated that he would be detained for some days in consequence of the desertion of several men who had been engaged in Sydney and brought to Brisbane to complete his complement of hands to work the vessel … The weather has been very rough outside for the last few days, and it might be that he was weather-bound.^[6]

The Sydney Morning Herald's Brisbane correspondent added a detail that says something about how the port had changed: "the last voyage was the first time that she had ever come up the river to Harris's Wharf to load and unload"^[23]. For ten years she had worked from the roadstead, with lighters and steamers running out to her. On her final voyage she came alongside in Brisbane like a modern ship.

The cargo was a complete cross-section of what Queensland sold to the world in 1872. The manifest recapitulates as 812 bales of wool, 598 bales of cotton, 2089 cases of preserved meat, 381 casks of tallow, 2 tons of bones, 1 ton of hoofs, 194 bags of tin ore and 47 bales of skins, plus 500 bags of cotton seed, 50 bags of bone dust, 30 bales of wattle bark, 2229 horns, 497 hides, 47 calfskins, 10 bales of wallaby skins, 9 cases of beeswax, a case of honey, a case of saddlery, a case of drapery and a case of books^[6].

The consignors read like a directory of the colony's commercial class — Henry Beit, R. L. Jenkins, Craig Simmie and Fraser, A. B. Buchanan, T. B. Stephens, Gordon Sandeman, Arthur Hodgson, James Taylor, W. B. Tooth, G. H. Wilson and Co., Greenup Brown and Co., J. and G. Harris — together with the Hogarth Australian Meat Preserving Company and the Central Meat Preserving Company, whose 2089 cases of tinned beef were the colony's newest export and its great hope for using up cattle it could not ship alive^[6].

And there were four cases of natural-history specimens: one from O. Loewe, one from the Rev. Thomas Jones, and two from W. H. Miskin^[6]. Miskin was Queensland's leading entomologist. At the consignees' meeting a week later, Walter Hill — curator of the Brisbane Botanic Gardens — said he "hoped the valuable cases of specimens he had put on board for exhibition in London would not be sold in this way", and was told that nothing could be reserved from the auction and that he must look to whoever bought the wreck^[8]. The Argus recorded simply that "there were cases of specimens for the great Exhibition on board"^[24].

Aboard were thirty-one passengers. Seven in the saloon — Miss Louisa King, Miss Olivia Gawthrop, Miss N. Smith, Miss E. Duncan, and Messrs W. St John Holberton, Angus Clerk and Arthur Beevor — with five in the second cabin and nineteen in the steerage^[6][23][3]. One of the steerage passengers was blind^[10].

The wreck

The Marine Board's narrative of the loss is the tightest account, and it is worth reading whole because almost nothing in it is contested:

Find that the Young Australia, with Mr. Sholl, the senior pilot, in charge weighed from abreast the Pilot Station at Moreton Island, at 6 a.m., of the 31st of May, wind light and variable from the eastward. The wind shortly after hauling to S.W., and freshening, ship stood out by ship channel, going from four to five knots. After passing the Fairway Buoy, she was hauled up towards Moreton Island to intercept the Pilot schooner. The master having given the usual certificates; the pilot left, lighthouse bearing E.S.E., ship being from one and a half to two miles from the shore.

The yards were then filled, and the ship steered to the eastward, to round the North Point, the breeze being S.S.W. and steady. When nearly abreast the point the wind shifted round west, about to N.N.E., and the yards were braced sharp up on the port tack; and as soon as the ship gathered way, the helm was put down to stay her.

The ship came round, and the yards were braced up on the starboard tack, when the wind fell to almost a dead calm. The flood tide was then making and a short and rather heavy swell was coming in, which soon gave the ship stern way; the helm was put amidships, and, after a short time she began to pay off. There was a breeze on the water to windward, and the master was in hopes that he would gather headway and clear the rocks, towards which she was being set. As the breeze however, did not freshen, and the vessel was getting very close to the broken water, the port anchor was let go, in about five and a half fathoms, but before she could be brought up, her heel took the rocks, and she swung round broadside on, and became a wreck.^[7]

Captain Cooper's own statement, given to the Courier's reporter on the beach the following morning, adds the clock times and the shape of the afternoon:

At 4 a.m. turned hands out, hove in short, and made all sail. At 6.30 a.m. weighed anchor, there being light variable airs from east to south-west. At 10.30 a.m. the pilot left the ship off the Yellow Patch … At 11.15 a.m. the wind flew round to the N.N.E.; braced the ship up on the port tack, the East Cape of Moreton Island bearing S.E. by compass. Stayed ship. After hauling the main yard the wind fell, and it became a dead calm, ship remaining stationary, whilst a heavy easterly swell and strong southerly current set the ship towards the rocks.^[10]

Superintendent James Brayden at Cape Moreton wired Brisbane the same evening:

The Young Australia is on shore on the north point of the island. She went ashore about 11 o'clock this morning. All the passengers and crew are on shore at the North Point. The vessel is breaking up, and it is very uncertain whether any of the cargo will be saved.^[6]

On the exact time. Brayden's telegram says "about 11 o'clock"; Cooper's own log-style narrative puts the wind shift at 11.15 with the striking some minutes after that. The AUCHD records the time of day as 11:00^[3]. Half an hour either way; the sensible statement is late morning, and the point that matters is that it happened in broad daylight in fine weather.

Where she lay. Stranded "about two hundred yards distant from the spit of the North Cape", head lying about N.W., very nearly broadside on to the shore^[10]. And she was lucky in a very narrow way:

Two hundred yards further round the Cape, and had she gone ashore there, no earthly power could have saved a life, or an atom of ship or cargo, which would have been ground up against a reef of rocks over which the surf broke twenty feet high at least continuously. About the same distance from where she now lies towards the Bay, and not a rock is discernible — nothing but a smooth shelving beach, but with a heavy surf always brewing on it. The ship lies stranded at the very commencement or end of the reef, and a mercy indeed it was that she did not drift one hundred yards further.^[10]

Everyone got ashore

There is no casualty list on this page because there were no casualties — of any kind. Nobody drowned and nobody, so far as any account records, was even hurt.

The port lifeboat was got down "after much difficulty" and took all the female passengers ashore. It could not get back through the surf. The large lifeboat was got off the skids and bilged as they tried to bring her over the side; they lowered her into the water anyway and sent as many of the male passengers as she would safely carry, along with a line to the shore so the boats could afterwards be hauled to and fro^[10].

It is gratifying to know that through all the turmoil and excitement consequent upon the vessel's striking, the crew and male passengers behaved exceedingly well in assisting the females into the first boat, and carefully dispatching a blind passenger in the second.^[10]

Two boats' crews from the ship Ramsey, under her chief officer, pulled in from some miles off and helped get luggage away^[10]. Mr Brayden came up from Cape Moreton "as soon as he found she was on shore, just at the time when some communication with land was so much needed"^[10].

The boats worked until 5 p.m. moving passengers' and crew's luggage. At 4 p.m., with the ship labouring heavily on the flood, the mizenmast was cut away to ease her. Then Cooper left with the remainder of the crew^[10][8].

Some of them then walked. The four saloon ladies and the three saloon gentlemen set off down the beach for the Pilot Station, nine or ten miles away, at night — and walked straight past it in the dark:

Following the beach, the lights from the Pilot Station were not discernible, and the weary castaways passed the Station for some distance, and would probably have overshot the mark still further had it not been for the fact that it was discovered at the Station from a fellow passenger, who was behind them … the result being that some of the Station hands soon hastened in pursuit, and brought them back again.^[10]

Even the ship's cat is said to have come off^[9].

The walk up the beach

The telegram reached Brisbane about one o'clock on the Friday afternoon. By four the agents, J. and G. Harris, had chartered the steamer Francis Cadell and sent her down loaded with provisions^[10]. Aboard were the Harbour Master, Captain Wyborn; Mr Curphey of the Customs; Mr Layton for the agents; Captains Dring and Twine, going to report on the vessel for the agents and the underwriters; Mr Webb the Tide-surveyor, picked up at Lytton; Mr Wassall and several of the Water Police, picked up at the hulk — and a newspaper reporter^[10].

What that reporter wrote is the best thing in the whole file, and it is not really about a shipwreck at all. The steamer could get no closer than the Pilot Station. So they walked.

On inquiring how far we should have to walk, the reply was nine or ten miles along the beach, not a comfortable assurance to those who were not good pedestrians, but not sufficient to deter any one who did land from tackling the journey. The night was, providentially for all concerned, a fine one, and as the tide was low the beach close to the water's edge was firm and pleasant to travel on … there being no moon the night was dark and little was discernible except the white carpet of sand stretching as far as the eye could range.^[10]

They left the Pilot Station exactly at midnight, passed the Yellow Patch light shortly after two, and about half an hour later saw camp fires ahead, and then the ship — "her spars and rigging showing out in relief against the star-lit sky"^[10].

The first camp was a group of steerage passengers "snugly encamped underneath a honeysuckle tree", who "regretted that they had been unable to save little, if any, of their traps, but were thankful to Providence that they had saved their lives"^[10]. Captain Cooper was camped further on with the rest.

There were no coverings of any description on shore, with the exception of a few blankets … A share of the fire and a drink of coffee was all the comfort, however, obtainable that night, there being no other provisions on shore with the exception of a raw ham, slices of which were ingeniously grilled at the fire by one visitor, and savory was the scent thereof; but alas! the food was not palatable by itself alone — a very little going a very long way. Supperless for the night were therefore all compelled to go.^[10]

Nobody slept. At first light "certain imprisoned chanticleers on board the ill-starred ship" — the deck poultry, still in their coops — announced the morning, and the daylight showed them what they had come to see: the hull working on the rock like a see-saw, dipping at the bow when a sea struck her stern and grounding aft when it passed, the mizenmast cut to the deck, the maintopmast and gear over the side, the foremast still standing with its yards crossed, the rudder gone^[10].

That her back was broken was evident to the merest novice, she was dividing as nearly in half as possible, it being simply a question of time and weather as to when the final parting should be.^[10]

Salvage and the sale

For a wreck, she behaved beautifully. She was two hundred yards off a beach, inside the point rather than outside it, with the water in front of her calm enough to float bales ashore, and she held together for weeks.

Lloyd's agents in Brisbane — Armour, Woodward and Co. — despatched the Francis Cadell back to the site on the Monday morning with Captain Dring, Lloyd's surveyor, and Captain James Twine with a gang of hands. By Monday evening they had reached the wreck and found Cooper's crew already at work with a rope and tackle, getting cargo and passengers' luggage ashore; nearly all the poultry, pigs and livestock had been landed the same way^[8].

Twine's telegrams from the site read like a bulletin from a patient's bedside:

June 4. The ship is in much the same state as on Saturday. Captain Cooper is now working, in conjunction with myself, in saving the property on board. I believe the ship will hang together for some considerable time, unless bad weather prevails.

June 5. The wreck is in the same condition as reported by me yesterday to Captain Dring, but the bottom of the vessel is gradually chopping to pieces. Fifteen sails have been landed; the fore and main masts are still standing.^[10]

The underwriters accepted the abandonment, and on Wednesday 5 June the agents called a meeting of consignees at the Chamber of Commerce. It was thinly attended — Mr A. Thompson, manager of the Union Bank, in the chair, with Armour and Woodward, Captain Dring, Layton for Harris, and Messrs Holberton, Goertz, Forrest and Walter Hill^[8][10]. Everyone present agreed that nothing could be done but leave it to Lloyd's agents, a vote of thanks was passed, and the meeting dissolved^[8].

The auction was on Friday 7 June, and it was the event of the week:

The wreck, cargo, and appurtenances, were sold by auction, yesterday, by Mr. John Cameron, under instructions from Lloyd's agents. The sale attracted a very large crowd. It was intended to hold the auction in Mr. Cameron's mart, but it proved too small to accommodate the crowd, and an adjournment consequently took place to the Exchange Room, in the Town Hall. The first bid was £1000, and for the first ten minutes the bidding was very slack. It then brightened up, and ultimately the lot was knocked down for £7100, to Mr. A. Martin, as agent for Messrs. J. and G. Harris.^[10]

The Queenslander thought the buyer had done well, and explained why in a paragraph that is really a lesson in wreck economics: about eight hundred bales of wool and six hundred of cotton could be floated ashore "without sustaining much damage from the sea water"; the 380 casks of tallow "will not be damaged at all, neither will the preserved meat, the tin ore, and some other valuable commodities on board"^[10].

They were right. The salvage that followed was a small industry. A stevedore was contracted with a force of "some half-hundred men"; the Francis Cadell brought Cooper, his officers and crew back to Brisbane on 8 June; steamers and lighters shuttled continuously^[20]. The first 55 bales of wool reached Brisbane on Monday 10 June^[20]. A week later the traffic was in full swing:

The Emma, with the schooner Leslie in tow, arrived at Harris' wharf last evening from the wreck of the Young Australia, bringing 200 bales of wool and cotton, 400 cases meats, a large quantity of sails, stores, ironwork, &c. … The Exchange is also loaded and on her way up with 50 bales of wool and cotton, 70 cases meats, stores, and sundries. The schooner Ethel is now loading with the assistance of the steamer Leonie and lighter Dauntless, and will be followed by the Perseverance, now waiting her turn.^[11]

The AUCHD's summary is simply "the cargo was salvaged"^[3], and the 1956 retrospective went further: "Passengers, crew, all personal property and the entire cargo of wool were removed and there was no loss of life"^[9]. Neither is quite provable from the contemporary reporting, which stops following the story once the novelty wears off — but the direction of travel is clear enough.

The Marine Board inquiry

The Board sat under Captain G. P. Heath, Commander R.N., Portmaster of Queensland, and took the evidence of the master, the first and second mates, the carpenter, the man at the wheel at the time of the accident, the pilot, and one of the saloon passengers^[7]. It reported on 12 June, twelve days after the loss.

Its findings were three, and the third is the interesting one.

1st. That the wind being fair, and apparently steady, the pilot was justified in leaving the vessel when he did.

2nd. They entirely acquit the master of any wilful default, but they consider that he committed an error of judgment in trusting until too late to the probabilities of a freshening breeze to carry him clear of the land, instead of insuring the safety of the vessel, passengers and cargo, by letting go an anchor directly she ceased to be under command and he saw that the vessel was being set in-shore towards the rocks.

The Board, however, in consideration of his frequent and successful voyages between this port and London, and his well-known character, desire to deal leniently in the matter. They therefore return Captain Cooper his certificate, with an admonition to take more prompt and decided measures for the safety of his vessel should he ever be again placed in a similar position.

3rd. That when the wind outside the Cape is blowing in a different direction from that which a vessel is observed to have it when leaving port, the Board consider that the ensign, or some signal should be hoisted from the signal staff at the lighthouse, to draw attention to the fact; and that, in such cases, the vessel should be conducted by the pilot until she is clear of Cape Moreton, and within the influence of the sea breeze.^[7]

That third finding is a system fix rather than a verdict, and it is the Board doing its actual job. The problem was not that Sholl left too early by the standards of the day; it was that the standards of the day let a pilot step off inside the last danger on the strength of a breeze that the lighthouse — which could see the wind outside the Cape — knew was about to change. The Board asked for two things: a signal from the lighthouse when the outside wind differed from the wind in the port, and, in that case, pilotage all the way out past Cape Moreton.

It is worth holding that recommendation next to what happened on the same coast twenty-two years later. When the Danish barque Aarhus was lost on Smith Rock in 1894 after waiting an hour for a pilot who never came, the Marine Board of the day condemned the working of the pilot schooner in terms that echo 1872 — and the Brisbane Courier said the whole finding was "an intolerable mockery of justice and of common sense". Pilotage at the northern entrance was a problem the colony kept re-discovering.

The one procedural oddity is how gentle the Board was. It acquitted Cooper of wilful default, found an error of judgment, handed his certificate straight back, and cited his record and character in mitigation. In 1894 the same institution found four separate grounds of default against Captain Gram of the Aarhus. The difference is real: Cooper's ship was becalmed by an act of weather in a place where a competent master could reasonably expect to sail clear, and everybody aboard walked away.

The cannon

Most wrecks leave nothing you can go and look at. This one left a gun that has been standing in Brisbane, on and off, since the 1870s — and it has spent a century and a half being argued about.

The agreed part of the story starts on the deck. Ships in the immigrant trade carried a small piece to fire salutes and signals, and the Young Australia's was put aboard by Captain Charles Grey, R.N.R. — her chief officer in 1862–63 and her master from 1864 to 1867 — who is said to have obtained it from the British naval authorities. His family's account, given to the Courier-Mail in 1937 by his daughter-in-law, made it a gun from the naval reserve training ship Unicorn, stationed at Dundee, where Grey did his Royal Naval Reserve training^[19].

When Captain Grey became master of the Omar Pasha in 1868 the old cannon which boomed its salute when the Young Australia cast anchor in foreign ports remained on the ship.^[19]

It was recovered from the wreck, and then it began to move. Its documented itinerary^[21][3]:

A gun that has been dredged out of the Brisbane River twice and had two shot rusted into its bore is going to attract stories, and it did. In 1954 a Brisbane columnist recorded that during the Second World War British naval officers made overtures to buy it, believing it to be a relic of Nelson's Orion^[9]. The Queensland Historical Society's 1956 account is refreshingly blunt about how that ended:

It was pointed out to the Navy that nothing authentic was known of the gun's history and the proposition to purchase was dropped.^[9]

The same writer thought the Young Australia version "quite plausible" and noted the corroborating detail that the Otter, bought as a tug in 1884, really was taken up by the Queensland Government in the 1885 scare^[9].

So how much of this is actually established? The wreck-to-Water-Police link is repeated consistently from 1937 onwards and is accepted by the AUCHD^[3]. The Unicorn attribution rests on one family's recollection published sixty-five years after the fact^[19]. The Orion attribution was investigated and abandoned^[9]. And a 1941 description of the gun says only that it is "of antiquated type, similar in appearance to the carronades of Nelson's day" with "its four-facet barrel … cast in an English foundry" more than a century earlier^[25] — which is consistent with an old naval piece from a training ship, and consistent with a good many other things too.

One error to correct while we are here. The Queensland Water Police's own history page — the "Rice 2009" source the AUCHD cites — dates the wreck to April 1872^[21]. It was 31 May. The photograph in Queensland State Archives is captioned with the date in manuscript^[26], and the Marine Board's finding names it twice^[7].

The wreck today

The Young Australia was never a mystery wreck. She went ashore in daylight two hundred yards off a beach that people walk along, and she was photographed where she lay. But she is a surf-zone wreck, which means she was buried rather than lost, and she comes and goes.

The AUCHD's History tab records how she came back:

A scuba diver reported in early April that he had found a wreck off the rocks at North Point, Moreton Island, whilst diving. He allegedly retrieved a brass porthole from the site. The Department of Defence Base Administrative Support Centre of Enoggera followed up this report and located the site 17th April 1993.^[3]

Site conditions, from the 1993 Initial Report of Wreck^[3]:

What was recorded on the seabed, in the same report^[3]:

• approximately 6 m × 18 m of the stern section of the hull, still substantially visible;
• two untethered anchors about 3 m in stock length and about 2 m from fluke tip to fluke tip, lying covered or partly covered in sand about 15 m west of the wreck;
• a third anchor about 15 m ESE on a rock ledge, covered by beach rock and still connected to the wreck by its anchor chain;
• an upright deck winch mechanism and frame 5 m south of the wreck;
• hydraulic lines and possibly a small hydraulic accumulator or pump still attached to the deck, "which have been interfered with by divers";
• clay bricks and numerous brass and copper nails and rods around the wreck, sand-covered;
• and, bluntly stated, "there is evidence of vandalism and divers having removed objects from the wreck".

The third anchor is the one that ties the site to the story. Cooper let the port anchor go in five and a half fathoms, and she struck before the cable brought her up^[7]. An anchor lying east-south-east of the hull, still shackled to it by chain, is exactly where that anchor should be — laid out to seaward of a ship that was set onto the rocks with her cable running.

The hydraulic gear is the part that does not fit, and it should be flagged rather than explained away. Hydraulic lines and an accumulator are not 1852 wooden-clipper fittings. Either the 1993 recorder was describing something else, or some of the material at the site belongs to a later wreck at the same point. Queensland's own wreck map plots the Waipara immediately alongside the Young Australia at North Point^[27], and at that scale the two symbols overlap. This is listed under Gaps and uncertainties.

On the state wreck map, the Young Australia appears in the North Moreton Island inset of the Heritage Branch's Moreton Bay Shipwrecks, right at the tip of the island — in a tight cluster with Waipara and Fleetwood, and along the coast from Merkara, Orange Grove, Venus, Grace Darling, Hopewell, Juno, Kallatina and Mount Kembla^[27]. The map's legend distinguishes exact, map/chart reading and estimate positions by symbol colour; in this cluster the symbols sit on top of one another and cannot be reliably assigned to individual names at the published scale.

Is she diveable? Not really, and not in the way the Smith Rock wrecks are. She sits in three to six metres inside the surf zone off a rocky point on the exposed corner of Moreton Island, largely under sand. There is no Queensland Dive into History fact sheet for her as there is for the Aarhus and the St Paul, no charter runs to her, and no published site plan. When she is exposed she is a scatter of timber, iron and anchors in white water.

Protection and access

The Young Australia is protected underwater cultural heritage.

The AUCHD records her protection as the Underwater Cultural Heritage Act 2018 (Cth), with responsibility resting with the Australian Federal government^[3]. Under that Act, which replaced the Historic Shipwrecks Act 1976 from 1 July 2019, Australian underwater cultural heritage more than 75 years old is protected automatically — no individual declaration is needed^[22][28]. A wreck of 1872 has been over that threshold since 1947.

No protected zone is declared for this site: the AUCHD's Details of the protected zone field is empty^[3]. That is different from the Aarhus, which sits inside a gazetted 500 m zone that requires a permit merely to enter. It does not mean the Young Australia is unprotected. Automatic protection still applies, and interfering with the site — digging it out, taking material from it, damaging it — is an offence^[22][28].

The 1993 report's note that objects had already been removed, and that a brass porthole was allegedly taken by the diver who reported the site^[3], is a reminder of why the rule exists. If you find material on the beach or in the shallows at North Point, the thing to do is report it — the Commonwealth's Notification of discovery of underwater cultural heritage form exists for exactly that^[28].

The site lies well inside the three-nautical-mile limit of Queensland coastal waters and within the Moreton Bay Marine Park; the specific zone applying at North Point was not confirmed for this page against the zoning plan^[29].

What the record gets wrong

This wreck is unusually well documented and unusually badly transcribed. Six errors circulate, and all six are correctable from primary sources.

Two further points are not errors but genuine ambiguities.

Her destination. Every Queensland source says London^[6], and the AUCHD agrees^[3]. Bruzelius says "Left Brisbane for Liverpool [?]" — with his own question mark^[1]. London is right.

Her owners in 1872. The AUCHD gives the registry as London and leaves the owner's name blank^[3]. Bruzelius has her sold to J. P. Foulks of Liverpool in 1867^[1]. The Colonist described Mr Layton as "representing the firm of Messrs. J. and G. Harris, the owners of the ship"^[8], and the Queenslander said she "belonged to the Harris line"^[10] — but the Sydney Morning Herald noted her hull insurance "has always been effected in England"^[23], and J. and G. Harris acted throughout as agents. A Brisbane house of that period was routinely described as owning the ships in the line it agented. The registered ownership question is open, and the Board of Trade register is where it would be settled — see below.

Gaps and uncertainties

Things this page could not establish, and where they would be found.

• The registered owner at the time of loss. Official number 42591 is recorded^[3], so the Board of Trade Registry of Shipping and Seamen files and the annual Mercantile Navy List for 1871–72 will name the registered owner outright, and settle the J. P. Foulks / J. and G. Harris question. The relevant series is at The National Archives (UK), and the Mercantile Navy List volumes are digitised.
• Lloyd's Register entries. No Lloyd's Register entry was consulted for this page. The 1862–1872 volumes would give her class notation, her surveys, her successive masters and her owners year by year, and would confirm the British re-measurement that explains the depth-of-hold discrepancy. Lloyd's Register Foundation Heritage & Education Centre holds the survey reports.
• The complete list of her Queensland voyages. The AUCHD says ten trips by January 1872, citing the Brisbane Courier of 10 June 1922^[3]; that article was not obtained. Six arrivals are documented here (1862, 1863, 1864, 1866, 1869, 1870). Queensland State Archives' immigration series and the Queensland Government Gazette shipping returns would complete the list.
• How many immigrants she landed in total. Given passenger counts of 277, 272 and 286 on three of her voyages, the ten-voyage total is plausibly well over two thousand people — but that is arithmetic, not evidence, and is not asserted here. The QSA registers^[17] and the Queensland assisted-immigration indexes hold the actual figures.
• The crew. Not one member of the Young Australia's crew is named in any account consulted — not the mates who gave evidence to the Board, not the carpenter, not the man at the wheel. The Board's own record of proceedings, if it survives in Queensland Votes and Proceedings or the Ports and Harbours Department files, would name them, as would the ship's articles.
• Pilot Sholl's first name, and what became of the Board's third recommendation. Whether the lighthouse wind signal was ever instituted, and whether pilots were thereafter kept aboard past Cape Moreton, is not established. The Portmaster's annual reports for 1872–73 would say.
• The natural-history specimens. Four cases were shipped by O. Loewe, the Rev. Thomas Jones and W. H. Miskin, and Walter Hill had material aboard for exhibition in London^[6][8]. Whether any of it was recovered, and whether it ever reached the Exhibition, is unknown. Queensland Museum and Brisbane Botanic Gardens records, and the 1873 London International Exhibition catalogues, are where to look.
• The total value of the salvage. The wreck sold for £7100 and a great deal came off, but no account was found that closes the books. The Brisbane insurance and Chamber of Commerce records for 1872 would.
• The hydraulic gear on the site. The 1993 report records hydraulic lines and a possible hydraulic accumulator or pump attached to the deck^[3]. That machinery is anachronistic for an 1852 wooden clipper, and raises the question whether some recorded material belongs to a later wreck at the same point — the Waipara is plotted immediately alongside on Queensland's wreck map^[27]. The 1993 Initial Report of Wreck itself, and any subsequent Queensland Museum inspection, would resolve it.
• Whether the site has been surveyed since 1993. No site plan, photomosaic or archaeological report is published. The Queensland Museum's maritime archaeology section is the body that would hold one^[30][31].
• The porthole. The AUCHD records that the diver who reported the site in 1993 "allegedly retrieved a brass porthole"^[3]. Whether it was recovered, and where it is, is not recorded.
• The cannon's origin. The Unicorn attribution rests on a single family recollection published in 1937^[19]. A physical examination of the gun at Whyte Island — founder's marks, the Royal cipher, calibre and pattern — would settle far more than the newspaper record can.

News stories from history

The Brisbane Courier, 1 June 1872 — the telegram

The Young Australia is on shore on the north point of the island. She went ashore about 11 o'clock this morning. All the passengers and crew are on shore at the North Point. The vessel is breaking up, and it is very uncertain whether any of the cargo will be saved.^[6]

The Queenslander, 8 June 1872 — daylight at the wreck

Stranded about two hundred yards distant from the spit of the North Cape, lay the noted Young Australia, with her mizenmast cut away to the deck, her maintopmast, spars, a portion of a topsail, and the accompanying gear, hanging over the side; her foremast standing firmly, with the spars up, and the whole of her fore rigging apparently in good preservation. She was indeed a sad sight to look upon — apparently fast upon a rock about the centre, she worked as if on a pivot, every sea that struck her stern causing her bows to dip until she touched, and then to rise again until she grounded aft.^[10]

The Queenslander, 8 June 1872 — the conduct of everybody involved

The feeling appears to be general amongst the passengers that the captain and crew did all in their power under the circumstances. Of course there are some dissentients, as is always the case, who consider that far more of their luggage could have been saved, forgetting at the same time how essentially expedient it is under such circumstances that they should prove only too willing to render assistance themselves.^[10]

The Queenslander, 8 June 1872 — the question the wreck raised

Pending the Marine Board inquiry into the loss of this vessel there is little further to say, except perhaps to urge upon the Board the expediency of deliberating as to the advisability of pilots quitting a vessel before she is well clear of the land.^[10]

The Queenslander, 15 June 1872 — and a photograph

The first portion of the cargo saved from the wreck of the Young Australia arrived in Brisbane on Monday evening, and consisted of 55 bales of wool. … Judging by a photograph taken upon the spot, there appears to be very little alteration in the appearance of the wreck.^[20]

That last sentence is the reason the picture at the top of this page exists. Someone went out to North Point in the first fortnight of June 1872 with a camera, and the resulting negative — B1428 — is in Queensland State Archives, captioned in ink on the mount: "Young Australia, wrecked 31/5/1872, North Point, Moreton Island."^[26]

The Sandgate Echo, 18 April 1956 — the verdict of posterity

On the Cape itself, actually North Point, there was lost in June 1872 the sailing ship "Young Australia" in one of the least dramatic wrecks imaginable.^[9]

(June is wrong by a day; the point stands.)

A note on the sources

Primary and strongest: the Queensland daily and weekly press of June 1872, above all the Queenslander's special reporter, whose despatch of 8 June is the single best account of the wreck, and the Brisbane Courier's verbatim publication of the Marine Board's report and finding on 13 June. Both are freely readable on Trove. The Queensland State Archives photograph and immigration register are contemporary documents of the wreck and of the ship's working life, and are decisive on the date and on the 1870 voyage.

Official, with reservations: the AUCHD record is the authoritative modern register entry and the only public source for the 1993 rediscovery and site description — but its Construction tab is demonstrably wrong about where and when she was built, and its General History contradicts its own date field. Use its site data; check its ship data.

Secondary, and flagged as such: Lars Bruzelius's clipper-ship pages are unusually careful, cite their sources, and are corroborated in detail by the Queensland record — but they are a compilation, and the site is now available only through the Internet Archive. Wikipedia's article on the Red Rover is a summary of Bruzelius and of Arthur H. Clark's The Clipper Ship Era (1910). The 1937, 1942, 1954 and 1956 Brisbane newspaper articles on the cannon are recollection and journalism, not record, and they disagree with each other; they are cited here for what they claim, with the disagreements left visible.

Not consulted: Lloyd's Register, the Mercantile Navy List, the Board of Trade registry files, and any post-1993 archaeological survey. Each is named above under Gaps and uncertainties against the question it would answer.

Further reading

• AUCHD — Young Australia (Shipwreck ID 3351)
• Queensland State Archives — photograph of the wreck (ITM1640396)
• Queensland State Archives — Register of passengers on immigrant ships, digitised pages (ITM18476 / DR39682) (PDF)
• Marine Board report and finding, Brisbane Courier, 13 June 1872 (Trove)
• Moreton Bay Shipwrecks map, Heritage Branch 2014 (PDF)