Gothenburg (ship)

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Gothenburg
StateLibQld 1 143671 Gothenburg (ship) .jpg
Ship data
flag United KingdomUnited Kingdom (trade flag) United Kingdom
Ship type Passenger ship
home port Melbourne (from 1862)
Owner McMerkan, Blackwood & Company
Shipyard John Scott Russell, London
Build number 39
Launch April 1, 1854
Whereabouts Sunk February 24, 1875
Ship dimensions and crew
length
38 m ( Lüa )
width 8.5 m
Draft Max. 6 m
measurement 736 GRT
Machine system
machine Steam engines
Machine
performance
120 hp (88 kW)
Top
speed
12 kn (22 km / h)
propeller 1
Rigging and rigging
Rigging Schoonerbark
Number of masts 3
Others
Registration
numbers
Register number: 23071

The Gothenburg was a passenger ship put into service in 1854 , which operated in British waters until 1862 and then in Australian waters until 1875 , carrying passengers , freight and mail . The last owners of the ship were McMerkan, Blackwood & Company.

On February 24, 1875, on a journey from Darwin in northern Australia to Adelaide in the south of the country, Gothenburg on the coast of Queensland was caught by a cyclone and hit rocks on the Great Barrier Reef . Due to the stormy weather, a proper rescue of the passengers was not possible. 113 people were killed, 22 survived. The loss of the ship and with it many regionally and nationally important personalities left its mark on the Northern Territory . It is one of the most serious civil shipping accidents in Australia.

The ship

At the pier in Port Adelaide

Consisting of steel -built steamship Gothenburg ran in 1854 in the shipyard of John Scott Russell in Millwall, a district of London , from the stack . The ship had a propeller and was powered by steam engines that reached up to 120 horsepower. The Gothenburg had three masts with the rigging of a schooner bark . The chimney sat between the main and the mizzen mast . Two lifeboats were moored on each of the port and starboard sides .

The first owner of the Gothenburg was the London-based North of Europe Steam Navigation Company, in whose service it drove from the Pier Irongate Wharf near the Tower of London to Sweden and back. In 1857 it was bought by Union-Castle Line , which renamed it RMS Celt . In June 1862, the ship was bought by the Australian shipping company McMerkan, Blackwood & Company based in Melbourne , which they used on Australian trade routes. She proved to be very reliable in those waters, quickly became popular and was also one of the most modern ships in Australian waters in the 1860s.

In 1873 the hull in Adelaide was lengthened and the ship was converted to cope with longer journeys and to carry a higher capacity of passengers and cargo. After these renovations, the steamer got its original name Gothenburg back. In November 1874 the government of the state of South Australia commissioned several ship owners to carry out ten trips between the capital of South Australia, Adelaide, and the distant city of Darwin in the northern Northern Territory . Shortly before, a gold rush had broken out in the nearby town of Pine Creek following the discovery of gold , resulting in rapid immigration to the area. The region also developed into an important trading post with the areas of the Dutch East Indies .

On the route from Darwin to Adelaide along the east coast of Australia, the local bank money, government papers and the Royal Mail mail were transported. After each voyage was successfully completed, the ship operators received £ 1,000 from the government of South Australia. The owners of Gothenburg also took part in this trade and sent their ship to the Northern Territory.

Downfall

beginning of the journey

On Wednesday, February 17, 1875, the Gothenburg cast off in Darwin for the return journey to Adelaide via Melbourne and Newcastle . Captain James Pearce had been instructed to travel at the highest possible speed. He had been the captain of Gothenburg for some time and had built a reputation as a capable and respected seaman. There were 37 crew members and 98 passengers on board the ship. In Captain Pearce's cabin, 3,000 ounces of gold, then valued at £ 40,000, were kept for EAS Bank in Adelaide. One of the passengers, Vice Consul Durand, is also said to have carried a box containing sovereigns and other gold coins worth £ 3,000.

In the following three days at sea, the Gothenburg covered around 900 miles in clear weather. Only at the height of Somerset on the Cape York Peninsula did the sea become rougher and the weather worse, so that Gothenburg had to enter Somerset and take on additional ballast. While the steamer was at anchor there, the sea was so churned that the windlass tore. Captain Pearce took his ship seven miles into open waters to await the next day.

On Thursday, February 23rd, the Gothenburg Cooktown passed around 2 p.m. Wind and rain grew stronger and stronger and the clouds so big and dense that they completely covered the sun. Despite these conditions, the ship continues its way in a southerly direction between the north coast of Queensland and the Great Barrier Reef and steamed into increasingly bad weather. Although this route offered protection from the open sea, the ships were exposed to numerous as yet unknown reefs and rocks. A stopover in Newcastle was planned for the coming Sunday, February 26th.

Collision on the Great Barrier Reef

Graphic representation of the accident

On February 24, 1875, Gothenburg continued to pass the Queensland coast. Cyclone-like conditions prevailed. The machines were doing their best and all three masts were under full sails. It was raining so hard that neither land nor the sun could be seen on board. Around 7 p.m., Captain Pearce ordered a change of course. Shortly thereafter, at full speed and at low tide, Gothenburg rammed an extension of the Great Barrier Reef 31 miles northwest of Holbourne Island. The ship collided with such force that it was pushed high up on the reef and was stuck there. At first there was no panic among the passengers . Since everyone assumed that the Gothenburg would be able to swim freely from the rocks during the next high tide , the passengers returned to their cabins.

Pearce had the sails hauled in and ordered measures to balance the ship. He wanted to make the front part of Gothenburg lighter so that the ship would come loose. The passengers were ordered to the stern, where buckets filled with water were to serve as additional ballast. The action was unsuccessful, Gothenburg was still stuck. Next, the machines were reset to “full power”. This ensured that the Gothenburg freed itself halfway, but in the process, its hull, which was previously undamaged, was ripped open by the rocks. In addition, in her new position she gave the high waves a large target area.

The troubled, rising sea was able to penetrate the ship through the holes in the hull and put out the fires in the boilers . Around midnight, the chief engineer went to the navigating bridge and reported to the master that the engine room was completely flooded and useless. More and more seawater penetrated through hatches and portholes and began to flood the first cabins. Winds and currents became more violent and changed directions unpredictably.

The storm made it impossible to launch the lifeboats . At 3:00 a.m. the two boats were to be launched on port side. Four crew members each boarded each, but before passengers could board, both drifted off in the troubled sea and could no longer reach the ship. Then there was a rush on the starboard boats. One of the boats, already overcrowded with women and children, capsized when more people tried to board. The second starboard boat was caught by a breaker while still hanging in its davits and pulled into the sea together with its occupants.

The ship is sinking

During the attempts to evacuate the ship that got Gothenburg growing list . The people could barely stand and began to climb over the railing onto the side of the ship. In addition, sharks began to orbit the ship. Most of the passengers on board the Gothenburg drowned, were washed off board or were trapped below deck in the cabins, which slowly filled with water. About 100 people died within a very short time. Few were alive by daybreak. Breakers continued to pound over the ship, gradually decimating the survivors. A passenger later testified that the wreck was surrounded by corpses and debris bobbing up and down in the swell . Many of the prospectors carried their valuable finds in their pockets and refused to dispose of them. Some of them were reportedly pulled down due to the weight and drowned.

On the morning of February 25, only the masts were sticking out of the water. 14 survivors held on to the rigging for the next 24 hours in persistently stormy weather. At the next low tide, the Gothenburg crashed onto the rocks again, turned and broke between the front and main mast. The cyclone subsided on the morning of February 26th. The survivors managed to straighten one of the capsized lifeboats, exhaust it and reach a nearby island. There they met four crew members of the Gothenburg who had been stranded with one of the port boats on the other side of the island. The other port boat, which had been washed away by the waves from Gothenburg , was discovered two days after the accident by the steamer Leichhardt near the Whitsunday Islands . The Leichhardt immediately set course for the scene of the accident, but found no more signs of life. The Gothenburg was a complete wreck. The chimney had broken off and only parts of the rigging were still above the surface of the water.

Meanwhile, the other 18 castaways on their island did not believe that they would be found there. They fed on bird eggs and rainwater. They engraved their names and details of the accident on the inside of a turtle shell in the hopes that someone would find the shell in the future. On February 28, 15 of them set out in their boat to a neighboring island that appeared to be closer to the busy shipping lanes. A ship dispatched to search for survivors found the men and brought them to Bowen . The Bunyip from Townsville saved the other three men of their island.

Passengers

Among the passengers on the last voyage of Gothenburg were many prospectors, miners , residents of the city of Darwin on their first vacation trip and some employees of the Australian Overland Telegraph Line . Some prison inmates were also transferred to Adelaide on the ship.

There were also some senior government officials, judges and businessmen present. The most prominent travelers included:

Aftermath

113 passengers and crew, including all 25 women and children on board and all officers, were killed in the disaster. 22 people survived. (12 crew members and ten passengers). The death toll in the sources varies from 98 to 112, but according to the official passenger list published in 1875 by publisher and publicist JH Lewis in his report The Wreck of the Gothenburg on Her Voyage From Port Darwin to Adelaide , there were 135 people been on board, of whom 22 survived and 113 died.

The city of Darwin was particularly hard hit. Until then, there had been no misfortune in which so many important personalities were suddenly wiped out. The news of the calamity shocked Darwin from which the city did not recover for several years. In some parts of Darwin, especially in Karama and Coconut Grove, numerous streets, squares and buildings were named after passengers and crew members of Gothenburg . A suburb of Darwin got in honor of Dr. James Millner named Millner. In the Stuart Park district, the Gothenburg Crescent park was named after the ship. Also, Melbourne was hit by the fall, as almost all team members were from there. The men left eleven widows and 34 half-orphans .

Shortly after the accident, a diver was sent down to the wreck to secure gold and other valuables. After some difficulty, the gold was recovered from the captain's cabin. The diver also found the bodies of two women hugging at the foot of the stairs to the drawing room. He wanted to cut off curls so that the women could later be identified, but his diving line was too short to get to them. In addition, some sharks were caught near the site of the accident and human bones, remains of clothing and jewelry were found in their stomachs.

Passengers James Fitzgerald and John Cleland and the coal trimmer Robert Brazil were honored with gold medals and gold watches on July 26, 1875 by Anthony Musgrave , the governor of South Australia , for their efforts to rescue other passengers . They were also given gold chains by the Gothenburg Relief Fund Committee. Some Australian newspapers speculated about the lifeboats. Survivor James Fitzgerald argued that if the boats had been launched earlier and fully manned, they would not have stood a chance in the heavy seas. He also criticized the fact that there was not enough space in the boats for everyone on board. The turtle shell, on which 18 of the 22 survivors carved their names, is now on display in the South Australian Museum in Adelaide.

The wreck

The remains of the broken iron shell of Gothenburg lie in nine to 16 m deep water 130 km southeast of Townsville and 75 km northeast of Ayr . It is located on the west side of Old Reef in position 19 ° 22 '6 "  S , 148 ° 3' 21"  O coordinates: 19 ° 22 '6 "  S , 148 ° 3' 21"  O .

The wreck is a listed building and is listed as a Heritage Site on the Queensland National Estate Register (No. 8923). It is also protected by Section 7 of the Commonwealth Historic Shipwrecks Act of 1976. The reef that surrounds the wreck is good for diving and has an extensive coral garden , but divers are only allowed to get within 200 meters of the ship. Both the wreck and the flora and fauna must not be impaired. Sharks can still be found in the area today.

literature

  • Ronald Parsons. Australian Coastal Passenger Ships: The Details and a Brief Outline of the Career of Every Steam and Motor Ship That Carried Passengers On the Australian Coast . Magill (South Australia), 1981
  • Hugh Edwards. Australian and New Zealand Shipwrecks and Sea Tragedies . Phillip Mathews (Milsons Point, New South Wales ), 1978
  • Charles Hocking. Dictionary of Disasters at Sea during the Age of Steam: Including Sailing Ships and Ships of War 1824–1962 . Lloyd's Register of Shipping (London), 1969

Web links