Whatever happened to Blythe Star? A freighter’s fatal last voyage
A routine delivery turned into disaster for the Blythe Star when it sank off Tasmania in 1973 and an extensive week-long search found no trace of the ship or any survivors. Michael Stoddart analyses the fateful voyage and its consequences.
BLYTHE STAR’S FINAL VOYAGE started like any other. At 8 am on Thursday 11 October 1973, waterside workers arrived at Hobart’s Prince of Wales Bay to begin loading pallets of fertiliser to be shipped to King Island in Bass Strait. On charter to the Tasmanian Transport Commission from the Bass Strait Shipping Company, Blythe Star was a typical post-war freighter of 321 tons gross. Its 650-horsepower motor pushed it through the water at 9.5 knots, making it a useful ship for general work. This was to be its 38th voyage for the Commission; no-one thought it would be its last. By 6 pm on Friday 12, the ship was loaded with one tonne of barrelled beer and 350 tonnes of fertiliser: 267 tonnes in the hold, and a further 30 inside the 750-millimetre-high hatch coamings. The first officer, Ken Jones, calculated how much could be carried on top of the hatch covers, and after discussion with management, agreed to take 60 tonnes on the hatches, as it had on a previous voyage. In the event only 54 tonnes were loaded, due to limitations of the ship’s derricks. Inexplicably, Jones appeared to have forgotten that on the first voyage Blythe Star made for the Commission four months earlier, on which he had been first officer, a serious stability problem was encountered at Sea Elephant Bay off King Island’s east coast. On that occasion the ship carried 300 tonnes. All went well until about 14 hours into its voyage, when the ship developed a serious list. The captain, Richard Turner, instructed the engineers to press up the ship’s double-bottom ballast tank No 2 with 44 tonnes of sea water. The ship righted itself. 50
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In port at Grassy, Turner and Jones discussed what had happened, and agreed that 60 tonnes on the hatches was too much. They recommended that a limit for deck cargo be set at 25–30 tonnes, and telephoned this advice to the Commission’s shipping manager, Alistair Maddock, in Hobart. Apart from informing the Commission’s agents, Maddock kept this information to himself and did not disseminate it to those who would need it. In 1970 Blythe Star’s owners had employed a firm of naval architects to review the ship’s stability characteristics, in accordance with the Department of Transport’s new minimum stability standards. The firm recommended that ballast tank No 2 be kept full at all times. Such advice flew in the face of established practice which held that, if the hold was full, no ballast water was needed. Many captains and mates relied on the distance between a ship’s centre of gravity and its metacentric height, known as the GM distance, to inform them of stability. If this was at least one foot (30 centimetres), the ship was considered good to go. On this voyage it appeared that the GM distance was a little above a foot, and the hold was full. The captain testified to the Court that the ballast tank was empty. On its fateful final voyage Blythe Star’s master, Captain George Cruickshank, agreed to travel from Hobart via Tasmania’s west coast to King Island as the route was four-and-a-half hours shorter than via the east coast. Before casting off he checked his load line to satisfy himself he wasn’t overloaded, then took his ship out into the River Derwent.
