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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. 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.
Blythe Star alongside at Prince of Wales Bay, Hobart. Image Maritime Museum of Tasmania The inquiry revealed multiple failures on the part of the captain
Survivors Alf Simpson and Mal McCarroll. Image Maritime Museum of Tasmania
At 9 pm, as he was heading west from Bruny Island, he spoke on the radio to Captain Trevor Roberts, master of Joseph Banks, telling him he was going west-about to King Island. By 5.15 am on Saturday morning, the lighthouse keeper on duty at Maatsuyker Island logged a small, grey, tanker-like freighter making its way westwards, though he was unable to read its name. Shortly before 8 am the helmsman noticed that the ship had developed a slight list to starboard. So too did the chief engineer, John Eagles, who rushed up to the bridge to ask the captain what was going on. The captain said he didn’t know, but that the list seemed to be righting itself. The chief went below to check if any of the tanks had taken water. He returned a few minutes later to report that all were dry but, on an afterthought, he said he’d forgotten to check one and he’d go back to do it. Hardly had he reached the engine room when the ship lurched further to starboard. By the time it rolled to 90 degrees, the crew had scrambled aft to where the bosun was launching the rubber life raft. Eagles managed to kill the engine and the crew jumped into the raft. In the nick of time they cast off as Blythe Star gave a great hiss and sank stern first. All 10 crew had made it to safety, with little more than a few cuts and bruises. They were five miles west of Tasmania’s Southwest Cape. Their euphoria at getting away from the sinking ship was cut short when Captain Cruickshank said he’d been unable to send a May Day signal because he was not on the bridge as the ship’s condition worsened and couldn’t get to the radio. Neither had he been able to grab the portable life-boat radio. Nobody knew the ship had sunk, or where the life raft was. As the captain descended into a state of shock, Ken Jones took charge of the crew and set off a parachute flare hoping Maatsuyker Island lighthouse would see it. It didn’t.
For eight days the raft drifted around the south of Tasmania at the mercy of wind and currents. Its emergency pack contained glucose tablets, high-protein biscuits, and 20 litres of canned water. Two or three crew members had been in bed when the capsize occurred and were dressed only in underpants and a T-shirt. They shivered with cold. The captain gave his jacket to 18-year-old ordinary seaman Mick Doleman, who’d been thrown from his bunk when the list increased. No-one was properly dressed for an eightday ordeal on the Southern Ocean and everyone suffered mightily from the extreme cold; had the raft not had an enclosed canopy it is unlikely anyone would have survived. For much of the first two days the raft drifted around the Pedra Branca archipelago – the site of many shipwrecks. The men had to paddle feverishly to steer the raft clear of the jagged rocks. Five days into the ordeal the second engineer, John Sloan, became sick from a long-standing thyroid problem, as the pills he needed to treat it had gone down with the ship. He deteriorated quickly and died on Thursday. He was given a brief funeral before being committed to the waves. Ken Jones didn’t allow dark sentiments to dominate the conversation even when things turned very black, as they did when a nearby fleet of Japanese fishing boats failed to respond to flares and SOS signals and turned away. Early on the morning of Sunday 21 October, after traversing 400 kilometres of the Southern Ocean, the raft drifted into Deep Glen Bay, a tiny rocky bay on Tasmania’s east coast, about 75 kilometres southeast of Hobart. Stumbling ashore, the men slaked their burning thirsts from a little creek flowing into the bay. All around them were 200-metre-high sheer cliffs, and the bush everywhere was thick and dense. Despite several attempts, no-one found a way out that first afternoon, or on the next day. A few hours after making landfall, John Eagles crawled down the shore to the raft, lay down and died. He was followed early the next morning by Ken Jones, both men succumbing to hypothermia and exhaustion. Their deaths had a crushing effect on the remaining men, who now knew that time was running out for everyone. The rations from the raft were all but exhausted, and their will to live was going the same way. On the morning of Tuesday 23 October the three youngest members – Mick Doleman, Mal McCarroll and the ship’s cook Alf Simpson – left the camp knowing that if they did not find a way out they were all doomed. Panels cut from the raft’s canopy served as ponchos, and more pieces tied around their feet sufficed as boots. They climbed up the steep cleft through which the creek flowed to emerge after some hours on the top of the ridge overlooking the bay. The bush at the top was impenetrable, sometime slowing the group’s progress to less than 100 metres per hour. Exhausted by the end of the day, they climbed into a huge hollow tree and covered themselves with bracken to spend a wet, uncomfortable night.
The next morning they drank rainwater from a moss-covered log and pressed on. Alf Simpson was a big man who had trouble getting through the bush. Regularly he’d fall through the tangled horizontal scrub, but fortunately didn’t hurt himself. Before lunchtime they stumbled on a logging track and followed it for several miles, hoping it would lead them to civilisation. Then they heard it – the faraway sound of a log truck grinding its gears, and it was coming their way. Doleman was afraid the driver might not stop for three bedraggled men who looked like escaped prisoners, and told the others to wait at the side of the track. At the last moment he ran out in front of the truck, which stopped dead. They persuaded the driver they were who they said they were, whereupon he hauled them aboard. The driver had nothing to eat or drink except a packet of Minties and some cordial, which they quickly devoured. He drove to Dunalley township where the postmistress took them in, found them clothes, ran a warm bath and fed them soup and raisin bread. Fortunately her husband had been a fisherman, and knew from their description of the rocky bay where their shipmates were. Later, while they climbed into an ambulance for the drive to Hobart, a police helicopter winched the four survivors to safety. News of the ship’s disappearance, and of the massive search and rescue operation which failed to find any trace of them, had filled the nation’s newspapers and TV screens for days. When the seven survivors turned up, radio and TV reporters flocked around in an unseemly display of invasive journalism, for it was not often that people returned from the dead. The Commonwealth Minister for Transport established a Court of Marine Inquiry to find out what caused the ship’s capsize on a calm sea on a morning of light wind. Presiding over the inquiry was Mr Justice Edward Dunphy – an old-school judge with a reputation for unorthodox judgments and confronting gruffness. The inquiry sat for 25 days and produced a transcript twice as long as the King James bible. One third of the Court’s time was taken up with deciding whether Blythe Star had gone to sea with or without ballast water. Naval architects used all the information available about how the ship was loaded, and concluded that if it had carried ballast, the ship would have been more than five inches below its marks. Counsel assisting the Court concluded the capsize was caused by the ship having insufficient positive stability upon its departure. The Court’s decision was a bombshell. The judge did not accept this view, instead declaring the ship had gone to sea ballasted. He ruled that it capsized because the chief engineer had emptied ballast from No 2 tank instead of emptying the bilges. Counsel appointed to assist the Court, Mr John Winneke, had forensically analysed the evidence to conclude that the ship capsized as it carried too much weight above the deck-line and was top heavy, and thus the seeds of its fate were sown before it left Hobart. A combination of factors, including the ship’s poor stability, lack of ballast and the ‘sloshing’ of liquid in the fuel and fresh water tanks, was enough to unsettle the ship. When the captain ordered the helmsman to put a few degrees to starboard on the wheel at 8 am that Saturday morning, the change in the ship’s direction was enough to push it over. There was no evidence to suggest the involvement of any engineer. Why the judge rejected Mr Winneke’s advice, and put blame on a man who could not defend himself, is a mystery. But in inquiries of this sort, the decision of the Court is final.
Approximate drift route taken by Blythe Star’s life raft. 1 Maatsuyker Island 2 Pedra Branca rocks 3 Bruny Island 4 Deep Glen Bay 5 Dunalley township
King Island
Sea Elephant Bay Port of Grassy Nobody knew the ship had sunk, or where the life raft was
Location of capsize Hobart
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2 3 5
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The inquiry revealed multiple failures by the captain, who failed to check his first officer’s stability calculations, to send out a May Day, to be on the bridge during the crucial 30 minutes, and to show leadership when his crew were abandoning ship. The judge also criticised the Transport Commission for its laissez-faire attitude to running a shipping operation. Difficulties were found in the relationship between the newly formed Marine Operations Centre in Canberra and the RAAF and RAN, who flew 300 hours in 17 aircraft without finding any trace of the life raft. For five years the Department of Transport had been looking into radar reflectors for life rafts, as was required by the Navigation Act, but so far had not recommended a single device. Reports of Maatsuyker Island’s sighting of the ship passing westwards on Saturday morning, admittedly muddled because of poor radio connections, were ignored by Canberra, which argued to the end that the Commission was unable to tell it whether the ship had sailed west or east-about.
Some good came from the disaster. The requirement for ships to report their position daily (AUSREP), and for life rafts to be equipped with EPIRBs, came from the inquiry. That three men had to die leaving widows and orphans to fend for themselves was an appalling price to pay for such a litany of indifference, failure and neglect displayed by those who had a duty of care for Blythe Star and its crew.
References
Court of Marine Inquiry report No 156: MV Blythe Star (on 315392) Australian Government Publishing Service 1975
Commonwealth Archives (Hobart) files: T73/236; T73/237; T74/221 Tasmanian Archives and Heritage Office files: 544/01/78; AB984/1/939; AB984/1/940 AB984/1/1074; AB984/1/1075; AB984/1/1087 Contemporary newspaper clippings, The Mercury, Canberra Times, The Examiner, Sydney Morning Herald. Maritime Museum of Tasmania D_2012-086 Miscellaneous papers relating to the loss of Blythe Star. Maritime Museum of Tasmania Box 049
Michael Stoddart is a biologist who has worked in several universities in the UK and Australia. He was formerly Chief Scientist of Australia’s Antarctic Program and is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Tasmania. He is currently a researcher at the Maritime Museum of Tasmania in Hobart, and his first maritime book – Tassie’s Whale Boys. Whaling in Antarctic waters – was published in 2017 by Forty South Publishing. His new book, The Blythe Star tragedy. How incompetence and neglect sank a ship and cost the lives of three men, will be published later this year, also by Forty South Publishing.
