Signals, Issue 91

Signals

June

cover: The 1:3 scale tank test model of the famous Ben Lexcen-designed 12-Metre yacht Australia II is an important artefact in the museum’s collection, representing the historic Australian victory that snatched the 1983 America’s Cup and broke a 132-year US stranglehold on what was then yachting’s most prestigious trophy. Now there’s debate about who designed its revolutionary winged keel – the full story is on page 13. Gift of America’s Cup Defence 1987 Limited. Photographer A Frolows/ANMM.

2 Admiral Pâris and his extra-européen boats

One of France’s most remarkable naval officers compiled this rare encyclopaedia of non-European vessels in 1843

13 Turbulence around the winged keel

Questions have surfaced again about who really designed Australia II’s winged keel

21 Quest for the South Magnetic Pole

This exhibition is the first to examine the quixotic quest for this ever-shifting geographical phenomenon

25 Members events

Talks, tours, cruises, seminars, children’s events … winter calendar for Members

30 What's on

Cert no SGS-COC-006189

From the director 14

Winter exhibitions, events for visitors young and old, programs for schools

34 Governor Macquarie lights up South Head

An exhibition marking the 200th anniversary of the visionary governor’s arrival in the colony

39 Lady Hopetoun, first of the fleet

The seventh annual Phil Renouf memorial lecture recalls the beginnings of Sydney Heritage Fleet

42 Salty songs and rollicking verse

Renowned folk impresario Warren Fahey writes about songs from our maritime past

47 Readings

Sydney Harbour – a history; Sailing into the past

42 Tales from the Welcome Wall

Far from Mother Russia – via China and Hong Kong

44 Collection

A seat at history’s table – Dunbar memento

46 Currents

Mythic writing; Endeavour at Kurnell 240 years on

48 Bearings

Admiral Pâris and his extra-européen boats

A treasure of the museum’s collection is a rare encyclopaedia of traditional, non-European vessels, published in France in 1843. This pioneering work of maritime ethnology was compiled during three world voyages by one of France’s most remarkable naval officers. Curator Dr Stephen Gapps has worked with museum staff to make the entire publication accessible online, and brings us the fascinating story.

above: Portrait of the one-armed Admiral FrançoisEdmond Pâris (1806–1893). Photographer L Rouille, late 19th century. Reproduced courtesy of the Musée national de la Marine/S Dondain left: Plate 47 Gay-you bateau de pêche de la baie de touranne au plus près du vent, et se laissant dériver pour trainer des filets (Gay-you fishing boat in Touranne Bay [indochina] close to the wind, drifting to drag the nets). Pâris delineator, Mozin lithographer. ANMM collection

It may seem unlikely that a 19th-century French naval officer who led the introduction of steam engines and ironclad warships into the French navy would be best-known for recording, with a delicate painterly hand, rustic scenes of traditional ‘native’ boating. Yet FrançoisEdmond Pâris, a decorated veteran of the Crimean War who rose to the rank of admiral, was no ordinary naval officer. He has to be one of the most fascinating characters in French maritime history. His career in many ways bridges the pre-modern and industrial periods. He was absorbed in the grand enterprise of collecting, describing and classifying curiosities of the newly explored, non-European world, sailing three times between 1826 and 1840 with renowned French world-voyagers. Pâris was also at the forefront of two great 19th-century transformations. One was the introduction of steamship technology. The other turned ‘cabinet-of-curiosity’ collections into the great didactic museums of Europe, as Pâris ended his career as head of the French maritime museum.

During his Pacific voyages, the energetic Pâris documented virtually every type of watercraft he encountered, in places as diverse as Senegal, the Seychelles, India, the Straits of Malacca, Malaya, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, China, Australia, Chile and Brazil. He recorded canoes from Greenland, Arab dhows, Chinese junks, Malay prahus and Pacific outrigger craft. Pâris’s fascination with non-European maritime traditions produced an extraordinary publication that’s one of the treasures of the collection at the Australian National Maritime Museum. It’s an astonishing encyclopaedia of non-European vessels, published by the

Pâris’s ethnographic work takes a seafarer’s delight in the inventive solutions that had developed to meet the universal challenges of seafaring

Pâris repeatedly depicts the craft that he records both in picturesque views and in precise technical drawings, as in this Arabian ‘beden’ at anchor, under sail and oar and in plan and section.

right: Plate 7 Beden safar de mascate, au mouillage et à la voile (Beden safar of Muscat, at anchor and under sail).

Pâris delineator, Sabatier lithographer.

below: Plate 5 Garookuh de mascate et beden safar (Garukh of Muscat and beden safar).

Pâris delineator, Adam & Lemaître engravers

French government in 1843, titled in full Essai sur la construction navale des peuples extra-européens ou collection des navires et pirogues construits par les habitants de l'asie, de la malaisie, de grand ocean et de l'amerique (Essay on non-European naval architecture, or a collection of vessels and canoes built by the inhabitants of Asia, the East Indies, Pacific Ocean and America). It includes 132 lithographic plates of boat plans and nautical scenes, and notes on the vessels’ construction, design, handling and use. Without doubt the Essai ranks as one of the greatest of all works on naval architecture.

Better-known early 19th-century illustrated French voyage accounts of Australia, Asia and the Pacific, by the likes of Baudin, Freycinet and Louis de Sainson, are rich sources of natural history and ethnography. However, Pâris’s maritime ethnography of indigenous watercraft was unique. His documentation of these vessels included meticulous, scientific plans of their structure and rigging. Yet he also created accomplished, vibrant scenes of these craft in use. Pâris’s skilful sketches, paintings and watercolours of busy waterfronts and working sailing craft often compile the different activities of fishing vessels, lighters, or transports into a single, richly informative image. We see how these vessels worked, and his careful observations provide us with information about the people who worked them and the environments in which they operated.

In 1994, the Australian National Maritime Museum acquired a copy of Pâris’s rare, limited edition with the assistance of the Louis Vuitton Fund, established by the luxury goods retailer to help the museum collect items relating to French exploration in our region.

The sumptuous folio remains exactly as published: in two volumes, 13 parts, comprising 132 loose plates and 156 loose pages of text, all presented in a blue morocco box. Since numbers of them were subsequently bound by their owners, the museum’s specimen is particularly valuable. Only a dozen copies are thought to remain in existence.

Although a selection of the images was temporarily displayed by this museum, most of them have never been publicly viewed. Now this important illustrated encyclopaedia has been included with this museum’s growing online collection content.

François-Edmond Pâris was born in 1806, the son of French government administrator Pierre-Théodore Pâris. He entered the French Naval Academy at Angoulême in 1822 and studied painting with the naval artist Pierre-Julien Gilbert (1783–1860). Gilbert’s official role was to document French naval history, and he painted many dramatic naval battles. Pâris’s other art teacher was Pierre Ozanne (1737–1813), a naval draftsman and engineer who was known for his fine and accurate drawings of ships and naval battles. Pâris’s talent for both rigorously accurate plans and lively, scenic watercolours can be traced to these early influences.

Graduating from the naval academy as a hydrographer in 1824, Pâris’s flair for drawing and painting soon secured him a place on a voyage of scientific exploration. In 1826 he joined L’Astrolabe for a world voyage under Captain Jules Sébastien César Dumont d’Urville, who preferred trained navy personnel to ‘troublesome’ civilian scientists and artists. Pâris was one of three junior officers or élèves assigned to the voyage. He was to have an excellent role-model

Plate 21 Engraving from the section ‘Ceylan et Côte de Coromandel’ (Ceylon and Coromandel Coast [india]: Doni à balancier (Outrigger dhoni) in section, elevation and plan. Pâris delineator, Adam & Lemaître engravers

in L’Astrolabe’s official artist Louis de Sainson, who would produce the remarkable Atlas historique of this 1826–29 voyage.

Dumont d’Urville’s expedition was France’s last and greatest scientific voyage of discovery, in the grand tradition of Bougainville, d’Entrecasteaux, Baudin and Freycinet. Its objectives included the delivery of young olive and fig trees from Toulon’s Botanic Gardens to John Macarthur in New South Wales; ‘to look for a place suitable for the deportation of criminals’; to look for anchorages for warships; and to continue the search for evidence of the long-lost expedition of Comte de Lapérouse, which vanished shortly after meeting the First Fleet in Botany Bay in 1788.

L’Astrolabe reached Australia via the Cape of Good Hope, and Pâris was employed surveying King George Sound in Western Australia – not yet formally colonised by Britain – and later Jervis Bay south of Sydney. Here the young officer drew an Aboriginal bark canoe, or as he titled it Pirogue en écorce de la baie Jervis Plate number 112 of Pâris’s Essai from the region ‘Nouvelle Hollande, Nouvelle Zelande’ shows several canoes from New Zealand and the only drawing of an Australian watercraft in the series.

In Port Jackson, Dumont d’Urville discovered that his extensive surveys had aroused suspicion about French intentions. Indeed Governor Darling had already been alerted from Britain of French interest in King George Sound and had dispatched two brigs, Amity and Fly, to establish a British settlement there.

Ordered to ‘examine the vast territory in the north-east of New Zealand’, Dumont d’Urville readied the ship’s guns and muskets because of the ‘fearsome reputation’ of the Maori. After causing more consternation over France’s colonial ambitions, d’Urville visited several Pacific islands and erected a monument to Lapérouse on the island of Vanikoro. While heading home via Mauritius and

Cape Town, the young Pâris received word of his promotion from élève to enseigne de vaisseau (ensign).

The hydrographic results of the expedition, its vast collection of botanical and zoological specimens and its artistic output were highly regarded. A grand record of the journey, Voyage de la corvette l’Astrolabe, was published in 13 volumes of text and four atlases of plates – the Atlas historique – between 1830 and 1835. The Atlas was a significant collection of art works, most by de Sainson but several of them based on paintings and sketches by unofficial voyage artists including FrançoisEdmond Pâris.

The plates were produced by lithography – ‘drawing on stone’ – a complex and highly skilled printmaking technique that allowed a richer texture than engraving, and the use of colour. Artists painted or drew on polished limestone blocks with oily crayons or washes, and used chemicals and acid that had an affinity for oil to etch the image into the stone. They applied inks that adhered to the oily image areas and were repelled by water sponged on the non-image surfaces. A sheet of paper pressed onto the stone came away with a perfect printed image. Used by commercial printers for scenes and views, lithography had not previously appeared in French government publications, suggesting the importance they placed on Dumont d’Urville’s Atlas historique

The next French voyage to the South Pacific was to have quite a different focus. In 1829 Cyrille-Pierre-Théodore Laplace was given command of an expedition to secure French colonial interests. Laplace was to re-establish waning French influence in Indochina, and obtain information about the ports and trading regulations of other places in Asia and the Pacific. Laplace chose his own officers and among them was the recentlypromoted Lieutenant Pâris, bringing his experience on Dumont d’Urville’s famous

Pâris delights in the aesthetic appeal of seacraft everywhere –so often the cleverest artefacts of human ingenuity

expedition and his growing reputation as a hydrographer and artist.

La Favorite sailed from Toulon in December 1829, rounded the Cape of Good Hope in a storm and encountered several hurricanes before making the island of Mauritius. Laplace took the ship to India to refit. Near Madras, La Favorite grounded on a mud bank and was assisted by local Indian fishing vessels. Pâris was to later note that these masula, despite their frameless construction of mangowood planks sewn together with coconut coir, were well-suited to the surf precisely because of their very un-European flexibility.

La Favorite continued to Singapore and then visited a series of far-eastern ports, including Manila, Macao and Canton, where Laplace secured ‘most favoured nation’ status with the Chinese. While in Da Nang (Vietnam), Laplace noted that Pâris’s survey chart of Tourane Bay was ‘as handsome a piece of work as it was useful’. Again, though, Pâris was not just making charts. The many studies of Indochinese watercraft he later published show that he spent a great deal of time painting, sketching and measuring all sorts of ‘péniche’, ‘gaydiang’, ‘bateau de pêche’, ‘gay-you’ and ‘caboteur’.

La Favorite continued to the Dutch East Indies, then to Australia. The crew had suffered much illness in Asia and two men were buried on Bruny Island in Tasmania; another three died in hospital in Hobart in July 1832. In Sydney the Frenchmen were a popular addition to the colony’s social calendar. Pâris would have been involved in what Laplace described as the daily round of ‘excursions, banquets and balls’ that took up all the officers’ time while in Sydney – so exhausting, in fact, that he had to set sail in order to gain some rest!

The warm welcome cooled when colonial authorities learned that the French were making extensive surveys of the New Zealand coastline in an

On his return to France, Pâris’s increasing portfolio of work was recognised and he was awarded the Légion d’Honneur

apparent attempt to claim it for France. The threat of this French corvette off the New Zealand coast led several Maori chiefs, prompted by some colonials, to write to King William IV for his protection. This ultimately hastened the British colonisation of New Zealand.

While Pâris made several detailed drawings of Maori canoes, Laplace was not at all taken by other aspects of Maori culture. He wrote of being ‘sickened’ by a feast that included the ritual eating of human flesh. Laplace left ‘these abominable savages’ and La Favorite headed east, arriving in the Chilean port of Valpariso in November 1832. Continuing south around Cape Horn, they were home in Toulon in April 1833.

Despite some trading setbacks in China, Laplace’s voyage was generally regarded as a success and the French government authorised the publication of his account, Voyage autour du monde … sur la corvette de l’État La Favorite, in four volumes, from 1833. Twenty-four of the 72 plates of various ports and towns included in the first volume were by François-Edmond Pâris, who had been active in sketching and painting during the expedition.

Pâris had also begun to compile his notes, sketches and watercolours of extraeuropéen watercraft. A manuscript that would eventually form the basis of his Essai sur la construction navale des peuples extra-européens, now held in Paris at the Musée national de la Marine, shows many of the views and naval architectural drawings that were later engraved or turned into lithographs.

On his return to France, Pâris’s increasing portfolio of work was recognised and he was awarded the Légion d’Honneur. Considering his expertise in native craft, it seems in some respects curious that Pâris then sought permission to go to England to learn English and familiarise himself with the operations of the new steamships. His skills in plan drawing and his

excellence as a technician no doubt aided his application. His time in England was productive, as he was later involved in installing the first steam engines on French naval vessels.

The work on indigenous watercraft was not yet complete, however, and Pâris was to embark on a third major voyage and circumnavigate the globe one more time. In 1837 Pâris was attached as executive officer to the frigate Artémise, once again under Laplace. The age of European scientific exploration was coming to an end and the voyage was primarily a political one: Laplace was to ensure fair treatment for French missionaries and traders in Tahiti and Honolulu.

The voyage of Artémise became an arduous, disease-ridden struggle through the Indian Ocean and South-East Asia that would prove catastrophic for Pâris.

In June 1838, while inspecting a steam engine in a foundry in the French enclave Pondicherry in southern India, his sleeve became caught in some machinery and his arm was mangled. It was later amputated, but in the best naval traditions this didn’t stop the energetic Pâris from continuing his work and career, or his infatuation with steam engines.

Artémise visited Hobart and Sydney – the third time for the well-travelled Lieutenant Pâris. After striking a reef in Tahiti, sailing the Californian coast and suffering an outbreak of cholera on board, Artémise returned to France in April 1841.

Pâris’s three expeditions had provided him with such a comprehensive body of work on non-European watercraft that he could now claim to have a definitive study. The King of France agreed. Pâris’s drawings and notes were to be published by royal decree and very shortly after his return in 1841, his Essai sur la construction navale des peuples extra-européens entered production. It was a mammoth task, and little expense was spared. Some of France’s most notable printers, engravers

ingenious solutions to seafaring’s challenges: right: Plate 117 Pirogues de Lakeba, au plus près y vent arrière (Canoes of Lakeba in a following wind). Pâris delineator, Mozin lithographer.

below: Plate 130 Pirogues de valparaise et balse des intermedios (Canoes of Valpariso [Chile] and raft in middle). The three-masted ship in the background is most likely the corvette La Favorite on which Pâris made his second world voyage. Pâris delineator, Mozin lithographer, Lemercier printer.

and lithographers were employed, and several artists were required to help copy Pâris’s art onto stone.

The publication was produced as a folio series, rather than bound as a book. This meant not only that subscribers could receive the Essai in instalments as it was produced in 13 parts over the next two years, but that errors could be amended and changes incorporated as the production continued.

The firm Lemercier, Benard et Cie was one of the major participants. Joseph Lemercier, who was once described as the ‘soul of lithography’, had been awarded medals for his work including Dumont d’Urville’s Voyage de la corvette l'Astrolabe. He was associated with many prominent French artists, and explored different techniques for colour lithographic printing. In 1837, with the printer Benard, he formed Lemercier, Benard et Cie & Co, which was to print the majority of the 132 lithographs and engravings in Pâris’s Essai, although a handful of the last plates in the folio were credited solely to Lemercier.

The Essai was produced by the publishing house of Arthus-Bertrand, bookseller and specialist editor of new voyage chronicles. Claude Arthus-Bertrand was an ex-army officer who established a bookshop and publishing house in Paris in 1803.

After producing the eight-volume atlas of Louis Isidore Duperrey and Jules Dumont d’Urville’s Pacific voyage of 1822–25, Arthus-Bertrand became an official publishing house for the French Naval Ministry.

The majority of the Essai’s lithographs were printed by Bouchard-Huzard, established by veterinarian Jean-Baptiste Huzard and his wife Marie-Rosalie to produce veterinary and agricultural books. It was thus well-positioned to produce large, detailed images. Madame Huzard was one of the few women involved in printing in 19th-century Paris, continuing after her husband’s death in 1838. She was

From the humble Jervis Bay bark canoe and decorated New Zealand canoes to an extraordinary Moluccan war galley.

left: Plate 123 Pirogue en écorce de la Baie Jervis, pirogue de l’Anse de L’Astrolabe dans l’île de Tavai Pounamou, pirogue de la Baie Houa-Houa dans i’île Tka-na-Mawi (Bark canoe in Jervis Bay, canoe of Astrolabe Cove in Tavai Pounamou island, canoe of Houa-Houa Bay on the island Tka-na-Mawi). Pâris delineator, Adam & Lemaître engravers.

below: Plate 103, section ‘Archipel des Moluques' (Molucca Archipelago), Bouanga, navire Malais, ayant trois rangs de rames (Bouanga, Malay vessel, having three banks of oars). Pâris delineator, Adam & Lemaître engravers

a significant presence in the production Pâris’s Essai

Most of the engravings required to reproduce its lines plans and drawings were produced by Adam et Lemaître. Augustin François Lemaître was a prominent engraver and lithographer in 19th-century Paris. Victor Adam was a respected lithographer who had worked on several major publications of Pacific voyages including Dumont d’Urville’s Atlas historique

Léon Jean-Baptiste Sabatier was the lithographer of many of the plates in Pâris’s Essai and is noted as artist on the only two plates in the folio where Pâris himself is not the credited artist. Sabatier was a prolific artist, engraver and lithographer between the 1830s and 1880s. He produced many scenes of Asia and the Pacific and was involved in the production of several volumes and folios of scenes from French maritime expeditions in the mid-19th century, notably Dumont d’Urville’s Atlas historique

Arguably the most prominent artist involved with Pâris’s work was Charles Mozin. Regarded as a significant artist in the development of what has been called pre-impressionism, his early work in the 1820s focused on views of fishing boats and coastal villages and ports. A remarkable draughtsman as well as a painter, he paid attention to small details such as a ship’s rigging. All of this made him an excellent choice as the main lithographer for Pâris’s Essai. Between 1841 and 1843 sections of the Essai were posted regularly to subscribers. They appear to have been produced monthly. This system allowed some flexibility in the engraving and printing process. The individual plates did not arrive sequentially, but were grouped with the corresponding text pages. The yellow cover sheets for each series –

from the first series or Livraison Première to the 13th and final Treizième et Dernière Livraison – wrapped the plates and text pages and held an updated index to each series.

When complete, the Essai text and accompanying atlas of plates were arranged in geographical regions such as ‘Arabie’, ‘Côte de Malabar’, ‘Bengale’, ‘Ceylan’, ‘Afrique’ ‘Chine’, etc. The text provided information on the type of vessels, what they were used for and how they were constructed. Each entry has at least one accompanying image of a vessel that shows how it was sailed or how it was employed, for example in fishing or transportation. Some are dramatic scenes under full sail in high seas. Others show in precise detail intricate carvings on the prows of Maori canoes or Chinese junks. Some are obviously intended to show how a particular type of sail was rigged. Many include everyday details such as laundry hanging on a line to dry. The major study is often accompanied by an engraving of construction drawings of the vessels shown in section, elevation and plan, and sometimes the complete lines taken off the hull. Some show scaled human figures. The detailed architectural drawings were later to form the basis of reconstructions of many of these vessels as models.

Despite the loss of an arm, Pâris remained active in the French Navy, transferring to its new steamship section in 1842, commanding the steam ships Infernal and Archimède, before receiving the rank of captain in 1846. Other commands between 1847 and 1854 included the royal yacht Comte d’Eu in 1847. In this time of rapid innovation and change in naval warfare, as steam-driven, ironclad ships evolved, Pâris collaborated with his father-in-law Admiral Bonnefoux on a huge Maritime Dictionary of Sail and Steam, in both French and English.

His arm was amputated, but in the best naval traditions this didn’t stop the energetic Pâris from continuing his work and career

During the Crimean War (1853–56) Pâris headed a naval division, and in 1856 took command of the single-screw steamer Audacieuse. In 1857 he visited England to study the construction of Brunel’s great ‘Leviathan’, the steamship Great Eastern In 1858 he was promoted to Rear Admiral and from 1860 to 1861 led the second division of the French fleet, with his flag on Algésiras. Made a member of the French Academy of Sciences in 1863 in recognition of his contributions to geography, he continued to write treatises on naval architecture. In 1864, Pâris was promoted to Vice-Admiral. He served as director of the Dépôt des cartes et plans de la marine (Bureau of naval charts and plans) and was vice-president of the Dépôt des phares et balises (Bureau of lighthouses and beacons).

He retired from the navy in 1871 –whereupon the ethnographer of nonEuropean maritime cultures came full circle. He became curator at the Musée naval du Louvre and was put in charge of conserving the paintings and drawings he had made in his early career. The naval museum at the Louvre – forerunner of today’s Musée national de la Marine – held a large collection of French ship models and naval paintings. To this Admiral Pâris added his own signature: he commissioned the construction of 250 models of vessels from different locations of the French Empire, based on his plans and drawings. While this gave physical form to the images from his Essai, it also neatly reinforced the extent of French dominions around the globe. The Australian National Maritime Museum has in its collection a copy of the French maritime museum’s catalogue for 1909 that includes the models that Pâris commissioned, all listed as ‘bâtiments éxotique’ (exotic constructions).

Admiral François-Edmond Pâris died in Paris, the city of his birth, in 1893,

aged 87. His incredible career had commenced in the burst of postNapoleonic ambition for a new French colonial empire, and ended in the cataloguing of these materials in a public, instructional museum. In between, Pâris took the opportunity offered by three world voyages to become the first European maritime ethnographer. He brought to this the same enquiring and technical mind that drove his later involvement with the new technologies of steam and iron.

The vast majority of the craft Pâris recorded have disappeared from use, making his plans and sketches even more significant today. Pâris’s images of Hawaiian craft have been used as the basis for reconstructions of vessels to retrace the journeys of ancient Polynesian voyagers. They have helped researchers to reconstruct the kind of prahus sailed by Macassans from Sulawesi to the trepang or bêche-de-mer fishing grounds of northern Australia. Just a few of the craft Pâris drew survive today. The kattu maram of the southern Indian coasts, fishing rafts of logs bound together by cords and rigged with a lateen sail, are still built and used today in the manner recorded by Pâris.

Pâris’s ethnographic work with its classification of indigenous artefacts exemplifies the spirit of scientific enquiry and the world view of the Enlightenment that propelled the great European voyages of the 18th and early-19th centuries. Yet unlike some images and accounts that emphasised the superiority of the European, Pâris’s work also shows empathy with indigenous cultures. There is a tension – typical of European perceptions of non-European cultures –between the scientific need to document and the impulse to capture the strangeness of exotic cultures. There is also a selection process at work that neatly ties in with French imperial aspirations, with so much of his focus on studies in French Indochina.

Ultimately, though, Pâris’s ethnographic work takes a seafarer’s delight in the inventive solutions that non-European peoples had developed to meet the universal challenges of seafaring. At the same time he demonstrates how these watercraft were ingenious adaptations to quite particular maritime conditions and environments. And he delights in the aesthetic appeal of seacraft everywhere – so often the cleverest artefacts of human ingenuity. 

Plate 35 Grands patiles de Calcutta (Large ‘patiles’ of Calcutta). Pâris delineator, Sabatier lithographer, Lemercier, Benard et Co printer

Plate 62 in the section ‘Chine’ (China), Bateaux caboteurs de l’une des provinces du nord (Cargo boat of one of the northern provinces) showing views of a junk rigged with additional topsail and a light-air stuns’l or ringtail. Pâris delineator, Mozin lithographer

Plate 49 Grande jonque de querre (Large war junk). Pâris delineator, Adam & Lemaître engravers

Plate 69 Bilalo, bateau de passage de Manille à Cavite (Bilalo, a passenger boat plying between Manilla and Cavite). Pâris delineator, Mozin lithographer

The Musée national de la marine currently has an exhibition of Pâris’s ethnographic ship model collection, viewable at: www.museemarine.fr/site/fr/expo-tous-bateaux-du-monde clockwise from top left:

You can see Pâris’s masterpiece on our website at 203.35.183.199/eMuseum/code/ emuseum.asp by entering the words ‘essai sur la construction’ in the search box.

Turbulence around the winged keel

Questions have surfaced again about who really designed the famous winged keel of the America’s Cupwinning 12-Metre yacht

Australia II David Payne, curator of ANMM’s Australian Register of Historic Vessels, looks at artefacts in the museum collection to sift through the claims and counterclaims – and delves into the Cup’s tricky history.

It was a standout theatrical moment during the celebrations when Australia won the America’s Cup on 26 September 1983, and broke a 132-year US stranglehold on what was then yachting’s most prestigious contest. Live to world TV, Australia II was hoisted from the water to reveal at last its highly secret winged keel, the unconventional appendage that had devastated the American defenders – psychologically as much as by any boat speed advantage it delivered.

Those images from Newport in Rhode Island, USA, were replayed in October 2009, as controversial claims were aired that the extraordinary keel was not the invention of Australia II’s designer Ben Lexcen. This self-taught genius of yacht design was revered by our nation for the 1983 America’s Cup victory, along with Australia II skipper John Bertrand and the syndicate leader, flamboyant

businessman Alan Bond. Lexcen died of a heart attack in 1988, aged just 52. Not long afterwards Bond was disgraced and gaoled for corporate fraud. Now the media were reporting claims by Dutch naval architect Dr Peter van Oossanen that it was he, not Lexcen, who played the principal role in the keel’s development.

In 1981 van Oossanen had been a key staff member at the Netherlands facility where the Australia II design was tank tested using a 1/3 scale model. That model, number 5854b with keel Va, was gifted to the Australian National Maritime Museum by the Australia II syndicate, along with a series of plans, in the late 1980s. It is currently in storage.

The full-size Australia II was displayed here, on loan, for nearly 10 years from the time this museum first opened. It was then transferred to the Western Australian Maritime Museum in the state where the aluminium-hulled 12-Metre

yacht was built, and where the challenging yacht club and syndicate leader resided.

Last October, when the dispute over who really designed Australia II had journalists clamouring for comment and footage for the day’s news, it was still daybreak in Western Australia. Attention was directed here instead, where our historic 18-foot skiff Taipan – designed and built by Ben Lexcen in 1959 – was on display. As the late designer’s supporters sprang to defend his reputation, the revolutionary skiff Taipan was a trump card. It featured an early precursor of the winglets on Australia II’s famous winged keel, trialled by Lexcen nearly a quarter of a century earlier.

By mid-morning the first TV crews had set up to film and conduct interviews. This continued until early evening when Nine News ran a live cross between the studio and the museum. Standing in front

The Australia II 1:3 scale tank test model in the museum's collection is an iconic artefact representing the historic Austalian victory in the 1983 America's Cup. Stern and bow views. Gift of America's Cup Defence 1987 Limited. Photographer A Frolows/ANMM.

The bodyplan (the fore and aft sectional view of the hull) was taken from the model in 1986 (see credit page 19).

of a floodlit Taipan, their reporter dismissed the claims that someone else had designed the winged keel in a short, rehearsed exchange with the newsreader.

For the museum, this was a chance to demonstrate another dimension. More than just a place to visit, it was a national resource of significant historical material and was ready at short notice to provide a quality perspective on questions of public interest. It proved again the value of the huge Taipan restoration project we had undertaken in 2008 (reported in Signals Nos 80, 82 and 83). The skiff could now be interpreted correctly, and it made a stunning visual statement for national TV.

The story resurfaced in March 2010 on Seven’s Sunday News program and another media stop was accommodated, at short notice. The mass media, of course, is not known for its ability to convey nuanced information and complex

historical contexts – in this case the background to the America’s Cup and the challenges for it – which were missing from their coverage of the keel-design controversy. The museum, by contrast, is a centre for research, and much of relevance to this question can be found in our collection and archives.

Intriguingly, the formula for a successful America’s Cup challenge was predicted with uncanny accuracy in 1903 by the eminent Australian naval architect Walter Reeks, little-remembered today but profiled on the website of our Australian Register of Historic Vessels. A newspaper report about a meeting he had that year in the USA with Nathanial Herreshoff, then the dominant designer of American defenders of the cup, says: ‘It is the opinion of Mr Reeks … that the cup will never be taken from America so long as the challengers are built on conventional lines, and while such

men as Nathanial Herreshoff still live to design and build American yachts.’ He was right on both points. The eventual winning challenger Australia II was totally unconventional for a 12-Metre yacht, the class that contested the cup from 1956 to 1987. The baton of American design dominance, handed from the great Herreshoff to Starling Burgess and then to Olin Stephens, was gone too; the 1983 defender Liberty was designed by a Dutch-born US citizen, Johan Valentjin.

Earlier Australian challenges for the America’s Cup had pointed the way: things went better when the thinking was unconventional. In 1962 Gretel’s unusual cross-linked genoa sheet winches caused the Americans to abandon the exhausting upwind tacking duels that they used to dominate … and then they watched in disbelief as the flat-sterned Gretel surfed past their defender Weatherly to win a race.

The NYYC began to regret their generosity, alarmed at the threat of a design breakthrough as the rampaging Australia II easily beat off the other challengers

right: Australia II tacks ahead of US defender Liberty during Australia’s successful challenge for the 1983 America’s Cup. Photographer Sally Samins, ANMM collection centre: The museum’s 18-foot skiff Taipan, a revolutionary early Lexcen design. The replica rudder, held by America’s Cup-winning skipper John Bertrand, shows early Lexcen experiments with endplates and other hydrodynamic features. He’s with former Taipan skipper Carl Ryves. Photographer A Frolows/ANMM

far right: Australia II’s winged keel and Dennis Conner, the defending US skipper who it helped to defeat in 1983. Conner, who won back the America’s Cup in 1986, visited the museum in 1992 when Australia II was on display here. Photographer J Carter/ANMM

Gretel II came back in 1970 with proportions that probed new boundaries in the 12-Metre rule, and it featured a number of engineering novelties. Many observers thought it was the faster boat, winning two races but losing one of them on protest. That year’s defender Intrepid, previously an Olin Stephens masterpiece, had been largely redesigned by the lesser-known Britton Chance, and was considered slower as a result of the changes.

The wheels of the America’s Cup juggernaut were beginning to wobble, as Ben Lexcen and Alan Bond understood. Their third challenge, Australia in 1980, carried a radical bendy mast copied from the British 12-Metre Lionheart. Australia was competitive and won a race, giving the team confidence to challenge again knowing that if they could get a major design edge they would at last have an advantage. Previously, advantages had almost always rested with the defender.

The America’s Cup was named after the New York Yacht Club’s schooner America, which sailed to England in 1851 and won the ornate ‘hundred guineas cup’ put up by the Royal Yacht Squadron. Thereafter the contest was governed by a Deed of Gift that set a template for the race’s conduct, in terms largely favouring the defending club. Nonetheless the Deed allowed for many details to be agreed by ‘mutual consent’ between challenging and defending clubs. Over the years the NYYC gradually gave ground, consenting to arrangements or details that assisted the challenger.

After World War II the archaic requirement for the challenger to sail to Rhode Island from its home port was

dropped. Although the Deed specified that the yacht was to be ‘constructed in the country to which the challenging club belongs’, the 1962 Gretel syndicate was allowed to use some American sailcloth and sails, and was granted the use of an American test tank to develop the design. Gretel proved too competitive, and the Americans denied the sailcloth request for the next two Australian challenges.

Later in the 1960s, joint challenges were accepted. By 1983 there were seven challengers, with tough racing to determine which club would be the final challenger. This eroded a previous advantage enjoyed by the Americans, who traditionally chose their defender after hard-fought trials between several yachts. As well, the NYYC now permitted materials and fittings to be sourced from suppliers world-wide. The rules that restricted team membership to nationals of the challenging country were eased, so that a recent change of citizenship would qualify someone to sail for that country.

Bond’s team took advantage of these concessions, to source the very best. They secured an advanced mast extrusion from US sparmaker Tim Stearns and then designed the taper and fittings themselves. They sourced superior instruments from the US firm Ockam. Top New Zealand sail designer Tom Schnakenberg became an Australian citizen to join them. He persevered with new Kevlar cloths when the Americans had given up on the tricky material, recutting and fine tuning until in the end Australia II had superior sails.

The design team was also given permission to use the Netherlands Ship Model Basin test tank in Wageninen

to test models at a large 1:3 scale, because there was no such facility in Australia. This is what has caused the continuing controversy over the actual design of the yacht.

As 1983 progressed the NYYC began to regret their generosity, alarmed at the threat of a design breakthrough as the rampaging Australia II easily beat off the other challengers. The club tried to disqualify Australia II on the basis of the Dutch contribution to its design. In response, Dr Peter van Oossanen denied any design input, saying the Dutch technicians had only carried out tests as directed.

Twenty-six years later, van Oossanen – now an Australian citizen – made the claim that he had been untruthful in 1983. He now says that he and associate Joop Sloof actually played a major role in proposing, designing and testing the keel configurations, and that Ben Lexcen had little input into the process. Their motive for coming forward, they said, was to gain recognition for their input, which they felt had been ignored by Australian accounts of the campaign over the years since 1983. And they wanted to claim most of the credit for the final hull design, too.

A detailed account of the Dutch version of events was gradually made public including the final 1983 report from the Netherlands Ship Model Basin, notes on meetings, comments on telexes – even their records of when Lexcen was at the tank, questioning the amount of time he spent there. Some of it appeared to support a higher level of Dutch involvement, but the tank test report simply described the process and outcome, and did not attribute a designer.

The claim by the Dutch duo set off a furious response from surviving Australia II syndicate members and Ben Lexcen’s supporters, angered that their late colleague was unable to respond. Nor could campaign manager Warren Jones, who had died in 2002. The defenders produced their own records and recollections of the events at the time. John Longley, project manager and crewmember of Australia II, responded with evidence of Lexcen’s design input that appeared in documents archived at the Western Australian Maritime Museum.

In one telex to Warren Jones, dated 22 May 1981, an animated Ben complains about Dutch food – ‘sick of bread and cheese’ – then talks about ‘Keel III’ being a big advance’, christening it Darth Vader and signing off as Ben Skywalker. Ben was clearly there and carrying on as only he could.

His supporters also argued that Lexcen had been an innovative designer for decades, highlighting yachts like Mercedes III, Volante, the International Contender class and the legendary Apollo – the yacht that bonded Bond to sailing. They didn’t hide Lexcen’s failures – he was a risk-taker, always trying something new. But they certainly questioned van Oossanen’s record: two of his later America’s Cup boats, one Australian and the other Swiss, had been eliminated in 1992 and 2000. Both had radical but unsuccessful keel innovations.

Here at the museum Taipan presented Lexcen’s side of the story. It showed that he was a lateral thinker from his earliest designs. On Taipan he had experimented with the hydrodynamics of centreboards

and rudders, using endplates and devices called fences that limited water-flow disturbance and anticipated the winged keel. The radical concept of Taipan’s hull and rig frustrated the 18-foot skiff opposition when it won easily, and upset the traditionalists. But it showed a man capable of pulling apart a rule in ways not contemplated by others – just as he would do with the 12-Metre rule for Australia II Lexcen worked with endplates again on his next 18-foot skiff Venom a year after Taipan, and they showed up on the keel and rudder of his 1967 International 5.5-Metre design Kings Cross. His first 12 Metre was Southern Cross for the 1974 America’s Cup challenge. That year two Australian America’s Cup designers, Alan Payne and Warwick Hood, wrote a now-forgotten article in Australia’s leading yacht magazine Modern Boating One innovation they suggested was an endplate to the 12-Metre keel, arguing that the short keel span of this ageing class needed all the help it could get to improve its effectiveness.

The article drew attention to various ways in which the waterline length could be manipulated within the 12-Metre rule, and how this could ease the peculiar problems associated with these yachts’ proportions and their massive ballast ratios – problems that were compounded when the new, light-aluminium construction was adopted. The article showed how a hull with a shorter waterline length and less ballast could still have enough stability to support its greater sail area.

Australia II’s upside-down, winged keel was the means to this end. It increased stability due to its lower centre of gravity,

allowing Australia II to have a shorter waterline and greater sail area. As is so often the case, similar things had been done before. British yacht designer Uffa Fox, a favoured inspiration to Ben Lexcen and a man with a similar larrikin streak, had been putting upside-down keel profiles on some of his designs since the 1940s, and Ben’s sketchbooks in our collection show similar ideas beginning to surface as far back as 1958.

A key point emerging from these examples is that yacht designers, like artists or writers or musicians, influence each other all the time, drawing on and developing ideas that are already circulating in their highly complex disciplines.

By the 1983 America’s Cup, designs were no longer the product of one person as had been the case when the Deed of Gift was drafted. For decades they had been the result of a team effort, overseen by a chief designer who took the ultimate responsibility for the design when signing it off. That was Ben Lexcen; he had his team, and so did the Americans. Even if a Dutch technician had contributed to the design, he was just a part of the team under Lexcen’s direction. Olin Stephens had used Italian Mario Tarabocchia as draughtsman for the lines of their challengers. Lexcen had teamed up with Liberty’s Dutch-born designer Johan Valentjin in 1977 to produce Australia, and Valentjin had also worked for Stephens in the past. The design web had long been an international tangle. Rule bending was virtually an America’s Cup institution, and whether it was cheating was often a matter of perspective. The Americans had

above: Lines of Australia II, reproduced from America’s Cup Yacht Designs 1851–1986, author/ publishers François Chevalier et Jacques Taglang 1987. Lines redrawn by F Chevalier 1986.

allegedly sailed a ‘13 metre’ instead of a 12 Metre to win a previous contest, when Courageous apparently slipped through the measurer’s tape. In 1983 a multiple-rating certificate for US defender Liberty was a real irritation. The yacht had been measured in three different displacement and sail-area configurations that could be changed at short notice to suit the wind conditions. Some claimed that this crossed the boundaries of ‘fair sailing ‘demanded

by the rules – but as Australian skipper John Bertrand noted in his book Born to Win, the real frustration was that they had not thought of it themselves. Liberty pulled the rating certificate trick for the final race, and Australia II’s crew found themselves racing a different, lighter boat that had more sail area and was more competitive in conditions that had previously left the defender in their wake. The indelible drama of that race lives on for everyone on the water, and

top: Hull lines of Australian, reproduced from Sydney Sails – the story of the Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron’s First 100 Years, published by Angus & Robertson 1962.

the worldwide audience watching live on TV – especially those of us night-owls viewing in Australia.

As Australia II trailed on the reaching legs the keel’s extra drag weighed on the crew’s mind, its upwind advantages nullified by the now-changed Liberty By then, however, the keel had done its job – psychological and actual – while the winning break came from Australian teamwork. The afterguard chose the right wind shifts to follow. Months of recutting the spinnakers, with advice from sailmaker and tactician Hugh Treharne, provided better downwind sails. In tricky conditions they sailed through from behind to lead again at the last mark as the US team panicked. The crew’s concentration kept them in front during the final, nail-biting leg, and the cup left America after 132 years.

Australia had won sailing’s Holy Grail with a blueprint for success: innovative design, attention to detail on every aspect of the project, and a strong team proud to sail their boat for their country. Walter Reeks had observed of the US defender in 1903: ‘Building a yacht to defend the prestige of their country is looked upon in America from a national standpoint. Every man helps.’ Australia II had this commitment all through the campaign, and it remains a pinnacle of Australian sporting achievement.

What happened to wings on keels after 1983? Though heralded by some as the next big thing, history suggests otherwise. Certainly a number of racing and even cruising keels swiftly spread underwater wings, but many bodies controlling yacht racing shut the door, banning them as an unnecessary complication that could make existing craft obsolete. They were permitted by the two remaining International Metre-boat classes still racing, the 12 and 6 Metres, something of a niche market.

The 1987 America’s Cup 12-Metre designs featured a flock of highly refined keels with wings of various proportions, angles and sweep – and that was about as far as it went. It was the last series raced in the old 12 Metres. When the new America’s Cup class of lightweight 25-metre-long monohulls emerged in the 1990s, they allowed much deeper-draft and high-aspect ratio keels with large torpedo-like ballast bulbs. Wings became smaller and barely contributed to ballast, beginning a path back toward the size of endplates – which is more or less where the journey had started.

Back in 1983, the focus on Australia II’s keel distracted attention from the team’s

As the late designer’s supporters sprang to defend his reputation, the revolutionary skiff Taipan was a trump card

breakthroughs in hull shape – the canoe body, in yacht design jargon, which can be seen clearly in photographs of the test tank model in the museum’s collection. Once again Lexcen’s supporters have strongly challenged recent claims of significant Dutch input into shaping the hull, pointing out that Lexcen had not been satisfied with the initial ‘final shape’ that had been refined through the testing. John Longley recalls Lexcen delaying the yacht’s fabrication as he went over the lines on his knees, working by hand to modify them during the full-size lofting of the design at Steve Ward’s shed in Cottesloe, Western Australia, until he was happy with the final shape.

This final hull shape, and the radical package it was part of, has a number of conceptual elements that are eerily similar to a remarkable Sydney yacht from 1858, and these begin with its name, Australian Built at Woolloomooloo by Dan Sheehy from a design by Richard Hartnett, Australian was a Sydney Harbour sensation, winning races until the mid-1880s. It had a very low handicap for its size, achieved by exploiting the rules with a clever location of the rudder that significantly reduced the length measurement used in the rating rule of the time. It was an interesting example of lateral thinking, just like Australia II – and like her, this made the authorities and competitors unhappy.

Australian’s hull design was remarkable and different too. Thirty years later Walter Reeks described it as ‘almost the perfect vessel’. It featured a deepveed, double-ended hull shape with semi-circular longitudinal lines. Its mathematically precise hull shape was based on Hartnett’s dissection of the streamlined body of a mackerel he caught.

If you compare the bodyplan (the fore and aft sectional view of the hull) on both yachts, there is a strong sense of déjà vu in that of Australia II. Both show a very

similar constant deadrise as their respective hull sections rise from the keel. But Lexcen was not copying Australian; he was pushed toward the outcome by the 12-Metre rule.

Its restrictions relating to heavy displacement and a girth measurement (a crucial part of the complicated 12-Metre formula) force designers to use a deep-vee midsection, and in the 1970s and early 80s the deadrise of the hull from the keel and centreline became relatively flat-sided. The fore-and-aft hull sections either side of the girth measurement station (near midships) then followed a very similar section shape to fair into the mid-section. This produced a hull with an almost constant deadrise to the sections throughout much of the hull.

Looking side-on at the profile, Australia II also recalls Australian’s semi-circular lines. Australia II had a shorter waterline compared to conventional 12 Metres of the period. It was able to reduce both displacement and drag-causing wettedsurface area, by removing volume in the region between the keel and rudder (known as the skeg or bustle). Taking out the skeg allowed the parallel sections of Australia II to run through well into the stern, so the hull lines approach being double-ended. It also created a circularlooking run to the profile and the longitudinal lines – all affinities with Australian’s hull form.

At this point, the ghost of Walter Reeks joins us again. In 1889 he proposed an Australian challenge for the America’s Cup in the great era of 100-foot cutters, and was happy to submit to the Deed of Gift, no concessions asked. He was even prepared to sail a challenger from Sydney to New York ‘on its own bottom’. Reeks went to the USA to discuss the challenge and examine the successful 1887 defender, the Edward Burgessdesigned Volunteer. Reeks proposed a design of the maximum allowable 90 feet (27.43 m) on the waterline that would follow the principles of Australian, described by Reeks as ‘an approximation of the best forms known to modern times’. He was unable to secure financial backing, so the venture never proceeded.

Given the success of Ben Lexcen’s Australia II, it is curious to think what a similar-shaped hull might have done for Australia almost 100 years earlier if there had been an entrepreneurial, colonial-era Alan Bond to support the project. There wasn’t, so our generation was lucky to have Ben Lexcen, Alan Bond and John Bertrand to finish off the job in spectacular style almost a century later. 

Australia II tank test model

The wooden tank test model of Australia II is a work of craftsmanship in its own right, painted a gaudy, high-gloss yellow with contrasting black grid lines so that the wave patterns could be observed easily as it was towed along the tank and filmed at the same time.

Made of a local European pine, it is fabricated in the time-honoured ‘breadand-butter’ layered method used for model yachts and builders’ half-models. The joints between the lifts, as each layer is called, were cut exactly to a waterline (a horizontal section through the hull) by an early form of computer-controlled milling. The stepped shape left by the large number of squareedge lifts was faired down to the joints by hand to create the final hull shape,

to bring the model down to its correct floatation trim.

At 1:3 scale the test model is itself a small yacht, which the designer hopes will closely replicate the performance of the fullsize hull. Large-scale models like this ensure more accurate measurements of resistance and observations of wave patterns or water flow. As long as the test conditions are exactly replicated, designers hope that comparisons between different models will demonstrate the real performance of the full-size versions.

Nonetheless some questions remain about how accurately the results can be extrapolated to full-scale predictions. This might partially explain why the conclusions in the final report on Australia II ’s model tests suggested it would have ‘about a seven-minute lead at the finish’ in a moderate wind, when the margin was much closer for many races. 

ANMM registrar Cameron McLean with the Australia II tank test model in a museum storage facility. The stern view shows the hollowed-out skeg area, lines converging into a double-ended hull form below the waterline. Winglets on the keel are clearly visible. ANMM collection, gift of America's Cup Defence 1987 Limited. Photographer A Frolows/ANMM

Quest for the South Magnetic Pole

For over 150 years, explorers risked their lives in desolate Antarctica to plant a flag at a shifting point on the Earth’s surface. This exhibition from South Australia recalls one of history’s oddest and most protracted quests – and salutes the Australian scientist who came as close as possible to the elusive South Magnetic Pole.

The exhibition poses a surprising question that challenges Mawson’s achievement: did he plant the flag in the right place?

Friday 16 January 2009 marked the 100th anniversary of Douglas Mawson planting the British flag at the South Magnetic Pole. The achievement was commemorated with flights over Antarctica, postage stamp issues and an exhibition, Quest for the South Magnetic Pole. The exhibition has now reached our galleries, where it poses a surprising question that challenges Mawson’s achievement: did he plant the flag in the right place?

Developed in collaboration with the South Australian Maritime Museum and South Australian Museum, with support from Visions of Australia, Quest answers its own question and goes on to explore the science of magnetism – how the Earth’s magnetic field works, what the South Magnetic Pole is and why scientists and explorers were so keen to locate it. It also shows how scientists and explorers live, work and survive in this extreme environment.

Magnetic mysteries

In 1600, English scientist William Gilbert postulated that the Earth is a giant magnet, and that this is the reason a compass points north (and not, as had previously been thought, due to the influence of the pole star Polaris, or a magnetic island on the North Pole). Later scientists and explorers devoted their efforts to understanding how these magnetic forces work and why a compass needle constantly veers off true north.

overleaf: Northern Party at the South Magnetic Pole. Mawson set up the camera before the shutter cord was pulled by expedition leader Edgeworth David. Photographer Douglas Mawson 1909. Courtesy Mawson Collection, South Australian Museum

left: Getting ice on the glacier in drifting snow. High velocity wind. Photographer Frank Hurley 1912. Courtesy Mawson Collection, South Australian Museum

opposite: Bob Bage cooking, Frank Hurley in sleeping bag. Mawson's Southern Sledging Party. Photographer Xavier Mertz 1912. Courtesy Mawson Collection, South Australian Museum

Driven by curiosity and a desire to improve navigation, scientists had established by the 19th century that a compass needle is pulled towards a magnetic – rather than the geographic – pole, and that the North and South Magnetic Poles are constantly on the move.

We now know that the magnetic poles are the extremes of a magnetic field generated by molten metal churning around the Earth’s core. Just as that molten metal is never static, so the poles are also constantly shifting – sometimes travelling up to 30 kilometres a day. Yet despite being a moving target, the South Magnetic Pole attracted explorers 100 years before the better known – and fixed – geographic pole that lies at the end of the Earth’s rotational axis. While many exhibitions have profiled Antarctic exploration, Quest is the first to feature the search for the South Magnetic Pole.

The quest begins

In 1831, dashing British polar explorer James Clark Ross proved that it was possible to reach the North Magnetic Pole. Embarking on a sledging journey in the Arctic from his ice-bound ship Victory, he observed the needle on his dip circle (a three-dimensional compass) point to the vertical. The race was on to locate its southern counterpart.

German scientists Humboldt and Gauss subsequently established a string of observatories throughout the world

that could take simultaneous observations. From these readings, the pair calculated the likely position of the South Magnetic Pole. Spurred by these tantalising coordinates, three separate expeditions set out in the late 1830s to search for it and to explore Antarctica. They were led by Frenchman Jules Dumont d’Urville, American Charles Wilkes and Briton James Clark Ross. International rivalry was intense and there was no warmth when the French and American expeditions encountered each other in the ice-pack. Instead, they tacked and sailed the other way!

These 19th-century voyagers took astounding risks to negotiate ice-choked waters in timber sailing ships. Although all three expeditions failed in their quest, the consolation prize was the charting of vast tracts of the Antarctic coast and the identification of hundreds of new species. To 20th-century explorer Roald Amundsen, ‘these men were the real heroes … those who sailed right into the heart of the pack.’

Antarctic landings

A revival of whaling in the late 19th century prompted a Norwegian expedition to venture into Antarctic waters seeking new whaling grounds. Signed on as expedition scientist was a brash young Norwegian, Carsten Borchgrevink. In January 1895, he leapt ashore and declared himself the first person to stand on continental Antarctica.

Borchgrevink subsequently mounted his own expedition in 1898 on the Southern Cross, drumming up funding on the promise of finding the South Magnetic Pole. The expedition’s scientific party would be the first to winter on the Antarctic landmass.

Meanwhile, a young Tasmanian physicist named Louis Charles Bernacchi, desperate to voyage to Antarctica, bombarded the local press with articles on the importance of sending an Australian expedition to the region. He caught a lift with Borchgrevink’s Southern Cross, becoming the first Australian to land on the continent and the first scientist to conduct magnetic research there.

Bernacchi would later be recruited as physicist for the 1901–04 Discovery expedition led by British Captain Robert Falcon Scott, living on the iced-in ship that served as a base for an attempt to reach the South Geographic Pole. The trekkers were forced to turn back after two months, suffering snow blindness and scurvy but having reached 82° south.

Ernest Shackleton was a veteran of Scott’s failed attempt to reach the Geographic Pole. In 1907–09, Shackleton led his own epic expedition south on the Nimrod intent on reaching both the magnetic and geographic poles. In October 1908 he sent three men out on a sledging journey in search of the magnetic pole.

The exhibition relates the gripping tale of this Northern Party’s bid. Douglas

Mawson, T W Edgeworth David and Alastair Mackay hauled sledges (initially weighing 200 kg) more than 2,000 km in gruelling blizzard conditions over largely unmapped terrain. In their attempt to reach the pole, they ditched mineral specimens, equipment and food to lighten the load, living off seal blubber and penguin meat. On 15 January 1909 they took a final reading of the dip circle, and the next day sledged several more kilometres and hoisted the British flag.

However they had niggling doubts about the ‘dip’ of their compass needle that eventually proved founded. Soon after they rejoined Nimrod, they realised that the magnetic pole had eluded them. In fact Mawson, Edgeworth David and Mackay had been forced to pull up over 100 kilometres short of their goal.

Now a seasoned Antarctic explorer, Mawson raised funds for a new Australian-New Zealand expedition. Setting up base at Cape Denison, one of the most desolate places on Earth, four parties set out in the summer of 1912 to map the continent. The Southern Sledging Party – Australians Frank Hurley and Robert Bage and New Zealander Eric Webb – resumed Mawson’s quest for the South Magnetic Pole.

This time the terrain was featureless and there were no animals to hunt when the food ran out. Battling frostbite, snow blindness, exhaustion and starvation, the group was forced to turn back a crushing 60 kilometres short of their goal.

Ultimately, their journey would be overshadowed by Mawson’s own epic bid for survival following the death of his two companions on the Far Eastern Sledging journey.

Charles Barton takes up the quest

After World War I, interest in reaching the South Magnetic Pole waned. Scientists on Mawson’s 1928–30 Discovery expedition focused their efforts on reoccupying old magnetic stations to measure changes in the Earth’s magnetic field. It would be the 1980s before Australian geomagnetist Dr Charles Barton took up the challenge again.

By now the wandering pole had moved out to sea, and what had once been a sledging race against time now became a thrilling seaborne quest. Working for Geoscience Australia, Barton developed a fluxgate magnetometer to measure the strength and direction of the magnetic field at sea.

In 2000, Barton mounted a private expedition on the Antarctic ship Sir Hubert Wilkins. Frustratingly the constantly shifting pole proved faster than his slow-moving vessel. Finally, however, on 22 December, the forces of nature relented: the pole slowed and Barton’s instrument recorded a distance of 1.6 kilometres – the closest anyone had, or could ever hope to come, to the South Magnetic Pole. The quest had finally come to a conclusion, at sea, from a ship – and with surprisingly little fanfare.

The exhibition

Initially shown at the South Australian Maritime Museum from May–October 2009 to coincide with the anniversary of the Mawson’s Northern Party achievement, Quest traces the story

Charlie Barton recorded a distance of 1.6 kilometres – the closest anyone had, or could ever hope to come, to the South Magnetic Pole

of the search for the South Magnetic Pole and highlights Australia’s significant role in the race. The exhibition draws on the riches of the South Australian Museum’s Mawson Collection. This collection of Antarctic artefacts, papers and photographs, rare books, reports and maps numbers over 100,000 items, many of which belonged to Sir Douglas Mawson (1882–1958), university geologist and polar explorer.

On display are scientific instruments, sledging equipment, cameras and provisions taken on both the British and Australian sponsored journeys. Items include the Northern Party’s map (annotated by Mawson and his companions), a dip circle and a manhauling sledge. Personal items include expedition skis and poles, a Nansen cooker, finnesko (reindeer-skin) boots and wolf-skin mitts and a three-man reindeerskin sleeping bag.

Stunning historic images, including photographs from Shackleton’s Nimrod and Mawson’s Aurora expeditions, are displayed. They include dramatic

3D images captured by innovative stereo cameras and lenses carried by Shackleton and Mawson. Soundscapes conjure up the roaring winds of the plateau, and the experience of sheltering in a flimsy canvas tent during a raging blizzard. There’s a strong interactive component. The Lucky Dip explains how the Earth’s magnetic field works, and demonstrates the instrument used by early explorers to locate the South Magnetic Pole. The Pulley Hauley encourages visitors to climb into a replica man-hauling harness and imagine hauling a heavy load over wind-swept ice. Visitors can also dress in replicas of polar explorers' specialised clothing.

A special exhibit is an extremely rare edition of Aurora Australis – printed on site at Shackleton’s winter quarters and the first book written, printed and published entirely in Antarctica. Charlie Barton’s fluxgate magnetometer, which he employed in 2000 to finally pinpoint the elusive South Magnetic Pole, is definitely a highlight of this exhibition. 

Dr Charles Barton will be a special guest at the museum’s opening of the exhibition Quest for the South Magnetic Pole on 2 July 2010. This travelling exhibition from the South Australian Maritime Museum and South Australian Museum appears in Gallery One until 17 October. This article was edited from their material by Penny Crino. The exhibition is supported by Visions of Australia, an Australian Government program that assists the development and touring of cultural material across Australia.

left: Aurora Australis, the first book written, printed and published entirely in Antarctica. Ernest Joyce and Frank Wild 1908. Courtesy Mawson Collection, South Australian Museum

right: Charlie Barton alongside his fluxgate magnetometer on the Sir Hubert Wilkins, December 2000. Nicknamed ‘Charlie’s Bird, it jutted out from the ship’s stern, removing it from the vessel’s magnetic field. Photographer Gregory Haremza. Courtesy Charlie Barton

Members

Members welcome Jessica News

Relaunching the lavishly refurbished, classic Halvorsen cruiser Silver Cloud at our wharves last March was a champagne event for Members.

Photographer Michael Ellem

As the 16-year-old Australian singlehanded sailor Jessica Watson neared the end of her epic voyage we organised a ferry to take our Members out to greet her as she entered the harbour, the youngest person to sail solo around the world.

Welcome to another quarter of exhibitions, activities and events for you to enjoy.

We don’t let the winter chill slow us down here, so do come in for a visit over the winter months. All event details are overleaf.

We host some interesting visiting vessels. The classic old Halvorsen Silver Cloud was re-launched here in March. Ella’s Pink Lady, the S&S 34 made famous by plucky 16-year-old Jessica Watson, berthed here after her world voyage and triumphant return in May. Don’t miss the Plastiki, here in June. She’s built from plastic bottles and recycled materials, and is sailing to us across the Pacific Ocean from North America. You can hear designer Andy Dovell talk about the project and inspect this extraordinary vessel.

Our traditional annual Navy mess dinner in the HMAS Vampire Wardroom is coming up, with dining President Captain Paul Martin RAN (Rtd) who commanded Vampire in 1982–83. You’ll have a chance to tour Spectacle island, repository of Royal Australian Navy heritage items, conducted by RAN museums director CMDR Shane Moore ran. And we’ll be out on the water in the Sydney Heritage Fleet vessels Lady Hopetoun and Waratah

Among our guest speakers this winter is the popular media personality, journalist and author Mike Carlton who’ll talk about his new book Cruiser: the life and loss of HMAS Perth. Aficionados of the other kind of cruiser won’t want to miss P&O archivist Robert Henderson’s half-day history of P&O

in Australian waters. He’s bringing classic images and films – many previously unseen – from his own collection and P&O Orient Line archives. Don’t miss this one!

You’ll find the winter’s exhibitions on page 32. A personal favourite is Sons of Sindbad: The photographs of Alan Villiers. This famous Australian writer and photographer had a lifelong passion to record the passing of the age of sail. in the late 1930s he sailed with Arab dhow masters from the Persian Gulf to Zanzibar, East Africa, recording age-old indian Ocean sailing traditions. A special guest will be Kate Lance who wrote the award-winning biography Alan Villiers: Voyager of the Winds

We have plenty for your children, too. The NSW Department of Primary industries (Fisheries) is coming back with its workshop Fishing for Kids to teach responsible fishing practices to children. They’ll get a chance to catch some of those increasingly big fish we see swimming around the museum wharves since the commercial fishing ban a few years ago.

We will be contacting many of you shortly as we undertake a survey of our Members so that we can receive your feedback and suggestions and try to serve you better. These may be online or by post. Do please take a few minutes to complete the survey, to help us build an even better Members program for you.

On behalf of the Members team, i look forward to seeing you here very soon.

Adrian Adam, Members manager

Photographs courtesy of Member David Mueller

Members events

Calendar Winter 2010

Friday 18 Lunchtime talk & view: Portraits of a shipping company

Sunday 27 Viewing: Ghost Ships with Max Gleeson

To be advised Talk & viewing: The Plastiki project

July

Thursday 1 Preview: Quest for the South Magnetic Pole

Saturday 10 On the water: Cruise on Lady Hopetoun

Wednesday 14 For kids: Fishing for Kids

Saturday 17 Special: HMAS Vampire Wardroom dinner

Thursday 22 On the water: Spectacle island naval heritage tour

Sunday 25 Talk: Sons of Sindbad – Alan Villiers

Thursday 29 Talk: Life & loss of HMAS Perth, with Mike Carlton

Sunday 8 Talk: Documents that shaped Australia

Saturday 14 For kids: After-dark ships & museum torch-light tour

Tuesday 17 Lunchtime curator talk & view: Macquarie’s Light

Sunday 22 Special: History of P&O Cruise ships – films & lecture

September

Saturday 4 On the water: Cruise on Waratah

November

From Friday 19 Overseas tour: The floating world of Cambodia

How to book

it only takes a phone call to book for these Members events … have a credit card ready and we can take care of payments on the spot.

• To reserve tickets contact the Members office: phone 02 9298 3644 (business hours) or email members@anmm.gov.au Bookings strictly in order of receipt.

• If phoning, have credit card details handy.

• If paying by mail after making a reservation, please include a completed booking form with a cheque made out to the Australian National Maritime Museum.

• The booking form is on reverse of the address sheet with your Signals mailout.

• If payment is not received seven days before the event your booking may be cancelled.

Booked out?

We always try to repeat the event in another program.

Cancellations

if you can’t attend a booked event, please notify us at least five days before the function for a refund. Otherwise, we regret a refund cannot be made. Events and dates are correct at the time of printing but these may vary … if so, we’ll be sure to inform you.

Parking

Wilson Parking offers Members discount parking at nearby Harbourside Carpark, Murray Street, Darling Harbour. To obtain a discount, you must have your ticket validated at the museum ticket desk.

Lunchtime talk & viewing

David Moore –Portraits of a shipping company

12 noon–1.30 pm Friday 18 June at the museum

Australian photographer David Moore was commissioned by Columbus Line to create photographic portraits of their shipping activities. The company began operations between North America and Australia/New Zealand in 1959 and was the first company to regularly schedule a containerised shipping service. Join curator Paul Hundley for an introductory talk and guided tour.

Members $15, general $20. includes light lunch and refreshments, Coral Sea Wines

Viewing

Ghost Ships of the Coast Run –a new film by Max Gleeson

2–4 pm Sunday 27 June at the museum

Shipwreck authority and experienced wreck diver Max Gleeson presents his new documentary about the loss of colliers Woniora, Birchgrove Park and passenger/ cargo vessel Bega. Historical images and movie footage skilfully bring these stories to life, and spectacular underwater scenes let you join the divers as they venture down 80 metres deep to film the wrecks and surrounding marine life.

Members $15, general $20. includes canapés and Coral Sea wines

David Moore Columbus Line portraits

Photographer David Moore Hamburg

Süd

Collection

Talk & viewing

The Plastiki project

Date to be advised pending the vessel’s arrival in Australia

The Plastiki expedition is a bold adventure that aims to focus the world’s attention on the state of our oceans. The project involved building a boat from plastic bottles and recycled materials and sailing it from North America to Australia. Plastiki is currently mid-Pacific and is scheduled to dock at the museum in June. Join project representatives and the vessel’s Sydneybased designer Andy Dovell for a talk about this extraordinary voyage and view Plastiki at our wharves.

Members $15, general $20. includes canapés and Coral Sea wines. Please visit our website or call the Members Office for date and time

Preview

Quest for the South Magnetic Pole

6–7.30 pm Thursday 1 July at the museum

For over 150 years, explorers risked their lives in one of the planet’s most hostile environments to plant a flag at a shifting point on the Earth’s surface. it was Australian scientist Dr Charlie Barton who finally came closest to reaching the South Magnetic Pole in 2000. This exhibition investigates the history and science of magnetism, and documents the extreme conditions endured by these daring polar adventurers. Join curator Lyndyl Lawton (South Australian Maritime Museum) for an introductory talk and preview.

Members $15, general $20. includes supper and Coral Sea wine

On the water Cruise on Lady Hopetoun

10–11.30 am or 12 noon–1.30 pm

Saturday 10 July on the harbour

Named for the wife of the First Governor General of Australia, Lady Hopetoun was built in Berrys Bay and launched on 10 April 1902. For many years she served as the NSW Government’s ViP launch, and she is now owned and operated by Sydney Heritage Fleet. Don’t miss your chance to take a cruise on this classic vessel and learn about her fascinating history and restoration. Read more about her, and Sydney Heritage Fleet, on page 39.

Members only $50 (limited places available). includes refreshments on board. Meet at the heritage pontoon next to HMAS Onslow

For kids

Fishing for Kids

10 am–12 pm or 11 am–1 pm

Wednesday 14 July at the museum

This workshop teaches children responsible fishing practices. Learn about conservation of fish habitats, sustainable fishing, knottying, line-rigging and baiting, casting techniques and handling fish, and try your hand at fishing from our wharves. Find out about the fish that live in and around Darling Harbour. Each child receives fishing tackle and a hat to take home, plus a certificate of achievement.

Ages 6–12 years. Members $20, general $30. includes morning tea. Limited numbers. Children will be fully supervised by RFT education officers

Talk

Sons of Sindbad – The photographs of Alan Villiers

2 –4 pm Sunday 25 July at the museum

Australian-born master mariner Alan Villiers recorded the end of the era of sail in books and thousands of photographs. They include of his voyages aboard Arabian dhows in 1938–39 when he documented age-old indian Ocean sailing traditions, the great skills and hardships endured by sailors and pearl divers, and what he thought were ‘the last days of sail’ in the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf and the coasts of Arabia and east Africa. Villiers later donated his collection to the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, UK, which lent them for this exhibition. Join his biographer Kate Lance for insights into this exceptional man and an introduction to the fascinating exhibition. Members $15, general $20. includes canapés and Coral Sea wines

EMAIL BULLETINS

Have you subscribed to our email bulletins yet?

Email your address to members@ anmm.gov.au to ensure that you’ll always be advised of activities organised at short notice in response to special opportunities.

Plastiki made of 12,500 recycled bottles

Sons of Sindbad, Baggala, Alan Villiers

Gone fishing at the museum

Members events

Special

Annual HMAS Vampire wardroom naval mess dinner

6–9.45 pm Saturday 17 July on HMAS Vampire

Celebrate HMAS Vampire’s RAN service with our annual, traditional naval mess dinner in the wardroom. Your dinner president will be Captain Paul Martin RAN (Rtd), commander of Vampire 1982–83. Former ship’s Operations Officer CMDR Warren Smith RANR will be your vice-president. Experience the passing of the port, the loyal toast and more – all in the best naval tradition.

Members $99, general $110. includes predinner cocktails and canapés on the deck and a three-course meal. Strictly limited places due to the size of the wardroom. Black tie and miniatures. Partners welcome

On the water

Spectacle Island naval heritage tour

10 am–1 pm Thursday 22 July on the harbour

Spectacle island lies in the main channel of the western harbour off Drummoyne and is significant as Australia’s oldest naval explosives manufacturing and storage complex. Originally built to store government gunpower, the island was converted to store naval munitions in 1893, featuring an internal railway system, and later a repository of RAN heritage items. Take a guided tour of the island with RAN museums director CMDR Shane Moore ran Bring a picnic to enjoy on the lawns. Members only $45. includes refreshments onboard. Meet at the Heritage Pontoon next to submarine Onslow

Limited places available – book early Talk

Documents that shaped Australia: Records of a nation’s heritage

2–4 pm Sunday 8 August at the museum

This anthology presents a richly varied collection of 100 snapshots of Australia’s recorded history. From ‘The secret instructions for James Cook’ to the Rudd Government’s 2008 ‘National apology to the Stolen Generations’, it provides an overview of key moments from our past, which together contribute to an understanding of our national heritage. Join author John Thompson as he explores some of the many important documents relating to our maritime and colonial history.

Members $15, general $20. includes canapés and Coral Sea wine

For kids

After-dark ships & museum torch-light tour

5.30–7 pm Saturday 14 August at the museum

Bring along your torch for a night of ghoulish adventure at the museum. Meet our longtime caretaker Spanka Boom who will lead you over our ghostly ships HMAS Vampire and HM Bark Endeavour. Then find out what really happens in the museum after dark and discover what goes ‘bump’ in the night! Listen to scary stories and join in songs and activities along the way. Mums and dads can enjoy a glass of Coral Sea wine in the Members Lounge.

Ages 3–10. Member child $10, guest $15. includes refreshments and light supper. Don’t forget your torch!

Lunchtime curator talk & viewing: Macquarie’s Light

12–1.30 pm Tuesday 17 August at the museum

The first Macquarie Lighthouse was completed in 1818. Designed by convict architect Francis Greenway under instructions from then Governor of New South Wales, Lachlan Macquarie, the soft sandstone deteriorated rapidly and by 1878 the structure needed replacement. The current lighthouse opened in 1883. Designed in neoclassical style by James Barnet, it is similar to the original tower, but built in stronger materials. Join curator Peter Gesner for an introductory talk and guided tour of the exhibition.

Members $15, general $20. includes a light lunch and Coral Sea wine

BOOKINGS AND ENQUIRIES

Booking form on reverse of mailing address sheet): phone 02 9298 3644 fax 02 9298 3660 (unless indicated). All details are correct at time of publication but subject to change.

Vampire wardroom dinner

After-dark torchlight tour

Macquarie Light from the south

Special

A history of Australian P&O Cruise ships – films and images from the archive

1.30–5 pm Sunday 22 August at the museum

P&O archivist Robert Henderson presents a history of P&O cruising in Australian waters from the company’s first Australian cruise (a six-day cruise on the Strathaird from Sydney to Norfolk island in December 1932). View classic images – many previously unseen – from Robert’s personal collection and from P&O/Orient Line’s archives, one of the largest private collections of maritime material.

View historic footage of the golden age of cruising, including the construction and 1960 arrival in Sydney Harbour of popular favourite Oriana, and the history and war service of well-known ship the Canberra. This event will be introduced by this museum’s Council member Ms Ann Sherry ao, who is the CEO of Carnival Australia, a division of the world’s largest cruise ship operator which is the current owner of P&O Cruises.

Members $45, general $55. includes high tea and evening refreshments

Talk

Cruiser: The life and loss of HMAS Perth

With Mike Carlton

6–7.30 pm Thursday 29 July at the museum

Commissioned into the RAN on 29 June 1939, HMAS Perth was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine and sank on 1 March 1942. Of the vessel’s company of 686, only 218 were repatriated. Many became prisoners of war and were incarcerated in camp near Batavia, Java. The story is now the subject of a new book by author and media personality Mike Carlton. Come and hear Mike talk about the ship, her loss in battle and the extraordinary stories of the survivors.

Members $15, general $20. includes canapés and Coral Sea wine

On the water Cruise on Waratah

10 am–2 pm Saturday 4 September on the harbour

Owned and operated by the Sydney Heritage Fleet, the coal-fired tug Waratah is the oldest tug in working order in Australia and has the graceful proportions of a vessel of her era. Built at Cockatoo island and launched on 21 May 1902 as the Burunda, her primary role was to tow dredges and barges between ports along the NSW coast. Take a cruise back in time on this old steamer as we head up toward the Parramatta River where historian and author Greg Blaxall will talk about the history of the river and its environs.

Members $55, general $65. includes refreshments and light lunch on board. Meet at SHF shipyard in Rozelle Bay

Exclusive overseas adventure

The floating world of Cambodia

19 November–5 December 2010

$4,090 per person including airfares

Join us later this year to explore the magnificent temples of Angkor and discover Cambodian maritime traditions – ancient and modern – on the museum’s latest Asian cultural adventure. On this 17-day tour our guests will gain insights into the unique marine environment that supported the great Khmer empire and its unrivalled monuments – including world-renowned Angkor Wat – while experiencing Cambodian life as it’s lived today on its inland waterways and sea coasts. This exclusive tour developed in conjunction with World Expeditions is led by museum staff member and Asian specialist Jeffrey Mellefont, leader of our previous maritimeculture tours of indonesia and southern india.

Price $4,090 includes airfares and airline taxes, twin-share hotel and breakfasts, transfers and transport, entry to sites, guides. Travel insurance, single supplement ($385), Cambodian visa not included in the package price. Detailed trip notes at www.anmm.gov.au/cambodia2010.

For more information and bookings call Katherine at World Expeditions (02) 8270 8400, toll free 1300 720 000 or email info@worldexpeditions.com.au

Life afloat with P&O

Mike Carlton’s Cruiser

Angkor Wat, Cambodia

What’s on winter 2010 Events

Mystery and misadventure on Flora and Wreck Reefs

10 am–12 noon Thursday 3 June in January 2009 our divers located two historic Queensland shipwrecks: HMS Porpoise and Cato, both lost in 1803 on Wreck Reefs. in December they found the remains of Phillip Parker King’s Mermaid, wrecked on Flora Reef in 1829. ANMM marine archaeologists and curators who took part in these expeditions – both sponsored by Silentworld Foundation – reveal the dramatic chain of events behind the disasters, and describe the experience of diving for relics. Followed by a film Shipwrecks of the Pacific and Tasman Sea $45. includes morning tea. Bookings essential WEA 9264 2781

The art of Peruvian craft: Celebrating a timeless tradition

10 am–5 pm Sunday 20 June

Experience a day to remember at this festival presenting the rich tradition and artistry of Peruvian craft. The vibrant colours and textures of Peruvian textiles and jewellery will be complemented by food stalls offering a feast of traditional Peruvian dishes. Enjoy a celebration bursting with music, dance, lectures, handcrafts, photography and entertainment. Our guest alpacas are sure to delight young and old! FREE. in association with the Australia-Peru Chamber of Commerce and Australia-Peru Cultural Connection

Program times and venues are correct at time of going to press. To check programs before your museum visit call 02 9298 3777.

international Lighthouse Week

Cruise Forum

Macquarie Lighthouse and the lighthouses of Sydney Harbour

10 am–2 pm Thursday 19 August

Australia’s first lighthouse, Macquarie Lightouse at Dunbar Heads, has been operating since 1818. Museum curator Peter Gesner discusses its history and significance. Dr ian Hoskins, author of Sydney Harbour: A History, talks about the harbour’s other charming lighthouses and Hornby Lighthouse outside the heads. Take a heritage ferry cruise, view Robertson Point lighthouse, and enjoy a picnic at Cremorne Reserve. On return visit the Macquarie’s Light exhibition with the curator, view relics from the Dunbar, and see a performance of The Keeper – A gothic tale of light and dark (details below).

$65/Concession $60. includes cruise, lunch and performance. Bookings essential WEA 9264 2781

Theatrical presentation

The Keeper

– A gothic tale of dark and light

2.30 pm Thursday 19 & 7 pm Friday 20 August

On a tiny island in a lonely sea, human lives collide like waves on the rocks. A love offering, a doomed rescue, death, and a child’s secret are the flotsam in this watery tale. This engaging one-woman performance, laced with wry humour, transports us into a strange world where everyday objects take on a life of their own and songs can release a trapped soul.

$15/Members $10. Bookings essential 9298 3655

History Week:

Who do you think you are!

10–11 am Monday 6 September

Tour the museum and view the changing faces of those who have shaped Australia –indigenous people, early explorers, convicts, first immigrants, diggers on the goldfields, maritime workers, child migrants, post-war migrants and boat people. See how dress and hairstyles changed over 100 years!

FREE. Morning tea included.

Bookings essential 9298 3655 or email dbicknell@anmm.gov.au

Special group rate for Winter school holiday children's events (opposite)

For 10 children or more

$7 per child for a fully organised program of activities that includes:

• all museum exhibitions

• all children’s daily activities

• entry to destroyer HMAS Vampire, submarine HMAS Onslow and tall ship HMB Endeavour replica

• FREE entry for 2 adults per 10 children

• FREE bus parking

Note $4 extra per child for 1874 tall ship James Craig

Bookings essential

Book early to ensure your space! Phone 02 9298 3655

Fax 02 9298 3660

Email bookings@anmm.gov.au

The art of Peruvian craft

Visitors on board ship

Macquarie Lighthouse

Kids events

Winter school holidays 4–18 July 2010

See the museum’s fleet

Buy a Big Ticket, see the fleet, enjoy all kid's activities.

Kids on Deck

Antarctic adventures

Children 5–12 years

Hourly sessions

10 am–4 pm daily

investigate the marvellous properties of magnets, navigate to the South Pole, learn about Antarctic life and work.

$7 per child or FREE with any purchased ticket. Adults/Members FREE.

Theatre

Questacon Science Squad

– Climate change show

Children 5–12 years

10.30 am, 12 pm & 1.30 pm Monday 12 & Tuesday 13 July

An awesome multimedia exploration of the atmosphere and climate change. Audience members make decisions that could change the world!

included in Kids on Deck ticket

Youth workshop

Wearable weaves

Ages 8–14 years

10 am–12.30 pm

Monday 5 & Tuesday 6 July

Create a wearable artwork or accessory using traditional indigenous weaving techniques for NAiDOC Week.

$15/Members $12 (includes all materials). Bookings essential 9298 3655

Youth workshop

Young inventors

Ages 8–14 years

10 am–1 pm

Thursday 15 & Friday 16 July

Explore the science of magnetism by creating kinetic systems and ferrofluid sculptures. invent your own navigational instrument in this experimental sculpture workshop.

$20/Members $18 (includes all materials). Bookings essential 9298 3655

Free family movie!

2 pm daily during school holidays

Magnets and Magnetism. What, why, how?

Courtesy Network Ten

During school term

Fun family Sundays!

Kids on deck

Antarctic adventures

Children 5–12 years

Hourly sessions

11 am–3 pm every Sunday during term

investigate the marvellous properties of magnets, navigate your way to the South Pole, and learn about living and working in the Antarctic.

$7 per child or FREE with any purchased ticket. Adults/Members FREE

Free family movie!

1.30 pm every Sunday during term

A FREE movie to complement the temporary exhibition program.

Visit www.anmm.gov.au for full program

Mini mariners

Children 2–5 years + carers 10–10.45 am & 11–11.45 am (2 sessions) every Tuesday during term June Pirates Ahoy!

Follow the treasure map to find out where the secret loot is hidden. Then make your own treasure chest to take home. Come dressed the part to double the fun. 20 & 27 July Captains Crew

We’ll unfurl the masts and set sail on a rollicking adventure on the high seas as we perform all the duties of an 18th-century sailor.

August Under the Sea

Sing a song about a wibbly wobbly jellyfish. Learn about what lives under the sea and make your own jellyfish mask to take home. Come dressed as your favourite sea creature or mermaid.

$7 per child. 1st adult/Members FREE. Booked playgroups welcome. Bookings essential 9298 3655. Please note this program is not offered during the school holidays. For more information visit www.anmm.gov.au

International Lighthouse Day celebrations

Children 5–12 years

11 am–2 pm Saturday 21 August

Experience the hair-raising adventures of a lighthouse keeper! Take a guided tour of the museum’s Cape Bowling Green Lighthouse and make your own lighthouse to take home. Enjoy a special live performance of Flotsam and Jetsam, the story of 11-yearold Nikki who lives an exciting but isolated life as a lighthouse keeper’s daughter.

$7 (includes workshop and show)/Members FREE. Bookings essential 9298 3655

The slopes of Erebus, 1908

Chrissie Shaw as Mrs ingram in Flotsam and Jetsam

Mini mariners under the sea

Exhibitions

David Moore –

Portraits of a shipping company

From 13 May 2010

USA Gallery

World-renowned Australian photographer

David Moore was commissioned by Columbus Line to create photographic portraits of their shipping activities.

The company began operations between North America and Australia and New Zealand in 1959, the first regularly scheduled container shipping service.

Sons of Sindbad –

The photographs of Alan Villiers

24 June–17 October 2010

South Gallery

Alan Villiers’ photographs of his voyages aboard Arabian dhows in 1938–39 capture age-old indian-Ocean sailing traditions, the great skills and hardships endured by sailors and pearl divers, and what Villiers thought were the ‘last days of sail’ in the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf and the coasts of Arabia and east Africa.

Produced in collaboration with the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, UK, with the assistance of William Facey and Grace Pundyk

Intertwined journeys –

Tu Do and the Lu family

16 June–7 November 2010

Tasman Light Gallery

The remarkable story of the Lu family, who arrived in Australia in 1977 on the Vietnamese refugee boat Tu Do, is documented in 14 photographs by Michael Jensen and Andrew Frolows. The museum acquired Tu Do – meaning Freedom – in 1990.

Quest for the South Magnetic Pole

2 July–17 October 2010

Gallery One

For over 150 years explorers risked their lives in one of the planet’s most hostile environments – the desolate Antarctic – to search for the South Magnetic Pole. Australians were involved at every stage. Quest investigates the science of magnetism, and documents the extreme conditions endured by these daring polar adventurers in one of history’s most bizarre and protracted quests.

Developed with the South Australian Museum. Supported by Visions of Australia

Macquarie’s Light

18 August–28 November 2010

North Gallery

2010 marks the 200th anniversary of Lachlan Macquarie becoming fifth Governor of New South Wales. This exhibition explores the history of the Macquarie Lighthouse, from the original 1818 design commissioned by Macquarie to the present design built by the NSW Colonial Government in 1883.

Travelling exhibition

Exposed! The story of swimwear

Until 8 August 2010

Queensland Museum South Bank 21 August–7 November 2010

Museum of the Riverina Wagga Wagga NSW

Exposed! places Australian swimwear in a global context of design, swimming history and popular culture.

Sail Away program

Joseph Banks and the flora of the Australian east coast

Until 25 July 2010

Western Plains Cultural Centre NSW

6 August–19 September 2010

Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery NSW

Engravings of Sydney Parkinson’s exquisite botanical drawings from Cook’s first voyage.

Little Shipmates – seafaring pets

Until 25 August 2010

Parkes Shire Library NSW

Shipboard pets recorded by Sydney photographer Samuel Hood over 50 years.

Steel Beach – ship breaking in Bangladesh

2 September – 11 October 2010

Museum of the Riverina NSW

At the town of Sitakunda on the Bay of Bengal, Bangladesh, Andrew Bell photographed the shipbreaking industry.

Quest for the South Magnetic Pole

Intertwined journeys – Tu Do and the Lu family

Opening of the Macquarie Lighthouse, 1883

For schools

Over 30 programs are available for students K–12 across a range of syllabus areas. Options include extension workshops, hands-on sessions, tours with museum teacher-guides and harbour cruises. Visit our website: www.anmm.gov.au for details of all programs. Bookings essential 02 9298 3655 fax 02 9298 3660 or email bookings@anmm.gov.au

Quest for the South Magnetic Pole

Years 5–8 Science, HSIE

Quest for the South Magnetic Pole investigates the history of magnetism and the extraordinary lengths scientists and explorers went to in the mad race to reach the South Magnetic Pole. Australia played a significant role in the quest and it was Australian scientist Charlie Barton who finally came closest to reaching the Pole in 2000. The exhibition explores the key themes of the science of magnetism and how the Earth’s magnetic field works, and the extreme conditions of living and working in Antarctica.

Guided tour

$6 per student

Magnetism workshop

$10 per student, includes a tour of the exhibition

Core programs

Transport

Years K–2 HSIE, Science

Students tour the museum identifying various forms of transport connected with water – sailing ships, row-boats, ferries, tugs, a Navy destroyer, water traffic and even a helicopter! An optional cruise by heritage ferry takes in industrial, commercial and passenger transport systems on the harbour.

$6 per student (cruise extra)

Pyrmont walk

Years 7–12 History, Geography

Explore this inner city suburb from the perspective of changing demographics, construction, planning and development. Led by a teacher-guide, students walk the streets of Pyrmont and examine changes. This program is suitable as a site study for History and Geography. A harbour cruise examining change and development along the waterfront is also available.

$12 per student Years 7–10 (cruise extra)

$15 per student Years 11–12 (cruise extra)

Pirate school

Years K–4 English, Maths, HSIE, Creative Arts

Join the pirate school for lessons in treasure counting, speaking like a pirate, map reading and more! Then embaerk on a treasure hunt through the museum and board tall ship James Craig

$10 per student ( James Craig $2 extra)

Splash!

Years K–2 HSIE, PD, PE & Health, Creative Arts

A hands-on program where younger visitors explore leisure in, on, under and near the water through movement, dress-ups, games and stories. includes a guided tour of our Watermarks exhibition. Students make their own themed craftwork to take home.

$8 per student

Navigators & Endeavour

Years 3–10 HSIE

The exhibition Navigators – Defining Australia investigates early contact with the Australian continent. On this guided tour students encounter non-European traders, examine traditional and scientific navigation techniques, and consider the influence of early European explorers. An ideal tour to combine with a visit to our replica of HMB Endeavour – one of the most historically accurate in the world. For those studying Cook and early European exploration, a visit to HMB Endeavour brings the era alive.

Navigators tour only – $6 per student

Endeavour only – $8 per student

Endeavour & Navigators – $12 per student

Shipwrecks, conservation & corrosion

Years 11–12 Chemistry

This 4-hour program includes a talk on metals conservation, an experiment-based workshop and a tour of related shipwreck material in the museum’s galleries. Students can also visit our Navy destroyer HMAS Vampire and submarine HMAS Onslow and view the tall ship James Craig from the wharf. $20 per student (minimum numbers apply)

Part of Charlie Barton’s fluxgate magnetomer

Bob Bage from the Southern Sledging Party 1912

The north face of the Magnetograph House

it’s 200 years since Lachlan Macquarie began his industrious term as Governor of New South Wales. An exhibition about his most significant maritime contribution, the first Australian lighthouse, marks this anniversary. Curator Peter Gesner leads us across the harbour to scenic Watsons Bay and Vaucluse in pursuit of its history.

Governor Macquarie lights up South Head

The energetic governor who left his name on more streets, towns, geographical features and landmarks than just about anyone else in Australia’s history, Colonel (later Major General) Lachlan Macquarie (1762–1824), was not the first choice of successor to the stormy William Bligh. Macquarie was initially appointed as lieutenant to the British Crown’s preferred governor of the infant penal colony of New South Wales, General Miles Nightingale.

Because of Nightingale’s arthritis , however, Macquarie was elevated to governor in his place in April 1809 and departed for Sydney in May that year on board HMS Dromedary. He was escorted by HMS Hindustan and accompanied by a battalion of his regiment, the 73rd Regiment of Foot. With him were his second wife Elizabeth, their personal retinue including Macquarie’s Indian manservant George and a bodyguard of several troopers led by Sergeant Whalan of the 73rd. They arrived on 28 December 1809, and on that day Macquarie signed over command of the 73rd Regiment to Lieutenant Colonel O’Connell.

Taking up his post as fifth Governor of New South Wales on 1 January 1810, Macquarie served for more than 11 years – the longest term of any colonial governor. He is credited with improving the infrastructure of the colony, transforming it from a remote and chaotic penal outpost to a well-planned and efficiently administered settlement that would develop into one of the world’s great capital cities.

Keen to make his mark as a reforming governor, Macquarie had a special interest in public works and town planning. He initiated a building program with the intention of creating an exemplary colonial town that would be unrivalled in the Empire, and be regarded as a fitting place in which to develop a prosperous and free settler society.

Elizabeth, his cousin and wife of just two years, played an important part in Macquarie’s reformist programs. She took a particular interest in the colony’s architecture and laying-out its public gardens. Mrs Macquarie’s Point with its rock feature popularly known

as Mrs Macquarie’s Chair, in Sydney’s botanical gardens, is a legacy of this interest. It has also been suggested that because of Elizabeth’s influence several of the new public buildings commissioned by Macquarie were built in the neo-Gothic or Scottish-baronial style, for example the Government House stables (now Sydney Conservatorium of Music in Macquarie Street).

As a prestigious facet of his building program, Governor Macquarie created the colony’s first real lighthouse. Commissioned in 1816, ‘Macquarie Tower’ as it was initially known was built to a grand design by the convict architect Francis Greenway, befitting Macquarie’s intentions. In addition to its functional purpose, the imposing, state-of-the-art lighthouse was intended as a prominent place marker and a symbol of an emerging, thriving colony. It would serve as an icon of the British presence in New Holland, which, through Macquarie’s example, increasingly came to be referred to as Australia.

Opinions were divided over the most suitable location for a lighthouse. Several practical considerations led Macquarie to choose a location one and a half miles (2.5 km) south of the actual harbour entrance. The southern head of the harbour mouth, known as Inner South Head, was relatively low-lying. For ships approaching from the south it would have been obscured by the high sea cliffs south of the entrance. North Head was high enough and projected further east, and so was clearly visible to ships approaching from all directions. It was too remote from Sydney, however, which would have added to the costs of constructing and manning a lighthouse there.

A manned signal post was already located at Signal Hill on Outer South Head. In 1789 a flagstaff had been erected there for signalling arriving or departing ships to the settlers in Sydney. The first flag flown was to signal the arrival of HMS Supply returning from Norfolk Island in February 1790. The flagstaff was followed by a 30-foot (9-metre) stone column set up as a permanent marker on the cliffs. A beacon of coals burnt in an iron brazier was installed as an aid

The Macquarie Light by an unknown artist, about 1820. Reproduced courtesy Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales

to vessels approaching after dark. It was first lit for the Bellona, carrying free settlers in 1793. A modern lighthouse tower to assist ships to determine their position at sea would replace the beacon.

By siting the lighthouse at Outer South Head, Governor Macquarie capitalised on the maritime infrastructure already in place there. Considering the geography of Port Jackson, it was the ideal location. Aborigines had used it to make fire and smoke signals. The flagstaff, the column, the beacon and then the lighthouse were all indicators of the settlement’s location in relation to the world at large. Most importantly, though, this was the best place from which the signals could be seen because, from the viewpoint of the Sydney settlement and Observatory Hill, North Head and Inner South Head were blocked from view by Bradley’s Head.

Even after the lighthouse was built the signallers’ job remained important, to alert the settlers at Sydney Cove of approaching vessels and to relay requests for pilots to bring in vessels. For the early settlers it was crucial that they should immediately be aware of vessels in the offing, especially if they were carrying vital supplies from home, stores, new convicts or new settlers. When off the coast at this latitude – at approximately S 33˚ 50' – any Sydney-bound vessel would know upon sighting the flagstaff (and later the lighthouse) that they were almost at their destination after a long voyage; all that remained was to get through the heads safely and into Port Jackson, one of the ‘best and safest harbours in the world’.

A small fishing community and pilots for the harbour were based close by at Watsons Bay, which was conveniently located for prompt responses to signals requesting pilot services. Horsburgh’s early sailing directions for Port Jackson stated that ‘pilots come off to ships when the signal is made for them, and the flagstaff at the entrance of the port will be discerned from a considerable distance in the offing’. Captains with little or no experience navigating through the heads were advised to signal for a pilot.

By 1800 a rudimentary pilot station had been established in Watsons Bay, on the western shore of the South Head promontory. A number of pilot boats were based there; initially their crews lived in a makeshift encampment. At times it was operated more or less privately by several pilots and their boat crews who competed for work. Many were experienced blue-water whaling

men and so were expert oarsmen, used to the strenuous work of rowing for miles at sea in pursuit of a whale.

Boats carrying a pilot were rowed out from Watsons Bay through the heads to drop off a pilot to assist in-bound vessels to anchorages or berths within Sydney harbour. If the winds were contrary, recently arrived sailing vessels would anchor in Watsons Bay or Camp Cove to await suitable winds. Outbound sailing vessels could anchor there if delayed by adverse winds (strong on-shore easterlies) preventing them from getting out through the heads.

In 1833 the colonial government stipulated compulsory pilotage for most vessels entering or leaving Port Jackson. After 1869 the government built an official pilot station at Watsons Bay with berthing along a wharf for the new government-owned pilot vessel Thetis

Signal Hill was initially linked to Sydney, approximately seven miles (11 km) to the west, by a walking track, but after 1811 an improved carriage road (Old South Head Road) was built by convicts and soldiers belonging to Macquarie’s old regiment, the 73rd. When waterborne transport was used to fetch and carry people or stores to and from Signal Hill, access from Sydney was across the harbour to Watsons Bay, which was linked to Signal Hill by a walking track.

The signallers shared the Watsons Bay foreshore with a small fishing community and with the harbour pilots and their boat crews. As the century progressed, summer retreats or marine villas were built in Watsons Bay by wealthy Sydney residents. With the building of a public jetty in the 1850s for steam ferries from Circular Quay, Watsons Bay and nearby Signal Hill became a popular destination for day-tripping Sydneysiders.

Building works for Governor Macquarie’s lighthouse, the important shipping infrastructure that would augment the simple facilities of the signal station and early pilots camp, started in 1816. The foundation-stone ceremony was recorded in Macquarie’s journal entry for Thursday 11 July 1816:

This day at 2, o’ Clock in the afternoon I went through the ceremony of laying the Foundation Stone of the New Tower intended to be immediately erected at the South Head of Port Jackson (and to be completed in Nine Months from this Date), to answer for the double purpose of a Light House, and Barrack for the Party of Soldiers quartered there.

Macquarie transformed the colony from a remote and chaotic penal outpost to a wellplanned and efficiently administered settlement

— I was accompanied on this occasion by Lt. Govr. Molle, Mr. Garling the Judge Advocate, Mr. Secry. Campbell, Capt. Gill Actg. Engineer, Lieut. Watts adc., and Mr. Greenway the Acting Civil Architect; all of whom went on purpose along with me to see this Ceremony Performed. — I christened this intended erection ‘Macquarie-Tower’ and we drank success to it in a glass of Cherry Brandy!

Macquarie had hopes that the works would be finished by April 1817, but that month the tower was only half-finished. Greenway gave Macquarie another estimate of the time it would take to complete, recorded in the governor’s journal entry for 11 April 1817:

I went by Water this morning to the South Head to see the Tower – the foundation of which I saw laid this day Nine Months – which was the time then limited by Mr. Greenway for its final completion, but which a long series of tempestuous rainy weather combined with other Causes have unavoidably retarded. — The Tower is now 33 Feet High from the Ground –which leaves 32 feet yet to complete. — The work is excellent hitherto – and Mr. Greenway says the whole will now be completed in Four Months from this date.

top to bottom: Genteel colonial society visits Macquarie’s scenic landmark, 1827. Vue du phare du Port Jackson (Nouvelle Galles du Sud), lithograph by Louis Auguste de Sainson, Plate 26 of Voyage de la corvette l'Astrolabe, Atlas historique Paris, 1830. ANMM collection

View from the lighthouse across Watsons Bay and inner South head to North head, about 1825 by Joseph Lycett, aquatint. Reproduced courtesy of Dixson Library, State Library of NSW

A fine watercolour depicting Macquarie’s lighthouse and the signal station on Outer South Head (far left) and the Hornby Light on inner South Head, built 1858 in response to the Dunbar disaster. A pilot boat is shown. HMSS Himalaya entering Sydney Heads, Frederick Garling, watercolour about 1859. ANMM collection

opposite: Watercolour portrait of Governor Lachlan Macquarie, ‘Finished from Life by Read Snr Feb’y 11 1822’. Reproduced courtesy Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales

The imposing, state-ofthe-art lighthouse was intended as a prominent place marker and a symbol of an emerging, thriving colony

In fact it took an additional 12 months and was eventually completed in April 1818. It was not operational until 30 November that year due to the delayed arrival from England of the lantern mechanism and light room. Fitted out so its light could be seen from 21 nautical miles out to sea, the tip of the 76-foot (23.16 metre) tower was 353 feet (107.3 metres) above sea level on the Outer South Head.

When the lighthouse was finally finished, Macquarie was so pleased with it that he announced that owners of locally registered vessels would not be burdened with extra levies to pay for its operation and maintenance. He immediately pardoned Greenway and confirmed his permanent appointment as Colonial Architect. This was despite Greenway cautioning that the tower would not last because of the poor quality of the locally quarried sandstone building blocks that had been available for use.

There was also criticism from Macquarie’s masters of the very high building costs and of what was regarded as his cavalier style of governing – he had not first obtained permission from London to spend that much money on a lighthouse. Similar criticism was voiced in relation to other public buildings that had been commissioned without high-level authorisation. All of Macquarie’s building projects were regarded as extravagances, inappropriate edifices for what was still widely considered a mere penal colony!

During its working life from 1818 to 1884 the Macquarie Tower required several repairs as well as reinforcing with iron bands. By the 1870s it was considered in need of refurbishing or replacement due to its dilapidated state and obsolete technology. An official review was held in 1873 to assess the need for lighthouses around the entire continent. The review also included deliberations about the condition and future of Macquarie’s light.

A building program to provide for an entirely new tower on Outer South Head was eventually recommended to accommodate a new and more powerful light apparatus. It was to be built immediately inland of the original tower – about eight feet (2.5 metres) away – and the old tower would then be demolished. This was to be one of 18 new lighthouses around Australia deemed by the review panel to be required.

Work started in 1880 to a design by NSW Colonial Architect James Barnet –whose lighthouse designs were being built up and down the coast – and it was completed in 1883. Although Barnet used

much stronger materials, it is interesting to note that he more or less copied Greenway’s design. Greenway’s original plans are unfortunately not extant. But before the original Macquarie’s Tower was demolished, measured plans of it were made by the Colonial Architect’s Office, so a detailed architectural comparison with Barnet’s plans can still be made.

Barnet’s tower is still referred to as the Macquarie Lighthouse because it was built within a few metres of the first building, and was closely modelled on the original design. For a short time the two towers stood side by side, until piecemeal demolition of the old Macquarie Tower started in 1884.

During demolition coins were found under the foundation stone, indicating that they had been put there by Macquarie at the foundation ceremony on 11 July 1816. They are a ‘holey’ dollar and a ‘dump’ that was punched out from its centre, and are now in the ANMM collection. Re-struck in NSW due to a shortage of currency, Spanish silver dollars or ‘piece of eight’ (reales) were used for this purpose; the value of the holey dollar was determined at five shillings and the ‘dump’ at 15 pence. It was for use only within the colony.

Throughout their working lives the lighthouses have been popular artistic subjects, providing attractive vantage points for painters and photographers. They were also a popular destination for day-trippers from Sydney. In this regard the track – improved into a road in 1811 by soldiers from Macquarie’s old regiment – played a pivotal role in making the lighthouse a much-chosen destination for excursions.

Residents and visitors got to the Outer South Head in horse-drawn carriages along Old South Head Road, or they walked or came on horseback, or came to Watsons Bay by water across the harbour and then walked up the rough track to the lighthouse precinct, where they could enjoy attractive views of the ocean, spectacular views of the cliffs or vistas back across the harbour to the town in the west and to the pristine shore in the north. 

The view by colonial artists and today’s vistas by the museum’s photographer Andrew Frolows will be on display in our North Gallery from 18 August to 28 November 2010. The author will speak about the Macquarie Light at a forum held here on 19 August 2010 during international Lighthouse Week – for details see program on page 30.

Top: The old and new lighthouses about 1884. The new tower is on the right; the iron strapping on the old lighthouse is evident. Photographer unknown, reproduced courtesy of the NSW State Archives

View of the Macquarie light today. Photographer J Mellefont/ANMM

Lady Hopetoun first of the fleet

Phil Renouf Memorial Lecture 2010 in March this year we hosted the seventh annual lecture, named after the late president of Sydney Heritage Fleet. The 2010 lecture recalled the organisation’s beginnings 45 years ago, reports

Sydney Heritage Fleet’s Alan Edenborough.

above: The late Phil Renouf (1938–2002) – engineer, naval architect, sailor, ship-modeller and musician. He’s shown here as president of Sydney Heritage Fleet, on board James Craig, whose recovery he was actively involved in from the first. He presided over the completion of its three-decade-long restoration. Photographer David Lovett.

right: A recently acquired painting by renowned maritime artist John Allcot, undated, shows Lady Hopetoun in the early years of her service as the NSW Government’s vice-regal launch. Reproduced with permission of the artist’s estate. ANMM collection, gift from P&0

Join Sydney Heritage Fleet for a cruise on the historic vessel Lady Hopetoun; details in the Members Events program on page 27.

Phil Renouf was the much-loved and highly respected leader of Sydney Heritage Fleet, the volunteer-based organisation that specialises in the restoration and operation of important historic vessels and has its offices, library and non-floating collections housed in the Australian National Maritime Museum’s Wharf 7 Maritime Heritage Centre. Phil led Sydney Heritage Fleet at a critical time in its development, and this annual lecture series was inaugurated to honour his significant contribution to Australian maritime heritage.

This year’s lecturer was Warwick Turner, another key figure in Sydney Heritage Fleet. It was Warwick who, with some friends, established in 1965 the organisation that has become Sydney Heritage Fleet. It was founded to save the elegant government VIP steam launch Lady Hopetoun, the first vessel of the organisation’s internationally regarded fleet. Warwick recalled Lady Hopetoun from his childhood on the harbour:

‘My fascination with Port Jackson, as I peered from the train while crossing Sydney Harbour Bridge each day,

developed into a great interest in steam ships. From tugs to liners, the harbour was alive with interesting vessels –a complete contrast to today. I first saw Lady Hopetoun steaming up Lane Cove River in 1956, chasing us boys who were rowing in the Riverview [College] Gold Cup Regatta. I could not believe such a thing of beauty existed. She was belching plenty of black smoke, but her grace and turnout was just stunning. I always looked for her from the bridge and was sometimes rewarded as she arrived or departed her mooring at Goat Island.’

Lady Hopetoun, named for the wife of Australia’s first Governor General, was built in Berrys Bay, Sydney, in 1902 for the Sydney Harbour Trust, forerunner of the Maritime Services Board (MSB) and today’s NSW Maritime. Her designer was a renowned Australian naval architect, Walter Reeks. For more than 60 years

Lady Hopetoun’s principal role was as the NSW Government’s vice-regal and VIP vessel for Sydney Harbour, taking royalty, visiting dignitaries, governors general, state governors and premiers on tours of Sydney Harbour. Just over 21 metres

long, her wooden hull carvel-planked in kauri and powered by a coal-fired triple expansion steam engine, Lady Hopetoun is truly a vessel of significance.

The President of the MSB in the mid1960s, Mr W H Brotherson, did not share the enthusiasm of Warwick Turner and many, many other Sydneysiders for Lady Hopetoun. He ordered a modern replacement vessel and Lady Hopetoun was to be scrapped. This was the trigger that focused Warwick’s mind. He and his group negotiated with the MSB to acquire the vessel, but Mr Brotherson decided to put the vessel out for tender. There were other bidders, some quite influential, but in the end the bid of £300 by Warwick and his friends was accepted.

On 18 January 1966 Lady Hopetoun was handed over by Mr Brotherson to the first president of the newly-formed Lady Hopetoun & Port Jackson Marine Steam Museum Limited, Captain Freddie Stovin-Bradford. Lady Hopetoun was in steam for the handing-over ceremony and after the MSB flag was lowered took guests for a short run. From the start the organisation’s aims were big, but first the fledgling museum had to deal with the realities of a vessel more than 60 years old and clearly not in the first flush of youth.

‘The acquisition phase was easy compared to what was to come,’ said Warwick. ‘The development of a conservation plan for the hull was critical. We were never backward in approaching those we considered the best for advice.’ Lady Hopetoun underwent her first refit under the ownership of the museum, just in time to lead the harbour parade for the ceremonies associated with the 1970 bicentennial of Captain Cook’s landing in Botany Bay.

By then another vessel with a remarkable working life of more than 60 years had joined the fleet, the 33-metre coal-fired steam tug Waratah built at Sydney’s Cockatoo Island in 1902. She had a hard working life in the NSW Department of Public Works towing barges full of silt dredged from the coastal rivers and harbours of New South Wales. And she was soon followed by the 51-metre steam pilot vessel John Oxley, built in 1927 in Scotland for the Queensland Government. A museum crew steamed her from Brisbane to Sydney.

With a growing fleet, no direct funding and no permanent site in Sydney Harbour at which to establish a shipyard to restore and maintain the vessels, not to mention displaying the museum’s growing collections, the future was daunting.

The NSW State Government’s proposals to demolish The Rocks and some of the nation’s oldest buildings generated an immense public outcry that forced it to back down. The Sydney Cove Redevelopment Authority (SCRA) was set up to find a more sensitive solution to development in The Rocks. One of SCRA’s first plans was to develop a maritime museum precinct in Campbells Cove, on Circular Quay west adjacent to the Overseas Passenger Terminal.

Leaders of the Lady Hopetoun & Port Jackson Marine Steam Museum were quick to approach SCRA’s director, who was sympathetic to them and their vessels occupying the proposed site. But there was a catch: the director wanted ‘a tall ship’ for the museum. When told that Sydney had done a very efficient job of destroying all examples of the ships that built the nation after colonisation, his response was ‘Well, see if you can find one’.

In the early 1970s, one didn’t Google ‘sailing ship wrecks’ in search of a tall ship to salvage

The 1902 steam tug Waratah. Join Sydney Heritage Fleet for a cruise on this historic vessel; details in the Members Events program on page 29. Photograph reproduced courtesy of Sydney Heritage Fleet.

In the early 1970s, one didn’t Google ‘sailing ship wrecks’ in search of a tall ship to salvage. The research was laborious, but at the very end of 1971 a breakthrough came as a result of a letter published in the British ship-lovers’ magazine Sea Breezes. Written by a Sydney yachtsman, it described a sailing trip to Tasmania and sighting the hulk of a sailing ship in Recherche Bay, on the remote south-eastern corner of the island. The ship – James Craig, ex-Clan Macleod –was built in 1874 and was the veteran of 23 roundings of Cape Horn.

The group first visited the hulk, by sea as there was no road access, in January 1972. Cutting a very long story short, within a remarkable 16 months the old iron-hulled barque had been surveyed, had its holes plugged with concrete, was temporarily refloated and pronounced salvageable, and on the proverbial smell of an oily rag was towed the 60 sea miles to Hobart. The museum had another ship! Needless to say, the director of SCRA was surprised that his challenge had been met but he undertook to make the Campbells Cove site available. Sadly, the MSB, which controlled the wharves and water, thought otherwise. The proposal was abandoned, plunging the museum into near crisis. It was once again without any prospect of a permanent home in Sydney Harbour, and for several years the future looked very bleak.

Perseverance. Determination. Stubbornness. Choose your word. The supporters simply refused to give up. In 1981 James Craig made a triumphal entry into Sydney Harbour at the end of a tow rope. A new site at Birkenhead Point showed promise, but ship restoration and retail outlets are not

comfortable neighbours and so the fleet moved yet again. By this time, the innerSydney-Harbour ferry Kanangra (1912) had been given to the organisation that now called itself Sydney Maritime Museum, and both the ferry and James Craig found themselves for a time in Cockle Bay, near Sydney’s Pyrmont Bridge. Again, the retail redevelopment of Darling Harbour pushed the vessels out and another temporary home was established in Rozelle Bay.

The founding of the Australian National Maritime Museum (ANMM) brought the promise of co-operative arrangements, although this took some years to bring to fruition. To differentiate between the two organisations, it was agreed that Sydney Maritime Museum would trade under the present name of Sydney Heritage Fleet (SHF). We moved our administration offices, library, small boat and engine collection and some workshop activities into ANMM’s Wharf 7 Heritage Centre building, provided generously and rent-free by the national organisation.

The restored and recommissioned barque James Craig took up a permanent berth alongside. From there James Craig

operates her regular public sailing program and is open to visitors as part of the combined attractions within the maritime museum precinct.

Described for some years as the ‘odd couple’, ANMM and SHF rub along together very well. Co-operative projects are increasing, the most significant of which is the Australian Register of Historic Vessels. SHF still receives no direct funding, which continues to place a strain on its resources, but free occupation of the Wharf 7 facilities and many other support services provided by ANMM are greatly appreciated.

The organisation’s goals remain (in the words of its constitution) ‘to restore, maintain, exhibit, display and operate for the benefit of the public vessels and artefacts … to maintain and operate a restoration and maintenance facility … and to promote the preservation and teaching of traditional maritime trades, skills and crafts ...’.

A core element of the museum’s structure has always been its volunteers. After 45 years it is still volunteercontrolled, with a small support staff. Some 600 of the museum’s 1,400 members are active volunteers and

between them annually clock up in excess of 100,000 hours of volunteer contribution.

The SHF’s greatest challenge remains the lack of a permanent home for its shipyard – essential to the restoration and maintenance of its vessels and its operational fleet. With five of the vessels now over 100 years old and all in passenger-carrying condition, securing a permanent shipyard site is vital. So is securing a sound financial base. At the time of writing, the omens – at last – are encouraging that we will see the end to our 45-year search for a permanent home. Stay tuned – Signals readers will be among the first to know!

There are few organisations in the maritime heritage world which can look back, as the Fleet does, on so many decades of achievement, most of it by volunteers, and without direct funding from any government source. Ordinary people achieving extraordinary things, sums it up. 

Sydney Heritage Fleet offers a number of ways in which members of the wider community can help keep the Fleet afloat. Details are available at www.shf.org.au.

Salty songs and rollicking verse from our maritime past

For over four decades folklore collector and music identity Warren Fahey –2010 winner of the prestigious Australia Council Don Banks Music Award –has been collecting traditional Australian songs and popular verse. Here he delves into our maritime past to uncover ballads about salty sailors, amorous escapades, disastrous shipwrecks, and life on board the majestic ships that once plied these seas.

Being an island continent has always shaped this country’s history. Indigenous people came by sea from the north thousands of years before that extraordinarily skilled navigator, Lieutenant James Cook, hoisted up the ‘red, white and blue’ for the British Empire. And ever since, the sea has been a vital part of our national identity – all the more surprising considering that for the first hundred years or so of white settlement, the majority of Australians lived away from the coast, in ‘the bush’.

As a social historian and singer of old songs, I’ve been collecting the remnants of our maritime folklore for over 40 years. This has involved some major detective work scouring through manuscript collections and ships’ newspapers and, from 1972 onwards, tape-recording oral histories. I am extremely fortunate to have started my oral history collection (now housed in the National Library, Canberra) at a time when I could talk to people who were born in the 19th century.

ABC Music, a long-time partner in my work to preserve our musical heritage,

left: Veteran folklorist Warren Fahey with his trusty squeezebox. Photographer Craig Borrow opposite: Cover of the Across the Seven Seas: the Australian Maritime Collection from Warren’s 10-CD series Australia: Folk Songs and Bush Verse (ABC Music), available from the museum Store.

far right: Cover of Rare Convict Ballads and Broadsides

has issued a 10-CD series, Australia: Folk Songs and Bush Verse, on which I perform many of the songs I’ve collected. While Australia’s maritime history features prominently across the series, two of the compilations will be of particular interest to Signals readers: Rare Convict Ballads and Broadsides and Across the Seven Seas: the Australian Maritime Collection, both of which offer many sea songs and shanties never before recorded.

These songs are the signposts of our maritime history. Some are traditional ballads common to most English-speaking cultures, some belong to the canon of what eventually became known as ‘popular song’, and others first appeared as printed broadsides or ‘penny dreadfuls’. Before newspapers, radio or 24-hour television, the general public received its news primarily from street literature. The most popular were the broadside ballads – large, single sheets, printed on one side only, peddled by broadside sellers who often sang their verses to advertise them. They were the tabloids of their day, announcing

executions, terrible murders, shipwrecks, scandalous romances and stories of tormented souls transported to faroff lands.

These songs and ballads – which for convenience I call ‘folk songs’ – can be extremely helpful in tracking the Australian story. Unlike most facts-andfigures historical accounts, they give us a unique insight into the emotional content of their narrative. Many are sung in the first person to draw the listener into a very personal account. The convict transportation ballads are a good example, many opening with the familiar invocation: ‘Come listen for a moment, lads, and hear me tell my tale…’

The Australian maritime story in the era of white settlement begins with the arrival of the 11 ships of the First Fleet, bearing hapless souls to Botany Bay. Eventually some 185,000 male and female convicts would be transported to these shores. The majority of transportation songs are understandably plaintive. They tell of the dreaded separation from family and lovers; the fear of being exiled

As a social historian and singer of old songs, I’ve been collecting the remnants of our maritime folklore for over 40 years

so far from home; deprivation and mistreatment by carers and the system; and finally, heartfelt warnings to others ‘lest they too be transported’.

While conditions in England’s gaols were horrific, the thought of hard months spent on the ocean voyage to Australia was often feared even more. Some died during the passage – of illness, malnutrition or just sheer terror. There was also the very real fear of shipwreck – several convict ships, including ones carrying women and children, were destined for a watery grave.

Many crimes were punishable by transportation to the penal settlements of Botany Bay – a generic destination that seems to have long outlived the transfer to Port Jackson and the addition of Norfolk Island, Van Diemen’s Land and Moreton Bay. The crimes included poaching, forgery, petty theft and political agitation. Sentences of 7, 14 or 30 years were in reality a lifetime since no return fare was available. One song in the collection, simply titled ‘Australia, Australia’, is a shortened version

right:

this year

opposite: in 1973 Warren recorded the seafaring repertoire of ex-seaman, Jimmy Cargill. it was Jimmy who spotted the Japanese mini-submarine caught in the harbour net in WWii.

These song sheets were the tabloids of their day, announcing executions, terrible murders, shipwrecks and scandalous romances

of a longer ballad called ‘Virginny’ written during the American War of Independence (1775–1783) when Virginia was the main destination for Britain’s transported convict class. It is unusual in that its subject is highway robbery and, as an added emotional trigger, a crime motivated by love. There are extremely few transportation songs about highwaymen because most such offenders were executed.

Another song, ‘Botany Bay Scoundrels’, presents a litany of villains, crooks, whores and pimps and the reasons they were transported. Every low-life receives a serve in this somewhat ribald song that dates back to a printed broadside (circa 1790) where it was called (less colourfully) ‘Botany Bay: a new song’. This rare find comes to us from the Mitchell Library of the State Library of New South Wales, and was originally unearthed by that extraordinary researcher of documents and books, David Scott Mitchell, for whom the library was named exactly 100 years ago. Along with the song’s obvious sarcasm (‘to make a new people in Botany Bay’) its barbed final verse reminds the listener of Governor Lachlan Macquarie’s comment that Australia was settled by people sentenced here, and those who should have been!

Ships brought optimistic free settlers and later, even more optimistic goldseekers to these shores. Then came the waves of immigrants as the giant sail and steamships landed their human cargo of ‘new chums’ and sailed off with our famed wool, beef, timber and wheat. In 1973 I recorded a song without a name: its singer, a Mr Gilmer of Maryborough,

Queensland, had learnt the song in 1923 when he was working as a shearer in the Riverina. The song, now known as ‘Limejuice tub’, describes the ships bringing new-chum workers into the country.

The reference to lime juice also appears in another song, ‘According to the Act’, recorded from Captain Watson, a member of the Shiplovers’ Society of Victoria, in 1960 when he was 88 years old. This song takes a sarcastic swing at the Merchant Shipping Act of 1894, with its references to a compulsory daily issue of lime juice for all merchant seamen. (The use of lime juice and vinegar as a preventative against scurvy had been well known to British sailors for many years prior, dating back to James Cook’s voyages across the Pacific.) The Act covered many aspects of shipboard life that needed more improvement than its legislation provided, such as hours of employment and working conditions, especially on the well-worn sailing vessels that were finding it extremely difficult to compete with the steamship trade.

Sailors are the world’s great travellers and their tradition is full of songs and stories that have also travelled. Australia grew up in the golden age of sailing when sleek, powerful clipper ships ploughed the oceans on the Britain to Australia run. Some of the world’s most famous ships, including the Cutty Sark and Marco Polo, serviced our ports, bringing with them a wealth of songs and shanties. Shanties –maritime work songs – link us to our maritime past and many were used and localised on the Australian run.

Other songs and shanties came to us from whalers and seal-hunters who worked our coasts, or from the fishing fleets that trawled the sea’s then-rich harvest. In 2007 I had the good fortune to discover a rare collection of such shanties, taken down, with musical notation, from a whaler and sealer on Kangaroo Island, South Australia, in 1923. You can see that collection at: warrenfahey.com/ccarey.htm

Ben Bright, born in North Wales in 1896, was 76 when his unique repertoire was recorded. He spent most of his life at sea and would have been one of the last sailors to bridge the old days of sail and the new age of steam. An active member of International Workers of the World in the 1920s and ’30s onwards, he eventually retired to Australia in 1972. His stock of songs included sea shanties, bush songs and some unusual maritime ditties including ‘The Handy Barque, the Campanero’, which is essentially a rant against a particularly despised sea captain:

Well, the skipper said to the mate, you’ve got ringworms in your date, You’ve got dead-eyes in your ears, oh, I can find-oh, You’re a dirty old son-of-a-bitch, you’ve given everybody the itch, You’re not fit to be the mate of the Campanero

Then the mate in a rankin’, threw the skipper onto the plankton, Saying: it’s not me you’re going to fear-o, If I’m not a dirty old bitch, you’re more like a lousy old swan,

Than the captain of the barque, the Campanero

Earlier

Warren presented an installation on the convict and industrial history of Cockatoo island for the 2010 Biennale of Sydney. Titled Damned Souls & Turning Wheels, it included many folk songs from his extensive collection.

This song appears in Stan Hugill’s Shanties of the Seven Seas as a pumping song, however Bright’s version is a forebitter (or forecastle song) – a song sung on board ship by sailors in their leisure time, as opposed to the more romanticised sea songs written and sung ashore about the glories and delights of life at sea.

Another of Ben’s songs, ‘The Academy of Mister Paddy West’, concerns a legendary figure in maritime folklore known for operating a dodgy ‘school’ for would-be sailors. Legend has it that Paddy’s crimping methods (the practice of delivering seamen to a ship in need of hands – voluntarily or otherwise) included putting completely inexperienced seamen through a halfhour crash-course. This song doesn’t seem to have been collected from any other source, and is also noteworthy for its reference to steam. Part of it appears to have been borrowed from a sea song called ‘Away, Susannah’.

Ben introduced the song thus: ‘There was a fair amount of singing went on in the sailing ships. Once you got settled down in a ship you got to know each other pretty good. Fellas’d tell stories of their experiences about shanghai-ing or boarding house masters like Tommy Moore, y’know. Or maybe somebody would have an accordion or a mouth organ and you’d hear songs in every language under the sun, and in broken English. I remember a fella called Peterson, a Swede, used to sing this song about Paddy West’s Academy.’

The 19th-century sailor was often portrayed in a romanticised fashion

– a ‘roving blade’ with ‘a girl in every port’ – but in reality, it was a very tough life. Conditions on board ship were uncomfortably cramped, food was often scarce or inedible, hours were long, and if the captain and mate were ‘hard men’, it could be unbearable. There was also the ever-present danger of drowning or shipwreck. Notwithstanding this, countless songs relate tales of the sexual misadventures of sailors while in port.

The ribald tale known as ‘Bung Your Eye’ comes from J W Eisdell’s ‘ Back Country’ or the Cheerful Adventures of a bush parson in the eighties, 1936. The song is known in several versions, including ‘The Basket of Oysters’.

While it’s not unusual for a sailor returning to port to find he had fathered a child during his previous visit, this song seeks to remedy the situation by passing the child back to the bewildered sailor:

As Jack went a-roving down a fair Sydney street

A girl with a basket he chanced for to meet …

Says Jack, ‘To be serious, what have you got there?’

‘Good Holland’s gin, I vow and declare, Good Holland’s gin if you wish for to buy

And the name that they call it is ‘Young Bung Your Eye’.’

Now Jack he bought the basket and right away went

To look in the basket it was his intent, But in two or three minutes a young child did cry

Then up in his arms he took young Bung Your Eye … Now all you young sailors who roam Sydney’s streets, If a girl with a basket you chance for to meets, The course that I give you is steer ‘full and by’

Or they’ll make you the dad of a young ‘Bung Your Eye’.

Another category of nautical song is the maritime disaster ballad. Across the Seven Seas offers the first recording of three ballads that tell of tragic shipwrecks, two taken from first-hand accounts by survivors. ‘The Melancholy Loss of the Amphitrite’ is a good example. The convict ship Amphitrite sailed for New South Wales in August 1833, with 108 female convicts, 12 children and a crew of 16. Not long after leaving, the ship was caught in a gale off the coast of France and ran aground. The French offered to take the convicts and crew ashore but the captain and surgeon,

fearing they had no right to liberate convicts, refused all offers of assistance. The ship was torn to pieces and only three members of the crew survived. One can almost hear the agony in the desperate verses of this tragic tale. The undated broadside was published by W & T Fordyce, Printers, Dean Street, Newcastle, probably printed soon after the tragedy in 1833.

Another such song is ‘The Wreck of the Dunbar’, which was adapted from first-hand accounts and the published narrative verse of Mr Samuel Bennett, Sydney, 1857. The merchant ship Dunbar smashed into the sea cliffs near the Macquarie Light (in today’s Vaucluse) in the middle of a stormy night on 20 August 1857, after a 91-day passage from Plymouth and only minutes from the safety of Sydney Harbour. The Dunbar had 122 people on board – 59 crew and 63 passengers – many of them Sydneysiders returning from a visit ‘home’, as they thought of England. Others were immigrants. The captain was experienced and much esteemed. There was only one survivor of this terrible maritime tragedy.

A little-known song of this genre concerns The Royal Charter. Launched in 1857, this was a new type of clipper with auxiliary steam engines used on the route between Liverpool and Australia, and able to make the passage in less than 60 days. She had accommodation for up to 600 passengers including a luxury first-class section, as well as some room for cargo. In late 1859 The Royal Charter set out from Melbourne bound for Liverpool, with 452 passengers and crew, some carrying gold from Australian goldfields valued at £320,000. On 25 October she sailed into the worst storm recorded in the Irish Sea that century and sought to wait it out at anchor. The anchor chain broke and the ship was driven stern-first onto the rocks 50 yards from shore off the island of Anglesey, Wales. The ship broke into two sections, and everyone on board was lost, either drowning or perishing as they were hurled against the rocks. Some of the passengers attempted to swim to shore with their pockets filled with gold nuggets. The ship became known as the ‘golden wreck’.

British collector E J Moeran collected the ballad of the shipwreck from Mr James Strong at Winterton, England, in July 1915. It was published in Moeran’s Songs Sung in Norfolk, 1923, and, as far as I can ascertain, this was the only time the song had been collected in the oral tradition and, even more surprising, the only time it had been published.

Even half-remembered lines can help to piece together the jigsaw puzzle of Australia’s fascinating maritime past

My recorded version is certainly the only time its Australian connection has been identified.

One of the most fascinating songs in the maritime compilation is ‘The Female Rambling Sailor’. The theme of a young girl going to sea disguised as a sailor, sometimes to seek her true love or simply to find adventure, was not uncommon in traditional balladry. Although the lass in this particular song is named ‘Rebecca Young’, the most famous of these female sailors was Jane Thornton, who reputedly, after serving in the Royal Navy, secured a Naval Pension courtesy of Queen Victoria’s endorsement.

Pioneer collectors Norm O’Connor and Bob Michell recorded this very fine ballad from Catherine Peatey of Melbourne in 1959. Mrs Peatey spent her early life in the Warrnambool and Leongatha districts in southern Victoria, and learnt most of her songs from her father, writing them down in a manuscript book she kept for that purpose. I learnt the song in the late 1960s from the recording of Mrs Peatey in the National Library of Australia.

A number of the songs derive from our inland rivers. ‘The Old Macquarie’ features one of our most famous rivers. In 1974, I recorded 92-year-old Susan Colley singing this charming Australian adaptation of the American spiritual, ‘River of Jordan’. The children’s song has various bush animals boarding Noah’s Ark. There is also the tall tale of ‘The Wonderful Crocodile’ found off La Perouse – essentially an Australian version of the ‘Jonah and the Whale’ story.

Sydney Harbour also gets a gong in ‘Take Me Down the Harbour’. Boating and ferry trips to Sydney’s ‘pleasure beaches’ provided abundant material for songs in the popular canon, however this one also introduces that fashionable new invention, the telephone. I sourced this charming ditty from The Imperial Songster No. 83, published by The Tivoli, Sydney, in 1909. It is attributed to Gray & Bennett. I hope the tune is close to the original. The places mentioned in the song are all inner-city harbour and surf beaches, and Clifton Gardens was the earliest ‘pleasure picnic ground’ accessible by ferry. It was a wild place and, for a time, was closed due to rowdy behaviour by ‘larrikins’.

Now Gertie’s a girl, a sweet little pearl, She works down in the city; And she has a beau, his name is Joe, So handsome and so witty.

On each Saturday, when he gets his pay, A message soon he’s reading: ‘I feel quite alone, ring me up on the phone, You’re just the one I’m needing.’

[Chorus:] Take me down the harbour

On a Sunday afternoon –To Manly Beach or Watson’s Bay, Or round to Coogee for the day; Call around to Clifton, Or Mosman, it will do, Dear old harbour, Sydney Town, They can’t beat you.

Way over the tide, how softly they glide, Out on the harbour ferry, Whilst music so sweet makes life feel complete, Their hearts are light and merry, Then homeward once more, they part on the shore, And Joe says to his girlie, ‘If you feel alone, ring me up on the phone, And call me quick and early.’

As a folklore collector I am always delighted to hear from readers who recall songs about our maritime story. We place a high regard on material collection but sadly, have largely neglected areas like folklore and oral history. Even half-remembered lines can make a valuable contribution to the songhunting quest and help to piece together the jigsaw puzzle of Australia’s fascinating maritime past. 

Warren Fahey am is the founder of the legendary record store Folkways and folk music label Larrikin (which released the music of Eric Bogle, Redgum and The Bushwackers). He sold the Larrikin label well before its controversial recent copyright case against Men at Work. Warren can be contacted at warren@warrenfahey.com or via his Australian Folklore Unit website (www.warrenfahey.com). His new recordings are available at the museum’s retail outlet The Store. ABC Books will publish his songbook Australia: Its Folk Songs & Ballads (including the songs mentioned in this article) in September.

The original broadside: published lyrics to ‘The Female Rambling Sailor’, one of the ballads performed on Across the Seven Seas Collected from Catherine Peatey, Melbourne, in 1959.

Dazzling harbour with the proud arch

Sydney Harbour: A history by ian Hoskins. UNSW Press, Sydney, 2009. Hardcover, 359 pp, iSBN 978 1 921410 16 1. RRP $49.95

Looking at the cover of this handsome volume, one could be forgiven for asking: do we really need another book about Sydney Harbour? Fortunately, this thoroughly researched and lovingly written book more than justifies a positive answer. Ian Hoskins has chosen a broadly chronological narrative arc as the framework for his celebratory and wide-ranging history of Sydney’s defining feature – its dazzling harbour, identifiable around the world by the luminous sails of the Opera House and the ‘proud arch’ of the Harbour Bridge.

Taking as his point of departure the harbour’s unique sense of place – it would eventually displace the bush in Australia’s national iconography – the author assembles a multi-faceted portrait of the waterway’s complex character and history: its physical features and natural beauty, its social, cultural, commercial, political and military history, its architectural landmarks and recreational attractions. Underpinning every aspect is its extraordinary hold over locals and visitors alike.

Hoskins’ first encounter with the harbour was by ship in the 1960s as a four-year-old migrant, and he now works in sight of its north shoreline as public historian at Stanton Library. This close personal connection is obvious in his story-telling, from the harbour’s very beginnings as a flooded valley 15,000 years ago to today’s intensely urban waterside city. The chapters cover each of the phases: the maritime lifestyle of its original Indigenous inhabitants, whose dispossession and social collapse are a recurring sub-theme; the isolated, struggling convict settlement that Governor Phillip famously described as sitting upon ‘one of the finest harbours in the world’; and its gradual transition to the bustling working port made possible by its ‘unrivalled safe deep-water anchorage’.

Carefully selected documents, first-hand accounts and fascinating anecdotes build an absorbing and often intimate insight into harbour life. Hoskins skilfully personalises historic events, portraying a diverse array of characters and social strata – from fishermen, boatmen and waterside workers drawing a livelihood from the harbour, to the aristocrats, entrepreneurs and politicians who made decisions about its development.

The author creates a multi-sensory picture of the harbour across time. We witness the gradual appearance of wharves and warehouses, slipways and boat-yards. Hoskins conjures clippers, steamships and ferries, troopships and warships, immigrant vessels, luxury liners, container ships and car carriers – often through the eyes of contemporary artists or writers. We catch the odours – or stench – of wool-presses, meat and whaling works, coal furnaces, fuel oil, untreated sewage and industrial waste – sanitation problems that led to the horror of bubonic plague in the early 1900s. We share the elation of those who watched, enthralled, as the two arms of the Harbour Bridge gradually met in the middle in 1932, creating an enduring icon of the city and even Australia itself.

The book is richly illustrated by contemporary drawings, engravings, paintings, portraits, prints, posters, maps and photographs that beautifully document the harbour’s development and character, its ever-changing light

and moods. Artists captivated by the waterway’s magnificent natural beauty include Arthur Streeton, Conrad Martens, Lloyd Rees, Margaret Preston and Brett Whiteley. Photographs by Harold Cazneaux and Max Dupain detail harbourside life with striking authenticity.

Class solidarity and the rise of the militant wharfies’ union are explored. So is the growth of recreational activities including sailing and rowing, with their strong roots in waterside working communities alongside the more privileged strata of yachting. Although there are obvious social implications in who can afford to live and sail on the harbour, the author argues that its enduring appeal lies in a ‘breathtaking and superlative beauty’ that is accessible to all. Speaking of the 1800s, he writes: ‘For all the privatisation of the foreshore, Sydney people routinely lined every available headland and point to watch the harbour’s frequent civic spectacles.’ Then as now, the harbour provided a spectacular backdrop for public celebration.

Hoskins charts the protracted battle to retain foreshore land for public recreation rather than private interests; the push in the 1960s and 70s to demolish and redevelop in the name of progress; and the gradual disappearance of the harbour’s ‘gritty’ working character. He also notes the upside to this: an increase in accessibility through the many harbourside parks and walks that have replaced former industrial sites. Current debate about the harbour’s future includes the value of industrial heritage, encroaching urban and residential development, and Sydney’s seemingly insatiable desire for waterside living.

Many books about Sydney Harbour delve no deeper than their glossy photographs, or focus on a single topic, such as ferries or racing skiffs. This is a comprehensive study by a professional historian. It’s compelling story, engagingly told, of a city ‘intrinsically connected to its waterfront’. 

Penny Crino

Floating hypotheses or historical nostalgia

Sailing into the Past: Learning from Replica Ships

Edited by Jenny Bennet. Seaforth Publishing, Barnsley, 2009. Hardcover, 192 pp, colour photographs, B+W drawings and plans, index, iSBN 978 1 84832 0130. RRP $75

I was hesitant when approached by the editor of Signals to review this interesting and attractive publication with its many fine photographs of historic sailing ship replicas, including the museum’s Endeavour. I’m very interested in replicas. Indeed I’ve been involved in the research and design of a number of replica projects over the years. My problem was that I contributed one of the book’s 13 chapters! However the editor persisted, and there was a precedent … I remembered once reviewing a book in which I actually appear as ‘a character out of a Conrad novel’ (Tim Severin’s The China Voyage). So I agreed to give it a go.

Three introductory chapters establish a historical, theoretical and technical discussion about building and assessing replicas. They are followed by four chapters on ancient and medieval ship replicas, then six on ‘The Age of Discovery, 1600–1750’, each by an expert contributor with a connection to the replica in question. The Age of Discovery is usually seen as the second half of the 15th century to the early 17th century – the period when the Portuguese, Spanish, and later the northern-European mariners set out to chart and exploit the world beyond Europe. Three of the chapters discuss replicas that post-date 1750 – including the Endeavour replica – so this section might have been more felicitously titled.

Captain Richard Woodman opens chapter one with John Ruskin’s pivotal insight that ‘a ship is the most honourable thing man has ever produced’ and provides a brief, generalised account of the development of sailing ships, along with some personal reminiscences. In the second chapter Seán McGrail, perhaps Britain’s pre-eminent maritime archaeologist, provides a good, succinct

discussion of theoretical issues of replicas, reconstructions and ‘floating hypotheses’ in experimental archaeology. He sees a distinction, even an opposition, between archaeologically motivated replica projects and those driven by ‘historical nostalgia’, national prestige and aims such as education.

It is a valid distinction, but several of the following chapters implicitly demonstrate a belief that archaeological research can be integrated into projects that are initiated with other motivations. McGrail insists that ‘the expected outcomes, in terms of significant additions to knowledge … must be shown to be commensurate with anticipated costs.’ How knowledge and costs are commensurable is an open question. This perceived opposition between archaeology and building replicas for the love of ships might explain why Britain has no significant replica ships.

Colin Palmer is certainly the man to write his chapter about ‘Measuring Performance under Sail’. It is a fine piece of technical writing and there is a poetry to his description of the difficulties of measuring things ‘where sky meets sea’. He frankly acknowledges that there are so many variables that real precision is elusive, though GPS now provides a simple and effective way of measuring real speed, real tacking angles and real progress made good. I learned a good deal from this chapter, including the fact that a large angle of leeway makes the apparent wind come further ahead of the vessel and contributes to unrealistic observations of how close to the wind some replicas can sail. Palmer, a scientist, uses metres per second for wind speed while other chapters use knots. Consistency and/or a handy conversion table would have been helpful.

Professor Boris Rankov begins the replica chapters with a fascinating account of the Hellenic trireme replica which effectively ended the assertion that, for mechanical reasons, a trireme could not have three separate tiers of oars each pulled by one man per oar. He gives

a good summation of the arguments both for and against such a project.

The Viking ships of Skuldelev, in chapter five, are the gold standard for replica projects. The ships on which the replicas are based were meticulously excavated and their original configurations reconstructed. The replicas were built using authentic tools and materials. Planks were split from freshly felled oak trunks, never sawn, for it is only in this way that the strength, lightness and flexibility of a Viking ship and its remarkable performance can be recreated.

The several Hanseatic cog replicas discussed in the chapter five are mostly based on the archaeological recovery of a largely complete hull at Bremen. All have accepted motors and other compromises necessary to operate commercially, but nonetheless provided the opportunity to discover much about how such apparently clumsy ships could be sailed. There are more cog replicas under construction now, partly because of their success as work-experience projects in economically depressed areas. The Baltic caravel of the next chapter was similarly motivated. It is a speculative and generalised reconstruction of a type of vessel for which there is currently no archaeological evidence. Substantial compromises to facilitate construction and commercial use include an anachronistic transom stern and a bow thruster. The aim of her successful

Australians can take real pride in the fact that Endeavour and Duyfken are so well represented in this volume, and so well respected internationally

operations is the opportunity ‘to experience living history’.

My chapter about several replicas of early-17th-century Dutch ships, particularly Duyfken – the Western Australian-built replica of the little scout ship or jacht that in 1606 was the first recorded European ship to reach and land crew on Australia – opens Part II. It also discusses the Mayflower replica.

This is followed by a chapter about the several replicas of the three Jamestown ships that brought the pioneers to the first permanent English settlement in North America. There have been replicas at Jamestown since 1957. They build new ones when the replicas get old and each is a new interpretation, sometimes significantly different from the previous version. The chapter is mainly about the historical research which is said to produce increasingly authentic design, although some changes might be partly motivated by their use as museum ships.

The chapter about bezaisen, Japan’s sailing coastal traders of the Edo era, is something really unexpected and exciting. These ships, rigged with big, baggy, single square sails set on huge unstayed masts (shown on the cover), are quite unlike Chinese ships or anything else. Constructed with neither frames nor bulkheads, yet capable of loading hundreds of tonnes, the last of the real bezaisen existed recently enough to have been photographed but the designs were never drawn on paper. The four replicas

Readings

are reconstructed designs. They are also remarkable in being the work of one old Japanese carpenter with a passion for these cultural artefacts.

Sultana is a fine little replica of an American schooner bought by the Royal Navy to serve in the revenue- and dutiescollecting activities that provoked the American Revolution. The replica was built using the resources of the small town of Chesterton, Maryland, population just 4,500. A well-planned and wellexecuted project is well described, and there is useful discussion of how modern stability regulations and modern materials produce a replica that can be driven much harder than the original, thus losing the old safety factor of ‘what she can’t carry, she’ll drag’.

The Endeavour replica’s chapter is by Antonia Macarthur, who was the historian for the organisation that built her in Western Australia, the HM Bark Endeavour Foundation. Antonia is perhaps too modest about the meticulous and exhaustive research that she undertook to make the spaces inside the ship appear ‘as if Cook and his people had just walked off the ship’. Australians can take real pride in the fact that Endeavour and Duyfken are so well represented in this volume, and so well respected internationally. At the risk of sounding jingoistic, this is one of those fields in which we punch above our weight.

The final, particularly well-written chapter is admirable in its honesty about

the faults of the Baltimore clipper replica Pride of Baltimore, since some contributions tend occasionally towards PR puff. The first Pride replica is described as a ‘furious little ship with too much sail on her sharply raked spars … poorly built and weakly rigged’. She was very authentic in some respects including cooking and provisioning but made no attempt to conform to safety requirements. Tragically four lives were lost when she was knocked down in a squall and foundered. But she had sailed more miles than most replicas ever will and the author Andrew Davis wonderfully evokes the authentic ‘constant, annoying, tiring anxiety’ of sailing a really authentic replica. The second Pride is a different sort of a ship.

This is a fine book, packed with information and insight and an exciting selection of photographs of mankind’s finest creations. It will teach even the expert reader a good deal. It’s far more than just another coffee table encyclopaedia of ships and the sea. 

Editor´s note: Reviewer Nick Burningham modestly says little about his chapter, which discusses some of the advanced research techniques he used on the Duyfken replica project including sophisticated mathematical analysis of ship portraits in contemporary Dutch works of maritime art. Nick has worked as researcher and adviser on a number of important historical replicas, including ancient vessels of Asia and the indian ocean.

Far from mother Russia

Revolution, escape, adaptation, endurance and exodus – this is the story of Australia’s White Russians. Welcome Wall coordinator Veronica Kooyman writes about one family’s story.

Our featured Welcome Wall registrant is Antonina Borodina (nee Suzdalova), born in China in 1927, the daughter of White Russians who had fled the Russian Civil War to settle in China. After surviving war and turmoil for 35 years, political turmoil once again forced this family to leave the home they had established and migrate to Australia.

The narrative of White Russian immigration to Australia in the 1950s and ‘60s takes us back several generations to the overthrow of the Romanov dynasty, Russia’s 1917 revolution and subsequent civil war.

When control of the state was seized by the Bolsheviks, many supporters of the murdered Tsar Nicholas II, and others who opposed the Soviet regime, fled the country. Dubbed the ‘Whites’, in opposition to the communist ‘Reds’, their ranks included military officers, Cossacks, intellectuals, businessmen, landowners and officials from the Imperial government. Hundreds of thousands, possibly millions,

left the country between 1917 and 1920 in the wake of a civil war, worsening conditions, food shortages and fear of reprisal for their ideological positions. They took few, if any, of their possessions and little wealth with them.

Many left for European Slavic countries such as Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Poland and Czechoslovakia, or to western countries such as Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, Germany and France. However, those living in Siberia and the Russian Far East fled to nearby China, Central Asia and Japan. In China cities such as Shanghai and Harbin swelled with Russians seeking work and refuge. During this time Harbin, located in Manchuria close to the Russian border, became known as the ‘Moscow of the Orient’. It already had a small Russian population, since the region had once been Russian territory. With this influx of Russian refugees the city became a small-scale replica of old Russia on Chinese soil, with orchestras, ballet companies, tertiary vocational schools and colleges, and many successful businesses.

left: Antonina as a child with her parents Natalia and ilya Suzdalov. Family photographs reproduced courtesy of Antonina Borodina

above: in Hong Kong prior to leaving for Australia. Antonina is the adult in the middle surrounded by her five children (left to right): Anfisa, Evdokia, Yakov (on his mother’s lap), Maria, and Nikolai standing behind his mother.

The museum’s tribute to migrants, The Welcome Wall, encourages people to recall and record their stories of coming to live in Australia

The family travelled by foot over 170 kilometres to Hong Kong, where they boarded the Dutch liner MS Tjiluwah for Australia

In the nearby city of Hailar, located just inside the Chinese border, Ilya Suzdalov arrived from Russia in 1919. Once he had secured work with a British company his wife, Natalia, followed in 1920 with daughter Nadezhda. In 1927 the second child and subject of this story, Antonina, was born in Hailar. The family settled and life was good. However, this peace was not to last.

From 1924 the stateless White Russians had begun moving south to Shanghai, Peking and Tientsin in small numbers. This was accelerated in 1931 with the sudden invasion of Manchuria by Japan, and their proclamation of its independence. Despite most business being allowed to continue as previously, many Russians feared worse to come and the numbers migrating south continued to rise. However the influx of refugees made it harder and harder to find work in the southern cities, and Antonina’s family decided to stay in Hailar where her father had reliable work. As war swept the world, the stateless Russians were not interned by the Japanese.

In August of 1945 as World War II drew to a conclusion, the Soviets invaded Manchuria and expelled the Japanese forces. Hailar was the scene of bitter and ferocious fighting. At the end of the war the British company Ilya had been working for closed, offering to take him and his family to England. He declined and moved his family to the nearby Chinese countryside, to farm the land. Rural life was not easy. The climate was harsh, water and electricity were limited and the diet was basic and unvaried. Even now, over 60 years later Antonina does not like corn on the cob, a staple of the family’s diet there.

In destabilised China, civil war broke out between the nationalists and the communists. By 1948 the communists had military success in the north in and around Harbin and began a fast-moving drive south to the major cities like

Shanghai and Peking. The White Russian community had few choices. Some had elected to adopt Soviet citizenship and either stayed put and accepted Chinese communist government, or began heading back to the Soviet Union. Others refused the political system they had originally fled in Russia and, facing incarceration, began the exodus to countries such as the United States, South America and Australia as displaced persons in the first wave of post-war White Russian migration.

Antonina stayed with her family in rural China throughout the post-war period and continued to work the land. During this time she met and married Alexander Borodina, who also worked the land in the same village, and they had five children – Nikolai, Maria, Anfisa, Evdokia and Yakov, all born in the Manchurian village of Trehrechie.

During the turmoil of Cultural Revolution in the early 1960s, however, the Russians still living in the Chinese provinces were evicted from the lands they had occupied for the last three decades. Their choice was to return to the motherland or migrate to the West.

In 1962 Antonina, by this time a 35-yearold widow with five children between the ages of 4 and 16, decided to leave China. The United Nations Refugee Agency assisted in sponsoring a large-scale White Russian migration to Australia, South America and the United States, and the efforts of a man originally from Harbin, Nikolai Ostroumov, helped secure passage to Australia for families from Trehrechie.

Assisted by her brother-in-law and sister-in-law, Antonina and her children started the long journey to Australia, travelling by truck to Hailar then by train to Harbin, Peking and Canton. From here the family travelled to Hong Kong, and Antonina recalls trekking by foot for some of this journey. They stayed in Hong Kong for two weeks until their ship left for Australia. The family travelled on the

The Borodina family sailed for Australia in 1962 on the Dutch passenger liner MS Tjiluwah, 8,675 GRT, built for Koninklijke Paketvaart Maatschappij (KPM) in 1950–51 for its far-eastern service. in 1960 it was transferred to a KPM subsidiary, Royal interocean Lines (livery shown here), to operate on the service between Australia, Hong Kong and Japan. ANMM collection

Dutch liner MS Tjiluwah which plied between Australia, Hong Kong and Japan. The basic third-class accommodation was described as ‘deck with stretcher’ and was popular among Chinese students and White Russian migrants.

On 30 September 1962 Antonina and her family arrived in Sydney and were transferred to the Bonegilla migrant centre. Despite language barriers, and with the help of the Red Cross and a closeknit Russian community, the family settled into life in a new country. Antonina found work at the Eveleigh Railway Workshops as a cleaner of interstate trains, and worked there for the next 20 years. The family eventually obtained housing in Sydney’s Canley Vale, a home which Antonina was later able to purchase.

On 2 May 2010 Antonina Ilyichna Borodina, who has nine grandchildren and 21 great-grandchildren living across the eastern states of Australia, had her name unveiled on the museum’s Welcome Wall. 

The Welcome Wall

It costs just $105 to register a name and honour your family’s arrival in this great country! We’d love to add your family’s name to The Welcome Wall, cast in bronze, and place your story on the online database at www.anmm.gov.au/ww. So please don’t hesitate to call our staff during business hours with any enquiries on 02 9298 3667.

A seat at history’s table

The tragic wreck of the fine clipper ship Dunbar on Sydney’s South Head in August 1857, with the loss of all but one of the 122 people on board, created a small industry producing commemorative publications and artworks, as well as relics fabricated from the ship’s shattered timbers. Curator Kieran Hosty acquired this remarkable chair to represent that history.

‘The Captain’s Chair’, believed to be manufactured from timbers salvaged after the Dunbar shipwreck of 1857. Photographer Merinda Campbell/ANMM opposite: Dunbar keel timbers washed up in Middle Harbour. From A Narrative of the melancholy Wreck of the “Dunbar” by James Fryer 1857. Engraving, ANMM collection

In the pitch-darkness of a stormy night on 20 August 1857 the first-class clipper ship Dunbar – just minutes from the end of an 81-day voyage from Plymouth loaded with migrants and prosperous colonists returning to New South Wales after visits ‘home’ to Britain – missed the entrance to Port Jackson by a nautical mile and crashed into the sheer sandstone cliffs south of the heads. The ship was battered to pieces against the foot of the sea cliff by the heavy seas, and every soul on board perished in those wild waves – with the exception of one crewman, miraculously washed up onto a rock ledge.

No-one in the settlement of Sydney knew anything about it until dawn broke. Sydneysiders woke to appalling scenes of wreckage, cargo and battered corpses washing into the harbour on the tide. Outside the heads, flotsam and more bodies were still being pounded on the rocks by the stormy seas, and washing up and down the coast.

The impact of the Dunbar disaster is hard to imagine in these days of safe and efficient air and sea travel. For those living in the emerging colony of Sydney during the 1850s the tragedy had a lasting emotional effect. Many of the Dunbar victims were prominent citizens, and many Sydneysiders lost loved ones in the unthinkable tragedy. The funeral procession attracted an estimated 20,000 people who lined George Street. Banks and offices closed, every ship in the harbour flew their ensigns at half mast and minute guns were fired as seven hearses and 100 carriages went past.

The effect of the Dunbar wreck on Sydney is evident from the number of narratives and accounts which were published just days after the event, selling in their thousands and posted to friends and family in Britain. Letters deluged

newspaper editors, lithographs, paintings and poems were created. Then other memorabilia associated with the tragedy began to appear in Sydney, manufactured from parts of the ship itself.

The keel had floated in to Middle Harbour and timbers of all kinds were salvaged and recycled from the harbour and the coastline. Despite demands by the police and the insurers not to plunder the wreckage, advertisements began to appear for items, including furniture, manufactured ‘from the Wreck of the Dunbar in Teak and Oak’. Chairs, armchairs, tables, containers and tableware, some clearly marked as ‘Made from the wreck of the Dunbar 1857’ have survived in private hands or in collections such as the Historic Houses Trust of NSW, the Powerhouse Museum and St John’s Church in Darlinghurst.

The fine, sturdy, solid timber chair appearing opposite is evidently one of these. The chair was acquired recently by the museum from Peter and Helen Isbister, whose family has always known it as ‘The Captain’s Chair’. It is in fact recorded in the mid-19th-century diary of Florence M Fraser, Helen Isbister’s great-great-grandmother, as having been recovered from Bondi following the wreck of the Dunbar in 1857.

The chair, which measures 1907 x 691 x 820 mm and weighs 19 kilograms, is of a solid construction. The arms and legs are securely fastened to the seat and back by trunnels or treenails – solid timber dowels driven into very tightlyfitting holes bored between the parts to be fastened. This is the same technique used in the 19th and earlier centuries for fastening the timbers of ships.

The most unusual feature of the chair is that the seat and back are carved from a single piece of timber. An examination

An examination of the timber grain suggests strongly that the original piece of timber was a ship’s knee

of the timber grain suggests strongly that the original piece of timber was a knee – a naturally grown shape of timber used as reinforcing in ships. In these, the grain ran lengthwise along both angles of the timber bracket, to provide maximum strength.

Notwithstanding the family diary entry, the rustic chair seems unlikely to have been a commercially manufactured piece of cabin furniture. Its excellent condition – there is no sign of breakage or repairs and there’s an absence of scratches or gouges – would indicate that it had not been carried as cargo. If it had, it would have been most unlikely to have escaped the pounding seas and the destruction of the ship, and washed ashore unscathed.

Given its mid-19th-century provenance, it is highly likely that this chair was manufactured from timbers – including a grown knee, bracket or similar piece of the ship’s framing – salvaged from the wreck of the Dunbar in 1857. The timbers may very well have washed ashore at Bondi Beach, the first bay to the south of the wreck site.

The Dunbar was an 1167-ton wooden three-masted sailing ship built in 1852 by the English shipbuilders James Laing & Sons at Sunderland. Costing over £30,000 and constructed from British oak and Indian teak, it was held together by copper fastenings and iron brackets. Initially used as a troop transport in the Crimean War, Dunbar then reverted to its intended trade of carrying passengers and cargo quickly between England and Australia. On its fateful second voyage to the colony, in 1857, it was carrying 63 passengers, 59 crew and a cargo including dies for the colony’s first postage stamps, machinery, furniture, trade tokens, cutlery, manufactured and fine goods, food and alcohol. 

Currents

Maritime myths writing workshop

Our big international exhibition Mythic Creatures – Dragons, unicorns and mermaids ran from late last year and right through the summer and Easter holiday periods, closing in late may. As part of the education programs held in conjunction with the exhibition, the museum’s education staff held a creative writing workshop for upper primary and junior secondary school students. The workshop, entitled Maritime Myths, investigated how a story is pieced together, using descriptive writing to create an atmosphere, writing in a genre and how to brainstorm ideas. After touring the exhibition, students got comfortable on the cushions in our Dragon’s Lair reading room and used a variety of mythic creature-related stimuli to create an idea for their story. The workshop proved popular with over 500 students attending. In conjunction with the workshop we offered a competition for participating students to submit the story that resulted from their participation in the workshop. Our winner was Anastasia Dale who is in a combined Year 4 and 5 class at Alexandria Park Community School . For her efforts Anastasia received gift vouchers from the museum’s popular retail outlet The Store – one for her school and one for herself. Well done Anastasia! We would like to share her story with Signals readers.

Jeff Fletcher

‘My lake’s sea monster’

When I just woke up I quickly dressed and went down to my favourite lake. I played in the rockpools and found a sponge to add to my collection of dry blue bottles, dried-up sponge and bits of coral that have been washed up.

I heard a roar and assured myself it was just waves crashing. Then it came again, louder this time and it sounded … in pain. I didn’t want to go in case it was dangerous but, well, what was it? Maybe I could help it. I went into my little nook in the rock and cautiously crept along to where the roars were coming from. When I looked I had to pinch myself in case I was dreaming. Oh man, I wasn’t dreaming!

Then I summoned up all my courage and looked again and saw a magnificent creature with scales that glistened blue, purple and green in the early morning sun. The beautiful animal had gleaming ice-blue eyes that fixed me with a penetrating yet mesmerising glare.

It majestically rose upwards like a snake and then thumped back down. The poor thing seemed to be trapped in some extremely strong fishing twine. My first thought was to run away and never come back but I was drawn back by some unforeseen force. I slowly, unwillingly turned back and saw a look of pleading on the wonderful monster’s face. ‘I’ll be right back,’ I promised, and I meant it.

The youngest person to sail solo around the world, 16-year-old Jessica Watson, visited the Australian National Maritime Museum shortly after returning in triumph to an enthusiastic public welcome on Sydney Harbour on 15 May (more photographs on page 25). Her S&S 34 yacht Ella’s Pink Lady was displayed at the museum from the day of her return, where it was the focus of several TV channels that broadcast their weekend news from the museum’s vessel basin. Her yacht drew curious crowds in the week that it was displayed here.

I dashed back home and got some garden clippers and then, on second thought some fish. When I got back it gave a soft, almost tender roar. I fed it the fish and cut the line.

It wrote something on a rock and disappeared into the sea. Only then did I dare to venture closer to the rock. It read ‘Thank-you Anastasia. Your kindness will never be forgotten by the sea-creatures – Esmerelda. P.S. Thanks for the fish!’ So now whenever I look out to sea, I remember that day and that secret.

Anastasia Dale Year 4/5

Anastasia Dale of Alexandria Park Community School with her award for winning our children’s creative writing competition, Maritime Myths.

Photographer Merinda Campbell/ANMM

Endeavour at Botany Bay 240 years after Cook

The climax of the Endeavour replica’s autumn sailing program was a visit to James Cook’s landing site at Kurnell on Botany Bay on 29 April, for the Meeting of Two Cultures Ceremony held on the 240th anniversary of the landing in 1770.

The ceremony, held at Kamay Botany Bay National Park, was organised by the Sutherland Shire Council and featured Welcome to Country by the Kurranulla Aboriginal Corporation, performances by

Thulli Dreaming and the Royal Australian Navy band. The photograph below right shows Endeavour voyaging crew members and local school children.

The autumn voyaging schedule included High Seas Adventure offshore voyages, a Sydney Harbour cruise and overnight sleepovers at anchor with themes of navigation, botany and history. The replica is shown (below left) hove to as an exercise in 18th-century seamanship.

Museum sponsors Corporate Members

Bearings from the director, Mary-Louise Williams

With the closing of our recent international exhibition Mythic Creatures – Dragons, unicorns and mermaids at the end of May, we’re pleased to report our best-ever quarter of visitation, with more people attending the museum than at any comparable period since we opened in 1991. That put us ahead of last year’s visitor numbers by an impressive 18%. And for us that’s really what it’s all about – giving as many people as we can, both Australians and overseas visitors, the experience of our maritime history and heritage, as it’s presented by this national institution.

The Federal Budget on 11 May brought the welcome news that we have the go-ahead for a long-planned $8.8 million upgrade to the eastern side of the museum. This will include the construction of a modern education centre; a major refurbishment of Yots Café, and enhanced facilities for our volunteers. While this period of site works will inevitably affect some of the programs we offer, we will be scheduling things so as to minimise disruptions. External works won’t start until after our Classic & Wooden Boat Festival which is making a very welcome return on the spring weekend of 16 and 17 October. The festival has become a huge event over the years, with its lively mix of entertainment, food, heritage displays, fantastic marine jumble sales and of

course the thing that everyone comes for, those wonderful visiting classic boats occupying every available square metre in the water and on dry land. This year we are welcoming as festival patron our old friend Ian Kiernan – single-handed roundthe-world yachtsman, founder of Clean Up Australia, and an early member of the museum’s governing Council.

We have been working with the Royal Netherlands Embassy on a series of programs to cultivate our shared maritime history and cultural ties. One of these relates to the artefacts from four wrecks of early Dutch East India Company ships found off Western Australia, shared between Australian and Dutch museums by The Australian Netherlands Committee on Old Dutch Shipwrecks (ANCODS).

On 2

(L to R) Jean Palmer who registered seven ancestors (five were convicts); Dr Kiran Phadke; Joseph Di Leo who registered 17 family members; Anton Enus from Welcome Wall sponsor SBS and Roger Henning, both of whose names were unveiled.

left: Our Welcome Wall unveiling ceremony was attended by 2,200 guests and surprised us with the best rendition of the national anthem we’ve ever heard, from the Bulgarian Martenitsa Choir. Photographer Genelle Bailey

The Netherlands artefacts are coming back to Australia and some of the highlights of this collection will be displayed here before going on to Western Australia. They include the famous Dirk Hartog and de Vlamingh plates.

On a sad final note, we mourn the passing of the recent president of the Australian Association for Maritime History, Dr Kenneth McPherson (1944–2010), who was overtaken by a sudden and untimely illness. He was a fine historian best known for his work founding and running the Indian Ocean Centre for Peace Studies based at Curtin University, and for his contributions to the maritime history of our region. 

above:

May Minister for the Arts the Hon Peter Garrett (at left) unveiled panels of new migrant names on The Welcome Wall. Guest speakers were

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