Family History WA

from The Irish Scene July/August 2021 Edition

Paula From Tasmania

Last Voyage of SS Dacca

BY CHRISTINE TIMONEY

15 May 1890 - The sea was smooth as glass and a light breeze blew as SS Dacca, under Captain Dugald Stuart, cleared Suez in fine weather just after midnight and set course for five miles west of Brothers Island. She was sixteen days into an expected seventy-five day voyage, her eleventh from London to Queensland Ports, having already dropped passengers at Naples and taken on coal at Port Said. Around 8am some of her 464 passengers slept while others watched with mild curiosity as the ship passed the Big Brothers Island light. There would be plenty more daylight in which to take stock of the wide expanse of the Red Sea opening gradually before them, perhaps a gentle reminder of the even wider expanses yet to come when they would reach the open ocean. As the day wore on, the monotony was eased by sightings of majestic stingrays, pods of dolphins and even the occasional pair of turtles still courting, though the spring mating season was nearly over. With no land in view all day the passengers settled into their largely uneventful daily rhythm, contemplating the unknown life that lay ahead when this seemingly endless journey would finally be over. At 6.30 next morning, barely an hour after daybreak, the calm was shattered when the ship struck a glancing blow on Daedalus Shoal, a small rocky outcrop that rises in deep water to lie in wait just below the surface. Upon inspection she was found to have six feet of water in the forward hold. Evacuation was now the only option. Evacuation? Out here? Evacuation – to where? Lifeboats were lowered and the doctor threatened to put a bullet through the first man who got into a boat before more than 250 women and children were safely taken care of. In a letter home, written within a day after the shipwreck, a female survivor describes how events unfolded. “We were going along beautifully, without a hitch, until yesterday morning, when I was startled as I lay in my berth by the doctor who came and told me we had struck on the shoal, and all hands were to get on deck and make for the boats. How they were all got out of the ship, clothed and with their lifebelts on, seems amazing to me now… I was in my night-dress, dressing gown and slippers. The doctor came running along and put a lifebelt over me, and again as he passed he put a hat on my head; otherwise I should have gone over worse clad than I was.” Among those lining up for the lifeboats were nearly two hundred single female emigrants, sixty-three of them Irish girls. The promise of a new life as a domestic servant in the colonies now counted for nothing as each one scanned the empty blue watery horizons with wide eyes and understood just how fragile her life had suddenly become. Have you ever flown between Ireland and Australia in the cramped confines of a modern aircraft? Have you ever wondered what the long sea voyages undertaken by nineteenth century Irish emigrants were really like? Christine Timoney, a committee member of the Irish Special Interest Group at Family History WA, first took a personal interest in the 1890 voyage of SS Dacca after reading a 1938 obituary for her grandmother Honorah McMahon, which placed 19-year-old Tipperaryborn Honorah on this ill-fated voyage. On further investigation she found Honorah’s name on the outgoing passenger list not of Dacca but of Dorunda, which left London a few weeks after the shipwreck and picked up a group of Dacca survivors in the Red Sea, conveying them on to Queensland. Though surviving the sinking of Dacca is not Honorah’s story after all, it is the story of 158 other Irish emigrants – most of them domestic servants, labourers and farm labourers – and deserves to be told.

Survival was all that mattered now, and it was not promised in this dangerous and unpredictable sea. As evacuation began, the leakage in the forward hold was briefly slowed but the relief was short-lived when water was found to be pouring into the aft holds. This called for drastic action, so the ship was driven forward at full power in an attempt to beach her on the steep-sided reef. When instead she bounced off the reef with great force, a watery grave must now have seemed a very real prospect. At 7.15am hope appeared in the form of the SS Rosario, whose lifeboats were also lowered, and what was later described in the official record as a calm and orderly operation succeeded in disembarking all 555 persons to lifeboats. In her letter home the unnamed survivor describes being rowed in the lifeboats to the reef where the passengers waded the shallow water to the lighthouse, across coral and soft, slippery mud. “Most of us bear the marks of the journey on our feet.” She is full of praise for the ship’s doctor who tended to the sick and injured in the upstairs room of the lighthouse. Around 11am, the entire cast of this grim tale could only watch in horror as Dacca, having drifted for a mile or two, turned her bow almost vertically to the ocean bed so that her stern rose 30 to 40 feet in the air and abruptly sank in about 200 fathoms. According to eyewitness accounts the last boat, with Captain Stuart on board, had drawn away barely two minutes earlier. Hundreds of passengers were transferred, either to Rosario or to the much larger Russian ship Palamcotta which arrived while the drama unfolded. While the rescue was completed without loss of life, word of the shipwreck would have caused much distress to worried families at both ends of the route. The unidentified passenger’s letter quoted above and published in the newspapers of the time, begins: “I know the consternation you will be in when you read of the total wreck of the Dacca in Monday morning’s paper.” Having painted her vivid picture of the shipwreck and marvelled that not a life was lost, she begins to come to terms with having lost all of her possessions, with one notable exception: “Thanks to one of the officers I got the silver wedding present I am bringing out. I told him where to get it. My own possessions I was not able to think of. When we were once more settled down and I thought of them, my little grandson’s books were the first regret and afterwards I remembered my copy of ‘Knight’s Illustrated Shakespere’ I was taking out with me, and so on from article to article. Then it was

Left: The SS Dacca

Source: Red Sea Wreck Project www.redseawreckproject.com Below: A newspaper item from the Sydney Morning Herald Wednesday 2 July 1890 reporting the event

Source: Trove, National Library of Australia.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 81

that my destitution dawned on me.” While listing for her family the replacement linen she will now require, she sympathises with “the poor” who would be rendered destitute by this disaster, and wonders “whether a subscription could be got up for them in London.” Further on she asks, “Can you picture my costume? A pyjama from Mr M’Clain, the first officer on this ship, a black skirt which was rescued, and a pair of canvas shoes from Mr James, the second officer.” Signing off the letter, she concludes, “Words cannot tell you how I feel, and I do not think the horror of it all will ever leave my mind. Love to you all.” It would be another two and a half months before the frightened survivors, no doubt haunted by still vivid memories, finally reached Queensland on board Taroba or Dorunda, most of them never to face the perils of the sea again. FOR MORE INFORMATION and an image of SS Dacca, visit Red Sea Wreck Project, www.redseawreckproject.com/2013/08/21/dacca

OTHER SOURCES:

UK Outward Passenger Lists, 1890-1960, accessed via Ancestry. Ned Middleton, The SS Dacca www.touregypt.net/vdc/dacca The Wreck of the Dacca: A Lady Passenger’s Story, www.wrecksite.eu The Wreck of the Dacca, in The Queenslander, 26 July 1890, p181. Wreck of the Dacca: Account of eyewitnesses, Brisbane Courier, 25 June 1890, p3.

THE IRISH SIG IN 2021

In 2021 the Irish Special Interest Group (Irish SIG) at Family History WA (FHWA) continues to meet online via Google Meet until the Covid-19 restrictions permit more people in our meeting room - currently the limit is 31. Next online meeting will be on 18 July, when we will explore how to get the most out of John Grenham’s website in our Irish family history search, and we hope to meet face to face on 17 October to celebrate forty years of the Irish SIG. In future meetings we plan to provide a forum for informal exchanges of members’ Irish research successes and challenges, while continuing to keep members informed and updated about useful resources for finding Irish ancestors. New members and visitors are always welcome to our meetings - simply book your place using the online booking site TryBooking, details below. At this stage you can book for the July meeting. Immediately after each quarterly meeting, bookings for the next meeting will open. Those who have booked will be sent a link to the Google Meet shortly before the 2pm meeting. FHWA also hosts lots of other exciting online events - some for beginners, and others for experienced researchers, so check out the full suite of presentations, workshops and meetings. Nonmembers and new members are welcome to join in from home. See the link below to FHWA homepage 82 | THE IRISH SCENE and choose the ‘Events’ tab. A small payment may be required for some events. We invite you to visit FHWA’s extensive library and resource centre at 6/48 May Street Bayswater, but it is wise to phone ahead to check on the building’s current capacity restrictions which may vary with the ebb and flow of the pandemic. Opening hours are given on the FHWA homepage.

CHRISTINE TIMONEY

ON BEHALF OF THE IRISH SPECIAL INTEREST GROUP

MORE INFO

ROBYN O’BRIEN, Convenor Irish Special Interest Group E irish.sig@fhwa.org.au Book a place at the next IRISH GROUP MEETING at TryBooking: .trybooking.com/BLPZM Book for FUTURE FHWA EVENTS at trybooking.com/eventlist/genealogy?embed=1 Go digging for resources at FamilyHistoryWA’s

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