Was there 300 tons of gold bullion aboard the Waratah.

Recently I received an email asking me if I knew of the rumors that the Waratah carried 300 tons of gold on her last voyage to London when she disappeared off the coast of South Africa in July 1909 which could have resulted in the hi-jacking of the ship. To answer the question I made exhaustive inquiries at the Bank of England into the records held there and also in Australia, but could find no record of any gold being shipped aboard the Waratah or of any specie of any kind, (gold, silver or coins). The Blue Anchor Line ships  over the years did carry small amounts in their strong rooms and this was usually published in the press, gold sovereigns minted here in Australia were often carried to South Africa for distribution in that country. Waratah on her last voyage did load in Sydney 300 tons of lead bullion which was placed in No 4 lower hold and in the hold just before the bridge. The bullion was automatically thought to be gold, the word bullion has obviously confused some people but base metals such as copper, nickel, zinc and lead were often referred to as bullion in the form of ingots. Looking at the prospect of carrying 300 tons of gold would in itself would produce logistical problems. The space that would be required to house such an amount, the weight and where it would be placed for stability reasons, the guarding of such gold and manpower required for the voyage. The specie or vault room on board the Waratah was certainly to small being about 110 cubic feet 2.75 tons, plus who would take the insurance risk on such an amount of gold which would have been worth 12 million 902 thousand 400 pounds in 1909. If there had have been that amount of gold on board the insurers would have certainly let it be known in the hope that a salvage company would step forward to recover it if possible, with a large share for themselves. If ever the Waratah was found and it proved to be in very deep water there would be no salvage value in trying to recover the lead and 75 tons of copper ingots on board, the cost of recovering these items would not be a viable proposition. 

 

                                         Lead bullion to be further refined to 99.7 pure lead. 

 

                                                  Gold bullion in the Bank of England vault.

The collision of the Pisagua and the Oceana

On the 12th of August 2015 Andrew Van Rensberg posted an interesting blog on the collision of the Pisagua and the Oceana, I should like to add further to the event.

The Pisagua was a German barque of 2,906 grt with a length of 370ft 9inches x beam 44ft 7inches x depth 26ft 1inch. she was driven by 38,000 square feet of sails and was under the command of captain R.Dahm. Built of steel in 1892 she was carrying 4,500 tons of nitrates from Mexillones (Chile) to Hamburg Germany.

The Oceana was owned by the P&O Company a passenger cargo ship 6,610 grt x beam 57.15 ft x depth 26ft 6inches with a steaming speed of 14.5 knots. She was under the command of captain Thomas Hide and was bound from London to Bombay India. Oceana had a crew of 221, and was carrying 15 first class passengers, 26 second class (21men, 18women and 2 children). On board was specie in the form of gold and silver ingots valued at the time to be worth 747,110 pounds. The Oceana left Tilbury for Bombay at  2.00pm on the 15th of March 1912. About 2.56am on the 16th of March, she passed the Royal Sovereign light ship at about 3 miles off. A course was then set, S83W true. The weather was described as fine and clear with a north fresh wind. Beachy Head was abeam at 3.28am. In accordance with the usual arrangement the pilot was to continue to act until the ship reached the Nab light vessel. From midnight to 4am Mr. Walter Naylor the chief officer had the watch, he also held a masters certificate. Shortly after passing the Royal Sovereign light ship the pilot left the bridge to sit down in the chart room, he notified the chief officer and said, "keep a sharp lookout and call me if you need me". The vessel at this time was steaming at 14.5 knots.

 

At about 3.55am the chief officer was examining some lights on the starboard bow when he heard the gong in the bows strike once, the signal from the lookout indicating that there was a ship on the port bow. Mr. Naylor looked at the ship through his glasses and made her out to be a sailing ship under plain sail almost on opposite course, showing her starboard side open. A blue flare was being burned on the sailing ship and by its light he could see she was running free with her sails on the port tack. He judged her distance to be 1.25 miles, and she bore two points on his starboard bow (22.5degrees). At first he did not see the green light but as the blue flare burned down he saw a dim green light. He gave the order "port five degrees" but did not signal with the ships steam whistle as to what he was doing. The pilot came out of the chartroom and said, "what are you porting to"? the chief officer replied "the ship burning the blue flare". The pilot quickly looked at the ship and gave the order, "hard a port". The order was repeated by the helmsman and the helm put hard over. It was of course to late and the Pisagua struck the Oceana at an angle estimated by the chief officer to be almost a right angle. The Pisagua struck the Oceana  about 18 feet before her foremast with her bowsprit coming over the Oceana. The Pisagua rebounded before coming near the bridge of the Oceana again striking just before the break of the bridge, and sweeping away all the lifeboats on the portside except the after boat No 10. Her plating was torn away for about thirty feet, the cabins in the vicinity of the blow were all wrecked. The second officer was sent to check the damage and observed from the main deck that the top of the waves were entering the hole in the hull. regular soundings were taken of number 1 hold until they reached 33 feet. When both vessels were free of each other the captain and the chief officer both thought the ship was rapidly sinking, with the passengers on the captains mind he ordered the remaining boats made ready. The chief officer misunderstood the captain and lowered the No1 lifeboat down to the spar deck where 16 passengers and 2 crewmen boarded it. On reaching the water the boat, almost at once took a sheer out from the ships side. The after rope fall was released but no painter had been passed forward to the ship,(rope attached to the lifeboat). The ship started moving forward, the life boat was still connected by the forward rope fall and could not be released and boat capsized by being dragged along and threw all 18 people into the sea drowning 17 souls. There was no lifeboat equipment in the boats and an axe usually kept in each boat had been taken out for fear of theft. if there had have been an axe in the boat the seamen could have cut the rope fall and may have saved the boat from being upset. Prior to sailing two Board of Trade surveyors on separate occasions visited the ship to test her boats in the water. Neither of these two surveyors inspected the lifeboats equipment which should have been in the boats by law. If they had have done there job properly the axe would have been in the boat concerned. 

 

The Oceana eventually sank due to the master insisting on the ship being towed when all advice to beach her while she still had flotation was ignored. The Pisagua was damaged to the effect that her bows had been crushed back 17 feet. It was only the strength of the No 1 hold bulkhead holding out saved her. She was towed back to Dover by two tugs. On arrival she was promptly arrested by having a writ attached to her mast to ensure payment for the salvage and towage by the tugs. Pisagua was named after the port of Pisagua in Chile where ships since 1860 came from all over the World to load nitrates. 

The cause of the collision was the fault of the chief officer in attempting to cross ahead of the Pisagua, (steam must give way to sail), he was also found responsible for the  deaths of the 17 people that drowned, his certificate was cancelled for six months with a strong censure. 

 

 

 

                                                  Pisagua showing her code letters R.J.P.T.

 

 

                                                          The badly damaged Pisagua.

 

 

  

Waratah gossip from Barclay & Curle shipyard.

Mr. William McPhee was a chief engineer at sea until he retired to America and began a career as an author writing books mainly about the sea and ships. He is a very well known author world wide and has many books to his name. In 1910 he was on a ship that tied up in the Queens dock Glasgow at the foot of Finniestoun Street in full view of the Barclay & Curle fitting out basin. At the time there was an ex Blue Anchor Line ship at the berth which was the Geelong being converted from carrying 450 steerage class passengers to a larger capacity of 700. At the time a young cousin of Mr. McPhee was an apprentice in the engine shops of Barclay & Curle, his cousin told him he had worked on the Waratahs engines and was on board for the sea trials. He said " everyone in the yard knew she was extremely tender and it took very little to make her list."

What we do know is that during the engines trials Mr. Hodder the chief engineer ordered a section of the main steam line be replaced as he was not happy with it.   

 

                                                     Chief engineer William McPhee.

 

 

                                                             Barclay& Curle fitting out berth.

Rocks and reefs everwhere but not on the charts.

Early charts of the South African east coast were devoid of much information regarding important dangers of rocks and reefs and other dangers to shipping. The coast in the early 1900s was poorly surveyed and a lot of the information presented on them came mainly from commercial shipping that forwarded information onwards to the Admiralty responsible for the publication of charts. It was not until 1924 when Lieutenant Commander A.F.B. Woodhouse a Royal Navy Hydrographer took command of the HMSAS Protea and undertook surveys of the coast from 1924 to 1927 that the charts began to be updated. Up to  this time many vessels had come to grief on uncharted obstructions taking a heavy  toll on ship losses along with many lives.  One such victim of the poorly surveyed charts was captain Edward Lawson of the s.s. Palatina 2,332ton ship belonging to the Manchester and Salford Shipping Company. On the 7th of March 1911 he was coasting north close inshore taking an advantage of the weak north bound current that varied from one knot to one and a half knots with a south east wind. After obtaining a good fix of his position from the Great Fish River Lighthouse at 11am he meandered along the coast until about noon, uncertain of his position he altered course slightly out until he struck an obstruction at 12.50pm damaging his hull which started to take water. Captain Lawson managed to make it as far as East London but due to his draught being to deep to enter the harbour with the water he had taken in he managed to beach the ship near the entrance. At the subsequent inquiry he told the court that he had struck what he thought was a submerged hulk. The court dismissed this saying that he was sailing to close to the shore in an unsafe manner. Consequently he had his masters certificate suspended for three months but was issued with a first mates certificate. By  claiming he hit a submerged hull of a ship he was hoping to be exonerated as he could not be held liable. If the reef he struck was not on the chart he could claim that he struck an uncharted rock and hold the publishers of the chart liable for a defective chart. This would not work because his claim would be dismissed on the grounds that the publishers of the chart could not be held liable for hazards un-known at the time of the publication of the chart. It would appear that the obstruction was on the chart and by coincidence a ship the s.s. Cariboo of the Ellerman Line struck a reef in the same area and foundered this was near Keiskamma  south of East London. In 1992, 182 tonnes of copper ingots were salavaged from the Cariboo, on November 6th 2014 an application was made for a permit  with SAHRA (heritage authority) to salvage further copper ingots from the Cariboo. It would appear that both these ship had been set in towards the reef.

                                                                     s.s. Cariboo.

Another ship that fell foul of the onshore set of the current was the German ship s.s. Itzehoe 4,467 tons. On the 24th May 1911 when near Cape Recife she ran aground on to  Thunderbolt reef which was clearly marked on the chart. Thunderbolt reef is a patch of rocks with depths of less than  6 feet and lies 8cables (0.8 mile) SSW of the Recife Lighthouse. The sea generally breaks on this reef, which also extends up to 6cables (0.6mile) south east of Cape Recife. Vessels are warned not to attempt to approach Cape Recife or Thunderbolt reef within a distance of two miles because of a strong set towards them. The cargo was salvaged from the Itzehoe and one of the vessels assisting was the former dredger from East London the Kate which had been converted to a coastal steamer. Coasting is a very intense form of navigation particularly close inshore with the sets towards the shore. I have coasted many times up the east coast  as far as  the northern tip of Mozambique and you have to be constantly on the alert taking every opportunity to fix your position and depth but at night I would steer well off shore and even then keep a constant check on soundings to make sure the vessel was not being set in.

   East London dredger Kate later converted to a coastal steamer, that helped take cargo from the Itzehoe.

                  s.s Itzehoe hard and fast, note the Cape Recife Lighthouse on the left of picture.

                                                                            s.s. Itzehoe.

     s.s. Kiel sister ship gives a clearer look, Kiel was captured by the Americans during the first world
 War.

      

Did lead concentrates help capsize the Waratah?

In modern shipping today many casualties have resulted in the loss of ships due to capsize caused by  bulk cargoes of lead concentrates. The Waratah was said to have loaded 1,000 tons of concentrates but in actual fact she loaded 1,500 tons. On her second voyage to Australia she off loaded cargo at Adelaide then took in 1,000 tons of concentrates which she carried to Sydney and back to Adelaide for stability reasons. At Adelaide she took in 500 tons more for the voyage back to England but there is no record of it on the manifest. The Board of Trade must have known something of it because the Solicitor for the Board of Trade Mr. Robert Ellis Cuncliffe who was gathering all the evidence for the inquiry wrote to the Adelaide agents asking if a further 500 tons had been shipped. That was  the only mention of it ever heard, there is no proof that the agents answered his request which strongly smells like conspiracy, it would appear that the 500 tons did not exist. However I am in possession of documents that prove beyond doubt the concentrates were loaded into number two lower hold.

 

                                        Mr Robert Ellis Cuncliffe Board of Trade Solicitor.

 

The cargo of  lead concentrates may look dry when being loaded but it contains moisture in between the particles and if the moisture content is to high it can be dangerous. Once the ship is underway agitation takes place due to engine vibration, the ships motions rolling and pitching along with wave impact against the ships hull. The result is the compacting of the lead particles, this in turn leads to a closing up of the space between the particles. The moisture or water content rises sharply and presses the particles apart, this then produces the cargo to move from a solid state to a liquid one and forms a fluid on the surface of the cargo. Once it has reached this stage the cargo will flow to one side of the ship on a roll one way but may not return fully with a roll the other way. This could well lead to a dangerous list and possibly a sudden capsizing of the ship. The possibility of the cargo becoming liquefied is more so when the ship runs in heavy weather and high sea at full speed. Whether or not much attention was paid in 1909 to the nature of lead concentrates is not known. Today a certificate must be produced by the shipper to the master of the ship to satisfy him the cargo is of a low moisture content. There is today a danger that this type of cargo loaded in third world countries that the certificates may look genuine but may not be authenticated (falsified) which to the unsuspecting master could well cost him his ship.

 

                  Dry concentrates                                                                    Liquefied  concentrates.

 

             Partially capsized  M.V. Hope July 2013 south of Phuket, four seamen lost their lives. 

The poor condition of the Waratahs lifeboats.

On the final day of the Court of Marine Inquiry Mr. Dickinson said in his summing up the following," the Court does not accept as authentic the loose accounts of the colonial deponents of the boats rotten and useless state, but it does appear that they were not all in a satisfactory seaworthy condition on the first voyage, for in an account rendered by Messrs, Lund  to Messrs, Barclay Curle on May 5th 1909, appears an item "Labour to make boats good and watertight on the saloon deck (caused by unseasoned wood shrinking at the butts and seams. The Emigration officer, captain Clarke reports unfavourably on these boats."

Captain  Clarke was the man responsible for inspecting the Waratah prior to her first voyage and issued a certificate to state that the ship was a suitable emigrant ship. When it came to the lifeboats  he had two boats put down into the water and rowed around by seaman. These two boats had been selected by captain Bidwell marine superintendent for Lund's. It was apparent that this was enough to satisfy captain Clarke and presumably he didn't bother to check the rest being as they were new boats.  It was only after the first trip that Clarke was made aware of their condition, At the inquiry Clarke was absolved of his neglect to inspect all the boats and the blame was shifted to Bidwell.

 

  The above picture is an example of a lifeboat dried out and the cracks in the seams can be seen, this a clinker built boat, planks or strakes overlapping similar to a weatherboard house, this type of planking on a wide beam boat had a dampening effect on rolling. On the stem can be seen carved are the boats dimensions along with number of persons capacity.

To make the planks and frames swell up and make the boat watertight some officers filled the boats up with salt water but this usually  resulted in the weight of the water snapping the ribs and planks or strakes. Mr. Owen the chief officer took the lazy way out by having the boats covered in thick white paint in the hope this would prevent the timbers from shrinking in the tropics. One easy solution would have been when washing down the decks, to give the timbers a good soaking each day both inside and out, the water inside would have easily drained off through the two drain plugs at either end of the boat. Another solution was to take the opportunity at each port to put boats down in the water allowing them to swell up until the ship was ready to leave. Boat drills on board the Waratah were practically useless and amounted to nothing more than a muster of hands to each boat and have their names crossed off. Covers on the boats where never taken off and the crew were never instructed on parts of the boat or practice at swinging them out. 

A proper lifeboat drill being carried out on a White Star ship, note the man in a white top this obviously a steward that turned out for the Drill.

Life saving equipment was not taken seriously by all accounts and the three life rafts on board were lashed down next to the funnel to make way on the boat deck for strolling passengers. This resulted

in the timbers warping severely due to the heat from the funnel.

                                                                       Life raft.

                                          Mass production of lifeboats for the Titanic.

I can understand the comment from the Solicitors office of the Board of Trade  when it said that the Waratah was badly managed by the Lund company.

 

Wilhelm Lunds first ship.

Wilhelm Lund founder of the Blue Anchor Line launched his first ship the clipper ship Ambassador in 1869, he had owned 30 ships in total, 8 sailing ships, 20 cargo steamships and 2 small coastal steamers. The Blue Anchor Line ceased to exist after 1910 when all his remaining ships were sold to the P&O company after the tragic loss of  his new ship s.s. Waratah which disappeared off the South East Coast of South Africa in 1909 with the loss of 211 lives. The company was wound up in 1912 by his eldest son Sydney who was a Stockbroker in Thread Needle street London. Sydney Lund was paid 200 pounds by the company for his  services in this regard. All the ships are long gone and the company which was one of the most prolific in its time is now a faded memory. However their is still a reminder of this grand company in the skeletal remains of the Ambassador which lays on the beach at Estancia San Gregorio X11 in Chile, in 1973 the Chilean Government declared the Ambassador a national monument.
The Ambassador was 714 grt (692nt)  176ftlong x31.3ft beam x 19ft. she was a wooden clipper built on an iron frame known as a composite ship. She was built by John and William Walker at Rotherhithe near London. She took part in the great tea race for clippers in 1870 from Foochow in China and made London in 115 days, five days behind the famous Clipper Cutty Sark which was launched in the same year as the Ambassador.

                                                         Ambassador in her full glory.

                                  Ambassador today at Estancia San Gregorio X11 Chile.

                                                      A sad end to a great ship.

Drifting derelicts.

For centuries derelict vessels and hulks have roamed the oceans posing a threat to other ships even today the same danger exists more so with containers that float on the surface and just below it. Ships on the South African Coast report having struck submerged objects not long after the Blue Anchor Line ship Waratah disappeared. At that period in time 1909, the consequences a steamship colliding with a dis-masted hulk either on the surface or slightly below it could have a devastating effect on a ship that had the misfortune to strike one. A steamship proceeding at full speed hitting one of these many hulks would certainly have her watertight integrity breached and possibly sink. Lookouts may spot one on the  surface  during daylight hours and even a lookout aloft would have difficulty sighting one below the  surface, and of course none would be seen at night time. Sailing ships seemed to be the main culprits for example, in June 1881 the Oriflamme  caught fire and was abandoned in the Pacific at latitude 18 degrees 12 minutes south longitude 92 degrees 42 minutes west, in February 1882 the hull had drifted ashore on Raroja Island in French Polynesia after having drifted 2,840 mile in eight months.

The full rigged ship Foundling of  Liverpool 1,186 tons net with an iron hull left Liverpool with a cargo of railway materials and fire bricks topped off  with 1,081 tons of Welsh coal for Bombay. The coal caught fire and could not be controlled and  on November 22nd 1874, captain Nicholas W. Rutter and his crew abandoned the ship and made it safely to Pernambuco on the coast of Brazil. The hull did not sink and it drifted for over eight months in the Southern Atlantic. In the first week of October 1895, the port captain of the harbour Paranagua Brazil was surprised to find the hulk in his harbour after negotiating the dangerous bar. The hull was still intact with the railway iron and fire bricks. 

 

                                                         The remains of the Foundling

 

In May 1911 the German Australian Line ship Hanua struck what was believed to be a submerged wreck when 80 miles from Capetown and 10 miles offshore on the south east coast of South Africa. Whatever she struck tore a hole along the bottom of her hull 12 feet long, lucky for the captain it tore the plates below the double bottom hull were a ballast tank was situated and no damage to the cargo took place or any fear of her sinking. The Hanua made full speed for Capetown to be docked and repairs effected, authorities did not believe it could be a rock in that part of the main shipping lane. It was most probably a submersed hulk that had found its way in to the Agulhas current further up north.

 

                                                                         s.s. Hanua 1.

 

A more modern day derelict is the ex Russian ship M.V. Lyubov Orlova which drifted for almost a year in the North Atlantic before finally sinking. The ship was being towed from St Johns Newfoundland to the breakers yard when she broke loose in a storm one day after the tow commenced and could not be retrieved. Could you imagine the damage that would be done to a fast cargo ship or a passenger cruise ship if she was not spotted on radar during the night.

 

 

                                                                   M.V. Lyubov Orlova.