The Van Diemen History Prize 2021

Each year we publish the winner of Forty South’s Van Diemen History Prize, a competition that celebrates both good writing and meticulous research, and the long and fascinating Tasmanian past that so abundantly feeds both disciplines. The 2020 prize was, for the first time, shared, with submissions by Tony Fenton and Terry Mulhern being declared joint winners.  Terry Mulhern’s “Insubordination and improper intimacy” appeared in the June, 2021, issue of Forty South Tasmania print magazine,. 

Two fishing boats ply the south coast of Tasmania, as they have done countless times before – but this time is different. In February 1933, strong gales buffet the island, catching the crews of Corona and Doris Jane away from port. The fishermen dash for New Harbour, a small bay open to the south with a few rocks at the entrance affording scant protection. They are tossed about for an entire fortnight in this anchorage, knowing all this time that a slight change in the wind means shipwreck.

Friends and family of the crew had no way of knowing if their loved ones were safe – marine radio was a new technology out of reach for owners of such small vessels. Communications with Maatsuyker Island lighthouse revealed that the boats had been spotted on February 24 in Cox Bight. The lightkeeper thought they would probably have sheltered in nearby New Harbour, but couldn’t be certain. The news did little to allay people’s fears.

Lobbying from Southport residents prompted the government to arrange a search. Sergeant Tom Challenger of the Water Police was to venture forth in the Sea Fisheries Board’s patrol boat Allara. Conditions were so poor that even the passage from Hobart to Recherche Bay was uncomfortably rough. Simultaneously, arrangements were made for a seaplane from HMAS Albatross (then at anchor in North West Bay) to make a reconnaissance. Albatross steamed to Southport and launched a seaplane at first light on March 2. The crew sighted two boats at anchor in New Harbour, and men waved to the plane from the beach. The aviators had intended to drop message bags, but conditions proved too rough. Seeing that the fishermen were safe, Allara was recalled and the search called off.

Although exposed to the wrath of the elements from the south, New Harbour is the only shelter between Recherche Bay in the east and Port Davey in the west. For fishermen working the south-western coast in boats so much smaller and lower powered than they are today, Recherche was too far if the weather changed suddenly. To reach Port Davey, on the other hand, meant rounding the notorious South West Cape while beating into the prevailing north-westerly winds. This is the story of a struggle to ameliorate the dangers faced by the coastal fishing fleet.

The 1933 incident precipitated calls for moorings to be laid in New Harbour to give vessels a better chance of riding out storms. The Sea Fisheries Board concurred with the fishermen, while the Hobart Marine Board wanted nothing to do with it, a position for which it was roundly criticised. The marine board objected that if it were to place a mooring in New Harbour, fishermen in other localities would be justified in asking for moorings too. The board was, however, willing to donate a spare buoy for the scheme on the condition that they “accept no responsibility in any direction whatever”.

Arthur Stubbings, a tin miner who relied on south-coast fishermen for transport of supplies to and ore from his mine, declared that the marine board wardens had no idea what they were talking about and should swap places with the fishermen.

Thanks in part to the efforts of John Dwyer, MHA, a mooring was put down a year later, and the matter was seemingly laid to rest. However, in 1935 another incident brought the issue to the fore again. The McKay brothers, of the fishing boat Ronena, had seen another boat, Galena, fishing off New Harbour and expected her to return. She was worked single-handedly by 65-year-old Alex Hutchings, who had been badly injured in a logging accident a year before. The McKays became increasingly worried when Galena did not show up, and at length went out in search. Travelling east, they found nothing until reaching Louisa Island, where they came across some spars, a portion of a deck and part of a dinghy, forlornly floating in the sea. They continued the search but found nothing further, and no trace of Hutchings.

Ronena then went to Port Davey where the McKays continued their fishing. There they came across the yacht Conella, told her crew the news and, since they were about to return to Hobart, asked them to report the tragedy to the police. This they did, and the newspapers covered the story. As the days went past, the public learnt more details that made Hutchings’ survival seem increasingly unlikely. The boat’s engine had “gone bung”, said one fisherman, and Hutchings had had only four days’ food left. Challenger knew that the missing man had poor eyesight, and Galena was not in a condition to withstand the heavy weather that had buffeted the coast.

Three days after news of the wreck had reached Hobart, the public was relieved to learn that Hutchings was safe. He had been fishing near Louisa Island when his boat struck a rock during a fog. Fortunately he was able to wade ashore. Apparently unscathed, he made his way to where another boat was lying, and worked aboard that vessel until the skipper was ready to return to town.

Although this drama occurred some 20 kilometres east of New Harbour, it galvanised the lobbying for shelter for fishermen. A year later, three half-ton concrete blocks were laid down as moorings in New Harbour. Now fishermen could pick up the attached buoy and rope, and ride out bad weather much more safely than they could with their own anchors.

So it was hoped. But in a storm four years later the moorings were found inadequate. A “terrific storm” hit the coast one winter, catching out three fishing boats, including Lurline and Seafarer. Even with the boats’ anchors down, the mooring weights dragged along the sea bed and Lurline passed the other vessel. L Mazey, on Lurline, ran his engine at full power. Even so, the vessel dragged, narrowly missing a rocky point and shipwreck. He let out another anchor, but now Seafarer bore down on Lurline and collided. She became entangled in Lurline’s lines. For half an hour her stern thrashed Lurline’s bow. In this melee, Seafarer’s rudder and mizzen rigging were damaged, while Lurline’s bow was smashed in.

After much effort, Seafarer’s crew managed to get a line ashore and pull clear of Lurline. Mazey and his mate Garrett feared their vessel would go to the bottom. They set out for shore in a dinghy. Huge surf dashed the dinghy onto the rocks, capsizing and damaging it. The men managed to haul it to safety. There they remained ashore until, during the night, the storm abated. The battered vessels limped back to civilisation shortly afterwards.

The moorings had proven inadequate and Challenger criticised their position, saying that the windward vessel could foul the others if it dragged, as had been demonstrated by Lurline and Seafarer. Several people suggested that ships’ anchors or mushroom-shaped anchors constructed from condemned boiler ends would hold much better in the sandy bottom of New Harbour. At length the Sea Fisheries Board decided to lay ships’ anchors, and by July 1939 three anchors weighing one or two tons each were in position.

The moorings were now safe, but big swells from the south could still toss sheltering boats like bath toys. The Sea Fisheries Board had earlier proposed constructing breakwaters at New Harbour and at Boat Harbour on the east coast using Commonwealth funding then available for unemployment relief projects aimed at developing fisheries. Alas, a reduction in the Commonwealth loan quota meant that funding was not forthcoming. The board remained interested in the idea of a breakwater to protect the tenuous anchorage, but for now it had to confine itself to providing moorings.

The Hobart Marine Board’s concern that placing moorings at New Harbour would lead to a flood of requests for similar works elsewhere proved well founded. Fishermen began to call for moorings, breakwaters and lighthouses all around the state. But the Department of Agriculture (which had absorbed the Sea Fisheries Board) was more receptive to fishermen’s suggestions. It saw such developments as a means of opening up more remote fishing grounds and taking pressure off those closer to populated areas, which even then were becoming depleted.

A fourth mooring was laid in 1941, and maintenance was delegated to south-coast fishing identity Syd Dale. He periodically checked and repaired the moorings as needed throughout the 1940s free of charge. All that the Sea Fisheries Board (and later the Department of Agriculture) had to provide was materials. Typically, a maintenance inventory would consist of so many fathoms of chain and manila rope, so many glass buoys, and perhaps antifouling paint. It was not just nature that took a toll on the moorings: suspicions arose that the buoys and even ropes were pilfered, either exchanged with inferior ones, or the chains simply allowed to sink.

This state of affairs remained throughout the war years. Then in 1950 Dale was unable to locate the moorings after the buoys had once again disappeared. This was to have near-fatal consequences a year-and-a-half later.

Dale’s son Colin, on Denalis, and stepson Clyde Clayton, on Arlie D, anchored in New Harbour that fateful October. The sea was as “calm as grease” – too calm, felt Clyde’s wife and deckhand Win. Colin and Clyde took advantage of the calm conditions to go ashore and gather firewood. In the small hours of the morning a change in the boat’s movement woke Win. An hour later the storm hit, a south-easter with waves breaking across the mouth of the bay. As the day wore on, the gale increased its fury, huge breakers sending spray hurtling over the 16-metre high inner rocks.

The undertow current forced the boats’ vulnerable sterns toward the oncoming waves, which threatened to crash over them. The skippers had to use their engines to prevent the anchor chains suddenly snatching and possibly breaking, requiring them to constantly adjust throttle and helm. With breakers alarmingly close behind, Arlie D had to move further out. In this perilous situation Clyde was unable to leave the helm to help Win raise the anchor. So Colin transferred his deckhand brother Trevor Dale to the dinghy and let him back astern on a long line. Win and Trevor battled with the anchor as Clyde struggled to keep Arlie D pointing into the wind.

Thanks to the more powerful and reliable post-war engines, Arlie D could move away from the snarling rocks. But soon she dragged back toward Denalis. There was nothing to do but keep the boats apart using their engines. In this position they kept vigil for 12 long hours. Although tossed by giant swells, they were in the only part of the bay that wasn’t breaking.

By late afternoon the sea began to break over the boats. It was time to abandon ship. Colin and Clyde expertly brought their dinghies ashore through ferocious surf and somehow landed them safely on the rocks. Once ashore they overturned the dinghies and lashed them down securely. After this ordeal they clambered to a small sea cave to spend a miserable night, though a fire and a cup of tea provided some small comfort. At the peak of the storm the sea threatened to flood the cave, adding to the castaways’ alarm.

The four crew fully expected next morning to find their boats reduced to matchsticks. So they were amazed and relieved when, peering out at daylight, they saw two “sturdy ships rocking bravely on their anchors”. In the calm after the storm, they retrieved a drum of diesel which had broken free from its lashings on the deck of Denalis and washed ashore. Then it was back aboard their vessels to make things ship-shape.

. . .

Tin miner Deny King, concerned that fishing boats may have come to grief in the storm, made the four-hour trek to New Harbour from Melaleuca, and was perturbed to find that his sister Win had had such a close call.

This narrow scrape prompted the fisheries division of the Department of Agriculture to once more have the moorings renewed. Two years later it went further, at last acting on long-called-for breakwaters at anchorages frequented by fishermen. The simplest solution was to sink a large ship in shallow water to seaward of the moorings, and this method was used at New Harbour and at Walkers Corner in Fortescue Bay.

For the New Harbour breakwater, the Minister for Agriculture approached the Union Steamship Company of New Zealand (USSNZ) offering to buy their coal hulk Jessie Craig for a nominal sum. Jessie Craig was a 55-metre iron barque built in Scotland as Isola in 1876. Trading first out of Denmark, after 20 years she was bought by the Auckland-based Craig Line for use on the Australia-New Zealand service which she plied until being reduced to a floating coal store at Hobart in 1914.

The USSNZ company let the department have the hulk free of charge after stripping her of valuable machinery. The fisheries division then contracted George Cheverton to fill the vessel with more than 100 tons of gravel and sand for ballast. After clearing the way with various other government departments (even the marine board did not object, provided holes were made in her to ensure she would not float away), all was ready.

On May 5, 1953, the once-proud barque was towed out of Hobart by the tugboat Boyer, and proceeded on her final voyage in company with the fisheries trawler Liawenee (whose master was none other than Syd Dale). All went smoothly at first. Then, while manoeuvring Jessie Craig into position, the towing lines snapped under the enormous strain, increased by the surging waters. At last in position, holes were blasted in the hulk, which settled firmly on the sandy bottom.

John Dwyer, now the Minister for Fisheries, who had been aboard Liawenee “supervising” the operation, confidently predicted that the breakwater would shelter fishermen for the next 20 or 30 years. Yet a fisherman reported that within a week a moderate gale blew up and the seaward side of the hulk stove in. He maintained that few fishermen had been consulted about the breakwater, and as a result it had been placed in the wrong position. Other rumours circulated that the team had been over-generous with the gelignite. Either way, the breakwater soon broke up.

In addition to the breakwater, another mooring was laid using one of Jessie Craig’s anchors. The cycle of renewing sunken moorings continued throughout the 1950s, but by the end of the decade the fisheries division had had enough, and there is no evidence that the moorings were renewed after that date.

Four years later Des Whayman called for improvements to New Harbour after he rescued crew from the doomed fishing boat Leanne in mountainous seas among the Maatsuyker Islands. He contended that by excavating material from a nearby hill, a suitable breakwater could be constructed. Although Rupert Brown MLC supported Whayman’s views, nothing further was done.

With the availability of marine radio, reliable engines and better forecasting, the need for moorings in remote places has slowly diminished, and today the struggle to provide safe harbours for fishermen has become just another turbulent backwater of Tasmanian history.

Tony Fenton majored in Physics and Computer Science at the University of Tasmania and completed a Graduate Diploma in Information Management. Following a period of work for the State Library of Tasmania, he has devoted most of his time to historical research and writing. His long-standing interest in South West Tasmania—brought about by his grandfather, the legendary tin-miner and naturalist Deny King—led to an exhaustive study of the history of Port Davey. Tony’s first book, A history of Port Davey, Southwest Tasmania, Volume 1: Fleeting Hopes was published by Forty South in 2017.