Mariners Are Warned!

Marsden Hordern

• Publisher: Melbourne University Press Digital
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780522850444
• eBook ISBN: 9780522863581
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Australian & Oceanian History
• Index: History

John Lort Stokes was commissioned by the British Hydrographic Office in 1837 to survey and chart unknown parts of the Australian coastline. He was the last Royal Navy surveyor to hold such a roving commission-as had Matthew Flinders and Phillip Parker King before him. The voyage lasted six years and his ship was H.M.S. Beagle, of Charles Darwin fame.

Stokes circumnavigated Australia twice. In the north he discovered the Fitzroy, Albert and Flinders rivers and Port Darwin, and in the south charted that graveyard of sailing ships, Bass Strait. A century later, twelve of his charts were still in use.

The occasional breathtaking foolhardiness of this earnest and conscientious man startles the reader, as it must have done his men. On a whim, Stokes twice risked drowning himself and others with him, and he made several daredevil escapes from crocodiles.

The stories are gripping, and Marsden Hordern is a gifted and vigorous storyteller. He is ably assisted by the ship's mate, Helpman-a chatty, witty chronicler. Mariners are Warned! is an engrossing biography, written with empathy by a fellow mariner.

Winner of the Age Book of the Year; Victorian Premier's Literary Award (A. A. Phillips Award for Australian Studies); Braille Book of the Year; Australian Maritime History Prize.

Companion volume to King of the Australian Coast, another prize-winning maritime biography by the same author.

Lieutenant Stokes,
Assistant Surveyor

1

Prelude to the Voyage

With THE SAFE RETURN of H.M.S. Beagle from South America at the end of 1836, Captain Francis Beaufort, Hydrographer of the Royal Navy, was well pleased. As he now had available a trusted and experienced team and a stout ship, he could pursue another project close to his heart and further a grand design—the completion of the work of Matthew Flinders and Phillip Parker King in filling up the empty spaces that still remained on the chart of Australia. And in such a project lay the essence of Beaufort’s talent—later extolled by the hydrographic historian, Commander L. S. Dawson:

Captain Beaufort had a remarkable power of discerning and appropriating ability to its right object whenever it came in his way; and at every turn of his life he was using this power on behalf of others . . . He knew that there was scarcely what could be termed a correct chart of any portion of the globe in existence when he accepted office. Seconded by an able staff of surveyors, proud to serve under one so competent to appreciate their labours, he soon gave them occupation . . . The master mind of Beaufort, which directed these efforts for a quarter of a century, did more for the advancement of maritime geography than was effected by all the surveyors of European countries united.1

Beaufort worked quickly, attending first to the ship’s company. Some changes would have to be made here. Her former captain, Robert FitzRoy, later to become governor of New Zealand, would be replaced by her previous first lieutenant, John Clements Wickham—newly promoted to commander. Beaufort was confident in this appointment; Wickham was an excellent seaman and ran a ‘tight ship’—a ‘great hand’, according to Philip Gidley King, midshipman on the previous voyage, ‘for holystoning decks, painting ship blacking . . . and making everything smart’.2 Phillip Parker King (midshipman King’s father) also endorsed the Hydrographer’s judgment: ‘I am delighted at Wickham’s promotion, there is not a more deserving person in the service, nor a better sailor, nor a more correct gentlemanly high minded man’.3 Wickham would also hold the position of surveyor, but Beaufort knew that the great zeal for hydrography lay with John Lort Stokes. Stokes and Wickham must therefore be kept together. With Wickham as captain and Stokes as assistant surveyor, the professional conduct of the work would leave nothing to be desired.

There were also other tried men available from the Beagle’s former crew. Alexander Burns Usborne, master’s assistant under FitzRoy, would be the ship’s new master—and several other former officers, the boatswain Thomas Sorrell, carpenter John Weeks, and some of the seamen and marines, were to rejoin their old ship. Benjamin Bynoe, the gregarious surgeon, who had sailed with Wickham and Stokes in the ship twice before and had learned much natural history from Darwin on the previous voyage, was also to act as naturalist on the coming expedition, and Lieutenants James Barker Emery and Henry Eden would fill the places of first and second lieutenants.

As for the ship herself, although she was now in need of a refit, Beaufort knew her to be well suited for the work. Despite—according to Stokes—belonging to ‘that much abused class, the “10-gun brigs”—coffins, as they are not unfrequently designated in the service’, she was an excellent sea boat.4 But as she had undergone many alterations, official plans of other ships of her class do not picture her accurately, and descriptions of her vary. It is known, however, that she was a small three-masted ship with a displacement of only 235 tons. Ninety feet long on deck, with a beam of twenty-four feet eight inches, she drew twelve feet for’ard and thirteen feet aft. In Australian waters she carried six boats: a yawl, a cutter, a gig, two whalers and a fourteen-foot dinghy. The eye of a man standing on her poop deck would have been about twenty feet above the sea.

In the second week of February 1837 the Beagle was recommissioned by Commander Wickham, and Lieutenant Stokes reported to his old friend and new captain on board at Woolwich Dock. They were to remain there from the middle of February until early June, for a seemingly endless list of tasks and problems confronted them.

To begin with, a crew had to be engaged—some of them new to the ship. As Wickham could not know how they would measure up until they were at sea, he was fortunate that from Woolwich the ship would sail to Plymouth for her final departure. The journey around the coast would give him a chance to assess his crew in action, and to make any necessary changes before leaving England. Of particular importance was finding a decent cook. Nineteenth-century expeditions did not cater for their members’ bodily comfort as they do today, and sea cooks were sometimes drawn from the ranks of pensioners—the halt and the lame and other old seamen no longer capable of going aloft. But Wick-ham, convinced that the cook’s quality would vitally affect the health and morale of his crew, was not prepared to accept one of these. He looked around for a more suitable candidate and, having found him, appealed to Beaufort for help:

Do you think there is any chance of my getting a cook’s warrant for a man who has been eleven years acting cook of the Mastiff. He is now serving in that ship as an A.B. in consequence of her not being now allowed a warranted cook—Mr Thomas says he will be most happy to discharge him if their Lordships will grant him a warrant, as he well deserves it, he is an old sailor and will suit us much better than an old pensioner who may be deficient of a leg or an arm, the man’s name is Mitchell.5

Beaufort, always anxious for his men’s welfare, gave the nod and Wickham got his cook. William Mitchell, a native of the West Indies, had been a fisherman in his youth, and had travelled far and survived much. On one occasion, trapped for days inside the hull of a capsized vessel, he had bored a hole through the hull and, by waving a handkerchief tied to a stick, had attracted a passing ship and been hauled to safety. But the ‘old sailor’s’ powers of survival were ebbing, and in joining the Beagle he was shipping on his last voyage.

Fitting out the Beagle was also full of problems. Apart from provisioning, storing and stowing, there were sails to be ordered, boats to be repaired and rigging to be checked. Much new equipment was needed—anchors, charts, chronometers, compasses, fishing lines, lead lines, books, stationery and surveying instruments of many kinds—and in his efforts to obtain these, Wickham was bedevilled by what he saw to be the pinch-penny attitude of the Admiralty.

This was particularly the case with the sails and boats. The Beagle carried two suits each of twenty different sails; these sails were the ship’s main engines, and each performed a different function in transferring the wind’s power to the ship. Some—like the topsails—had to stand unusually heavy wear, and consequently needed to be especially strong, and Wickham was shocked to learn that one of the suits he was to receive was a legacy from the Beagle’s former voyage—tired and worn from years of work in tempestuous seas. Worn sails could fail when they were most needed—clawing off a lee shore or riding out a gale in the Southern Ocean—and Wickham pointed out to Beaufort that these sails would be virtually useless by the time they reached New Holland. Old sails, he said, were out of the question, and he would not have them.

Then there were the boats, and Wickham was particularly concerned about one of his whalers which had been badly affected by dry rot during the previous voyage. This, he hastened to assure Beaufort, was not due to his negligence, and no blame for its state should be laid at his door: ‘We managed to keep our boats from being stove or otherwise injured, but we could not keep them from becoming dry rotten’. The carpenter had laboriously replaced the old scarf, but Wickham knew that new wine should not go into old bottles, or sound timber be used to patch decayed boats. In spite of his plea, however, it seems that he did not get a new whale boat; at the end of the voyage Stokes recorded with some satisfaction that the ship returned with its boats and spars almost unchanged from those they had been supplied within 1831.

While all this bustle surrounded the Beagle in Woolwich Dock, Beaufort was equally busy at the Admiralty. The Beagle was only one of his surveying ships, and his responsibilities spanned the world, but as the winter days lengthened into spring and the Beagle’s departure drew near his mind was much occupied with drawing up instructions for her work in Australia. In this he had consulted with Captain Phillip Parker King, the most experienced authority on Australian hydrography, who knew what still needed to be done to complete the work of Flinders and himself.

The instructions, delivered to Wickham on 8 June 1837, came in two parts. The first—from the Admiralty generally—began:

By the Commissioners for executing the office of Lord High Admiral of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland &c.

Whereas his Majesty’s surveying vessel, ‘Beagle’, under your command, has been fitted out for the purpose of exploring certain parts of the northwest coast of New Holland, and of surveying the best channels in the straits of Bass and Torres, you are hereby required and directed . . .6

The requirements and directions which followed were onerous and diverse. From the Thames, Wickham was to proceed to Plymouth to rate his chronometers.* He was also to embark a land exploring party under Lieutenant George Grey, of the 83rd Regiment. The 25-year-old Grey, supported by Lieutenant Lushington, of the 9th Foot, was to lead a land expedition for north-west Australia fostered by the Royal Geographical Society, and the Colonial Office had arranged for the party of thirteen men to sail in the Beagle. Wickham was then to proceed via Tenerife, Bahia and the Cape of Good Hope to Swan River, and from there to Roebuck Bay in north-west Australia, where the great tides and configuration of the coast had led to the supposition that Dampier Land was an island. There Wickham was to exercise a nice judgment: he was to probe inshore as far as the ship and her boats could float, but not ‘too precipitately’ to commit her ‘among these rapid tides, nor to entangle her among the numerous rocks with which all this part of the coast seems to abound’. Furthermore, as solution of the vital question of rivers leading to a supposed inland sea was a principal object of the voyage, no promising opening on the western coast of Australia was to be neglected.

Also important was the construction of accurate charts and tide registers of Bass Strait, where many ships were being wrecked, and of Torres and Endeavour straits. Torres Strait, too, was becoming a thoroughfare, and contained many unknown dangers. Wickham was cautioned to keep his boats always armed and to be on his guard against the natives there, and to practise towards them ‘dignified forbearance and benevolence which tend to impress far higher respect for our power than the exercise of mere force’. He was also required to visit and assist the proposed new settlement at Port Essington.

In addition to these many specific duties, should Wickham find himself at a loss for occupation, he was to employ his ‘spare time’ in ‘such discoveries as may more or less tend to the general object of the expedition’. After three years’ work on his ground, ‘unless some very important result were to promise’, he was to return to England. Their Lordships did not wish to employ unprofitable servants.

The second part of the instructions, couched in Beaufort’s elegant prose, was more specific. To begin with, Wickham was to investigate the ‘Eight Stones’—a group of rocks said to exist in the Atlantic between England and the Canary Islands, and indicated on the chart by a vigia.* Beaufort did not believe these rocks existed, and wished to expunge the vigia from the chart.

On reaching Swan River, Wickham was to consult with the Surveyor-General, Lieutenant John Septimus Roe—‘that intelligent officer’ who had sailed with Captain Phillip Parker King. And there were other friends who could be called on in times of need, Beaufort pointed out: Sir John Franklin in Van Diemen’s Land and, in New South Wales, King himself,

. . . whose long experience of all those coasts, as well as of the seasons, and of the manner of dealing with the inhabitants, will be of the utmost use to you; and whose zeal for the King’s service, and whose love of science, will lead him to do everything possible to promote your views.7

To facilitate contact with the native tribes, Beaufort suggested that Wickham should hire an interpreter ‘at a low rate’, but he was on no account to bring him home; Beaufort had had enough trouble with the natives FitzRoy brought back with him from South America. He urged Wickham to stimulate the efforts of his junior officers for the good of the Navy, and to bend his and their minds to many things, particularly the study of the activities of coral insects, weather, sea temperatures, rainfall, lunar and solar halos, natural history and the Aurora Australis.

The Hydrograph...

Table of contents

• Mariners are Warned!
• Lieutenant Stokes, Assistant Surveyor
• Commander Stokes, Captain of the Beagle