Under Full Sail by Rob Mundle

Author:Rob Mundle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2016-10-12T04:00:00+00:00

The seas were so powerful and the destruction of the ship so complete that there was no immediate way of discovering her identity. She might be any one of six or more vessels due to arrive in Sydney from England, or from another Australian port. Those sailing from England were always at the mercy of the winds – they could drift through the doldrums for up to two weeks – so there was no way of estimating with any accuracy when they might arrive at their destination. Such a ‘guesstimate’ could end up being out by a month or more.

Because of the extreme conditions, the search for clues was concentrated inside the harbour – particularly in Middle Harbour, where wind, wave and tidal action had caused the greatest number of bodies and the majority of the debris to accumulate. The first clue relating to the ship’s identity came with the recovery of a small piece of hull planking from a lifeboat: it had the word ‘London’ painted on it in white letters. An increasing number of small boats joined the search, which continued throughout the day.

By evening, Port Jackson’s superintendent of pilots, Mr Pockley, was in a position to make an official announcement: a mailbag had washed ashore in Middle Harbour carrying the inscription ‘No. 2, per Dunbar, Plymouth, May 29’, and a cask of tripe, also recovered, was marked ‘Ship’s stores – Dunbar’.

Never in its short history had the colony experienced such a tragedy on its own doorstep. It appeared at that stage, according to the Empire report, that all 122 ‘unhappy beings were swept into eternity with scarcely a moment’s warning’. With many of the sixty-three passengers being ‘old colonists, or relatives of persons residing in the colony’, hundreds of residents made the pilgrimage to South Head the following day to pay their respects and see the little that remained of the 202-foot timber ship.

But that afternoon, amid what was a sombre scene, there were shouts of excitement: one of the sightseers at the Gap thought he’d seen movement on a rock near the water’s edge more than 200 feet below. He concentrated on the spot for a short time, then bellowed for all to hear that he could see someone waving an object far below. However, that person, be they man or woman, was obviously in a location from which there was no immediate escape: the shoreline was too rugged and the cliff-face too sheer for whoever it was to reach safety.

Frantic action followed in a bid to organise a land-based rescue attempt. Before long, lengths of rope arrived at the clifftop, and soon a brave soul volunteered to be lowered to the spot where the survivor clung to the rock.

Amazingly, thirty hours after Dunbar was wrecked, a dazed, cold and hungry twenty year old able seaman, James Johnson, was hauled up the cliff to safety, along with his rescuer. Johnson would be recognised as the sole survivor of the Dunbar tragedy.

However, despite the incredible circumstances surrounding his survival and subsequent rescue, he could enjoy no rest.

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