In her July 2024 talk to the PPPG, Elaine Race discussed he importance of Bass Strait to shipping, starting with those early explorers and cartographers who mapped that portion of the Australian coast at great risk to themselves and crew. The fragility of their sailing craft was visible in pictures of a whaleboat in which Bass explored the coast from Sydney to Western Port in 1797 and the ships used by French explorers Baudin in the Geographie and Hamelin in the Naturaliste. They mapped half of the Australian coast in 1802-03 including Westernport Bay. Their charts guided more than one thousand ships around the P.P.D. It is likely to be more.
Transportation of convicts to Port Jackson (Sydney) from 1788 and Van Dieman’s Land (Tasmania) from 1803 stimulated European settlement but feeding convicts and soldiers became a major headache for the British government and their local representatives. Fertile land was deemed Crown Land and sold to settlers at serious cost to the First Nations People but while the settlers were doing well they needed more unskilled labour. Britain had too many poor and promoted emigration schemes to move 127,000 people in an eighteen year period to the other side of the world through the Poor Law Relief System and the Bounty System. A further 9,000 people paid their own fare to chance their fortune in Australia Felix during the same period.
The passage between Tasmania and the Mainland had been confirmed by friends George Bass and Matthew Flinders in 1798. Travelling through Bass Strait reduced the voyage time for ships travelling to Sydney, Brisbane, New Zealand and the P.P.D. and sailing around southern Tasmania was forgone. The distance between Cape Otway and Cape Wickham on King Island is only 84kms and many ships aiming for the P.P.D. were taken off course and found the inhospitable coast of King Island. Bass Strait was comparatively shallow and filled with an assortment of rocky outcrops including submerged volcanic mountains and the currents were unpredictable. There was another problem. Sailing ships which used the Great Circle Route approaching Bass Strait from the west would be catapulted across the Southern and Indian Oceans and land in often perilous conditions near the P.P.D. coast due to fog, squalls, steep waves, inaccurate charts or human error. Luck played a role in determining success.
The Bass Strait Maritime Museum estimates 1500 ships came to grief in the 1800s. There are 600 documented ship wrecks around the P.P.D. coast and about 140 around King Island most occurring before 1855. The Cataraqui which foundered off King Island in August 1845 with the loss of 420 P.P.D. immigrants remains the cause of the greatest loss of life in Australian waters and spurred action by Charles La Trobe and Sir John Franklin to call for a lighthouse at Cape Otway. La Trobe selected the site personally.
The concise description of a ship being lost was important to demonstrate how quickly disaster can happen. In 1885 it took the iron screw steamer Gulf of Carpentaria only seven minutes from impact with a submerged rock to have 17 feet of water rushing into a hold, 20 minutes for all 28 crew to safely escape by lifeboat and three and half hours for the ship to totally disappear under the waves in good conditions. It was unlikely many people sailing in Bass Strait in wooden sailing ships with possibly hundreds of immigrants on board would survive a similar event.
Maritime safety was reliant on lighthouses, accurate charts, competent navigators, a reliable chronometer and good food and vitamins for long journeys. A bit of luck helped.
The story of lighthouses began more than 3,000 years ago and illustrations of the Pharos of Alexandria in Egypt and the 800 year old Hook Head lighthouse in Ireland were shown. Most but not all lighthouses are recognizable as a stone tower with a beam of light emanating from a glass enclosed “lantern” on top.
It seems it took time for superior lights to evolve. Fire in braziers were common from nearly 300 BC to about 1680 when candles were lit followed by oil lamps. In some locations the challenges to keep a light burning was astounding. The Isle of May Lighthouse (1635) required three men working full time to hoist 400 tons of coal up to the brazier each year; Winstanley’s Eddystone Light required 60 one pound candles each dark day/night and Smeaton’s Eddystone Lighthouse needed 24 candles to be replaced every three hours. The Argand lamp was introduced in 1780 and provided a more consistent bright light with more efficient combustion of the oil due principally to hollow wicks.
Fresnel a French civil engineer and physicist developed new theories on the behaviour of light rays disputing some of Isaac Newton’s theories. He produced exquisite refracting and reflecting glass lens which allowed for longer and brighter beams of light from lighthouses. He had been seconded to the Commission des Phares (founded 1811 by Napoleon) and consequently had a major role in planning lighthouses around France. Lights were “ordered” and using the lens they would blink at specific intervals to allow mariners to identify the light. Painted patterns on exteriors facilitated recognition by daylight. Eventually most lighthouses worldwide adopted Fresnel style lens.
In the 1960s charmless but efficient plastic boxes set on concrete pads appeared on rocky outcrops. They were powered by acetylene lamps until solar power was introduced. Although about 25,000 lighthouses still exist worldwide, most have now converted to unmanned installations where electronics including GPS and radar are utilised. The heroes were the keepers and families who manned the lighthouses in isolation.
Adding a more personal aspect to the talk, the journey of one Bounty emigrant on the 500 ton Gilmore was followed as she made the move from Tipperary to Melbourne in 1841 with her husband and young baby. “Biddy” Barry was one of 37 adults aged 15-31 from Tipperary on this voyage along with John Marshall, the Bounty Agent who had made it possible. He would rely on being reimbursed the 38 pounds from a sponsor when the ship arrived in the P.P.D. It would be his last role as a Bounty Agent but he would safely deliver 20,000 emigrants to Australia in ten years and had a role in making available Emigrant Depots in Cork and Plymouth to provide food and some acclimatisation to shipboard life for prospective emigrants.
https://www.portphillippioneersgroup.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Emigrant-depot-cork.jpg
Biddy left from Cobh Harbour by steamer for Plymouth travelling on an open deck. It would not be a comfortable ride into the North Atlantic for these landlubbers. (More than 2.5 million Irish would later leave from Cobh Harbour, Cork between 1848-1950).
https://www.portphillippioneersgroup.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Cobh-Harbour-1841.png
The Roche Point light was the last vestige of Ireland Biddy would see. Approaching Plymouth Harbour where the Gilmour was moored, Biddy passed the Eddystone Rock which was responsible for 50 shipwrecks annually before Winstanley had built the first wooden lighthouse in 1698 despite being kidnapped by French pirates during construction. Winstanley had been returned only to be washed away in his lighthouse five years later in a mighty storm. Mr Rudyard then built a stone tower sheathed in hardwood and covered in pitch which went up like a proverbial Roman candle 46 years later melting the lead in the lantern causing lives to be lost. Next John Smeaton built an excellent tower using interlocking granite stones with a concave collar to disperse the wave energy. Unfortunately this was removed to the Hoe after 122 years of service when the rock on which it rested crumbled a year prior to this Gilmour voyage but Biddy saw the stump at the Rock and Smeaton’s light being re-assembled on the Hoe. Smeaton would later be known as the father of British Civil Engineering. She would not see the fourth iteration of the Eddystone Light which was built for Trinity House (the General Lighthouse Authority for England, Wales, the Channel Islands and Gibraltar) founded in 1514. The architect was James Douglas. It survives today and crowned with a helipad.
https://www.portphillippioneersgroup.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Rudyards-Lighthouse.png
After a delay of 24 days, the Gilmore finally started the 20,000 km journey travelling the Great Circle Route with 223 Bounty immigrants on board. The first part of the journey through the North Atlantic was rough. The water from the English Channel pushes against the mighty Atlantic waves and travelling down the Brittany coast and past the Bay of Biscay there was little respite. The salted beef or pork at lunch would not have been appreciated. There are some heroic lighthouses in this area – the Penmarc’h lighthouse and the elegant 400 year old Cordouan Light near the mouth of the Gironde River.
The seas would be quieter and the temperature more pleasant as they passed the Azores and the Canary Islands but nearing Cape Verde the sun would be beating down on white skin and with little breeze it made for a slow passage through the Doldrums. It took eight weeks to reach St Helena where Napoleon had been exiled. He had died in isolation 20 years prior.
The Green Point lighthouse with its diagonal red ribbon paintwork heralded their arrival at Cape Town where the ship would stay for several days while stores were replenished. It had taken 11 weeks to travel this far and would take a further eight weeks to complete the journey.
They still had more than half the distance to travel but winds from the South Pole would spirit them across the Southern and Indian Oceans. As the ship dipped south past 40 degree latitude and into the sub Antarctic region, Biddy and her friends would think they had entered a version of Hell. Huddling below decks to keep warm and dry in the intense cold and damp with the noise from the screaming winds muffling the murmuring of Hail Marys as the ship heaved and groaned towards the east. Spare a thought for the men on deck at this time. Two helmsmen on the wheel exposed to the elements and men out on the dangerously swinging yardarms with frozen fingers furling or unfurling the sails on command. Then there was the navigator in a small cabin trying to plot the course by the light of a swinging lamp and hoping his charts were accurate and the men on watch who might see the iceberg or the land mass and sound the alarm. Heroes!
Eventually the noise would lighten and the ship would roll less. Strange smells would reach them from nearby land – eucalyptus, wattle, cooking fire smoke. Excitement would mount as they neared the PPD but of course we all know this is a particularly dangerous part of the journey. The crew is careful as the ship passes Cape Otway and lines up to enter Port Phillip Bay. The Canadian barque William Salthouse went aground at Point Nepean only a few weeks ago and her mast is still visible at Pope’s Eye. We moor at William’s Town and thank Captain Maw and the Virgin Mary for keeping us safe from reefs, icebergs, whales, tempests and disease. The Gilmour has completed another voyage safely with only four deaths. It is Christmas Eve and very warm but we now have to make our way to the Immigrant’s Depot in King Street and meet our sponsor. Based on assorted snippets from the Port Phillip Patriot and The Port Phillip Gazette in those weeks there is a major economic depression hitting the P.P.D. and wages in 1842 are likely to be 40% less than this year.
The Cape Otway Lighthouse. John Ibbotson in his well researched book “Lighthouses of Australia” suggests lighthouses were built to save cargo and preserve the ship rather than the crew or passengers but it appears the impetus to install lighthouses around Bass Strait came after the tragic loss of life in two shipwrecks off King Island – the Neva with 241 convict women and their children lost in 1835 and the Cataraqui in 1845 with 420 lives lost. After many months at sea the first sight of the Australian coast might be the Cape Otway headland if the ship was on course but it could be Cape Wickham on King Island if the readings were incorrect. That western gateway to Bass Strait was known as The Eye of the Needle. Captains knew threading the needle required them to stay close to the Otway headland or risk being driven by strong currents onto the reefs around King Island. While more ships were lost off Cape Otway, civil servants in Sydney and London argued over the best site for a lighthouse. It took another two years before consensus was reached that building a lighthouse at Cape Otway was the priority.
Access to the site was difficult by sea and land but after several failed attempts Charles La Trobe, now the Superintendent of the P.P.D. and a “closet explorer”, took matters into his own hands rough walking to Cape Otway to assess the area. In 1840 La Trobe had banned aborigines from entering Melbourne Town but was reliant on the local tribe at Cape Otway to guide him through the ravines and dense bush to find a suitable site for the lighthouse.
La Trobe wrote: “Good building stone, lime, and water, are abundant and accessible. A rise, about a musket shot from the brink of the precipitous face of the Southern point to the promontory, furnishes as it appears to me an admirable site … it commands an unimpeded view of the whole of the deep bight …”
It took longer to determine where the lighthouse should be built than the actual construction on this cliff 298 ft above the water. Building started in 1846 for a tower 66 ft tall and the light was lit in August 1848. Its signature flashes of light would be of comfort to many sailors. Local stone, shaped by 70 masons over ten months, was used in construction. It was quarried at the Parker River 14 miles distant and transported through the bush by bullock cart.
Despite those southerly gales peppering the stone with sand and wind the lighthouse remains in good condition today. It is the oldest Victorian lighthouse and only the third to be built on mainland Australia.
Latitude could be assessed by using stars or the sun but Longitude required an accurate chronometer on board each ship. The British passed an Act of Parliament in 1714 and offered prizemoney for anyone who could produce a reliable chronometer for maritime use. John Harrison made the time piece but had to wait forty years before he was presented with the 23,065 pound prize.
The William’s Town Light and Timeball was an essential element in keeping mariners safe before electronics by allowing chronometers and clocks to be calibrated. It was built at Point Gellibrand in 1840 as a timber construction on a bluestone base with one fixed light. In 1849 it was replaced with a solid bluestone tower with a four reflector light then a nine reflector light added three years later. The light would be turned off at 1958 hrs each day and turned on at 2000 hrs to allow the mariners to fix their time. In 1860 the apparatus for the copper timeball was installed. At 1300 hrs or 1pm each day the ball would be hoisted up the iron mast and as it dropped chronometers and watches were calibrated. In 1926 the Timeball keeper died but was not found for ten days. Nobody remarked on his disappearance or noticed the ball had not dropped during that interval. Ships crews now tuned into local radio stations for the time calls.
Victorian Lighthouses 2024
| OUTSIDE THE BAY | INSIDE THE BAY | |||
| Portland | Cape Nelson (1884); Whaler’s Bluff (1889) | Point Lonsdale | Point Lonsdale (1863) (1902) (1950) | |
| Port Fairy | Griffiths Island (1859) | Queenscliff | Murray Tower; Queenscliff Low; Shortland Bluff; Hume Tower | |
| Warrnambool | Flagstaff Hill Obelisks (1850s); | Port Phillip Bay | Wedge Light (1993) | |
| Flagstaff Hill Leading Lights (1871) | Port Phillip Bay | Coles Light (1947) | ||
| Cape Otway | Cape Otway (1848) (1994) | Port Phillip Bay | West Channel Pile | |
| Aireys Inlet | Split Point (1891) | Port Phillip Bay | Prince George Shoal | |
| Flinders | Cape Schanck (1859) | Port Phillip Bay | Fawkner Beacon | |
| Phillip Island | Cape Woolamai (1928); Point Grant (1947); Round Island (1997) | Williamstown | Timeball Tower (1949) | |
| Walkerville | Cape Liptrap (1951) | Pt Melbourne | Port Melbourne Channel Front & Rear (1924) | |
| Bass Strait | Citadel Island (1913) | St Kilda | St Kilda False (fibreglass) Light (1965) | |
| Wilsons Promontory | South East Point (1859) | Mornington | Schnapper Point | |
| Point Welshpool | Cliffy Island (1884) | McCrae | Eastern Light (1883) | |
| Darriman | Omega Facility1982) | Port Phillip Bay | Hovell Light | |
| Lakes Entrance | Mount Barclay (1923) | Port Phillip Bay | South Channel Pile (1874) (1998) | |
| Orbost | Cape Conron (1966) | Point Nepean | Monash Light (1930) | |
| Cann River | Point Hicks (1890) | |||
| Mallacoota | Little Rame Head (1993); Gabo Island (1846) (1853) (1862) |
Elaine Race Talk delivered to Port Phillip Pioneers Group July 2024
Further Reading
| Australian Government: Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water | Australasian Underwater Cultural Heritage Database; #6577 |
| Bendigo Art Gallery Exhibition (2013) | Her Majesties Territories: Stereographic View of Australian Sceneries |
| Blainey, Geoffrey (2006) | A History of Victoria |
| Charlwood, Don (1981) | The Long Farewell |
| Ibbotson, John (2001) | Lighthouses of Australia: Images from the End of an Era |
| Lemon,A & Morgan, M (1986) | The Cataraqui: Australia’s Worst Shipwreck |
| Lighthouses of Australia.Inc | |
| Loney, Jack (1980) | Mysteries of the Bass Strait Triangle |
| Loney, Jack (1979) | Wrecks on King Island |
| McDonald, John & Richards, Eric | The Great Emigration of 1841; recruitment for New South Wales in British emigration fields |
| Museum of NSW | State Archives Collection |
| National Library of Australia | TROVE |
| Noone, Val (2012) | Hidden Ireland in Victoria |
| O’Farrell, Patrick (1984) | Letters from Irish Australians 1825-1929 |
| Penberthy, Ian (2008) | Lighthouses – 75 Most Magnificent Lighthouses |
| Port Melbourne Historical and Preservation Society | 1850-1860 |
| Rand McNally (1974) | The international atlas |
| Romanov-Hughes, Alexander (2015) | Shipping lists |
| Rushen, Elizabeth (2020) | John Marshall: Shipowner, Lloyd’s reformer and emigration agent |
| Russell, Roslyn (2016) | High Seas & High Teas |
| McDonald, John & Richards, Eric | The Great Emigration of 1841; recruitment for New South Wales in British emigration fields |
| Sleigh, Elizabeth A. (2001) | From Tipperary to Port Phillip |
| Tout-Smith, D. (2003) | Municipality of Portland, Victoria in Museums Victoria Collections |
| State Library of Victoria Foundation: J. Barnes & S.Burt 2007) | The LaTrobe Journal #80 Spring 2007 |
| Wells, John (1980) | More Colourful Tales of Old Gippsland |
| www.Great Lighthouses of Ireland.com | |
| www.heritage.victoria.gov.au | Guide to the Historic Shipwreck Trail on Victoria’s West Coast |
| www.lightstation.com | |
| www.naroomanewsonline.com.au | |
| www.residentjudge.com | Description of Christmas 1841 |
| www.uslhs.org | Thomas Tag |