3[Henderson, Graeme & Kandy-Jane, Nedlands, WA, Unfinished Voyages: Western Australian Shipwrecks 1851-1880, 1988, pages 67-71, University of Western Australia Press]
Emma
The schooner Emma was built in Lowestoft, Suffolk, in 1859, and was bought by the Western Australian pastoralist and merchant Walter Padbury in 1865. Misfortune pursued the Emma from the date of her arrival on the Western Australian coast. On her first voyage to the North-West she lost a man overboard and lost an anchor off the De Grey River. At Champion Bay, she collided with the jetty, causing damage. At Cossack, she went aground. On her next voyage north from Fremantle, she went aground on the Abrolhos and her cargo of sheep had to be off-loaded on the Islands before being taken into Champion Bay. Passenger Lockier Burges later reminisced:
We left Fremantle in a bustle, with trusses of hay piled on the main deck so in fact everything was in the wrong place. If rough weather had come on suddenly we should have been in a fix. To make matters worse a large compass that had belonged to the Calliance (wrecked at Camden Harbour) was placed in the Emma. The Calliance was three times the tonnage of the Emma , so consequently the compass would not work correctly in such a small vessel. The result was that the next night after leaving Fremantle, we found ourselves high and dry on the south end of the Abrolhos .... We had only one boat-such were the conditions in these olden times, that we were allowed to go to sea with only one boat, and that not even a lifeboat, but an old tub, built of jarrah, which would go down like a stone if she capsised.[1]
Returning to Fremantle, the Emma struck a sand-bar south of the old jetty and was dismasted. She was refloated, but the next north-wester sent the schooner back onto the beach.[2]
Padbury paid another £100 to have her refloated, after which she was fitted up with new rigging and thoroughly renovated for another voyage to Cossack. At Cossack, Captain Badcock and his seven crew loaded wool belonging to the Roebuck Bay Company, and several tonnes of pearl shell. Thirty-four passengers embarked for Fremantle, and the Emma left Roebourne on 3 March 1867. It was Badcock's intention to obtain more provisions from Fremantle. The average duration of colonial coasting voyages from Fremantle to Port Walcott was 30 days, with 50 days for the return voyage.[3] The Emma must have been a swifter vessel than the average coaster. A previous voyage up the coast had taken 19 days, so it was expected that she would be back in Roebourne by the end of April.
The Emma did not return. Nor did the Brothers, which was also expected with supplies. Food ran short in the settlement, and in May, as a desperate measure, Robert Sholl, the Government Resident at Nickol Bay, sent a party overland to Champion Bay (about 1,000 kilometres as the crow flies) to seek relief.[4] On their arrival, a supply vessel was sent north.
Speculation as to the fate of the Emma and those on board was varied. Captain Tuckey, who had sailed from Fremantle in March and arrived safely at Roebourne, thought he discerned the mast of a vessel on the shore while passing Dirk Hartog Island.[5] Sholl recalled that the Emma had been very lightly ballasted, having 25 tonnes of iron ballast and only a few tonnes of cargo and passengers' luggage.[6] He also noted that her mainmast was defective, and speculated that the vessel might have been either upset in a squall or dismasted to float helplessly. Captain Badcock had told Sholl that he would sail round Ritchie's Reef (now named Tryal Rocks, north of the Monte Bello Islands) and then keep close along the shore if possible. Sholl also wrote that 'she had a good slant of wind which ought to have carried her round the North West Cape'.[7]
The speculation was revived in 1876 by Charles Tuckey (see Brothers entry) who claimed that an Aborigine from a North West Cape tribe had told him the following story:
A long time ago (about ten years he described) a ship was wrecked near North West Cape; the passengers landed, at night, in the boats, and as they had no means of defending themselves the natives had no difficulty in making them prisoners. There was a large number of persons, and amongst them were some females [no women are listed among the Emma's passengers]. The natives were not 'sulky' with them, but nevertheless they killed and ate all of them, the narrator partaking of some of the flesh.[8]
It is possible that Captain Tuckey's account of the Aborigines' behaviour was influenced by his attitude towards Aborigines generally. In later years, as master of the Argo, he engaged in rounding up and kidnapping Aborigines for forced labour in the pearling industry.[9]
In the 1930s, a stockman on Warroora Station, about 160 kilometres south of North West Cape, is said to have found a small iron cannon on the beach at the front of Maggie Cliffs. On a hill in the adjacent dunes lay a stone cairn.[10] Neither can be located today. (See map on p. 30.)
Diver Serge Katarshi reported in 1979 the finding of a wreck in the Coral Bay area, and inspection by the Museum recently suggests that the site is that of the Emma.
The 116-ton schooner Emma (Official Number 25291) had two masts, one deck, a round stern and a shield head.[ll] Her dimensions were 26.1 metres by 6.2 metres by 3.4 metres.
NOTES
1. L. C. Burges, The Pioneers of the Nor'-West, Australia (Constantine and Gardner, Geraldton, 1913), p. 29.
2. West Australian, 22 March 1886.
3. Government Gazette, 20 February 1872.
4. Perth Gazette, 12 July 1867.
5. Ibid.
6. Inquirer, 28 August 1867.
7. Perth Gazette, 12 July 1867.
8. Inquirer, 19 January 1876.
9. Su-Jane Hunt, The Gribble Affair, History honours degree thesis, Murdoch University, 1978, p. 38.
10. B. Parker, 'Northern Cannon Quest', Underwater Explorers Club News, 11: 1 (1971), p. 1.
11. Register of British Ships, Fremantle.