Cataraqui

Looking through Blue Gun Clippers and Whale Ships of Tasmania, by Will Lawson & the Shiplovers Society of Tasmania, first published 1949, I found a bit on the wreck of the Cataraqui. It's one of the sadder shipwreck tales.

On 20 April 1845, the Cataraqui left Liverpool carrying 370 emigrants, mostly families. By the 3rd August, they were just a day out of Melbourne, coming through Bass Strait, with "all on board looking eagerly forward to reaching arbour after the storm which had beset them for several days.

"In the early morning, with warning, the ship struck off Boggy Creek [west coast of King Island] when she had all sail set. A prudent shortening of the sail on the previous evening had been so scoffed at by the surgeon, who was at loggerheads with the captain, that Captain Findley decided to carry on. The ship was making at least 10 knots when she crashed on to the rocks, about 100 yards from shore.

"The Cataraqui broke up at once, scattering her human freight into the cauldron of raging waters. The position was hopeless, and of 408 person on board, only nine won to shore. Daylight presented a horrible scene to these lucky survivors. For about two miles the beach was strewn with the dead, mostly females, for the ship was carrying a large number of married women, with their families, and girls to Australia."

Wrecks in Tasmanian Waters, by Harry O'May, has a longer passage including:

"By 5 a.m. all below decks were drowned but daylight revealed about two hundred persons still clinging to the wreck. Every wave took its tool and by 4 p.m. she had parted and many went into the sea. Lines had been stretched along the vessel to supply the survivors with something to grip. Some had endeavoured to make a raft. At 5 p.m. she parted again but still seventy poor souls clung to the forecastle. All night the sea washed over them and at daybreak on the fifth only thirty survived."

The final part comes from Villiers' Vanished Fleets: Strange Tales of the Sea, when some of the survivors realised their only hope was to try to reach shore:

"Mr Guthrie, the first mate, clutching to a spar, plunged into the sea and was carried over the reef to the shore. There he found a passenger who had escaped during the night and one of the crew who had got ashore in the morning. Six other seamen swam, or with piece of planking, floated ashore. Soon afterwards, the remains of the Cataraqui disappeared beneath the sea. These nine men were all who survived; only one migrant reached Australian shores."


Parks & Wildlife Service, Shipwrecks of Tasmania

Grave of 245 bodies from the wreck of the Cataraqui on King's Island

Loss of the Cataraque/Cataraqui: From British Parliamentary Papers 1846
That last page has a list of passengers.