Heritage Centre Education Kit Captain Tutty and Sheet 6 Issue 2 the Port of Townsville April 2006 Captain Tutty, who lived in the Worker’s Dwelling, was tug master for the Port of Townsville In the 19th and early 20th The first harbour centuries wharves lined the Flinders Street side of the creek from where From 1864, when the first the Barrier Reef Wonderland now settlers arrived to found Townsville, stands to the site of the present until 1892, when the new harbour was Railway Station. completed, Ross Creek was Townsville’s harbour. The old Victoria Bridge was built as a swing bridge to allow vessels to It was very different then. The travel up the creek and discharge mouth of the creek was close to where cargo at the wharf near the railway the Strand road now begins. On the station. The only reminder we have of South Townsville side of the creek was those days is Victoria Bridge a small hill known as Pilot Hill (because that was the location of the Pilot Only small craft could enter the Station), and off shore from there was creek; larger ships had to anchor in a small rocky island, called Magazine Cleveland Bay in the lee of Magnetic Island. Island. Cargo and passengers were then transferred to smaller vessels called You cannot find any of these lighters, for transfer to the wharves in features today because the hill and the creek. It was often difficult and island were quarried, and land was sometimes dangerous, particularly with reclaimed from the sea to create the strong south-easterly winds. harbour that we know today. NATIONAL TRUST OF QUEENSLAND Townsville/NQ Branch Heritage Centre 5 Castling St, West End Townsville Q4810 Ph (07) 4771 5873 Text: Dr Dorothy M. Gibson-Wilde Layout: Bruce C. Gibson-Wilde Photos: Dr Dorothy M. Gibson-Wilde and John Oxley Library Original Townsville harbour in Ross Creek, about 1882 6: CAPTAIN TUTTY AND THE PORT OF TOWNSVILLE page 2 of 4 The tug Alert As steamers grew larger in size, they were unable to enter the harbour and moor, or to turn around and leave, under their own power. They needed the help of a tug. So on 16 January 1908 the tug Alert arrived at Townsville harbour. The Alert came from South Africa. Before its purchase by the Townsville Harbour Board (now Townsville Port Authority), it had been The causeway from Magazine Island to the used by the Table Bay Harbour Board mainland showing Pilot Hill, which was demolished The new harbour during the Boer War. It was a sea- to reclaim land for the going tug, fitted with fire and salvage sugar terminals In 1875 the Queensland pumps, and served Townsville harbour Government decided to construct a for over 50 years before it was new harbour where larger ships could scuttled. anchor at sheltered wharves. A long causeway was built, joining Magazine Captain Tutty Island to the mainland, and two long rock breakwaters were constructed The master of the tug was Captain extending from each side of the creek Tutty, who lived in the worker’s mouth. dwelling now relocated to the National Trust Heritage Centre. He was well The harbour between the liked and highly respected by the breakwaters was dredged, with a long seafaring community. During his channel leading out to deep water. service the Alert was involved in a Wharves were constructed inside the number of searches for missing south-eastern breakwater. The Townsville Harbour vessels, and in rescuing vessels cast tug Alert and (right) It was a major undertaking. Captain Tutty at the helm. adrift in cyclones. 1999-2006 National Trust of Queensland This sheet may be copied only for educational purposes 6: CAPTAIN TUTTY AND THE PORT OF TOWNSVILLE page 3 of 4 The best known search was was not invented until much later) it carried out in 1911 when the coastal could not locate the missing steamer. passenger steamer Yongala *** disappeared. The Alert and other vessels searched up and down the Today the wreck is world-famous coast for many kilometres, locating as a site for scuba diving. Tourists wreckage over a wide area. Without from all over the world ‘dive the the benefit of echo sounding (which Yongala’. The Yongala Story ger. At twenty minutes to two in the afternoon, it The Yongala was built in 1903 for the Ade- departed for Townsville. laide Steamship Company by Armstrong Whitworth & Co of Newcastle, England. It was a Shortly after it left, the signal station on Flat single-screw steamer with gross tonnage of 3664 Top Island at Mackay received a telegraph warn- and overall length of 106.7 metres, and speed of ing from the Meteorological Bureau at Brisbane 14.5 knots. The Yongala and its sister ship Gran- that a cyclone was approaching the coast between tala were designed to provide the Australian Mackay and Townsville. But the message could coastal trade with a faster and more comfortable not be passed to the Yongala as it had no radio service. receiver and was out of sight of any signal station to receive semaphore signals. Both vessels were well equipped and very popular with travellers, though neither carried In the meantime Grantala, the sister ship to the radio receivers, as ship to shore radio was still in Yongala, left Townsville for the south at 4 pm the its infancy. Yongala had a crew of 72 under the same day, and took almost twenty-four hours to command of Captain William Knight, an experi- reach Bowen after being forced to shelter from enced and long-serving officer. cyclonic winds in the lee of Cape Bowling Green. Passengers told newspaper reporters that they had On March 21 it left Brisbane with 49 passen- gers and freight including the racehorse Moon- never experienced rougher weather. shine as deck cargo. The Yongala was due in Townsville at 6 am on Friday, 24 March 1911. Some effects of the blow Departure was delayed because of the late arri- were felt in Townsville, but it was not considered val of Moonshine, but two days later on 23 strong enough to have caused a vessel like the March 1911 the ship arrived off Mackay in rea- Yongala to founder. sonable time to discharge cargo and one passen- SS Yongala 1999-2006 National Trust of Queensland This sheet may be copied only for educational purposes 6: CAPTAIN TUTTY AND THE PORT OF TOWNSVILLE page 4 of 4 So, it was thought that the captain had taken the music room on the Yongala. Tutty also re- the vessel further out to sea to avoid the storm. covered a mail hamper with parcels from south- By Saturday, 25 March, however, when three ern mail order firms; most were eventually deliv- other vessels from the south had arrived battered ered to the owners. by the storm, and none had sighted the Yongala, the vessel was posted missing. Clearly the Yongala had gone down, but where? The wreckage was so widely distributed Relatives and friends of those aboard still held that it was impossible to estimate where the out hope of its being found. Many of the passen- wreck might be. No bodies of passengers or gers were well known in the north. The whole of crew were ever discovered. Townsville knew Matthew Rooney, one of the popular Rooney brothers and manager of Why did the Yongala go down? Rooney & Co., well known throughout north Many theories were put forward for the disap- Queensland as saw millers, contractors and fur- pearance of the Yongala . It was quite clear that niture makers. He and his wife and daughter she had been caught in a destructive storm. Lizzie, a prominent local singer, were returning from holiday. Robert Hayles and George Butler, two of the people involved in the search at the time, agreed The wife of another prominent citizen, Cairns that from Cape Bowling Green they could see solicitor Abijah Murray, and their four children where the cyclone had cut a huge trail through were among the passengers. the bush, leaving all the trees uprooted or A search is started… snapped off. The northern side of Cape Upstart was nearly stripped of all vegetation, though the The passenger ships Ouraka, Cooma and Tai- southern side of the cape was almost untouched. yuan had arrived in port. They put to sea to It must have been a small but very intense cy- search for the Yongala, but found nothing, be- clone that caught the Yongala. fore continuing their scheduled voyages. The The last sighting of the vessel was at 6:30 pm Yongala had apparently disappeared without trace. on Thursday, 23 March when the lighthouse keeper at Dent Island in the Whitsundays re- Other smaller vessels including the Alert con- ported seeing her heading north, with the seas tinued the search from Cape Upstart to Lucinda rising and the barometer falling. Point for several weeks, hoping to find evidence of the Yongala’s fate. The disappearance of the Yongala remained unexplained, its memory kept alive by those who Eventually wreckage began to float ashore. had known passengers and crew. The lighthouse keeper at Cape Bowling Green *** found five bags of pumpkins washed up on the beach and a seaman’s shirt was found nearby. In 1943 a minesweeper of the Australian Navy Other pumpkins turned up in various places. The on duty in Bowling Green Bay located an uni- body of the racehorse was found at Gordon’s dentified shoal. In 1947 the survey ship HMAS Creek near the mouth of Ross River. Five bags Lachlan was ordered to investigate the find.