Corioli: The Shipwrecked Sepia

The Sepia was a three-masted iron sailing barque that wrecked en route to Fremantle, 3km west of Carnac Island. It was carrying general supplies needed for the growing colony.  Corioli has carried out excavations on the site and has found items that reveal information about consumer goods for early colonists, which gives us great insight into their needs and wants.

Iron shipwrecks often retain their shape, particularly in the lower hold (where the beer was kept) that preserves objects in situ and allows them to be studied exactly how they were stored when the vessels were wrecked.

One beautiful object preserved aboard the sunken Sepia was a piece of Satin glass. This particular style of dipped glass with applique was popular in late 19th Century and appeared in the Great Exhibitions of Europe and London. Other examples of this piece of blue glass were being produced in Sturbridge and Birmingham, and almost identical pieces are valued at around $5000 dollars today.

A lot of documentation is still available for the wreck of the Sepia. One such interesting document was a ‘bill of lading.’ This was part of a shipping document that would have been carried on the Sepia as well as on another vessel in case something happened to the carrier ship. It shows that the Sepia was carrying 70 cases of bottled beer, which was a popular import at the time. It also displays the name of the vessel and the consigner: E&J Burke of Dublin.

When the cases of beer were found, the corks and seals were still intact and lying in straw boxes, exactly as they would have been when the ship sank. The only things that have deteriorated and disappeared are the paper labels. Beer bottles are often confused with champagne bottles on wrecks such as the Sepia due to this lack of label, but marked differences in the bottle help to identify them.

The Western Australian Museum has an example of a bottle whose tin coated lead seal has survived. This type of seal would have sat on top of the cork of all of the bottles to indicate the bottler or the name of the substance. The Western Australian Museum has a range of these from different wrecks, and these provide us with a lot of important information about what was being imported during the early years of the colonies.

Cases of beer were imported in large quantities because the beer manufactured in Western Australia at the time was of a very bad quality. The production of high quality beer requires clean and fresh water, and settlers in Western Australia did not have access to this resource. Today, we see this reversed, as WA now produces many types of the amber liquid that is enjoyed throughout the world, particularly in England and Europe.

Wrecks such as the iron Sepia provide a glimpse into colonial life. The Sepia’s cargo of beer and luxury items shows that the needs and wants of an early European colony aren’t so different from our needs and wants today.