North America (1840/07/08)

Koombana Bay

Port of Building: Scarborough, Maine, USA
Year built: 1834
Port of Registration: Wilmington, Delaware, USA
Rig Type: Ship
Hull: Wood
Length: 103.19 ft (31.45 m)
Breadth: 24.06 ft (7.33 m)
Tonnage: 270.43
Port from: Wilmington, USA
Port to: Wilmington, USA
Date lost: 8 July 1840
Location: Koombana Bay
Chart Number: Aus 115 & WA 50976
Position: Lat. 33º 19.6' S
Long. 115º 38.9' E. This is not a GPS position
Protection: State Maritime Archaeology Act 1973
Significance criteria: 3 & 8
THE VESSEL
The American whaler North America was a ship-rigged vessel, having two decks, a square stern and a billet head, and was owned by William Wheeler. It had sailed under the command of Captain Kempton with a crew of 25 from Wilmington, Delaware, on 6 December 1839. The ship had made at least one previous voyage to Australian waters. The North America was at anchor in Koombana Bay along with two other American whalers, the Samuel Wright (Francis Coffin) and the Hudson (Captain J. Denison).
THE LOSS
On 6 July heavy rain during the day was followed on 7 July by mild gentle weather. However that evening the breeze freshened from the north-east, increasing and shifting north-north-east. ‘At midnight it blew a perfect hurricane’ (Perth Gazette, 18 July 1840: 3d). About sunrise on 8 July the wind shifted to the north, and at 8.00 a.m. went to the north-north-west and blew with ‘unmitigated fury’. The North America was blown onto the shore shortly after the Samuel Wright (see entry). It was ‘much damaged’ (Perth Gazette, 18 July 1840: 3d), being bilged the second time it struck. The storm quickly subsided and by 4.00 p.m. there was a gentle breeze blowing from the south. The Hudson had ridden out the storm safely on four anchors, and in fact went whaling the following day, catching one whale in Geographe Bay.
INITIAL SALVAGE
The Perth Gazette for 18 July 1840 published the following advertisement on its front page:
Two Wrecks For Sale
Sale of the Wrecks of the
Samuel Wright
and
North America
at Port Leschenault
On Monday 20th Inst.
The Samuel Wright (Capt. Coffin) and North America (Capt. Kempton), as they now lie wrecks, in the Port of Leschenault, will be sold on the above date, with all their sails, rigging, &c, &c.
Leschanault, July 9
The North America was bought by John Randall Phillips for £400, which included the whale-boats and whaling gear. The auction was conducted by Henry Bull, the Resident Magistrate at Bunbury. Phillips became resident magistrate at Albany in September 1840, and it is possible that he wanted to either use the whaling gear to set up a bay whaling station in the Albany area, or to sell it at a profit to whalers there.
Whale oil and bone salvaged from the wrecks of the Samuel Wright and the North America were also sold. The 30 tuns of sperm oil fetched £50 per tun, the 36 tuns of black oil £9 per tun and £90 per ton was paid for the 1½ tons of whalebone. The monies raised by the sale of the oil and bone were to be paid to the crews of the two ships in accordance with their lays.
E.H. Withers arrived in Bunbury in 1864 aged 7 years, and in his reminiscences he records that as a boy he salvaged copper bolts from the wreck of the Samuel Wright and one of the North Americas in order to sell them locally for 4 pence per pound weight. These bolts were about 600 mm long and 25 mm in diameter.
SITE LOCATION
On 27 December 1841 HMS Beagle sailed in to Koombana Bay to collect ‘Mr Forsyth [Charles Codrington Forsyth], whom I had sent over land’ and who had ‘completed the survey of this anchorage, and Leschenault Inlet, which it joins in the south corner by a narrow boat channel’ (Stokes, 1969: 395). Commander Stokes goes on to note ‘the wreck of a large whale ship in the head of the bay shows the folly of attempting to ride out the winter gales to which it is exposed…’. This wreck would most probably have been that of the Samuel Wright, which was quite prominent for some years after wrecking. The fact that Stokes does not mention the wreck of the North America suggests that Phillips had by this time substantially dismantled that wreck.
It should be noted that in the sailing directions prepared by Wickham and Stokes mention is made of two wrecks, the Samuel Wright and the North America (1840):
Point Casuarina is the southern point of a small opening, known as ‘Port Leschenault,’ from which a reef extends about a third of a mile to the N.N.W., and shelters the anchorage from the westward—this does not appear to be a very secure port, as when we passed in the Beagle at a wide distance from Point Casuarina, two American whale ships were lying on the beach having been driven from their anchorages a short time before, during a N.W.erly gale (Wickham & Stokes, 1842: 131).
These Sailing Directions, though dated 1842, would have been based on surveys carried out during the previous two years. Stokes’ chart of 1841 shows only one wreck. As this was probably the Samuel Wright, this further suggests that the North America (1840) had been dismantled after it was sold.
The Reverend Wollaston’s map drawn on 18 April 1843 depicts only the Samuel Wright and the second North America wrecked only eight days earlier, which reinforces the suggestion that the North America (1840) had virtually disappeared as a landmark.
SITE DESCRIPTION
The site of this wreck is not known. Magnetometer surveys undertaken by the Department of Maritime Archaeology, Western Australian Museum, in 1982 produced anomalies at a number of different sites, one of which may possibly be the scant remains of the North America (1840). These surveys, and reports by local residents, indicate that it is buried under metres of sand well inland from the present shoreline.
STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE
SOCIAL (3)
Most of the crews of the three American whalers wrecked in July 1840 were subsequently engaged in bay whaling in the area. The Americans were sought after as crew because of their experience in whaling.
The North America had previously fished the southern coast of Australia, and in its very speedy twelve month voyage June 1838 to June 1839 had returned to the United States with 2 400 barrels of right whale oil, valued at about US$24 200.
REPRESENTATIVE (8)
The North America is representative of the multitude of American whaling vessels which worked along the south and west coasts of Western Australia in the 19th century.
REFERENCES
Barnes, P., 2001, Marlston Hill and All That: The Story of Koombana Bay, the Leschenault Waterways and the North End of Bunbury Since They Were First Recorded by Europeans Nearly Two Hundred Years Ago. Self published.
Dickson, R., 2007, The History of the Whalers on the South Coast of New Holland from 1800–1888. Hesperian Press, Victoria Park.
Gibbs, M., 1990, A Preliminary Database of Whaling and Sealing Vessels in Western Australian Waters 1792–1885. Department of Archaeology, University of Western Australia, Nedlands.
Henderson, G., 2007, Unfinished Voyages: Western Australian Shipwrecks 1622–1850. University of Western Australia Press, Crawley.
Schnur, W.W., Mystic Seaport Museum, Inc. letter to Worsley, P., 29 July 2008.
Loney, J., 1994, Wrecks on the Western Australian Coast. Ocean Enterprises, Yarram, Victoria.
McCarthy, M., 1982, Koombanah Bay wrecks: an investigation of the wrecks in the bay, for the State Electricity Commission of Western Australia. Report—Department of Maritime Archaeology, Western Australian Maritime Museum, No. 19.
Stokes, J.L., 1969 (1846), Discoveries in Australia: with an Account of the Coasts and Rivers Explored and Surveyed During the Voyage of HMS Beagle in the Years 1837–38–39–40–41–42–43. By Command of the Lord Commissioners of the Admiralty. Also a Narrative of Captain Owen Stanley’s Visits to the Islands in the Arafura Sea, Volume II. State Library of South Australia, Adelaide, (Facsimile Edition 1969).
The Perth Gazette and Independent Journal of Politics and News, 18 July 1840: 1a & 3d, and 1 August 1840: 2c-d.
Villiers, A., 1973, The War with Cape Horn. Pan Books Ltd, London.
Wickham, J.C. & Stokes, J.L., 1842, Australia North-West Coast Sailing Directions by Commander Wickham and Lieutenant J.L. Stokes HMS Beagle 1841–2. Photocopy of original manuscript, Western Australian Museum, Fremantle.
Withers, E.H., n.d., Happenings Through the Years. Unpublished manuscript.
Wrecked in same gale as Samuel Wright and Governor Endicott
Position taken from rectified Wolleston’s Chart