Sea Queen (1907/03/30)

Off Woody Island, went ashore Boxer Island

Sea Queen is variously described as a schooner, a ketch, and a lugger. It may have been built by Charles Walker, boatbuilder of Fremantle, who was well-known for building luggers for the pearling fleet, as well as cruising and racing yachts. He is known to have built a yawl named Sea Queen. The vessel, owned by W. Clements of Perth, had been chartered by the Australian Phosphates Company to explore the islands of the Recherche Archipelago for guano deposits. As a consequence it was loaded with provisions for three months, a boring plant and mining stores. It was valued at £800, with the stores and equipment worth a further £500. It was not insured.

The Sea Queen departed Fremantle on 19 February 1907. The party had explored Boxer and Figure of Eight islands, and found on the latter a particularly rich deposit of phosphate claimed to be over 50 000 tons.

THE LOSS
During the night of 30 March 1907 the Sea Queen was anchored off Woody Island when the anchor dragged and the vessel went ashore. The vessel was wrecked, and almost all the provisions, boring plant and mining stores were lost. There was, fortunately, no loss of life, but ‘Mr Broadhurst [Florance Constantine Broadhurst], who has had a large share in the Abrolhos guano works, was in this venture also, and was unfortunate enough to severely injure his arm while leaving the wreck’ (West Australian, 9 April 1907: 5i). Some of the group rowed to the mainland and walked to Esperance. From there a fishing boat was sent to collect the remaining survivors.

INITIAL SALVAGE
From contemporary newspaper reports it would appear that almost nothing was saved or later salvaged from the wreck of the Sea Queen. An Extraordinary General Meeting of the Australian Phosphate Company in May 1907 was held to consider the loss of the ketch and all their mining equipment. The meeting considered that the successful exploration results to that date justified spending money on replacing the equipment and continuing the search for further phosphate deposits.

The wreck of the Sea Queen was sold to J.W. White ‘as she lies’. There appears to be no record of the vessel being salvaged by White.