Enchantress (1874/08/15)

New Island, Brecknock Harbour

By the early 1870s, there were some eighty to a hundred small vessels pearling out
of Cossack and other anchorages to the west. In 1872, Roebourne Resident
Magistrate Robert Sholl reported that there were thirty-one 'ships' and fifty-two 'boats'
employed, and that the vessels ranged from 1 to 56 tons, the average being 10 tons.
(Sholl 1872, C.S.O. 714, fol.17) The fifty-two 'boats' were dinghies. The smaller
vessels could not stay at sea in heavy weather, and in 1873, the Inquirer saw the
number of shipwrecks as suggesting:
...the necessity of the early appointment of an official to see that the numerous
coasting craft are fit to proceed to sea, and that, moreover, they are properly
provisioned and in the charge of competent seamen. The recent lamentable
loss of life connected with our pearl shell fishery, and the way in which the
boats employed in it are almost without exception manned, calls for the prompt
attention of the Government (Inquirer 11/06/1873).
Bigger 'ships' were, however, being dispatched from the other pearling centres in
Queensland and overseas. Two such vessels were the schooners Flower of Yarrow
and Enchantress. Their owners, however, were not content to restrict themselves to
the well known pearling grounds around Cossack.
In 1872, the Australian Fishing Company was floated in London, and these two
yachts were fitted out in England to engage in the industry in North West Australia
(Streeter 1886:160). Ample capital was available. Lieutenant Ross, R.N. (perhaps
one of the family from Melbourne who had been members of the abortive Camden
Harbour Pastoral Association in 1863), was contracted for three years, and twentyeight
crewmen were said to have been specially chosen from the English fishing
fleets (Bain 1982:74). In his prospectus, the promoter estimated that each diver could
bring up 100 shells in an hour, an extreme exaggeration.
The 150-ton Flower of Yarrow, commanded by Lieutenant Ross, called at Fremantle,
en route from London to the North-West, in March 1874. The Flower of Yarrow,
which had formerly belonged to the Royal Yacht Squadron, carried two 21-pounder
Armstrong guns and had on board a steam launch capable of accommodating
twenty-eight passengers (a boon in heavy tidal waters) (Perth Gazette 20/03/1874).
She also carried equipment for conducting pearling operations on an extensive scale,
and was said to have an auxiliary steam engine (Parsons 1974:12).
The Flower of Yarrow sailed north to join the twenty-nine-year-old Enchantress,
which came to the North West via Singapore, where she had called to recruit divers.
The two vessels apparently commenced shelling as far north as Darwin, and
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gradually worked down the coast toward Camden Sound and King Sound (Inquirer
03/03/1875). They were finding abundant good-quality shell.
Lieutenant Ross would have been made aware by Robert Sholl or others, of the
presence of shell around Brecknock Harbour. Sholl had spent some time there in
1864 after the wreck of the Calliance, and John McCourt had collected a small
quantity of shell there in 1869 with the schooner Argo (Scholl 1869, C.S.O. 697,
fol.146). The Enchantress was filled with shell, and when the news of this success
reached Roebourne, Sholl predicted that most of the larger vessels would leave
Exmouth Gulf to try to link up with Lieutenant Ross' fleet (Scholl 1874, C.S.O.782,
fol.192).
Disaster struck for the Australian Fishing Company when the Enchantress hit a reef
off Champagny Island on 15 August. The vessel managed to reach Brecknock
Harbour, where she became a complete wreck (Parsons 1980). Then, in
confrontations between the crew and the local Aborigines one European crewman,
one Malay crewman and eight Aborigines were killed. Newspaper reports of the time
mention ‘a sanguiny battle with natives, killed and wounded on both sides’ and that
the ship was a complete wreck. The Aboriginal people concerned could have been
the Worora (Silvester 1998)
Lieutenant Ross had the Enchantress broken up to retrieve her copper fastenings
(Inquirer 03/03/1875) but the pearling project was a failure, and the Flower of Yarrow
was sold (Henderson, G & Henderson, K.J. 1988:150).
Site Description
While the wreck has not been positively identified, It seems likely that the
Enchantress was beached at New Island, located in the entrance to Brecknock
Harbour. This area also has a freshwater spring. Several expeditions from the
Western Australian Museum have seen wreck material there. In 1963, Ian Crawford
found heavy brass pipes, pieces of iron, broken china and a part of a compass
(Crawford 1968:79), and in 1978, Scott Sledge found iron deck supports, bricks and
lead piping (Sledge 1979:39).
(Souter 2009: 145-148)