Coonatto (clipper ship)

Last updated

Clipper Ship Coonatto - Messrs Anderson Thomson and Co Owners and Messrs Thos Bilbe and Co Builders RMG PY8564.jpg
Coonatto by Thomas Goldsworthy Dutton and William Foster, about 1863
History
Civil Ensign of the United Kingdom.svg United Kingdom
NameCoonatto
Owner Anderson, Thompson & Co
Port of registry London
Builder Thomas Bilbe and William Perry, Rotherhithe
Launched1863
Identification
FateWrecked February 1876
General characteristics
Type clipper
Tonnage633  GRT
Length160.2 ft (48.8 m)
Beam29.0 ft (8.8 m)
Depth18.7 ft (5.7 m)
Sail plan full rig

Coonatto, was a British three-masted clipper that was built in 1863 and wrecked in 1876. She traded between London and Adelaide for 12 years. She was wrecked in the English Channel in February 1876.

Contents

Building

Thomas Bilbe and William Perry built Coonatto at the Nelson Dock, Rotherhithe, Surrey in 1863 for Anderson, Thompson & Co., previously James Thompson & Co. [1] and later Anderson, Anderson & Co., who from 1861 trade as "The Orient Line of Packets", commonly referred to as the "Orient Line" of London. Their relationship with the builder began with Celestial, an all-timber ship constructed on their patented system of framing, followed by the clipper Orient, from which the line gained its name. Other ships built by Bilbe for the company were Argonaut, Borealis and Yatala, the last-named also on the Adelaide route.

Coonatto was named after the once-famous sheep station of Grant and Stokes. [2] She was a ship of 633  GRT, 160.2 ft (48.8 m) long, with a 29.0 feet (8.8 m) beam and 18.7 ft (5.7 m) depth. She was designed to carry passengers and cargo swiftly between Britain and Australia. The cargo on the return voyage was chiefly wool, but also copper. She was an early example of a composite ship, with an iron frame and timber cladding, giving more open space for cargo. [3]

Anderson, Thompson & Co registered Coonatto at London. Her United Kingdom official number was 47320 and her code letters were VNDP. [4]

Career

Her master for the first four voyages was Captain William Begg, previously of the Sebastian. He was a hard-driving skipper who made some very quick passages to Adelaide. Her fastest time was 66 days to the Semaphore lightship and 70 from dock to dock, even after losing both her helmsman and the wheel overboard during a manoeuvre off St Paul's Island. [3]

Begg was succeeded 1869–1872 by James Norval Smart, previously master of The Murray. John Eilbeck Hillman succeeded Captain Smart. [5]

Coonatto at Port Adelaide in May 1867 or 1869 The Coonatto in May 1867 or 1869 at Port Adelaide. StateLibQld 1 110056 (cropped).jpg
Coonatto at Port Adelaide in May 1867 or 1869

During the sixties and seventies, when Sydney and Melbourne were filling their harbours with the finest ships in the British Mercantile Marine, Adelaide, in a smaller way, was carrying on an ever increasing trade of her own, in which some very smart little clippers were making very good money and putting up sailing records which could well bear comparison with those made by the more powerful clippers sailing to Hobson's Bay and Port Jackson. ... Their captains, however, were always keen in rivalry and put a high value on their reputations as desperate sail carriers. They made little of weather that would have scared men who commanded ships of three times the tonnage of those little Adelaide clippers, and they were not afraid of a little water on deck. — Basil Lubbock in The Colonial Clippers (1921) [3]

Her last trip was uneventful until almost home. She left Adelaide on 14 November 1875 laden with copper and wool and reached the Channel on 19 February. She sighted the usual lights: Bishop Rock, The Lizard and Start Point, and St Catherine's Point, but not the light at Beachy Head, [6] which was where Coonatto foundered. There were no injuries, and much of the cargo was saved, but the ship broke up and was lost.

A Board of Trade enquiry found Captain Hillman negligent in not sounding for depth when his position was in doubt, and his certificate was suspended for three months. [7] These circumstances closely mirrored the loss of the Yatala under John Legoe of the same company just four years earlier.

A year later Hillman was appointed master of the Inch Kenneth (1866) of 1,120 tons, which on 23 September 1877 capsized and sank in the South Atlantic, the cause being attributed to the load, bags of wheat and linseed, shifting in heavy seas. 18 of her complement of 26 perished, Hillman included. The eight who survived had been at sea for three days in the lifeboat before being picked up by the Liverpool. [8]

Some other clippers on the England to Adelaide run

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clipper</span> Very fast sailing ship of the 19th century

A clipper was a type of mid-19th-century merchant sailing vessel, designed for speed. Clippers were generally narrow for their length, small by later 19th-century standards, could carry limited bulk freight, and had a large total sail area. "Clipper" does not refer to a specific sailplan; clippers may be schooners, brigs, brigantines, etc., as well as full-rigged ships. Clippers were mostly constructed in British and American shipyards, although France, Brazil, the Netherlands, and other nations also produced some. Clippers sailed all over the world, primarily on the trade routes between the United Kingdom and China, in transatlantic trade, and on the New York-to-San Francisco route around Cape Horn during the California Gold Rush. Dutch clippers were built beginning in the 1850s for the tea trade and passenger service to Java.

<i>City of Adelaide</i> (1864) Worlds oldest surviving clipper ship, completed in 1884

<i>Lammermuir</i> (1864 clipper)

Lammermuir was an extreme clipper ship built in 1864 by Pile, Spence and Company of West Hartlepool for John "Jock" "White Hat" Willis & Son, London. She was the second ship to bear the name. The first Lammermuir had been the favorite ship of John Willis, and was wrecked in the Gaspar Strait in 1863.

<i>Loch Vennachar</i> Scottish sailing ship that was wrecked off South Australia in 1905

Loch Vennachar was an iron-hulled, three-masted clipper ship that was built in Scotland in 1875 and lost with all hands off the coast of South Australia in 1905. She spent her entire career with the Glasgow Shipping Company, trading between Britain and Australia. The company was familiarly called the "Loch Line", as all of its ships were named after Scottish lochs. The ship was named after Loch Venachar, in what was then Perthshire.

<i>Carrier Dove</i> (clipper) 1855 sailboat

Carrier Dove was an 1855 medium clipper. She was one of two well-known clippers launched in Baltimore that year, the other being Mary Whitridge.

<i>Ocean Telegraph</i>

Ocean Telegraph was a clipper ship that was built in Massachusetts in 1854 and was last known of in Gibraltar in 1923. She was in US ownership until 1863, when UK interests bought her and renamed her Light Brigade.

<i>Lord of the Isles</i> (clipper)

Lord of the Isles was the first iron-hulled tea clipper, built in Greenock in 1853. She served in the tea trade until 1862, and also made voyages to Australia. She is known for a record passage between Greenock and Shanghai, and for her close finish in the 1856 Tea Race from China to England, docking in London just ten minutes before Maury. This race was the basis for the plot of a 1927 movie by Cecil B. DeMille The Yankee Clipper.

<i>Torrens</i> (clipper ship)

Torrens was a three-masted clipper ship that was built in England in 1875 and scrapped in Italy in 1910. She was designed to carry passengers and cargo between London and Port Adelaide, South Australia, and was the fastest ship to sail on that route. She is notable as the last sailing ship on which Joseph Conrad served before he began his writing career.

<i>Rodney</i> (clipper) Ship

Rodney was an iron-hulled clipper ship that was built in Sunderland in 1874 and wrecked on the Cornish coast in 1901. She was one of the last ships built for the Australian migration trade. Devitt and Moore operated her between Britain and Australia for more than two decades. Rodney set numerous records for speed, and had luxuries that were unusual for her era.

John Legoe was a ship's captain, associated with the sailing ships Celestial, The Murray, Yatala and Hesperus, before settling in South Australia, where he and his family were notable citizens.

<i>The Murray</i> (clipper ship) Three-masted, wooden-hulled clipper built in 1861 and wrecked in 1884

The Murray was a three-masted clipper ship that was built in Scotland in 1861 and lost off the coast of Sweden in 1884. For nearly 20 years, the Orient Line sailed between London and South Australia. In 1880, Norwegian owners bought her and renamed her Freia.

<i>Hesperus</i> (clipper ship)

Hesperus was an iron-hulled, three-masted, passenger clipper ship that was built in Scotland in 1874 and scrapped in Italy in 1923. She was built for Thompson and Anderson's Orient Line service between Great Britain and South Australia.

<i>Yatala</i> (clipper ship) English ship wrecked in 1872

Yatala was a British clipper ship that was built in England in 1865 and wrecked on the north coast of France in 1872. She spent her seven-year career with Anderson, Thomson and Co's Orient Line, sailing between London and South Australia.

<i>South Australian</i> (clipper ship)

South Australian was a composite-hulled clipper ship that was built in Sunderland in 1868 and sank in the Bristol Channel in 1889. She was a successor to clippers St Vincent and City of Adelaide. For nearly two decades she voyaged annually between London and South Australia.

<i>Orient</i> (clipper ship) A clipper ship of 1,133 tons, built in 1853

Orient was a wooden-hulled, three-masted sailing ship that was built in England in 1853 and scrapped in Gibraltar in 1925. She served in the Crimean War, and then spent two decades with James Thompson & Co's "Orient Line" of ships sailing between Great Britain and South Australia.

William Begg was a ship's captain in the merchant navy and as a privateer who made many voyages between England, Africa, the Far East and Adelaide, South Australia, where he later settled and had success as a businessman in Port Adelaide.

<i>The Goolwa</i> (clipper ship) Three-masted, composite-hulled clipper ship

The Goolwa was a three-masted, composite-hulled clipper ship that was built for the trade between Great Britain and South Australia. She was built in Scotland in 1864 and sank in the Western Approaches in 1888.

St Vincent was a three-masted sailing ship that was built in England in 1865, renamed Axel in 1894 and scrapped in 1907. For the first part of her career she was a clipper, trading between London and Adelaide. She was later re-rigged as a barque, and spent the final part of her career she was under Norwegian ownership.

Kaisow, a composite clipper, was built by Robert Steele & Company at Greenock and launched on 19 November 1868.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Killick</span> British sea captain

James Killick was a British sea captain, shipowner and entrepreneur. He founded Killick Martin & Company with James Henry Martin.

References

  1. ↑ Variously spelled Thompson or Thomson; by some references both in the same sentence.
  2. ↑ A. T. Saunders (5 March 1927). "Notes and Queries". The Register . Vol. XCII, no. 26, 692. Adelaide. p. 14. Retrieved 11 April 2017– via Trove.
  3. 1 2 3 "Rotherhithe blog". 28 April 2016. Retrieved 12 April 2017.
  4. ↑ Mercantile Navy List. London. 1870. p. 82. Retrieved 24 May 2022– via Crew List Index Project.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  5. ↑ "Some famous Clipper Ships of Olden Days". The Observer . Vol. LXXVIII, no. 5, 841. Adelaide. 1 January 1921. p. 26. Retrieved 5 April 2017– via Trove.
  6. ↑ This was a recognised problem with the Belle Tout lighthouse, and the impetus to build the Beachy Head Lighthouse.
  7. ↑ "The Coonatto Enquiry". South Australian Register . Vol. XLI, no. 9228. Adelaide. 12 June 1876. p. 4. Retrieved 11 April 2017– via Trove.
  8. ↑ "Shipwreck and Loss of Life". South Australian Register . Vol. XLII, no. 9686. Adelaide. 29 November 1877. p. 5. Retrieved 11 April 2017– via Trove.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.