Sixty-miler

The waters in which the ocean jetties were located were in nautical parlance called "open roadsteads", meaning "an area near the shore where vessels anchor with relatively little protection from the sea.

On 16 April 1914 the sixty-miler Wallarah, while departing Catherine Hill Bay during a squally "east-nor-easter", was wrecked when heavy seas forced her onto the reef 70-yards to the south of the jetty.

In March 1908, Derwent was leaving Blackwattle Bay and deviating to avoid some small vessels anchored in the area, when she struck the dolphin protecting the bridge structure.

Ships made use of the tides to avoid running aground in shallow Fern Bay, when laden with coal and heading downstream from the tidal Hunter River port of Hexham to the sea.

[135] Under the command of the same captain, the ship that replaced Minora on the Newcastle-Sydney run, the schooner May Byrnes, was caught by a sudden change of wind direction, while entering Port Jackson, and was wrecked on North Head, in February 1901; all her crew survived.

In 1875, bound for Sydney from Catherine Hill Bay, on a calm but dark and foggy night, the 178 ton three-mast, single-screw 'auxiliary steamer', Susannah Cuthbert, ran aground at Long Reef.

In 1913, Euroka, a small iron paddle steamer carrying coal from Lake Macquarie to Sydney, having been abandoned by her crew, washed up on Long Reef and was wrecked.

[157][158] On 24 February 1917, a wooden sixty-miler, Yambacoona, was steaming toward Sydney within "200 to 300-feet" of Broken Head (at Terrigal, NSW)—an inquiry later found this far too close to land for safety—when the key came out of a pinion wheel in her steering gear.

The Commissioners also inspected eighteen ships—including two under 80-tons—and the loading facilities at Catherine Hill Bay, Hexham, The Dyke (Newcastle), Bulli, Bellambi, Wollongong and Port Kembla.

It is known that, before she left Bulli—with both hatches open[21]—the weather had changed, due to a Southerly Buster, and there were 44 mph (71 km/h) winds and probably a rising sea,[162] diminishing the chance that her crew could survive the sinking, and none of them did.

[168] Belbowrie escaped serious damage, in June 1923, when she ran aground on a sandy bottom at Doughboy Point—a small rock headland to the east of Boat Harbour[169]—five miles north of Cronulla.

[170] In August 1923, the small wooden sixty-miler, Austral (157 tons), was fortunate to escape almost unharmed, after running aground on the Sow and Pigs Reef, in Sydney Harbour.

[179] In 1924, she run aground at Cannae Point near the North Head Quarantine Station, while carrying coal bound for the nearby Manly Gasworks wharf; her crew managed to refloat her under her own power.

[180] Later, in 1927, en route from Catherine Hill Bay, she foundered off Terrigal, due to water entering the holds through hull plates in the bow; seven of her crew died.

Both vessels put their engines into reverse, avoiding a more serious collision, but a glancing blow, against the square corner of the ferry, caused a gaping hole in her hull, fortunately above the waterline.

In June 1928 during a gale and heavy seas, the small wooden-hulled collier, White Bay, first capsized trying to enter Newcastle and then washed ashore in the Stockton Bight; five lives were lost, with only one survivor.

[200][201][202][203][36] On 5 March 1929, a Court of Marine Inquiry found that Annie M. Miller left Bulli with a decided list to port, caused by improper loading and that she was overloaded by 37 tons.

The Inquiry stated that, while it could not definitely come to a conclusion as to the direct cause of the sinking, its opinion was that the improper loading and the failure to place the tarpaulins led to the ship's loss.

At the Marine Court of Inquiry into her loss, evidence was given that Captain Smith had admitted himself that he had on 'dozens of occasions' taken Christina Fraser to sea with her hatches off and while coal was still being trimmed, apparently only doing so to save time.

[208] She was last seen off Gabo Island on 24 June 1933 during a gale, then—despite an extensive search, and except for some wreckage washed up at Lakes Entrance—Christina Fraser and her crew of seventeen men disappeared without trace.

[217] In May 1936, Abersea (formerly South Bulli), en route from Sydney to Wollongong during a southerly gale, stranded on the Bellambi Reef, as a result of a navigation error by her second officer.

The course set when passing Port Kembla should have taken her three miles off the cape, but an incoming tide and heavy weather on the starboard side possibly caused the ship to drift gradually inshore, while maintaining the notionally correct heading.

[226] In January 1939, a small wooden steamer, Stone Fleet ship, and sometime sixty-miler, Belbowrie, en route for Shellharbour, ran onto a rock shelf and was wrecked, at the southern point of Maroubra Bay.

In October 1944, the former sixty-miler Duckenfield—the second ship to carry that name—had been renamed Gyoun Maru and was under the Japanese flag, when sunk by American naval aircraft, south-west of Taiwan, in the South China Sea.

[233][234] A similar fate befell the former Beulah, which had been sold to a Chinese company in 1935; captured by the Japanese and renamed Shintai Maru, she was bombed and sunk by American aircraft, north-west of Tsunoshima, in July 1945.

[236] In 1947, the small coastal steamer Paterson had just returned from wartime duty with the Royal Australian Navy and on her first trip carrying coal from Catherine Hill Bay to Sydney, when she had to be beached near Norah Head.

[245][246][247][248][249][250][251] The pilot boat, Captain Cook (1938), had passed through the heads to start the search, around 3:15 a.m., but the police launch Nemesis did not put to sea, until two hours after the signal from the ship was received.

[15] Hexham Bank had survived her time carrying coal as a sixty-miler but, in June 1978, while preparing to load construction aggregate ("blue metal") at Bass Point, she caught fire.

[15][271] Now better known as the "forest ship", the rusting hulk of the sixty-miler Ayrfield (built in 1911 and originally named Corrimal) rests in shallow water in Homebush Bay on the Parramatta River, which at one time was used as a breaker's yard.

[139] The stripped hulks of Bellambi (originally Five Islands), Malachite, and Hexham Bank lie in deep water off the Sydney Heads, where they were scuttled after recovery of items and materials of value.