Stone Fleet (New South Wales)

The Stone Fleet was the colloquial name for the small coastal ships that carried crushed-stone construction aggregate ('blue metal') to Sydney from the Illawarra ports of Kiama and Shellharbour and the nearby ocean jetties at Bombo and Bass Point.

There are some intrusions of igneous rocks in the Sydney area, particularly at Prospect Hill[2] and Hornsby,[3] but these isolated outcrops, although later quarried, were insufficient to meet demand.In the southern part of the Illawarra region, south from Sydney, there are extensive igneous rock formations—mainly basalt—stretching from north of Shellharbour to south of Kiama at Gerringong, and extending right to the coastline.

Around Kiama, the formations—known as the Gerringong Volcanics—are the result of lava flows from the extinct collapsed volcanic vent known as Saddleback Mountain.

[1] Ultimately, sail gave way completely to steam, ending the need for this unique method of shedding speed.

Until 1936, a branch of the tramway, along Manning Street, also took stone to a set of staiths south of the Kiama railway station, where it was loaded onto wagons for transport by rail.

[18] Although receiving some protection from Bass Point to the south and Cowrie Island to north, the Shellharbour jetty was exposed to heavy seas from the east or north-east.

A wooden jetty was constructed around 1880 at Bass Point—an area also known in those times as 'Long Point'—to load crushed stone from an adjacent quarry.

[33] These steamships were, in turn, superseded gradually, by somewhat larger steel-hulled vessels, from the 1910s onwards, although surviving wooden-hulled steamers, such as Dunmore and Belbowrie continued to carry crushed stone during the inter-war period.

The last ship of the 'Stone Fleet', the self-discharging bulk carrier MV Claudia, was much larger and faster than the earlier vessels.

Many sailing vessels were lost in the earlier period of the 'Stone Trade'[1] In 1881, the schooners Industry and Mary Peverley where both attempting to enter port at Kiama, with a strong north-east wind blowing.

Mary Peverley managed to drag a second anchor over the chain, narrowly avoiding collision with another schooner, Prima Donna.

Later, carrying stone from Bombo in 1885, she collided, at night, with the steamer Glaucus off Bradley's Head in Sydney Harbour.

[36][13][37] The wooden-hull steamer Civility collided with Illawarra, off Kiama, in August 1881,[38][39] You Yang in January 1886—after which she sank off Bradleys Head[40] but was apparently refloated—and Vision in July 1902,[41][42] surviving to be broken up in 1918.

[29] In 1894, the small wooden steamer Resolute, out of Kiama, sprang a leak off Five Islands and was saved by being beached In Wollongong Harbour.

[43] Also in 1894, the Bowra, a wooden steamer that had been put on the Kiama run in 1893 assisting the Resolute,[44] also sprang a leak near Seal Rocks, while carrying coal to the Clarence from Newcastle, and foundered, without loss of life.

[45][31][46] The wooden-hull Dunmore had a narrow escape after she collided with a much larger ship, the 'sixty-miler' Kelloe, two miles off the Botany Bay heads in May 1902.

[47][48][49] Dunmore collided with a naval longboat off Mrs Macquarie's Point in Sydney Harbour in 1909, resulting in the drowning of 15 sailors from HMS Encounter.

[52] In 1918, the Dunmore was involved in yet another collision—this time with the tug Champion—and sustained damage; a Court of Marine Inquiry found the Champion's master responsible.

in 1924, the wooden steamer Kiltobranks had just loaded 'blue metal' at Shellharbour but, upon leaving the wharf, she went aground nearby during a north-easterly gale.

[16][53][54]The small wooden twin-screw coastal steamer, Stone Fleet ship, and sometime sixty-miler, Belbowrie, had survived a grounding on a sandy bottom at Doughboy Point (east of Boat Harbour[55]), in June 1923,[56][57] and a collision with a submerged object that holed her hull, in February 1931.

Members of the Maroubra Surf Life Saving Club rowed to the scene, in two surfboats, but could not approach the ship safely, due to the breaking waves.

Her crew of ten all survived; they made their way to safety, one-by-one, hand-over-hand, suspended from a 70 foot long (21 m) rope line, while being drenched by the heavy rain and breaking surf.

With her bunker coal wet due to waves breaking over the ship, it took her 46 hours to reach Sydney, after needing to take shelter in Botany Bay.

The crew took to lifeboats and rafts but were too close to the reef to be picked up safely by the CSR ship, Fiona, that was nearby.

[68][69][70] Later in 1951, Paterson —carrying general cargo at the time— sprang a leak off The Entrance and made for the shelter of Cabbage Tree Bay, immediately north of Norah Head, where she anchored and then sank, around 300m from the old jetty, in 10m of water.

[71][72] The location was not far from where Paterson had been beached and later refloated, after a similar incident, in November 1947, while carrying coal to Sydney,[73] but this time it was the end of her.

[1] Hexham Bank had survived her time carrying coal as a 'sixty-miler' but, in June 1978, while preparing to load crushed stone at Bass Point, she caught fire.

With the older Stone Fleet ships all gone by then, the trade at the new Bass Point jetty used ex-'sixty-miler' colliers, like Hexham Bank, which were available after the end of gas production from coal.The new operation at Bass Point and the use of a larger ship, MV Claudia, resulted in the last years of the trade achieving the highest shipments.

Remnants of the narrow-gauge tramway once could be found in Terralong Street, Kiama, outside the Presbyterian Church and the locations of the loading bins at the basin can still be identified.

A Hanson concrete batching plant remained at Blackwattle Bay in January 2020, at the site of the former unloading facility, but was no longer used by ships.