Incomparable Captain Cadell [illustrated edition] 1741141087, 9781741141085

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The Incomparable Captain Cadell

The Incomparable Captain Cadell JOHN NICHOLSON

A SUE HINES BOOK ALLEN & UNWIN

First published in 2004 Copyright text, maps and pencil sketches © John Nicholson 2004 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10% of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act. A Sue Hines Book Allen & Unwin 83 Alexander Street Crows Nest NSW 2065 Australia Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100 Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218 Email: [email protected] Web: www.allenandunwin.com National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: Nicholson, John, 1950–. The incomparable Captain Cadell. Includes index. ISBN 1 74114 108 7. 1. Cadell, Francis, 1822–1879.-2. Pioneers – South Australia – Murray River Region (N.S.W.) –S. Aust. – Biography. 3. Adventure and adventurers – Biography. 4. Murray River Region (N.S.W.–S. Aust.) – History.-I. Title. 994.23031092 Designed by MAU Design Typeset by Pauline Haas Index by Fay Donlevy Printed in Australia by Griffin Press 1-3-5-7-9-10-8-6-4-2

CONTENTS

Preface

ix

Chapter 1

The Firth of Forth: Growing up among ships 1822–35

1

Chapter 2

The River Thames: Preparing for sea 1836

13

Chapter 3

The Minerva: To the end of the earth and back 1836–40

27

Chapter 4

The Pearl River: In the service of empire 1840–46

41

Chapter 5

The Royal Sovereign: Glimpses of the future 1846–49

63

Chapter 6

The Queen of Sheba: Building a clipper 1849–53

77

Chapter 7

The Murray River: An opportunity goes begging 1852

95

Chapter 8

The Forerunner: A canvas boat on the Murray River 1852

109

Chapter 9

The Lady Augusta: The pioneer of the Murray 1853

125

Chapter 10

The Albury and the Gundagai: A man of substance 1853–58

155

Chapter 11

The Darling River: Death of a transport empire 1856–61

183

Chapter 12

The Waikato River: Another colonial war 1858–66

203

Chapter 13

The Eagle: The explorer 1866–68

225

Chapter 14

The Trois Amis: South Sea trader and blackbirder 1870–77

239

Chapter 15

The Gem: Pearl shell, slavery and bloody murder 1877–79

261

Epilogue

283

Notes

290

Acknowledgements

301

Picture credits

302

Index

303

Francis Cadell

Preface Two names struggle for pre-eminence in the story of Australia’s Murray River paddle-steamers. One – William Randell – holds a permanent place in the hearts and affections of river people and South Australians. The other, notwithstanding its owner’s more substantial contribution, has faded into the background. I first encountered references to Captain Francis Cadell several years ago when I was working on a book for children about the Murray River. The book would deal with aspects of the river’s history, ecology and folklore. The riverboats, of course, would have their very own chapter, and as I pursued my research, Cadell’s prodigious contribution to the establishment of a thriving paddle-steamer trade emerged. I have always been intrigued by those over-achieving British empire-builders who litter the Victorian world like soldier ants on a forest floor – so competent, so dependable, so energetic and yet so relaxed about it all. They never seemed to doubt what they were doing as they walked into other people’s countries and – outnumbered thousands to one – imposed British law and order, built railways and ports, made fortunes and went to church on Sundays. Cadell was one of those. His clear, piercing gaze stares out from steel engravings in faded copies of the Argus and the Illustrated London News, cutting through the years to directly engage us with the uncomplicated surety of a sea-captain, an explorer, an administrator. His self-confident prose flows from countless letters and diaries, as pithy and pointed now as the day he wrote them.

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Cadell came to South Australia in the 1850s and, over the next ten years, almost single-handedly transformed 2500 kilometres of shallow, twisting, snag-choked rivers into the major transportation network for inland eastern Australia. His part in this considerable feat is well documented, as is his very public feud with the kindlier but much less interesting Randell. But what caught my eye as I researched were the references – tantalisingly few and sketchy – to the pageant of adventures he seems to have crammed into the remaining years of his short life, and to the sinister shadows that gradually came to darken his initially engaging disposition. He was, by some accounts, a captain in the Royal Navy when he arrived in Australia in command of the Royal Sovereign, having played a part in the first Opium War and then carved a reputation battling pirates in the South China Sea. Later in life he would take up whaling and then piracy and blackbirding, wandering the oceans until his ‘mysterious death in the South Pacific’ in 1879. Along the way he is supposed to have studied steam engines in Glasgow and irrigation in Lombardy, run riverboats on the Mississippi and the Amazon, explored some remote parts of the Australian coastline, designed and built fast clipper ships and even tried a spot of farming in outback South Australia. Could all these things possibly be true? And whether they were true or not, why has this powerhouse of a man been so spectacularly snubbed by history? Why has the comparatively modest contribution of William Randell to the transformation of the Murray River, and the impact of that event on the economic history of Australia, been so well recognised while Cadell’s was brushed under the carpet?

PREFACE

xi

The answers, of course, are to be found in the questions themselves. Cadell’s activities both on the Murray and in other places made him some powerful friends – but also some powerful enemies. When news of his death began to emerge, the steady flow of press interest that had accompanied him during his life became a flood. Dozens of obituaries appeared in newspapers across Australia, New Zealand, the Dutch East Indies, Singapore, Great Britain, even India, and it was not long before his critics – decorously silent for a while – joined in the clamour. His supporters rallied to his defence, and the battle ebbed and flowed for decades until there was almost no common ground at all – the protagonists could not even agree on the colour of his hair. The dispute about Cadell’s character reached some kind of a climax in the early decades of the twentieth century, when A.T. Saunders, the son of Port Elliot’s first harbourmaster, wrote a number of long letters about him to the Adelaide press. Saunders collected a vast dossier of material on Cadell: press clippings, lists of shipping arrivals and departures, accompanied by his own handwritten notes on dozens of scraps of paper. I suppose he intended to gather it into a book, but that never happened. It would have been a savage critique indeed; Saunders had a very low opinion of the captain. His collection of Cadellia is now in the Mortlock Library in South Australia. For me it provided an unexpected treasure-trove, opening up an array of new directions to investigate. It includes a long list of dates on which articles and letters to do with Cadell appeared in the press. Saunders must have trawled through millions of lines of newsprint to compile this list; he certainly saved me a lot of work.

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Saunders’ collection of documents (with accompanying devastating commentary) is balanced by the other major source of available information. A scrapbook in the possession of a relative of Cadell in the UK, copied by the Australian Joint Copying Project, contains a lot of press clippings again, a short biographical note by Cadell’s father, and a curious ‘history’ of Australia, written in Cadell’s own hand, which flows seamlessly into a diary or autobiography covering his own contributions to Australia’s exploration and development. It also contains a number of letters. This material appears to have been put together by a family member – possibly his father – because there is a clamorous absence of material relating to blackbirding, or indeed of anything critical of Cadell. So my search for the real Cadell has been entertained and informed at every point by a sort of adversarial court of claim and counterclaim from his supporters and his detractors. In the end many of the more speculative assertions proved to be little more than unsubstantiated scuttlebutt. Others understated his more spectacular or villainous deeds. In the end the comfortable façade of Victorian capability also crumbled under closer examination. The incomparable Captain Cadell turned out to be a much more complicated person than I had imagined.

CHAPTER 1

The Firth of Forth Growing up among ships 1822–35

It is 1829, and down by the chilly waters of the Firth of Forth, at Leith’s Old East Dock, a young boy crouches at the edge of the quay. Wrapped up against the cold mist, a line held lightly in his hand, he directs his gaze persistently to the sailing ships and steam tugs that ply the estuary. He is a familiar figure to the stevedores and sailors, the wagon drivers, ropemakers and coopers, the officers and supercargoes who work these wharves, feeding his imagination and filling his head with the lore of the sea and the love of adventure. At the age of seven or eight Francis Cadell has spent every available minute wandering the waterfronts of Leith and nearby Cockenzie. Instead of going to school he tags along on his father’s regular round of visits to the

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Cockenzie Boat Harbour, where his small fleet of trading vessels berths, and to his coalmine at Tranent, about 4 kilometres inland. With his father he boards the weather-beaten brigs and schooners newly arrived from distant ports and listens to the talk of cargoes and customs, of pirates and foreign wars, of sails and rigging, of urgent repairs and departure schedules. He acquires a sailor’s eye for the weather and an intimate knowledge of the tides along the Firth. Francis is hard pressed to keep up as his father stalks the narrow lanes of Leith, pursuing his daily business with provedores, ships’ chandlers and forwarding agents. Sometimes the young boy wanders off alone, ducking into the inns and taverns that line the river-bank alleys. The talk here is of record-breaking runs to Australia, of navigational breakthroughs and revolutionary ship designs coming out of America that promise to carve weeks off a fast passage to the Indies, of storms at sea and loss of life, of legendary wooden ships and the legendary iron men who sail them. But for the best stories of all Francis doesn’t need to step outside the large, comfortable family house at Cockenzie, thick with the memories of three overperforming Cadell generations. His father’s seafaring friends, home from China, the Indies or the South Pacific, gather to talk of trade in sandalwood and spars, Timor ponies, oriental curiosities and second-hand muskets. And the names of far-off places ricochet around the room like silver bullets: Cape Town and Calcutta, Batavia and Valparaiso, Mauritius, Tokopia, Madeira.

When Francis William Cadell was born at Cockenzie House on 9 February 1822, the Firth of Forth – with its major port at

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3

Leith and countless smaller harbours – was packed with sailing ships of every description, the wharves and jetties banked up ten abreast with magnificent armed East Indiamen, weatherbeaten coastal packets and colliers, sleek cutters, fishing smacks and whalers. The roadstead was studded with men-ofwar, brigs, schooners, barques, barquentines, even the occasional Baltimore clipper with its raked masts, sharp bow and undercut stern. In a golden age of shipbuilding, the Forth was roaring with activity. Together with the Clyde, Tyne and Thames rivers – where Browne’s, Napier’s, Blackwall and countless other yards were busy laying the keels for a new generation of sailing ships, and planning already for the clipper era that would see the fastest sailing ships the world has ever known – Leith was busy, building, repairing and fitting out its share of English and Scottish shipping. In the year of Francis Cadell’s birth, 3071 ships totalling 277 000 tons operated out of Scottish ports. More importantly, the Forth and Clyde were leading the way with a technological revolution that would change the face of world shipping and eventually spell the demise of sail. In 1825, 53 steamboats were operating on the Clyde. In 1826 the steamship United Kingdom, designed by David Napier and built at Greenock by Robert Steele, took over the Leith-to-London passenger run, putting a lot of the traditional, fast Leith smacks out of business. Cadell’s birth was straddled by that of two other Scottish seafaring greats. The legendary blood-and-guts clipper ship captain ‘Bully’ Forbes was born in Aberdeen in 1821. He would carve a reputation as the hardest driving, most fearless of clipper captains, regularly seeking the ‘furious fifties’ and ‘shrieking sixties’ with a full spread of canvas, risking all –

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MAP 1 The Firth of Forth

ships, cargoes and lives – for that glorious record-breaking fast passage to Australia and the Orient and its attendant publicity. But his career would invite condemnation, and collapse in controversy, much as Cadell’s own career would. James Baines, born in 1823, managed to keep his career intact. He founded the Black Ball line of clippers based in Liverpool and dominated world trade for two or three glorious decades, just as the East India Company had been doing for a much longer time. Of the three, Cadell is the least known, but his curious career, his complex Jekyll-and-Hyde personality and the mystery surrounding his death make him by far the most intriguing. Francis Cadell was the third of eleven children. His gorgeously ornamented family tree, drawn up in 1890 by Edinburgh solicitor J.H. Stevenson and trimmed with a cornucopia of flags, crests and medals, reveals a comfortably upper-crust army family. Modestly titled senior army officers sprout from its branches and twigs like apples in an orchard. Two of Francis’ own brothers rose to dizzy heights. Robert

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5

(number five) was a general, served on the staff at the Crimea and won a CB (Companion of the Order of the Bath). Thomas (number nine) was a staff officer in Bengal and won a VC during the Indian Mutiny. Of his other brothers and sisters we know less. Martha was the oldest, four years older than Francis; John (number two) was the Belgian vice-consul at Leith for a period; Janet (number seven) wrote a book called Fisher Folk. The family tree also reveals another, altogether different family obsession – a fascination for the latest in industrial technology – that was to play a much more significant part in Cadell’s future. In 1732 Francis’ great-grandfather William (1708–77), then a successful merchant at Haddington, moved to Cockenzie, leasing Cockenzie House, the Boat Shore Harbour, some commercial saltpans and the coal pit at Tranent. Cockenzie House had been built in 1675 for the Seton family. It was a plain but elegant, two-storey, pink sandstone building. At one end it abutted the robust ‘Hanseatic Barn’, also built in the seventeenth century by merchants of the Hanseatic League who traded extensively with the Forth ports. Its main claim to fame, apart from the Cadells’ period of occupancy, seems to be its association with Prince Charles and the 1715 rebellion. Overlooking the battlefield of Prestonpans, where Charles Stuart (the Scottish pretender to the English throne) defeated King George II’s army led by Sir John Cope, it allowed the Seton family a ringside seat and the opportunity for a mid-battle change of allegiance when they saw which way the fight was going. Prince Charles was entertained the evening after the battle at Cockenzie House, where he deposited 200 ‘Lochaber axes’ for storage and discovered Sir John Cope’s war chest containing £2000 that had been left

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there before the battle. The Setons were punished for their perfidy after the war, when the English seized the estate. The Tranent coalfields had been producing coal since the thirteenth century. In 1722, ten years before William’s arrival, a railway line had been built linking the mine with Cockenzie. It was the first railway in Scotland, a harbinger of the close links Cockenzie and the Cadell family would have with iron and steam. William Cadell also owned a small fleet of ships, which traded with various European ports, mainly carrying cargoes of timber and iron. Around 1750 he became friends with Dr John Roebuck, who had recently come to live in Prestonpans. Roebuck and his business partner, Samuel Garbett, were developing a commercially viable method of producing sulphuric acid. Cadell suggested that they apply their expertise

British battery at the siege of Sevastopol

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7

to the local production of iron, large quantities of which he was importing from Sweden and Russia every year in his ships. Britain was already at the forefront of iron smelting technology. Abraham Darby had used coke as a fuel for the first time in 1747 at his Coalbrookdale iron foundry, allowing much higher temperatures to be generated. By 1750 it was possible to produce malleable pig-iron in bars, leading in turn to the production of large iron structural members: posts, beams and plates. Improvements in iron and, later, steel manufacture in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries turned the world upside down. Iron and steel would change forever the nature of work, creating mechanical equipment to replace every kind of manual job from the most highly skilled to the most brutally labour-intensive. They would accelerate transport and they would lend vast new possibilities to architecture and structural engineering. The development of the steam engine – made possible by improvements in metallurgy – would create a wild and, at times, dangerous ride for people such as Francis Cadell, who attempted, not just to get on board, but to take over the driver’s seat as well. In 1759 William Cadell, Samuel Garbett and Dr John Roebuck established the Carron Ironworks near Falkirk on the Firth of Forth, employing the latest coke-fired blast-furnace technology. The Carron works forged rapidly to the cutting edge of the industrial revolution. William’s son William was also a founding partner. He became the first manager of the works in 1760, on a salary of £100, guiding the enterprise through its first difficult years. In 1769 he tired of what he described as ‘this bitter cup’, resigned and went into business on his own account, developing the famous iron-rolling mills at

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Crammond, as well as supplying Carron with coal from various mines around the Forth region. He later started the Clyde Ironworks near Glasgow. Another son, John (1740–1814), also became a partner, but the Cadell family sold out of the Carron Ironworks entirely in 1773, just as William’s steadying hand began to be missed and the works entered a stormy period that almost destroyed it. The company’s most famous product was the carronade or ‘smasher’, a light, large-bore naval gun used on British merchant ships and warships up until about 1815. Carronades provided British sea power with a major armaments advantage during the Napoleonic Wars. The works also produced a range of larger ordnance and its guns acquired the comforting reputation of never blowing up in the faces of their gun crews. Like all arms manufacturers before or since, the company had no hesitation in selling to foreign countries – past, present or future enemies amongst them. Spain and Russia became good customers. No doubt there were plenty of Carron guns pointing back at General Robert Cadell during the siege of Sevastopol. The Carron Company also built James Watt’s first steam engine. In 1789 they provided the engine for Britain’s first steamship, an unnamed experimental model built by William Symington. In 1802 a second experimental boat, the Charlotte Dundas was trialled on the Forth-to-Clyde canal. John Cadell purchased Cockenzie House after his father’s death in 1777 and continued to run his share of the family’s mining, manufacturing and shipping interests from there. On 27 April 1790, Hew Francis Cadell (Francis’ father) was born. He established a precedent he may later have regretted, going to sea as a midshipman on HMS Atlas (Baltic Fleet). He was

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soon home, however, taking over the family businesses after his father’s death in 1814. He continued to build up the trading fleet, operated whale ships in the North Atlantic, constructed a new harbour at Cockenzie, lobbied unsuccessfully for a rail link with Edinburgh, and demonstrated that his good works were not entirely self-motivated by donating land for church construction with admirable even-handedness to several different denominations. On 21 July 1817 he married his cousin, Janet Marion Buchan-Sydesserfe. Hew died at the age of 83, having outlived many of his children. He had been enormously enterprising, energetic and outspoken, vigorously supporting Francis in material ways during his early career, later backing his son morally and verbally against the tide of controversy that enveloped him. In later life he praised the young Francis for ‘daring, activity and ingenuity’. Perhaps Francis became a bit too daring, active and ingenious, because at the age of eight the boy was packed off to school in Edinburgh (to the ‘Edinburgh Academy’ according to Hew, to the ‘Edinburgh High School’ according to the Argus). There The Carron Ironworks was at the forefront of armaments manufacture

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is no record of his academic achievements, nor of his living arrangements while he was at school. He may have travelled the 25 kilometres from Cockenzie every day or boarded in Edinburgh and gone home for the weekends. What we do know is that five years later he was to get a rude shock – indeed two rude shocks in swift succession. At the beginning of 1835, as he was approaching his thirteenth birthday, Francis was sent away to boarding school at Cuxhaven in Germany. Why Germany? Why Cuxhaven? Was he playing up a bit – still too daring and active – and Cuxhaven provided some kind of boot camp to bring him into line? Was this a last-ditch effort by his parents to head off the young man’s determination to go to sea? If so it was a poor choice of location. Cuxhaven is a small port at the mouth of the Elbe River, near Hamburg, visited regularly by Hew Cadell’s ships. The shifting sands of the Elbe estuary and Helgolander Bucht, brilliantly brought to life in Erskine Childers’ The Riddle of the Sands, were close by. Vast, flat billows of sand and mud extended far out into the sea. As the tide ebbed, at a fast walking pace, they were left high and dry, separated from each other by a veinous braid of salty rivulets and shallow ponds. At high tide thousands of square kilometres of sea covered the banks by a mere metre or two, and a bewildering forest of ricketty poles, incomprehensible to the uninitiated, marked the navigable channels. The Elbe River men knew these channels like the wrinkles on the palms of their hands – and they needed to. They would delicately thread the narrow trenches in their 18 m- long Elbe ewers (large, beamy generalpurpose cargo boats with a low freeboard, a long, wide hatch, a demountable mast and gaff-rigged mainsail). The fishermen

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MAP 2 The Elbe estuary

knew them too, out in all weathers in their smelt ewers or bending to the oars in smaller 8-metre eel jolles. These waters would provide the young Francis with endless hours of joy, mucking about in small jolles or catching rides on a variety of specialised river barges: Elbe schutes, loaded with fruit, kirschen jolles with their boxes of cherries. Helping the boatman unfold his peculiar hinged mast and hoist the gaff sail could bring the reward of a handful of plump, ripe cherries. All the time Francis was learning the tricks of the tides, the vagaries of the wind, the uncertainties of shifting sandbanks and the sudden disorienting blindness of a heavy sea mist rolling in off the North Sea. Schooling enough for one who would make the navigation of large rivers in far-flung lands, and their restlessly unpredictable mouths, his life’s work. But it must have been a frightening and lonely experience

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for a just-thirteen-year-old to be shipped nearly 1000 kilometres across the North Sea (four or five days’ journey) in the middle of winter to a foreign country, to communicate in a foreign language, to go to a school where he had no friends. Cadell was only at Cuxhaven for a year, but I can’t help wondering how important this experience was in creating the tough, insular individual whose apparent inability to form close friendships would evolve ever more quickly into a callous disregard for others in later life. Two months after arriving in Cuxhaven, Francis received another shock: news of his brother’s death. William was just a year older, the closest of all his siblings. Francis came home at the end of the year and, lured still by the smell of salt and tar, at last persuaded his father to let him go to sea. Hew Cadell made some enquiries, pulled some strings, and finally got him a midshipman’s berth on the Minerva, bound for China, leaving in February. She was a big ship and, better still, an East Indiaman. (At least, that’s what Hew Cadell tells us.)

CHAPTER 2

The River Thames Preparing for sea 1836

Early in the new year, fourteen-year-old Francis Cadell turns his back on a bitterly cold East Lothian winter. With his midshipman’s kit jammed into a new sea bag and manfully shouldered, he makes his way up the slippery gangplank of a Leith smack, then settles down for an uncomfortable two or three days buffeting down the coast through a heavy swell and sleeting rain, to London. He plans to lodge with one of his father’s shipping contacts – at Greenwich or Deptford – before joining his ship, along with most of the crew, at the very last minute. Fleets of ships bound for the Orient begin assembling along the Thames from early October every year. East India and West India docks are by now jammed with ships in varying states of readiness. After dumping his kit at

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his lodgings, Francis goes in search of the Minerva and finds her in the East India Export Dock. After her recent voyage to the East the Minerva has undergone an extensive round of repairs and maintenance. Her rigging has been replaced, new sails have been cut, worn ones repaired. The ship has been thoroughly cleaned and painted inside and out. She is now finally ready to be refloated and surveyed. With a skeleton crew on board – Francis comes along for the ride – she is towed unceremoniously by a smoky steam tug, downstream to Gravesend, where provedores deliver drayload after drayload of maritime spare parts, maintenance items and stores. Enough paint to completely coat the ship for the return voyage comes on board, as do barrels of pitch, tallow, turpentine and rosin. Large quantities of oak, deal and treenails (timber dowel fixings) are stowed away, accessible for running repairs. One hundred kilograms of ‘old junk’ (worn and damaged rope used to make oakum for caulking), several tonnes of spare cordage, 20 bolts of canvas, enough wood and coal for the cooking fires, and enough cotton and oil for the lamps are all stowed under the first officer’s critical gaze. He also supervises the filling of water butts. Between deliveries, the crew busies itself scooping 50 tonnes of water for the voyage straight out of the river. It is filthy, but it will improve with time, as the organic matter in it begins to ferment. The provedores at Gravesend also supply food for the voyage: 25 tonnes of ‘hard salt junk’ (salt pork or beef), bread (already hard and stale), suet pudding, tongues – it is obviously not the food that attracts Cadell to a life at sea. This unpalatable lot will be well washed down, however, with 40 tonnes of ale, 6 tonnes of wine, 1100 litres of brandy, some cider and rum: by my calculations almost 4 litres of alcohol per person per day! Raisins, currants, vinegar and about 500 litres of lemon juice complete the list of inanimate items. The other items will walk, waddle and trot on board a little later on.

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From time to time one of the Minerva’s paying passengers climbs the gangplank to inspect the accommodation and stow large items of luggage. Back upriver behind another steam tug, and she is ready for her cargo to be expertly stowed by stevedores who know how to fill the complicated nooks and crannies created by a wooden sailing ship’s heavy ribs, beams and knees. The first officer is everywhere – occasionally joined by the captain – lurking around, watching critically, directing, interfering. Intimately familiar with the peculiarities of his ship, Captain Templer is concerned also about how and where certain goods are to be placed. Their relative weights and fragility, the risk of one material contaminating another, their vulnerability to bilge water, the accessibility of some goods (like alcohol) to crew members, are all matters for his thoughtful consideration. Among the last things to come aboard are the guns, gun carriages and an extensive collection of small arms: muskets, bayonets, pistols, poleaxes, cutlasses, bullet moulds, grenade shells, even a forge for making ammunition. Finally the ship’s boats are lashed on deck and the nervous passengers make their way on board. Even for the passengers, a long voyage on a sailing ship is far from comfortable, indeed it is positively dangerous, a calculated risk. Six equally nervous midshipmen stride aboard, outwardly cocky, inwardly knowing that all eyes are on them, waiting for their first mistake. They are all young – fourteen or fifteen years old – mainly from privileged backgrounds, ambitious to become officers and eventually to command their own ships, anxious to do well and outshine their fellows. There is a pecking order to establish. The following day the bulk of the crew come aboard and finish rigging the ship, while Captain Templer remains on shore until the last minute, dealing with paperwork, customs clearances and money matters. Eventually the mate gives the orders to cast off and haul out. The seamen

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MAP 3 The Thames Estuary & MAP 4 inset The Isle of Dogs

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manning the capstan strike up a song in time with the rapid click, click, click of the ratchet as they reel in the warp, using the capstan to winch the ship out of dock. The pilot comes aboard, and the Minerva glides slowly down the Thames, behind another of those tugs that have recently taken so many headaches out of the beginnings and ends of voyages. Later she will heave to. Lighters will come alongside with gunpowder and the remaining ship’s stores – some salt, a couple of spars, some luggage and a farmyard of animals: sheep, goats, pigs, calves, rabbits, turkeys, even cows. The animals are confined in cages or corralled inside the lifeboats, awaiting their invitation to the captain’s table. A few stragglers, including the captain, join the Minerva late at night, coming out by cutter. Then she waits for the tide, and the weather. The start of any voyage under sail from the Thames estuary is a difficult and dangerous business, requiring wind from just the right quarter, skill in navigating the maze of shoals, banks and bends, and hard work from the crew. The risk of getting stuck on the Goodwin Sands is high and will result in a 12-hour wait till the next high water. It can take several days to clear the Downs, time enough for Cadell to find out exactly what he has let himself in for.

Most of what we know about Francis Cadell’s early life is contained in a biographical note written by his father shortly before his death. Clearly he relied on recollections of events that had happened years before. Just as clearly, his account attempts to polish up his son’s fast-tarnishing record. Hew Cadell was certainly conscious of the prestige acquired simply by beginning a life at sea on one of the East India Company’s ships. They were the best ships afloat, the aristocrats

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of the sea. Built to more exacting standards than even the Royal Navy’s ships, their hull planking was 100 millimetres thick instead of 75, and they had iron knees (strengthening the connections between ribs and beams) long before the navy changed from wood. They were generally large ships with bluff bows, plenty of cargo space and plenty of canvas to move it, albeit slowly, between Britain and India or China. They also carried plenty of guns to protect themselves with. Most were built in various yards along the Thames – Blackwall, Deptford, Limehouse, Rotherhithe – by an interwoven web of shipbuilding families that collectively formed the biggest employer in London. Other yards specialised in particular parts of the process: masts or spars, sailmaking, fitting out. The East India Company had fought, bullied and lobbied British and foreign governments for a set of trading perks and monopolies that made it the most successful commercial organisation in the world. It had formed alliances and made treaties with foreign countries, built forts, employed its own army and waged war to protect its overseas interests. It had armed its merchant ships and trained its crews so well that they effectively became cargo-carrying warships, a match for most of the world’s navies. The company’s ships carried the King’s Commission to protect British interests abroad, and there was a regular interchange of officers and crews between Royal Navy and company ships. Perhaps surprisingly the company owned almost none of these ships. Most were leased to it by private owners, often having been built to East India Company specifications by owner-speculators, in anticipation or under promise of immediate long-term lease by the company. Shipowners were

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picturesquely referred to by the company as ‘husbands’. Ownership was often shared by several husbands, to lessen the risk in what was a highly speculative business. Very often the Captain was at least a part owner. He and the other partners had complete power over hiring and firing. And so it was to Captain J. Templer, the Minerva’s outright owner, that Hew Cadell had turned to find a berth for his son. The Minerva, in fact, was not an East India Company-leased vessel in 1836. (Neither, incidentally, were any of the other 38 Minervas listed in Lloyd’s Register for that year.) Hew Cadell’s claim that his son’s first berth was an East Indiaman was only correct to the extent that she had, at an earlier stage in her life, been leased by the company. Now she was operating independently and had been doing so since 1832. She was launched in 1813 and served the company continuously for nearly twenty years – a phenomenally long time. She was the third Minerva to have been employed in the East India Company’s business. The nineteenth century was a period of rapid dislocation in the shipbuilding industry. After 200 years of British dominance, during which the design of sailing ships and their equipment had changed little, big moves were afoot. Across the Atlantic the necessity to outsail the ships of the British naval blockade following the American Declaration of Independence, and a large pack of privateers, was producing improvements in hull design and increased use of fore-and-aft rigging that would culminate in the legendary Baltimore clippers and the whole fast clipper phenomenon of the 1850s. Ample supplies of timber, especially softwood, allowed American shipbuilding to flourish. In Britain, however, timber was in short supply. A shipbuilding

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industry that used up a whole mature oak tree for every ton of shipping it built had plundered British forests until there was almost nothing left. Improvements in metallurgy were coming to the rescue, but in the meantime the East India Company and others had to look elsewhere for their ships. Around 1800 the company started commissioning ships from yards in India, using teak. Teak had the huge advantage of resistance to Toredo Navalis woodworms, which spelt death to most wooden boats operating in tropical waters, necessitating the expensive business of copper-plating hulls. Teak’s other characteristics were, in every way, as good as oak’s. Building ships in India also served the company’s commercial interests. Famine in China in the last decades of the eighteenth century led local farmers to a massive increase in rice cultivation at the cost of other crops, especially cotton. The resulting shortage led to a rapidly expanding trade in cotton from India to China. Between 1808 and 1811 the company commissioned one new ship each year: the Bombay, Charles Grant, Earl of Balcarras and the Minerva from the Parsee shipyard in Bombay, to take advantage of this demand. The master shipbuilder was Jamasetjee Bamanjee, a member of the Parsee family. The longevity of these four ships was legendary, the Bombay serving for 60 years. The Minerva was a big ship – 987 tons. She was armed with twenty 18-pound carronades. She carried a crew of just over 100, including the commander, six mates, surgeon and surgeon’s mate, midshipman-coxswain, bosun and two bosun’s mates, gunner and two gunner’s mates, carpenter and two carpenter’s mates, sailmaker, caulker and mate, six quartermasters, cooper and mate, armourer, captain’s cook, ship’s

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cook, butcher, baker, poulterer and six midshipmen. She carried about ten passengers in addition to the cargo. As the Minerva edged her way past the Downs and out to sea, Cadell had the chance to check out his five companions. They were all ‘gentlemen’ (the sons of middle- and upper-class families). Two or three were, like himself, from naval or merchant marine backgrounds, with fathers who were captains, officers or shipowners. They could all read and write, putting them among an educated elite for their age. For some this would be their second or third major voyage. Wealthy parents could buy a first passage for a young boy to give him a taste for shipboard life – without its demands. Others signed on as ‘captain’s servant’ for one relatively undemanding voyage before throwing themselves in at the deep end. Then they would serve two or three voyages as midshipmen ending in promotion to sixth officer, or a decision to quit and try something else or, at worst, desertion. Almost half of all desertions in the 1790s were midshipmen. They ate in the third mate’s mess, together with the fourth, fifth and sixth mates and the ‘junior passengers’. They were referred to as the ‘guinea pigs’ and they were universally reviled by the crew. ‘These little minions of power’, wrote Royal Navy seaman Samuel Leech in 1813, ‘ordered and drove me round like a dog nor did I and the other boys dare interpose a word. They were officers their word was law and woe betide the presumptuous boy that dared refuse explicit obedience.’ And it was not only the other boys on the ship who had to obey the midshipmen. It must have been particularly galling for the old salts to be berated by fourteen-year-olds with toffy accents,

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aping the officers they were trying so hard to impress. But to disobey an order, even from a guinea pig, was a serious matter, inviting punishment. Captains of sailing ships, even as late as the 1830s, were still a law unto themselves. They maintained control over a large group of poorly educated, sea-toughened hard cases by dint of their own physical and mental toughness, and with the liberal use of an extravagant purgatory of barbaric punishments. The men lived and worked in comfortless, dangerous conditions. Many were drunk whenever they could manage it. Some were violent. Petty crime flourished in a brutal dog-eat-dog environment. Another nineteenth-century mariner, George Watson, describes his shipmates as ‘a sample of every character . . . highwaymen, burglars, pickpockets, debauchees, adulterers, gamesters, lampooners, bastard-getters, impostors, panders, parasites, ruffians, hypocrites, threadworn beaux jack-adandies’. The bosun and his mates, hand-picked for their brawn and sadistic natures, were the captain’s chief enforcers, the cat-o’nine-tails, the three-yarn nettle (three strands of rope tightly knotted together) and the lash, their tools of choice. Tied to a grating, the guilty seaman was ‘cut’ repeatedly, his wound liberally washed with vinegar, and the punishment continued. Bluejacket Jack Nastyface (probably a pseudonym), writing in 1835, describes the results of this cruelty in gruesome detail: ‘. . . his back resembles so much petrified liver, and everystroke [sic] of the cat brings away congealed blood and the boatswain’s mates are looked at with the eye of a hawk to see they do their duty and clear the cat’s tails after every stroke, the blood at the time streaming through their fingers’.

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Even without the floggings life was bad enough, especially if the weather turned nasty. Cold, wet and constantly exhausted, the crew could be called upon at any time to scale the ratlines, crawl out 30 or 40 metres above the pitching deck along violently capricious footropes, to claw at heavy canvas with frozen, bloodied fingers and broken fingernails. Death or serious injury were the inevitable reward for any slip. Between these excursions, a round of hauling ropes, pushing on capstan staves, stowing wet sails, pumping bilge water and scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing awaited them. Meals, at least, provided some relief – or did they? The crew was divided up into a series of messes of about eight men each. The cook doled out the food for each group into a leather ‘mess-jacket’. Breakfast was ‘burgoo’ – porridge with lumps of salt meat in it. Dinner brought more salt meat, this time with peas in the form of a stew, accompanied by dry ship’s biscuits and followed by suet pudding. Occasionally fresh fish or notso-fresh cheese replaced the stew. Supper was a hash of anything returned after dinner; no extra food was allowed for this meal. The appropriately named mess-jackets must have been pretty putrid after a few weeks of this. Cadell, messing with the third mate, enjoyed a slightly higher standard, but the fresh meat and eggs supplied by the captain’s farmyard, the plum duffs, fresh bread, jam and wine were reserved for the captain, first and second officers, surgeon, purser and ‘senior’ passengers. There were some real consolations however. Calm weather or steady winds lessened the workload, allowing for a spot of fishing, a sleep in the sun, conversation and music. Work songs (shanties) remained an important part of shipboard life as long

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as sail power persisted. There were songs for everything: raising the anchor, hauling up sails, pumping and kedging or warping the ship (pulling it along by a rope attached to an anchor). Each watch had a ‘canary’ or ‘shanty-man’ – a seaman who led the singing. Shanties were not for relaxation, but many East Indiamen had ‘captain’s bands’ to provide entertainment for the passengers. A passing ship might allow the passengers and officers to go visiting, perhaps hold a dinner party, and the crew to lower a boat and row the toffs back and forth. Good weather and a pious skipper meant Sunday church. The officer of the watch would give the orders: ‘rig the pulpit and spread the capstan’, and a seaman would drape an ensign over the capstan creating a makeshift altar on which the captain placed the ship’s bible. Five bells sounded, and the captain began reading the service. Time on board ship was told by the ringing of bells, one for each half hour, so five bells was 6.30 am, the watch having started at 4 am. The ship’s routine revolved around four-hour watches (eight bells each). The crew was divided into the starboard watch and the larboard watch, which took the work of running the ship in turns. At eight bells (midnight, 4 am, 8 am, midday, etc.) the watch changed over – the fresh watch starting work, the other going below to sleep or rest. Between 4 pm and 8 pm there were two short ‘dog watches’, allowing the two groups to swap without one having to work a double watch. Breakfast was at 8 am (eight bells), punishments at 11 am (six bells), dinner at midday (eight bells) or 1 pm (two bells) and supper at about 5 pm (two bells). On passenger ships lights out was at 9 pm (two bells) or 10 pm (four bells). I wonder how long it took before the young midshipmen’s

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glamorous images of life on the ocean wave were crushed by this relentless program of heavy work, danger, crime, brutality, bad food and lack of sleep. Or how long it took them to realise how poorly they were being paid for these privileges. Francis Cadell was paid £2/5/- a month for his first job, the same as an ordinary seaman. Stevedores, building workers, indeed most labourers in Britain at the time earned about £12 a month, farm labourers a little less. Ship’s carpenters got £4/10/- a month, much less than their counterparts on dry land. Even captains (in the East India Company) were paid only £10 a month in the 1830s, but that figure alone does not tell us the whole story; the commander, at least, could supplement his wages richly. For a start his pay commenced from the day the ship was floated, months before the voyage began, and during this period his responsibilities (in terms of time) were small. He earned ‘primage’ – a percentage of the voyage’s earnings, amounting to perhaps £100 for the trip, more of course if he was a part owner. Captains were also paid an extra 5/- a day for expenses, and at the end of the voyage they were free to sell the remains of the ship’s massive overprovisioning. One East India captain was described by one of his friends as little more than ‘a vendor of cheese, ham, porter and other filthy articles of lucre’. Captains also sold seats at the captain’s table, usually for about £50, but on occasion for as much as £5000. Captains were paid to take on midshipmen. No doubt the list of perks could go on and on. But the biggest earner of all was the notorious ‘private trade’ carried out openly not only by skippers but by virtually everyone aboard ships involved in international trade. As much as 100 tons were set aside on the Minerva for the captain,

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officers and others to stow goods that they intended to sell at the other end. The captain got the lion’s share of space, of course, but even midshipmen were each allowed to bring a quarter of a ton of bits and pieces for their own little trading ventures. Most private trade was in goods keenly sought after by expats, and in India by the growing Anglo-Indian community intent on establishing lifestyles more British than the British themselves. Saddlery, hounds, fishing tackle, prints, pipes of madeira, port or claret, pickles, beer, cheese, perfume, haberdashery, cutlery – the enterprising private trader would try anything. Some items were prohibited: arms, for example, or goods directly in competition with those consigned in the vessel such as wool, tea or timber. The most popular items were the industrial-revolution knick-knacks collectively known as ‘sing-songs’: chiming clocks, watches, musical boxes, windup moving shepherds and shepherdesses. These had the advantage of making excellent bribes for customs officials in countries sensible enough not to produce such rubbish. The system was tailor-made for economic opportunists. It favoured those who kept their eyes open for chances to make money, and who knew the simple law of supply and demand. Cadell learnt the lesson well. Later he would learn that there were bonus rewards for those who chose to bend the laws a little.

CHAPTER 3

The Minerva To the end of the earth and back 1836–40

So as the midshipmen bicker over nooks and crannies to secrete away their boxes of cheap clocks and Red Leicester, as the captain’s servant finds new and more inventive cages in which to lock up his troublesome four-footed charges, as the bosun’s mates stalk the lower deck making bastards of themselves, the Minerva slips through a chilly sea mist past Margate, around North Foreland and into the strait of Dover. She is bound for Canton, 21 500 kilometres away. The journey will take about 110 days. On the first day at sea the midshipmen are summoned to the quarterdeck for a lesson in navigation. Captain Templer demonstrates the use of a Hadley’s Quadrant, Mayer’s Lunar Tables and the latest chronometer – now reasonably affordable, he says – to calculate longitude. Accurate charts for

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The nineteenth-century mariner relied on a limited range of navigational equipment

the first part of the voyage are easy to come by, explains Captain Templer, but further on he will rely on a range of less reliable information: East India Company charts produced by Alexander Dalrymple at the turn of the century, newer Dutch and French charts of some areas, John Horsburgh’s East India Directory and John Thornton’s Oriental Navigation. Even in the 1830s, however, there are still thousands of uncharted or inaccurately marked shoals, reefs and rocks. Routine soundings, insists the captain, and an alert lookout are absolutely essential. Cadell will never forget these early lessons. His own record of seamanship will remain unblemished till the day he dies. He will acquire a reputation during his Murray and Waikato River days of haranguing his subordinate

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skippers repeatedly to take care, to be vigilant, to consider the safety of the ship first. During his historic pioneering run up the Murray River in 1853 one passenger will be comforted by the constant presence of this ‘tall, elegant figure’ in the wheelhouse. ‘His powers of endurance are really remarkable . . . to direct the two vessels by night along an almost unknown river, amidst dangers seen and unseen.’ Captain Templer’s route to China will make use of the latest theories from wind and navigation experts to achieve as fast a passage as possible. After leaving the English Channel, the Minerva will cross the Bay of Biscay and skim the coast of Portugal before running the great circle route, pushed on by the north-east trade winds, crossing the equator near meridian 30°(about 700 kilometres from the coast of South America). She will then turn south-east aiming to cross meridian 20° east at latitude 45–55° (about 3000 kilometres south of the Cape of Good Hope). After storming east in the furious fifties she will ride the West Australian Current north to Batavia, in time for the south-east monsoons to carry her in to Canton. Three weeks after clearing the port of London, the Minerva approaches the equator, allowing the old tars to reinforce the ship’s natural pecking order and indulge in a bit of ritualised bullying. The principal players have been hard at work for several days preparing their costumes. About seven o’clock one evening, one of the sailors lowers himself quietly into the sea. He swims a short distance underwater away from the ship then breaks the surface and hails the officer of the watch. ‘How many of my children’, he demands in a booming voice, ‘are on board this ship, who have not been made free of the briny ocean?’ He brandishes a slightly crooked silver trident. His long flowing hair and beard – looking suspiciously like hay pilfered from the captain’s farmyard – conceal his true identity and, although the bemused midshipmen lining the rail can only see his head and

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shoulders, he appears to be wearing some kind of long robe. ‘I believe the number is nine, Your Majesty’, replies the second mate, obviously not fazed by this supernatural turn of events, and Neptune’s head subsides again beneath the waves, leaving several bits of straw floating on the surface. Two sailors, who have been concealed in readiness, launch a tar barrel filled with burning pitch. This is supposed to represent Neptune’s chariot, although Neptune himself sensibly keeps well away from it. It recedes into the gathering gloom, a floating island of stuttering flame, dipping into a trough, reappearing with diminishing size and intensity on a succession of rolling crests, until it finally fades from sight. The following morning Neptune sits down to an elaborate breakfast with a crowd of Tritons and mermaids (difficult to distinguish from their male counterparts because of their muscles, tattoos and facial stubble) and his similarly brawny wife and daughters. After breakfast they emerge on deck, where Neptune and family clamber onto a gun carriage decked out as a sort of triumphal chariot. A team of Tritons hauls it across the deck to the door of the after cabin. Neptune strikes the door three times with his trident. Captain Templer emerges. Neptune enquires kindly after the captain’s health and presents him with a large fish caught that morning by one of the crew. Templer can do no less than invite Neptune to take ‘a drop of something to keep him from catching a cold’. The preliminaries dispensed with, a nervous Cadell senses the approach of the ceremony itself. The initiates have so far been kept confined below decks, unaware of the elaborate preparations taking place above. One at a time their names are now called and they are bustled up on deck. Those below are left guessing as a succession of shouted orders, laughter and jeering from the spectators, muffled thuds, crashes and splashes filter down the companionway. Their forced banter fails to conceal their apprehension.

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Cadell’s turn comes soon enough. As he emerges, heart pounding, into the blinding sunlight, one of the bosun’s mates quickly blindfolds him, but not before he sees a chair precariously balanced on two planks laid across a large tub of seawater. He is led across the deck while Neptune fires a series of dangerously leading questions at him: what does he think of his life at sea, of his shipmates, the officers, the captain? While the interrogation continues he is helped up onto the wobbly planks and seated in the chair. Without warning it collapses beneath him and he drops into the water, still blindfolded, the chair and planks delivering a couple of heavy knocks to his face and arms. This is just the start. Two sailors now grab him and begin lathering his hair with what smells like a mixture of tar, rotting meat and farmyard manure. The honorary ‘barber’ then steps forward, armed with his ‘razor’, a long piece of hoop iron with jagged teeth filed in it. He proceeds to hack off apparently random clumps of Cadell’s hair, removing a good deal of skin in the process. Bruised, bleeding, soaking wet, still blindfolded and disoriented, Cadell’s ordeal is not yet over. The sailor sits him down again and Neptune fires a further stream of incomprehensible questions at him. He ignores them at first, but eventually, goaded and threatened into attempting a reply, he opens his mouth. Instantly the revolting tarbrush is forcefully inserted. At last he is released, still spitting out the noisome mixture, enriched now with his own blood. Cadell takes his place with relief to watch the next initiate endure the same treatment. As the morning wears on the sailors get more and more drunk. The initiates have been required to contribute half a crown each to pay for their tormentors’ refreshments. Those who cannot or will not pay are dunked three times in the ocean on a rope hung from the yardarm.

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Around the middle of May the Minerva threaded through the Lombok Strait, crossed the Bali Sea and, picking up the southeast trades, ran up the coast of Java to Batavia. The administrative centre of the Dutch East Indies was built on flat swampy land at the mouth of a river, the Kali Besar. Long ramshackle piers on either side extended its mouth far out into the bay. Twenty or thirty Dutch, English and American sailing ships were tied up in the deeper water. Closer to shore lay hundreds of praus, part of the vast fleet providing year-round transport to the 13 679 islands of the archipelago. Heavy local prau penisi rubbed thwarts with more elegant leti leti from Madura, broad, shallow prau patorani and prau padewakang from Sulawesi, and dozens of other distinctive island variations. A peppering of junks and dhows, towering over the praus, exchanged goods from more distant ports. Several Dutch warships were in port, one permanently at anchor, which served as a guardship. This was Dutch commercial territory, and the British ship was here only to fill the water butts, buy some fresh fruit, vegetables and meat, and allow the sailors ashore briefly to roam the narrow streets or markets, preferably without getting robbed or getting sick. Batavia had a long-standing reputation as the most disease-ridden port in South-East Asia. After a minimum of delay the Minerva was riding the trade winds northwards, across the Java Sea, through the Selat Kariwata between Borneo and Belitung, then negotiating a maze of islands before emerging into the South China Sea. From here on the danger of hitting an uncharted reef was diminished, but the threat of piracy intensified. Templer doubled the lookout and ordered the gunner to check the ship’s armoury, clean the weapons and ready them for use.

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Early in June after a trouble-free passage, the islands of Qundao and Wanshan appeared on the horizon. Two days later the Minerva lay at anchor in the Tankoo roadstead, off the Portuguese colony of Macao. With a permanent population of European traders and government officials, Macao was first port of call for almost all foreign ships seeking to do business in Canton. Chinese authorities imposed considerable restrictions on foreign trade, limiting it to certain months of the year and severely curtailing the movement of foreigners on Chinese soil. Merchants’ wives and families were not permitted in Canton – they had to remain in Macao while business was transacted. There were restrictions on the number of servants and assistants the traders could bring into Canton with them. Trade with foreign ships was dominated by a small number of government-authorised Canton traders, referred to as the Co-Hung. They had established an effective cartel, controlling tea and silk exports, and fixing the price for these and many other commodities. Foreign ships had to anchor 20 kilometres downstream from Canton, at Whampoa, to be laboriously loaded and unloaded by lighter. River pilots employed by the Europeans had to be specially licensed, and they demanded high fees. Pilots, boatmen and customs officials all required regular bribes. Captain Templer went ashore at Macao to consult the British agent and engage a pilot. The 5 km-long promontory had been a de facto Portuguese colony for 300 years, tolerated but never officially recognised by China. It looked like a little bit of Mediterranean Europe, a fishing village plucked from its natural home and deposited, unscathed, at the other end of the earth. A range of faded, porticoed and loggia-fronted public buildings lined the quay, while crumbling stucco buildings,

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pink-washed with the traditional mix of lime and bullock blood, piled up the slope behind, crowding in on a maze of narrow twisting lanes, walkways and stairs. Four small forts and twelve churches protected 3500 Christian bodies and souls, most of them Portuguese. A similar number of Chinese did the dirty work and occupied a squalid bairro at the northern end of the peninsula, where a narrow sandy neck connected it to the mainland. There were smaller populations – semi-seasonal – of Dutch, Spanish, American and British traders, the latter with their own cricket ground and racecourse. The following day the Minerva rode the incoming tide on a light breeze up to the mouth of the Pearl River, the ‘Bocca Tigris’ as the Portuguese called it. (British traders with their unfailing national talent for anglicisation called it the ‘Bogue’.) The Minerva anchored for the night in the shadow of Chuenpee Fort, one of two guarding the entrance. The next day she edged upstream between high cliffs and past another three forts, stopping along the way for paperwork to be signed and gifts presented. At Whampoa the river widens out, forming a natural harbour. Flat delta landscape extends from here up to the walled city of Canton, a dozen meandering streams providing alternative routes for a variety of riverboats. Lighters and bumboats carried goods between Whampoa and the city, mighty war junks made their stately progress, tiny sampans carried a market gardener’s produce and brothel-houseboats clustered around their major sources of trade. Canton itself, a forest of pagodas springing from a maze of narrow streets, was surrounded by a massive but crumbling wall, breached in places by recent battles. It had been a mecca to travellers and traders from the four corners of the world for

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MAP 5 Macao

centuries. It still was. The European ‘factories’ occupied a compound between the walled city and the Pearl River. They were actually warehouses, large stone buildings with deep cool loggias. They also contained living and office accommodation, sumptuously panelled, furnished and decorated. The European traders were tolerated, but not welcomed. It

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was not wise for them to enter the city; it would have been suicidal to wander the surrounding countryside and villages. Captain Templer dropped anchor at Whampoa – journey’s end. The Minerva and her crew would remain in the area for another four months before embarking, with the autumn monsoons at their back, on the long journey home. It was an unstable and unpredictable time for Europeans to be in China. Before she had finished unloading, the Minerva and other ships were unceremoniously ordered out of the river. The crew took her back to Macao and turned their attention to cleaning the holds, repainting her inside and out, repairing damaged equipment, sails and rigging. Then it was back to Whampoa – acceptable again in the eyes of officialdom – for a new cargo before replenishing the ship’s stores, and returning to Macao. There was plenty of spare time: waiting for the ponderous and arbitrary wheels of bureaucracy to turn, waiting for goods to arrive, waiting for winds and tides and pilots – plenty of time for the crew at the end of a long journey to go ashore, get drunk, get laid, get into fights and end up, in some cases, seriously injuring or killing somebody. The Minerva’s crew had nearly all been here before, many times, so there were also old friends to catch up with, other ships to visit, tall tales to trade. And there were all those clocks and cheeses and jars of marmalade for sale to homesick British, Dutch and Portuguese expats in the pretty ‘Mediterranean’ village. The men then scoured the markets for oriental trinkets to take home. ‘We’re loaded down with curios from China and the Indias,’ as one sea shanty put it, although cargo space was at a premium on the return journey, and private trade was more restricted. We can only guess at what the journey home might have

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MAP 6 The Pearl River Estuary

been like for Francis Cadell. Before his fifteenth birthday the boy from Cockenzie had been to the other end of the earth and back, seen icebergs and tropical islands, and bargained with Chinese merchants in the most exotic marketplaces imaginable. He had done a man’s job, at dizzying heights above the pitching deck of a sailing ship, and survived the dirt, discomfort and violence of life on board. He had seen the weirdest and most wonderful of the world’s shipping. He had

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Chinese riverboats

experienced again at first hand the challenges presented to sailors by river estuaries. He appears to have impressed his officers and captain. As the Minerva ran down the kilometres bringing her closer to England his mind must have turned more and more to home and family. One more commercial lesson, however, lay in store for him. Beating back up the English channel shortly before arrival at the Downs, a small, sleek sloop materialised out of the mist and crept up alongside the Minerva. Two of her crew came aboard. They were ushered into the cabin where they remained for several hours as a succession of officers, passengers and others came and went. Boxes and packages then started to emerge from their hiding places. They were transferred from the ship to the sloop under the joint supervision of their owners and the two mysterious newcomers. Further surreptitious discussions, some money changing hands, and the sloop melted quietly away. It was not until later, when customs officials came aboard and

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relieved Cadell (and others not in the know) of a handsome share of their trading profit, that the penny dropped. The idea was to offload your trading goods – or at least some of them – before arrival by selling them to smugglers who were a lot better at getting them ashore duty-free than you were. Cadell would surely not have been caught out this way a second time. Sailors and customs officers have always enjoyed a relationship built on disrespect and distrust. Cadell’s willingness to join battle with His Majesty’s revenue collectors would later emerge as a major thread running through his commercial career. The pilot came alongside near the Downs and guided the ship up to Erith where she was ‘lightened’ by removing her guns, shot, anchors, empty casks, spare timber and other heavy items. Before the crew were paid off they had one last job to do. The ship had to be pumped dry, a task always performed to the haunting strains of that most beautiful of shanties: Leave her, Johnnies, Leave her, oh Leave her, Johnnies, Leave her, Now we’ll bid this rotten scow goodbye, And it’s time for us to leave her.

A ‘ship-keeper’ then came on board to guard against river thieves. Finally a steam tug towed the Minerva up to the Empire Dock where stevedores began unloading the cargo, watched by revenue officers and the ship’s mates. Cadell was free. With a pocketful of wages and a box of trade goods still to sell, he could spend some time exploring the streets of London before returning home to Cockenzie. But not for long. His first voyage had been a successful one and Templer was happy to welcome him aboard again, as a

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midshipman, for another two trips to Canton. Templer then sold the Minerva to Captain G. Ireland, who also took command himself, deciding to shift focus from Canton to the India run. Cadell remained with the ship and on 3 May 1839 he was promoted to fifth officer, bringing more work, more responsibility, more status, but no more pay. The ship was sold again in 1840 to a Mr Manning, and Captain S. Geere took over as skipper. But by then Canton had become the centre of a major diplomatic storm between Britain and China. The Minerva was pressed into service as a troop transport and the eighteen-year-old fifth mate found himself on his way to his first war.

CHAPTER 4

The Pearl River In the service of empire 1840–46

Early in December 1917 Mr Thos Goode of Goolwa took up his pen and wrote a letter to the editor of the South Australian Register. He felt called upon to respond vigorously to correspondence from A.T. Saunders, the son of a former harbourmaster at Port Elliot. Saunders was an amateur historian with a particular interest in Francis Cadell and in several other colourful South Pacific identities. He was also a prodigious correspondent, writing tens of thousands of words to the press – mainly about Cadell, most of them not very flattering – at a time when there were many people still living in Goolwa and Adelaide who had known Cadell, admired him, even liked him.

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Amongst other things Mr Goode wrote: ‘I have a sword presented to him for service against Chinese pirates before the River Murray days . . . he was a gentleman.’ Ian Mudie in Riverboats also reports that Cadell was in the habit of producing a highly ornamented sword to entertain friends during his years in South Australia, claiming that it was presented to him ‘for punishing pirates in China’. By whom it was presented we are never told, but the pirate-fighting rumour remains persistent. One of Cadell’s many obituaries records that he was ‘. . . present at the siege of Canton besides taking an active part in many affrays with the pirates who at that time swarmed the China seas’. Cadell’s father makes no mention of these activities (or the sword), and it is hard to imagine that there would have been time for them if, as Hew Cadell claims, the young man was present at every major engagement of the entire Opium War between Britain and China, before returning home after the Treaty of Ningpo at the end of 1842. In any event, at the beginning of 1840, pirates were probably the last thing on Francis Cadell’s mind as he found himself swept up in another of Britain’s bloody little overseas campaigns. Great Britain was to the nineteenth-century world what the US is to today’s. Not a decade went by when there wasn’t some war to expedite, some fanatic to extirpate. Expeditionary forces lumbered around the globe to prop up unpopular tenant regimes, to uphold Western democratic principles, to protect British subjects and their friends, but mainly – let’s face it – to provide security services for British merchants operating legally or illegally in foreign countries. The Opium War was no

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exception – indeed it was the exemplar, a dirty war in support of a dirty trade – illegal, morally reprehensible and one-sided. Easy to say, perhaps, with the benefit of hindsight and with the clear vision of correct-line rectitude, but it seems it was just as easy to see 150 years ago. The young William Gladstone led the charge in a censure motion in the House of Commons: ‘A war more unjust in its origin, a war more calculated to cover this country with permanent disgrace, I do not know.’ The headmaster of Rugby School, Thomas Arnold (Matthew’s father), backed him up, calling it ‘a national sin’. Lord Ashley was another, later expressing his reluctance to ‘rejoice in our successes; we have triumphed in one of the most lawless, unnecessary and unfair struggles in the records of history’ and adding the ultimate mea culpa, ‘we are reduced to the level of the French’. But they lost the public-relations debate to a well-funded, politically broad, nationalistic campaign led by Canton-based trader William Jardine. Jardine was an ex-ship’s doctor who had handled his private trade well and then used the profits to establish a lucrative business in Canton. Now he was home in London, with a massive war-chest of £20 000 to encourage the government to believe that a few British warships off Canton and a regiment or two of redcoats would soon persuade the Chinese, with their rigid self-superiority, their arbitrary laws, their stifling restrictions on free trade and their weak-minded opposition to the importation of recreational drugs, that ‘it is not prudent to provoke those who are willing to be their friends’. ‘Why are not thousands of our bayonets bristling at this moment on the shores of China?’ thundered Samuel Warren, in support.

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But among all the jingoistic bluff and bluster, among all the talk of British lives at risk, John Barrow, in the Quarterly Review, probably came closest to the truth. ‘It is a curious circumstance’, he wrote, ‘that we grow a poppy in our Indian territories to poison people in China in return for a wholesome beverage which they prepare almost exclusively for us.’ The phrase ‘Opium War’ was coined by a journalist at The Times. Many have argued it is a misnomer, that the war was in fact about free trade and that opium played only a small part in Britain’s decision to make war on the Chinese. The fact remains, however, that without opium there would have been a dramatic imbalance of trade with China (because of the British love affair with tea and their apparent inability to conceive that it might be possible to grow tea elsewhere – India, for example). Without opium there would also have been a vast black hole in the funding necessary to run East India Company operations in India. In any case, the whole opium–tea business dovetailed together so neatly. The Company had taken over production of opium in India in 1781, selling the drug at auction in Calcutta to private traders. The traders, many of them Portuguese, then shipped it to Canton and sold it on the black (or not so black) market, for Chinese silver. The silver went back to the East India Company (to pay for the original purchase in Calcutta), and the company used it to purchase tea that it shipped home to England in its own vessels. The Company thus profited from, but avoided hands-on involvement in, the illegal trade. By 1829, 4000 chests of opium, each weighing about 70 kilograms, were entering China every year. New imperial edicts banning the trade (it was already illegal) failed to stem the flow. ‘There was no pretence at enforcing

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them,’ wrote Morse in his Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China, ‘irregular dues . . . were levied by the Hoppo, Viceroy, Governor, Treasurer, and so on down the list’. Most of the opium was unloaded at Lintin Island, a 600 m-high, 5 km-long blade of rock about halfway between Macao and the Bocca Tigris. It was held in stationary floating warehouses – actually old junks gaily decorated with pot plants, spare deck space transformed into vegetable gardens. From here smugglers transferred it to the mainland in sleek, 50-oared rowing boats, which were fast enough to elude pirates and other smugglers. They paid off the appropriate authorities and lodged the opium in warehouses, often in those owned by European traders along the Pearl River. From 1830, imperial edicts notwithstanding, consumption skyrocketed, reaching 30 000 chests by 1836. Between 1834 and 1839 the value of opium entering the country increased by 33 per cent, equalling and then outstripping the value of tea and silk exports. The East India Company, and increasing numbers of independent traders now starting to poach the Chinese monopoly, woke up one day to find that they were as dependent on opium as their unhappy customers. Meanwhile, in Peking, authorities were becoming increasingly impatient with the foreigners’ duplicitous trading arrangements. In 1831 a new set of regulations had further restricted trade: foreigners could not lend money to their CoHung trading partners, fewer Chinese were to be employed in the European factories in Canton, all arriving ships would be searched by military authorities, foreigners were not permitted to ride in sedan chairs, and so on. Chinese authorities even

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Ocean-going trading junks

ordered the demolition of the foreign traders’ quay at Canton. The British merchants, led by William Jardine and his partner James Matheson, boomed away in the local expat press. ‘The mere presence of cruisers on their coast would sufficiently alarm them . . . We have allowed the Chinese to doze in error when one rude shock would have aroused them to a sense of danger.’ In 1834, in response to a suggestion from Canton governor Lu Kun and in an effort to defuse the situation, the British government appointed Lord (William) Napier to be the first ‘Superintendant of Trade’ in Canton. His mission was an unmitigated disaster. Ignoring Chinese protocols he entered Canton illegally, refused to communicate in the form required by the Chinese, refused to leave Canton and return to Macao when ordered to do so and took umbrage (we are told) when the Chinese addressed him using a word phonetically similar to Napier which literally meant ‘laboriously vile’. (I’m bound to

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say I find this a little hard to believe. Can such a word really exist? Under what circumstances would it be used?) In any event he was sufficiently piqued to send two warships up the Bocca Tigris to fire on shore installations, resulting in the death of three British seamen when the Chinese returned fire. Napier then fell ill, was evacuated to Macao and died several weeks later. His successor, Captain Charles Elliot RN, took over in June 1836 shortly before the arrival of the Minerva and midshipman Cadell. His appointment coincided with another imperial blitz on the opium trade. Foreign ships including the Minerva were ordered out of the river, anarchy reigned on the Canton wharves and Chinese junks smuggling opium up the river fought running battles with customs officials and each other. But the amount of opium arriving just went on increasing. In March 1839 Commissioner Lin Zexu, a hardliner, arrived from Peking to sort things out. Within a couple of months he had arrested 1600 Chinese and confiscated 20 000 kilograms of opium together with 70 000 pipes. He demanded that all the opium held in European stores be handed over and tried to arrest the senior British traders on Lintin Island. He then blockaded the island for six weeks. Elliot persuaded the traders to hand over 20 000 chests of opium, valued at £6 000 000, promising (without authority) that the Crown would reimburse them, but tensions continued to worsen. He decided to evacuate the British factories and ordered all British citizens, including those at Macao, onto the available merchant ships, withdrawing to safer waters around Hong Kong. Here the Chinese attempted to poison drinking water in wells the British were using.

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Elliot requested armed assistance from India. Two British frigates, the Volage and the Hyacinth, arrived in August. In September news of the blockade reached London, adding impetus to the debate, as it progressed relentlessly towards its inevitable conclusion. When the decision to send an expeditionary force was finally taken, with the support of both sides of parliament, Francis Cadell and the Minerva were in India. Palmerston wrote to the Governor of India on 20 February 1840 instructing him to prepare a force of men and ships without delay. The letter, by overland post, arrived in March, and by 21 June the fleet was at anchor off Macao. There were twenty warships totalling 540 guns: three 74-gun ships including the flagship Melville, two first-class frigates (44 guns each), three second-class frigates (29 guns each), eight sloops and four armed paddle-steamers. The Minerva was one of 27 or 28 transports carrying 4000 troops commanded by Major General Sir Hugh Gough, 3000 tonnes of coal for the steamers and 72 000 litres of rum. Elliot’s cousin, Admiral George Elliot, was in command. He had three specific demands of the Chinese: payment for the opium seized, payment for the expenses incurred in mounting the expedition and the opening of China’s principal ports for unrestricted international trade. The Chinese reacted initially to the invasion with indirect tactics. The authorities offered substantial rewards for the destruction or capture of British ships and men. One effort to earn reward money involved sending a boatload of poisoned tea out to the fleet. Unfortunately for the Chinese the boat was captured by pirates who sold the tea to villagers, many of whom died.

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They next tried fire-ships – a favourite Chinese tactic and a devastating one if successful. Fire on board wooden sailing ships is almost unstoppable once it gets going. Eighteen old fishing boats were jammed with all kinds of combustible material, set alight and allowed to drift with the breeze and the current in amongst the 40 or 50 British ships at anchor. Francis Cadell must have looked on in fascinated horror as dazzling pyrotechnics began erupting against the midnight black of a moonless night. ‘The appearance was very beautiful,’ reported the Canton Register. ‘As they approached they blew up like some [fire] works . . . the beauties of the sight, however, did not dissipate the alarm felt on board the ships.’ Indeed they did not. There was near panic as the British ships slipped their cables and tried to get under way. Several collided. The shouted orders of the officers and the choice language exchanged between ships were drowned out by the roaring of the flames. Explosions sent flaming debris through the air, some of it lodging in sails and rigging. In the end no serious damage was done, and the wreckage of the fire-boats was later collected and cut up, providing the fleet with several months’ firewood. Elliot left a small force behind to blockade Canton and sailed north. On 4 July Cadell had another ringside seat watching from the Minerva as the British attacked Ting-hai, a port city on the island of Chusan. The town was well defended. After a nine-minute bombardment from the ships, troops landed outside the city and scoured it with musket fire through one long day and into the evening. Overnight the Chinese troops melted away and the following morning soldiers of the Royal Marines, and the 49th Foot and 14th Royal Irish regiments

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By 1840 steamships were playing a crucial role in Royal Navy operations

picked their way into the town through lanes strewn with bodies and littered with the rubble of smashed buildings. They embarked on a rampage of looting and plundering, breaking into shops and houses, terrorising the townspeople and making off with livestock that they later slaughtered and cooked. The battle fleet continued north and by the end of the year the Chinese were buying time with drawn-out rounds of negotiations, first near the Pei Ho River estuary and later back at Canton. By the beginning of January 1841 Elliot realised that the Chinese were playing with him. The time had come for action. It was left to the iron steamship Nemesis to provide a neat demonstration for the Chinese of the future of naval warfare and the superiority of British firepower. Steam tugs had been used in ports and estuaries around the world since the end of the Napoleonic Wars. In the early 1820s a reluctant Royal Navy invested in its first two steam tugs, the Comet and the Monkey, despite the misgivings of First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Melville. ‘Their Lordships feel it their

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bounden duty,’ he wrote, ‘to discourage to the utmost of their ability the employment of steam vessels, as they consider that the introduction of steam is calculated to strike a fatal blow at the naval supremacy of the Empire’. It must have pained their Lordships keenly to see the introduction of steam sloops in the 1830s and frigates in the 1840s, and to observe an increasing trend during the Opium and Crimean wars for mighty firstand second-raters to become little more than floating gun platforms, meekly manoeuvred into place by steam tugs. The Nemesis was an East India Company vessel. Using her shallow (1.5-metre) draft, she moved in close to the shore under the fixed guns of the Chuenpee and Tycocktow forts guarding the mouth of the Bocca Tigris and, in complete safety, battered the Chinese fortifications into piles of rubble. It was, as they might say today, a surgical strike using the latest military technology. Cadell would have had little time to enjoy the spectacle. Officers and crews from most of the transports had a busy day,

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manning the boats that ferried troops ashore as the Nemesis continued her work. Fifteen hundred soldiers of the 26th and 49th regiments, the Royal Marines, the 37th Madras Infantry and the Bengal Volunteers outflanked Chuenpee and stormed an upper fort before turning their attention back on Chuenpee. Both forts fell in hot hand-to-hand fighting. Three hundred to 500 Chinese were killed, and another 300 wounded. Thirtyeight British were wounded but none died. Over the next few days the remaining forts guarding the Bocca Tigris were destroyed. During January the British forces worked their way upriver to within 8 kilometres of Canton. At the end of the month, Sir Hugh Gough’s men were occupying the heights around the city’s crumbling walls. By now Cadell was itching to get into the action himself. He volunteered and was placed in command of the first cutter bringing supplies and ammunition upriver to the besieging forces. In so doing he officially ceased to be a merchant seaman and became a ‘naval volunteer’, thus qualifying for a share in any prize money on offer. Gough’s field guns pounded the two strong forts protecting Canton and his troops advanced to within 100 metres of the city walls before Elliot ordered a withdrawal, sensing that the Chinese commander was ready to talk terms. Elliot negotiated a truce, allowing some trade to recommence. But from the security of their distant palaces the Emperor of China and the Prime Minister of Great Britain were furious that the war had been called off. Chi-shan was dragged off to Peking in chains and 4000 fresh Chinese troops headed for Canton. Palmerston repudiated the agreement and sent Sir Henry Pottinger to replace Elliot.

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MAP 7 China Coast

He arrived in August, with clear instructions to humiliate the Chinese, to show no mercy and to settle for no less than the full platform of British demands. He brought more warships, another ten steamers, a vast fleet of transports, 10 000 fresh troops and a new admiral – Sir William Parker – to command them. We know almost nothing about Cadell’s part in the rest of the war, except that he was there. He left no record of his feelings but we know he saw it all: the massacres, the shocking

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injuries, the disease, the massive superiority of the British war machine. At some stage he was transferred to another transport, the Eruaad, as acting third or fourth officer, one of the Eruaad’s officers having been shot and killed. He was present when a reoccupied, refortified Chusan resisted for three bloody days before falling. He watched from the quarterdeck when victory finally came, sharing, no doubt, with Admiral Parker ‘the gratification of seeing the British colours planted by the troops in one of the batteries on the opposite shore; and in a few minutes the others on that side were all carried . . . the wall of the citadel was breached by the fire from the ships, and defences being reduced to a ruinous state, the Chinese abandoned their guns’. Ningpo fell offering no resistance and the British made their winter base there. In the spring the Chinese mounted a counter-offensive, attacking Ningpo with ghastly consequences. Thousands of Chinese were slaughtered; their blood flowed in rivulets, overflowing the storm drains. When he abandoned Ningpo in flames in May 1842 Major General Gough tendentiously reported ‘a deep feeling of gratitude [among the Chinese] for the orderly and forbearing respect and conduct of the British soldiers’. The British progress was unstoppable. Chinese soldiers and civilians died in their thousands, their bodies left to rot in piles in the streets of a dozen sacked cities. Cholera broke out. Looters followed the troops while opium ships followed the warships up the Yangtze. British casualties were spectacularly low. At Chen-hai the Chinese almost staged an upset but were beaten off when their reserve force failed to materialise. Its commander – in the supreme irony of the war – lay on a litter in an opium-induced stupor, unable to act.

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Finally, as Gough marshalled his forces ready to attack Nanking, the Chinese sued for peace. They agreed to all terms, including the ceding of Hong Kong. On 29 August 1842 the papers were signed on board HMS Cornwallis and the war was over. By 1850 importers were bringing 50 000 chests of opium a year into the country. The anarchy, lawlessness and tonnes of abandoned weapons left in the war’s wake created perfect conditions for an expansion in piracy. The South China Sea and piracy go together like camels and the desert. They always have. In the nineteenth century more than at any other time, the waters between China and the South-East Asian archipelago became a world focus for ocean-going outlaws. From the start of the century, large, well-organised pirate gangs operated in China, Indo-China and the Philippines. For a short period a great pirate ‘confederation’ of seven huge fleets carved up the China coast between them. From 1807 the confederation was led by a woman, Cheng I Sao. It had offices in Canton and other major cities for the collection of protection money. Its operations were disciplined, remorseless and unyielding. It was too powerful for the government to control and constituted a major threat to foreign shipping. Long after the confederation collapsed, petty piracy continued on a grand scale – mainly perpetrated by fishermen during their off seasons. During the war British forces had for the most part ignored the pirates, and the pirates had ignored them. After hostilities ceased, however, an increasingly brazen pirate population did untold damage to British and Chinese shipping. The British took some time to respond. In 1849 the Hong Kong

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administration introduced an Ordinance against Piracy and commissioned a fourteen-gun brig, the Scout, to conduct antipiracy operations. That summer the British China Squadron sank 57 pirate junks and killed more than 700 pirates. By this time, Francis Cadell was long gone. Just how much pirate bollocking he did do, and when, remains something of a mystery. In Riverboats, Ian Mudie says of this period that ‘He joined the Royal Navy and rose to what appears to have been the rank of lieutenant, “volunteer mate” he called it, before being dismissed for refusing to obey an order . . . It was probably after this that he spent some time fighting pirates along the China coast, a story he used to tell his South Australian friends when he showed them an elaborately decorated sword.’ Historian A.G. Price recorded in 1929 that ‘according to South Australian tradition he rose to the rank of Lieutenant but was discharged for disobeying an order, and [sic] action possibly due to the fact that he had radical ideas’. Radical ideas Cadell may have had, but the rest of this is conjecture. Perhaps his fifth mate’s position on the Minerva was prematurely terminated, although I can find no evidence of this. Perhaps his volunteer status came to an end as a result of insubordination. Perhaps he had been too ‘daring, active and ingenious’ again, foreshadowing the anti-authoritarian larrikinism that would become an increasingly dominant part of his make-up. An intriguing line of enquiry is suggested by the appearance on the South China coast at this time of one ‘Bully’ Hayes – an American sea-captain and adventurer whose path would regularly cross Cadell’s over the next 30 years, their careers developing some sinister similarities. William Henry Hayes was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in either

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1827 or 1829. He learnt his seamanship in the toughest of tough schools, on a Great Lakes schooner, and well before the age of twenty he had married the first of his many wives, begun working out of San Francisco on island traders, and lost an ear in a card game. (That’s nothing to what happened to the other guy, but let’s not get distracted.) It is possible, but unlikely, that the South China Sea was graced with his presence as early as 1843. He was certainly there in the early 1850s, in command of his own ship, the Otranto. Already he was a force to be reckoned with. For several years he devoted his prodigious talents and energy to tracking down the American pirate Eli Boggs who had been holding his own famously among his cutthroat Chinese colleagues for some time. In this enterprise Hayes teamed up with Captain Van of the Royal Navy gun brig Bittern. Van was later presented with a ‘handsome service of plate’ for his part in the operation. Perhaps this was the inspiration for Cadell’s ornamental sword story. Hayes was a character straight out of Hollywood: athletic, good looking, well muscled. For a man so big he could move remarkably quickly if the need arose. Usually it did not, and he approached life and its many adventures with relaxed, sardonic good humour. He dressed in the South Pacific traders’ unofficial uniform: white shirt, white trousers and a scarlet sash tied around the waist. He wore his flaxen hair long, gathered in a ponytail or sailor’s ‘ring-rail’. He had a long flowing beard completing the image of a Viking warrior to which so many likened him. Hayes’ face was constantly split by a broad smile. His smile, some said, was his greatest asset – the generous, disarming beam of a happy man, an honest man! It made people like him

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and trust him; trust him with their life savings, their ships, their trade goods, their wives. He was the consummate conman, using his engaging, courteous air to lure his prey. He also had a beautiful singing voice and he loved to use it. Altogether an immensely attractive personality, which hid not just a successful ‘filibustier’, as the Duc de Decazes described him in a report to the French government, but a homicidal psychopath. Later in his life, Hayes’ black moods of violent anger, during which he would lash out, smash faces, break bones and much worse, became more regular and more sustained. But he always retained the Houdini touch, able to charm his way out of any situation, and out of the clutches of any of the world’s navies. The pursuit of Boggs was not his only contribution to the cause of good. Acts of unselfish courage and generosity figure prominently in the lore of this ocean-going Robin Hood, and his supporters, if not outnumbering his critics, were certainly loud in his defence. Rolf Boldrewood, Louis Becke (his onetime supercargo and the writer of several books about the islands) and the prolific maritime historian Basil Lubbock all give him the ‘loveable rogue’ treatment, in the face of solid evidence that his career encompassed extracting money by deceit, repeated theft and larceny – often on a grand scale – extortion, fraud, blackbirding, murder, kidnapping, rape, polygamy, almost weekly assaults on crew members and others, and several bankruptcies. Hayes criss-crossed the Pacific, inducing islanders on board by one means or another then sailing away, later offering them as labourers to plantation owners on distant islands. Along the way he was in the habit of simply stealing any stockpiles of

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copra, coconut oil or other produce left unattended by their owners. He never missed an opportunity to persuade those he came into contact with to invest money in his ventures. The investments, of course, were never repaid. He regularly stocked his vessel with stores and trade goods, then absconded in the night without paying the bills. He always kept a small harem of young native women confined in his cabin. When he was done with them he sold them on, usually to some island chief. He associated (and competed) with blackbirders such as Captain Bobbie Towns, who used his sweet-sailing schooner the Black Dog to bring ‘black ivory’, as he described his unwilling passengers, from various Pacific islands to work on his cotton plantations in Queensland, and Captain Ben Pease, ex-US Navy, an unspeakably barbaric individual who once forced two captured Chinese sailors to fight each other to the death with knives while suspended from the rigging by their pigtails, and is said to have used severed heads as currency to pay for slaves that he purchased in the Solomon Islands. Hayes also did business with many of the ‘tame whites’ kept by Pacific Island chiefs – violent bodyguards such as Seth Barker, known for ‘hunting’ Samoans. Barker had 200 knotches cut in his rifle butt and was carried home after hunting trips on a bloodstained litter, the heads of his trophies hanging from its canopy. Just how much contact these outlaws had with one another – and how much influence they would have on our young Scottish opportunist – is hard to say. What is striking is the way in which their criminal activities coexisted with legitimate trading ventures and were, to some extent, masked by that

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legitimacy. Certainly, Cadell would come to inhabit that same netherworld between legal labour-supply practices and blatant slave trading, and his path would cross that of Hayes, as we shall see, on numerous occasions.

By March 1843 crowds were gathering in the streets of London as soldiers escorted the great convoys of wagons, groaning under boxes packed with silver paid up by a humiliated Chinese government. The Duke of Wellington voiced the specious adulation of a grateful nation, moving a vote of thanks in parliament for the ‘series of brilliant and unvaried successes’ enjoyed by the expeditionary forces. The ‘China money’ totalled nearly six million pounds, and Cadell was quick to put his hand up for his share. He was a bit slower getting his application in for one of the medals struck to mark the successful campaign, writing in October 1846 to the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, with suitably Victorian obsequiousness: That your Memorialist served in the Boats of the above named Ship at the attack on Canton. On that occasion he was one of those who volunteered and was placed in charge of the first Cutter to carry supplies and ammunition to the besieging force on the heights above Canton for which Services he has lately received . . . the sum of £109-11-5, being at the same rate as mates in the Royal Navy. That previous to the attack upon Canton when all available seamen were required His Excellency Sir J. Gordon Bremer through the Transport Agent Lieut. Somerville intimated that the Officers and Crew of the ‘Minerva’ who volunteered for the

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service should be placed in every respect on the same footing as the Royal Navy. That your memorialist was constantly employed from the capture of Chuenpee till the cessation of hostilities and served on every opportunity with the ‘Force’ on board both the transports ‘Minerva’ and ‘Eruaad’ which latter ship he joined one of her officers having been killed by the enemy. That your memorialist having observed in The Public Prints that the Medals for the Officers and men of Her Majesty’s Marine Forces who served on the China Expedition are being distributed begs with the utmost respect that on production of his certificates a Medal may be awarded to him for his services on that occasion and in which in the faith of the promise of your Lordships Officer His Excellency The Commander in Chief he humbly lays claim to, and your Memorialist as in duty bound will ever Pray . . .

This seems to be the first surviving piece of writing penned by Cadell, and it contains little promise of the articulate, prolific correspondent he later became. For much of his life he wrote, at every opportunity, about himself, his opinions, his achievements – gently congratulating himself, sternly criticising others and pushing numerous barrows. He wrote about customs and pilots, about lighthouses and rivers. He wrote about the need for government money to be spent, mainly on himself. His self-assured, readable prose flows from countless letters, diaries, newspapers and published speeches. He wrote clearly, succinctly, passionately, sometimes with wit. But for one who communicated publicly in such mighty tides, he remains, on a personal level, a remarkably enigmatic character. To plumb his deepest thoughts, to exorcise his demons or share

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his loves we must look elsewhere. To be sure, his words spoke loudly, but his actions spoke more loudly still. So what of that ornamental sword? Was it really a reward for punishing pirates? Or was it perhaps one of the spoils of war – looted from a shop or souvenired from a fallen opponent? Perhaps most likely is that it was a valueless piece of nineteenthcentury manufactured junk that Cadell picked up in a street market in Macao. Unable to get a good price for it on his return home he left it at the bottom of one of his boxes, where it started to acquire (as objects do) a story all of its own.

CHAPTER 5

The Royal Sovereign Glimpses of the future 1846–49

Francis Cadell gazes across the broad stretch of water where the Rio Tocantins joins the Rio Para to form just one of the Amazon’s mighty estuaries, to the Ilha de Marajo nearly 2 kilometres away. He turns and looks out to sea, then his eyes sweep back around to the south-west, upstream, where the great limpid tide shimmers in the heat, stretching lazily off to the horizon, lost in a maze of islands and lagoons. He tries to imagine the thousands of kilometres of navigable waterways, the swollen river winding its way further and further inland through an impenetrable jungle the size of Europe, past tiny villages perched on poles clinging to the muddy banks of the river, past bare paddocks scratched and burned out of the forest, defended tenaciously against its relentless encroachments, the river bursting briefly out of the darkness into the clear light of farmland. Past

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junctions with parallel waterways, dividing and joining, dividing and joining again, it threads deep into the heart of the vast continent to lonely outposts such as Obidos and Manaus, still navigable perhaps to Fonte Boa or Sao Paulo de Olivenga. Or further still, across the border to fabled Iquitos, 5000 kilometres from the mouth, where the Amazon remains wide enough, so people say, for half the city to be built on balsa rafts permanently floating on the river, rising and falling with the seasonal rains. Cadell is mesmerised by the sheer power and volume, not to mention the economic possibilities, of this mighty stream. Here at last is a river worthy of the name. The entire annual flows of all the rivers Cadell has known – the Forth, Elbe, Thames, Kali Besar, Bocca Tigris, the Hooghley in India, the Clyde – would not equal the water washing past the islands at the mouth of the Amazon in just one month, carrying tonnes of mud and silt in a great brown plume far out to sea. Dirty water greeted his first command, the Royal Sovereign, two days before she sighted land at the port of Para (Belem). With his ship unloaded and the seventeen crewmen cleaning and repainting under the direction of First Officer Bird, Cadell wanders off to explore the old Spanish waterfront. He examines with his characteristic fastidiousness the local shallow-draught riverboats and lighters jammed five or six deep along the stone quay and exchanging goods with European sailing ships and Yankee clippers. The port is crowded with two- and threemasted coastal lanchas, their sails roughly furled, their holds packed with coffee beans, their crews dozing in flimsy deckhouses. There is even the odd balsa, thousands of miles from its upriver home in the foothills of the Andes. He is struck by the absence of steamboats, common now in English and European ports, in parts of Asia, even in India where steam tugs have been towing East Indiamen 40 kilometres up the Hooghley River to Calcutta for decades. Just a few thousand kilometres north of here, where the Mississippi

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and Missouri Rivers join to thread the Louisiana delta and disgorge into the Gulf of Mexico, flotillas of floating palaces with broad, heavily laden barges in tow are already carrying the lifeblood of young America. The afternoon heat and humidity impose their oppressive burden on the old Spanish port. Ships and boats lie motionless in the gently lapping muddy water, as sailors and stevedores seek refuge in the shade to doze or drink away the hottest hours. Mad dogs and Scottish sea-captains have other ideas, however, and Cadell’s head is full of ideas. This whole basin could be opened up for farming and forestry. The rivers – ready-made highways for a fleet of steamers – could supply the farms and settlements while transporting their produce to Para for shipment to Europe and the world. And there would be no shortage of other cargoes: timber, gold from the mines at Ouro Preto, machinery and building materials and the thousand essentials and luxuries needed by a booming population.

Is this what Cadell was thinking as he whiled away that steamy afternoon on the Rio Para? Again we have only the sketchiest of records, but there is little doubt that this episode was instrumental in shaping the direction he chose over the next two decades. For my own part I find it hard to imagine anyone – anyone at all, let alone the 22-year-old commander of a small trading vessel – seriously contemplating so vast and unpredictable an undertaking. The establishment of a commercial riverboat fleet in a foreign country on an unknown river of Brobdingnagian proportions would need not just boats and crews but a vast infrastructure of wharves, stores, shipping

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agents, slipways and forges, and reliable firewood suppliers. Cadell had no knowledge of river flows and seasonal changes, of local navigational problems, of laws or regulations. He knew nothing of the dangers and difficulties that might be encountered in dense jungles far from civilisation or the rule of law. He was oblivious to whatever regimes of corruption might exist or whose patch he may be invading. Decades later, Glasgow shipbuilder and owner William Denny would be driven to suicide by the problems of setting up just such an operation on the Rio de la Plata, 4000 kilometres further south. But Cadell, it seemed, was serious about this preposterous brainwave. So serious that he set sail, according to some, for the west coast, for Peru, where he spent several months trying to organise a canoe and a couple of guides to take him downstream from the headwaters of the Amazon to its mouth, 6500 kilometres away, where the Royal Sovereign under Bird’s command would await him. Alas the young entrepreneur could find nobody silly enough to embark with him on such a suicidal journey. Later, South Australian governor Sir Henry Edward Fox Young could gloat that his ‘dauntless and enterprising’ protégé’s project had ‘proved inoperative, only because in South America he did not meet with that Anglo-Saxon ardour of progress which has greeted him in South Australia’. Instead Cadell loaded his ship with a mixed cargo and, clearing the port of Para, he coasted north past three Guyanas (French, Dutch and British), Venezuela and the Windward Islands, making slow progress against the north-east trades until, somewhere off Florida, he found good westerlies to take him home. Home for Cadell was now in Claremont Place, Glasgow.

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After his return from the Opium War he had worked on his father’s ships while studying for his Board of Trade Master’s Certificate exams, which he passed in 1847. But the Cadells were never a family to wait on bureaucracy, and in 1844 the trusting Hew had presented impatient Francis with his first command, the 204-ton Leith smack Royal Sovereign. Variously described as a sloop, schooner, brigantine or smack, she was a beautiful little ship. She was built at Leith in 1827, at a cost of £400, for the London and Edinburgh Shipping Company, which used her to ferry passengers between the two capitals. She was extensively repaired and refitted in 1830. But after another ten years the Royal Sovereign and others like her had had to make way for new, faster ‘Aberdeen clippers’. Now redundant, she was bought by Hew Cadell and entrusted to Francis’ command late in 1844. Over the next two years Cadell visited several Mediterranean and Black Sea ports in the Royal Sovereign and made two long voyages to South America: the first from Leith to Rio de Janeiro and back to London, the second from London to Rio, thence to Pernambucco (Recife), about 2000 kilometres further north, before returning home. It was these trips that left his head full of muddy waters and a vision of churning paddlewheels. On his return from South America late in 1846 Cadell’s master’s exams were still hanging over him and a little time at home in Glasgow with his nose in his lunar tables would fit quite well with this new obsession. He needed to learn a bit more about paddle-steamers, and there was no better place on earth than Glasgow to do that. David and Robert Napier had seen to that. The cousins were both born in the early 1790s in Dumbarton. Both learned

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ironworking trades from their fathers. Both became deeply involved in the most exciting technological invention of their time – the steam engine. David was the innovator, working on many pioneering steam engines including the Comet. He later built entire marine steam engines himself for use in paddlesteamers working out of Glasgow, and developed tank testing methods to improve hull design. He designed the United Kingdom, at that time the largest steamship ever built. Robert Napier was more the man of affairs. He took over a shipyard at Camlachie and built his first steamer, the Leven, in 1824. In 1839 he went into partnership with Samuel Cunard and two other Scots, operating transatlantic mail liners out of Liverpool. In 1841 he opened another shipyard at Govan, using iron as his principal material. He also ran steamboats out of Glasgow to nearby ports and islands. One morning Francis Cadell came knocking on the oakpanelled door of Robert Napier’s office. He wanted to learn about steam engines, he said. Could he come to some arrangement, obtain some hands-on experience in Scotland’s foremost yard (arguably the world’s – a little flattery would not have gone amiss)? Again his father put in a good word, but there was probably no need; Robert was generous with his knowledge. He trained a generation of marine engineers and is often referred to as the ‘father’ of Clyde shipbuilding. Cadell became a familiar figure around Napier’s yards, as he tried to familiarise himself with every aspect of marine steam engines. He lurked around the boilermakers’ shops and forges, sat in on Napier’s meetings with his design engineers, pored over drawings and specifications, learnt all about plate thicknesses, deflection stresses and steam pressure. He read with macabre

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fascination, no doubt, of the boiler explosions, fires, injuries and deaths that had become all too common among the poorly regulated Mississippi riverboats. A Tyneside shipyard in industrial-revolution Britain was no place for the faint-hearted. Hot, noisy, dirty, dangerous – Cadell loved it. He loved the flash of the white-hot rivets flying through the air as the sweat-streaked cookers tossed them into the catchers’ buckets, burning scale spurting and spitting off and dripping to the floor in their wake. He loved the mighty crash of hammers ramming the rivets, still red-hot, into their holes, accompanied by an explosion of red smithereens. He loved getting himself filthy with coal dust, scale and oil, as he crawled around in every corner of the enterprise. Soon he was discussing valve gear and connecting rods, steam pressure and exit ports with the same easy facility he had previously reserved for top gallants and mizzen peaks, belaying pins and shrouds. If he was working hard during this period, it is also certain that he was playing hard. After all, he was still only 24. The loyalties forged here among the Tyneside shipyards and taverns would endure and later cement a remarkable shipping company plying the waters of one of the world’s great rivers. Most of his friends he had known since childhood. Many were the sons of Hew Cadell’s captains. They had had similar upbringings; they had similar interests, similar ambitions to his own. Men such as George Johnston, who would become his senior riverboat skipper and probably the closest that Cadell ever had to a real friend. Or William Barber, who had been born at Cockenzie House and was almost a member of the family. Barber’s father commanded Cadell’s brig Halifax and later the schooner Mary. Or James Ritchie, the son of another

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Cadell skipper, or John Barclay, or Edmund Robertson. They would all become household names in South Australia, legendary riverboat captains, part of the lore and romance of the Murray River. You would imagine that there were sweethearts as well. From all accounts, young Francis was an attractive catch – if a bit of a man’s man. He was described as ‘tall’ and ‘elegant’, with red or sandy-coloured hair. George Johnston said he was ‘thoroughly gentlemanly in his bearing, genial in his intercourse with others, considerate to self-forgetfulness’. Most contemporary commentators agreed. The masses of press he attracted during his lifetime routinely referred to him as ‘the energetic and enterprising Captain Cadell’, ‘Captain Cadell of Murray River fame’, ‘a dauntless and enterprising man’. Towards the end of his life, and after his death, messages about Cadell’s nature became more mixed. George Ritchie, one of James’ sons, talked of his ‘elegant flow of language’, while acknowledging in the same sentence his ‘impetuous temper’. Perhaps his temper too often got the better of his ‘gentlemanly’ qualities. Murray Valley settler Nehemiah Bartley described him as a ‘two-handed bruiser’, which I take to mean a violent man. Others were even less complimentary. When the need to earn a living eventually caught up with him early in November 1848, Cadell sailed away, however, leaving no sweethearts counting the days till his return. During his interlude in the Napiers’ shipyards, William Bird had taken command of the Royal Sovereign, running a regular service between Cardiff and Belfast. But now Cadell was back, bound for South Africa, on another opportunistic trading venture. In Cape Town he took on 326 boxes of dried fruit, 32 cases of

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tobacco, 30 casks of sugar and 30 tins of coffee, all likely to fetch a good price, he imagined, in the new settlement of Adelaide. He cleared from the Cape on 18 November and made passage for South Australia. The Royal Sovereign must have been a pleasure to sail. Cadell took her south to latitude 50 before turning west. Her sails filled, the wind sang in her tense rigging and every plank rejoiced as she darted forward. Just three weeks later, Cadell could turn northwards again, and on 18 January 1849 the scrub-covered hills of Kangaroo Island loomed off the starboard bow. He eased her into Investigator Strait, Yorke Peninsula’s flatter profile barely visible on the northern horizon. It was hot. A steady offshore breeze was blowing. As twilight deepened Cadell shortened sail and picked his way carefully into the unfamiliar waters. During the night the northerly’s intensity increased and it backed around to a gusty northwesterly, whipping up a heavy, unpredictable swell and carrying pungent puffs of South Australia’s superheated inland air, laced with an aromatic mix of smoke, mallee scrub and dust to the sailors’ land-deprived senses. By dawn the Royal Sovereign lay off the coast 15 or 20 kilometres from Cape Jervis. A succession of rugged cliffs and bays stretched away to the north, backed by a rolling range of bush-covered hills. As the sun rose, high peaks – Mount Terrible and, further away, Mount Lofty – emerged as ghostly adumbrations from the orange summer haze. Cadell put the ship about and began to beat up the coast, passing the mouth of the Onkaparinga River about midmorning, its gleaming white sandhills splashed with sunlight. Bolder cliffs followed. Early in the afternoon he dropped anchor in Holdfast Bay

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(Glenelg). A thin ribbon of beach, low sandhills, here and there a small building fronted the broad, shallow bay. A boat cast off from the long timber jetty, made sail and came out to greet the Royal Sovereign. Officialdom, in the person of George Stephenson, customs officer, registrar of shipping, agent for Lloyd’s, protector of Aborigines, clerk of court, justice of the peace, editor of the Gazette and the South Australian Register, was coming to pay a visit. Quick tempered and malicious, from all accounts, with a wife who shared his ambitions, his business affairs and his personality defects, Stephenson was also the governor’s private secretary. Perhaps it was through him that Cadell made his first acquaintance with this man who would become such a powerful ally. Henry Edward Fox Young was South Australia’s fifth governor (in just thirteen years), its first civilian governor and almost as fresh an arrival as Cadell, having taken up his post in August 1848. Formalities completed, the Royal Sovereign could finish the journey, skirting Semaphore and Largs Bay to round Point Malcolm (Pelican Point) into the muddy Port River. Upstream, between Torres Island and Lefevre’s Peninsula, Cadell dropped anchor in Adelaide’s ‘Port Misery’ opposite a range of single- and double-storey timber sheds and warehouses fronting a ramshackle waterfront of wooden jetties and piers. He went ashore to look around. Adelaide in 1849 was still a comfortless frontier town with a European population of about 60 000. There were more than enough drunks, hooligans and sharp businessmen to counterbalance the social and religious ideologues who had dreamt up the idea of ‘Adelaide’ in the first place, or supported it enough to have actually made it their home. It was a happy

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hunting ground for rogues and speculators, and the port soon became a regular haunt for some of the Pacific Ocean’s more peripatetic colourful characters. Adelaide itself was about 10 kilometres inland, its location flagged by a pall of smoke. Between port and town, a rutted, dusty road snaked across the coastal plain linking several small villages and the half-hearted beginnings of some market gardens. But for the most part the intervening waste was still the scrubby domain of its original inhabitants, the Kaurna, and a cross-section of Australia’s bizarre bestiary: kangaroos, echidnas, brown snakes and stumpy-tail lizards. ‘There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune’ and, for Francis Cadell, Adelaide in 1849 represented that flood. His first visit lasted just ten days, but during this time he cannot have missed the regular arrival of drays laden with copper from the new mines at Kapunda, creating considerable ripples of interest among the local commercial community. He would certainly have noticed the mountains of wheat now being produced in the colony – enough to keep a small fleet of ships busy at the right time of the year. But above all he heard talk around the traps of a large river, further east, called the Murray; talk well peppered with words that had him edging closer, leaning forward to better hear the nature of the discussions. ‘Riverboats’ were mentioned, ‘paddlewheelers’, ‘a broad flowing river’, ‘an extensive inland waterway’. And then came ‘export cargoes’, the ‘wool clip’, ‘wheat, copper, silver, lead’. Perhaps he heard about the governor’s personal interest in these matters or even had the chance to meet His Excellency and to air his own ‘expertise’. Meanwhile the merchant adventurer was trying to flog off

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the goods he’d brought from Cape Town. He did quite well with his dried fruit and sugar, but the citizens of Adelaide, it seemed, had no use for his coffee or tobacco and these items were still in his hold when he cleared for Hobart on the 29th along with a new consignment – 41 barrels of brandy. Six weeks later Cadell was back in Adelaide looking for a good cargo, ideally for Singapore, Canton or perhaps Batavia. But such cargoes were not as easy to come by as he had thought. The days slipped by and turned into weeks. The Royal Sovereign lay at anchor, her holds empty, the putrid waters of Port Misery lapping gently at her old Scottish planks, her skipper desperately, but unsuccessfully, trying to drum up some business. Even a shipment to Melbourne or Sydney would do, but the Adelaide cartels, it seemed, had the trade sewn up and the cocky newcomer was not to be given so much as a whiff. With time weighing heavily on his hands Cadell determined on a little jaunt. He hired a couple of horses from James Chambers’ livery stables and rode the dusty midsummer tracks through the Adelaide hills and across the flats to that much discussed river. It was not the Amazon, to be sure, but where the Murray flowed vigorously out into Lake Alexandrina it was fully 300 metres wide and seemed to carry, even at this time of year, a substantial volume of water. Cadell skirted the large, shallow lake, visited the settlement at Currency Creek and pushed on round the last generous bend in the river – the Goolwa – and down to the Murray mouth: a 1.5 km-wide, shallow, not-very-promising junction between river and sea backed by a maze of lagoons, sandbanks and flat, windswept islands. He saw no shipping – indeed no boats of any

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description – and after two days he turned for Adelaide with the seeds of a new venture in his mind, a new opportunity to bring the lessons of Cuxhaven and the Pearl River to bear on an environment perhaps a little less daunting than the irremediably large and foreign Amazon. Back in Adelaide, emboldened perhaps by what he’d seen, the impatient Cadell did something quite extraordinary, revealing possibly for the first time his larrikin willingness to step outside normal behaviour, to throw the dice. He tried to sell the Royal Sovereign by raffle! On 4 April an advertisement appeared in the South Australian Register offering 300 tickets at £5 each. FEAR NOT. A MAN TO MAKE MONEY MUST SPECULATE.

Without speculation trade would never have been born. On Saturday next will be raffled for at ‘Coppin’s Hotel’ Hindley Street, the splendid brigantine Royal Sovereign of 204 tons, O.M. and 159 tons N.M., now lying in the Port of Adelaide ‘One of the best proportioned vessels in the merchant service’ New Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The Royal Sovereign made the passage to Port Adelaide in 32 days, the shortest we think ever made. Shares may be procured and numbers selected at the Port from E. G. Collinson, Esq., and in Adelaide at the ‘Hotel’ and from CAREY AND JOHNSON Corner of King William and Rundle Streets April 3rd 1849

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I wonder what old Hew would have thought of Francis’ novel approach. The ship, after all, belonged to him – not to his son – and she had proved a good little earner. On the other hand the Royal Sovereign was ageing. Wooden sailing ships had limited working lives – twenty years, perhaps 30 at a pinch – and during this time they had to be worked, and worked hard, to make them pay for themselves. The Royal Sovereign was now nearly 22 years old, a fact that Cadell conveniently omitted from his newspaper advertisment. Every week that she spent sitting around in the Port River was costing money. Whether or not Hew approved remains academic, however. On 11 April Francis advertised again, this time withdrawing his intention to raffle the ship, having sold too few tickets. On the 26th the Royal Sovereign was cleared for Sydney under ballast, and she arrived there on 15 May with 1186 bushels of Tasmanian wheat, collected along the way. In Sydney he tried again, advertising in the Sydney Morning Herald just five days after arriving: ‘For sale, freight or charter Brigantine ‘Royal Sovereign’ 204/159 tons Francis Cadell, Commander.’ Again he had no success, and the old Leith smack finally departed Australian waters on 4 June, sailing for Singapore under ballast. Australian waters, however, had not seen the last of Francis Cadell. He would return, and he would build not just one but two or three turbulent careers on her coastal and inland waterways. But first his story takes us back to the United Kingdom – for the final time – where he had one more hidden talent to reveal, and another unpredictable change of direction to follow.

CHAPTER 6

The Queen of Sheba Building a clipper 1849–53

The smart money in the mid-nineteenth century is all on steam. Wind is ‘old technology’; clean, quiet, comfortable and romantic it may be, with no need for fuel, no mechanical breakdowns, but sailing ships are labour intensive and dependent on fickle weather, tides and ocean currents. Steam is the new technology; all Cadell’s friends are into it and so is he. It is not for a love of sailing ships that he spent the best part of two years hanging around Robert Napier’s yard, or that the world’s mighty rivers, the steamboat’s natural home, hold such a fascination for him. But something of his childhood fascination with oak and tar, rope and canvas, winds and tides still holds him in its sway. Something of his father’s creaking barques and brigantines at rest in the Cockenzie Boat Harbour has

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got into his blood. Something of those bluff-bowed coasters beating up the channel or slipping silently into the Firth shrouded in mist, droplets of precipitation forming on the rigging, the taffrails, the whiskers of their watchful mates and masters, something of the Royal Sovereign – eager, joyful, swift – has reinforced his sailor’s affection for ships and boats. Real ships and boats, that is. It is still hard to form a personal relationship with a brutally functional iron puffer. But above all, perhaps it is those mountains of South Australian wheat and Darling Downs wool, those precious dray-loads of Kapunda copper and Broken Hill silver begging for a passage to Europe that most strongly influence Cadell’s next move. Despite steam’s relentless progress, long-haul shipping will remain the almost exclusive domain of sail for another 40 years, while engineers seek the efficiencies they needed to reduce fuel consumption to such a level that a passage to Australia – or even the Cape or Tenerife – will not require the entire cargo hold to be taken up with coal. And Cadell can see the advantages to be gleaned by the faster clippers, with their ability to bring the new season’s crop or clip to market first, creaming the early high prices. So while steam is slowly but surely making inroads into world shipping, Cadell also knows that the wooden sailing ship in its last glory days is paradoxically only now reaching its pinnacle of perfection. Early in the century, in response to the blockading British and a rat pack of privateers operating in the Caribbean and along its Atlantic coast, US shipbuilders started developing the fore-and-aft-rigged schooner, allowing greater speed upwind or with the wind a-beam. Now much of the world’s trade is being carried by swift, elegant ‘Baltimore clippers’, technically nearly all schooners, lean in the beam, with sharp concave bows, semi-elliptical sterns and raked masts.

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So Francis Cadell is back at the Napiers’ yard, but this time it is not the steam engines and red-hot rivets that are holding his attention. He is playing with David Napier’s test tanks. He has carved out a number of scale models of prototype hull shapes. They range from a sort of traditional bluffbowed, flat-bottomed coaster through to the latest he has glimpsed of the Yankee clippers now appearing in increasing numbers in home and foreign ports. He has even been down to Liverpool and had a good look at the Marco Polo, James Baines’ newest acquisition, just arrived from New Brunswick and taking passengers for her first, record-breaking voyage to Melbourne. In six months’ time she will be back, cruising triumphantly up the Mersey, a banner at her masthead arrogantly proclaiming ‘The Fastest Ship in the World’. Extrapolating from what he has already discovered Cadell introduces some innovations of his own – ironing out a bulge here, paring down an angle there, elongating, narrowing, streamlining. He wants to design and build the fastest ship in the world and, despite his inexperience, he will come mighty close to doing just that. Back in his lodgings, he draws up the lines of a clipper ship, mindful that in his search for speed he must still leave space for cargo. The two objectives are in furious conflict, almost mutually exclusive, but he knows that some kind of optimum must surely exist – the point where both trade-offs are acceptable, and profit – the other variable – rises to a peak. He tweaks the critical waterline contour ever so gently – an inch more the schooner, an inch less cargo space. He takes his compromise back to the tank for more testing. He discovers that the concave parts of the bow can be filled in with less detriment than the concave parts of the stern. He discovers that cargo space can be increased without loss of speed by broadening the beam but not by flattening the floor.

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Satisfied at last he commissions Thomas Browne’s yard in Newcastle to lay the keel of his new ship and digs deep into his accumulated trading profits to make the first progress payment. This is really a deposit allowing the shipyard to buy elm for the keel and the stem- and sternposts, oak for the floor beams and ribs and an array of complicated metal fixings. To complete the work he will need to mortgage the half-built ship and top up the loan with additional funds from his ever-supportive father. The work begins. The keel is built up in three layers: at the bottom a 150 mm-thick shoe, then the keel itself, 500 mm-deep, and finally a smaller keelson, bolted on top (after the ribs have been fixed to the keel) for further stiffening. The whole thing is 950 mm-deep by 300 mm-wide, solid elm. With the keel shaped and laid on the slipway, supported by a row of massive timber blocks, the shipwrights turn their attention to the stem- and sternposts. Elm is used for these too, because of its lasting durability underwater and its hardness. It will bear the brunt of inadvertent beachings and groundings as well as future rough treatment in dry dock. The floor timbers come next, 350 mm × 250 mm oak, bolted at right angles to the keel with copper bolts. Francis Cadell’s floor beams are quite short – even for a schooner. Each floor beam becomes the base for one of the ship’s frames (ribs). Each frame is a different shape. Each is made of six carefully selected pieces of oak, butted together with scarf joints, the joints stiffened with butt-chocks. Each is shaped according to its own individual template. The templates have been made up in advance out of light timber, following Cadell’s drawings. The frames are extremely close together – so close that as the ship grows there is more frame than empty space. Some of Browne’s better-fed workers cannot squeeze through the gap, but must clamber over the top to get in and out. The frames are connected to the keel and floor beams with iron elbows. The deck beams – upper and lower – tie

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the frames together near the top and about two thirds of the way up, again joined with individually fabricated iron elbows. Browne puts a couple of his best men to work on the more complicated framing at the bow and stern. Cadell is at the yard almost every day supervising the work in minute detail. In fact he makes a bit of a nuisance of himself. The shipwrights would like him to go away and let them get on with the job. Browne would like him to concentrate less on the building and more on scratching up the money he needs to make his second progress payment. It is now January and, with the completion of the frame, payment is due. Before the hull planking can be started, ‘steps’ are built up on the keel to hold the ship’s three masts. Heavy timbers to hold her anchor chains are also fitted. The planking begins at the bottom with 150 mm-thick garboards beside the keel, the thickness gradually reduced to 100 millimetres above the waterline. It is bleak midwinter, and the north country is blanketed in snow. Down on the river at Browne’s yard, the masts, yards and rigging of ships in the water are frosted like Christmas trees. The shed rooves and stacks of timber are powdered white, the ramps and scaffolding are slippery with ice, the coils of rope and bolts of canvas are stiff as boards. A cold grey mist hangs over the valley. At this time of year the plank benders have an enviable job. They position each heavy plank on a pair of trestles above their fire, kept blazing with a constant supply of yard off-cuts. While one man mops water from a bucket onto the upper surface of the plank, another uses a collection of heavy, levered clamps to coax it into its required shape – a simple curve, a curve with a twist, a double twist. Years of experience inform the right combination of heat, water and force. They work stripped to the waist while everyone else lumbers clumsily around, hatted, coated and gloved.

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Once attached, the hull planking can be caulked using ‘old junk’ finished with hair. Below the waterline the hull is ‘parselled’ with oiled canvas then sheathed in thinner boards, well limed, then coppered. Meanwhile the decking is being fixed. By June the ship is ready to launch. Cadell has been mulling over what to call her, and presciently decides on Queen of Sheba, not knowing how vast a fortune in gold from the Victorian diggings she will carry in her strongroom over the next few years. Wildly optimistic about how long the finishing work will take, he places an announcement in the local press: The splendid Clipper ship QUEEN OF SHEBA, 500 tons Burthen, Francis Cadell, Commander, now building by Mr Thomas Browne, at Howden in the River Tyne, to be launched the Middle of next Month; will take the Berth immediately, and be despatched in all July. This vessel has airy and elegant poop cabins, Bathroom & C., and every Accommodation for Passengers; her Height between Decks is 6 Feet 6 Inches clear, and being expressly built for sailing qualities, offers a first rate opportunity for shippers. For Freight and Passage apply to JOHN BARKER & CO., Indian Kings’ Court; or JOSEPH HEARD and CO., Quayside. Newcastle on Tyne, 18th June 1850.

Once the Queen of Sheba is in the water the shipwrights swarm all over her. They attach the rudder, helm and cables. They install capstans and windlasses, binnacle, anchor and mooring bitts. They cut gunports, scuppers and air vents. They install ‘patent ventilators’ for the hold, cast iron water tanks, wood stoves, fire and bilge pumps. They fit out the forecastle, passengers’ accommodation and officers’ cabins with the appropriate levels

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of finish and decoration, appropriate numbers of glazed, openable windows. They build lavatories and bathrooms and fit out the galleys. They construct staircases and gangways, balustrades and bulkheads, lockers and a strongroom. They paint her inside and out. They step the masts and weave a cobweb of standing rigging. The cables that make up the hundreds of halyards, buntlines, clew lines, leech lines are all tarred first, with a nutritious brew combining half a barrel of tar with 6 gallons of whisky, 4 pounds of litharge, 4 pounds of lampblack and two buckets of beef pickle. She is given a brand new suit of sails, a cutter and two small open boats. Finally Francis Cadell takes command of the Queen of Sheba. He finishes rigging her and sails her from Newcastle to Leith under ballast. It is his last visit to the country of his birth.

In October 1850, the Greenock Advertiser reported that ‘On Tuesday the Queen of Sheba, a splendid new ship, left Leith Dock with cargo and a few passengers for San Francisco.’ The cargo included 300 tonnes of coal. Cadell may well have been disappointed that on her maiden voyage the Queen had not attracted more optimists bound for the California diggings. His intentions, it seems, were to follow what was becoming a profitable and well-beaten path for a new generation of sailing ships, the ‘down easters’. Down the east coast of America, round the horn west-about, and north to booming California, they would earn enough profit on the first leg of the voyage to allow them to cross the Pacific under ballast, then pick up a cargo of tea in the newly deregulated China market, and make for England.

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In the late 1840s the discovery of gold in California (1847) and the repeal of Britain’s navigation acts (1849), accompanied by huge reductions in the amount of duty payable on wool, tea and other goods, had stimulated world trade and created an instant shortage of long-haul shipping, a shortage that the Americans, with their new designs and their inexhaustible supplies of lighter, softwood timber looked well placed to exploit. American shipbuilders Donald McKay, Brown and Bell, Isaac Webb and others soon created a fleet of clippers that would carry two thirds of the world’s freight by 1860. Among them were the ‘extreme’ clippers such as the Lightning, Herald of the Morning, Rainbow and Young America. Many American yards built ships for British firms including James Baines’ famous Black Ball Line. Speed was of the essence, and the clippers were record breakers: fast and furious, magnificent to behold but a nightmare to sail. Their crews and officers were a special breed: tough, fearless but practically unmanageable. Their skippers were like rock stars: hard-driving, harddrinking, mercurial, self-promoting and with more than a glint of madness in their eyes. In 1849, 775 ships had cleared from European ports bound for California, where flour was fetching $40 a barrel; sugar, $4 a pound; boots, $45 a pair and laudanum, $1 a drop. Some vessels were even earning out their construction costs on their first trip. San Francisco in 1850 was a canvas town, bursting at the seams. Several ship hulks anchored in the bay had been pressed into service as hotels. Ashore, the muddy streets were a lawless pandemonium of blind-drunk seamen spoiling for a fight, galloping horses, gold diggers and armed desperadoes. Judge McGowan ruled the city unofficially, at the head of a cutthroat

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gang of outlaws. Every man carried a gun and a Bowie knife. Lynchings were commonplace. Smooth-talking, sharp-witted confidence tricksters enjoyed open season. Perhaps Bully Hayes was in town between voyages, looking for his next victim, when the Queen of Sheba sailed through the Golden Gate. Whatever frustration Cadell may have felt at failing to attract more of the lucrative passenger trade had been assuaged by a good, fast passage. The Queen of Sheba had vindicated his long hours of whittling and tank testing. More disappointment, however, was in store. He had not calculated on the lure of gold, and there were a lot more optimists on his ship than the few who had paid for their tickets. Within 24 hours of dropping anchor in San Francisco Bay, most of his crew had deserted, and he sailed away short-handed several weeks later. Perhaps this shortage of manpower influenced his next decision – not to strike out for China, but to head south instead, for the Society Islands. Or perhaps his goal had always been Adelaide, and another attempt to break into the local trade. A more likely reason was the highly publicised ‘discovery’ of gold by Edward Hammond Hargraves near Bathurst in New South Wales earlier in the year. Promising deposits had already been uncovered in other parts of Victoria and New South Wales but they had been accompanied by little public notice. Hargraves, himself a Californian forty-niner with a nose for publicity, was just the man to create a gold rush off his own bat. By now the news had reached California, and Cadell capitalised on a shortage of berths to Sydney, taking on 120 paying passengers. Whatever the reason, he was subsequently able to supplement his dwindling crew with Society Islanders, with whom he got on well. Some of these

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experienced blue water sailors would stay with him for years, incongruously manning paddle-steamers on the coffeecoloured inland waterways of Australia and in New Zealand. The Queen of Sheba sailed through the heads into Sydney Harbour on New Year’s Day 1852. Cadell’s passengers trooped down the gangplank with a swing in their step and gold in their eyes, and he cleared for Adelaide several days later. On 14 January he called in at Melbourne, meeting shipping agents R. & P. Turnbull, who encouraged him to believe that there was trade enough for a regular clipper service between Adelaide and Melbourne. Within a few weeks the Turnbulls were acting as Cadell’s Melbourne agent. In Adelaide once more Cadell renewed some old acquaintances. This time, as the commander of a fine new clipper ship,

Circular Quay, Sydney

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he quickly found a social niche at the big end of town. Amongst others he was introduced to William Younghusband, a leading merchant, landowner, shipowner, shipping agent and prominent member of the fledgling Legislative Council. Younghusband also had the ear of Governor Young. With such energetic allies as Younghusband and the Turnbulls, Cadell’s clipper service was almost immediately up and running. On 1 February the Queen cleared for Melbourne with a full cargo and passengers, arriving on the eighth for a quick turnaround and a short passage back to Adelaide. On the nineteenth he was back in Melbourne, this time for three days, and so it continued through the rest of 1852, as Cadell and the Queen set a punishing pace, shuttling almost continuously between the two ports. In February 1853 the Melbourne Argus reported that the clipper had ‘returned again yesterday with her usual complement of passengers from Adelaide having been absent from this port little more than a fortnight . . . her arrival yesterday completed her twelfth voyage within eleven months’. Melbourne Port records in fact indicate that during 1852 alone she made a total of sixteen round trips, the passage each way taking a little over four days. Usually the turnaround took three or four days, sometimes more. On several occasions the Queen arrived and left within 24 hours. All of this on one of the world’s more dangerous bits of coastline. Bass Strait, where the roaring forties funnel wind and water into a narrow gap between Tasmania and the mainland, had already acquired a treacherous reputation. A dozen or more serious shipwrecks were eclipsed in 1845 by the destruction of the Cataraqui on King Island with the loss of 400 people. In 1853 alone there were 41 shipwrecks along the

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In an age of lighthouse building, Cadell had plenty to say on the subject

Victorian coast, and the ‘shipwreck coast’ between Melbourne and Discovery Bay would continue to reap victims aplenty from immigrant ships driving in from the Southern Ocean during the next 50 years. By the end of 1852 Cadell must have developed a healthy respect for these stormy waters. He must also have been growing in confidence. Accepted by the Adelaide establishment, his debts paid and his coffers filling, the gold rushes promising to underpin his operations for some time to come, his star was on the rise. Cadell could afford to publicly flex his muscles, and he began to carve out a

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place for himself as the self-appointed spokesman of the coastal trade. The Argus of 26 March 1853 devoted a small article to the need for a lighthouse at Cape Howe. ‘We have noticed correspondence in our daily contemporary from Captain Cadell on this subject,’ it reported, to lend authority to its claims. Cadell had, understandably, quite a lot to say about lighthouses. He wrote to the South Australian Trinity Board with the novel suggestion that lighthouses should be so constructed that, in addition to their normal horizontal signal, they would also direct a beam of light upwards into the air. On cloudy or hazy nights – and the coast is usually hazy – the beam could be spotted from great distances because of its height. The suggestion was never taken up. Cadell also had a bit to say about ports and pilot services. On 4 June 1853 we find him again in the Argus, mocking the Port Phillip sea pilots. Of all the great ports, Melbourne stands ‘unique’ in her pilot arrangements:– to all other ports, pilots are really the guides who lead the tempest-tossed and wave-worn mariner into safety . . . In Melbourne safety is reached . . . and not until then, the freshwater pilot condescends to run the tempest-tossed and wave-worn individual up to the river and tranquil waters . . . For months I have been going in and out of your port weekly, but I have not once seen the pilot schooner outside the heads.

Perhaps the Port Phillip sea pilots had long since decided that the respected captain of the Queen of Sheba was well capable of negotiating the heads without their assistance. By early 1853 the overworked clipper was in need of maintenance. At the same time the urgency of Victoria’s gold

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frenzy had lost its heat and from March onwards she made only seven more trips to Melbourne. Early in April she cleared from Melbourne with one last, headline-hitting 5000 ounces of gold secure in her strongroom. On the twelfth R. & P. Turnbull offered the Queen of Sheba for sale on behalf of the ‘managing owner’, Captain Cadell. ‘The only reason for offering this fine ship for sale is that various other engagements require the entire attention of the managing owners.’ Cadell’s ‘various other engagements’ at this time could have occupied the entire attention of a small army. On 2 March, at Port Adelaide, he was the host of a ‘dejeuner and ball’ aboard the brand-new iron screw-steamer Cleopatra, which he skippered on the Adelaide–Melbourne–Sydney run for the next five months until he was summarily replaced, for reasons that are not clear. At 1500 registered tons, the Cleopatra was the biggest command Cadell would ever have. She had a 300horsepower steam engine, was ‘furnished with Phillip’s Fire Annihilators’ and carried ‘an experienced surgeon’ on board; the more nervous traveller was clearly becoming an important part of the trade. Fares from Adelaide to Sydney were £12/5/(first saloon), £8/5/- (second saloon) and £6/5/- (third cabin). Cadell’s flirtation with wind was over, and he was back where he belonged. But the Queen of Sheba had clearly won the hearts of many among the South Australian and Victorian shipping communities, and one more incident is worth recounting before she passes out of this story on 11 April 1853, returning to England to trade for many more years between London and various Mediterranean ports. On 21 March 1853 the Argus reported that Cadell had challenged the Anna Dixon, a brand-new, 189-ton, British-built

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snow or brig also operating on the coast, between Adelaide and Melbourne, to a race for 100 guineas. Racing was a popular pastime, it seems, among captains of ships or boats in the nineteenth century. They were often immensely proud of their vessels and conscious of the prestige and increased business that might come their way if they could prove that their boat was the fastest. Races or record breaking attempts, however, could make the passage fairly uncomfortable – not to say positively dangerous – for those on board. One famous race involved five large tea clippers that left Foo-Chow at about the same time, all bound for London. Just over three months later they all arrived within three days of each other. Two clippers – the Ariel and Taeping – sailed in on the same tide, cramming on every stitch of canvas for a neck-and-neck duel up the English Channel. The paddle-steamer era on the Murray began with a much publicised race – as we shall see – and continued as it had begun. Celebrated dare-devil riverboat captain Tommy ‘Hooky’ Freeman (the loss of three fingers in a shooting incident, leaving just his thumb and little finger, provided his nickname) was determined to have the fastest boat on the river by hook or by crook, and to that end he spent much of his time, energy and profits constantly refitting his steamers with bigger and bigger boilers. This culminated in the PS Canally being oomphed up – at great cost to her cargo capacity – with a locomotive engine, turning her into a sort of nineteenthcentury speedboat. Predictably, she became known as the ‘greyhound of the Murray’. Riverboat captains would routinely resort to every underhand trick to win a race, and Freeman was no exception. As skipper of the PS Rothbury in the 1880s he found himself, on

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Cape Otway, Victoria

one occasion, plying the Darling River in company with the South Australian – another ‘greyhound of the Murray’. On docking that evening at Wilcannia, Paddy Brown, an engineer on the Rothbury, recalled that ‘Tommy Freeman, who could have a very annoying way with people, jeered at Jack Kerr, her skipper.’ The banter quickly led to an argument about which boat was faster, and £25 was put up by each skipper to try the matter. That evening Jack Kerr took the South Australian upstream and cut a load of firewood, which he sprayed with kerosene before loading it into the hold. He then ‘spragged’ the pressure gauge, allowing the actual boiler pressure to go on rising without the needle on the gauge showing more than the mutually agreed maximum pressure – in this case 5 pounds above the manufacturer’s recommended maximum. Freeman,

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who already had a load of excellent firewood on board, took the Rothbury downstream the following morning just before the race and similarly spragged his gauge. The dangers involved in these practices need not be spelt out! The trial was against time, over one mile, dragging an identical load. Freeman won the toss and invited the South Australian to go first. When the Rothbury’s turn came, she got off to a flying start and was well ahead at the halfway mark. But her crew’s premature celebrations at hearing this news led to a lapse in concentration. A fireman opened the firebox, the pressure dropped, and the Rothbury finished twenty seconds behind. Francis Cadell, it must be said, was never the racing kind. His challenge was a belated piece of me-too-ism in the face of direct competition on the same route by two similar ships. A week earlier the Argus had announced under the headline ‘RACE ON THE HIGH SEAS’ that ‘a match for £300 a side has been concluded between the Anna Dixon and the new American Clipper Sea Witch . . . The Queen of Sheba is to sail at the same time, so there will be a fine opportunity for trying the merits of the three’. On the appointed day the Sea Witch and the Anna Dixon were under way on the morning tide, at first light. The imperturbable Captain Cadell calmly finished taking on cargo – this racing was all a bit beneath his dignity – and rounded Pelican Point four hours behind his rivals. He passed Cape Jervis at midnight, so close on the heels of the Anna Dixon that he could see her riding lights faintly glimmering ahead on the port bow. Clearing the lea of Kangaroo Island, the Queen forged ahead, freshening westerlies filling her rarely used

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studding sails. Somewhere between Cape Otway and Portland, during the night of 28 March, she inched past her brand-new American competitor, sailing serenely into Port Phillip Bay to drop anchor at 7.30 am on the 30th. The Sea Witch finished 24 hours later, the Anna Dixon the day after that.

CHAPTER 7

The Murray River An opportunity goes begging 1852

As if hosting dejeuners, taking part in impromptu clipper races, corresponding with the press about lighthouses and pilot services, commanding a big new coastal steamer and attending to all the minutiae of his own trading business were not enough to keep him occupied, Cadell’s eyes during 1852 and 1853 were increasingly focused on a much bigger vision. Long before the gentle, reassuring rhythm of the Cleopatra’s steam engines became the background for many of his waking hours, his mind had been turning again towards the Murray River, and the still untapped opportunities it held. They were opportunities that others had already recognised, and for ten years a wave of public interest and demand had been gradually swelling. By now it was unstoppable.

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During the earliest years of European exploration and exploitation the business end of the Murray had been spectacularly ignored. Flinders and Baudin had failed to notice that Australia’s premier river was even there, disgorging 24 million litres of muddy water under their very feet during every minute of their eponymous encounter on 8 April 1802. Perhaps they were too preoccupied by the uncomfortable quandary presented by each other’s unexpected appearance, and took their eyes momentarily off the main game. For the whalers and sealers who came next and who knew of Lake Alexandrina’s existence, at least by 1828, the Murray was an irrelevance. So it fell to that great landsman and searcher for the inland sea, Captain Charles Sturt, in February 1830, to bring back the good news – and the bad news – that Australia had its very own Mississippi, but that the mouth was impossible to navigate. The following year, returning home from a defunct penal settlement in Western Australia, Captain Collet Barker was instructed to take time out for a detailed survey of the coast between Cape Jervis and the mouth. He landed on the Sir Richard Peninsula, spent several days tramping around Lake Alexandrina and the Goolwa, and finally swam the 400 m-wide mouth, alone (he was the only member of his party who could swim), to gain a good vantage point from which to survey the maze of channels and mud islands at the start of the Coorong. Here he was unfortunately mistaken for one of the local whaling fraternity – not popular among local Ngarrindjerri people – and speared to death. In 1836 Colonel Light arrived, one of an advance party entrusted with the job of selecting and surveying a site for the

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MAP 8 The Murray Mouth

new settlement of Adelaide. He was, like Sturt, a soldier, and he agreed with Sturt’s landsman’s view that the Murray mouth was not suitable for shipping. Furthermore he believed that the surrounding land was no place for a major port city. So he selected a site in Gulf Saint Vincent, 100 kilometres away from the main shipping lanes to Melbourne and 100 kilometres away from the Murray River. When South Australia’s first governor, naval officer John Hindmarsh, arrived, he was appalled by the decision. He packed Colonel Light back off to Encounter Bay telling him to think again, but the stubborn fellow returned, his opinion unchanged.

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The governor was not to be so easily fobbed off. In November 1837, two of his supporters, Young Bingham Hutchinson and Thomas Bewes Strangways, led an exploring party across the Mount Lofty Ranges and down to the Coorong. They teamed up with local whaler Captain Blenkinsop (described by rival whaling skipper James Fell as ‘headstrong’). They explored Currency Creek in one of Blenkinsop’s boats and named Hindmarsh Island. On 8 December the expedition took a bizarre turn when they met up with South Australia’s first judge, Sir John Jeffcott, who had been shipwrecked on the way to his own wedding, together with his best man, none other than Governor Hindmarsh’s son John. Jeffcott and young Hindmarsh, apparently in no hurry to get to the church on time, joined the exploring party, and the judge quickly developed a fatal fixation on successfully navigating the bar. Egged on by the ‘headstrong’ Blenkinsop, they entered the waters of the mouth, having first overloaded the boat with some large whale bones that the whaling captain wanted to collect. Halfway through the entrance, the apparently calm waters suddenly erupted into a succession of mountainous breaking waves that swamped the boat in a cauldron of swirling foam. As the boat sank the judge was heard beseeching loudly, ‘The Lord have mercy on our souls, for we shall all be drowned,’ before disappearing below the waves. Blenkinsop and two sailors, George Wright and Henry Brooks, were also drowned. Ngarrindjerri people waded into the dangerous rip and hauled the others to safety. In spite of their mishaps, Hutchinson and Strangways reported favourably on the governor’s ideas. He received more support from Adelaide harbourmaster Captain Lipson and

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others of the local seafaring fraternity, Captains Crozier and Hart and Colonial Marine Surveyor W.J.S. Pullen. (John Hart was in reality a flour miller and pastoralist whose interest in matters maritime and an earlier stint in the whaling business had earned him the nickname ‘Captain’.) Colonel Light continued to defend his view that the mouth was unnavigable, sending surveyors B.T. Finniss and H. Nixon to report again on the Goolwa. Finniss came up with the kind of report that was expected of him. He emphasised, with justification, Encounter Bay’s dangers, reporting that ‘. . . it cannot therefore be considered a safe and Commodious Harbour . . . ’ In 1838 two events further fuelled the dispute. First a sailing ship called the Fanny was wrecked on Younghusband Peninsula. Her master, J.M. Gill, took a small dinghy loaded with provisions in and out of the Murray mouth several times, declaring it ‘a perfectly safe and practical entrance’. Later Charles Sturt made his second visit to the mouth, again throwing his considerable weight behind Colonel Light. Soon afterwards, Governor Hindmarsh was recalled, largely because of the affair, leaving Light with the spoils of victory. But Hindmarsh left behind some valuable allies who were not ready to give up the fight just yet. He also left behind something much more powerful. He had planted the idea that this fan-like network of navigable inland waterways could service a vast area of farmland and its rural communities, that a fleet of paddle-steamers and barges could provide communication with the outside world for countless hitherto isolated settlements. Such a fleet would deliver the necessities and the luxuries of life almost to their front doors and – more importantly – transport their immensely valuable

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produce thousands of kilometres to the coast much more quickly than bullock drays, and for a fraction of the cost. At a magnificent port on the banks of the Goolwa those goods could be transshipped to fast ocean-going clippers bound for Europe. It was an idea that would fire the imagination of settlers up and down the Murray and Darling rivers and their many tributaries, and of merchants, shipowners and legislators in Adelaide – at least those who could see that there were bigger issues at stake than the concerns of those with a vested interest in Adelaide’s infrastructure. It was an idea powerful enough to overcome the many intransigent problems presented by the Murray River’s less-than-helpful sea mouth. Hindmarsh had already suggested, or at least backed, some possible solutions to those problems. If ocean-going ships could not cross the bar and dock in deep water on the Goolwa so that goods could be winched directly from the barges to their holds, then other engineering solutions could be found. A canal could be dug, 10 or 15 kilometres long, connecting Goolwa with a deepwater port on the ocean side of the peninsula. B.T. Finniss mocked the idea. It would be vastly expensive and it would fill up with sand as fast as it could be dredged. Well then, argued Hindmarsh, perhaps a railway could be built or, cheaper still, a horse tramway. The new governor, George Gawler, continued where Hindmarsh had left off. He favoured an ocean port at Victor Harbour but hedged his bets, ordering Pullen to undertake yet another survey of the Murray mouth. Poor Colonel Light. He must have wondered what he had done to deserve this succession of hopeless romantics. The Marine Surveyor’s

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immediate trip was aborted due to a fire that ripped through his offices destroying much valuable equipment. It makes you wonder how it got started. Another version of this story has it that the fire occurred at Encounter Bay, while he was preparing for the trip, and that he had to walk all the way back to Adelaide. Later in 1839, however, with a team of twelve surveyors, Pullen completed the first detailed survey of the mouth. At the same time his mission was getting valuable support from ‘Captain’ Hart who, in his own words, ‘during a journey down the Murray in January, 1839 . . . had an opportunity of ascertaining that the river was navigable from the Goulburn downwards . . . a depth of water at all times sufficient for the purposes of steam navigation’. The following year the Murray navigation lobby persuaded Governor Gawler to go and take a look for himself. The governor authorised Pullen to test the mouth again, in a whaleboat. With a volunteer crew Pullen successfully rowed out into the ocean and back again. Finally in May 1841, he blew the opposition out of the water by taking a much larger vessel, the cutter Waterwitch, drawing almost 2 metres, through the heads without incident and then sailing her all the way up to Moorundie, near Blanchetown. Pullen then buoyed the channel and surveyed a deepwater port downstream from Goolwa. Gawler stamped his imprimatur on the notional harbour, naming it Port Pullen. At this point, cruel fate – in the guise of a massive and mounting public debt, plus a hard-nosed new governor, 29-year-old George Grey – intervened. South Australia’s third governor arrived in 1841 with instructions to curb expenditure. The whole Murray River project was shelved. It would be

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another twelve years before the first paddle-steamer edged gingerly upstream with its modest cargo of trade goods. For the next seven years the frustration of valley communities, in the face of stubborn government inaction, built and built. Murray settlers John (‘Big John’) McKinley and Edmund Morey, both from the Euston area, faced a threemonth wait every year as bullock drays loaded with their wool bumped and lumbered down muddy rutted tracks to the Melbourne markets. Then they waited another three months for the goods and provisions purchased in Melbourne to find their way back to Euston. They complained long and hard, begging the South Australian government to put a line of steamers onto the river. In early 1848 ‘Captain’ Hart attempted to do just that, but his proposed navigation company folded before it had even started, starved of public and government support. When Henry Edward Fox Young arrived in August 1849 to take over from Governor Robe (Grey’s successsor), ‘Big John’ McKinley wasted no time in getting into his ear. And a very responsive ear it turned out to be. Young was fascinated by the Murray River right from the start. Perhaps this had something to do with his wife, Augusta, who was from a seafaring family and whose uncle was Captain Marryat, the author of Masterman Ready and other rollicking tales of the sea. Surveyor B.T. Finniss, formerly a Murray-mouth sceptic, sensing perhaps a change in the wind, would describe Sir Henry as ‘a man able to understand his responsibilities, and identify himself with the wishes and interests of those he was appointed to govern’ – unlike George Grey, one is tempted to add. A. Kinloch (who would later accompany Young and Cadell

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on their pioneering steamer trip upriver) described the new governor as ‘an officer of enlarged ideas’. Young visited Goolwa almost immediately, anticipating Cadell’s first reconnaissance by just a few months. He decided that the bay adjacent to Freeman’s Nob would be a good spot for an ocean harbour – a decision that he and many others would live to regret. He named it Port Elliot, after his friend the governor of Bermuda, Trinidad and St Helena. He endorsed Hindmarsh’s early horse tramway idea and commissioned one of Adelaide harbourmaster Lipson’s surveyors to examine the proposal in detail and report back. In September 1849, as Cadell was arriving home in Scotland in the Royal Sovereign, Young established a commission of enquiry into ports and harbours for coastal and inland navigations. In 1850 he applied to the Lords Treasurers in London for funding for his tramway, and persuaded the new Legislative Council of South Australia to offer two prizes, of £2000 each, to the owners of the first two iron steamers of not less than 40 horsepower and not more than 60-centimetre draught to navigate the Murray from Goolwa to the Darling junction. To be fair on his predecessors, he did come with instructions to revitalise the South Australian economy – now struggling after seven years of Grey’s and Robe’s austerity measures. Neither were all his measures greeted with universal acclaim. Many Adelaide businessmen would continue to fight bitterly against what they saw as his attempts to destroy Adelaide in favour of the Murray mouth. In September 1850 Young decided to dip his own toe in the river. He set off from Adelaide with his wife, Lady Augusta, his

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young son, a nurse, Captain and Mrs Freeling, Mr and Mrs R.R. Torrens and Mr Hutton. Leaving the women and child at Moorundie, the men continued on horseback as far as the Rufus River where they were met by George Mason, Protector of Aborigines and Murray River enthusiast, in a whaleboat crewed by six Ngarrindjerri men. They rowed upstream to the Darling junction before turning round and travelling downstream, all the way to Goolwa. They called in at Moorundie and at riverside homesteads along the way. The governor’s personal voyage of discovery was followed up the following year by a more modest private venture. On 5 May 1851 Richard Gerstacker left Albury in a large bark canoe, which sank beneath him just a couple of days later. Undaunted, he walked along the river all the way to Moorundie and then wrote a glowing account of its navigational potential: ‘the possibilities of steamboat navigation on the Murray’, he stated, ‘need not be doubted’. Later in the year Young appointed a select committee to enquire into the subject. The committee comprised ‘Captain’ Hart, Captain Charles Bagot (a mine owner and pastoralist), the irrepressible George Fife Angas, and two members of the Legislative Council, John Baker and William Younghusband. Younghusband was still serving on this select committee when he met Cadell, early in 1852. McKinley, Morey and many other settlers regaled the committee with their transport woes. Bullock teams took six weeks or more to bring goods from Adelaide to the Darling junction, at a cost of £12 a tonne. From Melbourne the teams took even longer to reach the Darling. Even at Maiden’s Punt – the closest point on the Murray to Melbourne – the journey

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The Murray River, near Albury

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could take up to a month. Further up the Darling, where squatters by now had settled as far as Mount Murchison, just past Wilcannia, the wool clip was taking the best part of a year to find its way across the plains and over the mountains to Sydney. And that was before gold. Now the teamsters had deserted the farmers and rushed to the safer, easier and more lucrative business of supplying the diggings with all the necessities of life. Worse still, many bullockies had abandoned their flyblown profession altogether in favour of a quicker road to riches. In short, transport was unobtainable and the 1851 wool clip was stacked to the rafters in hundreds of woolsheds across the outback, with no means of getting it to the ports. Christmas came and went in a steamy colonial lather of poultry, pudding and perspiration, but still nothing happened. All the select committees, all the reward monies on offer, all the commercial opportunities going begging would come to nought, it seemed, without someone willing to actually take the plunge: to put a paddle-steamer on the river, advertise a scale of freight charges in the South Australian Register, raise steam and surge boldly upstream. Come the hour, come the man. Francis Cadell arrived in January 1852. But he had no intention of simply complying with the government’s terms and collecting Governor Young’s £2000 prize. He would dictate his own terms. For a start there were almost certainly no steamboats operating in Australian waters that fulfilled the criteria. To get one built in a British shipyard, or buy one, and then ship it out to Australia (a riverboat with a 60-centimetre draught is not the sort of thing you put to sea and travel halfway round the globe in) would

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take years. The next problem was that the governor’s carrot required him, Cadell, to take all the risks, bear all the costs and receive nothing at all until such time as he had negotiated all the reefs and snags between Goolwa and the junction. So he wrote to the government in May 1852, no doubt encouraged by his new friend Younghusband, and made his own proposal: the government would undertake to pay him £500 to bring a steamer through the mouth – no specifications, no caveats, just a steamer through the mouth. It was a down payment, if you like, for getting a steamer onto the river. The requirement that it should cross the bar was Cadell’s insurance against any local amateur who might be encouraged to choof up the river in some home-made excuse knocked up on the river bank. Next he wanted £1000 to take the steamer up to the Darling junction. This was the teaser, because it offered what Young really wanted for half the price he had been prepared to pay. Finally he asked for £250 a quarter to continue plying between Goolwa and the Darling for twelve months – again a strong enticement, indicating that he was no fly-by-night, he was in for the long haul. It also gave the government the opportunity to pay the last instalments further down the track. All in all it was a well-thought-out package that should have appealed to Governor Young while protecting Cadell’s own interests. But it didn’t. Somewhat miffed, perhaps, that his own generous offer was being spurned, Young flatly refused. It was not until considerable pressure had been applied by Younghusband and most of his fellow MPs that the governor backed down and consented, after negotiating a couple of facesaving concessions. The two £2000 prizes were still on the table, but they would never be claimed.

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Now it was Cadell’s move. He drew up the plans for a timber paddle-steamer, about 30 metres long, drawing less than a metre, with a large deckhouse containing ample, well-appointed passenger accommodation. His first journey up the Murray would carry people rather than goods. And not just any people, not just passengers – the entrepreneurial Scot wanted an audience of movers and shakers to witness his triumph. He commissioned Chowne’s yard in Sydney to start work. He also commissioned a barge to be built at the local Winsby brothers yard in Goolwa. Next, he needed to take a closer look, himself, at the river he would make his own.

CHAPTER 8

The Forerunner A canvas boat on the Murray River 1852

It is 25 July 1852 and the esteemed captain of the Queen of Sheba is watching from the Melbourne wharf as her crew warp off and set sail for the run down Port Phillip Bay to the heads, under command of her first officer, Captain Hingston. Cadell shakes his head slowly and makes a mental note: some of the mainsail and foresail buntlines are starting to look a bit frayed. He turns and strides away. He will be on the road to the diggings by nightfall, but first there is some business to transact. He unhitches and mounts his brand-new riding horse, Fandango, named, he explains to anyone who cares to listen, ‘for performing the national dance of Spain so well’. Cadell is the first to admit that he is more at home on the pitching deck of a willing schooner than in the rolling saddle of a frisky mare.

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With packhorse in tow his first stop is a small boatbuilder’s yard on the river, where he takes delivery of what looks like a bundle of bent sticks – the prefabricated framework, in fact, for a 6 m-long, 1 m-wide dinghy. Further up the same lane, at a sail-maker’s loft, he picks up the heavy canvas cladding for his new boat, the Forerunner – cut and stitched, ready to stretch over the frame once assembled – and a sail. Finally he heads for a rendezvous with two local squatters – passing acquaintances with whom he will team up for safety to make the three-day journey to Bendigo. It is just as well he does. The next day, passing through the Black Forest they are confronted briefly by three bushrangers who, deciding that the odds are not sufficiently in their favour, allow the gentlemen to ride on. Cadell will later make light of the incident. ‘We were too ugly,’ he quips in his diary, ‘so they left us alone’. In Bendigo he makes himself known to the local commissioner who invites him to tag along on his rounds of the diggings. Cadell stays almost a week, makes a bit of a holiday of it, but also recruits a boat’s crew for the journey he is planning to make down the Murray from Swan Hill to the lakes. The four volunteers are successful diggers, or so they say, keen to get home to Adelaide. They have agreed to take part in this little adventure just for the fun of it, he thinks, but they seem steady enough. On the road again and a couple of clear, mild days and bright, frosty nights bring them across the flat grassy plains to Beveridge’s Tyntyndyer station on the banks of the Murray. They immediately set about assembling the boat in a small shed made available by Peter Beveridge. They finish late, dine and collapse into bed exhausted. At first light Cadell is awake, trying to make sense of his unfamiliar surroundings. He is in a small, low room, a kind of study or office: musty, dusty, untidy. To his left there is a good oak desk, a little the worse for wear,

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littered with papers, scraps of leather, a bottle of ink, a whip, some bullets, an oily rag. Behind him some rough shelves hold a few books and more papers. In front, a small casement window set in the drop-log wall lets in a brilliant shaft of morning light. To his right there is a low doorway. In the absence of an actual door, the opening is draped with a single, large bullock skin. He is lying on a camp stretcher. As he lies there, his eyes tracing patterns in the pit-sawn Murray-pine ceiling, overlaid with wrinkled, milk-limed cloth, his sailor’s intuition tells him that something is not right. He gets up and pads over to the window. He draws back the curtains. The dry, dusty red yard of the day before is gone. Great drifts of leaves and twigs accompanied by dozens of branches, large and small, litter the area behind the house. Huge ruts have been gouged out of the gentle slope down to the flood plain, which is now a patchwork of water and mud. Several small trees have been uprooted, the vegetable garden flattened. There is a knock at the door. Beveridge’s face says it all. The Forerunner is ruined. At the height of the storm the shed collapsed, splintering the frame, tearing the canvas to shreds. Cadell has slept through the whole catastrophe, ‘having been awake,’ he explains, ‘through too many villainous nights at sea.’

Tyntyndyer station on the Murray River was one of the first of the valley farms. It was settled by the two Beveridge brothers Andrew (23) and Peter (just sixteen) in 1846 when they arrived from Kilmore (near Melbourne) with two bullock drays, 300 head of cattle and two farmhands. Shortly after their arrival Andrew Beveridge was speared to death by a group of the local

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Wati Wati people. There are several versions of the events that led up to this tragic outcome – as there are in so many violent early-contact stories. The least likely version is that he was simply mistaken for an unpopular overseer and murdered in error. Either of the other two versions is, sadly, much more likely to be true, although they both have a whiff of exaggeration about them. In one Andrew is just a shade too much the well-intentioned, innocent victim; in the other he is, perhaps, too much the racist redneck. The first version, the one that was written down, given in evidence, reported in the newspapers and found its way into the history books, is that a considerable amount of sheep spearing had been going on over a period of months at Tyntyndyer Station. This was not uncommon. Right across the country vast flocks of sheep and herds of cattle were being moved into areas of native grassland that had previously supported the animals on which Aboriginal people depended for food. The sheep and cattle, backed up by the farmer’s gun, inevitably won the competition for feed, leaving the locals no option but to start eating mutton and beef instead of kangaroo and wallaby. And why not? The farmers were happy to kill the Aborigines’ animals, so why should they not reciprocate? Andrew Beveridge, needless to say, did not quite see it that way. But he was a generous, tolerant man who wanted to establish good relations with his new neighbours. He began with polite requests, patient explanations of the new order, even agreements as to how much of his stock the Wati Wati would be permitted to take. But it did not stop there, and he soon felt the need to adopt a tougher line. Finally he delivered an ultimatum: the next man caught spearing sheep would be shot.

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Andrew was working downriver at the time, many kilometres away from the homestead, sleeping in a tent each night. It was 4 am when he was woken by a native stockman. A war party had arrived, well armed and determined to have the matter out. Beveridge got up and walked quietly over to the group. He was unarmed, still believing that good sense would prevail, still trusting in the essential humanity of these people for whom he had developed such a liking. That was his fatal mistake. The other version of Andrew Beveridge’s death comes from local oral sources. This says that he abducted a local Wati Wati girl and kept her chained to his bed for a week in the face of increasingly desperate pleas by her family to let her go. Finally they speared him to death. Two men, ‘Bobby’ and ‘Ptolemy’, were later arrested, taken to Melbourne and hanged in the presence of a third Wati Wati man, ‘Bullet Eye’, who was then sent home to tell his people the salutary tale. The oral version continues, telling us that young Peter Beveridge, not satisfied with this legal response to his brother’s murder, continued to reap vengeance using the popular arsenic-in-the-flour method, quickly reducing their numbers from thousands to next to nothing. This version of the story also claims that Beveridge hated the Wati Wati, refusing to employ them to work his 77 000-hectare run and later used blackbirded ‘Kanakas’ as slave labour. In fact we know that Peter Beveridge went on to take a great interest in Aboriginal people, their languages and customs. He amassed considerable knowledge of their society and community structures, beliefs, family arrangements and games. He addressed the Sydney Philological Society on the subject

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and wrote a book called The Aborigines of Victoria and the Riverina that is packed with fascinating detail about architecture, hunting and fishing methods, boatbuilding and diet. It does not, however, provide us with an unrelieved picture of Beveridge goodness and light. Rather it is unremitting in its racist generalisations, chilling in its indication of what the brothers’ attitudes may have been towards their indigenous neighbours. Peter informs us, for example, that the Aborigines have no . . . such arbitrary distinctions . . . [as] vice and virtue . . . cowardice, and self preservation, being too largely developed in the aboriginal character . . . mercy being unknown, such retribution was dealt out as only the brains of such bloodthirsty and ruthless savages could hatch, dismembering their quivering victims atrociously, and carrying away such portions of the reeking carcasses as their individual appetites deemed most toothcome [sic] . . . They are too indolent to make themselves good weatherproof huts . . . too lazy even to keep a good fire on.

He even suggests ‘that these people are descended from a primitive race . . . a separate creation’. It’s a wonder he could sleep at night, with nothing but a bullock-skin door to protect him. But to a fellow white man Peter Beveridge was generosity incarnate. He lent the labour of another younger brother, Mitchell, who had come to the farm following Andrew’s death, and even pitched in himself to repair the Forerunner. As they worked he told Cadell of his plans for the station. The land needed no clearing and the natural grassy plains were well watered by the lazy, meandering river with its anabranches and

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billabongs. He had started making red bricks on the property, with which he would clad the drop-log homestead and build a store over the old sawpit, incorporating it as a coolroom. A grove of big, shady peppercorn trees would shelter the house, and he fancied the idea of an avenue of palm trees leading down to a jetty on the river. He might even try some olives. For the moment, however, transport was his major problem. Bullock drays carrying shingles for the house had recently taken a month from Bendigo. Supplies from Melbourne could take double that time. Like everyone else on the river, he was just hanging out for the riverboats to come. With such enthusiastic help it did not take long to knock the Forerunner back into shape, launch her and take her for a quick test run. Finally, on 10 August, with provisions stored and the crew aboard, Cadell stepped into the stern, placed his revolver ostentatiously on the seat beside him and, according to Mitchell Beveridge, dispelled any misunderstandings the crew may have had with the words, ‘Now, boys, I’m boss’. Beveridge shoved the flimsy contraption off into deeper water and Cadell’s crew bent willingly, if somewhat inexpertly, to the oars. The repaired boat worked tolerably well, but her framework did not run to the luxury of a solid gunwale in which to plant the boat’s two pairs of rowlocks. With each stroke the frame flexed disconcertingly, threatening to tear the canvas. Cadell decided to hoist the sail, allowing the diggers to ship their oars, sit back and enjoy the passing landscape as a light breeze and the river’s strong current took hold of the boat. Cadell remained in the stern, grasping the rudder. The river was about 50 or 60 metres wide here, its full, glassy, torpid mass gliding downstream with understated power at

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about 5 or 6 kilometres an hour. Bare earth banks, 3 to 4 metres high, sloped back from the water at about 45 degrees, then flattened out onto the grassy, almost treeless rangelands of Beveridge’s run. They did 25 kilometres that day, mainly under sail, and pulled into the bank as the sun dipped in the west, setting the dusty mallee sky ablaze with a startling display of yellow, orange and crimson. They landed near an isolated slab cottage, where a lone Scotswoman was battling on after the death of her husband at the hands of the blacks. She fed the explorers and gave them timber with which to fashion some rudimentary gunwales. Respecting her privacy, they camped a short distance away, on the river bank. They took the opportunity to tallow the canvas with fat from the evening meal. Back on the water, Cadell pronounced the waterproofed and strengthened Forerunner ‘twice the boat’, and he spent another satisfactory day filling his notebooks with rough maps, crammed with detailed notes about reefs and snags, tight bends and broad reaches, potential landing and fuelling points. He took regular soundings and noted river depths in a long string of figures. That night, a lone shepherd with 3000 sheep

Collapsible boats were a nineteenth-century obsession. Here, the Berthon Boat, designed to be used as a lifeboat

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shared his campfire and swapped fresh mutton for a few quids of tobacco. Another day on the river and another hospitable cottage where another lone woman had been bailed up in her kitchen, this time by the notorious ‘Billy the Bull’. Cadell recorded in his diary that Billy was ‘as famous on the Murray as our Robin Hood or Rob Roy’. The woman’s husband had come home in the nick of time and Billy had melted away into the scrub. The Forerunner arrived shortly afterwards to find the nervous couple celebrating their escape but reviewing their defences. The possibility that Cadell’s little boat might indeed be the forerunner to a regular steamer service, a reliable link with the outside world and the long arm of the law, must have seemed like the promise of a second coming to these perversely determined and courageous pioneers. They showed their gratitude by presenting the expedition with ‘a pan for boiling our meat’. I suppose that Cadell had intended to simply barbecue any meat he managed to obtain until the idea of greasing the boat with fat occurred to him on their first night out. Later he recalled that whenever the Forerunner leaked ‘we clamped [sic] the frying pan on the fire, and after cooking our mutton chops, gave her a coating of grease, which was at all times most effectual’. The next few days took them through increasingly dry mallee country. The earth was redder by the hour, the vegetation thinning and shrinking. Here and there the dark emerald of a Murray pine contrasted with the silver sage of the porcupine grass, the drab olive of the mallees, casuarinas and black box. The river itself began to sink lower and lower into a single, much deeper trench of its own making, a trench stuffed

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with redgums, their upper branches barely reaching the clifftops. At the next lonely riverside homestead, an old highlander, his face pitted and disfigured by smallpox, shared the hardships with an incongruously young and beautiful wife. He explained that the young woman had been persuaded to throw in her lot with the crabbed old bushman by his admonition not to ‘look at my face, but look at my station on the Murray’. Meanwhile Billy the Bull’s presence seemed to be shadowing the Forerunner. ‘I took a warrant against Billy to a Hottentot trooper down the river,’ wrote Cadell, ‘this Hottentot belonged to the Cape Mounted Rifles was transported for shooting at some of his officers – has had to be disarmed repeatedly for shooting the natives, in fact the fellow’s thirst for blood is intractable [?] as a tiger’s. The sergeant who gave the order hoped he would kill Billy, who before dying, would send a spear through this most amiable of troopers.’ On 6 September the South Australian Register reported that ‘Captain Cadell, of the Queen of Sheba, arrived in his canvas boat at Chambers horse station on the Murray on the evening of the 1st Inst . . . intending to reach Wellington on Saturday . . . We take the opportunity to state that in a very few weeks the small steamer building by Messrs Randell at Gumeracka [sic] will be launched on the Murray.’ In fact it would be nearly six months before William Richard Randell’s Mary Ann hit the water at Noa-No (Drabsch’s Landing), a few kilometres north of Mannum. But by now the frame of his homemade steamer would have been clearly visible on the bank as Cadell’s amateur oarsmen, nearing the end of their marathon, rowed him by. I wonder if Cadell’s heart missed a beat as, looking up from

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his notebook, he found his gaze arrested by the bright pink of the freshly milled redgum skeleton – clearly the ribs of a substantial vessel – sitting there beside the river. Beside his river. Did he hail the two or three men working there, ask them what they were doing, or did he simply drift by, turning in his seat to try to make sense of what he had just seen? Was this the first inkling for Cadell that he had a competitor? Randell was two years younger than Cadell, born on 2 May 1824 at Sidbury, Devonshire. He arrived in Adelaide in 1837 with his parents and two younger brothers. His father was an officer of the South Australian Company, superintending land sales, stock management and milling operations. Notwithstanding his senior position with the company he was forced to live in a tent on public parkland for a year after their arrival. In 1844, Randell senior left the company and took up land at Gumeracha, on the Torrens River 40 kilometres from Adelaide. William Randell left a wonderful account of his early life in a series of diaries. The story goes that his father would often send young William down to the Murray River, 50 or 60 kilometres away, to fatten a herd of cattle for a few days on the lush riverside grass. On one of these excursions he records that, resting one evening on the clifftop overlooking the Murray, he was ‘seized with the determination that I would be the first man to put a steamboat on the river’. William and his brother John started a flour milling business at Gumeracha, but the discovery of gold in Victoria convinced him that the time was now ripe for a riverboat on the Murray and perhaps the Loddon, Campaspe or Goulburn, to carry supplies to the diggings. In July 1852 he started work on this

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new enterprise with brothers, Thomas and Elliott, helped by two local carpenters. They felled redgum and milled it at a sawpit in the Kenton Valley near Gumeracha, against the strenuous objections of their father who ‘was strongly opposed to the project, and always told me I should stick to the work I understood’. They seem to have partly assembled the hull frame on the spot then hauled the sections 50 kilometres to the Murray. ‘As I had never seen a steamboat,’ Randell claimed with modest self-satisfaction, ‘it certainly was rather venturesome on my part.’ Randell also said he knew nothing of the prize money on offer. Both claims are just a little difficult to believe. Drawing on his experiences at the steam-driven flour mill, Randell installed a steam engine in his boat, constructed paddlewheels and commissioned an Adelaide blacksmith to build a boiler to his own specifications. Flying in the face of conventional wisdom, Randell specified a rectangular boiler. It was 2.1 metres long, 1.3 metres square, and made of 6 mm-thick steel plates riveted together. The firebox was made of copper and ran through the middle of the boiler. At its first trial the firebox collapsed so Randell removed one end of the boiler, installed a new steel firebox and replaced the end, bolting it back on in the absence of riveting equipment. At its second trial, Elliott Randell, the ‘engineer’ of the venture, retired to a safe distance and crouched down in the bushes expecting the monster to explode at any minute, only reappearing when he could hear the gentle, reassuring throb of the steam engine as it approached operating pressure. As the pressure increased further, however, the boiler swelled and bulged, its sides bloating in an apparent effort to become cylindrical (as all boilers should be). The brothers responded by wrapping a

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couple of lengths of heavy bullock chain around it and ramming a series of wooden wedges in between the chains and the sides of the box. Throughout its life, however, this most unusual boiler continued to expand and contract, panting like an overworked buffalo. The Mary Ann was launched on 19 February 1853. She was 17 metres long, 3.5 metres wide, displaced 2 tons of water and drew nearly a metre. Before Randell could set off upstream, however, an unhelpful government demanded that he first visit Goolwa to obtain customs clearance for the goods he proposed to sell in Victoria. This demand established a pattern of preferential treatment that many believed would penalise Randell in favour of Cadell for a decade or more. It was also an early glimpse of the farcical way in which intercolonial rivalries would be played out through a bureaucratic three-way customs war to create havoc in the riverboat trade for 50 years. On 4 March the Mary Ann left Noa-No for Goolwa, ‘carrying 112 bags of flour, 24 bags of bran, 5 bags of biscuits, 69 bags of sugar, 21 boxes of tea, 4 cases of ‘sundries’, 400 lb tobacco’. William was skipper, Tom was mate, Elliott, engineer, and there was one deckhand. At Goolwa a large crowd greeted the little puffer. Even the governor had come down from Adelaide for the day. He came aboard and offered Randell a £300 reward for his pioneering voyage. It was all that Randell would ever get from the government – and it would take a long time coming. The Winsby brothers’ shipyard – busy already on a barge for Cadell – took a few hours off to join in the celebrations and hoisted the new Murray River flag. It was based on the ‘national colonial flag’ of the 1820s, with a red southern cross dividing it into four quarters, like the Eureka

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flag, the Union Jack in the first quarter and blue and white horizontal stripes in the other three. It would become the unofficial ensign for steamers in the Murray river trade. It is still used today. The Mary Ann steamed out of Goolwa the following day under a leaden sky, with a blustery southerly building up a savage chop on Lake Alexandrina. As she crossed the lake she shipped water repeatedly, almost foundering at one stage, but she gained the river in safety and reached Noa-No on the sixth. Randell loaded up with fuel and provisions. He then lost valuable time finding replacements for two crew members who had signed on for the voyage but thought better of it at the last minute after an incident with a sword. Randell had been presented with the sword by a friend, who intended it more as a trophy or good-luck charm than as a weapon. But, when asked, Randell foolishly declared that he would use it against the Aborigines if necessary. The idea of fighting their way up the river with flashing sabres, like the three musketeers, did not appeal to the deckhands, so Randell was left shorthanded. The first paddle-steamer voyage on the Murray finally got under way on 25 March. The river was low, and from Moorundie onwards, Randell had considerable trouble with sandbars and shoals. Just beyond Morgan he was forced to unload several tonnes of goods in order to keep going. At Penn’s Reach, 40 kilometres on, he turned back, obstructed by a sandbank too large to negotiate. The Mary Ann had travelled just 200 kilometres, but Randell had learned some valuable lessons. He winched her onto his crude slipway at Noa-No and began working on a few modifications.

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In the meantime Cadell had finished his own voyage of discovery. On 11 September 1852 the Adelaide Times announced his return ‘to Adelaide yesterday after his exploring trip down the Murray’. He had abandoned the Forerunner and her crew at Wellington, recording with satisfaction that ‘the little boat was only snagged once during her passage, which an overall patch and a yarn and a needle speedily put to rights’. He crossed Lake Alexandrina, reported the Adelaide Times, in a ‘sailing vessel kindly furnished by Mr. Carter, with three blacks . . . Captain Cadell speaks very highly of the very efficient manner in which Mr. Mason has laid down the beacons in the channel between Wellington and Goolwa’. Cadell was less complimentary about the efficiency of Chowne’s shipyard in Sydney, busily at work, he had supposed, on his new paddle-steamer. The work was expected to be finished in October, so it was with some disappointment that he now learnt it had barely begun. Delays, it seems, were ‘due to the difficulty in procuring mechanics, from so many of them having gone to the diggings’. Following a trip to Sydney, during which the appropriate firecrackers were inserted, no doubt, in the appropriate places, Cadell returned to South Australia and turned his attention to the perennial problem of the Murray mouth. It was now thirteen years since Pullen had first surveyed the opening in detail, and three years since Cadell’s own first visit. Focused as he was on the depth of water over the bar, Cadell may not have been aware of the bigger changes that were taking place. It would be another four years before Captain Bloomfield Douglas RN again plotted the actual position of the mouth, discovering that it had migrated 500 metres along the

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beach in a south-easterly direction. When the next major survey was done in 1876 it had moved on another 500 metres. Later it turned around and headed back up the coast, ending up 100 years later in almost exactly the same position as that plotted by Pullen. Bloomfield Douglas kept an eye on the Murray mouth over a number of years. At one stage he noted that it had moved 140 metres in just six months. On another occasion he calculated that a million tonnes of sand had been dislodged by the restless mouth over a period of eighteen months. In January 1853, Cadell had his own first taste of its unpredictable power.

CHAPTER 9

The Lady Augusta The pioneer of the Murray 1853

Francis Cadell, William Younghusband and Thomas Saunders (the Port Elliot harbourmaster) are mucking about in a sailing skiff, like three twelve-year-olds on holiday. They have taken the day off, put a boat in the water at Goolwa and set sail for the Murray mouth, munching on bread and cold meat as the wind and current carry them downstream. The final reach of the river is broad and calm – just a gentle chop disturbing its blue green waters. It is quite shallow. In most places they can see the bottom. They could step out of the boat and wade the 200–300 metres to shore if they wanted to. The bottom of the boat grounds occasionally on the sandy shoals. There are thousands of fish: blizzards of silver bream, mullet and mulloway flashing in the sunlight, stately Murray cod and the odd shark patrolling this

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netherworld between river and ocean. On the surface, fleets of pelicans cruise the lagoon, while storm petrels and gulls wheel overhead. The river mouth is a kilometre or more wide. Its north-west margin laps hard up against a steep sand and earth bank where a small knoll of relatively permanent land has established itself. There are tufts of grass and small, windswept shrubs. Shearwaters are nesting there in burrows. The south-east side is much lower. A long, flat, sandy spit, barely breaking the surface of the water, extends for another kilometre before gently rising to a range of lofty sandhills that disappear into the distance, blurred by a haze of salty mist. The flat water ends abruptly at the opening. From the low viewpoint of a small boat the entire mouth appears walled across by a disconcertingly high barricade of white and dark blue water. The ocean froths and boils at what seems like an elevated level above the lagoon, higher indeed than their heads, threatening to spill over into the calmer water at any moment and swamp the tiny wooden boat. But it never does. The roar of the breakers is not loud enough to drown out their voices, but it certainly makes its presence felt. The whole scene is bathed in the most brilliant sunshine: bleaching the sand to a biscuity white, carving the sandhills into architectonic solidity with black, geometric shadows, throwing a myriad of dancing sparkles off the water. The scene is made more startling by a bank of dangerously inky indigo cloud that has been looming up over the Southern Ocean for several hours and is steadily filling more and more of the sky. Storm-clouds on a summer’s day – like a painting by Giorgione. They reef the sail. Cadell gets out his copy of Pullen’s map, Younghusband gets out his lead line, and they set to work. They systematically check the depth of the whole area, paying particular attention to the

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Pullen’s map of the Murray mouth, with alterations and annotations in Cadell’s hand

naturally occurring channels, making their way slowly but surely towards the ominous wall of water. The steady rolling thunder of the breaking waves gradually builds. Closer and closer they get to the bar itself, sweeping almost the total width of the opening, feeling now the frustrated turbulence of the river water as it fights with the ocean swell. Now for the difficult bit. Cadell decides that he will put the boat’s head

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into the breakers and storm straight out to sea, sounding the depth as he goes, before going about and surfing in on a parallel line, while recording another string of depths. Cadell is the seaman here; the others will do as they are told. The first run goes like clockwork. ‘Stand by to go about,’ roars the captain over the crash of the breakers, then: ‘Going about!’ and he yanks the tiller over as Saunders and Younghusband scramble from one side of the boat to the other, expertly dodging the momentarily confused boom. Then the sail fills and they are on their way again – Cadell steering, Younghusband heaving the lead, Saunders balancing his weight on the windward gunwale – through the surf and back into the calmer waters. More confident now, they turn and go back for another run. Again they successfully pierce the incoming breakers. ‘Stand by,’ booms the captain as he searches for a suitable break in the waves. Round they go, but at the critical moment a large wave rears up and hits the boat side on, filling the bottom with water. Saunders and Younghusband bail feverishly as Cadell struggles to regain some leeway. He almost succeeds but by now the next wave is upon them. It bursts over the boat, filling it halfway to the gunwales and leaving it wallowing dangerously, still three quarters on to the direction of the waves. The next wave hits the boat with such fury that it capsizes, pitching all into the water: men, map, lead line and cold mutton. All three are good swimmers and they strike out along the beach, getting clear of the river’s relentless outflow before scrambling ashore on the ocean side of the sandy knoll. They collapse exhausted, wet and cold, on the warm sand. Their day’s work is lost, but Cadell has formed a mental map of where the channels and shoals lie – at least for the time being.

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Cadell’s new paddle-steamer was launched from Chowne’s yard at Pyrmont on 25 March 1853 by a Miss Williams, before the usual assemblage of bearded Victorian dignitaries. Cadell had only just begun his brief captaincy of the coastal screwsteamer Cleopatra. Her regular visits to Sydney had allowed him to oversee the completion of the work at Chowne’s yard. Now the launch has been timed to coincide with one of the Cleopatra’s scheduled visits, and Cadell entertained the guests on board, with a little help from the band of the 11th regiment. A couple of things about Cadell’s boat would have struck the interested observer immediately. The first was her name. Randell’s Mary Ann was named after his mother – a gesture of genuine filial affection typical of the man. Cadell called his boat the Lady Augusta after (Augusta) Lady Young, the governor’s wife – a gesture much more calculating and cynical. Right from the start, with the naming of their respective boats, these two rivals reveal so much about themselves. Cadell, the entrepreneur, the big spender, would cut a mercurial and opportunistic trail across the Murray–Darling basin for a decade before departing, as he had arrived, in a blaze of publicity, his enemies snapping at his heels. Randell would quietly build a more lasting relationship with the river and its people, working the paddle-steamers for 40 years before entering parliament and then honourable retirement. Unfortunately Cadell was in a bit of a hurry when he registered the Lady Augusta, and all official paperwork relating to her has her name spelt ‘Agusta’. Cadell never had much time for bureaucracy. The other striking thing about the Lady Augusta was her appearance. Creating an ugly boat is so difficult to achieve that

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the phrase is almost a contradiction in terms. The design of watercraft seems to effortlessly bring together a sort of stringent functionalism with a robust vernacular sensuality. Boats of all shapes and sizes are invariably sleek and graceful: their rakish angles and gentle curves combine seamlessly with their purpose-built rationality and simplicity. From the black, planked war canoes of the Solomon Islands to glittering white luxury liners, from aggressively bristling guided-missile frigates to Sydney Harbour ferries, from caravels to catamarans, they are always a visual delight. So what went wrong with the Lady Augusta? It is hard indeed to imagine how the designer of the gorgeous Queen of Sheba could have created such a monster, such a ‘strange and ugly object’ as Mudie described her. Cadell’s determination to cram as many dignitaries as possible on board for her maiden river voyage probably had a fair bit to do with it. She was basically a long, flat, pointed raft, with the deck almost entirely covered by an oblong accommodation block that looked a bit like a row of portable workers’ toilets. There were 32 cabins in all: sixteen utilitarian ‘fore-cabins’, and sixteen ‘cuddy-cabins’ for the gentry. ‘The ladies’ cabins are fitted up with green velvet, and the gentlemen’s with horsehair cushions’, reported a young crewman in a letter written on board. The Lady Augusta was 31 metres long, almost 4 metres wide (6.1 at the paddle boxes) and had a draught of less than a metre, fully laden (0.7 empty). Her hull was divided into four watertight compartments. She had two 20-horsepower horizontal steam engines with cylindrical boilers and featured two very high funnels. One of them later fell over in an accident

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that killed two men; the other was then shortened. The deckhouses, which rendered the steamer almost unmanageable in high winds, were also later removed. Whatever may be said about her overall design, her engines were beyond reproach. When she reached the end of her working life they were transferred to the PS Jupiter, which continued to run a service on Lake Alexandrina connecting Milang, Narrong and Menindee until 1930. They were still running perfectly when they were finally taken out of service and sold for scrap. Once the Lady Augusta was launched Chowne’s men spent another two months on the finishing touches. They rigged her temporarily as a two-masted ketch, and she sailed on 31 May under the command of Captain Thomas Davidson, one of Younghusband’s employees. He certainly took his time, piloting her cautiously down the New South Wales coast, calling in at various ports for quite lengthy visits along the way. On 10 July Cadell joined her from the steamer Phoenix, off Cape Howe, but he left her again when she reached Melbourne. It is a bit hard to trace the peripatetic captain’s movements during this period. He set a blistering pace, bobbing up in Melbourne one week, in Adelaide the next, then back at Goolwa or the Murray mouth. One minute on the bridge of the Cleopatra, the next he’s hitching a ride on some other coastal steamer. There were several visits to Ballarat, where he appeared in court as a witness at the trial of Stephen Lawrence, charged with stealing Cadell’s watch. Meanwhile, back in Scotland, the ever-helpful Hew had purchased another steamer, the Lioness, an iron tug of 26 tons, built in 1851 by T.D. Marshall of South Shields. He had the

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paddlewheels and boxes removed and stowed away, and he sent her out to Australia under sail, rigged as a schooner and crewed by volunteers drawn from the old Cockenzie families: George Johnston, John Barclay, William Barber and James Ritchie among others. The sailors turned out to be of more lasting use than the boat, many of them ending up as skippers on Cadell’s river steamers after brief and unproductive visits to the Victorian goldfields. The Lioness was too deep for river work and Cadell sold her. (She turned up later in Hokitika, on the bleak west coast of New Zealand’s South Island, where she featured in one of Bully Hayes’ spectacular escapes.)The Lady Augusta cleared the port of Melbourne on 22 July. She visited Portland and arrived at Port Elliot on 10 August. At 5 am on the sixteenth, Captain Davidson ordered steam to be raised and she ran back along the coast to the Murray mouth. There was a strong northerly blowing and the sea was rough. Davidson dropped anchor about a kilometre offshore, in 9 or 10 metres of water, ‘to await a smoothing’. It appears that Cadell may have taken command himself at this stage, for the run into the river. Six weeks earlier he had arranged for a tent to be pitched on the beach. From here observers kept a 24-hour watch, recording the effects of tides and weather conditions on the depth of the channels and on the positions of shifting sandbanks. The channel was temporarily buoyed for the attempted passage. By midday the weather had shown no indication of abating and Cadell sent some sailors in a lifeboat to have a crack at the opening. They reached the calm waters of the Goolwa without incident. At 3 pm the wind dropped, but the ocean condition appeared to deteriorate and the captain decided, like that other fatally flawed Scot, that ‘if it were done when ’tis done, then

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’twere well it were done quickly’. He weighed anchor and took the Lady Augusta around in two or three broad loops while steam pressure was brought up to its maximum level. Then he pointed her at the opening and gave her everything the boilers could muster. Like a runaway train on a mountain railway, she bucked and lurched through the surf, while Francis Cadell battled with mother nature to prove who was the mightier. A maverick wave struck the boat a-beam and she broached to, losing headway and wallowing sluggishly in the worst possible place to stop. For several minutes she lay there, battered by successive waves, refusing to answer the helm, until at length, slowly but surely, Cadell imposed his will. The paddlewheels dug into the water, the bow came slowly around, and she slid gracefully over the bar and into calm water. Cadell relaxed his whiteknuckled grip on the wheelhouse taffrail. His face split into a broad smile as a ragged but exhilarated shout of sheer relief erupted from Davidson and the crew. One of the two whaleboats being towed behind had filled with water, but there was no other damage. The Lady Augusta cruised upstream to the Goolwa jetty, a welcoming crowd and a volley of musketry. In a letter to the Adelaide press almost a year later Cadell commented that he ‘could not conscientiously recommend [the Murray mouth] as “a cruising ground for yachts”’, but that ‘it is our high aim to navigate it regularly, and to prove to the world that we possess a navigable estuary as well as a navigable river’. His immediate business with the Adelaide press was of a more commercial nature. ‘Captain Cadell begs to inform the settlers of the Murray and Murrumbidgee’, proclaimed his advertisement in the Adelaide papers just four days later that he

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was up and running and ready to pick up their consignments of wool on this, his very first journey upriver. The farmers on the Murrumbidgee would actually have to wait a little longer, but the lives of those on the Murray were about to change. The next ten days went by in a blur of champagne and speeches, lunches, launches and musket volleys, all accompanied by the sense of urgency that only a rival can produce. Randell had set off upsteam again in the improved Mary Ann – and Cadell must surely have been aware of this – just 24 hours before the Lady Augusta steamed out of Port Elliot to attempt her entry into the river. On 22 August, Monday, Cadell’s guests began to arrive for the journey upriver. There would be over 40 people on board – versions of the exact number vary – by the time the Lady Augusta sailed. The guest of honour was the governor, Sir Henry Edward Fox Young, not accompanied this time by his family. There were three members of the Legislative Assembly: R. Davenport, J. Grainger and, of course, William Younghusband, with his wife and three daughters. Two reporters, James Allen and E.W. Andrews, represented the Adelaide Times and the South Australian Register respectively. ‘The 45 who compose our number,’ wrote the governor, also included an Adelaide merchant ‘of experience and intelligence . . . [and] an engineer of the name . . . Napier, well-known among the scientific constructors of steam engines’. Well known indeed, especially to Cadell, who would continue to draw on Napier’s help and expertise for many more years. Other passengers included Captain Kinloch, Mrs B.T. Finniss and her son, Boyle Finniss, Mr R. Bright, Mr Palmer and a Mrs Irvine, whose entertaining behaviour would delight the governor during the voyage. Mr

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Mason, the Protector of Aborigines at Wellington, who had buoyed the channel so ably from Goolwa to Wellington, would act as pilot. Captain Davidson would command the Lady Augusta, Captain Robertson would be barge-master, and the multicultural crew included three Aborigines, one ‘Chinaman’, two Indians and two South Sea Islanders. Cadell’s barge was launched on Tuesday (23 August) from Winsby’s yard at Goolwa. Again he had given some careful thought to the name. Like Randell he was convinced – wrongly as it turned out – that the goldfields would provide a substantial part of his trade, so he called her the Eureka, after the Eureka Hill diggings near Ballarat (the famous Eureka Stockade incident was yet to occur). She was festooned with garlands of banksia flowers, and Younghusband’s thirteen-yearold daughter, Eliza, did the honours. That evening Cadell threw a dinner on board the Lady Augusta. The Eureka had been lashed alongside, temporarily decked over, and an awning erected. During the voyage, the passengers would be glad of the extra space to use as a promenade deck. For now, however, a long table, a white tablecloth, candles and the best the Goolwa hotel could provide of food, wine and service, brought a touch of Renoir to the Murray delta. Along with the inevitable toasts and speeches, ‘one of the crew’, a Mr Higgins, sang ‘Come, Fill the Flowing Bowl’ and ‘Hurrah for a Bushman’s Life’. It is hard to imagine how Cadell and his crew were able to find time for the vast number of jobs still needing attention. The following day the residents of Goolwa, Port Elliot and Currency Creek farewelled the captain and officers at a gala lunch held at the government store. The 15 m × 7 m warehouse

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was given a temporary floor that groaned under the weight of the assembled populace and another mountain of dead pig, chook and cow, suitably prepared again by the Goolwa pub. The Reverend Mr Newland of Encounter Bay was in the chair and ‘Mr Higgins of Currency Creek, acted as croupier’. There were yet more toasts and speeches. This time the locals had their chance and the South Australian Register reported their contributions in detail: ‘They must excuse him, he was a plain man, and spoke his mind. (Hear, Hear.)’ There were yet more songs: ‘The Queen of the Seas’ and ‘I Was Merry in the Hall’. I wonder if some of the guests, particularly those who had been up late the night before, found themselves nodding off as the afternoon wore on. Not Cadell, of course. As guest of honour he was entitled, indeed expected, to excuse himself at the earliest possible opportunity. No one else could leave until he had. There was last-minute work on the steamer and barge to supervise, stores and firewood to load, engines, boilers and other equipment to be checked and adjusted. No doubt his mind was also exercised by that man Randell. What was he up to? Did he constitute a serious threat? Was there room for two operators on this river? For that matter, was there business enough for one? Time would tell. And what of the river itself? It was almost a year to the day since the Forerunner had arrived at Wellington. There had been plenty of water then, but what would it be like now? How would the massive Lady Augusta, the Eureka loaded, he hoped, with 100 tonnes of wool, cope with the rocky reefs that stuck up unpredictably out of the riverbed, the great drifts of sand, the lethal snags and fallen trees?

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But I don’t think that Francis Cadell was really the worrying kind. He would have taken care of business with his characteristic energy, retired early – thank goodness there were no more formalities – and slept well. He would need to be up early. Tomorrow was a big day. The Lady Augusta finally got under way at 7 pm on Thursday 25 August, perhaps just a few hours later than everyone had expected. The gentlemen of the press reported fine weather, bright starlight and water as smooth as a mirror. At a signal from Cadell a small band of musicians drawn from the crew – multi-skilled as well as multicultural – struck up ‘Off She Goes’, and the steamer glided away from the wharf. The crowd raised three cheers for ‘Captain Cadell and the first steamer on the Murray’. Poor Randell was already forgotten. The Lady Augusta circled around and swept past the wharf before heading upstream, Cadell and Mason in the bows. She made good progress and at ten o’clock Davidson dropped anchor just short of Point Sturt, where the Goolwa opens out into Lake Alexandrina. The thrashing of the paddlewheels ceased, the steam engines’ rhythmic throb stuttered and stopped, the boat’s creaking and groaning and the shouts of the crew died away, the murmurs of temporarily disturbed waterbirds petered out and a deep silence descended on the little party. But for the passengers it was just too exciting to even contemplate sleep at such an hour. No doubt they made full use of the promenade deck, the glittering stars and the equally glittering company before seeking their rather poky cabins. They would have got a rude shock at 4 am, however, as Captain Davidson had the engineer and stokers at

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work raising steam for a five o’clock start. It was another clear day. Around Point Sturt and onto the lake the Lady Augusta steamed, disturbing flocks of swans and cygnets. Young Boyle Finniss reported it ‘very rough and windy, making people sick’. By midmorning they were off Point Pomanda, infested, according to Mason, with large black snakes. Soon after, they entered the river. They took on fuel at Scott’s station, at a jetty erected there by the energetic Mason, and pushed on to Wellington where a crowd had gathered to meet them. Cadell had no time for celebrations, however. He pushed on determinedly, past Wark and Cooke’s sheep station where another crowd had gathered and on into a rough, gloomy evening. The passengers must have breathed a collective sigh of relief when he finally called it a night at 11 pm.

MAP 9 The Murray

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Journals kept on board by the two reporters, Allen and Andrews, by Kinloch and by the governor record almost every detail of the trip. They also give us an insight into what the colonists wanted from the Murray. ‘Here is deep water running through fertile land,’ writes Andrews for the South Australian Register, the following day, ‘– a natural highway, connecting vast tracts of country . . . We passed the Rhine [perhaps one of the small anabranches just upstream from Mannum], at 2 o’clock. Its waters seemed rather swollen.’ All four diaries are full of references to the suitability of the land for farming purposes, to stock numbers already there, to the amount of water in the river. Late that night they reached Moorundie. The next day was Sunday. Cadell led his little flock in prayers on the river bank.

AP 9 The Murray River

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No doubt some of the locals joined in. Moorundie, near where Blanchetown now stands, was then a major centre for the scattered white community of the lower Murray. The Protector of Aborigines had his headquarters there. There was a police station, and it was the centre of Edward John Eyre’s large pastoral station. It had a growing population of fringe dwellers. The Ngaiawang people would have been intrigued indeed by so vast a gathering of the red-faced strangers, assembled on the river bank beside their mighty smoke-billowing super-canoe. What must they have thought as the sound of those Christian voices drifted thinly through the morning air: ‘O Eternal Lord God, who alone spreadest out the heavens, and rules the raging of the sea . . . ’ The day of rest, however, was mainly taken up with cutting and loading firewood, and there was some drama as well. A white man had been murdered upriver, and when the Lady Augusta tied up at the jetty late on Saturday night the settlement had been abuzz with excitement. The unfortunately named Corporal Coward had just ridden into town with another police officer to investigate the murder. Cadell’s impatience to get going was palpable. At 3 am on Monday the Lady Augusta was on her way again. Late that afternoon they tied up at the river bank in the middle of nowhere. Andrews paints a wonderful picture of the kind of fun an evening could bring when Cadell could be persuaded to make an early stop: As the evening closed in the sailors made a fire of brushwood, on the rising ground a few yards from the river, to light them as they carried wood into the ship. The effect from the cabin windows was very pleasing, and dinner was no sooner ended than we all

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went ashore . . . One fire was kindled under a large native cypress pine covered with foliage. I can hardly describe the beauty of the flames as they blazed in the midst of the green branches, which, ever and anon; yielding to the heat, darted forth forked tongues of fire . . . the whole air was spangled with fire.

The next day Andrews saw ‘several turtle in the river . . . I can personally vouch for its excellence when potted for sandwiches’. These were a good couple of days for the table: just before breakfast, an Aboriginal man had come alongside in a canoe – ‘The most primitive exhibition of naval architecture I ever saw’ – and traded three large golden perch for a tin of flour. The following day there were fresh vegetables and beef to be had at Chambers’ station. On Thursday, 1 September, after an unplanned diversion up a ‘billybong’ that looked like the main stream, the Lady Augusta arrived at Chapman’s Paringa station. Here was news of another murder. This time two white men travelling from the Darling River had been killed. The local Sub-Protector of Aborigines, E.B. Scott, handed over to Cadell an Aboriginal suspect in the custody of a police constable, for transport to New South Wales. Their presence on the boat must have dampened spirits a little. Two other Aborigines had been shot dead ‘trying to escape’. The prisoner was later acquitted. There was also news of the Mary Ann. In fact there had been news of her progress at almost every stop. Randell’s little boat, having started from Noa-No nine days ahead of Cadell’s Goolwa start was now four or five days ahead of the Lady Augusta. The gap was slowly closing. Cadell’s early starts and late finishes were paying off, but the pressure was getting to

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everyone. Lack of sleep, long hours in the wheelhouse, the intense concentration needed to navigate an almost completely unknown waterway, some of it split into a confusing tracery of parallel anabranches and billabongs, parts of it choked with fallen trees, often at night, with a barge lashed alongside, were bound to affect the officers’ alertness. Sooner or later something was going to go wrong. It happened the following day. ‘A little before 10’, reports Andrews, ‘all on board were startled by a loud and sudden scream.’ Captain Davidson, while making his way through the engine room, had got his foot caught in the ‘eccentric wheel’, which cut right through his boot, smashing his foot to a pulp. It was a serious injury, requiring urgent medical attention. But the Lady Augusta could not go anywhere without firewood, and the nearest doctor was at Wentworth, three days away – or perhaps even further. Cadell called a halt that afternoon at Chowilla station to refuel. The injured man, groaning in his cabin, added a chill to the already discomforting presence of a black man chained up on deck. Andrews and some of the passengers, trying to get away from the boat for an hour or two, ‘crossed a large lagoon in a mungo or native canoe’. The Lady Augusta crossed the border into New South Wales on Saturday, 3 September, and with Davidson still in considerable pain, Cadell decided to push on through Sunday. Was it really his need to get the injured man to medical care that drove Cadell on, or was it his determination not to be upstaged by the upstart from the Adelaide hills? The 3 am starts, the 11 pm finishes, even the odd all-nighter, made the journey much less of a picnic than his guests, I am sure, had expected. In retrospect, the night-time travel in particular

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bordered on suicidal. Later, during the heyday of the riverboat trade, skippers were obliged to pull in and tie up at the bank at sunset. It was just too dangerous to negotiate the rivers at night, even when they were charted and well known to the experienced skippers. But Cadell had a point to prove to the world. He wanted to show that riverboats could make a nonsense of the best travel times offered by bullock drays, or even by fast stage coaches. Beating Randell was important too, but that was becoming a more personal issue. At Yamborough station, on Sunday, he learnt that the Mary Ann had passed by the previous Wednesday. On Tuesday, 6 September, they reached Bagot’s station, and learnt that Randell had been through on the Friday – he was still four days ahead. That evening, just after dark, two Aboriginal men and a woman approached the Lady Augusta in a canoe. One of them grabbed hold of the rudder chain, which upset their canoe. They were thrown into the water while the canoe was dragged under the steamer. The two men clambered on board, but the woman floated away downstream. ‘When we expressed apprehensions for her safety,’ wrote James Allen for the Adelaide Times, and asked her husband why he did not jump in to her rescue, he replied, ‘the water too much cold’. The woman reached the shore in safety while her husband, Bob, ‘a fine intelligent fellow’, was persuaded to pilot them upstream for some distance. That night they reached the Darling River. ‘We entered the Darling at its junction with the Murray’, wrote the governor, ‘700 miles from the Goolwa, at half-past 11 o’clock P.M. with full foresail and full speed of steam’. They tied up outside McLeod’s public house. Randell

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had been there on Saturday morning, still nearly four days ahead. Cadell was relieved to find that Dr Fletcher was in town. He came aboard the next day. He had two jobs to do. First he attended to Davidson’s mashed foot. Next, as the local resident magistrate, he had a murder trial to hear. After the police evidence had been presented he dismissed the charge against the Aboriginal prisoner. There is no record of how the man got home again. The Lady Augusta ploughed on, passing Mrs Williams’ station on the twelfth. She was another of the Murray’s tough pioneer women. As the boat surged past she attempted to fire a salute from a small, ancient cannon, supposedly given to her by Charles Sturt. The gun failed to go off until the boat was several kilometres upriver when the passengers heard it loud and clear. The next day they reached Euston. The Mary Ann had passed there only the day before. Things were looking up, and Cadell celebrated by tying up early and announcing that a dance would be held that evening on the barge/promenade deck, under lights. On Wednesday, 14 September, Cadell tied up at Ross’s station for firewood, obligingly supplied by three slightly inebriated farm labourers, who then demanded payment in the form of alcohol. The crew member supervising the operation, a man called Copeland, refused, and the three labourers attacked him. Apparently no one went to his aid; it seemed they did not need to. As the passengers and crew lined the rail, clapping and cheering, Copeland served out a good thrashing to all three of them. In another version of this story told in Riverboats, Mudie says that three station ‘shepherds’, who

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were drunk, invaded the forecabin, trying to buy spirits. Cadell refused them and turned them out of the cabin. They abused the crew as they left, and a general brawl ensued. Cadell allowed himself to speculate later about where the liquor could have come from to get them drunk in the first place. Had Randell had anything to do with it? Many riverboat tales have benefited from a bit of ornamentation over the years and this may be one of them. A similar anecdote, possibly from around the same time (and possibly another version of the same incident) is told by settler, wanderer and writer Nehemiah Bartley. He has a drunk bushman getting on board the Lady Augusta and thrusting his head into no less a cabin than His Excellency’s, where Sir Henry was in the middle of shaving. Cadell was quickly on hand, bundling the man ashore. The drunk teetered at the water’s edge hurling a torrent of abuse in the captain’s direction, describing him, amongst other things as an ‘ugly man’. Cadell – probably tired beyond imagining and close to the end of his tether – apparently leapt ashore and beat the man senseless. The bushman, according to Bartley, ‘had nothing to complain about on the score of beauty’. Cadell finally caught up with Randell that night, just upstream from the Murrumbidgee junction. At 11 pm the Mary Ann’s crew were rudely awakened from their slumbers by the pounding of the Lady Augusta’s twin steam engines and the thrashing of her paddles. The cruising palace steamed past, her powerful headlight piercing the darkness, every window ablaze, a floating cocktail party of passengers who had stayed up in anticipation of just this event. Cadell did not stop to exchange pleasantries. He did not even slacken pace, but

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surged ahead and only pulled over at midnight when he had put 5 or 6 kilometres between himself and the Mary Ann. Randell, we are told, immediately raised steam and gave chase, regaining the lead shortly before dawn. It took all day for the Lady Augusta to peg back the lead and draw abreast of the Mary Ann again. The race was now fast and furious. It was becoming obvious that the little Mary Ann, with its panting boiler, could be just as nimble as Cadell’s ‘twofunnelled monstrosity’, with a heavy barge lashed alongside. The two steamers churned on, side by side, the passengers and crews hurling good-natured abuse across the narrow gap, the captains maintaining a frosty silence. Gradually the Lady Augusta pulled ahead. In the excitement of the duel, Cadell took a wrong turn and found himself battling up the Wakool River. Randell followed, assuming that the respected captain could not possibly be wrong. When an overhanging branch carried away the Lady Augusta’s mast, Cadell was forced to accept that he was no longer in the main stream. He backed and filled laboriously in the narrow channel and chased the smaller boat back to the Murray. The Mary Ann’s manoeuvrability was paying dividends, so at Coghill’s Piangil station, still 80 kilometres short of Swan Hill, Cadell decided to unhook the barge and leave Captain Robertson to load up the wool that was stacked there on the river bank. Unencumbered, the Lady Augusta caught Randell that evening, but another disaster lay in store. Without the stabilising effect of the barge, the top-heavy Lady Augusta was more vulnerable than ever to crosswinds. A gust caught hold of the steamer and she ended up hopelessly entangled in a thicket of overhanging trees. It took hours of axe

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work to liberate her. Finally at two o’clock in the morning she was free, and Cadell pressed on into the night. As the sunrise lit up the eastern skies and began to cut through a filmy river mist at 5 am on 17 September, the engineer reduced speed and the Lady Augusta finally glided into the bank just below Beveridge’s Tyntyndyer station – the starting point for the previous year’s Forerunner expedition. Peter Beveridge was on the jetty to meet them. Much had been done in the twelve months since Cadell’s last visit. James Allen was able to report that ‘Mr. Beveridge’s garden is the most beautiful I have seen on the Murray. It is laid out with much taste . . . an artificial canal leading from the billabong gives the whole a cool and pleasing appearance.’ He also commented on ‘the few miserable remains of the nearly extinct tribes at Swan Hill. The adult natives are fast disappearing from the wholly or partly settled districts.’ But Cadell could not dally. Randell was close behind, and Cadell was not going to throw away the narrow lead he had worked so hard for at this late stage. After stocking up with fresh vegetables and some eggs, he pushed on to Swan Hill. The town’s entire population was out in force: ten white men, two white women and fifteen Aboriginal men and women. Randell arrived a few hours later. That evening a ball was held. The following day being Sunday, one of the Mary Ann’s crew, described by Randell as a ‘knockabout parson’ said matins. James Allen reported that ‘Prices at the store are extravagantly high; for instance cotton socks 2s. 6d. per pair; towels about 18 inches square and unhemmed, 2s. 6d. each; letter paper, 5s per quire . . . ’ One passenger left the Lady Augusta at Swan Hill and rode back to Melbourne. He carried with him the governor’s

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account of the journey and his ‘plan for turning to profitable account the great internal water system of Australia, a unity and completeness [of] which cannot fail to make it conduce to the greater prosperity and more rapid progress of each of its separate colonies, as well as to redound to the honour of Her Majesty’s Service and the advantage of our fellow countrymen in Great Britain’. The governor estimated that there were 1 500 000 sheep on the banks of the Murray, Loddon and Goulburn rivers, that ‘the breadth of the river averages 200 yards, the depth not less than 3 fathoms’. He proposed surveying and subdividing the lower Murray and calling it the ‘Hundred of the Murray in South Australia’. The Lady Augusta continued her journey on Monday, 18 September, but it must have all felt a bit anticlimactic. Randell had won the race to the Darling but Cadell had taken the honours in the end, clearly demonstrating that the Lady Augusta was the faster boat – not that he admitted that this was his objective. At many of the stations now there was wool piled up on the river bank, and Cadell the businessman, whose instincts were to load up and head for Goolwa, began to struggle with Cadell the publicist, ambitious to keep fighting his way up the increasingly snag-choked river, to go beyond whatever point his irritating competitor reached. On 22 September, Friday, Cadell and his passengers dined at Campbell’s Gannawarra station, just downstream from where Barham now stands. Perhaps he was quietly persuaded by his genial host, as the other guests gathered around the piano, of where his best interests lay. He ran just 4 or 5 kilometres more upstream the following day before turning for home. But he did not get far on the homeward journey. Just below

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Campbell’s a huge tree had recently keeled over into the water ‘blocking up nearly the entire stream; this we broke through by sheer force of steam, but not without almost sweeping the deck of passengers, who with difficulty avoided the branches as they passed over the vessel. The after bulkhead was also stove in.’ Later the Lady Augusta grounded on a sandbank and Cadell retired to bed, no doubt in an extremely bad mood, leaving it till the morning to kedge her off. They caught up with the Eureka at the junction of the Wakool. Having loaded up all the wool at Piangil station, Robertson had floated the barge downstream to pick up a load of wool from Poon Boon station, 100 kilometres up the Wakool. This wool, though promised, had not arrived, so Cadell took the Eureka in tow and headed up the Wakool to find it. He stayed two days at Poon Boon, loading wool from many of the nearby stations. Mudie tells us that ‘the lady passengers loaded the first bale, and hoisted it to the masthead with one of the members of the crew astride it. Cheers were then given, a toast was drunk, and a cannon on the Eureka was fired in honour of the occasion.’ He also reports that a crewman and two carpenters (it’s not clear where they came from) were left at the Wakool junction to construct two new barges from the local redgum. This seems like rather an ambitious idea, without the aid of milling equipment, a steam engine or even a rudimentary slipway. Was it something Robertson had dreamt up while he was waiting around for the Poon Boon wool or the Lady Augusta to appear? In fact it was not such a silly idea as it sounds. What was the point, Cadell reasoned, in sending a steamer and empty barge up to the Wakool for good redgum, then bringing it back to Goolwa to be made into a barge, which

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then had to be towed back upstream to collect a paying load of wool? Why not just build the barge on the spot, fill it up with wool and then send a steamer (with a load of trade goods) upstream to get it? Soon afterwards the Murray River trade suffered the first of many deaths that would occur among paddle-steamer crews over the next 100 years. One of the Lady Augusta’s firemen, William Teague, a blacksmith from Goolwa, was heaving a bucket of water from the river when he leant against a removable section of rail that gave way. He fell into the water and drowned. Coming so soon after Davidson’s injury, this must have been devastating for Cadell, but he leaves no record of his feelings. Indeed there is only passing reference to this incident in the diaries kept on board. The Murray River trade, compared to river trades in other parts of the world, enjoyed a reasonable safety record. Most deaths were by drowning, but there was a spectacular litany of explosions, fires, collisions and accidents with machinery as well. To have one death and one serious injury already on his slate after just one trip was not a good omen for the pioneer steamer captain of the Murray River. Cadell was in more trouble near Euston, two weeks after turning for home, with the Eureka and its load of wool. In time, with the benefit of experience, rivermen involved in the wool trade would learn how to carry mountains of wool carefully stacked and secured, each layer stepped in from the one below like an Aztec pyramid. The top layer, a single row of bales, would be precisely positioned – a centimetre or two more to port or starboard – to compensate for any unbalanced loading further down. These barges drew just 70 or 80 centimetres of water, and had no keel worthy of the name, so careful loading

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was vital to avoid excessive listing or rocking, or even capsizing. And that is what almost happened to the Eureka on this occasion. A gust of wind, a tight bend in the river taken too quickly, and the barge heeled heavily to one side, then overcorrected. After lurching from one side to the other several more times, the top layer of bales, which had been shifting dangerously, finally broke their ties and dropped into the water. And who should come chugging serenely round the bend in the river, just in time to witness the whole embarrassing debacle, but . . . William Randell, on his way back from Maiden’s Punt (Echuca). He hove to. Was there anything he could do? Could he carry some of Cadell’s wool for him to Goolwa – the Mary Ann was conservatively loaded and quite stable? This was no time to be standing on one’s dignity. Cadell accepted, but it must be done on a businesslike basis. How much would it cost? Until now the two men had remained on civil terms. For the most part they had had little to do with each other. A couple of days in Swan Hill, a few hundred kilometres of river travelled in tandem, all negotiated with dignity and decorum. But Cadell could be infuriatingly aloof and intolerant, and Randell was by nature quick-tempered. An unseemly quarrel erupted about how much it would cost for Randell to carry a dozen or so bales of Cadell’s wool to Goolwa. Finally they agreed on terms, but this petty dispute set the tone for all of their future dealings. They remained outwardly friendly but had little respect for each other, and the feud between their respective supporters smouldered on for decades after Cadell’s departure from Australia.

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Randell got under way first and kept ahead of Cadell all the way back. The next day, stopping at Kulkyne, he was still fuming and had some fairly blunt things to say about Cadell’s behaviour. Needless to say, Cadell got to hear about his comments, and he maintained a grudge for the rest of his time on the Murray, competing vigorously with Randell, never giving the smaller operator a break. In 1854 he wrote a gratuitously patronising letter to Randell, offering to carry Gumeracha flour for him: ‘. . . of course the flour would require to be brought to a good shipping place on the banks of the river,’ he hectored, finishing in a more seriously threatening tone, ‘. . . I am fully prepared (if required) to carry on a vigorous opposition and from the reiterated assurances I have from every settler on the river whose support is worth having I may add a successful opposition’. It was war, and Cadell made sure his captains were under no illusions. ‘. . . do all you can to clean the wool off so as to leave Randall [sic] nothing,’ he wrote to George Johnston in October 1855. And again in 1856: ‘I am glad to learn that the settlers are now beginning to see which Boats are the best . . . I hope that Randell had no chance of copying your charts. It is much better to let such a self opinionated fellow as he is, go to the Devil in his own way.’ Cadell was particularly jealous of his charts and river-navigation notes. They were as good as money in the bank. ‘You will be careful’, he wrote again to Johnston who was examining the Murrumbidgee in November 1856, ‘in not giving to everyone a copy of your note Book’. For his part, without a large fleet of boats, a cumbersome bureaucracy or a published schedule, Randell was able, repeatedly, to anticipate his opponent’s shipping movements,

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sneak in first and steal the trade from under his nose. The Australia and New Zealand Gazette pointedly remarked in February 1855 on the Mary Ann’s ‘arrival . . . simultaneous with the Lady Augusta [as] we have before noticed’. Adding fuel to Randell’s resentment, Cadell continued to enjoy the benefits of rich government largesse. Following the Lady Augusta’s successful first voyage, the Legislative Council of South Australia voted £4000 to Cadell (in addition to the £2500 it had already agreed to pay him) on condition that he put another two steamers into service on the Murray. Later, the South Australian, New South Wales and Victorian governments would all chip in, awarding lucrative contracts for snagging the rivers, in addition to his initial rewards for opening up the trade. So much government money flowed Cadell’s way over the years that it is hard to imagine how he could have operated without it, and how it is that he ended up in such severe financial difficulties. This apparent favouritism did not go unnoticed, continuing to feed the rumbling dispute between the two camps. The press weighed in – the Sydney Morning Herald taking Randell’s side: ‘But it has been thought – and we are of the number who think – that, in doing justice to Captain Cadell, a certain amount of injustice has been done to others.’ The Herald also quoted the South Australian Chamber of Commerce, which found the initial grant of £4000 ‘objectionable in point of principle, as being liable to prevent free competition’. Francis Dutton MLC responded for the Cadell camp, in terms that would be most unfashionable today: ‘Public competition has been tried and found to be a miserable failure . . . that Gentleman has performed in a most admirable fashion.’

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Eventually a select committee enquired into the controversy and recommended that £300 be paid to W. and T. Randell – the amount that Governor Young had already promised Randell, at the start of his first voyage. The Lady Augusta completed her maiden voyage up the Murray at Moorundie on Thursday, 12 October, two days behind the Mary Ann. At Wellington most of the passengers and some of the crew disembarked, while Cadell pushed on to Goolwa with his cargo. In addition to the wool – 441 bales – he carried 608 sheepskins and some tallow (one hogshead and five casks). The South Australian Register estimated that the expedition would ‘yield an immediate addition to our exports of 2 530 000 lbs of wool valued at £200 000 sterling’. Just how they arrived at this figure is a bit hard to work out. Cadell was quick to fire off a clarification: ‘let me explicitly state that the value of such orders is under £3,000’. It was all good publicity anyway and news of the expedition’s success flew around the world. The Royal Geographical Society in London discussed it at length, while the Madras Spectator could only wish ‘that India were blest with a few Governors of that stamp’. Cadell returned to Adelaide. Flushed with success, lionised by the establishment, lauded by the press, he was invited by members of the Legislative Assembly to a public dinner in his honour. The triumphant nosh-up was to be held on Wednesday, 26 October 1853 in the Legislative Council Chamber itself.

CHAPTER 10

The Albury and the Gundagai A man of substance 1853–58

He is seated immediately below, and dwarfed by, a large portrait of Charles Sturt, in the chamber normally occupied by the Legislative Assembly of South Australia. It is an ornate, elegant room housed, since 1843, in a single-storey brick and stone building in North Terrace. The benches, clerks’ table, dispatch boxes and other paraphernalia of government have been temporarily removed for the evening. A long table has been set for dinner. There is a loud buzz of conversation. Gentlemen in dinner suits are milling around chatting, finding their seats. There are little swarms gathered around Cadell and several other senior members of the expedition who are present. A military band is playing as unobtrusively as its nature will allow. At seven o’clock sharp, the Speaker of the Assembly, John Morphett, who will chair the evening’s proceedings, gives a nod and a fleet

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of waiters circumnavigates the table, delivering the first course. By eight o’clock the tablecloth is already well splattered with gravy and claret, when the press and visitors’ galleries are opened to let the ladies in. Cadell looks up. Lady Augusta is there, with Mrs Morphett and someone else he doesn’t recognise. That’s Cooper’s wife in the second row, Louisa Younghusband, Mrs Boothby, but most of them are unfamiliar. The ladies are there at the invitation of the Speaker, to endure a rising fog of cigar smoke, cooked cabbage and gentlemen’s farts for the next four hours, without being allowed to take part themselves. Cadell allows himself a gentle sigh. The life he has chosen seems forever destined to remove him, one way or another, from the company of women. Around nine o’clock, the waiters remove the cloth as deftly as sailors from the Queen of Sheba shortening sail, and the serious part of the evening begins. Cadell braces himself for the endless succession of toasts which he fears are in the offing. ‘The Queen, God Bless Her’ leads the way. Chairs scrape, gentlemen rise to their feet and raise their glasses. ‘The Queen, -een, -een’ rumbles round the room, and the band strikes up the national anthem. ‘Prince Albert, the Prince of Wales and the Rest of the Royal Family’ are efficiently disposed of and then the chairman rises for his moment – make that three quarters of an hour – of glory. ‘Gentlemen,’ he begins, ‘the next toast I have the honour to propose to you is “The health of the gentleman who so worthily and efficiently fills the dignified and responsible post of Her Majesty’s representative, Sir Henry Edward Fox Young” and I feel that, in so doing, I may with great propriety advert to some circumstances which indicate the very great state of prosperity in which . . . ’ Cadell is already miles away, reviewing for the umpteenth time the list he carries around in his head of things he has to do. First and most urgently, he

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must write up the specifications for the two steamers he wants Robert Napier to build for him in Glasgow. Napier likes to do things his own way – and why not, he certainly knows his stuff. He made several criticisms of the Lady Augusta when he was here. But Cadell too has his own ideas, based on his own, now considerable, practical experience, and on local conditions. Perhaps the two boats will be slightly different: one exactly as Napier wants it, the other with a few of his own innovations. And then there is the problem of getting them out here. They will need to be brought out as freight in a bigger ship, he thinks, a ship that will have to be modified to get the two steamers on board. Does such a ship exist? Perhaps it will need two ships. Perhaps he should have a special ship custom-built for the job. Perhaps they can be prefabricated and brought out in pieces? But Napier’s boats will take a year or more to build and ship out. In the meantime, Cadell has undertaken to run a steamer service on the Murray for twelve months. He needs another steamer in a hurry to share the work with the Lady Augusta. He has heard that the Melbourne might be available. Now operating on the Geelong-to-Melbourne run, she’s a little bigger than Cadell would have liked, but it may be possible to lease her, rather than buy her outright. That would certainly be better from a financial point of view . . . His thoughts tail off as the economic realities of the situation spoil his reverie. Economic realities are also the subject of the Speaker’s circumlocutions, which are grinding on: ‘. . . from the loss of labour. They were, it is true, for a time almost paralysed, and yet the prosperity and progress of the colony was not retarded; on the contrary it was advanced, for gentlemen will find that the exports of South . . . ’ Morphett could go on for hours yet . . . now where was he? Ah yes, the Melbourne. Of course he will need some more barges, too. At least that can be done locally to his requirements, at Winsby’s or up on the Wakool, by his

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own people. But there do seem to be problems with milling timber for shipbuilding here – another item for his list. He wonders if the latest steamdriven milling equipment couldn’t be shipped out with his two new steamers. He’ll include that in his letter to Napier. But he is getting ahead of himself. A more urgent problem is that of firewood for the steamers. There is plenty of wood available, of course, but a commercial enterprise can’t afford to have its steamers lying idle during the season, while its sailors are on the river bank cutting firewood for the boilers. He needs to recruit some woodcutters and send them up the river to cut and stack wood at appropriate points and to keep an eye on the woodpiles so that others can’t help themselves. That man Randell will have to be watched. He has the capacity to throw a spanner in the works in more ways than one. And his river charts also require work. It’s time they were updated and copied so there’s one for each steamer (and for the barge-masters?). Which brings him to the problem of the fallen trees and snags that gave him so much trouble during this last trip. It should not be up to him to clear the entire river – particularly if other operators are going to be using it. He sees another approach to government looming, perhaps the Victorian and New South Wales governments should be asked to make a contribution . . . An outburst of cheers and applause breaks in on his thoughts. Chairs scrape again on the floor. The gentlemen rise, a little less steadily this time, and raise their glasses. ‘Drunk, with enthusiasm’, the press will report – referring of course to the toast, not to the gentlemen. Now the governor is on his feet. This will be a bit more interesting. ‘Mr Chairman and Gentlemen, the reception you have given to the toast of my health is so gratifying, that were I to attempt to express all the emotions with which your kindness . . . ’

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But now that he has started, Cadell just can’t keep his mind off his grand enterprise. At least the Port Adelaide-to-Port Elliot link is in place and working well. The Josephine L’Oiseau has already made one successful trip, and the Queen of Sheba will soon arrive to take on board those now famous bales of wool brought down by the Lady Augusta and the Eureka, and carried from Goolwa to the port by dray. The construction of the railway continues to drag on; it should be operating early in the new year. But there is an uneasy feeling in Cadell’s mind about Port Elliot. Already one ship has come to grief – in May the schooner Emu went down with all hands – and he fears there will be more losses. With almost no protection from the open sea, Port Elliot is no port in a storm, or even in kinder weather. Extreme care is paramount. He would prefer to see a steamer plying directly from Goolwa to Adelaide. Cadell’s list stretches on and on. The Lady Augusta needs some alterations to render her less vulnerable to crosswinds. He will require a store or two upriver – perhaps at Moorundie, Wentworth, Maiden’s Punt – and forwarding agents in other places. He will need to raise more capital; go public, perhaps, issue shares? There are practical concerns like the tendency of a laden barge to . . . But something in His Excellency’s words slices through Cadell’s daydream ‘. . . a dauntless and enterprising man–’ where has he heard these words before? ‘–sits at your hospitable board’, and he realises that his turn to speak fast approaches. ‘I give you’, the governor finally declares, ‘the toast of the evening: “Captain Cadell’s Good Health”.’ It is drunk, needless to say, with enthusiastic cheering, and the band gives him a few more minutes in which to gather his thoughts. Cadell has the gift of the gab. It is one of the reasons for his success. He speaks well, persuasively, modestly. When he first undertook the navigation

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of the Murray, he tells his audience, he naturally expected that some eclat would attend his achievements, but this, gentlemen, this! Never did he look forward to such distinguished honours. ‘I did not undertake it for any mercenary motives. Those who know me best are well aware that my ambition pointed to the making up of a mighty but hitherto torpid stream; to make it fulfil its allotted duties as intended by the creator of all things and to render it subservient to the uses of mankind.’

If the guests thought that things would quickly draw to a close once the star performance was concluded, they were to be sadly disappointed. The advocate-general proposed the next toast: ‘The Sister Colonies of New South Wales and Victoria’, Mr Waterhouse then gave ‘The Health of the Settlers of the Murray’, Younghusband proposed ‘The Officers of the Lady Augusta’ and Mr Copeland responded. The registrar-general then proposed ‘The Commercial Interests of South Australia’ and Mr Scott responded, as the press later recorded, ‘in a speech of great length, and containing much important matter, but for which we are totally unable to find room’. And still the toasts rolled on. It was well after midnight by the time Cadell could escape. On the way out he was buttonholed by a succession of gentlemen with particular concerns. ‘Have you considered running steamers up the Edward instead of the Murray during the flood, Captain Cadell? You know that the Edward actually carries more water at that time of the year, and it would provide a more direct route to Albury . . . ’ or, ‘Has any thought been given to dredging a passage east of Hindmarsh Island directly

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The Murray Steam Navigation Medal, struck in 1853

through to the mouth? I believe this would scour out the bar and make a safer, more direct route for riverboats plying straight to Adelaide . . . ’ There was much to think about. He walked home through deserted streets to the little room now permanently reserved for his use at Younghusband’s house in Strangways Terrace, North Adelaide. Too excited to sleep, he pulled out the letter His Excellency had handed to him during the evening, and re-read it. It told him that the government had commissioned a medal to commemorate the voyage of the Lady Augusta. Three were to be struck: one for him, one for the governor and one for the Legislative Assembly. The medals would be designed and cast in England, using Australian gold – 54 ounces in all. The face would carry a likeness of Queen Victoria and the words ‘New South Wales South Australia Victoria tria in uno River Murray’. On the back would be a picture of the Lady Augusta and the words ‘The

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steam, navigation and commerce of the River Murray opened in 1853’. Perhaps he sat down at his writing table, still wide awake as the sky began to lighten behind the Adelaide Hills and wrote his reply: ‘I can assure Your Excellency, no devotee could value a relic of the true cross more than I will prize it which no gold will buy, which to me will hold a higher value than all the wealth that will ever roll down the mighty stream.’ Cadell set off for Goolwa again on 17 November 1853. It was time to take the Lady Augusta, the Eureka and 100 tonnes of goods up the river and bring back another load of wool. She arrived at Swan Hill on 16 December, as the Melbourne Herald reported: ‘She had been several days on the Wakool, landing cargo and material for the building yard established there for the construction of barges and now employing 18 artificers.’

Moving the annual woolclip was a vast undertaking. An extensive network of road transport fed the river boats. A postcard from the 1890s.

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She brought back 606 bales of wool on her second trip, and on a third and final run for the season, another 215. The settlers were beside themselves. Nehemiah Bartley later recalled the transformation. Before the coming of the steamers, goods would ‘arrive in lots of a ton and a half, or so, to each dray, and smothered in dust, and caked mud, bags worn with the impact of the dray wheels, all dirt and bad order at best. But, mark the contrast of the steamer from Adeliade. Clean, white 50 lb. bags of flour, clean, white, boxes of loaf sugar, and sperm candles, cases of brandy, spick and span.’ As the water level dropped, Cadell could turn his attention again to his list. In October the Legislative Assembly had granted him an additional £4000 to put two more steamers on the river. His current fleet consisted of one steamer and one barge now moored at Goolwa, both testament to how surprisingly tough river conditions could be: hulls, deck structures and paddles had been damaged by snags and overhanging trees, timber above the waterline was split and warped by the hot, dry conditions. The two boats could not carry the brunt of the work for another season, but reinforcements were on their way. On 5 November the South Australian Register had reported that ‘Cadell’s Lady Augusta Line of Steamers’ would include four new paddlewheelers to be called the Sir Henry Young, Charles Sturt, Albury and Gundagai, and that two barges already under construction, the Murrumbidgee and Wakool, would be followed up with the Darling, Goulburn, Campaspei and Kyalite. The Register’s report was nearly, but not quite, right. In fact the new boats would arrive in two waves. First, before the waters rose again in May or June, the two new barges under construction at Wakool Junction would

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be ready, and negotiations for the lease of the Melbourne would be complete. Built in 1852, the Melbourne was almost brand new but, like the Lady Augusta, she would always be a bit of a misfit on the Murray – a hastily cobbled together solution to an urgent problem. She was really too big for the river trade. In fact she remained one of the largest steamers ever to work the Murray. On some of the tighter series of bends she had to be shunted backwards and forwards, like a train on a switchback railway. There is confusion about many of the Melbourne’s facts and figures. She is often quoted as being 145 feet long, although her registration indicates that she was a good three metres shorter at 134 feet 6 inches. Some sources say she was built in Hobson’s Bay (Melbourne), but I think this is unlikely – she was a bit too professional a job to have been built by a colonial yard. Her registration says ‘Port Glasgow’, but I can find no record of her builder. She appears to have come out to Australia under her own steam (or, more accurately, her own canvas) and worked briefly on the Melbourne–Geelong run before being offered for sale or lease. Her owners may have decided that the Geelong trade was just a bit too competitive. There were thirteen paddle-steamers working it in 1853, six of them brand new, and six more would arrive within twelve months. Some sources say that Cadell bought the Melbourne for £8000 but, if he did, he never bothered to have her sale recorded on her registration papers. It is more likely that she remained the property of Thorne and Co., Geelong, under lease to the River Murray Navigation Company. Cadell obviously intended to change her name to Sir Henry, and she is referred to as such in many early press reports, but again the

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paperwork never got done, and in any case people continued to call her by her old name, so the Melbourne she remained. The second wave of boats would come from Napier’s yard in Glasgow. As predicted Hew Cadell had built a ship especially to carry Francis’ precious riverboats from the Clyde to the Murray and entrusted her to Captain Kay, who had commanded the Lioness on her earlier voyage out. On 12 March 1854 the Glasgow press reported: LAUNCH AT KINGSTON PORT – A brig 136 tons new, 185 tons old, coppered and fully rigged was launched from the building yard of Mr John Duncan on the 12 Inst. She was named the ‘Lady Emma of Cockenzie’ . . . she is to proceed directly to Glasgow to take on board two steamboats – direct for Port Elliot, at the mouth of the Murray River, for the purpose of enabling Captain Cadell further to explore and carry on the commerce of that noble stream and its tributaries.

The boats were in pieces – ready to be assembled at Goolwa. Two were paddle-steamers, the Albury and the Gundagai, and there were four barges. Between them the barges initially enjoyed a bewildering variety of names, but in the end they seemed to settle down as the Avoca, Goulburn, Kyalte or Kyalite and the Lachlan. Some sources list the Darling as one of these iron barges, but I believe she was built later on in Goolwa, possibly of iron, more probably of timber – as were the Goolwa, Mitta Mitta, Barwon and Bogan, all for Cadell’s companies. Some sources also claim that the Goulburn was entirely built in Goolwa. The backbone of Cadell’s river fleet was built of iron. He believed that iron was more likely than timber to withstand

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the constant battering of snags and reefs that tore away at the hulls of all riverboats. Experience soon taught the river men, however, that timber was a more resilient material. Underwater, it expanded to fill any gaps or cracks opened up by heavy contact with obstacles. Steel may have been more difficult to puncture, but any gap started between two steel plates was much harder to find and almost impossible to plug. So 10 cm-thick redgum planking became the norm for hulls up to the waterline. Above the waterline, exposed to the dry air and fierce sun, timber shrank, split and warped prodigiously, needing constant repair and replacement. In time most Murray River boats became an odd composite of timber below and iron or steel above. When the rivers rose again, late the following autumn, Cadell took the Lady Augusta upriver. He had some unfinished business to take care of. Twelve months earlier, Cadell the explorer and self-promoter had bowed to Cadell the businessman. He had founded a transport empire and shipped 1000 or more bales of wool to the coast. But all the time that man Randell had been nagging away at the back of his mind – in particular the fact that Randell had succeeded in navigating his home-made boat with its wheezing boiler further upstream than Cadell had managed on any of his three trips. Cadell was now well in charge of the lower Murray trade. It was time to expand his sphere of influence to the upper Murray. It was time to navigate the river, not just to Maiden’s Punt (Echuca) – Randell’s highest point – but as far as Albury, where the 1000 km-long track linking Sydney and Melbourne crossed the river. This had been the first part of the valley opened up for farming, in the 1830s. By now there were 400 Europeans living in

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Albury. It would be the logical terminus for Cadell’s steamers. Today there is a huge dam there, holding back 40 per cent of the Murray–Darling system’s entire flow – an ecologically disastrous relic of the nineteenth-century thinking that sought first to guarantee river navigability for twelve months of the year, later to drought-proof the valley farms and finally to treat the river as a cut-and-come-again supply of water for a creeping patchwork of intensive irrigation. Before pushing blindly upstream and risking damage to a valuable steamer, Cadell embarked on a mini version of his Forerunner reconnaissance. As a letter from Albury dated 12 June 1854 and published in the Australia and New Zealand Gazette reported, he started at a point about 100 miles below Albury. He says that there are few obstacles . . . The Captain got a small boat here in which he and two servants are making their way down to the steamer at Swan Hill. It appeared a frail bark, for it was made of green hide nailed to a frame, but he seemed perfectly confident in its sailing powers. A custom house is to be built immediately. The next thing . . . is a jail . . . crime in all its hideousness stalks triumphant in the midst of us.

Triumphant in his own stalkings, Cadell took command of the Lady Augusta and pushed back upstream, past Maiden’s Punt and into the thick jumble of fallen branches at the Barmah Choke. Further on, he emerged into clearer waters. Near Tocumwal, 160 kilometres from Albury, he wrote confidently ahead, telling his contacts to expect him any day. A couple of days later, however, at Howlong – with just

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35 kilometres to go – he wrote again: ‘I . . . have abandoned all intention of ascending the river higher. The fact is I have no adequate inducement to clear a channel and fight my way up further. “Honour and Glory” are all very well; but neither one nor the other is the coin in which my engineers, stokers, and bluejackets are paid.’ Albury would have to wait another year for its steamer service. The Lady Augusta was back at Goolwa in time to pull the Melbourne off a sandspit just inside the mouth, following a first undignified entry into the river. In time she would get good at it. She ended up crossing the bar more often than almost any other vessel. In September, Cadell took her in and out of the entrance in a publicity stunt staged to show a select group of guests how easily it could be done. For the rest of the season she paid her way more tangibly, bringing loads of 538 bales, 793 bales and finally 800 bales of wool down to Goolwa. The Lady Augusta chipped in with 723 bales loaded into the Wakool and the Eureka, then headed back up late in the season to clear the last of the clip from the Darling and Wakool Rivers. The Adelaide Times expected this last trip to net 1200 bales. It also brought word of Cadell’s two new steamers and four barges, all aboard the Lady Emma, 70 days out from Glasgow. The Lady Emma arrived on 17 January 1855. The hold disgorged a vast array of steel ribs and plates, bulkheads and deckhouses, paddle-boxes and paddlewheels, boilers, shafts, belts, valves and tubing, all numbered and labelled. From her cabin emerged a small team of ‘mechanics’, complete with detailed instruction manuals for the assembly of the two steamers, four barges and a steam-powered mill. This

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mountain of metal and men was dragged to Goolwa along the new horse tramway, utilising, no doubt, its entire complement of eleven goods wagons and one carriage. The Lady Emma was then advertised for sale. (I wonder if Hew ever got paid for all the vessels he packed off to the Antipodes, never to be seen again.) Cadell had four months before the rivers rose to get the Albury and Gundagai up and running. Winsby’s and Shetliff ’s yards in Goolwa were soon employing 30 men to assemble the six boats. Captain Kay had dropped anchor inside the partly built breakwater at Port Elliot. Its massive stone blocks – some of them 90 cubic metres – would last just one month after the completion of the breakwater in May that year. During its construction, sections of it were periodically swept away by storms. Like most ships using the port, the Lady Emma had to be unloaded by lighter because the water at the end of the jetty was too shallow. Many of the heavier items were landed on the beach. Port Elliot’s dangers and disadvantages were becoming more and more apparent, and international shipping continued to favour Port Adelaide. The vital link along the coast provided by William Younghusband’s schooner Josephine L’Oiseau was stretched to the limit. Built in the Seychelles in 1841 she was past her prime. She had the disadvantage of not being able to enter the river mouth. On 14 August 1854, when the 181-ton, 50-horsepower steamer Iron Prince arrived in Adelaide from Newcastle, Cadell chartered her for six months to take on some of the coastal work. She was still there a year later, churning backwards and forwards under Captain P. Dickson’s command. Here is her manifest for 25 November 1855: ‘2 cases nails,

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1 cask, 2 cases, 1 package, 1 hhd leather, 1 do-scythes, 1 coil rope, 1 do. Frying pans, 3 chests tea, 5 half-do, 13 packages, 1 case herrings, 4 boxes soap, 1 bag rice, 44 bags sugar, halftierce tobacco, 3 boxes sundries, 1 jar, 1 weighing machine.’ She carried passengers as well, at £2 in the fore-cabin, £3/10/aft. While much of Cadell’s energy during 1854 and 1855 was taken up with buying and building riverboats, he was also hard at work tidying up the legal framework for his enterprises. Soon after his arrival in Adelaide in 1852 he had formed a partnership with William Younghusband and Patrick Turnbull, his Melbourne agent. At some stage Turnbull bowed out of this arrangement and was replaced by George Young. During those first years the partnership traded as ‘Capt. Francis Cadell’s “Lady Augusta” Line of Murray Steamers’. In April 1854 Cadell applied for a charter for the River Murray Navigation Company in partnership with Younghusband, Young and Turnbull. In June 1855 the ‘incorporation by charter’ was approved and the directors announced a public float offering 6000 shares to be paid to the value of £10 each. The company’s assets included thirteen vessels (not including the leased Melbourne or Iron Prince), a yard and moorings at Goolwa, a store at Wentworth and sundry equipment. The company office was in Gilbert Place, Adelaide. George Young was the managing director, but Cadell was definitely the public face of the company – and its biggest asset. He was universally respected and trusted. He enjoyed celebrity status wherever he went. He could hardly get out of bed in the morning without the press reporting on the fact. While Young looked after the freight, passenger bookings and money, Cadell

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The Goulburn River

made himself responsible for the operational side of the business, hectoring his skippers mercilessly about every aspect of how they should run their boats. ‘Should you be towing abreast when this reaches you,’ he instructed Johnston on 11 September 1855, ‘it is my desire that you at once cast off and tow astern. Should your Iron and Wooden Staunchions and rails still be up it is my desire that they be at once unsecured

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and taken down carefully preserving the Screws, Nuts, Rails and Staunchions . . . I consider that it would be madness to attempt the decent [sic] with the Engines as they are. You will bear it in mind that the safety of your ship is of more importance than the celerity with which you may perform your voyage.’ On 12 October he wrote again, no doubt with an eye to public relations: ‘Hope that you have got down to Maiden’s. It is my desire that you run a few miles up the Goulburn so as to be able to say you have navigated the River.’ He was still at it 1857, in a letter to one of the River Murray Navigation Company pilots on the subject of employing men to clear snags from a portion of the river, writing, ‘You may insert the following advertisement in the Beechworth papers . . . ’ and he goes on to spell out the exact wording of the ad before: ‘You will be particular in retaining all vouchers for payments made, and report progress to me, by letter, from Beechworth or Wangunyah [sic] addressed to Melbourne. You will comply with my verbal orders . . .’ In the same month as the River Murray Navigation Company float, Cadell also announced the arrangements for his steamers during the upcoming season. The Albury and the Gundagai would run up the river with barges, the Melbourne would shuttle between Port Elliot and Port Adelaide, and the Lady Augusta would be held in reserve for use wherever the need arose. At the same time, however, Cadell was offering the Melbourne for charter ‘to any part of the coast’. With the Josephine L’Oiseau and the Iron Prince already operating on the coast, another steamer was probably slightly unnecessary, and as a riverboat, the Melbourne had revealed her limitations. The following year, around about the same time, Cadell would

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optimistically announce that steamers would depart Goolwa for upriver on the first of each month, during the season. Firewood, cut into 1.5-metre lengths, would be stacked at prearranged locations, above high water. The company paid the woodcutters seven shillings a measured ton, but George Young was onto the skippers early in the season: ‘. . . if fuel is not properly stacked, do not measure it’. None of these arrangements could take effect until the two new steamers were ready to slide off the slips and into the Goolwa. The Albury was first, launched on 3 August. The celebrations included ‘a pulling match between Mr. Winsby’s Atalanta and Mr. Cadells [sic] Alma [which] was won by the former. Against this result Captain Cadell protested, but on grounds that the judges could not entertain’. The Albury was 36.5 metres long by 5 metres wide and drew 1.4 metres.

PS Resolution, on an 1890s postcard

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With the Albury in the water being fitted with her engine and boiler, all available attention was turned to the Gundagai. She included Cadell’s own design modifications: she was slightly bigger than her sister but had a shallower draught. Both steamers had 50-horsepower engines and could turn virtually in their own length. In addition to cargo space both had a main cabin with ‘22 berths for gentlemen’ and a ladies’ saloon with eight berths. By 1 September the Gundagai was in the water undergoing trials. With steam pressure at 15 pounds, and the engine turning at 38 revolutions, she cruised along at 16 kilometres per hour. Captain George Johnston took command of the Albury for her maiden voyage. With the Wakool in tow, he took on a cargo of trade goods and stores for the diggings. He pushed on up the Murray past Maiden’s Punt. River conditions were better than the year before, and he reached Albury on 2 October 1855. The celebrations were little short of ecstatic. Two hundred people paid £5 each for a seat in the 30 m-square marquee set up on the river bank. In preparation for the grand event, a whole bullock was spit roasted for two days, while a 100-kilogram plum pudding bubbled away in a very large vat of water. When the hour for lunch arrived, the bullock, following the best Australian traditions, was burnt black on the outside while the bulk of it remained raw. The pudding was similarly disappointing. With nothing in their stomachs except large amounts of alcohol, the guests rolled the unpalatable dough into balls and started throwing them at each other. The next day, Captain Johnston tried to make up for the disaster by taking 300 people on a picnic cruise up the river. ‘A German band discoursed excellent music’, reported the

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Sydney Morning Herald. ‘The Albury people, whose purses and hearts seem ever open, determined at a very short notice, to present Captain Johnston and his officers with a tangible remembrance of his visit to Albury. The Committee appointed decided on presenting the Captain with one hundred sovereigns, and his officers with thirty.’ Their generosity seems extraordinary, even in the light of the transformation that riverboats promised for this frontier settlement. They would bring, at last, some of those luxuries of civilisation: the latest fashions, household equipment, imported food and drink, books and newspapers, manufactured goods of all kinds, and all for a fraction of the cost, and much more quickly than road transport. The River Murray Navigation Company offered freight between Goolwa and Albury for £30 a tonne – ten times the going rate for freight between England and Australia, but only about half the rate for bullock teams from Melbourne to Albury. But the enthusiasm and generosity of Albury people would quickly turn to disappointment and then to fury, as riverboats emerged as, at best, unreliable and shambolic suppliers, at worst, powerful and opportunistic competitors, seeking to undermine the local traders. An important matter was glossed over in all the pandemonium of celebrations. Another of Cadell’s sailors was drowned during the picnic excursion. His death brought Cadell’s toll to four. Following the drowning of the stoker on the Lady Augusta’s first trip, two more men had drowned in September 1854 while being towed in a boat behind the Lady Augusta as it crossed Lake Alexandrina. One of the dead was Thomas Hammond, the other was not identified. They were in a small boat belonging to Thomas Goode, a Goolwa identity, its

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first mayor and a long-time friend and supporter of Cadell. His son’s name has already appeared in this story. Thomas Goode Senior’s name crops up again in connection with another two fatalities, also on the Lady Augusta, in 1856. A coroner’s enquiry in October 1856 found that Samuel Barby, engineer, and Francis Clems, stoker, both died as a result of an explosion causing the collapse of one of the steamer’s funnels. The explosion ripped a 40 cm-long rent in the flue, shooting a jet of steam directly at the two men. Barby was so badly scalded that he died within ten or fifteen minutes. Clems died a few hours after arriving back in Goolwa. Thomas Goode, who was on board at the time, gave evidence that, immediately before the accident, the engineer had his hand on a three-way steam tap, the implication being that he turned the tap the wrong way. During the hearing one of the jurors asked if this three-way tap was one of the things criticised by Robert Napier as being unsafe, I can find no record of Napier’s specific criticisms. In any event no blame was sheeted home to either Cadell or the Lady Augusta’s commander and mate. The deaths of Clems and Barby were the first to attract any serious attention in the press. The other four were all but ignored. The reports of the day don’t even tell us what their names were in three out of the four cases. It may be true to say that life was cheaper 150 years ago, that industrial accidents were more everyday occurrences, part of the normal risks that everyone took. It may also be true that a sailor’s life was even cheaper and more precarious than most. At the same time history serves up some shining examples of commanders whose efforts to protect the safety of their crews were legendary – James Cook, for example, 100 years before these

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events, or Roald Amundsen, 50 years after. But they were exceptions, and seaboard life probably bred an acceptance of suffering that could easily blossom into callous disregard or further into a complete contempt for human life. Could it be that Cadell’s sudden, rapid accumulation of this depressing safety record in the early riverboat days, and his natural unwillingness to feel responsible for it, was an important step in a hardening process which would transform this engaging, personable, capable individual into a criminal? Whatever Cadell’s demons were doing to him, whatever day-to-day problems there may have been, to outward appearances he continued to surge confidently forward, looking always to the future. On 1 March 1855 he arrived at Gundagai by overnight stagecoach, with Captain Robertson and an engineer by the name of Ferguson, to begin an examination of the possibilities offered by the Murrumbidgee River. They stayed at Edward Hargraves’ Ferry Hotel (no doubt more of a gold mine than the real one Hargraves had discovered at Lewis Ponds Creek four years earlier). By now it will come as no surprise to readers to learn that a dinner was held to honour the occasion for ‘police and other magistrates, with a number of respectable town residents and the nearest squatters . . . [who enjoyed] the splendid spread of viands and the excellent, first-rate quality of wines’. Cadell had been hard at work trying to get money out of the government – any government – for the purpose of clearing snags out of the rivers, something he was reluctant to do at his own expense. In 1854 the New South Wales parliament had debated a motion to grant £2000, but after some argument the

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motion was withdrawn. In October 1855, and again in January 1856, Cadell visited Victoria and New South Wales. Eventually New South Wales offered £2000, half each to be spent on the Murray and Murrumbidgee. Victoria, understandably, saw no benefit for themselves and declined. By April 1856 Cadell had built a small boat at Albury, carried it by bullock dray to the Murrumbidgee and then constructed two rafts from ‘pine’ trees cut on the spot. The rafts, nudged into position by the small steamer, were used as work platforms for the snagging project. Against his will, but at the insistence of New South Wales, he started at the junction with the Murray and worked upstream, instead of starting high up and gradually floating down. He continued the snagging operations on both rivers for eight months, clearing about 160 kilometres of each before the money ran out. During all this Cadell found time for a multitude of other busy-ness. Late in 1855 he took the Albury part of the way up the Coorong with an eye to further extending his transport network along the 100 km-long lagoon south-east of the Murray mouth. He turned back when he found his way barred by a reef of rock extending from one side to the other. (In time the reef appears to have been covered with sand and its location remains a mystery to this day.) Early in 1856 he floated the idea of putting a large steamer (274 tons) to work exclusively on the Murrumbidgee. He invited public subscriptions from riverside farmers and traders to buy it and run it on a cooperative basis. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that ‘Several wealthy settlers on the river have put down their names for sums varying from £200 to £600’. In March he announced that his steam mill ‘will be commenced

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in about a month from this date, at the above place [Goolwa], for grinding wheat and Sawn Timber & C’. In April 1856 he visited Bendigo in an attempt to drum up a bit more goldfields business, to exploit disenchantment with the Melbourne suppliers and bullock transport, just as he had done at Albury. He attended a fire-brigade dinner, at which his health was drunk. Also in 1856, Cadell registered his claim for a reward offered by the South Australian government for the discovery of new goldfields within the colony. The claim was registered jointly in his name and that of an Aboriginal woman called Betsey, from Cape Willoughby. Here is how the South Australian Register reported the discovery: ‘A black lubra, known on Kangaroo Island by the decent Christian name of “Betsey” has sent a preliminary claim to the Government reward promised to the discoverer of a goldfield! This may be startling or ludicrous intelligence. Betsey’s claim has been lodged . . . accompanied by testimonials of just claim by no less a person than Captain Cadell.’ I can find no more information about this curious incident. In August Cadell hatched a scheme to irrigate crops by diverting Murrumbidgee water to the Yanco billabong. He surveyed and designed the scheme, which involved digging a substantial channel. The Border Post reported in October: ‘Captain Cadell’s idea of bringing the water of the Murrumbidgee to Yanko [sic] and the Billybong . . . is now in process of realisation. One hundred workers are involved in making the cutting.’ The scheme was based, according to legend, on experience gained in Lombardy during his days of trading in the Royal Sovereign. To Cadell, then, belongs

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the credit (or blame) for pioneering irrigation in the Murray–Darling basin. In November he set off on a survey of the Edward River. ‘His opinion is favourable in regard to its navigation,’ reported the Border Post. The ‘intrepid explorer’ was also quick to place on the public record his opinion that ‘a thousand pounds would enable him to get rid of the most prominent [snags]’. Snags were becoming an obsession – and with good reason; they were a constant problem. On one trip to Albury in the Melbourne Cadell and George Johnston had both been forced to strip off and dive into the river to stuff oakum and felt into a large hole ripped in the hull planking of a barge. Cadell kept on with the clearing work begun in 1856 (using New South Wales money) on the Murray and Murrumbidgee. On 6 February 1857 the South Australian government voted a further £2000 for snagging operations to be undertaken by the River Murray Navigation Company. Cadell put three parties to work at various points along the Murray. Altogether they had done a rough clearing job on nearly 500 kilometres of river by April. Cadell was not satisfied, however. It was obvious that keeping the rivers clear was going to be an ongoing burden for as long as they continued to be used as a major transport network. He sold the idea of building a dedicated snagging boat to the South Australian government, which voted a further £8000 for its construction in May, following Cadell’s assurances that he could source all the specialised equipment it would need. ‘Nothing seems to daunt the intrepid Cadell . . .’ commented the Sydney Morning Herald, ‘Government after Government seems to yield to Cadell’s indisputable and natural powers of persuasion.’

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Cadell had a model of the proposed vessel built and put on display at the offices of the Commissioner of Public Works in Adelaide. The Grappler was built to his specifications in Echuca, just upstream from the Campaspe junction, by shipwright John Martin Webb. She consisted of a 19.8 m × 10.7 m floating platform with a steam engine to power the paddlewheels, a large jib crane on the foredeck and two saws. The equipment was supplied by Napier and Postlethwaite of Sussex Street, Sydney. She was launched on 1 February 1858 by Mrs Strutt, ‘the lady of the Stipendiary Magistrate at Echuca’. She was commanded by Robert Chisholm Hutchinsson. The Grappler’s crew of eleven included two of Cadell’s loyal Society Islanders whose job, we are told, was to dive into the water – much clearer then than it is now – and attach the lifting gear to submerged logs. Hitherto, however, Cadell’s instructions had been to cut the snags off just below low-water level, inviting generations of rivermen to curse what they called ‘snagging Cadell-style’, which effectively converted visible snags into thousands of hidden dangers. While seeking to defend this method of doing things – ‘I hold certificates from the river Captains [two that I am aware of] of the beneficial effects to the navigation derived therefrom’ – Cadell was also aware that ‘the above method of clearance’, as he wrote to Samuel Davenport, Commissioner of Public Works, in May 1857, ‘is only beneficial during the navigable season, and is but temporising with what ought to be done, for as I before stated, the thorough eradication of the “timber obstructing the deep water channel must be effected by steam power”’. Cadell also employed a man to scout ahead of the Grappler to mark the locations of snags. (Much of this work had already

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been done over the years, so that riverboat captains would at least know where submerged obstacles were.) In November 1856 Cadell had sent Johnston instructions on the matter: ‘My idea of marking the river is that both above [and below?] any bad place or snag that a tree should be marked below the spot in duplicate numbers to avoid confusion.’ The Grappler failed to live up to expectations. Clumsy to use and drawing too much water, she became known to rivermen as ‘the white elephant’. She retired early and spent her retirement moored at Morgan, serving for a while as police lock-up and post office. Snags continued to be the perennial problem that Cadell had predicted, however, and a succession of riverboats, dedicated to the task of keeping the shipping lanes free, were kept fully employed for the 30 or 40 years of the paddle-steamers’ heyday. Perhaps all this activity on Cadell’s part helped to fill a void created by the departure of an old friend. In May 1855 he had farewelled the governor, Sir Henry Young, whose tour of duty was over. Before he left he wrote Cadell a warm and generous letter, thanking him for all his work, and enclosing a ring as a personal gift. He had been the most powerful and the most enthusiastic ally Cadell had ever had. I have little doubt that without his passion there would have been no riverboat era to embellish so colourfully the history of the Murray. Cadell was not given to sentiment or emotion, but standing on the wharf at Port Adelaide, watching the ship kedge off, he must have felt a bit of that cold fear a young adult feels on losing a parent. One of his lifelines had gone.

CHAPTER 11

The Darling River Death of a transport empire 1856–61

The milky-green river glides silently at the bottom of a 10 m-deep trench cut into broad, flat saltbush plains. It has no place in this desert landscape, and it seems to know it, skulking apologetically within an artificial ribbon of Eden. Down near the water there are ancient, kindly redgums, the twice-daily arena for thousands of little corellas bickering over branch space, screeching insults at each other and the world, filling the dawn and dusk hours with their awful cacophony. Small teams of crows step up during the day to interrupt the heavy silence with their more appropriately mournful complaints, while a handful of Major Mitchell cockatoos watch over it all, remaining coolly aloof. Under overhanging branches, tree martins have built suburbs of mud nests, intricately

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constructed bottles clustered together, an easy swoop away from the river. Edible nardoo reeds form a bright green margin between the water and the shady, sandy beaches. Francis Cadell climbs purposefully out of this sunken garden and adjusts his eyes to a different landscape. An infinite flatness extends in all directions. The fine red dust at his feet is interrupted every two or three metres by a clump of saltbush – perhaps three quarters of a metre high and round – creating, in the middle distance, a soft velvet-brocade texture of dimpled sage grey, carpeting the gentle undulations of the plain, off into the shimmering distance. To the north a smudge of dust, the low profile of several thatched split-log buildings and a couple of trees mark the position of McKenzie’s station. The directors of the River Murray Navigation Company have decided to broaden the company’s activities and take up some grazing land on the Darling. But all the river frontages are gone, so Cadell has volunteered to take a look at possible runs further west, along the Anabranch. The Anabranch leaves the Darling at Menindee, about 300 kilometres upstream from Wentworth, and snakes its way southwards, roughly parallel to the Darling, through a network of semi-permanent billabongs and veinous channels that fill with water only in flood conditions, every four or five years. Striking out from McKenzie’s at Cuthero, 200 kilometres from Wentworth, Cadell intends to march directly west to the Anabranch, then follow it downstream to where it joins the Murray and rendezvous with the Lady Augusta at Moorna. He has one horse, some food and water, and a local Aboriginal man has agreed to accompany him as a guide. He walks 100 metres and pauses to glance back. The Darling has all but disappeared, the only indication of its existence a barely discernible line of treetops breaking the tufted carpet’s surface. Above stretches the vast dome

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of the sky, uninterrupted cobalt from horizon to horizon except at its zenith, where the scorching sun blasts and withers anything and anyone foolish enough to be out and about. In time, a telltale string of treetops snaking across the saltbush marks the line of a dry watercourse, sunk again several metres into the plain. Here at least is a small amount of shade, not the deep, dark, cool relief of real forest trees, just a dappled excuse offered by dry, inadequate mallee and mulga scrub with its straggle of limp, desiccated leaves. If anything the dry creek bed is actually hotter than the open plains. Here there is no breeze at all, and the white sand seems to radiate heat like fire bricks in an oven. They march on into the evening as the dome turns from cobalt to mauve to Prussian blue and finally to inky black, speckled with a million stars. They camp for the night, and start again early in the morning. Towards midmorning Cadell’s little caravan approaches a larger snake of trees, marking a broader watercourse, indeed an extended braid of interconnecting dry channels, ploughed ruthlessly through a wasteland of rock and sand, islands and sandbanks piled up around mallee and coolibah trees. There is even the odd waterhole, stinking with the bloated corpses of dead animals, flagged by circling black kites and wedge-tailed eagles. This, announces the guide, is it. This is the Anabranch. Cadell looks at him in disbelief. No, he says, this could not be it. There is no water. It can’t be the Anabranch. They will push on. Eventually they will come to another fine river, like the Darling. And so they do push on, into a maze of dry billabongs and watercourses, following the sun. The guide continues to protest. He begins to hang back behind Cadell and the horse. Eventually he seizes his chance and makes a run for it. Cadell’s reaction is instinctive. He sprints after the young man for a breathless 100 metres, throws himself through the air and brings him

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heavily to the ground. They lie panting on the red dust, under the glaring sun, streaked with sweat and dirt, pinned together in mutual dependence and disrespect. Cadell chains the man to a stirrup and they plod on in ugly silence, following the sun. Another night follows another evening. The dry watercourses become fewer and further between, the billabongs are left behind and the saltbush takes over again. Early on the third day the two men share the last of the water. That night Cadell shoots the horse. He drains its blood into a billy and they each drink a pannikin. He cuts and cooks as much meat as they can carry, and they sleep again, under another brilliant sky.

If Cadell didn’t know it he should have, but the further west he went, the worse the conditions would become. The saltbush country would stretch for another 300 kilometres, interrupted only by flat, lifeless saltpans and the very occasional dry creek bed, until it begins to break up in the tortured rocky folds of the Flinders Ranges. To the north it gets worse. The saltbush peters out and brutal, stony gibber plains take over. Nothing grows. The ground is covered by millions of small, hot, polished red and black pebbles, gleaming and flashing in the relentless sun, throwing up distant water mirages. Five hundred kilometres on, as the jagged profile of the Gammon Range ends abruptly in the west, surrounded by a horseshoe of unimaginably vast, blinding white salt lakes, gibber makes way for the endless red sand ridges of the Simpson and Strzelecki deserts. Today, two ribbons of asphalt stretch tenuously and economically between Broken Hill in the north, Terowie in the west and Wentworth in the south, but apart from that, just the

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MAP 10 The Anabranch

bore-access tracks of the impossibly optimistic cattle stations provide unreliable, indeed dangerous, seasonal travel. Cadell finally admitted defeat and turned south towards the Murray. He emerged on 11 July 1856, a week after leaving McKenzie’s, at Broken Cliff near Towonka Lagoon, 150 kilometres west of Moorna. Cadell and his companion were

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discovered, weak, exhausted and half-starved, by eight-yearold George Hart less than 2 kilometres from his parents’ Poodynook station. Cadell’s first words, according to George, were, ‘The Anabranch does not exist!’ Cadell was nursed back to health by George’s mother. He could eat nothing solid for 24 hours – just a little bread soaked in milk, and some brandy. He offered George’s father, Jacob Hart, £20 to go back and look for a satchel containing papers, but it was never found. He stayed with the Harts for two days, then rode away on a borrowed horse – which he never returned. George’s memories are contained in a letter he wrote to the South Australian Register 64 years later. In the letter he describes a heated altercation about the horse when Cadell and Jacob Hart came face-to-face some twelve months afterwards. Cadell’s version of events is substantially the same. In a letter from Wigley’s station dated 12 July, he wrote: ‘I write . . . under the most extraordinary circumstances . . . [I] never got water or came out until yesterday, seven miles below Hart’s. We had nothing to eat or drink for several days; and I was obliged to kill a valuable horse and drink his blood to save our lives . . . the Anabranch quite loses itself.’ He leaves no record of what happened to the Aboriginal guide from Cuthero. Nehemiah Bartley, the settler whose book has already provided us with some insights into Cadell’s character, adds another little twist to this story, remarking that, ‘but for the abundant supply of hair pomade that the gallant explorer always carried with him he . . . would have been unable to soften and eat the leather leggings, straps, valise &C., which, it is coolly stated, alone saved them from starvation’. Cadell’s brush with death in the desert ushered in a period

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of difficulties for him and the River Murray Navigation Company. He arrived home to news that the Josephine L’Oiseau had been wrecked at Port Elliot. On 10 July she broke a mooring chain in heavy weather, drifted onto the beach and began breaking up. Three quarters of her cargo, worth nearly £3000, was lost. The South Australian Register reported the wreck ‘attributable solely to the insufficiency of government moorings’ and that Captain Mennie was ‘exonerated on all charges relating to the wreck’. Soon after this disaster, the company’s barge Goulburn sank while being towed into Port Elliot. That same year three other ships were wrecked in the port, spelling the beginning of the end for this ships’ graveyard. Eight years later, the railway was extended to Victor Harbour and Port Elliot ceased to operate as a port. Cadell leased the screw-steamer Firefly to take over the Josephine L’Oiseau’s duties and the following year bought the screw-steamer Corio. She lasted only four months, however – she ran aground at the Murray mouth, and there she stayed. The company could ill afford the loss of valuable vessels at this time. Losses amounting to £1428 on a contract to carry redgum sleepers for the Adelaide-to-Gawler railway, and the collapse of several Melbourne businesses owing the River Murray Navigation Company substantial debts, both in late 1856, were pointing to a major shortfall in its second year of trading. At the same time the first murmurs of discontent with the company’s services were emerging. Essentially the problem came down to the River Murray Navigation Company’s failure to decide whether it should be a trading company – carrying goods upriver on spec and selling them at a profit along the way – or simply a transport company – carrying goods for

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others for a fee. Trying to do both resulted in inevitable conflicts of interest. The local press increasingly accused the company of dumping goods assigned for transport, short of their destinations, usually due to ‘dropping water levels’. The loads were often left on the river bank where they would deteriorate or disappear before their owners could arrange alternative transport. Meanwhile the company appeared to have no such problems carrying its own goods for trade, and local businesses soon realised that they were in direct trading competition with the transport monopoly on which they had to rely. Adding insult to injury, the company’s goods were frequently of an inferior quality. Several incidents became notorious: the supply, on one occasion, of tobacco cut with coal dust, and on another of bars of soap consisting largely of wood shavings. George Young was concerned enough to write to his captains in late 1856; ‘numerous complaints having been received from settlers of the unsatisfactory manner in which goods are delivered’. By April 1857 feelings were running so hot that the Border Post, announcing an approaching dinner in Cadell’s honour, ‘hoped that there will be exhibited a fair amount of good temper by all parties, and that nothing will occur to mar the enjoyment which all are looking forward to’. In the event, many stayed away, but a growing chorus of correspondents was now complaining of the ‘grossest mismanagement’, describing the company as ‘grasping and avaricious’, expressing its ‘unqualified censure and contempt’. By July, the Border Post’s editors had also run out of patience. ‘It is notorious that the management of the Murray Navigation Company has been characterised by the utmost carelessness; and it has been the

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exception rather than the rule, for goods to be landed in proper condition. The inferiority of the articles brought up the Murray has disgusted customers ordering supplies of goods . . . thousands of tons of goods belonging to consignees have been left by the Company exposed on the banks of the river.’ The Border Post would later accuse the company of ‘“cooking” the bills of lading’, ‘glutting the markets . . . with an inferior class of goods’, ‘entering into competition with their own customers’ and complain that ‘accidents happened so frequently . . . that goods could not be insured’. Cadell himself remained relatively unscathed by all these attacks. Because of his constant presence on the rivers, his disarming, can-do manner and the substantial reserve of goodwill he had built up, and perhaps because he was willing to pass blame on to others in the company, he remained an honest broker in the eyes of the valley traders while the full force of their vitriol was directed at his partners. Albury, Beechworth and other valley towns gradually returned to the expensive, slow, but at least reliable bullock drays to get their supplies from Melbourne. It was the final straw. In June 1858, the River Murray Navigation Company – barely three years old – was wound up. Some of its assets were sold to pay creditors, but the partners walked away with the steamers and barges. George Young kept the Lady Augusta, Younghusband the Gundagai, while Cadell and Turnbull kept operating as ‘Cadell’s Line of River Steamers’ with the Albury and Melbourne and offices in Weymouth Street, Adelaide. The break-up of the monopoly was welcomed, valley newspapers continuing to believe that Cadell, once freed of his avaricious partners, would do the right thing. Perhaps the fact that Cadell

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Wool transport on the Darling River

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continued to enjoy his good reputation while his partners – particularly Younghusband – lost theirs contributed to a cooling in his friendship with Younghusband. Another important lifeline had been cut away, and this time Cadell himself was, at least partly, to blame. So it was time for Cadell to start again. He had a new enterprise – Cadell’s Line of River Steamers – to build up, and a new governor to woo. In January 1859 he set off up the Darling River to recapture some former glory. The Murray, a bigger, more easily navigable river surrounded by a more closely settled population, had been Cadell’s first priority. But the Darling had the potential to double or even triple the riverboat trade. It served a vast area of potentially rich farming country, but its transport problems were much worse than the Murray Valley’s had been. Bullock drays to Sydney, the nearest port, could take up to six months. In a re-run of the voyage of the Lady Augusta, he would guide the Albury as far upstream as he could. Governor Sir William MacDonnell was on board. They reached a highest point just beyond Mount Murchisson before turning back. The Darling was relatively free of snags, but shallower than the Murray with tighter bends. Three days down, they met Randell – still dogging Cadell’s tracks – wheezing and burping upstream in the Gemini, ready to substantially eclipse Cadell’s highest point – again. The Darling River was open for business. Property values doubled within months. Big ports were soon flourishing at Bourke and Wilcannia. Cadell still had friends in Victoria too. At the Royal Philosophical Institute’s annual dinner in March, Sir Henry Barkly devoted the evening’s principal toast to the hot topic of

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the day – the Burke and Wills expedition. Planning was well advanced and Captain Cadell – ‘one of our honorary members’ – had volunteered to carry stores for the expedition. In the event, the bedraggled caravan was picked up at Bilbarka on the Darling, on 2 October 1860, before it had even reached Menindee, by the Moolgewanke, owned by George Johnston, no longer in Cadell’s employ, and Charles Murphy – skippered by Johnston. Suggestions, contained in many accounts of the Burke and Wills expedition, that Cadell’s steamers provided a regular line of supply for the expedition seem to be without foundation. Cadell’s run of bad luck continued. If declaring war on his customers had been his first big mistake, then flouting authority would be his second. Authority, in this case, came in the form of revenue officers – the sailor’s traditional enemy – representing the three separate customs and excise services of the three sovereign states of Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia. New South Wales had been the first to spy an opportunity to raise revenue from the new riverboat trade. In 1853 it announced it would henceforth impose customs duties on all goods arriving by riverboats from South Australia. Victoria, already receiving almost half of its total income from customs duties paid at ocean ports, was quick to follow suit. Following forceful protests from the valley communities the duties were relaxed in 1860. The residents of Albury celebrated with another attempt at the perfect spit-roasted bullock and 100-kilogram plum pudding, again in a marquee on the banks of the river. This time they added ten fat sheep to the menu – just in case. The celebrations were premature. All three colonies soon

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reimposed duties and backed their resolve with an extensive program of customs-house building. They then insisted that goods should only be unloaded at designated points along the river, where there were officers and facilities to process them. Needless to say this caused enormous inconvenience and more protest, leading to another relaxation in 1867. In 1874 New South Wales abandoned the idea altogether, but protectionist Victoria continued to impose duties. They were finally abandoned in 1901 with Federation. Indeed the irritation they had caused provided a major impetus in the push towards Australian nationhood. The duties had been a daily nuisance to valley communities and an administrative nightmare for the authorities. Smuggling was rife, and uncontrollable. Anabranches, particularly on the Victorian side, caused confusion – were they part of the river? If so, were the islands they created part of New South Wales? From the riverboat skippers’ point of view, the duties were also a major headache. Different rates had to be paid depending on which side of the river goods were landed. Duties had to be paid on stock taken across the river to graze, on vegetables crossing the river to market. In theory, customs had to be paid on goods landed on the bank in order to lighten a steamer or barge stuck on a sandbank, and revenue officers were not known for their sympathy or pragmatism when confronted with such situations. For their part, the skippers were not above bending the rules a little, and you can hardly blame them. By June 1855 George Young was writing to the River Murray Navigation Company’s captains, quoting the minutes of the latest directors’ meeting in which ‘It was resolved that the special attention of the Masters of the

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Companies [sic] vessels should be called to the necessity for complying in all respects with the customs laws of the several provinces through which they pass.’ The masters seem to have heeded the warning and kept out of trouble for a while, but in November 1858, when George Johnston docked the steamer Albury and barge Wakool at Wagga Wagga on the Murrumbidgee, police officers acting on information that he had been sly grogging along the river, came aboard and inspected the cargo and manifests. They seized both boats with their entire cargo and charged Johnston with the ‘sale of fermented and spirituous liquors’ along the river in contravention of both customs and excise regulations. Local wine and spirit merchant George Forsyth contributed circumstantial evidence, telling the magistrate, John Gordon JP, that he had ordered alcohol from the River Murray Navigation Company but had not specified particular quantities of anything, stating that he would accept whatever Johnston could supply – in other words, whatever he had left by the time he got there. No direct evidence was forthcoming, however, and the charge was dismissed. The case marked the beginning of a campaign by authorities – particularly in New South Wales and Victoria – to curb Cadell’s long-time practice of trading directly from his boats rather than simply supplying local retailers with goods. It took until August 1859 for the New South Wales authorities to score their first victory, successfully prosecuting Captain William Barber at Moama following the seizure of the Lady Augusta and barge. Captain and supercargo were each fined £50 and ‘all spirituous and fermented Liquors confiscated’. Two months later Johnston was in trouble again on the

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Murrumbidgee, requesting the Border Post to ‘contradict a rumour which had been spread abroad to the effect that the cargo of the Albury had not been properly cleared at Adelaide, that there were differential duties still due, and in fact that she was trading illegally’. In 1860 the Victorian government decided to crack down even further on South Australian steamers that were profiting from Victorian enterprise while paying scant attention to the law. Victoria introduced a new regulation allowing customs officers to seize dutiable goods not listed on a boat’s manifest. The regulation may well have been aimed directly at a new venture begun by Cadell the previous year. He had purchased the Melbourne-built iron screw-steamer Ruby and begun running her regularly from Melbourne along the coast, through the Murray mouth and upriver as far as Wentworth. Here, goods were transshipped to shallower-draught vessels for distribution up the Murray, Murrumbidgee and Darling rivers. In August 1860, goods brought up by the Ruby were transferred to the Albury and four barges under Captain Barber, bound for the Murrumbidgee, and to the Wakool – originally a barge but now converted to a steamer – under ‘Hell-fire Jack’ Mace, bound for the Wakool and Edward rivers. The two steamers were detained and boarded by a Victorian inspector of police at Kulkyne. He seized the entire cargo of all six vessels, none of it being listed on manifests for the vessels actually carrying it. In the end the skippers were allowed to proceed, but the several weeks lost arguing the issue had put them well behind schedule, spoiling some of the goods. Other goods had been damaged during the inspections and all of it, of course, was delivered late to the consignees.

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This kind of harassment continued until Cadell finally gave up the idea of running a service direct from Melbourne up the rivers. He sold the Ruby and bought another converted barge, the Bogan, for river use. This is exactly what the Victorian government wanted. The railway to Echuca was already under construction, and within four years it would start tapping the river trade, beginning a process that would lead relentlessly to the demise of the paddle-steamers. It seems surprising that Cadell caved in to bureaucratic pressure so easily. It was not in his nature to allow little things to get in his way. A.H. Landseer – silver miner, merchant, owner of warehouses up and down the Murray and Cadell’s agent for much of his river trade, said of him, ‘His mind is like a current that, meeting with obstacles in its course, gathers force and breaks the barrier that for the moment may have arrested its course, and rushes with accelerated energy from the very cause that produced its temporary stoppage.’ It surely can’t have been that difficult for him to ensure that the riverboats carried the necessary paperwork, no matter how unreasonable the requirements may have seemed. But that takes energy and stubbornness, and perhaps Cadell’s reserves of both these qualities were running low. Perhaps it was all starting to get to him – the losses, the criticism, the deaths, the seven years of imposing, by sheer determination and willpower, an orderly transport system onto this uncooperative river. But worse was to come. The collapse of the River Murray Navigation Company in 1858 had been due to a coincidence of two factors – an erosion of public confidence, and the loss of vessels. Now Cadell’s Line of River Steamers was steering towards a similar inevitable

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disaster. His war with his customers was replaced by a war with authority, but once again his fleet was in trouble. On 17 December 1859 news broke that the Melbourne had been wrecked at the Murray mouth on a journey from the Murrumbidgee to Adelaide. No lives were lost, but the vessel was not insured. Earlier in the year Captain Bloomfield Douglas had undertaken one of his regular surveys of the mouth, and reported in April that a large part of Barkers Knoll had been washed into the channel, reducing the depth to 1.5 metres at low water. He predicted that the mouth would soon become unnavigable. How right he was. His finding prompted a flurry of correspondence in the press and elsewhere including this gem from Cadell to J.B. Neales MP: I cannot say that I concur with his views, but should they turn out to be correct the more will it be to the disgrace of your colony. Hydrographically speaking, the operations of the season stand thus: 2000 miles of additional water communication have been opened up, and the soundings at the bar have shoaled up to 51/ 2 feet! . . . Commercially, we have developed vast territories for your traffic, whilst you let the gateway leading [to] them close under your very eyes.

Unnavigable or not, Captain Barber had attempted to run the mouth in the Melbourne on 16 November. A commission of enquiry absolved him of responsibility, but hedged its bets, finding that he ‘was not justified in navigating so dangerous a locality with merely one anchor and chain on board’. The loss of the Melbourne must have torn the very heart out

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of Cadell, as well as landing another financial body blow. She had been such an integral part of his successes, a proud banner-bearer for him on coast and river. For the last few years of her working life she had shuttled between Port Adelaide and Milang, on Lake Alexandrina, negotiating the mouth regularly every couple of weeks. She shipped most of the silver from Landseer’s Strathalbyne mine, as well as much of the wheat Landseer handled for the lower-Murray farmers. She reliably maintained the crucial link – always problematic – between the river steamers and ocean ports. Cadell struggled on for another year, but in March 1861 Cadell’s Line of River Steamers suspended payment. He sold the Albury to the man who had been her skipper from the start, George Johnston, and his new partner, Charles Murphy. The Bogan went to Randell in 1862, and Cadell sold his last steamer, the Wakool, to Geelong captain John McLean in 1865 after operating her in New Zealand waters for two years. Cadell’s short but dazzling association with the Murray River was over, his ‘spendthrift, extravagant, wildcat sort of a company’, as A.T. Saunders described it, in ruins. Again, at this very low ebb in his life, I can only guess at what he was going through. He left so little in writing about his personal life. The closest we ever get to anything personal from or about Cadell is a small collection of handwritten correspondence that Johnston hung on to. It gives us some tantalising hints, suggesting that there may indeed have been a softer person behind Cadell’s hard public veneer. In October 1855, Cadell was solicitous about an injury Johnston had received: ‘I was much greived [sic] to hear of the serious accident which has befallen you . . . I care nothing about the

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delay.’ After his disastrous perambulations on the Anabranch he admits to having ‘been quite blind from the “gravelly blight” but am now better’, going on to say, ‘I have no recent letters from home . . . I am afraid that one set are lost’. Later in the year he seemed to be dealing with some delicate issues concerning Johnston and his wife, who was still back in Scotland. ‘I hear from your wife through my Father that all the monies you accrue have not come to hand . . . My intention of speaking to you regarding your wife coming out and yourself going home . . . my letters say that she is not desirous of coming.’ The following year Cadell wrote again to Johnston with a slightly unusual request. ‘If you come across any cericencitres [parrots?] I wish you would get them for my Father who is making an Australian collection.’ Johnston sensibly handed the request on to a bushman acquaintance of the Mildura area, an old Cockenzie man called Peter Crum. In December Crum replied with a letter written, as A.B. Paterson would have said, ‘with a thumb-nail dipped in tar’. It is such a treasure, that ‘verbatim I [too] will quote it’. Mildura Dec 16th 1857 from Peter Crum Dear Sir, I received youres of Nov 24 by the Lady agusta by which I larned you was out side and I hop to hear of youre making sucksesful trips out and in at the Mouth. I have been trying sence I receaved youre leter to get some parrots for you but I am unsuccessful up to the present time, but I may get them yet. I have got some skines which I will forward to you by Capt. Barkly.

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I had a letter from him dated Sept. 6 by which I learn that Cockenzie people is well. They mention of Mrs Johnstons leaving by the Great Braton on 15 Oct and I understand that his two brothers comed with her which will be a good thing for him I suppose the other women is comen at the same time Lizzy is taking it more Leazeously than the others but in good shorets. there is no further particular news. Please say how you are getting on out side youres Trewly Peter Crum

CHAPTER 12

The Waikato River Another colonial war 1858–66

New Year’s Day, 1858 – Regatta Day on Adelaide’s Port River. A gentle north-westerly ripples the water, caressing the flags and bunting beneath a cloudless sky. Special trains have been on the go since 8 am. Everyone is here: Adelaide’s port community, sailors off visiting ships, families, merchants and a noisy sprinkling of food vendors. The Port River is barely recognisable as the muddy inlet and tangle of jetties where the Royal Sovereign dropped anchor almost exactly nine years ago. It is now lined with substantial stone and timber wharves where a forest of tall ships – each decked out for the occasion with its entire wardrobe of signal flags – is moored, crowding in on the cutters, gigs and whaleboats which are jostling for position, ready to race. The ships are as packed with spectators as the

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wharves. On board the government brig Yatala, the port and government establishment can be found: Governor and Lady MacDonnell, harbourmaster Captain Bloomfied Douglas, William Younghusband, John Hart, George Young. Francis Cadell is notable by his absence. Across the river, the Gazelle – flagship for the day – is moored at the government steps with more of the local maritime fraternity aboard: Lipson, Torrens and others. Cadell is not here either. But he is not far away. He can be found a short distance down the wharf among a small knot of sailors and shipowners. He is in animated conversation with a tall, commanding stranger who sports a long, flowing beard and even longer straight fair hair gathered at the back in a ponytail. The stranger’s face is split repeatedly with a flashing smile and a loud infectious laugh. He wears the traditional white shirt and trousers, gathered at the waist with a scarlet sash, of the South Pacific trader. William Henry Hayes is in port with his ship the C.W. Bradley Junior. He has made a couple of trips to Perth and back, and has somehow acquired an interest in the Portuguese ‘coolie ship’ the Estrella-do-Norte. Indeed he has been living aboard the Estrella, in some luxury, with his Adelaide wife of four months, Amelia Littleton. Cadell was invited to an American Independence Day party there a while ago but other commitments intervened. Nevertheless the two captains have seen a little of each other since Hayes’ arrival in March – enough to swap recollections about the South China Sea, enough to compare notes about the world of opportunities that is open to such enterprising fellows as they. Hayes is the dangerous flame at the centre of a circling crowd of local moths – but Cadell is careful not to get too close. Some five of the moths are aboard the Estrella’s boat, positioning themselves in readiness for the sixth event, ‘the event of the day’, as the

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papers report it, for ‘non-professional pullers’, competing for the ‘Ladies Purse’. This year the purse has been made by Lady MacDonnell herself. It is of purple satin and has the words ‘Port Regatta 1858’ embroidered on the outside. It contains a small collection of fancy knick-knacks of little value. Hayes has recruited five Adelaide businessmen to crew his boat: Robert Main, W.L. Mackie, W.S.M. Hatton, C.H.T. Connor and cox’n J.C.Hawker. The starter fires his gun, the crews dig their non-professional oars deep into the river and a few spectators with money on the outcome raise their voices in support. The Vision’s boat leads the Estrella’s out and maintains a narrow advantage up to the halfway buoy. But Hayes has already been beaten once this day, his own sailors humbled by men from the Nancy in the fifth race, so he raises his own prodigious voice. This has the desired effect; the Estrella’s boat edges to the lead, pulls away and romps home by 200 metres.

Bully Hayes’ Adelaide honeymoon, however, was drawing to a close. Beneath the conspicuously luxurious life, the extravagant parties and the boat races, his affairs, like Cadell’s, were in tatters. On 9 February he was declared bankrupt. He absconded aboard the schooner Waitemata on 16 March after leaking a rumour that he was on the departing brig Fayaway. His creditors took the bait and gave chase in a steam tug. Later, returning empty handed, they passed the Waitemata innocently getting under way with their man on board. Hayes spent a relaxing week on Kangaroo Island where, some say, he became engaged to a local woman (he appears to have had two wives already at this stage – more were to come), then visited Portland and Melbourne, where he disappeared for a while –

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travelling inland and keeping his head down. Cadell was on the Murrumbidgee by the time Hayes left Adelaide, watching his own affairs collapsing around him, with less equanimity, I suspect, than Hayes. During the next three years while Cadell’s left hand waged an increasingly acrimonious arm wrestle with customs authorities and Cadell’s Line of River Steamers came and went, his right hand continued to be held out in the hope of more government money for a variety of schemes. He offered his services to the South Australian government to follow up the exploration work of Goyder and Freeling in the north. The offer was not taken up, but it remained on the table and he would finally get his chance in 1867 to became a real explorer. In March 1860 Cadell spent several weeks in Victoria exploring the Snowy River and Gippsland Lakes. In May he wrote to the Argus with a full account of the expedition, and correcting a few misconceptions that were flying around: ‘The Snowy River generally may be considered a river of cataracts, cascades, and waterfalls that would defy the ascent of a salmon, let alone a steamer.’ He began his expedition on the La Trobe river, then crossed lakes Wellington, Victoria and King in a whaleboat to the mouth of the Tambo River. He then took the boat 60 kilometres across country on a bullock dray and explored parts of the Snowy and Brodribb rivers before sending Captain Ritchie back to the mouth of the Snowy with the boat to take soundings over the bar. Cadell followed in a bark canoe, sounding the river and deciding that it would be navigable for light steamers for about 40 kilometres. On 4 May, Cadell had his party on the move by 3 am, determined to cross the bar at the mouth of the river. Their first

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MAP 11 Gippsland Lakes

attempt was successful, but before Cadell could turn and run back into the river, conditions took a turn for the worse. ‘The weather looking more threatening . . . I had no alternative but to beach the boat, during which she capsised [sic] in the surf, where I parted company with a good old gold watch.’ It seems he had almost as much trouble hanging onto his watches as he did his boats. The men dragged the boat up onto the Ninety Mile Beach, got a fire going and camped there for the night, Cadell having walked 3 kilometres to Lake Tyers in the dark for some fresh water. Next morning they successfully launched the boat out through the surf and headed again for the entrance but the boat was now leaking so badly that Cadell beached it again, just east of the entry. They spent another night under the stars and then

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walked to Rodemite’s Station where they spent several days recovering. Cadell’s letter to the Argus finishes with a postscript: ‘What more astonished me than anything else during my trip was to learn that there are still, perfectly wild blackfellows on the Brodribb, who have never been into a station and live by spearing cattle & c.’ Hew Cadell ornaments the trip briefly but magnificently in his biographical note: ‘. . . and by [a] hair[’s] breadth escaping from drowning, from the clubs of savages, from starvation in the bush . . . ’ The Adelaide Times was more patronising, with: ‘Captain Cadell, too, has been rendering aid in his own peculiar way . . . ’ The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Cadell visited ‘Mr. Nicholson, the Chief Secretary, and offered to bring himself under an obligation to place one or more steamers on [the Snowy River]’. There is no record of the Chief Secretary’s response, but the following year Cadell put up a more formal proposal to the Victorian government, shortly after Cadell’s Line of River Steamers suspended payments. He offered to put a steamer onto the Gippsland Lakes and Snowy River, and run a regular service to Melbourne in return for £10 000 and a monopoly over ferry rights between Melbourne and the Lakes. He attempted to justify this somewhat outrageous proposal in a letter to the Victorian Chamber of Commerce, seeking the Chamber’s support – a letter which lends us some insight into the resentment he now felt: ‘Former and very bitter experience has shown me the necessity of obtaining such a right [a monopoly] . . . vessels with which I have been connected to the value of £17 000 have been lost in establishing the trade on the Murray. Now the river is eaten out with opposition.’

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The proposal was rejected. I suspect that the Victorian government was by now becoming a little wary of this South Australian entrepreneur with his record of financial disasters, his disregard for the law and his continual outspoken criticism of others. With the failure of this last-ditch effort Cadell disappears completely from the public record for over two years. From here on the captain’s tracks become more difficult to follow. There are some suggestions that Cadell spent the next few years trying his hand at farming on the Anabranch or the Darling. He successfully tendered for runs on the Anabranch but forfeited them when he failed to pay the rent. He was shown briefly as the proprietor of ‘East Milang’, now part of Coombah Station, and ‘Outer Eurilla’, now part of Cooinda. This suggestion is supported by a memorial from his father to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, dated 11 August 1862, in which (now aged 72) he takes up Francis’ cause: . . . all his hard-earned means are exhausted, pecuniary difficulties have overtaken him, and his only alternative is to begin the world anew, by becoming a squatter in the far back country, to the west of Mount Murchisson and the Darling [and begging] that Your Grace will be pleased to suggest to the Governors of New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia, the propriety of their respective legislative bodies granting a station or tract of country to Mr. Cadell, near any of the rivers with which his name has been and will continue to be honorably associated . . .

Hew’s memorial was forwarded to the governors concerned, ‘in order that they may take such steps as they consider proper in the matter’ but no further action was forthcoming.

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Williamstown Pier, Melbourne

It is also possible that he spent some time in New Zealand or the Pacific during this period but I can find no real evidence to support either of these suggestions. For someone so magnetically attractive to the press this silence is a bit odd. Cadell must have been keeping his head well down. Licking his wounds. What we do know is that he still owned the Wakool – one of the two original redgum barges built on the banks of the Wakool River, and since converted to a paddle-steamer. In June 1863 reports indicate that he was fitting her out for an attempt at the New Zealand trade. He transferred her registration to Melbourne and the Wakool left Goolwa on 19 July 1863 bound for Dunedin. She required repairs in Tasmania along the way. She arrived in Dunedin in September. It appears that Cadell was not in command.

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He was still in Melbourne the following February, about to embark for New Zealand when he was delayed by a curious telegram from the New Zealand government, asking him to wait in Melbourne for the arrival of a Mr J.C. Firth. ‘Wait,’ Colonel George Pitt begged, ‘and I will bear the expense.’ Pitt was the officer in charge of recruiting Australians to join armed militias fighting in the Waikato War against the Maori. Late in 1863 he had chartered eleven ships to bring the 1784 recruits and their families to New Zealand. They were lured by the promise of free land (confiscated from the Maori) at the end of their service. Pitt’s telegram, it seems, was prompted by a Melbourne acquaintance of Cadell’s, Edward Wilson, who, knowing of Cadell’s plans, had written to Sir George Grey, now enjoying a second term as governor of New Zealand: ‘Captain

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Cadell is visiting New Zealand to take a look at its lakes and rivers, and I am naturally anxious that you should be aware that a gentleman of Captn. Cadell’s eminence in works of practical utility is coming amongst you.’ The background to this flurry of New Zealand interest in Cadell had begun in the 1850s while Cadell was taking care of business on the Murray, and came to a head in 1860 while he was enjoying the surf on the Ninety Mile Beach. This was the year in which a relatively orderly, voluntary system of land sale by the Maori (via the New Zealand government) to the settlers had come seriously unstuck. The problem was that, while in most regions the Maori had willingly parted with portions of their arable land, there remained large areas of New Zealand’s most fertile country – particularly along the Waikato River and on Taranaki’s volcanic plains – that was not for sale. Pressure from the settlers and from government land purchasing agents had succeeded in persuading a minority of Maori in these regions to sell, but this did not translate into actual sales because of traditional collective land-holding arrangements – and the majority of the owners were opposed to the whole idea. Indeed many were beginning to think that too much land had already been given away. In 1859 Governor Gore Browne visited Taranaki to try to calm the mounting tensions between settlers, would-be land sellers and the over-my-dead-body majority. The governor held a large public meeting. All parties attended, but unbeknownst to the governor, his chief land purchase commissioner, Donald McLean, had plotted with those willing to sell. They had agreed that Teira, a junior chief, would make a very public offer at the meeting of land at the mouth of the Waitara River. Caught unprepared, the governor

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agreed to buy the land, provided no other title holders objected. The unwilling faction walked out, the land purchasing agents advised the governor after brief enquiries that there were no other owners and the governor found himself backed into a corner. He had to pay up and accept the consequences. These were that 300 people were evicted from the land, surveyors found their pegs being ripped out of the ground, and skirmishes led to one dead soldier and the capture of a Maori pa (stockade) that had been newly constructed on the land. Open warfare followed. The Taranaki tribes were actively supported by a loose confederation of Maori from all over the country under the leadership of the newly appointed Maori ‘King’. Initially the Maori gained the upper hand, but several years of inconclusive skirmishing lapsed into an uneasy truce which lasted until 1863 when renewed pressure for land along the Waikato and increased pressure from colonists to crush the King movement led to a depressingly similar repetition of the whole episode. On 12 July 1863, Lieutenant General Duncan Cameron crossed the Mangatawhiri Stream at the head of a joint imperialcolonial force. Twelve days later the Avon – a small armed steamboat – entered the Waikato River to support the ground forces. Another steamer, the Pioneer, arrived in October, and both boats assisted in attacks on well-defended pa at Mere Mere and Rangiriri. The government ordered another two steam tugs, the Koheroa and Rangiriri, with extra steel plating from the Sydney yard of P.N. Russell and Co., to be assembled at Waikato Heads early in 1864, and purchased the iron paddle-steamer Tasmanian Maid, fitting her out as a gunboat and renaming her the Sandfly. Command of this little flotilla was initially

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entrusted to Commodore Sir William Wiseman, a government administrative officer, but Sir George Grey obviously wanted an officer with more relevant experience to take command of the Waikato Steam Transport Service. J.C. Firth, the man who was so anxious to meet Cadell, was visiting Australia early in 1864 to buy more steamers. His meeting with Cadell was a bonus. The two agreed on terms almost immediately. Cadell was appointed as commandant of the Waikato Steam Transport Service, on a salary of £800 plus travelling expenses. He sailed for New Zealand on 27 February on the Phoebe. Later, when told that his pay had only commenced when he set foot aboard the Phoebe he protested: ‘. . . in my opinion I ought to be paid for those 12 days. However I am not accustomed to haggle over anything. I do not wish to do so over this’. Firth went on to Adelaide and negotiated with Younghusband for the lease of the Gundagai. She left for New Zealand on 19 May with Captain Ritchie in command. Firth also acquired the Adelaide-built, wooden paddle-steamer Prince Alfred. Cadell arrived in Auckland on 17 March to take command of seven steamers. An eighth, the Mautoa, was under construction at Port Waikato from two existing barges and a second-hand steam engine. The Wakool was never, as some have suggested, part of the Waikato flotilla. In one sense Cadell arrived just a little too late for all the fun. The storming of Mere Mere and Rangiriri the previous year were the flotilla’s finest hour. Nonetheless there was still much work to be done. After the battle of Rangiriri, in November 1863, the British and colonial forces had advanced

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MAP 12 The Waikato River

steadily up the Waikato as far as Ngaruawahia, at the junction of the Waikato and Waipa rivers, previously the pre-eminent Maori settlement in the area. General Cameron established his headquarters at Tuhikaramea, about 25 kilometres up the Waipa.

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When Cadell arrived, he set up operations at Ngaruawahia. He built up and maintained two months’ supply of army stores for all the forces operating on the Waikato and kept the river open as the principal line of supply and communication for the army. Ngaruawahia was heavily garrisoned; the Waikato Maori were not pleased to have lost it. Grey’s strategy for permanently pacifying the area was to establish armed townships along the river, occupied by settlermilitias. The government granted the settlers township land and farm lots, provided that they bore arms when required to defend their towns or to take part in joint military operations. The land was appropriated by the government from its Maori owners. The towns were located in strategic defensible positions close to navigable parts of the river. One of Cadell’s responsibilities (together with Colonel T.M. Haultain of the Waikato militia) was to select suitable sites. The townships of Hamilton and Cambridge were among the militia settlements. Cadell was also responsible for extensive workshops at Port Waikato, a depot at Mangatawhiri and a number of smaller river vessels. As well as supplying the army, the flotilla also brought building materials upriver for the villages. The soldier-settlers initially built timber barracks for themselves. Each village was supposed to have eight huts 18 m × 6 m, sixteen huts 9 m × 6 m, two smaller huts for the officers and a hospital. Cadell was unimpressed with the sawyers sent to Ngaruawahia to supply timber. Asked to comment on the N.C.O. employed to crack the whip over the sawyers, his response was characteristic: ‘I think he is a good man, but I have much greater faith in a mill, than an N.C.O.’ Cadell entered into the hostilities with enthusiasm,

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mounting a 6-pound carronade on the Rangiriri and arming its crew. He also requested that much of the bush and scrub along the rivers be burnt off to reduce the danger of ambush. There were natural hazards too, of a kind with which he was all too familiar. When the Koheroa, carrying vitally needed supplies for Hamilton, struck a snag and capsized near Huntly, she became a sitting target as well as leaving the Hamilton garrison short of food. A flurry of correspondence carried by urgent dispatch, hastened the unloading of the steamer Blue Nose and barge Waikato – the two vessels best located to help out – while Cadell set off for Port Waikato to get all the equipment he needed for the salvage operation. He also requested the loan of a pile driver to help with the raising of the Koheroa, although it is a bit hard to imagine what role it could play; the sunken steamer was lying in about 4 metres of water on her beam-ends, supported by the snag.

The Wanganui River

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The lakes and rivers of New Zealand provided another highway for early steamboats

In May 1864, in the face of a resurgent Maori threat, General Cameron took his forces up the Wanganui River. Cadell was there to back him up. He took command of the Gundagai himself and, accompanied by the gunboat Sandfly, brought supplies, munitions and a band of ‘loyal’ Putiki Maori along the coast and up the narrow, unfamiliar, snag-choked Wanganui River. The two steamers made several trips up the Wanganui over the next few months. As commandant of the flotilla, Cadell had authority over all the steamer captains, including the Sandfly’s skipper, Captain Marks. Marks was a local – an experienced coastal sailor who knew every bay and inlet along the New Zealand coastline – and an independent, strong-minded individual who was not afraid of a fight. Before Cadell arrived Marks had been busy blockading the mouth of the Thames estuary, during which he captured the Maori cutter Éclair, loaded with supplies. Later, in the Sandfly, he had pursued a group of fleeing Maori along the beach at Tauranga, shelling them with his 12-pounder. He

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was a maverick, and difficult to control, as Cadell discovered at Onehunga, in March 1865. The Sandfly was scheduled to depart for the Waikato with urgent supplies and a number of settlers’ families, when Cadell arrived to find all in disarray – the goods piled up on the wharf, the families milling around not knowing what to do, the crew on their backsides and Captain Marks nowhere to be seen. Cadell ordered the stores to be loaded and then told the mate to get under way. Shortly afterwards the Sandfly ran aground. Marks reappeared, rowing out to the boat, where he placed the mate under arrest and instructed Cadell to consider himself a passenger. The crew supported Marks, who continued to defy Cadell when they arrived at Port Waikato and Cadell tried to dismiss a seaman and reinstate the first officer. Cadell later attempted to charge Marks with ‘incitement to mutiny’ amongst other things, but the government refused to back him, choosing instead to dismiss Marks, telling him that they were selling the Sandfly and his services were no longer needed. Perhaps the military adventure had gone to Cadell’s head a bit, and he was playing the naval martinet a little too convincingly for some of the old coastal salts and riverboat skippers. Later on he was in trouble again, this time with his old Cockenzie and Murray River friend Captain Ritchie, now in command of the Prince Alfred. Again it was over a delayed departure with urgent stores. Ritchie had refused to set sail from Port Waikato because the tide was ebbing and he feared running aground. Cadell lost his temper, dismissing him on the spot and appointing the chief officer in his place. By the time the dispute was over, it really was too late to sail. The regularity with which these kinds of incidents occurred

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certainly lends weight to the picture I have of Cadell as a shoot-first-and-ask-questions-afterwards kind of person. He was undoubtedly a doer, and if people got in his way they got pushed aside. He appears occasionally and briefly in the history books covering the Waikato campaign, but always accompanied by those adjectives we have seen so often before: ‘capable’, ‘enterprising’, ‘the invaluable Captain Cadell’. Among those who worked for him, Daniel Morgan, an engineer aboard the Gundagai, probably summed up the general feeling: ‘I knew Captain Cadell very well indeed. He was highly respected as a man, and a strict disciplinarian.’ When he left the service in 1866 the New Zealand Herald insisted that ‘. . . great praise is due to Capt. Cadell for the manner in which under very great difficulties and discouragements, he has succeeded’. By early 1865 it was clear that the transport service on the Waikato had outlived its usefulness. In June, Defence Minister H.A. Aitkinson announced that the flotilla would be wound up on 1 August and that all plant and equipment would be sold, with the exception of two steamers. Cadell was asked to submit a tender to continue running a limited transport service. In December the Colonial Secretary wrote to Frederick Whitaker (government agent in Auckland) instructing him to sell all the remaining steamers, and ‘to inform Captain Cadell that his services will be dispensed with after the 31st instant and that his accounts are to be furnished before that date’. A bit of a tall order given that the letter was written five days before Christmas! The accounts in any case had been a mess for some time. Money matters were undoubtedly Cadell’s Achilles’ heel, but much of the fault in this case lay elsewhere. The New

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Zealand government’s reluctance to pay its bills elicited this plea from Cadell in June: ‘The meat contractor, Mr. Johnston, having supplied beef to a very considerable amount threatened to discontinue the supply if his account was not settled forthwith amounting to £35. Without beef coals could not be produced and without coals steam could not be generated . . . ’ Cadell was himself the meat in the sandwich, and on occasions he had but one remedy: ‘. . . the only cause of any unpleasantness with the Govt., my correspondence shows that I have been paying the Department “out of my own pocket”’. He left Port Waikato in January 1866. ‘Captain Harrison is to succeed Capt. Cadell as manager and superintendent,’ reported the New Zealand Herald, ‘but with the limited means of transport at his command it is doubtful if the service will be in any way better performed than heretofore.’ Cadell remained in New Zealand for another seven months. On 26 March, at ‘Mr. Steers’s The City Club’ in Auckland, a gathering of officers, friends and well-wishers presented the ‘late commandant of the Waikato Steam Transport Service’ with a generous testimonial, a gold chronometer-watch and gold ‘Albert chain’, a diamond ring and a locket containing portraits of Queen Victoria and himself, set in diamonds. ‘We who have served under your command,’ read the testimonial, ‘part from you with feelings of personal regard, and all write in wishing you success and prosperity in your future career’. Over the next few months Cadell visited the east coast where he was employed briefly to examine the Wairoa River and its entrance with a view to its navigability, reporting back to Donald McLean, superintendent of Hawke’s Bay province. This may well have been one of those incidents that had a far

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greater influence on Cadell than first appearances suggest. In the 1850s Donald McLean had been New Zealand’s chief land purchase commissioner. Governor Gore Browne had a limited knowledge of Maori culture and language and depended heavily on McLean. It was he who manipulated the governor in 1859, creating conditions that led to bloodshed in Taranaki and thence inexorably to the Waikato War. He also held the post of native secretary, creating, it would seem, a serious conflict of interest. Despite his knowledge of Maori language, McLean seems to have had an unsympathetic, manipulative approach towards the Maori, and to have undone much of the relatively enlightened work of Governor Grey’s first term. When Grey returned for a second stint as governor in 1863, McLean relinquished his two posts and ended up in charge of Hawke’s Bay. As one of the principal architects of the Waikato War – and its subsequent bitter legacy – McLean probably had a fair amount of contact with the commandant of the Waikato flotilla, and some of his attitudes may well have rubbed off. Cadell would maintain links for some years after his departure. He sailed for Sydney on 2 August 1866 aboard the SS Claud Hamilton. Another whose attitudes may have been rubbing off on Cadell at this time was his Adelaide Regatta companion, Bully Hayes. Shortly after Cadell’s arrival in New Zealand, in March 1864, Bully Hayes also turned up in Auckland. Since his disappearance from Melbourne in 1858 Hayes had returned to San Francisco, then showed up again in Sydney, with other survivors of the wreck of ‘his’ ship the Ellenita near Samoa. In Sydney he was declared bankrupt (again), spent some time in

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jail, and responded vigorously to an increasing tide of public criticism, including a long diatribe in the Sydney Empire by Sir Henry Parkes, entitled ‘The Career of a Remarkable Scoundrel’. He then joined a travelling theatrical troupe – the Buckinghams – which wandered around country New South Wales for a while, then headed for New Zealand. They ended up in Arrowtown, a South Island gold-rush shanty town where Hayes married Rona Buckingham. There is something slightly surreal about this time in both Cadell’s and Hayes’ lives. I’m not sure which is the more comical: the vision of the South Pacific psychopath earning his keep as a baritone in a travelling troupe, or that of the incomparable Captain Cadell directing miniature naval operations from the bridge of a paddle-steamer–gunboat on the Waikato River. Hayes turned up next in Auckland on 3 July 1864 in command of the Black Diamond, carrying a load of coal from Sydney that was consigned to Newcastle but that he sold in Auckland, pocketing the takings. The next few years, largely spent in New Zealand waters, feature some of Hayes’ blackest exploits. In September 1864, during a family boating trip at Croisilles Harbour near Nelson, his latest wife, their baby and his brother-in-law were all inexplicably drowned in an accident which Hayes alone survived. Shortly afterwards, at Picton, he stole the 10-ton cutter Wave and abducted a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old woman, Helen Murray, keeping her on board the Wave for some days before finally releasing her. He then acquired the schooner Shamrock in Wellington and began trading between Fiji and various New Zealand ports, including Wanganui,

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punctuating these trips with a bit of opportunistic blackbirding between Pacific islands. It is certain that Cadell’s tracks repeatedly crossed those of the South Sea buccaneer during this period. Perhaps their meetings amounted to no more than a nod of recognition or a brief word. Perhaps there were opportunities for more substantial conversations, even if Hayes was guarded in what he had to say about his recent exploits. Perhaps it is entirely coincidental that Cadell’s own first foray into the slave trade would take place in New Zealand, in 1870. Shortly after Cadell’s departure from New Zealand, Hayes arrived in Hokitika, a small bleak port clinging to a narrow strip of coastal plain on the storm-battered west coast of New Zealand’s South Island. He had a new vessel, the Rona (formally the Anglo-Saxon), which he had bought in May and promptly mortgaged – as was his habit – for £970. She carried a cargo of fruit, pigs and ‘curios’ from Levuka and, according to some sources, guns and ammunition to be delivered to ‘rebel’ Maori at Raglan. He sold the fruit, pigs and curios and then left in a hurry when the Rona’s mortgagees got wind of his whereabouts and came looking for their money. Having slipped precipitately out of port he then hung around offshore for several days. He had apparently lent his signal flags as decorations for Hokitika’s New Year’s Day celebrations and in the rush had left them behind. He had also omitted to deliver the curios to those who had bought them. The skipper of the local steam tug kindly returned the flags to Hayes under cover of darkness. The tug was none other than Cadell’s one-time vessel, the Lioness.

CHAPTER 13

The Eagle The explorer 1866–68

Cadell is 60 kilometres up a tributary of the Liverpool River on the northern coast of Australia. It is a hot, still day, silent but for the soft cooing of the Torresian pigeons, their unvarying three-note figure relentlessly repeated: C-G-C pause, C-G-C pause, C-G-C pause. The river is an unnatural, milky day-glo green, an unbelievable colour even in this region of spectacular paint-box hues. All day Cadell has been making his way upstream in a whaleboat, mapping the channels that sinuously thread the elongated, lozenge-shaped islands of mud and mangrove. Another river, another cornucopia of possibilities. Cadell remembers the Forerunner expedition on the Murray River and builds a picture in his mind of the same possibilities here: a fleet of riverboats, a sprinkling of

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hardy pioneers exchanging their rice, sugar, tea, cotton or tropical hardwoods for those snowy white bags of flour that so delighted the Murray Valley farmers, those manufactured goods, those tins of jam, rounds of cheese and bottles of whisky. But his vision melts away as fast as it appears. He shakes his head. He is coming to the conclusion that there are easier ways to earn a living in this enervating tropical lotus land, with its warm, seas and mosquito-infested mangroves. In the last few weeks, he has noted, with interest, plenty of evidence that the Macassan bêche-de-mer fishers are busy along this stretch of coast. Their squalid beach camps with simple bow shelters, the giant iron cauldrons they use for boiling the sea slugs and the ramshackle bamboo drying racks left behind to await the return of the fleet the following season. The few praus remaining took his mind back to Batavia, to the Kali Besar and its jumble of exotic shipping. Of much more interest – indeed he has thought of little else – were the odd pearling luggers off Cape York. There was quite a little fleet of them, painted ships at anchor off coral islands. Cadell thinks long and hard on that handful of isolated white men accumulating small fortunes from the exertions of their enigmatic, dark-skinned Aboriginal or Asian crews.

On his return from New Zealand, Cadell’s first move supports the theory that he had acquired at least some interest for – if not in – the dry saltbush country out west of the Darling River. Instead of returning to Adelaide or Goolwa he made straight for Echuca and embarked on the next steamer for Wilcannia. In Echuca the river community spontaneously saluted the founder of the river trade, skippers of all the steamers in port raising their colours to honour his visit. From Wilcannia he

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took to the scrub, rambling alone for two months in the Barrier Range and, 400 kilometres further north, in the Grey Range. He must have been a lot better equipped than on his first venture into this country because he emerged in November in Blanchetown – on the Murray between Morgan and Moorundie – healthy and in good spirits after a jaunt of 2000 kilometres or more. Substantial periods of lone contemplation in the desert have provided a time-honoured cleansing and healing strategy for many of the world’s well-publicised cast of driven ascetics. For Cadell it was an opportunity – denied him until now by the frenzied activity of the Waikato War – to mourn the loss of his dreams, to think about what might have been, and what might have gone wrong. To think about where he might turn from here. As luck would have it, his arrival back in Adelaide aboard the Blanchetown Mail could not have been better timed. Four years earlier the Ayers ministry had drawn up an ambitious plan for subdividing and selling land in the Northern Territory. After years of wrangling with Queensland, South Australia had finally won the right to administer the territory, and the idea was to establish a new community – along Wakefield lines – somewhere along its northern coastline. The South Australian government advertised in both Adelaide and London, placing some 100 000 hectares on the market. Investors paid a grand total of £82 553 into the state’s coffers for notional blocks of land in an as yet unexplored and unsurveyed wilderness. In March 1863 B.T. Finniss (one of the surveyors who had opposed the idea of a port city at the mouth of the Murray) took an expedition north to choose the site and survey the blocks. He was instructed to concentrate on the

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difficult and dangerous country around the Victoria, Roper and Adelaide Rivers. He chose Escape Cliffs, at the mouth of the Adelaide River, as the place for a city, and surveyed rural sections to the south. His expedition was soon torn, however, with disharmony and disagreement. Finniss’ decision was condemned by his subordinates and by representatives of the investors. He was about to recommend Port Darwin and Port Daly as more promising alternatives when he was recalled, leaving his deputy, Manton, to finish the work. ‘Mr Manton’, according to the South Australian Register, ‘was rather a worse ruler than Mr. Finniss in the matter of arbitrary and despotic conduct’. The government then sent John McKinley north. He examined a different piece of coastline and quarrelled with Manton before returning to Adelaide in 1866. By now the investors (mainly in England) were running out of patience. They still had nothing to show for their money, and many now demanded that their investments be repaid – with interest. The government decided to make one more effort and, in February 1867, appointed Cadell to lead an expedition, ‘. . . and a better man they could not well have chosen’, trumpeted the Register. He was instructed ‘to select as soon as possible a favourable site for the survey of 300 000 acres of good land within a reasonable distance of a good harbour, easily navigable, and conveniently situated as a port of call, with a healthy site for a Capital, and in close proximity to fresh water and timber’. Cadell, being a sailor, decided that the best way to choose the site for a new port city was to approach the land from the sea rather than the other way round. So, starting in the Gulf of Carpentaria, he would explore the northern coastline in detail,

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filling in the gaps still left after Flinders’, King’s and others’ work. He engaged the Australian Steam Navigation Company’s screw-steamer Eagle for the job. She was old, timber (but copper bottomed) and had sails to supplement her steam engine. At the last minute he also acquired a tiny river steamer, the Firefly, barely bigger than a launch, that had been running a regular service between Echuca and Swan Hill. Her owner, Captain James Symington, was dragged out of bed in the middle of the night to get her ready to send to Melbourne by the 8.30 am train. The Eagle left Adelaide that same month (February). Cadell joined the expedition in Sydney, where he engaged the additional personnel he still needed. On 2 April the Eagle threaded her way through the heads and turned northwards. Amongst the 25 men on board was Francis Napier, shipbuilder David Napier’s son. His diary of the expedition, with its close observation of things natural and ethnographic, together with Cadell’s own rather more flamboyant account, written in his elegant spidery hand, provides us with everything we need to know. As they rounded Cape York on 29 April, and headed out across the Gulf, Napier noted that ‘the sea was intensely blue, and much more phosphorescent than we had seen it on our way north’. The Eagle came to anchor four days later in Castlereagh Bay, ‘one of the finest sheets of water and landlocked harbours in Australia, with sufficient depth of water for any vessel, and room for all the fleets of the world’. The expedition continued in a westerly direction along the coast, using the Firefly from time to time to explore the muddy maze of river estuaries and mangroves. The presence of intruders attracted plenty of attention from large numbers of

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MAP 13 Northern Territory Coastline

Aboriginal people in the area, columns of smoke from their fires marching far along the coast in both directions. One large fire near the shore was probably intended, Cadell thought, ‘to attract our attention’. Cadell dropped anchor in the Liverpool River estuary on 5 May and ran the Firefly into the mangroves near Bat Island, looking for a suitable place to land his horses, a herd of sheep, several stockmen and others to establish a base camp and plant a vegetable garden. Cadell and three others waded ashore through the knee-deep mud, leaving Napier and several others aboard the Firefly, swatting mosquitos. ‘After enjoying ourselves in this way for about an hour,’ writes Napier,

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the Captain and the doctor were observed in the distance, returning in haste, chased by a number of natives. Our guns and revolvers were immediately loaded, and after getting the captain and doctor on board we awaited the expected onslaught. Presently our black enemy was seen peering at us from behind the trees, and we at them from behind sails and other protection from spears, although as yet I had not seen any of them had these weapons . . . But we found as I had thought from the first, that they never meant mischief . . . They had two canoes, about twelve feet long by two feet broad, drawn up on the bank. They were made of bark, very ingeniously sewed at the bow and stern, and plastered over, inside with moist clay, to keep the water out.

That night the horses were attacked by what Cadell described as an ‘alligator’. Two days later he began landing his livestock. He left on the fourteenth, retracing his steps to Castlereagh Bay and continuing as far as Mount Norris Bay, looking for ‘White Bob’, a helpful local Aboriginal man who – so Cadell had been told – would act as a guide. On 29 May, he returned, unsuccessful, to the Liverpool River where he stayed for the next two months. By now he had decided that he would recommend this estuary as ‘the most eligible site for a capital’. Cadell busied himself with his surveying while Francis Napier took an interest in the startling local termite nests, of which there were two varieties. One species built 7 m-high towers, as hard as fired clay, heavily buttressed, each containing a vast, complex city of chambers and passageways, warehouses, nurseries and dwellings. The other constructed more modest 4 m-high by 1–2 m-wide blades of grey concrete-like material, all arranged uncannily so that their long axes ran almost exactly north-south.

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Napier also provided a running commentary on a series of gun-related accidents and problems that occurred over the next few weeks. There were two mishaps in early June, one resulting in the loss of a finger. Then a young member of the expedition, a Queensland Aborigine named Tommy, disappeared, taking guns and ammunition with him. Soon afterwards he returned without the guns, only to abscond again with another gun that Cadell gave him. Two days later he was found and brought back to the ship where he was kept handcuffed but otherwise free to move around. He escaped again, swimming the 2 kilometres to shore, handcuffs notwithstanding. The following evening he was discovered in the expedition’s forge (part of the shore camp) where he was busy manufacturing iron spearheads. Finally, on 22 June, the recalcitrant young man jumped overboard yet again and began swimming for the shore. This time several members of the crew spotted him. They gave chase in a boat and pulled him out of the water, apparently in considerable pain. They brought him back to the Eagle and laid him down on the deck. Five minutes later he was dead. A postmortem showed his lungs to be full of water. Local Aboriginal people later returned two of the stolen guns. Problems with firearms continued. On 1 July Napier reported that he ‘heard the report of a gun and heavy fall. Rushing on deck, I found that one of the men had accidentally shot himself . . . The doctor and captain were signalled for, but Frazer was dead before they returned.’ George Frazer was the expedition’s blacksmith. By the middle of the month Cadell was ready to retrace his steps along the coast again. He would return to Castlereagh

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Bay and continue east, rounding Cape Arnhem to closely skirt the Gulf of Carpentaria coastline all the way to the Queensland border. Having already fixed on the Liverpool River and invested some considerable amount of time surveying the area, this belated glance at any other possibilities on offer seems something of an afterthought. Perhaps Cadell thought that he should at least be able to say that he had looked at a range of sites. In any case it was time to make his way to Burketown, the nearest place from which he could report progress to the South Australian government and replenish stores. At Castlereagh Bay Cadell took the Eagle into a broad estuary that he had examined briefly on his first trip through. This time he went further, following it as it took a sharp turn to the north-east, narrowed, and then widened out again into a maze of islands. The estuary was in fact the strait that now bears his name or, more correctly, his father’s. Cadell was now getting right into the exploring business and exercising the explorer’s most satisfying prerogative – naming things. He called the island that Cadell Strait separates from the mainland Elcho Island, after Francis Charteris, Lord Elcho, the member of the House of Commons for Haddingtonshire and Cadell’s local member. (Lord Elcho is also famous for being a founder of the volunteer movement, which sounds a bit like someone taking credit for the invention of generosity.) The Napier family got its name on the long, thin peninsula separating the strait from Buckingham Bay, which was named for the colonial secretary. The day before the discovery of Cadell Strait, Francis Napier had reported on another important event: ‘We had a birth on board today. While at Liverpool River some of the

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men had found a nest of emeu’s [sic] eggs, one of which had been put away by the mate in a drawer. On looking this morning into his drawer he found a little emeu walking about in it.’ The next day brought melancholy news, however: ‘the 23rd July – unfortunately the little emeu is dead; the rats have killed it’. The same day Napier’s curious eye focused on those beautiful Arnhemland structures still used today as temporary shelters and hides during the magpie-goose hunting season: ‘Here we saw a framework erection, five to six feet high, on which they sleep, with a fire underneath for the purpose of driving off the mosquitos.’ And not to be outdone in the architectural stakes, by either their human or their termite neighbours, the local brush turkeys had an impressive monument on show too: ‘It is dome shaped, fifteen feet high, and fifty-six paces around the base.’ The expedition cruised the Wessel Islands for a week before rounding Cape Arnhem on 10 August, reaching Groote Eylandt on the eleventh and Maria Island on the twelfth. Attempting to land some horses there, the Eagle ran aground ‘so suddenly that our tender [the Firefly] ran into our stern, and was so damaged by the propeller that, after hurriedly removing all that was valuable, we allowed her to sink, to the delight of all on board, as she had been a great hindrance to us’. The following day Cadell sailed into another grand estuary and eased the Eagle 25 kilometres upstream before dropping anchor. He had discovered the sea mouth of the Roper River. From there, he took the whaleboat 70 kilometres upstream to a sandbar which marked the end of the saltwater. Two Aboriginal men along the river independently indicated to him that a single white man, his beard down to his waist, had been seen

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regularly in the area, spearing turtles to survive. Cadell distributed some squares of calico among the local people to pass on to this man with the (not terribly helpful) message ‘Make for the Head of the Gulf. Plenty Stations’ pencilled on them. When news of the castaway reached civilisation the story took off like wildfire. Embellished at every re-telling it reached its speculative climax with the claim that Cadell had located and saved the long lost explorer Ludwig Leichhardt, last seen on 5 April 1848, near Mount Abundance in south-west Queensland, heading, as Leichhardt had obliquely put it, ‘to the setting sun’. Cadell was at least partly – if unintentionally – responsible for the exaggerations, having stated, several paragraphs earlier in his report, that he went up the Roper River to ‘Leichhardt’s position’, meaning the point at which Leichhardt had crossed the Roper during his expedition of 1844–45. They heard no more of the mysterious white man, and they sailed on to Burketown, where Cadell made himself at home in the bar of the hotel to compose his interim report. ‘This hastily written narrative, thrown off in the public room of a bush inn on the very ultima thule of civilizaton, with rather more than its full share of all the interruptions and désagrémens incidental thereto, intensified, I regret to say, by my own “liberty men”, who, true to their country and their calling are enjoying (?) themselves after a few months of tolerable discipline.’ He cabled it to Adelaide on 23 August, then went back for another look at the Roper estuary. He discovered another island. ‘The Captain called it Edwards Isle [Edward Island], after his friend Captain Edwards, who he met at Bourke Town [sic]’, said Napier. He then spent the best part of a week in and around Buckingham Bay.

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By now the temperature and humidity were climbing steadily to uncomfortable levels. Every evening brought a build-up of massive clouds and a spectacular display of thunder and lightning, but no rain to break the tension. It was that time of the year in the top end when people go a little ‘troppo’. Napier’s diary entries seem appropriately bizarre. On 9 October: ‘. . . the climbing perch, which is common in all the rivers of the north coast. They are about a foot long, and climb up the trees which grow out of the water. They cannot go up vertical stems, but waddle up branches inclined to the horizon at considerable speed, and it must be confessed that the sight of a fish up a tree is rather comical . . . ’ And on the thirteenth: ‘we found water close to the beach, and in a hollow of a rock almost the complete skeletons of two human bodies wrapped in bark. The skulls were 3–16th inches thick. Numbers of Torres Strait pigeons were flying about.’ Two days later they were back on the Liverpool River, where the ‘natives’ carted 100 tonnes of firewood for the Eagle’s boilers, then Cadell pushed on, towards Finniss’ settlement at Adam Bay (Escape Cliffs), arriving on 31 October. Cadell gathered a small party and rowed ashore. They dragged the boat up onto the mudflats at the mouth of the Adelaide River, and climbed a flight of rough wooden steps to the abandoned village perched on top of a 3-metre-high cliff. Fifteen or sixteen timber houses, some outbuildings and fences stood silently in the oppressive heat, apparently untouched. ‘We found everything as it had been left,’ wrote Napier, ‘not a window broken or paper disturbed.’ Not even the ripe bananas hanging in bunches from trees in the settlement had been picked. Cadell began working on his final recommendations:

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‘My report as the most eligible site for the capital will be in favour of the Liverpool . . . all communication with the natives has been friendly.’ And with the amused detachment that characterised much of his writing: ‘the natives of the whole northern Territory cannot boast of a fig leaf ’. But the build-up was weighing heavily on his crew. The heat was now stifling, the air so humid that breathing was uncomfortable. On 9 November, in the absence of fresh water, they began condensing seawater using the Eagle’s boiler. From Escape Cliffs the quickest way home was down the west coast, so on the twelfth, after loading up with fuel, they set sail. ‘The men are all knocked up’, wrote Napier, ‘and willing to run any risks at sea without steam power rather than remain longer in this miserable place’, The Eagle steamed into Koepang, the first port of call, on 19 November. Cadell’s dispatches got a mixed response in Adelaide. Many of the newspapers openly ridiculed his racy style, the South Australian Register describing him as the ‘Ulysses of the Northern Territory’. His final report did nothing to dampen their mockery. Cadell will rank among the Livingstones and Marco Polos of Australia. His style is so graphic as to be irrepressible even in his telegrams. His discoveries are all peculiar, not to say unique . . . Under his pen even the most ordinary events grow into historical importance . . . but we look in vain for the commonplace details of anchorage, soil, and climate, which those unreasonable mortals the land-order-holders will be most anxious to know.

The international press was more positive: ‘Here then is a

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tropical estate for Englishmen,’ announced the London Telegraph, ‘bigger and richer than Algeria.’ Even now the South Australian government was still not convinced that the right spot had been identified. Rejecting Cadell’s recommendations too, it dispatched yet another expedition under Surveyor-General Goyder. He promptly selected Darwin as the site for a city and surveyed the necessary town and rural allotments with the minimum of fuss. Cadell arrived home in Adelaide aboard the Aldunga on 13 February. For the next two years – until March 1870, when he turned up in Auckland – he again dropped out of sight. I can find no records of his movements except of a trip to Bendigo in June 1868. He travelled to Wentworth by steamer, ‘visiting on his way some of the back country of the Darling’, and then took a coach which got lost in the mallee scrub not far from Euston. ‘Several boxes of lucifer matches and two wax candles which happened to be in the coach were consumed in the attempt to regain the lost road’, the Riverine Herald tells us, also reporting his intention ‘to proceed to N.Z., where, however, his business will only detain him for a short time’. In August Cadell sailed from Melbourne bound for Queensland. I can only guess that his recent glimpses of the infant pearl-shelling business in the Torres Strait might have sown the seeds of an idea, and that he was heading for Somerset, at the tip of Cape York, for a closer look.

CHAPTER 14

Les Trois Amis South Sea trader and blackbirder 1870–77

Rangitoto Island’s perfect symmetry is framed by the doublehung sash window above a small writing table in Cadell’s hotel room. From the upper floor in one of a jumble of plain weatherboard buildings clambering up the Parnell slopes he looks down, through the late summer air, onto Auckland Harbour’s sun-speckled aquamarine. A ferry, with its smudge of smoke, shuttles back and forth between Devonport and the city. Half a dozen sailing ships of various descriptions line the dock almost beneath his feet. Cadell’s attention returns to the task in hand: a letter to Donald McLean, Superintendent of the Hawke’s Bay District, a firm friend since 1866 when he sought Cadell’s advice on river transport matters. Cadell was glad to

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Kawhia Township

accept the couple of months’ work following the abrupt termination of his employment on the Waikato. He reads through what he has written: ‘23rd March 1870. Sir, I beg herewith to cover a pamphlet on the ‘Spencer Rifle’. The number I sold to the Provincial Government was 30. When I last heard my friends had 10 in Sydney, which are offered to me. I have no doubt that with very little trouble a sufficient number could be picked up to arm any ‘troop’ of moderate strength.’ He gazes out the window again. A neat little topsail schooner has caught his eye, as it rounds North Head and sets a course diagonally across the harbour towards Queen Street wharf. Cadell now accepts that his restless, peripatetic nature will never allow him to put down roots. Even in Adelaide, where he has enjoyed so much success, where he still has so many friends, even there the stuffy Wakefieldian establishment seems to have turned its back on him again. The carping, mocking press, once so supportive of enterprise, now seeks to destroy all those who, like himself, actually try to get anything done. In the past year Auckland – and this hotel room – have

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become as much a home as Adelaide ever was. Here he enjoys a little more anonymity. Here his renascent business ventures are encouraged and welcomed – well, some of them are, anyway. That little trading venture to the rebel Maori still holding out around Kawhia was a bit cheeky – the less said about that the better, particularly when his government contacts might be listening. Still, he cannot see why it should have come so badly unstuck, with such potentially disastrous consequences. Hayes had been openly running guns to the west-coast Maori for years – and getting away with it. But when Cadell chartered the cutter Industry and sailed into Kawhia Harbour with a load of mainly innocent trade goods, the Maori stormed aboard, took him prisoner, threatened to kill him and then, several days later, apparently bored with their little game, set him free, acting as if it had all been some huge joke. Cadell finishes off his letter, signs and seals it, and sets off for the city. He has other pressing business besides this little gun-running sideline. The New Zealand government is in the market for a new steamer, and Cadell has been asked to inspect and report on two candidates, the Luna and the Edith. Today he will start with a surprise visit to the Luna. But as he walks his mind turns to the enterprise that most urgently occupies him. He has become an island trader, with two vessels hard at work. He is particularly keen today for any news around the waterfront of the Lulu, cruising, he hopes, somewhere in the Sandwich Isles. She is due back in Auckland some time in May, with a very special cargo on board.

Slavery was abolished in Great Britain and all British territories in 1834, and in the USA in 1865. In parts of the South Pacific, Australia and New Zealand, however, its sanitised alter ego,

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known as ‘blackbirding’, continued to thrive for another 50 years. ‘Blackbirds’, ‘black cattle’ and ‘black ivory’ were all euphemisms originating in the Americas referring to black African slaves, but ‘blackbirding’, in particular, became the term most closely identified with the South Pacific. It was a practice of procuring labour that survived under a veneer of legality and in the absence of any serious government attempt to expose it for what it really was or to stamp it out. The essential difference in theory between slavery and blackbirding was on the question of ownership. Slaves were property, to be bought and sold. ‘Blackbirds’ were indentured labourers who had consented to be transported to another place, employed for an agreed period in return for food, clothing, shelter and wages, and then returned to their homes at the end of the agreed period. The problem was that in most cases some or all of these conditions were ignored: the labourers were frequently kidnapped or induced into agreements under false pretences, the food, clothing, shelter and wages were generally inadequate, illegal or less than that which had been offered, and many blackbirded labourers – probably the majority – were never taken home. Some remained as virtual slaves for decades, some were sold to other employers, others attempted to escape (just a few of these succeeded). The blackbirders themselves were a grotesque carnival of entrepreneurs, thugs and sadists who treated labourers like any other cargo and combined blackbirding with their other shipping interests – legal and illegal. Ben Boyd is often credited with being Australia’s first blackbirder, bringing 65 men from the Loyalty Islands (New Caledonia)] and New Hebrides (Vanuatu) to work on his pastoral leases in New South Wales.

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Trading stamps – one of the many currencies exchanged by South Pacific traders in the nineteenth century

Boyd’s various enterprises collapsed in 1849 and he disappeared in the Solomons two years later. For several years he ran a shipping service between Adelaide and Sydney, and it is quite possible that Cadell met him during his first visit to Adelaide. During the 1860s Australian blackbirders such as Bobbie Towns with his schooner Black Dog, Henry Lewin (Australian Packet) and Albert Hovell (Young Australian) brought ‘Kanakas’ (a Hawaiian word that acquired a generic meaning for any Pacific Islander) to work on Queensland sugarcane farms. Others, such as Ben Pease and Bully Hayes, roamed the Pacific carrying opportunistic cargoes of labourers, along with their copra and sandalwood, when – and wherever – supply and demand dictated.

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Blackbirders were paid a fee – between £8 and £12 a head – to sign up and transport labourers. Their recruiting methods varied. The skippers could act legally, explaining the terms and conditions fully, the labourers voluntarily signing on with a mark or thumbprint. They could be less innocent, inducing the islanders to sign on by offering terms that they had no intention of honouring. Or they could dispense with any semblance of legality, perhaps kidnapping a chief or a woman or children from the village, releasing them only when the required number of men had presented themselves. They could round up a cargo of workers at gunpoint and then confine them in the hold with little food and no sanitation for weeks at a stretch. Often the blackbirder would then terrorise the remaining villagers, peppering the village with shot, making it an unhealthy place for rival blackbirders to visit, as many innocent traders also discovered. Labour was in short supply in the Pacific during the 1850s and 1860s. When whaling declined as a result of the increased use of new mineral oils, it left a substantial shortfall in certain grades of oil that the new technology could not produce. Coconut oil (made from copra) could meet this need, and it rapidly became the Pacific’s biggest cash crop. Later it would be rivalled by cotton, as the American Civil War slashed production there. The end of slavery in the Americas ironically contributed to its growth across thousands of Pacific islands. Meanwhile, in northern Australia and New Guinea the sugar, rubber and pearling industries were also expanding rapidly, creating even more labour shortages. By the late 1860s, ‘blackbirds’ were a more lucrative cargo, kilogram for kilogram, than sandalwood, copra, coffee or cotton.

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The antics of the blackbirders had made the Pacific a dangerous place for all but themselves. Growing diasporas of dislocated Islanders were creating more and more headaches for a thin smattering of local administrators. Official reaction to this mounting humanitarian crisis was sluggish. The British consul in Fiji introduced a process of certifying that each Fijian labourer had signed on voluntarily. In 1870 he issued 2300 such certificates. Little attempt was made, however, to follow them up, to establish that the people had been paid and returned home. Certification, in truth, did little to improve the situation; rather it tended to entrench the whole business by lending it a measure of official sanction. In 1872, in response to widespread public protest, the House of Commons passed the Pacific Islanders Protection Act, usually referred to as the ‘Kidnapping Act’, which allowed British warships to arrest suspected blackbirders in international waters and take them to Australia for trial. The navy had to be careful about where it put them ashore, however. Some of the Australian colonies were fairly sympathetic to the blackbirders; Queensland did not outlaw the practice until 1902. During the 1870s, negotiations between the governors of the Dutch East Indies and Western Australia led to substantial penalties for failure to return indentured ‘Malay’ sailors manning pearling vessels on the Western Australian coast. Originally the Dutch legislation insisted that the full amount of the fine be deposited with authorities in Koepang (Kupang) to guarantee return, but the governor eventually agreed to accept guarantees from businesses that had established offices in the Dutch East Indies. Blackbirding was built on the same fundamental attitude to race that underpinned slavery – the idea that some peoples

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were so intrinsically inferior to others that they were not entitled to the same freedoms and rights as more advanced peoples. While more openly expressed 150 years ago than it is now, the idea was probably no more widely believed, and no less widely reviled then, than it is today. The pragmatic frontier Australia that Francis Cadell inhabited rapidly developed a reputation for rural redneck racism, but in the cities, and back home in Britain, the anti-slavery movement, the churches and the social reform movements that blazed into life so explosively in the later nineteenth century, to inform and shape so much of the political thought of the twentieth, campaigned doggedly to change political attitudes. Messages about Cadell’s own attitudes to race are mixed. As a seaman, he worked in a ‘chequerboard’ industry, to use its own terminology, where a man’s worth had nothing to do with the colour of his skin and everything to do with how well he performed. He had worked closely, for decades, with South Sea Islanders – some of the world’s most accomplished mariners. He had been awed by the fierce, fighting pride of the Maori, the hunting and survival skills of the Aborigines. He had seen enough of the world’s shipping to be entranced by its variety, impressed by its appropriateness to local conditions. But viewed in another way, Cadell’s life experiences seem to have conspired to convince him of the superiority of the British people. The Chinese, the Aborigines, the Maori – they had all failed to match up to British technology, know-how, discipline and general superiority of character. And then there were Hayes, Boyd and the other bold, unprincipled resource-raiders of the Pacific. Their pernicious moral turpitude must have rubbed off to some extent on those with whom they mixed

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among the shifting populations of Port Adelaide and Sydney Cove. Finally, there seems no doubt that Cadell’s own character was changing. The outgoing, commanding, competent youth was developing into a more inward-looking, suspicious, bitter man in the face of criticism and his own failures. By 1867, when the 45-year-old sailed north on his voyage of exploration along the Northern Territory coastline, his attitude to the local Aboriginal people was harsh enough to cause the expedition doctor, J.M. Creed, to describe him as ‘very cruel’.

The Lulu docked in Auckland Harbour on 20 May 1870. The following day the New Zealand Herald had all the news: The clipper schooner Lulu, the property of Captain Cadell, arrived in harbour yesterday from a cruise among the New Hebrides . . . she had also on board 27 passengers . . . On 27th April, while the vessel was lying off Pentecost Island, the natives on shore made signs for those on board to land. A boat’s crew containing the supercargo, accordingly put off from the ship, but no sooner had one of the men landed than he was shot at by one of the natives with arrows. The boat immediately put off again and the crew were fortunate to reach the ship without being hurt.

The 27 ‘passengers’ included 23 indentured labourers from the ‘Sandwich Islands’ (Hawaii), engaged to work at Brissenden and Walker’s flax mills in Auckland. There is no record of what recruiting methods were used. Nor is it clear whether the

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Pentecost Island incident had anything to do with the Lulu’s blackbirding activities. Pentecost is 6000 kilometres away from Hawaii, but there is no doubt that many of the blackbirding vessels with more evil reputations could get a pretty hot reception wherever they went. The Lulu was built in 1869 at Onehunga and first registered, in Cadell’s name, at Sydney in January 1870. This was her first voyage, so it is unlikely that she had already acquired such a name for herself. Cadell paid her skipper, Captain R. McLeod, £4 a head for the Hawaiians. The overall fee per person was probably double that. Cadell kept the rest to cover return expenses and profit. As it happened, return expenses may not have amounted to much. Two years later, at least some of the islanders were still in New Zealand, claiming that they had been deceived about the terms of their contract. The New Zealand governor, Gore Browne, was sufficiently concerned to write officially about the incident to the Earl of Kimberley at Downing Street, but by that time Cadell was long gone. The Lulu cleared from Auckland on 17 June, Captain Bergin in command. She carried a tonne of onions, a bag of cottonseed, a complete house frame, 5700 metres of timber, a case of hatchets and two coils of rope, all consigned to Cadell himself. He was on board, and there were four other passengers. It is almost tempting to believe that the ancient mariner was ready to drop anchor at last in some quiet South Pacific lagoon, to put down roots at the edge of a palm-fringed beach and spend his retirement looking out at the ocean from his front verandah. Documentary evidence is less romantic, telling us merely that the Lulu turned up at Fiji in August after a trip to New Caledonia and departed several days later for Western

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Australia. Cadell was still on board. On 9 August she struck the Keedavin Reef, south of Ovalau. Convinced that she could not be re-floated, Cadell sold her as salvage for £400, only to see the mate sail her off the reef a few days later. No matter – Cadell’s plans for Western Australia were not to be so easily scuttled. He arrived off the north-west coast in October, perhaps aboard the Ohinemuri, a 67-ton ketch built at Onehunga in 1865, of which he owned a half share. He had on board 50 pearl divers from Alor and Solor islands, north of Timor. He was a newcomer to the pearling coast, muscling in on a small but lucrative labour supply trade. Within just a few years, he would come to dominate the coast in much the same way as he had the Murray twenty years earlier. At the end of the season 21 Western Australian pearling skippers made voyages to Kupang and Singapore, returning with an expanded workforce of divers from Timor, the Philippines and Sulawesi for the following season. Cadell made another trip to Alor and Solor in July 1871, bringing back 20 more divers. These men were put to work at Shark Bay. They comprised about a quarter of all the South-East Asian divers working that year on the Western Australian coast. The following year the overall number jumped to nearly 1000. Cadell then started turning up in Perth, where the local papers reported that he was preparing a pearling schooner of his own. ‘He is as active and energetic as if he were a lad of 21, and there is likely to be no one more successful.’ The schooner was probably the Water Lily which Cadell bought in 1871 or 1872 in partnership with a particularly unsavoury character, an Englishman called Walter Hale. In March 1872 Hale, in command of the Water Lily, dropped off a

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group of 44 ‘Malays’ and two Europeans at Condon Beach, near Cossack. They had one tent, enough clothing for eleven men and inadequate food. There were no fresh vegetables or fruit. They set up camp and began gathering pearl shell. Mainly used for making buttons, pearl shell or mother-of-pearl was, if anything, a bigger industry than pearls themselves. By May 5 tonnes of shell had been collected, but following a cold snap, some of the poorly clad and half-starved men in the camp became ill. Later reports indicate that they may have been suffering from beri-beri (a vitamin deficiency) or pneumonia, or both. Whatever they had, eight of them were soon dead. Another fourteen then tried to escape in an open boat; they were never seen again. Another month passed. Hale did not return. Eventually one of the whites and the serang (native overseer) rowed 60 kilometres to Cossack for help. Meanwhile Hale had been having some adventures of his own. While the Water Lily was cruising south to Fremantle, one of the Aboriginal crew clumsily dropped an axe into the

Cossack, Western Australia

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sea. The infuriated Hale shot him dead on the spot and, in the ensuing excitement, wounded another two Aboriginal sailors. Calm was soon restored and the dead man followed the axe over the side, but Hale decided to postpone his trip to Fremantle. Discharging most of the crew, he melted away into the islands with a trusted accomplice, the inappropriately named Sam Sustenance. Apart from his parsimony in the sustenance department, Sam was well known for other types of cruelty. He ran a female ‘barracoon’ or slave market for many years on an island off the Western Australian coast. He was later arrested but never charged with anything. A warrant was also issued for Hale’s arrest, but he was never caught. While all this was going on, Hale’s partner Cadell was aboard another vessel – possibly the Ohinemuri – anchored up a secluded creek on one of the islands of the Dampier Archipelago, off Cossack. He was surreptitiously conducting business as usual: selling large quantities of food and equipment (and according to some reports, ‘a vessel’) to pearlers. When news of the Cadell–Hale Condon Beach debacle reached Cossack, the locals kept the information about Cadell’s whereabouts to themselves. The local magistrate, R. Sholl, wrote to the Colonial Secretary darkly hinting that a conspiracy of silence existed among ‘men of means who had the control of boats . . . The affair being . . . a closely kept secret’. Cadell audaciously put in at Cossack several months later, and departed untroubled by any unpleasantness with the law. Obviously he cannot be held directly responsible for events aboard the Lulu, but his involvement in criminal neglect leading to the deaths at Condon Beach is hard to ignore.

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He headed for the Torres Strait, for another attempt at the lucrative pearl shell business in another location, deciding perhaps that it would be wise to absent himself from the west coast for a while. Rich pearl shell beds had been discovered in the Torres Strait in the 1860s, and by now the number of boats operating around Thursday Island was rapidly increasing. From just five in 1870 it shot to over 100 by the end of the decade. Thousands of Melanesians were imported to work the boats and a smaller number of divers came from Manila. There was little policing of the industry. Indeed the government resident at Somerset, Frank Jardine, was busy using government vessels to conduct his own pearl shell business in the early 1870s. Here, as in Western Australia, Cadell could operate with impunity. Within months, however, his crew had had enough and they deserted en masse, leaving him to limp back to Perth. Clearly Cadell’s treatment of his own crews was not that different from Hale’s. Just how much longer Cadell thought he could go on getting away with this sort of thing would be interesting to know. It is clear that he still wielded enough clout – built on his record in South Australia, and on the powerful group of individuals who still regarded him as a friend – to remain relatively untouchable. Back in Perth a handy coincidence of events drove home that point quite nicely for all to see. In town for a couple of days was Sir Dominic Daly, an ex-governor of South Australia, returning from a tour of duty as administrator of the Northern Territory, with his daughter Harriet and her husband-to-be: just the kind of heavy-duty friends Cadell needed. Harriet Daly’s memoirs describe the happy meeting: ‘We put up at an hotel . . . and found an old friend of ours

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staying there at the time – Captain Francis Cadell, of River Murray fame. I had known him all my life, and we were delighted to find him here. Captain Cadell took charge of my husband at once, and inveigled him off to the Weld Club, where he was introduced to the several dignitaries of the place.’ The following day Cadell came down to the port to see them off, taking the extra trouble to board their ship and sort out a little problem with some inebriated sailors. The warmth of Harriet’s comments and apparent feelings towards Cadell is the more ironic in view of earlier judgements she makes in her memoirs about his pearling colleagues: ‘The Kanyakas [sic] are very often badly treated by the owners of pearling schooners. These are frequently a low order of white man, of no distinctive nationality, the greatest bullies afloat. They thrash and ill-treat their brown-skinned sailors, defraud them of their pay, and their hands are not quite guiltless of murder.’ The following year (1874) the Dutch resident at Kupang wrote formally to Magistrate Sholl complaining specifically about Cadell’s activities. He claimed that indentured men were not being paid and were being ill-treated. He accused Cadell and another man of running barracoons on de Lambre and Barrow islands. Cadell defended himself against the accusations and Sholl continued to protect him. Shortly after the Dalys’ departure Cadell bought a new vessel, his fourth purchase in as many years. The 43-ton ironframed and -plated screw-steamer Les Trois Amis was built at Northfleet, Kent, in 1854, and schooner rigged in 1858. Cadell immediately mortgaged her to a Perth solicitor, Walpole Leake. Around the same time the Adelaide newspapers got hold of the idea that he was preparing to go exploring again, this time in the

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Murchison River area. Cadell’s former partner George Young, who still seems to have been acting as some kind of agent for him in South Australia, confirmed the rumour in a letter to the papers: ‘The Captain, for the time he is undertaking this business, abandons mother-of-pearl getting and the conveyance of live-stock by his schooner the Trois Amis.’ I can find no other records of this expedition. Perhaps it was a smokescreen, designed to deflect attention from Cadell’s other activities. The ‘live-stock’ referred to may have been cattle, but it is also possible that Young’s words are a veiled reference to the blackbirding trade. Perhaps I have an unjustifiably bleak view of some nineteenth-century attitudes, but these kinds of oblique references do seem very common. An obituary that appeared in Town and Country magazine after Cadell’s death noted that ‘his name has occasionally appeared in the Press in connection with the wild life of the Torres Strait at the North West Coast’. Far from exploring the Murchison River, Cadell spent 1874 building up his labour-supply business. ‘I have just returned from the Islands’, he wrote from Champion Bay (Geraldton) to George Young, ‘with some two dozen Malays, and start immediately for another lot’. The Perth Enquirer reported Cadell’s return to Perth on 8 April in the Trois Amis, and followed three weeks later with a more expansive piece about the treatment of South-East Asian crews and divers: ‘The thirst for shells, for pearls, for success in fact brutalises the pearling speculator or diver . . . no dark man’s life is valued . . . but the utmost amount of diving must be sucked out of them, killing them or not.’ Cadell was back in Fremantle early in 1875 for supplies before sailing back to Shark Bay. There he had acquired a new

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MAP 14 Pilbara Coastline, Western Australia

partner, as vile as his last, a Mr C.E. Broadhurst. We hear nothing more about him, until July, when the following report, written by Police Constable Henry Mainland of Geraldton landed on the desk of Sergeant Joseph Campbell:

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I beg to report . . . that there are 4 Malays in the employment of Mr. C. E. Broadhurst at Sharks Bay whose agreement has expired over 3 months. They are laying at Sharks Bay and Mr Broadhurst will not pay them . . . They complain to me of not having sufficient clothing to protect themselves from the cold and cannot get anything for want of money. I beg further to state that Captain F. Cadell has left 17 Malays in Sharks Bay in care of Mr John Hill and . . . the food left for their use is not fit for any human being for to use . . . several of these Malays have taken ill and one has died. I am satisfied the illness is caused by want of proper food and attendance.

Several accounts say that Cadell had put the men to work cutting sandalwood at ‘Useless Harbour’. Certainly he refused to take them home at the end of the pearling season. Perhaps he was trying to earn a little extra by putting them to work cutting timber. He certainly did not pay them, and the only food they got was four pannikins of rice between them (about 1.2 kilograms) to last them three weeks. Sergeant Campbell laid his information before the resident magistrate at Champion Bay, Mr Elliot, who went straight to the top with a letter to the governor, William C.F. Robinson. In August Robinson reported to the Colonial Office about the matter saying that he had dispatched another magistrate from Perth to investigate further. ‘The actions which have been taken will serve to show the employers of native & Malay labour that outrages such as these will not be tolerated by the Government.’ The whole issue was getting uncomfortably hot for the authorities. Three weeks later Robinson wrote home again, reporting on new laws proclaimed by the governor-general of ‘Netherlands India’ which required masters of Australian ships

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wishing to employ Malay pearl divers to make an agreement with each man in the presence of an officially designated harbourmaster. They imposed a penalty of 200 florins for the non-return of each employee within the agreed period and a further 300 florins for non-return within thirteen months. A security amounting to the whole sum had to be lodged with the authorities in Kupang. It was legislation that had the capacity to destroy the entire pearling industry. Following representation from Robinson it would later be watered down, but in the meantime an international imperative required that Broadhurst and Cadell be vigorously prosecuted. And why not? Cadell seems to have been one of those chiefly responsible for creating the problem and these latest allegations provided the authorities with the perfect opportunity to reassure the Dutch. In October Robinson reported that he had received a letter from Magistrate Fairbairn recommending legal action against the two.

Pearling boats

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The case did not come to court for several months. In March 1876 the Perth Enquirer quoted Magistrate Fairbairn’s findings in full: The next cases . . . were those of 10 Malays against Captain Cadell for non-payment of wages and ill-treatment. It would appear from the evidence (enclosed) that, from the time they first landed . . . they were ill treated . . . had to go into the bush to dig roots [to eat] . . . sickness broke out among Capt. Cadell’s men . . . two of them dying . . . I adjudged Capt. Cadell to pay each man wages from the date of entering the service at Batavia to date and awarded amends in each case equal to four months’ wages amounting to the aggregate of £193/14/4. Captain Cadell was not present, having left the colony for the Malay Islands some months ago. The impression among the pearlers at Shark Bay is that he will not return.

Fairbairn’s decision to award wages from the date of ‘entering service at Batavia’ is significant. Many operators stretched out the passages from the islands over months and did not start paying the men until they got to Western Australia. The interim period would be used for ‘training’ – during which tonnes of valuable shell could be accumulated, free of wages. Broadhurst appealed against his conviction, but Cadell did not bother. Here, as in other places, he had outstayed his welcome. In his absence, what property he had in the colony was seized and sold to pay the ‘Malay’ workers (less than they were entitled to). The pearlers at Shark Bay were right: he never returned. Just how bad had Cadell really been? Did he employ extreme methods to lure unsuspecting men aboard the Trois Amis? Probably not. With the Dutch authorities showing an

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increasing interest in labour recruitment, he would not have had the same freedom of action enjoyed by his colleagues working in the Pacific Islands. It is probable that most signed on willingly, with a clear understanding of when they would be back. Was he really conducting a semi-permanent slave market on one or more of the islands in the Dampier group? In this, as in so many aspects of Cadell’s life, we cannot find agreement. Historian Mary Bain, writing in Full Fathom Five, seems convinced that he was. She describes him as ‘the outstanding blackbirder on the west coast’. Writing in the 1920s A.T. Saunders and others shared her view. Cadell’s supporters, however, cannot bring themselves to believe he was involved in blackbirding at all. A.G. Price in Founders and Pioneers of South Australia says that the case against Cadell and Broadhurst ‘was not entirely proved’. One of the many obituaries that appeared after Cadell’s death said ‘He is credited with being involved in the nefarious practice of kidnapping human beings, known technically as “blackbirding” . . . but there is not conclusive evidence.’ The problem with making judgements about blackbirders is that at one end of the spectrum, their practices were entirely legal and morally unremarkable within a nineteenth-century context. It is clear that Cadell’s operations were a substantial step or two away from that blameless ideal, but just how far away it is difficult to say. For my own part I am satisfied that he was up to his neck in it. There is a small but sufficient amount of documentary proof, backed up by a vast amount of circumstantial and anecdotal evidence. The events of the next few years would further corroborate the case against him. Exactly where Francis Cadell was when the court case

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against him was being heard is anyone’s guess. Over the next two years he left enough of a trail behind him – of murder, mutiny and mayhem – that we can track most of his movements in a relentless descent into his own heart of darkness. First he put in an appearance in Sydney, where the Trois Amis with her bleached sails, worn rigging and stained hull would not have drawn a second glance among the crowd of island schooners and redundant whalers tied up at Circular Quay and ‘rotten row’. The 23-year-old schooner would have been a bit of a rust-bucket by now. I wonder if Cadell was still the same stickler for standards who had hectored his riverboat skippers about their ‘Screws, Nuts, Rails and Staunchions’ all those years before. Was the Trois Amis’ hull regularly scaled and painted, her teak deck hollow-stoned and caulked, the stinking detritus of her human cargoes scrubbed out of her holds at the end of every voyage? I suspect so. I think Cadell’s continued determination to play the naval officer would keep on causing problems until the day he died. The Trois Amis remained registered to Cadell until 1884, when her record closes with the words: ‘this vessel has been missing for some years, and is now generally regarded as lost’. In June Cadell bought another, even older, iron schooner, the Gem. She was built in Aberdeen in 1849 and described as ‘an excellent sea boat’, and ‘an ex-cutter of the Royal Yacht Squadron’. The Gem cleared from Sydney on 13 July 1877, bound for the Torres Strait under the command of Henry Brown. Cadell was on board. Among the crew was a Filipino named Perman. Some say he was the cook, some describe him as only a boy, others say he had already been with the Gem for three years. He would play a crucial role in the last chapter of Cadell’s life.

CHAPTER 15

The Gem Pearl shell, slavery and bloody murder 1877–79

It is a grey August day in 1879. A fine, persistent drizzle falls from the pearly sky onto a sodden Port Melbourne waterfront. Collars turned up, hats rammed down onto their heads, rain dripping from their hat brims, a small number of unlucky stevedores works on, oblivious to the damp, penetrating cold. Steam rising from the flanks of the draughthorses combines with that from locomotives and tugs to draw a gauze veil over the masts of the sailing ships, the dockside sheds, the wagons and the piles of sacks and boxes. Inside his office the harbourmaster pokes impatiently at the fire in his tiny grate, and warms his hands slowly over the inadequate flicker. He turns back towards the room, towards the bedraggled, dripping figure standing, cap in hand, two shuffled paces inside the door. Water gathers in puddles

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around the man, its surface tension and the waxed floorboards combining to create balloons of muddy liquid in trembling defiance of gravity. ‘Close the door, Mr Lawson.’ The harbourmaster sits down at his desk. He glances down at the letter lying open in front of him which arrived just a few days ago from Ho Yung San, Commissioner of Customs at Amboina. He looks back up at his visitor. Can he confirm the brutal story it tells? The man is a sailor. Judging by his tanned face he is more used to service in tropical waters than in these cloudy latitudes. Beneath his ill-fitting borrowed coat he is still wearing his torn and dirty white trousers and shirt and, on his feet, a pair of sandals. ‘Now let me get this straight, Mr Lawson. You say that you were brought here as a distressed seaman from Singapore, where you were abandoned by Captain Cadell. Is that correct?’ ‘No, sir, not Singapore, sir. At least, yes . . . I was brought here from Singapore but Captain Cadell left me at Amboina, sir.’ ‘And when was this?’ ‘In February, sir, this year. He just sailed off in the middle of the night leaving me with nothing but the clothes I stood up in . . . ’ Lawson warms to his story as he recalls the indignity and injustice of it all. But the harbourmaster cuts him off in mid flight. ‘All in good time, Mr Lawson. Perhaps we had better start at the beginning. When did you sign on with Captain Cadell?’ Lawson begins again more slowly. ‘I shipped at Sydney in the Gem, on foreign-going articles, on the thirteenth of July 1877. We went from Sydney to Somerset where we stayed for nearly four months, then to Tientsin . . . ’ ‘Tientsin, in China?’ the harbourmaster’s tone is doubtful. ‘Yes, sir, that’s right.’ The harbourmaster nods. ‘And then to an island called Masela Island, off Timor, where the captain took on board eleven natives for the purpose of pearl fishing. Then we went to Keppa Island,

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where the captain landed nine Keppa natives from a previous voyage. After that we went to Croker Island where we took on eleven of those people, including three women. They told me, later on, that the master promised to bring them back at the end of two months, but that never happened. Then we went back to Somerset where the Aborigines and the Masela men were all transferred to another of Captain Cadell’s schooners, the Trois Amis. At the same time the captain transferred about 30 other Keppa men and 28 Manila men from the Trois Amis to the Gem and we sailed for Banda, where the Keppa men were landed. We then went to an island called Eluka where another twelve men were brought on board. I believe that nine of these men came on board against their will. Then we went to Sourengana where the Manila men were dropped off. Then to Masela again, for another eleven natives, before heading back to the Torres Strait, at the beginning of July last year – where we stayed for about three months.’ The harbourmaster stares out the window as a puff of wind pushes a clatter of raindrops against the windowpanes. He tries to imagine the white-painted schooner with her snowy billows gliding around the phosphorescent water of the Timor and Sulu seas. He tries to imagine what Cadell’s purpose could be in conducting this time-consuming shuttle, this game of musical pearl divers. And he tries, more importantly, to anticipate where Lawson’s tale is leading. Will it help to answer the question on so many people’s lips? What has happened to the intrepid Cadell? ‘You understand, sir,’ Lawson continues in his police-constable-in-thewitness-box manner, ‘you understand that the Trois Amis remained all the time at anchor in the Torres Strait, just off Bardo [Badu] Island, while Captain Cadell used the Gem to get divers from wherever he could find them. Anyway, soon after we arrived back there, the captain told me to take five or six men to the Trois Amis and give her a good clean-out. While we were doing that, he transferred all the natives to the Gem, which the captain

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Somerset, Cape York, Queensland

then used as a temporary diving vessel. While this was happening, some people from the Gem went ashore to get firewood and fill the water butts. One of them was Mr Price, a passenger on the Gem. The others were all Aborigines from Croker Island except one was a Chinaman and there were two Malay seamen. Three of the Aborigines were women. I kept working on the Trois Amis, and it wasn’t until a week and a half later that the captain told me that the boat had never returned. He said he was afraid something serious might have happened and that he would take a boat and go to the island and see. He was gone for another whole week, and the mate, Mr Brown, was starting to get quite anxious by the time he finally returned. We could see from the look on his face as he climbed aboard that something was wrong. He told us that Mr Price, the two seamen and the Chinese gardener had all been killed. He said he found their bodies all piled together in a heap behind a large rock. The Croker Island people who were responsible had

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taken the boat and gone. He told us to get back to work while he went to Somerset to report the murders. ‘Well, sir, you can imagine with what feelings we turned back to our duties and with what concern for our own safety we now looked over our shoulders at our native companions. And with good reason.’ Lawson pauses for effect. ‘There was more bloodshed to come.’ ‘A few days later, while the captain was still at Somerset and I had gone back to work cleaning and painting the Trois Amis, I was startled by the sound of four shots coming from the direction of the Gem which was anchored about a quarter of a mile away. I was working in the hold at the time so I sprinted up on deck and tried to see what was happening. The captain having taken a boat to Somerset and all the other boats being employed by the divers, I could do nothing except watch. There was a lot of movement on the Gem, and then I saw someone jumping into the sea and swimming towards the two boats manned by the Masela Island divers. They pulled the man out of the water and rowed back towards the Trois Amis. As they got closer I could see that it was the mate, Mr. Brown. The back of his shirt was completely soaked with blood that was pouring out of a big cut in the back of his head. The bottom of the boat was awash with blood by the time they came alongside. We got him on board and patched him up as best we could. ‘After a while he was able to tell us what had happened. It seems that when they heard what their friends had done on Bardo Island, the remaining Croker Island men decided that they would kill the mate as well. They waited for an opportunity, and as Mr Brown was coming up from the cabin one of the natives was waiting for him on deck with a three-foot-long bush knife. As the mate’s head appeared, the native took a wild slash at it, inflicting a deep gash on the back of his head. The mate fell down the stairs,

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dazed, but came back up again a few minutes later with a revolver and shot four of the natives. Being the only European on board and still heavily outnumbered, he decided to throw himself into the water where he was picked up by the Masela men. Happily there were no sharks in the area at the time. I kept an eye on the Gem over the next few hours and saw that the crew were loading a boat with all sorts of objects that I could not identify. They then left in the boat, taking their wounded companions with them. Later, when I was able to board the Gem, I found that they had ransacked the cabin, taking blankets, bread, tobacco, pearls and all manner of other things. We never heard of them again. ‘The mate recovered from his wound soon enough and we continued diving for another five or six weeks, at which time I went with Captain Cadell in the Gem to Banda, thence to a Portuguese island called Timberdaly [possibly Timorlaut, now Tanimbar Island], and from there to Macassar [Snlawesi], where we took on a cargo of rice and salt for Amboina [Ambon]. From Amboina we went back to Banda, collected another load of rice and came again to Amboina. ‘After all the events at Bardo Island, I had pretty much made up my mind to get out of Captain Cadell’s employ as soon as possible, so I went to the harbourmaster at Amboina and asked him if I could be discharged. He told me I could, but the next day he said I must go back to the vessel and continue the voyage. The harbourmaster would not give any reason for altering his decision. Owing a storekeeper £1-17s, I asked Captain Cadell for the money and understood him to say that he would give it to me in the morning. I did not return to the ship that night because I could not find it, the night being dark and moonless. At daybreak next morning, when I looked again, the schooner had gone. This was about the seventeenth or eighteenth of February this year.’

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MAP 15 Northern Australia and the Banda Sea

‘And were you able to find out where the Gem was headed?’ ‘No, sir, but the captain of the steamer Broome, which took me to Sourabaya, told me that he saw the Gem lying at Banda, two days before he arrived in Amboina. That was later in February. I have not heard anything of her since.’ ‘Or of Captain Cadell?’ ‘Only that, passing through the Torres Strait on my way here, there was talk that Captain Cadell was expected at Maobloott Reef where the Trois Amis was then at anchor, still pearl shelling with 30 men and three boats. I spoke to the pilot on board our ship and he told me that a warrant was out against Captain Cadell from the Queensland government, for kidnapping Australian natives. He did not know whether the captain was aware of that.’ The harbourmaster ponders this latest snippet of information in silence

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‘Swimming’ and ‘apparatus‘ divers operated together in the 1870s

– he was not aware that a warrant had been issued for Cadell’s arrest – then says, ‘Thank you for coming to see me, Mr Lawson. If you think of anything else that might cast some light on Captain Cadell’s whereabouts, please let me know. Have you been able to secure another berth?’ ‘Yes, sir. I have, sir. Thank you, sir.’ And he turns to leave. At the door he pauses for a moment, and turns back. ‘There is one other small thing, sir. I did notice that Captain Cadell brought two large bags of money on board at Macassar, another two at Amboina and even more at Banda. I don’t know whose money it was, or what it was for, but there must have been upwards of £500 worth in the cabin and I thought he was taking a bit of a risk, just having it sitting there in bags. When he left Amboina he had only a native crew. I was the only other European on board. They were an evil gang, sir, and not well disposed towards the captain.’

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By 1877, when Cadell returned for his final assault on the mother-of-pearl trade in the Torres Strait, there were sixteen firms operating 109 vessels and employing some 50 European and 700 native divers and seamen. In spite of his fascination for new technology, Cadell had still not switched from the traditional ‘swimming’ methods to new ‘apparatus’ or ‘dress diving’ (using diving suits and pumped air). In 1874, during his first visit to the area, several luggers were already fitted out with the new equipment. Now 63 of the 109 boats in the strait were fully equipped. The apparatus divers were mainly Maori, Kanakas or the white skippers themselves. Swimming divers were more usually Kanakas or Torres Strait Islanders. They could only operate in water up to 4 fathoms [about 7 metres] deep. Malays and Torres Strait Islanders made up the crews. Many divers and crews were blackbirded, but the operators did not always get away with it. In a report to the Queensland government in 1871 Captain Moresby claimed that ‘imported native divers were detained there beyond their stipulated period of service, and so ill-fed as to be driven to make raids on the supplies of the native inhabitants’. In January 1873, the captain of HMS Basilisk detained two schooners, the Melanie and the Challenge, carrying a total of 88 Islanders. Their masters were later charged with blackbirding. Cadell himself came under investigation several times, the first on 20 September 1877, soon after his arrival from Sydney, when the government resident at Somerset received a complaint that he had a kidnapped South Sea Islander on board the Gem. The resident boarded her on 1 December but found no evidence to support the allegation. Cadell was allowed to proceed – as Lawson tells us – to Tientsin.

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Lawson’s account of Cadell’s movements over the next few years is the most comprehensive record we have, but the southern press also passed on a regular trickle of rumours about his whereabouts and doings, and a couple of other contemporary sources fill in some of the gaps. The first incident of note was reported in the South Australian Register on 5 May 1878: ‘Captain Robertson and his brother, of the schooner Kingston are supposed to have been murdered by the natives while fishing off Inarbiac Island, close to Captain Cadell’s vessel. They disappeared in the night . . . The Captain was on bad terms with the natives.’ It is not clear whether Cadell had anything to do with this incident or just happened to be in the same place at the same time. According to Lawson’s account, Cadell should have been engaged in his second recruiting trip at this stage. Perhaps Inarbiac is close to the island of Eluka where Lawson said they picked up twelve men – I can find no islands with these or similar names. Perhaps Lawson’s suggestion that Cadell took Islanders from here against their will was a contributing factor to the murders. Nothing more was heard until August, when news of the Torres Strait murders later described by Lawson to the Melbourne harbourmaster began trickling in: ‘Reports were received from Thursday Island on the first instant of the murder of Jas. Price, two Malays and one Chinaman at Mulgrave Island Torres Straits by the crew of the pearl shelling boat Flying Scud belonging to Captain Cadell. Besides the murdered men the crew consisted of 15 natives and four women, who afterwards took the boat and it is supposed made for Port Essington, to which place they belonged. Price had gone officially to form a station for the master of the schooner Jee.’ The reference to the

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Flying Scud is a bit confusing. I can find no evidence that Cadell ever owned or had anything to do with a vessel of that name. There was a Flying Scud operating in New Zealand waters in the 1860s. On one occasion she figured successfully in a celebrated chase and apprehension of smugglers by revenue officers and police. It is quite possible that the same vessel could have turned up, ten years later in the Torres Strait, but there is no record of the fact. The only other Flying Scud I know of is a fictional one – scuttled by unscrupulous South Seas operators in R.L. Stevenson’s The Wrecker. A week earlier Cadell had written to a South Australian business associate, John Lavington Evans, discussing labour importation matters and enclosing details of the tragedy. Love Cadell or hate him, you cannot help being continually surprised and delighted by the inventiveness of his language, even when under considerable pressure. ‘My Dear Evans,’ he wrote from Thursday Island, Many thanks for your letter of xxx, [sic] which was as full of interesting information as an egg is of meat . . . The telegrams will tell you of a fracas I have had in the shape of a boat having been run away with by N.T. natives, and their murder of [J. Price?] together with that of three other men. These are the men on whom there was a magisterial enquiry some time ago, which quite exonerated me from the charge of having got them in any but a fair way. Say this publicly if necessary, as I will be absent in the archipelago. The South Australian Government also have no suspicion of dishonourable conduct on my part. The crew consisted of eleven men, four of whom were married and had their wives with them. In fact, I thought that a run ashore would do them good, and behold the end. I have no

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cause to upbraid myself with ill-treatment of them. Quite the reverse. It has made a big hole in my muster-roll, and knocked everything out of gear. I will not be back until November, when I shall be happy to hear from you. The steamer is just in a day before her time, and so conclude a hasty letter.

On 30 August 1878 he wrote again, this time with news of the attempt on Henry Brown’s life: My Dear Evans – what a terrible thinning of my muster-roll has lately taken place. You will see it all in the papers. The mate’s story is substantially correct. He behaved most gallantly, and I think I will be able to get him the Albert Medal. At all events I will try. He is a Devonian. I have nothing much to say to you. I am off again to the Eastern Archipelago directly to recruit. It is uncertain when I will be back. I have written to R. H. & Co. about divers, having told them that I thought you would be unable to get any. We are getting terribly bad weather, and no shell is being obtained in consequence. – I remain, very truly yours . . .

The content of these letters makes me wonder just how much of a grip on reality Cadell still had. Was he really thinking of the Croker Islanders’ welfare when he sent them ashore for firewood and water? I think not. And the Albert Medal? For a blackbirder? Are these letters an attempt to convince himself that he had nothing to ‘upbraid’ himself over, or did he know that they would end up in the press, and people would judge his behaviour by their contents? He clearly realised that the activities he was involved in were considered unacceptable by a broad section of people and certainly by those in authority. Yet Cadell was brought up in a waterfront

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town at a time when press-gangs still operated, and he had spent 40 years working on ships whose crews had virtually no rights or freedoms. He must have wondered sometimes what all the fuss was about. He probably thought he was doing those men a favour, giving them work, food, a roof over their heads and something to take home to their villages at the end of it all. More interesting hints about this, and later events, emerged in a book published in 1899 called The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont As Told by Himself. De Rougemont was a traveller and adventurer who filled his book with swashbuckling anecdotes about rural, inland and northern Australia in the nineteenth century. At one stage he became involved in a pearling venture with a Dutch-Malay by the name of Peter Jensen – a brutal, violent, not very intelligent character, according to de Rougemont’s appraisal. Jensen owned a dog, Bruno, which he said had been given to him by his friend, Captain Cadell. Jensen told de Rougemont that he had been pearling with Cadell near Thursday Island with an Australian Aboriginal crew. ‘Cadell treated these men very badly, keeping them at work long after their return home had expired . . .’ De Rougemont also tells us that during this period Malays were always careful to look at the name of a pearling lugger before signing on, in order to avoid those with a reputation for illtreatment of crews, and that, as a result, the more ruthless skippers regularly changed the names of their boats. Perhaps that accounts for the Gem/Flying Scud confusion. In September the resident magistrate at Somerset wrote to the Colonial Secretary in Brisbane, reporting on yet another incident. This time Cadell had left a group of Malays to starve

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Pearl fishery, Torres Strait

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on a deserted island. The men had only ‘an old musket . . . not an ounce of powder . . . half a bag of . . . meal, no dish of any sort therefore had to eat uncooked and could only drink water by lapping it with their hands’. Meanwhile, down south, information about Cadell’s whereabouts had dried up. In the face of increasing concerns among his friends in Adelaide about his wellbeing, Evans wrote to the papers in August with the information that, to his knowledge, Cadell had left Torres Strait on 29 September 1878 ‘for the archipelago, for labour’. This tallies with Lawson’s account which has the Gem doing a bit of general tramp work between Banda, Macassar and Ambon over the next few months before disappearing – after stranding Lawson – in February 1879. The captain of the steamer Broome subsequently sighted the Gem at Banda later in the same month. The collector of customs in Adelaide chimed in, about the same time, with the reassuring claim that Cadell had been quietly pearling in the Torres Strait for the past four months, which would have accounted for his whereabouts since early May, shortly after the Gem’s last sighting. Other information, however, was also emerging, and it was less reassuring. On 20 August the harbourmaster at Port Melbourne handed on to the assistant commissioner of trade and customs a copy of the letter he had had on his desk in front of him during his conversation with Lawson. Although he had just received it, it had in fact been written two months earlier, on 7 June, by the commissioner of customs at Ambon, Ho Yung San, and sent to the governor at Batavia. It contained the first concrete evidence that something was amiss. In it Ho Yung San reports that, far from pearling in Torres Strait, the Gem had in

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fact departed from Ambon during May, bound for Banda and then Australia. Another account that emerged much later comes from Captain John B. Carpenter, then a resident of Ambon, who said that Cadell was sailing in the Trois Amis, not the Gem, and that his intention was to bring back cattle from Australia for use by the Dutch armed forces in Batavia. According to Carpenter, the crew consisted of ‘half a dozen Allor [Alor Island] savages, an old servant and a Manila boy’. Ho Yung San’s letter went on to say that, following the Gem’s departure, one of Cadell’s crew, ‘a native of Manila’, had turned up again in Ambon. ‘He told me that he was agreeably discharged by his Captain at Banda and that the schooner Gem is already gone to her destination.’ The native of Manila was Cadell’s Filipino steward Perman, who had now been with the Gem for five years and had, it seems, risen to the de facto rank of mate. He had arrived back in Ambon as a passenger on the Arabian schooner Amma Aegdroves whose captain provided Ho Yung San with the following statement: I went to Kay [Kai Island], where I met six men. They were crews for some English schooner. Their captain discharged them, and they have purchased one small vessel for £150 to go to Macassar, and their small vessel got wrecked on the way to Macassar, and the six men sought again the refuge of the said island. I arrived there when the six men were just escaped from destruction. One of these men (Manila fellow) applied to me for a passage to Amboina. I felt very pity of him, and took him on board as passenger. The Manila man possesses plenty money, and has carried with him one small boat, which is now on board my schooner.

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Ho Yung San – by now justifiably suspicious – boarded the Amma Aegdroves the following day, accompanied by the harbourmaster and by a Chinese man, described as a friend of Cadell’s. The latter identified the boat as one belonging to the Gem. Again Captain Carpenter’s version differs. He claims it was he who identified the boat and some of Cadell’s crew, wearing clothing belonging to Cadell and spending up big on the streets of Ambon, and that he then brought the matter to the attention of the Dutch authorities. Ho Yung San finished his letter by saying that the Manila man ‘is already arrested . . . I believe his Excellency the Resident of Amboyna will send out frigate take back [the rest] to trial.’ In due course a gunboat brought four men back to Ambon. They agreed to testify against Perman, and the full story – or their version of it – finally emerged. It seems that the Gem was in urgent need of a new mast, and while at Banda, Cadell had decided to make a short detour to Kai Island – an inportant centre of local shipbuilding – before the much longer voyage to Australia, to have a new one stepped. Almost exactly 100 years earlier, Captain James Cook had returned to Hawaii for the same reason. Now Cadell’s need for this mundane piece of maritime maintenance would lead to the same fatal consequences. The Gem left Banda at nine in the evening, probably on 16 or 17 May 1879. Some hours later, the day’s work substantially done, the crew were resting on deck under the stars when the peace was shattered by six rapid shots from a revolver – then silence. The crew instantly flattened themselves on the deck. When nothing more happened, some of the braver men

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crawled tentatively to the salt-stained skylight, through which they could peer down into the cabin below. The thick amber light of a single guttering oil lamp revealed Cadell lying on his bunk, bloodstains spreading rapidly on his shirt and on the bedclothes beneath him. Perman was standing near the companionway, brandishing the revolver and yelling angrily, according to their sworn evidence: ‘I have shot the Captain because I have been in his service five years without receiving any wages!’ Perman, we are told, then persuaded the crew, by a combination of threats and bribes, to help him scuttle the Gem with Cadell’s body still on board. They took the bags of Dutch dollars, some of Cadell’s clothes and other personal items, food and water, and rowed off in the dinghy as the Gem settled gently in the ink-black ocean, eruptions of phosphorescent bubbles still rising to the surface long after the tips of her masts had disappeared. They apparently rowed around the Banda sea for a week, looking for land, before blundering on Kai Island. Two or three days later Perman secured his passage to Banda on the Amma Aegdroves. When the Dutch authorities arrested him, Perman was wearing Cadell’s ‘underwaistcoat’ and was in possession of various other items: the revolver, a small telescope, a flint, a ‘breachloading double-barrel fowling piece’, a sword and an English woollen blanket. He was put on trial in Ambon, found guilty of Cadell’s murder and sentenced to death. ‘The trial lasted a long time,’ reported Captain Carpenter in a letter to A.T. Saunders, long afterwards, ‘but eventually the prisoner was found guilty and hanged on a gallows outside the courthouse.’

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But with Cadell there seems always to be an alternative version of events and his death is no exception. This one suggests that, while Perman was cooling his heels in prison at Ambon, either awaiting trial or awaiting execution, MajorGeneral Robert Cadell, the inspector general of fortifications at Madras, had got wind of his brother’s disappearance, probably by way of a letter from another Adelaide contact, a Mr S. Tomkinson, and he began throwing his considerable weight and influence around. He demanded answers from the Dutch authorities, later writing to the press: ‘I have been surprised at the perfunctory and useless way in which their simple duty was discharged.’ On 25 February 1880 the first government secretary in Batavia finally wrote to him: ‘I am directed by the Government of Netherlands India to bring to your knowledge the following particulars regarding the death of your brother.’ Most of what we know – or think we know – about the manner of Cadell’s death comes from the details contained in this brief official letter. But Robert Cadell had also demanded action from British authorities and, on 29 October 1879, Commodore Wilson directed a warship to visit the area, its commander to enquire into the murder. The result was that Perman – still alive – was extradited to Singapore for trial by a British court. Perhaps the major general should have stuck with the perfunctory Dutch. The case took two years to come to trial, and he cannot have been happy with the result. The Perth Enquirer brought news on 22 February 1882 that the wheels of justice were finally moving: ‘At the criminal assises [sic] held on the 19th ultimo at Singapore, a Malay or Japanese named Pernal [sic] was charged with having murdered Capt. Cadell, of the schooner

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Gem some two or three years ago. This man was handed over some months ago by the Netherlands Indies authorities . . . Two witnesses have at last been procured whose evidence [means] the case has been sent up for trial.’ In May, the Straits Times reported on the verdict: ‘Perlman [sic] . . . was tried for murder in the Singapore Supreme Court on February 14 1882, before a special jury who acquitted him, whereupon he was discharged.’ The jury realised that Perman was almost certainly being scapegoated. Cadell’s murder had been widely predicted for some time along the pearling coast. Perman may have had a hand in the murder – he may even have pulled the trigger – but it is difficult to believe that the others were not in on the plot as well. They were all men from Alor Island, from a community that Cadell had repeatedly plundered for labour over the years. In 1887, another island trader, Captain John Strachan, went public with his belief that Cadell’s murder had been orchestrated by the ‘Rajah of Ullora [Alor]’, because of his systematic cruelty towards Alor people. Captain Carpenter was of the opinion that the murder had actually taken place at Alor Island. Captain Strachan’s comments were part of a tide of public and press interest in Cadell that followed his death and continued for many decades afterwards. Of Cadell’s later life, I cannot help sharing the jaundiced view of Strachan, A.T. Saunders and others whose voices joined in a growing chorus of condemnation. Of his earlier achievements, I think we can afford to be more generous. Cadell was undoubtedly a man of prodigious talents. He had the benefit of just six years’ formal

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education (the time Australian children today spend at primary school). How many of us, with as little schooling, could have written so eloquently and entertainingly, could have mastered the principles of naval architecture and mechanical engineering so comprehensively, could have become such proficient navigators, competent managers, gifted public speakers? So what went wrong? Were the gods playing with him, as if he were an ancient Greek hero, causing a series of accidents and circumstances beyond his control to combine and defeat his efforts? Or is his story a Shakespearean tragedy – the timehonoured saga of a fatally flawed hero? I think the latter. For all his talents and abilities, Cadell would ultimately be brought undone by his own nature: his narcissistic pride, his overconfidence, his lack of respect for others. But perhaps we should not try so hard to fathom his inner being, leaving it instead to his father to provide him with a simple, well-deserved epitaph: ‘He was a man full of adventure and enterprise.’ Cadell’s brief tilt at life spanned a period of enormous social and technological change. He was a man of his time, and his life offers us a glimpse of the very best and the very worst of that roaring, rapacious age of iron and steam, empire and exploitation.

Epilogue Francis Cadell never married. I can find no record of lovers, nor even a less-than-willing cabin companion – Hayes style – and he seems to have left no children. In 1917 Cadell researcher A.T. Saunders made contact with John Cadell, a resident of Brisbane, in the belief that he might be a son. John Cadell wrote back: ‘Captain Francis Cadell was never married. He was a second cousin of mine.’ Later in the same letter he also said: ‘The Mr. Cadell who was a passenger on the “Queen of Sheba” was, I think, an uncle of mine.’ John Cadell had unwittingly fingered the Jekyll-and-Hyde nature of his famous relative. But it is not R.L. Stevenson’s multiple-personality anti-hero who springs most readily to mind when you read the massive amounts of press Cadell attracted during his lifetime or the much sparser mentions he gets in the history books. Cadell’s name is so routinely linked with one of the adjectives of approbation that have emerged so often in this book – dauntless, energetic, enterprising, capable, invaluable – that I could not help being struck by the relentless similarity of these descriptions to Joseph Conrad’s ‘incomparable Nostromo’. Nostromo is the reliable, can-do overseer who takes care of business for his slightly unworldly employers at a silver mine in a fictitious South American country. He is described repeatedly in glowing terms: ‘this fellow in a thousand’, ‘the remarkable Capataz’. Cadell’s press, like Nostromo’s, builds a picture of inexhaustible capability, of a man who is tough,

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resourceful, self-reliant, good in a crisis but also a competent manager of day-to-day affairs, a man capable of some sympathy but just as capable of slitting another’s throat if need be, and thinking little of it. And like Nostromo, Cadell would ultimately turn his back on what he saw as an ungrateful society, seeking satisfaction in criminal revenge. (To spice up the Conrad connection further, Nostromo’s first appearance comes in an incident in which a ship called the Minerva plays a modest role.) Above all, one senses that Cadell’s qualities too were born of vanity, were there on display principally to gain public approval. I believe that Cadell craved approval and acceptance, but he remained utterly alone in the world. Cadell’s life could well have come from the pen and imagination of Joseph Conrad. The story of a confident and competent young sea-captain who, far from civilisation, retreats increasingly within himself. Wrestling with his demons, he descends into brutality and isolation, surrounded by a cast of enigmatic, dark-skinned foreigners, against an enervating background of palm trees, pearling luggers and milky-green tropical seas. So did Conrad know, or know of, the ‘incomparable’ Cadell? There were certainly some family connections. Francis’ uncle Robert, an Edinburgh publisher who published most of Walter Scott’s later work, also knew Conrad and published at least one of his books, many years after Cadell’s death, of course. Conrad had earlier spent 20 or 30 years knocking about the Pacific and South-East Asia, accumulating a substantial dossier of stories, characters and impressions, of which he would later make such good use. A.T. Saunders claimed that he drifted into the circle of South Seas identities that supposedly included Bully Hayes,

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Francis Cadell and others. Conrad’s Almayer’s Folly, published in 1895, was based on a real person, called Almayer, whom he met ‘on a rickety little wharf forty miles up, more or less, a Bornean river’. Describing his first encounter with Almayer, in his book A Personal Record, Conrad teases us with references to ‘my good friend and commander, Captain C–’. Intriguing, but all very speculative! Nostromo was written between 1900 and 1904, and it’s a bit hard to imagine that the ‘energetic and enterprising’ Captain Cadell had made so strong an impression that he remained alive in Conrad’s imagination for 25 years to become the central character in one of the English language’s greatest novels. Francis Cadell was survived by brothers Robert and Tom and three of his six sisters: Mary, Janet and Harriet. In 1888 the governments of South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales collectively voted £1000 for the three ageing Cadell women, as a belated concession of gratitude to the man who had contributed so much to their rural economies. Cadell’s memory lives on in several geographical features: Cadell Strait and a Cadell River in the Northern Territory and, even more appropriately perhaps, the Cadell Fault, a 10 m-high wall of rock that reared up out of the ground 24 000–30 000 years ago, barring the course of the Murray River and diverting it northward into what are now the Edward and Wakool rivers. Eventually the Murray found another way south, through the Barmah choke, to join up with the Goulburn and re-establish its original course near Echuca. Cadell also has a street named after him in Goolwa, and a whole town further up the Murray, best known these days for its juvenile detention centre. There

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was for many years a paddle-steamer on the Murray bearing his name. Captain George Johnston had the Cadell built as a barge at Goolwa in 1876, just one year before Cadell’s death. Two years later he fitted a steam engine and paddle-boxes. The Cadell left the rivers in the 1880s and spent time as a lighter at Port Broughton on Spencer Gulf. After five or six years ‘long service leave’, reclining in the mud, she was bought by the Ritchie brothers (Captain James Ritchie’s sons) in 1922 and given a new lease of life carrying construction materials for the Murray River locks, proving herself a much more lasting, if less spectacular, contributor to the Murray River story than her namesake. Cadell’s birthplace, Cockenzie House, is now a retirement home, but George Johnston built his own ‘Cockenzie House’ in Goolwa, after buying land there in 1857. It still stands, in a district now known as ‘Little Scotland’, largely settled by families who came out in the glory days of the River Murray Navigation Company, many as crew on the Lioness. Johnston lived there until his death in 1882, an elder statesman of the river, the town and the local Wesleyan Methodist community. Cockenzie has more recently returned the compliment, naming a park after Goolwa. These days Cockenzie seems to treat its famous son with more respect than South Australia does. In 2000 the Cockenzie community built an impressive wood and canvas replica of the Forerunner based on the decrepit remains of a small boat shown in the foreground of an old photograph of Cockenzie House. I can find no record of the Forerunner having been repatriated to this final resting place, nor can I imagine the unsentimental Cadell doing any such thing, but it is well ingrained in Cadell folklore that the boat

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shown in this photo is indeed the Forerunner. The replica has the same slightly unusual shape shown in a very rough sketch (artist unknown) to be found among the Cadell papers. Cockenzie sculptor, historian, boatbuilder and riveraphile Kenny Munro believes that the shape could have its origins in the river craft Cadell would have seen on the Pearl River in the 1830s and 1840s. But to my mind the replica is all too fine a craft. Cadell’s Forerunner was cobbled together, added to along the way and probably abandoned after its work was done. The sketch, and the words in Cadell’s diary, also indicate that it had a mast and sail. More recently, another replica has been constructed at Armfield’s Slipway in Goolwa, based on the Cockenzie one. They are both beautiful, lovingly created objects of the boatbuilder’s art, and fitting tributes to one who was himself a bit of a perfectionist. The other boat most strongly identified with Cadell, the Lady Augusta, was already rotting away on the river bank opposite Echuca Wharf as the Gem slid beneath the Banda sea carrying Cadell’s body to its grave. From William Younghusband she had passed to Captain Barber, who altered her deckhouse arrangements, making her a more serviceable trading steamer. In 1867 she became a barge. In 1871 she was slipped at Echuca for repairs but she was too far gone and she slid quietly out of Murray River history. And what of the other people who drifted in and out of this story, without ever getting too close to its main protagonist? How many of them gracefully rotted away in coastal or river ports, watching the ships coming and going? How many came to grief more dramatically, on hidden shoals or reefs?

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William Randell was definitely one of the former, and the longevity of his connection with the Murray strongly contributed to South Australia’s affection for him and its ambivalence towards Cadell. Randell formed a partnership with E.B. Scott and ran boats on the rivers until his death in 1911. He was the first of three generations to do so. In 1875 his father died, and he went back to Gumeracha to take over the running of the family businesses, reducing his own workload on the steamers. He made his last journey as a skipper in 1887. His wife, Bessie, had accompanied him on many of his trips. He was much loved and respected on the Murray, not least perhaps for his amateur medical, dental and midwifery skills. In 1893 he entered the parliament of South Australia. Of Cadell’s exploits in later life and of their earlier bitter disputes he kept his own counsel, refusing to be drawn into the debate that raged in the 1870s and 1880s. Among Cadell’s skippers, William Barber was probably most like him. He was brought up to follow in the footsteps of his father who was one of Hew Cadell’s senior captains. He was reserved, a stickler for standards and would not stoop to dirty his own hands with work below his station. Surprisingly, when confronted with the Murray River’s first seamen’s strike, aboard the Albury in 1860, Barber immediately capitulated, acceding to all the men’s demands. A few weeks later, in the face of a copycat strike aboard the Gundagai, Captain Barclay sacked the entire crew on the spot. Many of the Cockenzie men who came over to Adelaide as crew on the Lioness – John Barclay, William Barber, James Ritchie, George Johnston, Edmund Robertson – had long and distinguished careers in the river trade.

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Of the Port Adelaide establishment, Captain Pullen’s later career was the most exciting. In 1849 he headed north to Arctic waters in search of the missing Franklin expedition. Later he was promoted to admiral. William Younghusband, Cadell’s great friend and ally, was already at the peak of his parliamentary and business career when Cadell arrived in Australia. In 1863, still a young man, he travelled to Europe, contracted typhus in Rome and died. Governor Young left Adelaide in 1855 to take up the more senior posting of governor in Tasmania. He retired in 1861. The shadier acquaintances of Cadell’s later life are more difficult to follow, with the exception of Bully Hayes. In the manner of his death, as in life, he paved the way for Cadell. He was murdered in 1877 by a crew member, ‘Dutch Pete’, on his boat the Lotus, in the Marshall Islands. Dutch Pete was never brought to justice. Perhaps the authorities were grateful that someone had, at last, taken the law into their own hands and got rid of the Pacific Ocean’s most dangerous nuisance. Neither Hayes’ nor Cadell’s death spelt the end of blackbirding, of course. It was still rife well into the twentieth century. New Guinea people today talk of the ‘celebrity blackbirding’ that they claim was still being transacted by Errol Flynn, Tom Cole and others along the Sepik and Fly Rivers in the 1920s. Blackbirding continues today, whenever suffering and desperation provide opportunities for men ‘full of adventure and enterprise’.

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Notes CHAPTER 1 THE FIRTH OF FORTH ‘His gorgeously ornamented . . . upper-crust army family’ J.H. Stevenson, The Cadells – Chart of Descendants of William Cadell b.1668, Edinburgh, 1890, South Australian State Library Mortlock Collection, PRG 145/5. ‘Janet (number seven) . . . called Fisher Folk’ J.S. Cadell, Fisher Folk. Publication details not available. ‘In 1759 William . . . coke-fired, blast-furnace technology’ J.H. Cadell, The Story of the Forth, James Maclehose and Sons, Glasgow, 1913. ‘this bitter cup’ J.H. Cadell, The Story of the Forth. ‘In later life . . . activity and ingenuity’ Francis Cadell 1822–1879 Papers, Australian Joint Copying Project, Canberra, M464. ‘The shifting sands . . . of the Sands’ E. Childers, The Riddle of the Sands, Wordsworth Editions, Ware, Hertfordshire, 1993 (first published 1903). ‘Francis came home . . . leaving in February’ Cadell Papers.

CHAPTER 2 THE RIVER THAMES ‘Most of what . . . before his death’ Francis Cadell 1822–1879 Papers, Australian Joint Copying Project, Canberra, M464. ‘The Minerva, in . . . vessel in 1836’ J. Sutton, Lords of the East, Conway, UK, 1981. ‘Neither incidently were any . . . for that year’ Lloyd’s Register of British and Foreign Shipping 1835–6, pp. 6–7. ‘These little minions . . . refuse explicit obedience’ S. Leech, A Voice from the Main Deck, quoted in H. Baynham, From the Lower Deck, Hutchinson, UK, 1969. ‘a sample of every . . . beaux jack-a-dandies’ G. Watson, The Adventures of a Greenwich Pensioner, quoted in Baynham, Lower Deck. ‘his back resembles . . . through their fingers’ J. Nastyface, Nautical Economy or Forecastle Recollections of Events during the Last War, quoted in Baynham, Lower Deck. ‘a vendor of . . . articles of lucre’ Quoted in Sutton, Lords of the East.

CHAPTER 3 THE MINERVA General information about crossing the equator is taken from A Life on the Ocean Wave: The Journals of Captain George Bayly 1824–44, MUP 1994. General information about navigation is taken from J. Sutton, Lords of the East, Conway, UK, 1981. ‘tall, elegant figure . . . seen and unseen’ I. Mudie, Riverboats, Rigby, Adelaide, 1961.

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CHAPTER 4 THE PEARL RIVER ‘I have a sword . . . was a gentleman’ South Australian Register, 10 December 1917. ‘for punishing pirates in China’ I. Mudie, Riverboats, Rigby, Adelaide, 1961. ‘present at the seige . . . the China seas’ Francis Cadell 1822–1879 Papers, Australian Joint Copying Project, Canberra, M464. ‘A war more . . . I do not know’ I. Herron, The Savage Empire: Forgotten Wars of the 19th Century, Sutton, Stroud, UK, 2000. ‘a national sin’ Herron, Savage Empire. ‘rejoice in our successes . . . of the French’ Herron, Savage Empire. ‘it is not prudent . . . to be their friends’ Canton Register, quoted in P. Napier, Barbarian Eye: Lord Napier in China 1834, Brassey’s, London/Washington, 1995. ‘Why are not . . . shores of China’ Napier, Barbarian Eye. ‘It is a curious . . . exclusively for us’ Quarterly Review, 1836. ‘There was no pretence . . . down the list’ Morse, Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China, East India Co., 1929. ‘The mere presence . . . sense of danger’ Napier, Barbarian Eye. ‘The appearance was . . . on board the ships’ Canton Register, quoted in Herron, Savage Empire. ‘Their Lordships feel . . . of the Empire’ C. Robinson, The British Fleet, George Bell and Sons, London, 1895. ‘the gratification of . . . abandoned their guns’ Herron, Savage Empire. ‘a deep feeling . . . the British soldiers’ Herron, Savage Empire. ‘He joined the . . . elaborately decorated sword’ Mudie, Riverboats. ‘according to South Australian . . . had radical ideas’ A.G. Price, Founders and Pioneers of South Australia, Adelaide, 1929. ‘handsome service of plate’ B. Lubbock, Bully Hayes South Sea Pirate, Brown, Son & Ferguson, Glasgow, 1991. ‘series of brilliant and unvaried successes’ Herron, Savage Empire. ‘That your Memorialist . . . will ever Pray’ Cadell Papers.

CHAPTER 5 THE ROYAL SOVEREIGN ‘dauntless and enterprising . . . in South Australia’ Madras Spectator, 13 January 1854. ‘thoroughly gentlemanly in his . . . considerate to self-forgetfulness’ I. Mudie, Riverboats, Rigby, Adelaide, 1961. ‘elegant flow of . . . his impetuous temper’ Quoted in R.D. Campbell, Captain Cadell and the Waikato Flotilla, Martime Publications, Wellington, 1985. ‘Murray Valley settler . . . a two-handed bruiser’ J. Palmer, The Great Days of Wool, Rigby, Adelaide, 1980. ‘FEAR NOT . . . April 3rd 1849’ South Australian Register, 4 April 1849. ‘For sale, freight . . . Francis Cadell, Commander’ Sydney Morning Herald, 21 May 1849.

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CHAPTER 6 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA ‘The splendid Clipper . . . 18th June 1850’ Francis Cadell 1822–1879 Papers, Australian Joint Copying Project, Canberra, M464. ‘On Tuesday the Queen . . . for San Francisco’ Greenock Advertiser, date obscured, October 1850. ‘In February 1853 . . . within eleven months’ Melbourne Argus, date obscured, February 1853. ‘We have noticed . . . on this subject’ Melbourne Argus, 26 March 1853. ‘Of all the great . . . outside the heads’ Melbourne Argus, 4 June 1853. ‘The only reason . . . of the managing owners’ Melbourne Argus, 12 April 1853. ‘furnished with Phillip’s Fire Annihilators’ Sydney Morning Herald, 20 April 1853. ‘an experienced surgeon’ Sydney Morning Herald, 21 March 1853. ‘Tommy Freeman, who could . . . Jack Kerr, her skipper’ Quoted in A. Morris, Rich River, Echuca, 1953. ‘RACE ON THE . . . of the three’ Argus, date obscured, March 1853.

CHAPTER 7 THE MURRAY RIVER ‘headstrong’ J.W. Fell, Account of the Drowning of Sir John Jeffcott and J.W.D. Blenkinsop in 1837, South Australian State Library Mortlock Collection, D574 (L). ‘The Lord have mercy . . . all be drowned’ Fell, Account of the Drowning. ‘It cannot therefore . . . and Commodious Harbour’ B.T. Finniss, Report on a Journey to Encounter Bay, South Australia Company, not dated. ‘a perfectly safe and practical entrance’ South Australian Register, 25 August 1938. ‘during a journey . . . purposes of steam navigation’ Adelaide Observer, not dated, in Francis Cadell 1822–1879 Papers, Australian Joint Copying Project, Canberra, M464. ‘a man able . . . appointed to govern’ B.T. Finniss, The Constitutional History of South Australia, Rigby, Adelaide, 1886. ‘an officer of enlarged ideas’ A. Kinloch, The Murray River: Being a Journal of the Voyage of the Lady Augusta, W.C. Cox, Adelaide, 1853. ‘the possibilities of . . . need not be doubted’ Improvements at Port Elliot, the Goolwa and Navigation of the Murray, South Australian Parliamentary Papers, 1851, p. 20.

CHAPTER 8 THE FORERUNNER ‘for performing the . . . Spain so well’ Francis Cadell 1822–1879 Papers, Australian Joint Copying Project, Canberra, M464. ‘We were too ugly . . left us alone’ Cadell Papers. ‘having been awake . . . nights at sea’ Cadell Papers. ‘such arbitrary distinctions . . . a separate creation’ Peter Beveridge, The Aborigines of Victoria and the Riverina, Hutchinson, Melbourne, 1889.

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‘Now, boys, I’m boss’ I. Mudie, Riverboats, Rigby, Adelaide, 1961. ‘twice the boat’ Cadell Papers. ‘as famous on . . . or Rob Roy’ Cadell Papers. ‘a pan for boiling our meat’ Cadell Papers. ‘we clamped the . . . times most effectual’ Cadell Papers. ‘look at my face . . . on the Murray’ Cadell Papers. ‘I took a warrant . . . most amiable of troopers’ Cadell Papers. ‘Captain Cadell, of the . . . on the Murray’ South Australian Register, 6 September 1852. ‘One one of these . . . on the river’ W.B. Randell, Diaries, South Australian State Library Mortlock Collection, PRG417/4. ‘was strongly opposed . . .work I understood’ Randell Diaries. ‘As I had . . . on my part’ Randell Diaries. ‘carrying 112 bags . . . 400 lb tobacco’ Adelaide Observer, 2 April 1853. ‘to Adelaide yesterday . . . down the Murray’ Adelaide Times, 11 September 1852. ‘the little boat . . . put to rights’ Cadell Papers. ‘sailing vessel kindly . . . Wellington and Goolwa’ Adelaide Times, 11 September 1852. ‘due to the difficulty . . . to the diggings’ Cadell Papers.

CHAPTER 9 THE LADY AUGUSTA ‘strange and ugly object’ I. Mudie, Riverboats, Rigby, Adelaide, 1961, p. 40. ‘The ladies’ cabins . . . with horsehair cushions’ Francis Cadell 1822–1879 Papers, Australian Joint Copying Project, Canberra, M464. ‘to await a smoothing’ Cadell Papers. ‘a cruising ground . . . a navigable river’ South Australian Register, 22 August 1854. ‘Captain Cadell begs . . . Murray and Murrumbidgee’ South Australian Register, 20 August 1853. ‘The 45 who . . . of steam engines’ Governor H.E.F. Young to Colonial Office, 17 September 1853, South Australian Parliamentary Papers. ‘one of the crew’ S. Wells, Paddlesteamers to Cornucopia, The Murray Pioneer, not dated. ‘Mr Higgins of . . . acted as croupier’ South Australian Register, date obscured, in Cadell Papers. ‘They must excuse . . . his mind. (Hear, Hear.)’ Cadell Papers. ‘Captain Cadell and . . . on the Murray’ Mudie, Riverboats. ‘very rough and windy, making people sick’ South Australian Register, 29 August 1853. ‘Here is deep . . . seemed rather swollen’ South Australian Register, date obscured, in Cadell Papers. ‘As the evening . . . spangled with fire’ South Australian Register, date obscured, in Cadell Papers.

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‘several turtle in . . . potted for sandwiches’ South Australian Register, date obscured, in Cadell Papers. ‘The most primitive . . . I ever saw’ South Australian Register, date obscured, in Cadell Papers. ‘A little before . . . and sudden scream’ South Australian Register, date obscured, in Cadell Papers. ‘crossed a large . . . or native canoe’ South Australian Register, date obscured, in Cadell Papers. ‘When we expressed . . . too much cold’ Adelaide Times, date obscured, in Cadell Papers. ‘a fine intelligent fellow’ Adelaide Times, date obscured, in Cadell Papers. ‘We entered the Darling . . . speed of steam’ Governor H.E.F. Young to Colonial Office, 17 September 1853, South Australian Parliamentary Papers. ‘had nothing to . . . score of beauty’ N. Bartley, Opals and Agates, Gordon and Gotch, Melbourne, 1892. ‘two-funnelled monstrosity’ A.T. Saunders, Notes and Correspondence about Captain Francis Cadell compiled by A.T. Saunders. Manuscript, South Australian State Library Mortlock Collection, PRG 37/12. ‘Mr. Beveridge’s garden . . . and pleasing appearance’ Adelaide Times, date obscured, in Cadell Papers. ‘the few miserable . . . partly settled districts’ Adelaide Times, date obscured, in Cadell Papers. ‘Prices at the store . . . 5s per squire’ Adelaide Times, date obscured, in Cadell Papers. ‘knock-about parson’ Mudie, Riverboats. ‘plan for turning . . . in Great Britain’ Young to Colonial Office. ‘the breadth of . . . than 3 fathoms’ Young to Colonial Office. ‘Hundred of the Murray in South Australia’ Young to Colonial Office. ‘blocking up nearly . . . also stove in’ Quoted in Mudie, Riverboats. ‘the lady passengers . . . of the occasion’ Mudie, Riverboats. ‘of course the flour . . . a successful opposition’ Mudie, Riverboats. ‘do all you can . . . leave Randall nothing’ Francis Cadell: Letters to George Johnston, manuscript, South Australian State Library Mortlock Collection. ‘I am glad . . . his own way’ Cadell: Letters to Johnston. ‘You will be . . . your note Book’ Cadell: Letters to Johnston. ‘The Mary Ann’s . . . have before noticed’ Australia and New Zealand Gazette, 10 February 1855. ‘But it has been . . . done to others’ Sydney Morning Herald, 26 November 1853. ‘objectionable in point . . . prevent free competition’ Sydney Morning Herald, 26 November 1853. ‘Public competition has . . . most admirable fashion’ Sydney Morning Herald, 27 January 1853.

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‘yield an immediate . . . at £200,000 sterling’ South Australian Register, 14 October 1853. ‘let me explicitly . . . is under £3,000’ South Australian Register, 28 October 1853. ‘that India were . . . of that stamp’ Madras Spectator, 13 January 1854.

CHAPTER 10 THE ALBURY AND THE GUNDAGAI ‘He is seated . . . the uses of mankind’ The quoted material and other details contained in this section are from the South Australian Register, 1 November 1853. ‘She had been . . . employing 18 artificers’ Melbourne Herald, 2 January 1854. ‘arrive in lots . . . spick and span’ N. Bartley, Opals and Agates, Gordon and Gotch, Melbourne, 1892. ‘LAUNCH AT KINGSTON . . . and its tributaries’ Cadell Papers. ‘at a point . . . midst of us’ Australia and New Zealand Gazette, 25 November 1854. ‘I have abandoned . . . bluejackets are paid’ Maitland Courier, 15 October 1854. ‘2 cases nails . . . 1 weighing machine’ South Australian Register, 25 November 1855. ‘Should you be . . . perform your voyage’ Francis Cadell: Letters to George Johnston, manuscript, South Australian State Library Mortlock Collection. ‘Hope that you . . . navigated the River’ Cadell: Letters to Johnston. ‘You may insert . . . my verbal orders’ Parliament of South Australia, Proceedings, Copies of Documents Ordered to be Printed, 1857–8, Vol.II, No. 64. ‘if fuel is . . . do not measure it’ Cadell: Letters to Johnston. ‘a pulling match . . . could not entertain’ Australia and New Zealand Gazette, 18 August 1855. ‘22 berths for gentlemen’ South Australian Register, 1 September 1855. ‘A German band . . . officers with thirty’ Sydney Morning Herald, 16 October 1855. ‘police and other . . . quality of wines’ Sydney Morning Herald, 1 March 1855. ‘Several wealthy settlers . . . £200 to £600’ Sydney Morning Herald, 1 March 1855. ‘will be commenced . . . Sawn Timber & C’ Cadell Papers. ‘A black lubra . . . than Captain Cadell’ South Australian. Register, 13 September 1856. ‘Captain Cadell’s idea . . . making the cutting’ Border Post, 4 October 1856. ‘His opinion is . . . most prominent [snags]’ Border Post, 13 December 1856. ‘Nothing seems to daunt . . . powers of persuasion’ Sydney Morning Herald, 12 February 1858. ‘the lady of . . . Magistrate at Echuca’ Border Post, 20 February 1858. ‘I hold certificates . . . navigation derived therefrom’ Parliament of South Australia, Proceedings. ‘the above method . . . by steam power’ Parliament of South Australia, Proceedings. ‘My idea of . . . to avoid confusion’ Cadell: Letters to Johnston.

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CHAPTER 11 THE DARLING RIVER ‘In the letter . . . after the event’ South Australian Register, 11 October 1920. ‘The Anabranch does not exist!’ I. Mudie, Riverboats, Rigby, Adelaide, 1961. ‘I write . . . under . . . quite loses itself ’ South Australian Register, 23 July 1856. ‘but for the abundant . . . them from starvation’ N. Bartley, Opals and Agates, Gordon and Gotch, Melbourne, 1892. ‘attributable solely to . . . to the wreck’ South Australian Register, 19 July 1856. ‘numerous complaints having been . . . goods are delivered’ Francis Cadell: Letters to George Johnston, manuscript, South Australian State Library Mortlock Collection. ‘hoped that there . . . looking forward to’ Border Post, 11 April 1857. ‘grossest mismanagement’ South Australian Register, date obscured, in Cadell Papers. ‘grasping and avaricious’ Border Post, date obscured, in Cadell Papers. ‘unqualified censure and contempt’ Border Post, date obscured, in Cadell Papers. ‘It is notorious . . . of the river’ Border Post, 4 July 1857. ‘“cooking” the bills of lading’ Border Post, 14 July 1857. ‘glutting the markets . . . class of goods’ Border Post, 14 July 1857. ‘entering into competition with their own customers’ Border Post, 14 July 1857. ‘accidents happen so . . . not be insured’ Border Post, 14 July 1857. ‘It was resolved . . . which they pass’ Cadell: Letters to Johnston. ‘sale of fermented and spirituous Liquors’ Wagga Wagga Express, 20 November 1858. ‘and all spirituous and fermented liquors confiscated’ Border Post, 21 August 1859. ‘contradict a rumour . . . was trading illegally’ Border Post, 19 October 1859. ‘His mind is . . . its temporary stoppage’ Quoted in I. Mudie, Riverboats, Rigby, Adelaide, 1961. ‘I cannot say . . . your very eyes’ Cadell Papers. ‘was not justified . . . chain on board’ South Australian Register, 28 April 1860. ‘spendthrift, extravagant, wildcat sort of company’ A.T. Saunders, Notes and Correspondence about Captain Francis Cadell compiled by A.T. Saunders. Manuscript, South Australian State Library Mortlock Collection, PRG 37/12. ‘I was much . . . about the delay’ Cadell: Letters to Johnston. ‘been quite blind . . . set are lost’ Cadell: Letters to Johnston. ‘I hear from . . . desirous of coming’ Cadell: Letters to Johnston. ‘If you come . . . an Australian collection’ Cadell: Letters to Johnston. ‘written with a thumb-nail . . . will quote it’ A.B. Paterson, ‘Clancy of the Overflow’, first published in book form in The Man from Snowy River and Other Verses, Angus & Robertson, 1895. ‘Mildura Dec 16th 1857 . . . yours Trewly Peter Crum’ Cadell: Letters to Johnston.

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CHAPTER 12 THE WAIKATO RIVER ‘New Year’s Day . . . home by 200 metres’ South Australian Register, 2 January 1858. ‘The Snowy River . . . let alone a steamer’ Melbourne Argus, 23 May 1860. ‘The weather looking . . . old gold watch’ Melbourne Argus, 23 May 1860. ‘What more astonished . . . by spearing cattle & c.’ Melbourne Argus, 23 May 1860. ‘and by [a] . . . in the bush’ Francis Cadell 1822–1879 Papers, Australian Joint Copying Project, Canberra, M464. ‘Captain Cadell, too . . . own peculiar way’ Adelaide Times, 9 July 1860. ‘Mr Nicholson, the Chief Secretary . . . steamers on it’ Sydney Morning Herald, 26 March 1860. ‘Former and very bitter . . . out with opposition’ Quoted in I. Mudie, Riverboats, Rigby, Adelaide, 1961. ‘all his hard-earned . . . to be honorably associated’ Captain Cadell’s Services, No. 239, 16 October 1862, South Australia Parliamentary Papers. ‘in order that . . . in the matter’ Captain Cadell’s Services. ‘Wait and I will bear the expense’ Col. G. Pitt to Cadell, 15 February 1864, New Zealand Government Archives, quoted in R.D. Campbell, Captain Cadell and the Waikato Flotilla, Maritime Publications, Wellington, 1985. ‘Captain Cadell is . . . coming amongst you’ E. Wilson to Governor Grey, 8 February 1864, New Zealand Government Archives, quoted in Campbell, Captain Cadell. ‘in my opinion . . . do so over this’ New Zealand Government Archives, quoted in Campbell, Captain Cadell. ‘I think he . . . than an N.C.O.’ New Zealand Government Archives, quoted in J.C. Morris, Armed Settlers, Hamilton, 1963. ‘capable’ Morris, Armed Settlers. ‘enterprising’ Morris, Armed Settlers. ‘the invaluable Captain Cadell’ Morris, Armed Settlers. ‘I knew Captain . . . a strict disciplinarian’ A.T. Saunders, Notes and Correspondence about Captain Francis Cadell compiled by A.T. Saunders, manuscript, South Australian Library Mortlock Collection, PRG 37/12. ‘great praise is due . . . he has succeeded’ New Zealand Herald, 2 February 1866. ‘to inform Captain Cadell . . . before that date’ Colonial Secretary to F. Whitacker, 20 December 1865, New Zealand Government Archives, quoted in Campbell, Captain Cadell. ‘The meat contractor . . . could not be generated’ F. Cadell to H.A. Atkinson, 16 June 1865, New Zealand Government Archives, quoted in Campbell, Captain Cadell. ‘the only cause . . . my own pocket’ F. Cadell to H.A. Atkinson, 31 May 1866, New Zealand Government Archives, quoted in Campbell, Captain Cadell. ‘Captain Harrison is . . . performed than heretofore’ New Zealand Herald, date obscured, February 1866. ‘Mr Steers’s the City Club . . . future career’ Cadell Papers.

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CHAPTER 13 THE EAGLE ‘Mr Manton was . . . and despotic conduct’ South Australian Register, 5 February 1867. ‘and a better . . . well have chosen’ South Australian Register, 25 January 1867. ‘to select as . . . water and timber’ Parliament of South Australia, Proceedings, Copies of Papers Ordered to be Printed, 1867. ‘the sea was . . . our way north’ F. Napier, Notes of a Voyage from N. S. W. to the North Coast of Australia from the Journal of the Late Francis Napier, published posthumously by descendants. ‘one of the finest . . . of the world’ Napier, Notes of a Voyage. ‘to attract our attention’ F. Cadell, Report of Explorations of Northern Territory by F. Cadell Esq. Undertaken from May 2nd to August 24th 1867, in Francis Cadell 1822–1879 Papers, Australian Joint Copying Project, Canberra, M464. ‘After enjoying ourselves . . . keep the water out’ Napier, Notes of a Voyage. ‘the most eligible site for a capital’ Cadell, Report of Explorations. ‘heard the report . . . before they returned’ Napier, Notes of a Voyage. ‘We had a birth . . . about in it’ Napier, Notes of a Voyage. ‘the 23rd July . . . have killed it’ Napier, Notes of a Voyage. ‘Here we saw . . . off the mosquitos’ Napier, Notes of a Voyage. ‘It is dome shaped . . . around the base’ Napier, Notes of a Voyage. ‘so suddenly that . . . hindrance to us’ Napier, Notes of a Voyage. ‘to the setting sun’ G. Connel, The Mystery of Ludwig Leichhardt, Melbourne University Press, 1980. ‘This hastily written . . of tolerable discipline’ South Australian Register, 25 October 1867. ‘The Captain called . . . at Bourke Town’ Napier, Notes of a Voyage. ‘the climbing perch . . . is rather comical’ Napier, Notes of a Voyage. ‘we found water . . . were flying about’ Napier, Notes of a Voyage. ‘We found everything . . . or paper disturbed’ Napier, Notes of a Voyage. ‘My report as . . . has been friendly’ Cadell, Report of Explorations. ‘the natives of . . . a fig leaf ’ Cadell, Report of Explorations. ‘The men are . . . this miserable place’ Napier, Notes of a Voyage. ‘Ulysses of the Northern Territory’ South Australian Register, 3 October 1867. ‘Cadell will rank . . . anxious to know’ South Australian Register, 8 January 1868. ‘Here then is . . . richer than Algeria’ London Telegraph, 18 February 1868. ‘Visiting on his way . . . of the Darling’ South Australian Register, 8 June 1868. ‘Several boxes of . . . a short time’ Riverine Herald, 8 June 1868.

CHAPTER 14 LES TROIS AMIS ‘23rd March 1870 . . . of moderate strength’ Quoted in R.D. Campbell, Captain Cadell and the Waikato Flotilla, Maritime Publications, Wellington, 1985. ‘very cruel’ Sydney Morning Herald, [?] March 1887. ‘The clipper schooner . . . without being hurt’ New Zealand Herald, 21 May 1870.

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‘He is as active . . . no-one more successful’ Francis Cadell 1822–1879 Papers, Australian Joint Copying Project, Canberra, M464. ‘men of means . . . closely kept secret’ Quoted in M.A. Bain, Full Fathom Five, Artlook Books, Perth, 1982. ‘We put up . . . of the place’ Mrs Dominic D. Daly, Digging, Squatting and Pioneering: Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, Sampson, Low and others, London, 1887. ‘The Kanyakas are . . . guiltless of murder’ Daly, Digging, Squatting and Pioneering. ‘The Captain, for the . . . the Trois Amis’ Cadell Papers. ‘his name has . . . North West Coast’ Town and Country, 7 February 1880. ‘I have just . . . for another lot’ Cadell Papers. ‘The thirst for . . . killing them or not’ Perth Enquirer, 28 April 1875. ‘I beg to report . . . food and attendance’ Despatches Concerning Malay Pearlers 1875–1877, manuscript, South Australian State Library Mortlock Collection, PRG 145/2. ‘The actions which have . . . by the Government’ Despatches Concerning Malay Pearlers. ‘The next cases . . . will not return’ Perth Enquirer, 1 March 1876. ‘the outstanding blackbirder on the west coast’ Bain, Full Fathom Five. ‘was not entirely proved’ A.G. Price, Founders and Pioneers of South Australia, Adelaide, 1929. ‘He is credited . . . not conclusive evidence’ Cadell Papers. ‘Screws, Nuts, Rails and Staunchions’ Francis Cadell: Letters to George Johnston, manuscript, South Australian State Library Mortlock Collection. ‘this vessel has been . . . regarded as lost’ Port of Fremantle, Register of Shipping, quoted in A.T. Saunders, Notes and Correspondence about Captain Francis Cadell compiled by A.T. Saunders, manuscript, South Australian State Library Mortlock Collection, PRG 37/12. ‘an excellent sea boat’ Saunders, Notes and Correspondence. ‘an ex-cutter of the Royal Yacht Squadron’ Saunders, Notes and Correspondence.

CHAPTER 15 THE GEM ‘It is a grey . . . towards the captain’ Conversation based on report in South Australian Register, 2 September 1879. ‘imported native divers . . . the native inhabitants’ Quoted in R. Ganter, The Pearl Shellers of Torres Strait, Melbourne University Press, 1994. ‘Captain Robertson and . . . with the natives’ South Australian Register, 5 May 1878. ‘Reports were received . . . the schooner Jee’ South Australian Register, 6 August 1878. ‘My Dear Evans . . . a hasty letter’ South Australian Register, 2 September 1879. ‘My Dear Evans . . . very truly yours’ South Australian Register, 2 September 1879.

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‘Cadell treated these . . . home had expired’ L. de Rougemont, The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont As Told by Himself, Heinemann, London, 1899. ‘an old musket . . . with their hands’ Quoted in Ganter, Pearl Shellers. ‘for the archipelago, for labour’ Argus, 30 August 1879. ‘half a dozen . . . a Manila boy’ A.T. Saunders, Notes and Correspondence about Captain Francis Cadell Compiled by A. T. Saunders, manuscript, South Australian State Library Mortlock Collection, PRG 37/12. ‘He told me . . . to her destination’ South Australian Register, 2 September 1879. ‘I went to . . . board my schooner’ South Australian Register, 2 September 1879. ‘is already arrested . . . back to trial’ South Australian Register, 2 September 1879. ‘I have shot . . . receiving any wages’ First Government Secretary, Batavia, to Major-General Robert Cadell, 25 February 1980, in Francis Cadell 1822–1879 Papers, Australian Joint Copying Project, Canberra, M464. ‘When the Dutch . . . English woollen blanket’ First Government Secretary, Batavia, to Robert Cadell. ‘The trial lasted . . . outside the courthouse’ Saunders, Notes and Correspondence. ‘I have been . . . duty was discharged’ Cadell Papers. ‘I am directed . . . of your brother’ Cadell Papers. ‘At the criminal . . . sent up for trial’ Perth Enquirer, 2 February 1882. ‘Perlman was tried . . . he was discharged’ Reported in Australasian, 6 May 1882. ‘Rajah of Ullora’ South Australian Register, 9 March 1882. “He was a man . . . enterprise’ Cadell Papers.

EPILOGUE ‘Captain Francis Cadell . . . cousin of mine’ A.T. Saunders, Notes and Correspondence about Captain Francis Cadell compiled by A.T. Saunders, manuscript, South Australian State Library Mortlock Collection, PRG 37/12. ‘The Mr. Cadell . . . uncle of mine’ Saunders, Notes and Correspondence. ‘incomparable Nostromo’ J. Conrad, Nostromo, J.M. Dent and Sons, Great Britain, 1904. ‘this fellow in a thousand’ Conrad, Nostromo. ‘the remarkable Capataz’ Conrad, Nostromo. ‘on a rickety. . . commander, Captain C–’ J.A. Conrad, A Personal Record, Thomas Nelson & Son, London, not dated. ‘The replica has . . . the Cadell Papers’ Francis Cadell 1822–1879 Papers, Australian Joint Copying Project, Canberra, M464.

Acknowledgements I am grateful to my publishers, Allen and Unwin, and in particular to Sue Hines for taking on this project with such enthusiasm; to senior editor Rachel Lawson for homing so unerringly in on all its split infinitives; and to designer Nick Mau for making it look so delicious. Thanks to my partner Jenny and to Danny Spooner for reading the manuscript at various stages. Finally, I am deeply indebted to the many organisations and individuals who helped me to uncover the details of this story: to the always helpful staff at the State Library of Victoria and the South Australian State Library; to the staff of the Royal Geographical Society of South Australia and South Australia State Records; Kenny Munro and J.R. Johnston of Cockenzie, Scotland; Amanda Baker and Ann Gibson at the Melbourne Maritime Museum; Nick Marinos (Armfields Slipway, Goolwa, S.A.); Perry Wells (Information Officer, Parliament of South Australia); and Glenys Pitts (Tyntynder station).

Picture Credits All maps and the pencil sketches at the beginning of each chapter are by the author. Pages (viii), 127: from Francis Cadell 1822-1879, Papers, Australian Joint Copying Project, Canberra M464. Pages 9, 28, 38, 46, 50-1, 88: J.G. Heck, The Iconographic Encyclopedia of Science, Literature, and Art, R. Garrigne, New York, 1851. Pages 86, 92, 105, 171, 192, 210-11, 250, 257, 264, 274: Andrew Garran (Ed.), Picturesque Atlas of Australia, Adelaide, 1886. Pages 116, 268: John G. Murdoch and Co, The Victorian Cabinet of Marvels, London, undated. Page 161: Inland Shipping of the Murray-Darling River System, MurrayDarling Basin Commission. Pages 162, 172, 217, 218, 240: postcards, author’s collection. Page 243: trading stamps, author’s collection.

Index Aborigines 141, 143, 144, 147, 208, 230, 232, 247, 251 Betsey 179 guides 184, 188, 231 Ngaiawang 140 Ngarrindjerri 96, 98, 104 Wati Wati 111–13 Adelaide 72–3, 96–8, 203 Adelaide/Melbourne run 86, 87–90 Albury 166–7, 174, 191, 194 Albury 163, 178, 191, 196, 197, 207, 288 assembling 165, 168–9, 173 on the Darling 193 maiden voyage 173, 174 sold 200 Allen, James 134, 139, 143, 147 Anabranch, the River 184–8, 209 Andrews, E.W. 134, 139, 140–1, 142 Angas, George Fife 104 Anna Dixon 90–1, 93–4 Bagot, Captain Charles 104 Baines, James 4, 79, 84 Baker, John 104 Baltimore clippers 3, 19, 78 Barber, Captain William 69, 132, 196, 199, 287, 288 Barby, Samuel 176

Barclay, Captain John 70, 132, 288 barges 149–50, 157–8, 163, 165 see also Eureka Barker, Captain Collet 96 Barkly, Sir Henry 193–4 Bartley, Nehemiah 70, 145, 163, 188 Batavia 29, 32 Beveridge, Andrew 110–14 Beveridge, Mitchell 114, 115 Beveridge, Peter 110–14, 147 Billy the Bull 117, 118 Black Ball Line 4, 84 blackbirding 58, 59, 224, 241–6, 253, 254, 256, 257–60, 262–4, 269, 270, 289 Blenkinsop, Captain 98 Bogan 165, 198, 200 Boyd, Ben 242–3, 246–7 Broadhurst, C.E. 255–6, 257, 259 Brown, Henry 260, 265–6, 272 bullock teams 102, 104, 106, 115, 175, 191 Burke & Wills expedition 193–4 bushrangers 110 Cadell 286 Cadell, Francis 283–9 appearance 29, 70, 188 arrives in Adelaide 72–3

blackbirding 224, 247–8, 254, 256, 257–60, 262–4, 269, 280 brush with death 184–8 Cadell’s Line of River Steamers 163–4, 170, 191, 193, 195–8, 199–200 childhood 1–4, 9–12 to China 27–62 Cleopatra 90, 95, 129 death 4, 276–80 Eagle 229–37 family background 4–9 feted 154–62, 170–1, 178 first command 63–7, 70–6 friends and allies 69–70, 87, 182, 193–4, 238–9, 252–3 Gem 261–80, 287 government help 153–4, 158, 163, 177, 180, 206 and Hayes 56, 60, 204, 222–4 Lady Augusta 107–8, 125–54, 157, 172, 175–6, 191, 287 Minerva 12, 14, 21, 39–40, 49–50, 51–2, 60–1 Murray exploration 109–18 Murray, first sight of 74–5

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Murray mouth survey 123, 125–8 and Murray opportunities 95, 106–8 in New Zealand 211–12, 221–2, 240–1 in Northern Territory 224–5, 228–38 personality 9, 10, 12, 26, 56, 70, 129, 136–7, 191, 193, 198, 200–1, 214, 219–20, 251, 252–3, 256 personality change 247 Queen of Sheba 79–94 racial attitudes 246 racing 90, 93–4, 142–8 rivalry with Randell 118–19, 134, 136, 141–2, 143, 145, 146, 147, 151–3, 158 River Murray Navigation Company 164, 170, 175, 184–91, 196, 198 Royal Sovereign 63–7, 70–6 schooling 9–12 seamanship 28–9, 109, 142–3, 152, 158, 171, 181 to South America 63–6, 67 sword 42, 56, 57, 62 in Victoria 206–8 Waikato Steam Transport Service 213–21 in Western Australia 249, 251–60 and women 70, 156, 283 Cadell, Hew 1–2, 8–9, 12, 17, 19, 77, 208, 209, 288 ships 67, 75–6, 131–2, 165, 169

Cadell siblings 4–5, 8, 279, 285 Cadell’s Line of River Steamers collapse 198, 199–200 customs problems 195–8 fleet 163–4 formed 170, 191, 193 Canton 33, 34–6, 40, 52 Carpenter, Captain John 276, 277, 280 Carron Ironworks 7–8 China Opium War 42–55 pirates 32, 42, 48, 55–6 route to 29 trade with 33–6, 45–6 Chowne’s shipyard 123, 129, 131 Clems, Francis 176 Cleopatra 90, 95, 129 clipper ships 19–20, 67 American-built 3, 19, 78, 84 ‘extreme’ 84 races 91 skippers 3–4, 84 Cockenzie 1–2, 5, 6, 9, 132, 286–7 Cockenzie House 2, 5, 8, 69, 286 collapsible boats 116 see also Forerunner Condon Beach debacle 249–50, 251 Coorong 96, 98, 178 Copeland, Mr 144–5, 160 Corio 189 Croker Islanders 263–6 Crozier, Captain 99 Crum, Peter 201–2 customs British 38–9

riverboat trade 121, 194–8 Daly, Sir Dominic 252–3 Darling 163, 165 Darling River 91–3, 143 grazing land 183–6 trade opportunities 100, 104, 193 Davidson, Captain Thomas 131, 132, 133, 135, 137, 142, 144 deaths of crew 130–1, 150, 176 Dickson, Captain P. 169 Douglas Bloomfield, Captain 123, 124, 199, 204 Eagle 229–37 East India Company 4, 24, 25 and opium trade 44–5 ships 17–19, 20, 51 Echuca (Maiden’s Punt) 104, 151, 166, 167, 181, 198, 226 Edward River 180 Elliot, Captain Charles 47–8 Elliot, Admiral George 48, 49, 50, 52 equator, crossing 29–31 Eureka 121, 159 commissioned 108 launched 135 wool cargo 133–4, 136, 146, 148, 149, 154, 162–3, 168 Evans, John Lavington 271–2, 275 Finniss, B.T. 99, 100, 102, 227–8 Finniss, Boyle 134, 138 Firefly 189, 229–33, 234 firewood stores 158, 173

INDEX

Firth, J.C. 211, 214 Firth of Forth 1, 2–3, 7 Forbes, Captain ‘Bully’ 3–4 Forerunner 109–18, 123, 147, 286–7 Freeling, Captain 103–4 Freeman, Tommy ‘Hooky’ 91–2 Gawler, Governor George 100–1 Gem 260–80, 287 Gerstacker, Richard 104 Gill, J.M. 99 Gippsland Lakes 206–8 goldfields 83–5, 174 bullock transport 106 Cadell claims reward 179 cargo from 82, 88, 89–90, 135 Goode, Thomas junior 41–2 Goode, Thomas senior 175–6 Goolwa 41, 96, 99, 175 horse tramway 100, 103, 169 port 100, 103, 159 shipbuilding 108, 165, 169, 170 Gough, Major-General Sir Hugh 48, 52, 54, 55 Goulburn 163, 165, 189 government help 121, 153–4, 158, 163, 177, 180, 206 government rewards 106, 107, 120–1, 179–80 Grappler 181 Grey, Sir George 101, 102, 103, 214, 216, 222 Gumeracha 118, 119, 288 Gundagai 177

Gundagai 163, 172, 174, 191, 220, 288 assembling 165, 168–9 to New Zealand 214, 218 Hale, Walter 249–51 Hammond, Thomas 175 Hart, ‘Captain’ John 99, 101, 102, 104, 204 Hart, George 188 Hart, Jacob 188 Hayes, William Henry ‘Bully’ 56–60, 132, 204–6, 222–4, 241, 243, 246–7, 289 Hindmarsh, Governor John 97–8, 99, 100, 103 Hindmarsh, John 98 Hingston, Captain 109 horse tramway 100, 103, 169 Hovell, Albert 243 Hutchinson, Bingham 98 Hutchinsson, Robert Chisholm 181 Hutton, Mr 103–4 India 20, 26 Industry 241 Iron Prince 169–70, 172 irrigation scheme 179 Jardine, William 43, 46 Jeffcott, Sir John 98 Johnston, Captain George 69, 70, 132, 152, 171, 174, 180, 182, 194, 196–7, 200–1, 286, 288 Josephine L’Oiseau 159, 169, 172, 189 kanakas see blackbirding Kay, Captain 165, 169 Kerr, Jack 92–3 Kinloch, Captain A. 102–3, 134, 139

305

Lady Augusta 123, 157, 172, 175–6, 191, 196, 287 crew 135, 144–5, 150–1 design 107–8, 129–31 maiden voyage 108, 130, 134–40 through Murray mouth 132–3 see also Eureka Lady Emma 165, 168, 169 Lake Alexandrina 96, 122, 123, 130 Landseer, A.H. 198, 200 Lawson, Mr 262–8, 269, 270, 275 Leith 1, 2–3, 4, 5, 67 Les Trois Amis 253, 254, 258–9, 260, 263, 264–5, 276 Lewin, Henry 243 Light, Colonel 96–7, 99, 100 lighthouses 89 Lioness 131–2, 165, 224, 286 Lipson, Captain 98–9, 204 Lulu 241, 247–9 Macao 33–4, 36, 47 MacDonnell, Sir William 193, 204 Mace, ‘Hell-fire Jack’ 197 McKinley, John ‘Big John’ 102, 104 McLean, Captain John 200 McLean, Donald 221–2, 239–40 Marks, Captain 218–19 Mary Ann 118, 119–22, 129, 141, 143, 145, 146 Mason, George 104, 123, 134–5, 137, 138 Melbourne 86, 89, 90

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Melbourne 157, 168, 180, 191 for charter 172–3 statistics 164 wrecked 199–200 Melbourne/Adelaide run 86, 87–90 midshipmen 15, 21–2, 24–5, 26, 27, 29–31 Minerva 12–20 China run 29–40 crossing the equator 29–31 ‘private trade’ 25–6 in Opium War 40, 48, 49–50, 51–2, 60–1 Moorundie 104, 139–40, 154 Morey, Edmund 102, 104 Morgan, Daniel 220 Murphy, Charles 200 Murray River Cadell first sees 74–5 Cadell proposal 107 first steamer voyage 122 reward for navigating 103, 106, 107, 120–1 snags 158, 177–8 trade opportunities 95–106 Murray River mouth 74, 168 survey 99, 100–1, 123–4, 125–8, 199 navigating 132–3 Murray River flag 121–2 Murray Steam Navigation Medal 161–2 Murrumbidgee River 177–8 irrigation scheme 179 Napier, David 3, 67–8, 79, 229

Napier, Francis 229, 230–1, 232, 233–4, 235, 236 Napier, Robert 67–8, 134, 156–7, 176 Napier, Lord (William) 46–7 Napier shipyard 3, 77, 79–80, 165 New Zealand 210, 240–1 receives blackbirds 247–8 Waikato Maori War 211–19, 221–2 Nixon, H. 99 Northern Territory exploration 224–5, 228–38 Opium War 42–55 partnerships see Cadell’s Line of River Steamers; River Murray Navigation Company pearl and pearl shell trade 249, 250, 252, 254, 256, 257, 262, 269 Pease, Captain Ben 59, 243 Perman 260, 276–80 pilot services 89 pioneers see settlers pirates 32, 42, 48, 55–6 Port Adelaide 169, 172 Port Elliot 40, 103, 124, 159, 169, 172, 189 Pullen W.J.S., Captain 99, 100–1, 123, 124, 289 Queen of Sheba 130, 159 Adelaide/Melbourne run 86, 87–90 building 79–83 to California 83, 85 cargoes 82, 83, 89–90 crew 85–6

racing 90, 93–4 sold 90 racing Cadell 90, 93–4, 142–8 riverboats 91–3 tea clippers 91 railway, and river trade 198 Randell, William Richard 200, 288 background 118 and Cadell 118, 134, 136, 141–2, 143, 145, 146, 147, 151–3, 158 on the Darling 193 government support 121, 153–4 see also Mary Ann Randell brothers 119–21 rewards 103, 106, 107, 120–1, 179 Ritchie, Captain James 69–70, 132, 206, 214, 219, 286, 288 River Murray Navigation Company 164 conflict of interest 189–90, 196 customer complaints 176, 189–91, 196 formed 170 grazing venture 184–8 losses 189–90 wound up 191, 198 Robe, Governor 102, 103 Robertson, Captain Edmund 70, 135, 146, 149, 177, 288 Robinson, William C.F. 256–7 Roper River 234 Rothbury 91–3

INDEX

Royal Sovereign 78, 179, 203 to Adelaide 71–2, 74, 75–6 to South Africa 70–1 to South America 63, 64, 66, 67 Ruby 197, 198 Saunders A.T. 40 Saunders, Thomas 40, 125–8 Scott, E.B. 141, 288 Sea Witch 93–4 settlers Murray 78, 100, 102, 104, 106, 115, 117, 134, 139, 144, 163, 174–5, 191, 200 Murrumbidgee 134, 178 shipboard life captains 15, 22, 24, 25–6 charts and instruments 27–9 crew 15, 17, 21, 22 food 14, 17, 23 midshipmen 15, 21–2, 24–5, 26, 27, 29–31 passengers 15, 21, 24 punishment 22–3 shanties 15, 17, 23–4, 39 watches 24 shipbuilding industry 3, 19–20 ships collapsible 116 East India Company 17–19, 20, 51 iron versus timber 165–6 racing 90–4 snagging boat 180–2 sent in pieces 168–9 see also clipper ships; steamships

shipwrecks 189 Murray mouth 99, 189 Victorian coast 87–8 slavery see blackbirding snags, clearing 177–8, 179–80, 182 Grappler 181 Snowy River 206–7, 208 Society Islander crew 85–6, 135, 181 South Africa 70–1, 73–4 South America 63–6, 67 South Australian 91–3 steam engines 6–7, 8, 68 steamships 3, 64, 77, 78 first 8 firewood problems 158 in Royal Navy 50–1 Stephenson, George 72 Strangways, Thomas Bewes 98 Sturt, Captain Charles 96, 97, 99, 144 Sustenance, Sam 251 Swan Hill 147, 151 sword (ornamental) 42, 56, 57, 62 Sydney 86, 123, 129, 131 Teague, William 150 Templer, Captain 15, 19, 27–8, 30, 33, 36, 39–40 Torrens, R.R. 103–4, 204 Towns, Captain Bobbie 59, 243 Tranent coalfields 2, 5, 6 Turnbull, Patrick 170, 191 Turnbull, R. & P. 86, 90 Tyntynder Station 110–15, 147 vessels see ships Victoria Cadell explores 206–8 Cadell proposals for 208–9 goldfields 82, 85, 89–90

307

Waikato Maori War 211–19, 221–2 Waikato Steam Transport Service 213–21 Wakool 163, 174, 196, 197, 198, 200, 210, 214 Water Lily 249–51 Webb, John Martin 181 Wentworth 170, 197–8 Western Australia 249, 251–60 wheat cargo 200 Wilcannia 106, 193, 226–7 Williams, Mrs 144 Wilson, Edward 211–12 Winsby’s shipyards 108, 121, 135, 157, 169 wool cargo bullock drays 102, 106 Eureka 133–4, 136, 146, 148, 149, 154, 162–3, 168 stacking 150–1 Young, George 170, 173, 190, 191, 195–6, 204, 254 Young, Governor Henry Edward Fox 106, 143, 145, 182, 289 and Cadell 66, 72, 87 and the Murray 102–4, 134, 148 Young, (Augusta) Lady 102, 103–4, 129, 156 Younghusband, William 87, 104, 107, 134, 160, 161, 204, 287, 289 Gundagai 191, 214 Josephine L’Oiseau 159, 169, 172 partnership 170, 191 surveying Murray mouth 123–8