Understanding, enjoying and caring for our oceans
More information has come to hand since I wrote Large Anchors Found at Normanville and More About the Shipwrecks at Normanville. Firstly, I accidentally found a copy of a letter written by David Muirhead’s father in 1970 on my computer. David’s father, David R. Muirhead, described the recovered anchor in […]
The publication of my article Large Anchors Found at Normanville may have been a little hasty. It did, however, lead to discussions with local Normanville residents David Muirhead, Des Gubbin and Kym Clarke. Those discussions also led to further research by me. I duly discovered that there are several shipwrecks […]
A couple of large anchors were found at Normanville between the late 1960s and late 1970s. Either of these two anchors may have been from the wreck of the Guldax, a 556-ton wooden barque built in Norway in 1878. In October 2018, I wrote at https://stevesshipwrecksite.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-wreck-of-guldax.html , “The wooden barque […]
What connections are there between the wreck of the Santiago in the North Arm of the Port River and the Willyama wreck at Marion Bay? Since writing Update of the Rusting Wreck of the Santiago recently, and after reading “Garden Island Ships’ Graveyard” again, I asked Nathan Richards for his […]
I have revisited the wreck of the Santiago several times since writing The Rusting Wreck of the Santiago last November, mostly by kayak. My most recent visit, however, included a snorkel inside the wreck. More on this shortly. My latest visit led to a little more research on the vessel. […]
The historic (Lighthouse Supply and Navigational Aids Maintenance Ship) MV Cape Don is a “part of the maritime history of Australia”. (Photo courtesy of MV Cape Don Society) The Cape Don was built in at the Newcastle State Dockyards in NSW. The keel was laid in 1961 and the ship […]
According to Captain Arthur Wright – Ancestor History, Captain Arthur Wright was a seafaring captain who brought “supplies, prisoners and free settlers from England, Ireland and Scotland to Hobart” (then Hobart Town, Van Diemen’s Land). Wright was born in St Mary, Islington, Middlesex, England to William and Catherine Wright in […]
A B-17 Flying Fortress called “Black Jack” has been laying 48m of water off of Papua New Guinea since WWII. I had not heard of “Black Jack” at all until I picked up an old video cassette titled “Black Jack’s Last Mission” at a second-hand goods shop several years ago. […]
I have been visiting the wreck of the Santiago in the North Arm of the Port River on many of my kayaking trips from Garden Island. There is always much interest from kayakers in the wreck, possibly due to the large size of the rusting iron hull. It is also […]
This is a story about how Claude Evans’ dream of restoring an old Huon pine yacht became more of a nightmare, only to end happily. This story started 12 months ago. It began in July 2020. I had documented as much of the story as I could at the time. […]