As Boyle, and every other seaman afloat, would have been all too aware, the coastlines of both places—Victoria and King Island—were strewn with the remains of both ships and lives. Seven years earlier (as he would have been reminded during many meetings held leaning over charts, protractor and compass in hand, with the representatives of the Board), the emigrant vessel Cataraqui, a large barque, had slammed into a rock shelf on King Island’s south-west shore, her skipper having erred tragically in estimating his position, convinced himself that he was actually much further to the north. Over three ghastly days, in a fierce storm, the ship was torn to pieces by the breakers, and though just metres from shore, no more than a pitiful four survivors remained alive from a passenger and crew list numbering 500 souls. The Cataraqui was, and remains still, Australia’s worst peacetime maritime disaster. Amazingly, a lighthouse at Cape Wickham was not built and activated until 1861.
Any glow of self-congratulation was short-lived, however, as Captain Boyle was brought back to reality by the sobs of the grieving and the wailings of the demented among his poor afflicted passengers and crew. As much as he would like to believe otherwise, his ordeal was far from over.
Staying on deck for the rest of the night to navigate the remaining 70 or so nautical miles to the entrance of Port Phillip Bay, Captain Boyle took the Ticonderoga north-east into a stiff spring breeze. After a few hours, almost in front of him, the first signs of his first day in Australia became visible on the eastern horizon.
Being completely unfamiliar with Australian landscapes, he took in the rich dark olive of the foliage, the undulating hills and the sweeping beaches of the Victorian coastline as it became slowly visible with the dawn—not unlike, he thought, some parts of America, with which he was far more familiar.
A new stirring began to be heard among the passengers. Finally, after weeks of the most terrible turmoil, of praying constantly for this nightmare voyage to be over, all sensed that they were finally nearing its end. Those in good health came onto the upper deck, braving the chilly wind to take in for themselves the first sights of their new country, no longer confined to the imagination but now real, there in front of them.
People who had lived and worked on farms all their lives came on deck and gripped the handrail. It was lush land, they thought to themselves, green and fertile. After what they had been through, this at least they needed to believe.
On a clear and bright early morning, after a journey of nearly 13,000 miles, the Ticonderoga arrived outside the entrance to Port Phillip Bay. Negotiating the formidable Heads was not a task to be taken lightly, particularly for those unaccustomed to its tricks and peculiarities. Beyond its entrance stretched a vast, almost entirely landlocked, inland bay measuring nearly 800 square miles. But first, the infamously treacherous passage between its two guarding promontories, known appropriately to sailors everywhere as ‘the Rip’, needed to be navigated. Although 2 miles of water separated the Heads—Point Lonsdale on the west and Point Nepean on the east—the intervening Rip was riven by a chaotic pattern of reefs reaching out from both points, reducing the true navigable distance to a gap little more than half a mile wide. A mistake made here would not be forgiven. So treacherous was the Rip, in fact, that even the government pilot vessels were reluctant to traverse it to bring vessels in. That risk, in most cases, would have to be undertaken by the captains themselves. According to his Notes to Mariners, Boyle was required to make his own way through the Rip to a small outcrop on the western arm near the fishing village of Queenscliff named Shortland’s Bluff. Once here, he was to signal for a pilot to guide him through the fairways to the shipping channel and eventually up to the port of Melbourne, Port Phillip itself. With the sandy floor of the bay at an average depth of only 26 feet, this was not a course Boyle wanted to tackle unaided.
He would have appreciated that same help with tackling the Rip itself, where unpredictable waves, eddies and currents abounded. Then there were the tidal streams that ran through it at up to 6 knots, and vastly differentiating depths—between 5 and 100 metres—making for surges that had already trapped scores of vessels, such as the 500-ton Isabella Watson. Eight months previously, this passenger barque had come to grief, taking nine lives with her, executing exactly the manoeuvre that Boyle, in a much larger ship, was now about to attempt. He could clearly see the Isabella Watson’s broken carcass washed up on a tiny cove just inside Point Nepean, as if placed there as a warning of the dangers that confronted him.
Boyle had studied his Notice to Mariners for the approaches to Port Phillip. Likewise he recalled the warnings to take particular care with the Rip. Slack water between the surge of the tides, he had been advised, would be the safest time to make his approach, but even then a sudden squall or current from below could drag a ship onto a reef or into the infamous natural feature of Corsair Rock, which lay guarding the Rip’s entrance like a sentinel.
Until deemed safe, it was customary for ships to pause outside the Rip, sailing back and forth under half-sail several miles out into Bass Strait, awaiting the most opportune moment to enter, then picking up the pilot to Melbourne. Captain Boyle, however, did not have time on his side. With his passengers dying like flies and 300 suffering various degrees of illness, his priority had to be delivering them to better care, and quickly.
A mate then announced that one of the sailors had in fact sailed to Melbourne several times previously—albeit not recently. Conditions were not ideal, but the water looked calm, a breeze was blowing in his favour and so Boyle decided to make the attempt. Even approaching the entrance from the ocean side was dangerous, as jutting nearly a kilometre into Bass Strait was the Rip Bank, another obstacle that needed to be avoided. A brief conference took place on the upper deck, with charts and notes consulted once again. Standing by the captain and behind the helmsman stood the unnamed seaman who, several years before, had likewise attempted the passage, the weight on his shoulders now feeling much heavier than he would have liked. Boyle looked up and ordered more sail. When all was ready, he then gave the command to bring the Ticonderoga about, and with men placed fore and aft giving soundings, in the great ship went.
Even in calm weather such as this, Boyle felt the surge of eddies tugging at the ship as it negotiated the bottleneck. Around him was a true patchwork of ocean temperaments: white water here, a smooth glassy upsurge from deep below there. Shadows flitted by as she glided over alternating patches of dark reef and pale sand. Boyle quickly appreciated the reputation of this torrid piece of water among sailors the world over. Running before the wind, the shore now began to move past. A line of little white stone cottages became visible, the first signs of habitation of this new land.
Then the soundings indicated more water beneath them and the sea settled to its dark bluey grey. They were past the Heads and through the Rip of Port Phillip Bay. Rounds of ‘Well done! Well done!’ made their way along the upper deck from the captain and first mate. Boyle trimmed the yards as the Ticonderoga’s bow edged towards the low hump of Shortland’s Bluff. Then came the order that every soul on board had, for 90 agonising days, longed to hear, ‘Come to anchor!’