‘Jeannie Deans’, 1851

The ‘Jeannie Deans’ was a 15-metre, 31-ton wooden schooner that had been built in Ulladulla in 1850. On 10th April 1851, whilst on a voyage from Sydney to Broulee, she was becalmed off Broulee and drifted on to the shore, where she was wrecked.

The ‘Geelong Advertiser’ of 11th June 1851 adds this postscript to the fate of the ‘Jeannie Deans’:

‘It will be in the recollection of our readers that we noticed the loss of the Jeannie Deans. The wreck, however, was not so absolute as was then spoken of. This fine little clipper coaster has been repaired - a thorough new bottom, keel, kelson (a reinforcing structural member on top of the keel in the hull of a vessel) and timbers. She may be expected in port again in about a fortnight. The copper has been sent down for her.

The gales to the southward have been so furious that even in Ulladulla the safest roadstead (a sheltered body of water where ships can lie reasonably safely at anchor without dragging or snatching) for coasters to the southwards, it was impossible for a craft io hold her moorings. We fear that we shall have to report some more serious losses from the southward.’

(Jeanie Deans is a fictional character in Sir Walter Scott's novel ‘The Heart of Midlothian’ first published in 1818. She was one of Scott's most celebrated characters during the 19th century; she was renowned as an example of an honest, upright, sincere, highly religious person. The name ‘Jeanie Deans’ or ‘Jeannie Deans’ was given to several pubs, ships, railway locomotives, an opera, a play, a poem, a song, a hybrid rose, an antipodean potato, and a geriatric unit in a hospital. They all were given their names from Scott's heroine.)