‘Julie Heyn’, 1865

The ‘Julie Heyn’ was a ‘large barquentine’, one of a Black Diamond Line of ships owned by Henry Simpson, an Adelaide shipping agent turned coal merchant.

Henry had anticipated a rapid rise in steam powered vessels that would require supplies of fuel coal (or ‘black diamond’), so acquired a large fleet of sailing ships to transport coal from Newcastle to Adelaide. (Interestingly, though, Henry Simpson did not add a coal-fuelled vessel to his own fleet until quite late, in 1879!)

On 1st May 1865 the ‘Julie Heyn’ left Newcastle bound for Adelaide with a load of coal. Aboard were 10 crew members. Soon thereafter they started experiencing strong southerly gales.

The vessel, however, succeeded in reaching the north-east tip of Tasmania. There it was hit by a strong gale, veering south-westerly to west-nor-westerly, so it was ‘then laid-to until the evening of the 16th, laboring heavily, and making so much water that the crew were unable to leave the pumps…The captain finding that the water had gained seven inches upon the pumps during the preceding two hours, and feeling assured that the vessel under those circumstances, could not live until morning if lying-to, bore up for Sydney, reaching Cape St. George (off Jervis Bay) about noon on Wednesday (17th May).

About 12 miles to the north of Cape St. George the wind fell light. During this period the water had been gaining steadily on the pumps, notwithstanding the exertions of the crew, who if favored with some eight hours' fair wind, might have safely reached Sydney.

At 8 p.m., finding that the vessel had nearly nine feet of water in the hold, and the crew being nearly exhausted with their continued labors at the pumps, and the vessel rapidly settling down, the captain determined to abandon her.

Less than an hour after the captain had left the vessel she went down.’ It then took 18 hours of rowing for the crew to reach land, on Gerringong Beach. Their lifeboat was immediately afterwards totally destroyed by the surf…(and) 'shortly after their landing the wind changed, blowing a gale from the southward, and raising a sea in which it would have been impossible for any boat to live’.

Image: Ships from Henry Simpson’s Black Diamond Line, probably in Adelaide.