‘Lanercost’, 1872

The ‘Lanercost’ was a 124-foot, 358-ton wooden barquentine built in the United Kingdom in 1865. She was originally registered to trade between the United Kingdom and Holland.

She left Newcastle on 21st November 1872 with a load of 580 tons of coal and was bound for Adelaide. Newspaper reports indicate she ‘had gone ashore at 5 a.m. on the 24th November, half a mile south of Mowarry Point, near Twofold Bay, and had become a total wreck, but all hands had been saved and had reached the shore’. (The wreckage is actually north-west of Mowarry Point in 5 to 21 metres of water.)

The crew of a local pilot boat attempted to board the ‘Lanercost’ later that day ‘but were thwarted by heavy seas breaking as high as the vessel's lower yards (sails). Hopes of saving Lanercost were gone when the hull went to pieces against the reef’.