‘Summer Cloud’, 1870

The ‘Summer Cloud’ was a three-masted, 39-metre, 355-ton wooden barquentine that had been built in Canada in 1855. In Australian waters, she mainly sailed between Adelaide and Sydney.

On 5th October 1870 she departed Melbourne for Sydney with a cargo of sixty tons of salt. For the first two days she encountered fine weather.

On 7th October, sailing north from Bass Strait, the wind freshened from the east-nor-east and ‘thick dirty weather’ (low level cloud ad/or fog) settled in.

On 9th October, the wind turned to the north-east, blowing in strong gusts. By then, the crew of the ‘Summer Cloud’ had not sighted land for several days.

The following day, the wind turned to the sou-sou-east and land was sighted land to starboard (to the right of the vessel). This turned out to be the eastern side of Wreck Bay.

The captain was unable to turn the vessel so attempted to run her ashore on a beach (now Summercloud Bay Beach but, in doing so, hit rocks on an offshore reef. Those on board managed to make it to shore with some difficulty. The fore and mainmasts were afterwards cut away to prevent the ship rolling.

Several days later a Mr Parnell discovered the wreck and took the crew and passengers to the Cape St George Lighthouse where ‘they were kindly treated by the lighthouse keeper, Mr Lee’ before they were transported to Sydney aboard the Ketch ‘Illalong’. Apparently at that time the ‘Summer Cloud’ was ‘lying high and dry at low water, apparently uninjured, with about two feet of water in her’. However, she became a total wreck.