Project · Victor Harbor, South Australia
South Australian
Postal packet, naval vessel, then colonisation ship: wrecked at Encounter Bay in 1837 and found in 2018 after 180 years. South Australia’s first known shipwreck.
Hull timbers of South Australian on the seabed off Victor Harbor
Built
1817–1819, Little Falmouth, UK
Wrecked
8 December 1837, Encounter Bay
Found
April 2018
Significance
The only known wreck of a purpose-built postal packet
Post, guns and whales
South Australia’s first known shipwreck
During a severe storm on 8 December 1837, marked by a wild south-easterly gale, the barque South Australian was violently ripped from its mooring and blown onto Black Reef, Rosetta Harbor, which it struck stern first.
The barque, a South Australian Company vessel, had been at anchor awaiting the arrival of another of the company’s ships, Solway. Once it had hit Black Reef, South Australian was pushed over into the shallow water beyond, close to the shores of what is Victor Harbor today.
Interestingly, Solway wrecked close to South Australian two weeks later. Colonel William Light, the first Surveyor-General of “the British Province of South Australia”, briefly surveyed the location, which at the time was a small community primarily involved in whaling, and remarked on his chart:
“This anchorage, I think, is not fit for anything.”
Colonel William Light, on his chart of Encounter Bay
The mail run
Life began as a postal packet
Marquess of Salisbury was laid down in 1817 at Little Falmouth (Flushing), United Kingdom, by shipbuilder Richard Symons, and was ready two years later: 236 tons, 26.5m long, with a beam of 7.6m and a draught of 1.8m. It served as a postal packet for six years.
In 1824 it was bought by the Royal Navy, converted and renamed HMS Swallow, which it remained until 1836 when it was sold to the South Australian Company, a commercial enterprise formed in London in 1835 that contributed greatly to forming the settlement that became the State of South Australia.
In the hands of the Company, HMS Swallow was once more refitted and renamed South Australian, now a colonisation vessel destined to help build the new settlement. On its voyage out it carried skilled labourers and breeding stock including bulls, heifers, pigs and goats. Among the passengers was David McLaren, who would become the Company’s colonial manager and after whom McLaren Vale may be named.
In Australia, South Australian worked between Kangaroo Island and Rosetta Bay, resupplying whaling stations that could only be reached by ship. It was for a time refitted as a ‘cutting in’ vessel, essentially an offshore whale oil processing platform, but made one more return trip to Kangaroo Island before it was wrecked. For the larger story of its life and times, visit the SA History Hub.
Lost for 180 years. Found 2018.
Keel bolts in the sand
Immediately after the wreck, the vessel was salvaged, but the lower hold was flooded and nothing could be saved from it. The wreckage was abandoned and left to the mercy of the sea.
As time passed, memory faded and the exact location was largely forgotten, known only to some local fishers. Work led by the State heritage department in the 1990s to locate the site did not prove fruitful.
In April 2018, a collaborative project between Silentworld Foundation, the South Australian Maritime Museum, the Department for Environment and Water, the Australian National Maritime Museum, MaP Fund and Flinders University set out to locate the site. Armed with archival information, data from previous searches, a magnetometer and several metal detectors, the team walked, snorkelled and dived the area on a survey grid.
The shipwreck was located on the fifth and final day of fieldwork, when bright copper bolts were spotted protruding from the sandy bottom.
2018–2019
Follow-up & management
Follow-up work in May and July 2018 helped the team understand the extent of exposure and the type of cultural material on the site. Articulated wooden hull structure and some loose artefacts were noted. Biological degradation was evident from marine borer (shipworm and gribble) tunnels and surface damage to the wood.
Another round of fieldwork in June 2019 collected additional data for mapping the site by baseline offset survey and digitally in 3D. This visit, almost a year after the last, revealed that the site is “deflating”: the sediment and seagrass that once covered and protected it are being naturally eroded, exposing areas of hull that had stayed buried since the wreck. Loose material is being washed off the site by waves and currents, sometimes ending up on the beach or dragged into deeper water and lost.
The team recovered a small number of fragile items that had become exposed and vulnerable. These are in treatment with the conservation team at Artlab Australia.
Protecting the site
The team shared these findings with the Victor Harbor community at a meeting at Victor Harbor Library in December 2019. The site is managed by the Department for Environment and Water. A 30m fishing exclusion zone protects the remains from damage caused by fishing, and information boards have been installed along the beachfront and at the nearby boat ramp.
Plans for future work to capture more data and further protect the site are underway, and the team will keep the local community informed, engaged and involved. Working closely with local people, the team aims to research, interpret and present the stories tied to the State’s first known European shipwreck, and the only known shipwreck of a purpose-built postal packet found anywhere in the world.
This work forms part of the wider South Australian Immigrant and Labourer Shipwrecks (SAILS) project, investigating and recording the shipwrecks and stories of immigration and the transport of labourers that shaped the development of South Australia.
Fieldwork 2018–2019
On site at Encounter Bay
Updates and insights
Follow the story of South Australian
Read it
Bound for South Australia
The story of the search, as told in Signals, the Australian National Maritime Museum’s magazine.
Watch it
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