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1850 "Old Lysander" |
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A 476 ton brigantine, the "Lysander" was on her second of three round trips to Australia. On her 1850 voyage, she arrived in Adelaide on September 21, some 97 days after leaving London. She was laid up in Adelaide for 47 days awaiting a suitable quantity of cargo and passengers and finally left for Melbourne on November 9. But as well as bringing the news of Separation which led to one of Melbourne's first football matches, the "Lysander" made another contribution to football history despite suffering a less than glamorous fate. After the brig was decommissioned, she was sold to the Government and used initially as a hospital ship and later as a prison hulk anchored in Hobson's Bay before being broken up. The Prisons Department stripped the ship of most things of value and transferred the bell, originally cast in 1825, to Pentridge where it was used for some years. The bell was then used by the Coburg and Richmond Fire Brigades and later removed to the headquarters of the Fire Brigade Board in Eastern Hill. (left) "Old Lysander" as pictured in The Sporting Globe in the late 1920s |
In 1922, the bell was given to Melbourne Cricket Club. To the cries of anxious supporters of "ring the bell", "Old Lysander" as she became affectionately known sounded the start and end of football's hostilities at the M.C.G. for over thirty years before being replaced with an electric siren system.
Old Lysander was watched over during most of her time at the Melbourne Cricket Ground by Mr. William Spry, the timekeeper for the Melbourne Football Club from the late 1890s through to the start of the Second World War.
The Lysander was just one of around a dozen ships owned by Messrs Marshall and Eldridge of 34 Fenhurst Street, London, carrying passengers and cargo on the London - Australia route, the partnership being an influential factor in the development of the colonial economies.
With a one-way voyage averaging around 110 days, lay-offs for re-fitting and awaiting cargo and a couple of inter-colonial runs, it was usually twelve months before the average vessel completed a full round trip, and the Lysander arrived in Melbourne for the final time in December, 1851.
Other than a couple of brief mentions in the press of her role in bringing news of Victoria's Separation, the Lysander attracted little attention, but late in the following year, the ship was thrust into the forefront of the public's notice.
With the flood of immigrants to the gold fields, the new administration's infrastructure was under intense pressure to provide basic services, and the Victorian Government purchased the Lysander in October 1852 as a hospital ship.
Later in the year, a "beautiful new clipper", the Ticonderoga, an "immigrant" ship, anchored at the Heads and news was conveyed to Williamstown by Captain Wylie of the brig Champion of the deplorable conditions on board.
Local authorities were horrified and alarmed to discover that of just over 800 passengers, 100 had died of typhus in the overcrowded and filthy conditions below deck on the ninety-day voyage. (There were also 19 babies born on the trip, including two sets of twins and miraculously 15 of the newborn appear to have survived).
To compound the problems, all medical supplies on board had been exhausted before the journey was half way through and the ship's doctor was also badly affected and not expected to survive. The Ticonderoga was ordered to stand off the Heads, and the Lysander was dispatched to Sorrento with sufficient supplies to last three months.
Some 300 of the survivors suspected of being affected by either typhus or scarletina were transferred aboard. On her three voyages to Australia, the Lysander's maximum payload was 236 passengers, suggesting that conditions must have been less than ideal for the affected patients.
The Government also authorized an emergency purchase of two houses on Point Nepean to act as hospitals where some 400 passengers were transferred. Deaths continued to occur on a regular basis both on the Lysander where the most serious cases were transferred and at the makeshift land hospitals.
The Ticonderoga and the surviving healthy passengers was finally allowed to berth at Melbourne some six weeks later. On Christmas Eve, between two and three hundred of the affected "… the majority of them in a deplorable condition from debility and sickness" were brought by steamer to Melbourne.
There was further uproar when one child died on the short up the bay and several other landed patients were not expected to survive. The final death toll was probably never known but by the end of the year was put at over 180.
The Ticonderoga left Melbourne without passengers on January 10, but for the British relatives of the 900 or more passengers that set out for the colonies, the agony continued. A letter to The Times on April 16 of the following year pointed out to the English public that despite it being over five months since the arrival of the ill-fated vessel at the Heads, there had still been no list of the deaths made available by the English authorities.
Ships arriving from England in the 1850s were generally classified as "passenger" or "immigrant" vessels.
"Passenger" vessels carried full-fare paying passengers, and while they were still risky conveyances given the whims of the weather and problems with maintaining supplies of fresh food and water, they were streets ahead of the "immigrant" vessels.
The Colonial Land and Emigration Office was set up to assist British immigrants to the new colony. Perhaps wisely, the agreements with the English-based shipping companies were for half of the fare to be paid when passengers embarked in England, with the balance due on safe arrival in Melbourne.
In stark economic terms, the Office believed that in offering the ship owners half of the agreed fee for loading their "cargo" alive, they were helping to improve conditions on the outward voyage. What the authorities didn't realize was that many of the ship owners and their agents secretly insured the lives of the passengers and stood to make more money from a "non-arrival" than a survivor.
Given those dying on board were buried at sea with no official record other than an entry scribbled into the ship's log, even the number of passengers on the immigrant ships was widely open to question.
Of all the accounts of what become known as the "Plague Ship", none could ever confirm the number of passengers that actually started out on the fateful voyage, some reports suggesting "just over 900" more accurate reconstructions putting the figure at between 814 and 822.
The final number of fatalities will never be known with undoubtedly many of those landing suffering side-effects over the ensuing months but the generally accepted tally of those dying on board or in quarantine at 168, although the figure appears to ignore those expiring soon after arrival in Melbourne and the four infants born on the voyage.
Most of the passengers were labourers or domestic servants from Scotland or the northern parts of England. Around half of the Scots were migrating with assistance from the Highland & Island Emigration Society (H.I.E.S), the northern equivalent of the Colonial Office.
Estimates suggest that around 76% of male immigrants at the time classified themselves as 'labourers' or 'agricultural labourers', whilst 84% of the females were "domestics". The two occupations were in high demand amongst the early settlers and squatters and were almost guaranteed immediate employment in the colonies.
The Ticonderoga, later known as "The Plage Ship" left Melbourne for Liverpool on January 10, the shipping notice simply stating "... with part of the original cargo. No passengers".
With the later advent of clipper ships and the discovery of what was known as the Great Circle Route, the average time for a voyage was reduced to around 75 days.
The Great Circle Route was correctly based on the assumption that the shortest distance between two points is not necessarily a straight line! The early ships tracked down close to the west coast of Africa and turned east close to the Cape of Good Hope, but navigators discovered that with the natural curvature of the earth's surface, an alternative route that took the vessel much further south to a point midway between the Cape and Antarctica was actually around 1,000 miles shorter and also favoured by strong and consistent westerly winds.
Oddly enough, the first reports of the looming tragedy referred to the vessel as the Ticonderago with the incorrect spelling used exclusively during the couple of months that the ship was in the news. Fortunately shipping registers of the time and later historical accounts reveal the true name as Ticonderoga.