The Patagonia, a British Brig of 323 tons was on a routine cargo run from Sydney to Manilla in what was then the Spanish East Indies. There was a small crew and a cargo of coal on board.
On February 05 1851, the vessel struck Bond’s Reef just off New Caledonia and could not be saved, so great was the damage. Captain Simons ordered the crew onto the boats with some instruments and provisions and set out south-west, expecting to make land in Sydney or Newcastle.
The weather was against them, with heat and storms and wild seas. On 15 February 1851, the survivors’ boats washed up in Cape Moreton, some 951 miles from the wreck of the Patagonia.
The Courier observed:
“The convenience of this port as a place of refuge is much impaired by the utter absence of any light-house, signal station, or other mark to guide a stranger. The persons in the two boats which arrived yesterday ran the most imminent peril of being drowned at the South Entrance, because there is no light-house on Cape Moreton.”
This and other wrecks caused the Government in New South Wales to implement plans to build a lighthouse on Cape Moreton in the 1850s. In 1854 Edmund Blacket’s design was approved, and the Lighthouse was opened in 1857. Separation from New South Wales occurred just two years later, making Cape Moreton the only New South Wales-built Lighthouse in Queensland. It is still in operation today.
The Patagonia crew were brought into Brisbane, exhausted and suffering from exposure. As usual, Brisbane Town was unprepared for the visitors, particularly as they had no money, no food, no change of clothes and no possessions.
The local authorities gave them some rations and plonked them into an empty room in the old Prisoners’ Barracks, which in February’s heat would have been miserable. Nobody thought to provide them with bedding or blankets or the means to cook the measly rations they were given.
Then as now, where the authorities faltered, the community kicked in to get the victims somewhere to stay, and some employment to tide them over. The subscription list includes some very familiar names.
Happily, after a perplexing fortnight in Brisbane Town, the crew were accommodated on various boats, and taken back to Sydney.
Moreton Bay Courier (Brisbane, Qld. : 1846 – 1861), Monday 17 February 1851, page 1
Moreton Bay Courier (Brisbane, Qld. : 1846 – 1861), Saturday 22 February 1851, page 2
Moreton Bay Courier (Brisbane, Qld. : 1846 – 1861), Saturday 1 March 1851, page 3 (5)
Moreton Bay Courier (Brisbane, Qld.: 1846 – 1861), Saturday 1 March 1851, page 2
All photographs: Wikipedia
Moreton Bay and More 