On a fine, calm Thursday afternoon, 3 November 1927, the little Watsons Bay ferry Greycliffe was run down off Bradleys Head by the Union Steam Ship Company's mail liner Tahiti, outward bound for New Zealand and San Francisco. The wooden ferry was cut in two and sank in moments. Forty people died, from a two-year-old boy to people in their eighties, and dozens more were hurt. It is still the worst disaster Sydney Harbour has ever seen. This is the story of the boat, the afternoon, the rescues, the long fight in the courts over who was to blame, and what's left to remember it by.
The Greycliffe
The Greycliffe was built at Balmain in 1911 by David Drake for the Watsons Bay run. She was a wooden, double-ended screw steamer of 133 gross tons and 125 feet long, with a triple-expansion engine by Campbell & Calderwood good for about 12 knots. She was first owned by the Watson's Bay and South Shore Ferry Co., and in 1920 she and her running mates King Edward, Vaucluse and Woollahra were taken over by Sydney Ferries Limited.
Like most Sydney ferries of her day she had a wheelhouse, rudder and propeller at each end. Weathered white bulwarks ran her length at deck level. On the main deck were separate saloons, the men's smoking room forward over the boiler room and the ladies' saloon aft over the engine room, with an upper promenade deck above and a wheelhouse at each end of it. Steve Brew, who has written the most thorough history of the disaster, says the 4.15 run from the Quay was nicknamed "The School Boat" for all the city school kids it carried home each afternoon.
The name
Greycliffe is an old Vaucluse name. Greycliffe House, built around 1852 in sandstone in the Victorian Rustic Gothic style, went up on land at Shark Beach that John Reeve bought from William Charles Wentworth. Reeve was married to Wentworth's daughter Fanny. They never lived there; it was leased out, first to Colonel John George Nathaniel Gibbes, the Collector of Customs, who liked watching the harbour shipping from its north-facing verandah.
The Tahiti
The Tahiti was a much bigger and older ship. She was launched on the Clyde at Govan by Alexander Stephen and Sons on 19 April 1904 as the Port Kingston, for an Elder Dempster company running between Bristol and Jamaica. The Union Steam Ship Company of New Zealand bought her in 1911, renamed her Tahiti and put her on the Sydney to San Francisco mail run via Wellington, Rarotonga and Papeete. Brew says she served as a troopship in the First World War. In 1927 she was around 7,600 tons and about 460 feet long, three times the Greycliffe's length.
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The Afternoon of 3 November 1927
The Greycliffe left Circular Quay at 4.15pm with about 120 passengers aboard, a lot of them schoolchildren heading home. She called at Garden Island to pick up the dockyard workers knocking off for the day, then headed down the harbour for the light north of Shark Island, with Nielsen Park, Parsley Bay, Central Wharf near The Crescent and Watsons Bay still to come.
At her wheel was Captain William Barnes, 52, who'd been working the harbour for about 30 years. Brew says he wasn't her usual master; he took her on Wednesdays and Thursdays when the regular skipper had his days off. Brew writes that as the ferry left Garden Island, Barnes glanced back through the wheelhouse's rear window and over the cabin roof, saw nothing, and came round to port. It was a clear, sunny afternoon, about 71°F with a light westerly.
Behind him the Tahiti was coming down from Darling Harbour with more than 300 passengers and crew aboard. On her bridge were her master, Captain Basil Aldwell, and the harbour pilot, Captain Thomas Carson, a Scot in his late forties who lived at Watsons Bay. As was the rule, the pilot had charge of the ship's navigation down the harbour. Brew's account has Carson calling full ahead off Bennelong Point and seeing the Greycliffe ahead, off the liner's starboard bow. He knew their courses would cross, but he believed the ferry knew he was there.
The collision
About halfway between Garden Island and Bradleys Head, the Greycliffe swung across the liner's path. Brew writes that Carson pulled hard on the steam horn twice. In the ferry's men's saloon the fare collector, Fred "Curly" Jones, looked out the port windows, saw a big ship barely 100 yards off and coming fast, and shouted at everyone to get out. Barnes, by his own account, didn't know the Tahiti was there until the horn blasts. He spun the wheel hard to starboard, but it was far too late.
The liner's bow hit the Greycliffe on the port side by the aft gangway. The ferry was pushed round square across the Tahiti's bow and shoved along for a moment, then rolled, broke in two and went under as the liner ran on through the wreckage. Brew says that when the cold water reached the furnaces the boiler burst, throwing up a cloud of steam and timber. People out on deck had the best chance. Most of those trapped in the two saloons didn't make it out.
Survivors' stories have stuck. Fourteen-year-old Ken Horler and his mates always sat at the back so they could watch the new Harbour Bridge going up, and he told the Sydney Morning Herald in 2003 that this saved their lives. He was dragged down tangled in rope, got free, and climbed onto one of the floating wheelhouses. John Corby ran for lifebelts for his wife and daughter, turned, and saw them holding hands at the top of the stairs just before the ferry rolled. He never saw them alive again.
The Rescue
The Water Police launch Cambria came round Bradleys Head on patrol just after it happened. Sergeant William Shakespeare raced in and sent Constables George Day and Ernest Maguire into the water. Every boat nearby joined in: the pilot steamer Captain Cook II, the Harbour Trust's Lady Hopetoun, the ferry Kummulla turning back from Taronga Zoo wharf, the tug Bimbi, the naval launch Sapphire and the ferry Woollahra, which lowered her boats. Barnes was pulled off a raft by the ferry Kurraba and, once he'd recovered a bit, went back out in a lifeboat to help. According to Brew, the Bimbi picked up 12 survivors, the Sapphire another dozen and the Cambria 11.
The survivors and the dead were brought to the Man O'War Steps beside the Fort Macquarie tram depot, which became a makeshift casualty station. Ambulances ran the injured up Macquarie Street to Sydney Hospital while crowds of relatives and onlookers packed Bennelong Point. The fire tug Pluvius searched by spotlight until after 8pm.
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Recovering the Dead
The next morning's Herald reported 11 bodies recovered, 26 people missing and more than 50 injured in hospital. Harbour Trust divers Thomas Carr and William Harris went down to the wreck, in about 20 metres of water, working two-hour shifts and cutting their way in with hacksaws. They brought up 13 bodies that first day. Mary Corby was found with her little daughter still in her arms.
Several days later the smashed hull sections were towed to Whiting Beach near Taronga Zoo, and bodies kept turning up over the next three weeks. Brew gives the toll as 35 by eight days after the collision. The last of the missing, Eugen Wolff of Vaucluse, was recovered from the wreck in late November. Then one more "missing" man, Arthur Hardy, walked into the Water Police station alive. His attaché case had been found floating in the wreckage, but he'd jumped off the ferry at the Quay just as the gangway came in. The final toll was set at 40.
The dead were a cross-section of Sydney. Brew lists six schoolchildren aged 11 to 15 and the science master of Sydney Boys' High, three doctors (one of them the Navy surgeon William Paradice), three more Navy men, seven Garden Island tradesmen, holidaymakers from NSW and Victoria, a six-times Mayor of Leichhardt and Millicent Bryant, who only seven months earlier had become the first Australian woman to get a pilot's licence. Most of the dead came from Watsons Bay and Vaucluse.
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Who Was to Blame?
This is where it got messy, and it stayed messy for four years. Most witnesses, other ferry captains included, agreed on two things: the Tahiti was going too fast, and the Greycliffe had for some reason turned sharply left into her path. Barnes said he hadn't consciously changed course. A few minutes out of Garden Island he'd felt the ferry pull to port, put it down to "slackness in the chains" of the steering gear, and corrected for it. Carson said he saw the ferry swing towards him, rang the engines astern and changed course.
Sydney Ferries came up with the "bow theory": that when a big ship and a small one run on parallel courses in shallow water, with the big one going faster, its bow wave can drag the small one into it. That would have put the blame on the Tahiti.
The inquiries
- The Marine Court of Inquiry, under the Supreme Court judge James Lang Campbell, accepted that the Tahiti was probably doing 12 knots against a permitted eight, but rejected evidence that the Greycliffe had turned straight into her path. Steve Brew believes this left Carson unfairly blamed.
- The coroner's inquest and a civil action in the Admiralty Court both threw out the bow theory. They accepted that the Tahiti was going too fast, but found the collision wouldn't have happened if the Greycliffe hadn't turned into her path. The courts had trouble getting evidence from the Tahiti's people between her voyages, and at one point there was an embarrassing clash between the courts themselves.
- The final court of appeal gave its verdict in 1931. Both captains were found guilty of contributory negligence, but the "Greycliffe's navigator" was held twice as much to blame as Carson.
Over time, then, the blame shifted away from the liner's pilot and onto Barnes and the likely failure of the Greycliffe's steering gear. The Greycliffe's design came in for criticism too: from her wheelhouse there was no clear view of ships coming up from behind. Carson paid a price all the same. He and his family lived at Watsons Bay among the victims' families, and Brew, a distant relative of Carson's, says some people there treated them as outcasts.
Picking Up the Pieces
Sydney's Lord Mayor, John Mostyn, opened the Greycliffe Disaster Relief Fund at the Town Hall within days. The first gifts were £50 from Amelia Marshall of Waverley and a guinea each from a Moore Park chemist and a Sydney Boys' High student, Frank Little. When the fund was wound up in March 1931 it had raised £6,281 plus £536 in interest. Thirty-three people got between £3 and £110 for clothes or funerals, and ten widows got between £275 and £878.
The Royal Shipwreck Relief and Humane Society gave nine bravery awards for the rescue: two silver medals, three bronze and four certificates of merit. Constables Day and Maguire got bronze medals, and Sergeant Shakespeare, who died in May 1928, was commended after his death.
In April 1928 Harbour Trust divers spent two weeks blowing up what was left of the wreck. Her engine was the one part to survive. It went to New Zealand in 1928 and from 1938 drove ammonia compressors and butter churns at the Tīrau dairy factory in the Waikato. After about 30 years of service there it went to MOTAT, the Museum of Transport and Technology in Auckland, where it was set up as a working exhibit.
The Tahiti's Own End
The Tahiti outlived her victim by less than three years. She left Wellington on 12 August 1930 for San Francisco with 103 passengers and 149 crew. Early on 15 August, about 480 nautical miles southwest of Rarotonga, her starboard propeller shaft broke and holed her hull. Her engineers fought the flooding for close to 60 hours. The Norwegian steamer Penybryn stood by through the night, and the American steamer Ventura took everyone off. The Tahiti sank at 4.42pm on 17 August 1930 without the loss of a single life. The court of inquiry in Wellington called it "a peril of the sea" and praised her master, T. A. Toten.
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Remembering the Greycliffe
The Greycliffe Memorial Gates at St Peter's Church, Watsons Bay, on Old South Head Road, were paid for by public subscription and dedicated by Bishop D'Arcy Irvine in May 1929. The rector, the Rev. J. F. Cherry, said they remembered not only the locals but everyone who died in the tragedy. Brew says the original timber gates have gone, but plaques remembering them are still on either side of the entrance.
In May 2007, for the 80th anniversary of her licence, the Australian Women Pilots' Association put a plaque on Millicent Bryant's grave. There is also a novel: Eleanor Dark's Waterway (1938) draws partly on the disaster.
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Timeline
- c. 1852 - Greycliffe House is completed at Vaucluse for John Reeve.
- 19 April 1904 - Port Kingston (later the Tahiti) is launched at Govan, Scotland.
- 1911 - The Greycliffe is built at Balmain. The Union Steam Ship Company buys the Port Kingston and renames her Tahiti. Her first voyage on the new route begins on 11 December.
- 1920 - Sydney Ferries Limited takes over the Greycliffe.
- 3 November 1927 - The Tahiti runs down the Greycliffe off Bradleys Head, and 40 people die.
- 4 November 1927 - Divers recover 13 bodies from the wreck.
- Late November 1927 - The last bodies are recovered and Arthur Hardy turns up alive.
- Late 1927 to early 1928 - The Marine Court of Inquiry and the coroner's inquest sit.
- April 1928 - Divers blast apart the remains of the wreck. The engine goes to New Zealand.
- May 1929 - The Greycliffe Memorial Gates are dedicated at St Peter's, Watsons Bay.
- 17 August 1930 - The Tahiti sinks in the South Pacific with no lives lost.
- 1931 - The final appeal holds both masters negligent, with the Greycliffe's navigator twice as much to blame. The relief fund is wound up in March.
- 1938 - The Greycliffe's engine starts work at the Tīrau dairy factory. Eleanor Dark's Waterway is published.
- 6 December 2003 - Steve Brew launches Greycliffe: Stolen Lives at the Australian National Maritime Museum.
- May 2007 - A plaque is unveiled on Millicent Bryant's grave.
Where the Sources Disagree
- Departure time. Wikipedia says the Greycliffe left the Quay at 4.15pm. Steve Brew's account on the Australian Police site calls it "the regular 4.14 p.m. run".
- The youngest victim. Wikipedia says the two-year-old boy died with his grandparents. The Sydney Morning Herald's 2003 article says he was killed with his mother and grandmother.
- How many children. Wikipedia says seven of the 40 dead were under 20. Brew counts six schoolchildren aged 11 to 15, and the two-year-old is counted on top of those.
- The memorial gates. Brew dates the dedication to 11 May 1929. Monument Australia, quoting the Sydney Morning Herald of 27 May 1929, gives Saturday 25 May 1929.
- Who was to blame. The Marine Court of Inquiry leaned towards the Tahiti and her speed. The inquest and the Admiralty Court put the main fault on the Greycliffe turning into her path. The 1931 appeal split the blame two to one against the ferry. Brew argues that pilot Carson was unfairly tarnished.
- The Tahiti's size. Wikipedia gives 7,585 gross tons. Brew says almost 7,600 tons, and the same account later calls her "the 8000-ton liner".
My Earlier Posts
- St Peter's Church - Watson's Bay, home of the Greycliffe Memorial Gates
- The Man O'War Steps - Farm Cove, where the survivors and the dead were brought ashore
- Taronga Zoo - From Moore Park to Bradleys Head
- The Wreck of the Dunbar, Sydney's other great maritime tragedy
- Vaucluse House, the Wentworth home
Sources
- Wikipedia, "Greycliffe disaster" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greycliffe_disaster
- Wikipedia, "RMS Tahiti" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Tahiti
- Wikipedia, "Greycliffe House" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greycliffe_House
- Steve Brew, "The 1927 Tahiti-Greycliffe Disaster", Australian Police (The Thin Blue Line) - https://australianpolice.com.au/nsw-police-history-index/water-police/the-1927-tahiti-greycliffe-disaster/
- "Dredging up tragic memories", Sydney Morning Herald, 5 December 2003 - https://www.smh.com.au/national/dredging-up-tragic-memories-20031205-gdhx31.html
- Monument Australia, "Greycliffe Memorial Gates" - https://www.monumentaustralia.org/themes/disaster/maritime/display/95277-greycliffe-memorial-gates
- Monument Australia, "Millicent Bryant" - https://monumentaustralia.org.au/themes/people/aviation/display/22035-millicent-bryant
- Steve Brew, Greycliffe: Stolen Lives, Navarine Publishing, 2003
- Photographs: Australian National Maritime Museum on The Commons and other contributors, via Wikimedia Commons
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