Sir Henry Browne Hayes – The Convict Knight Who Built Vaucluse – And Why Vaucluse Is Called Vaucluse

Sir Henry Browne Hayes was a knight, a former sheriff of Cork and a convicted kidnapper, and he's the man who built the very first house at Vaucluse. In 1797 he carried off a Quaker heiress named Mary Pike and forced her through a sham wedding. He was sentenced to death, had it commuted to transportation for life, and turned up in Sydney in July 1802 with plenty of money in his pocket. Over the next ten years he fell out with a ship's surgeon and with Governor King, held what's regarded as the first Masonic meeting in Australia, and got himself sent to Van Diemen's Land and then the Newcastle coal mines. In between he set himself up on a pretty patch of harbourside land near South Head, which he called Vaucluse. Legend says he ringed it with Irish turf to keep the snakes out. He was pardoned, sailed home in 1812, was shipwrecked in the Falklands on the way, and died in Cork in 1832. The house he started later became William Charles Wentworth's Vaucluse House, and the name he gave it, borrowed from a valley in the south of France, now belongs to the whole suburb.

Sir Henry Browne Hayes in a portrait miniature dated to about 1824, back home in Cork after his Sydney years. Attributed to Adam Buck, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

A Cork Man of Means

Hayes was born in 1762 (the old Dictionary of Australian Biography hedges with "1761 or early in 1762"). He was the son of Attiwell Hayes of Cork. The Australian Dictionary of Biography calls Attiwell "a reputable and opulent citizen", and Wikipedia says he was a wealthy brewer and miller who died in 1799.

Young Henry did well for himself in Cork. He became a captain in the South Cork militia and was made a freeman of the city in November 1782. In 1790 he was one of the city's sheriffs, and he was knighted that same year. The ADB thinks the knighthood was probably a reward for looking after the visiting Lord Lieutenant while he was sheriff. The same entry adds, a bit drily, that he had "an inclination to irregular behaviour".

In 1783 he married Elizabeth Smyth. Wikipedia says they had one son and three daughters, and the ADB just says "several children". Elizabeth died in 1794, which left Hayes a widower in his early thirties.

Vernon Mount

The family seat was Vernon Mount, a Georgian villa on the hill above Douglas outside Cork. It was built in the 1780s or early 1790s for Attiwell Hayes, with designs attributed to the architect Abraham Hargrave, and it was named after George Washington's Mount Vernon. Attiwell didn't move in after his wife died. He leased it to Henry instead, who is said to have spent a fortune on the interiors, murals included. The Irish Georgian Society calls the house "a building of national importance". Sadly it was gutted by fire in July 2016 and is now a shell.

Vernon Mount, the Hayes family house outside Cork where Mary Pike was taken in 1797, photographed in August 2016 after the fire that gutted it. Guliolopez, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Abduction of Mary Pike, 1797

Mary Pike was born in Cork in 1776. She was the only surviving daughter of Samuel Pike, whose family ran a bank in the city. When her father died in 1796 she inherited a fortune. The ADB puts it at £20,000, and Wikipedia's Hayes article gives a range of anywhere from £20,000 to £80,000. She was living at Woodhill with the family of Cooper Penrose, her aunt's brother.

On the night of 22 July 1797, Hayes set his trap. According to the Mary Pike entry, which follows the Dictionary of Irish Biography, she was lured out with a forged letter, supposedly from her mother's doctor, saying her mother was gravely ill. Her carriage was stopped on the road from Woodhill and she was taken to Vernon Mount. There Hayes and his sister tried to force her into a marriage. The old Dictionary of Australian Biography says a man dressed up as a priest went through the form of a wedding ceremony while Mary protested. She never accepted it as a marriage. Her uncle Richard tracked her down to Vernon Mount and got her out.

Hayes was outlawed and the government put up a £1,000 reward for him. He didn't go far, though. The ADB says he hid for a while and then lived quite openly for two years. Then comes the famous bit of cheek. According to the Dictionary of Australian Biography, he walked into the shop of an old family follower and suggested the man might as well collect the reward himself. Mary Pike's Wikipedia entry gives a slightly different version: Hayes wrote to Mary offering to give himself up for trial if the reward was withdrawn.

The Trial

The trial opened at the Cork spring assizes in April 1801. Mary Pike's entry gives the date as 13 April. It was, as one writer put it, "one of the sensations of the day", and Hayes turned up with a crowd of influential friends. Prosecuting was John Philpot Curran, the most famous courtroom voice in Ireland. Hayes was found guilty and the jury recommended mercy. He was sentenced to death, and the sentence was commuted to transportation for life to New South Wales.

Mary Pike never really got over it. The Dictionary of Irish Biography, as quoted on Wikipedia, says she appears to have "developed a pathological fear of the male sex" and lived in a Quaker retreat. Other reports say she was admitted to an asylum. She died in 1832, the same year as Hayes, leaving a fortune of £55,000.

John Philpot Curran, the famous Irish barrister who led the prosecution against Hayes at the Cork assizes in 1801. Unknown artist, National Portrait Gallery London, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Voyage of the Atlas, 1801–1802

Hayes was shipped out on the convict transport Atlas under Captain Richard Brooks. The ship sailed from Ireland on 29 November 1801 and called at Rio de Janeiro and the Cape on the way. The ADB says flatly that it was "the worst in the history of transportation". Of the 151 men and 63 women on board, 28 men and 2 women died on the voyage, and more died just after landing. Governor King blamed Brooks, saying the deaths came from his negligence and from overcrowding, because the captain had packed the ship with his own private cargo.

Hayes didn't suffer like the men below decks. He paid the captain a hefty sum for a privileged passage and ate at his table. That didn't stop him making enemies, though. He fell out badly with the ship's surgeon, Thomas Jamison, and when the Atlas reached Sydney in July 1802 Hayes was given six months' imprisonment "for his threatening and improper conduct".

Sydney about 1802, the year Hayes stepped ashore. Engraving after Charles-Alexandre Lesueur of the French Baudin expedition, published by François Péron in 1807. After Charles-Alexandre Lesueur, State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

A Thorn in Governor King's Side

The ADB sums up Hayes's time in New South Wales as "noteworthy largely for his war against authority". He made friends with the colony's awkward customers. Among them were Maurice Margarot and John Grant. All three kept up their defiance of Governor Philip Gidley King. Grant ended up exiled to Norfolk Island, and Margarot and Hayes were packed off to Van Diemen's Land. King called Hayes "a restless, troublesome character", and he was keen to keep him well out of town.

Governor Philip Gidley King, who called Hayes "a restless, troublesome character". Oil portrait, about 1798. Unknown artist, State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Did Hayes have a hand in the Castle Hill rising of March 1804? The ADB says there's "no positive evidence" he took an active part, but he was certainly a suspect, and "it would have been out of character if he had not encouraged it behind the scenes". That's a hunch, not a finding, so take it as one.

Maurice Margarot, one of Hayes's friends among the colony's troublemakers. Unknown artist, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The First Masonic Meeting, 14 May 1803

Hayes was a keen Freemason, and in 1803 he set about founding a lodge in Sydney. The old Dictionary of Australian Biography says King had already refused permission for the meeting, so Hayes held it anyway. It's doubtful he really had a warrant to set up a lodge, though he claimed he did. The meeting went ahead on 14 May 1803. The Sydney Gazette of 22 May 1803 is among the ADB's sources for it, and the ADB says the date "is regarded as the foundation day of Freemasonry in Australia". It also got Hayes into hot water with the Governor all over again.

Building Vaucluse

In 1803 Hayes bought land on the south side of the harbour, out past Rose Bay towards South Head. In those days it was isolated bush country. The New South Wales State Heritage Register listing, as summarised on Wikipedia, says he bought the grant made to Thomas Laycock in 1793 and the grant next to it. Laycock's grant was 80 acres (32 hectares). Wikipedia's Vaucluse suburb page names the second one as Robert Cardell's grant of 1795, which was 25 acres (10 hectares). The same listing puts his holding at about 105 acres (42 hectares). So yes, the Laycock grant was the heart of it, together with Cardell's next door.

One observer described the place as "a mere waste of land until Sir Henry Hayes built a dwelling house upon it and cultivated a garden". He put up a small stone cottage, two huts and some outbuildings, cleared about 50 acres (20 hectares) for farming and planted several thousand fruit trees. None of the trees survive. The newspapers called it a small but very charming farm. When he wasn't away on his enforced "travels", the ADB says, he lived there "in remarkable style and freedom for a convict".

Rose Bay and Vaucluse from the air, undated. In 1803 this was bush country well away from town, which is just where Governor King wanted Hayes. NSW State Archives and Records, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Irish Turf and the Snakes

This is the story everyone remembers. Vaucluse was snake country, so the tale goes, and Hayes, being an Irishman, knew that St Patrick had driven the snakes out of Ireland. So he had Irish turf (or soil, depending on who's telling it) shipped out and laid in a ring or trench around his house to keep the reptiles off.

How true is it? It's best treated as a legend with a grain of truth in it. The old Dictionary of Australian Biography of 1949 is careful to say only that "there is some warrant for the story". The ADB of 1966 tells it straight: he "surrounded it with a moat of turf which he had imported from Ireland", and it adds with a wink that "curiously, the turf appeared to have had the desired effect". Neither says how much turf, how it got here or who dug it in. The fancier versions, with Irish convict women singing and calling on St Patrick as they worked, turn up in later popular retellings. I couldn't find them in any of the reference works.

Vaucluse House today. Hayes's little stone cottage is still in there, swallowed up inside the Wentworths' Gothic additions. Cismok, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Bligh, the Rum Rebellion and the Coal Mines

Hayes came back from Van Diemen's Land and spent most of his time at Vaucluse. Then came 26 January 1808, when the New South Wales Corps arrested Governor William Bligh. Hayes, never one to keep his head down, said he was on Bligh's side. For that, Major George Johnston sent him to the coal mines at Newcastle.

He was let out after eight months but was back there by May 1809. This time the commandant, Lieutenant William Lawson, charged him with trying to bring the rebel government into ridicule. Given what most of Sydney thought of the rebel government, that can't have been hard.

Governor William Bligh. Hayes took his side after the Rum Rebellion and paid for it with a trip to the Newcastle coal mines. John Condé after John Russell, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Pardon, Shipwreck and Home to Cork

The sources tell the pardon two ways. The ADB says Bligh made out a pardon in 1809 and that Governor Lachlan Macquarie honoured it. The older Dictionary of Australian Biography says Bligh would have pardoned him if he could have got hold of the Great Seal, and that Hayes was pardoned under Macquarie in 1812. Either way, Hayes sailed for home in December 1812.

Governor Lachlan Macquarie, under whom Hayes's pardon finally took effect. Painted by Arthur Levett Jackson in 1874. Arthur Levett Jackson, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The trip home had one last adventure in it. He sailed on the Isabella, and also aboard was Joseph Holt, the United Irishman of the 1798 rebellion. The ship was wrecked in the Falkland Islands. They survived, and Holt's memoirs give an account of the wreck.

Joseph Holt of the 1798 United Irish rebellion, who sailed home with Hayes on the Isabella and was wrecked with him in the Falklands. Unknown artist, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Hayes then lived quietly in Ireland for nearly twenty years. He died at the end of April or the start of May 1832, aged about 70, and was buried in the family crypt of Christ Church on South Main Street in Cork. His portrait miniature at the top of this page dates from his later years there. In 2017 a play called Sir Henry was staged about his life.

Why Is Vaucluse Called Vaucluse?

Short answer: Hayes named it, and he borrowed the name from France.

There's a famous spring in Provence called the Fontaine de Vaucluse. It sits at the foot of a limestone cliff about 230 metres high, it's the source of the River Sorgue, and it's the biggest spring in France. The village beside it, Fontaine-de-Vaucluse, isn't far from L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue and Avignon. The village was once just called Vaucluse, and it later gave its name to the whole French department of Vaucluse. The word comes from the Latin vallis clausa, meaning "closed valley". That's a fair description of a valley shut in by cliffs.

The spring itself, the Fontaine de Vaucluse, where the River Sorgue comes out from under a limestone cliff. JYB Devot, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

What made the place famous across Europe was the Italian poet Petrarch. In the 1300s he made Vaucluse his favourite home and wrote about it in his poems. He said the spring, "famous for itself long ago, became even more famous by my long stay and my songs". He left in 1353. A Petrarch museum now stands on the site of his house, and in the 1700s a column went up in his honour. By Hayes's time Vaucluse was a byword for a romantic hideaway in a wild, rocky valley.

The poet Petrarch, who made Vaucluse famous in the 1300s. Italian portrait, first half of the 16th century. Italian 16th century, National Gallery of Art, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

So when Hayes found his own secluded spot of rocks, gullies and bush tucked in behind South Head, he called it Vaucluse. Most sources go further and say he did it because he admired Petrarch. Wikipedia's Vaucluse suburb page calls him "an avid admirer" of the poet who named the house after Petrarch's poem about the spring. The Vaucluse House article is more careful: he named it "probably" after Petrarch's Fontaine-de-Vaucluse. Another passage there just says he named it after the village in the south of France. So the French Vaucluse is certain. The Petrarch-loving knight is the usual explanation, but I couldn't find Hayes himself saying so in any source I could read.

The name stuck to the house, then to the estate, and eventually to the whole suburb. Wikipedia's suburb page says plainly that the area "derived its name" from the original Vaucluse House.

Fontaine-de-Vaucluse in Provence, seen from the castle. This is the Vaucluse our Vaucluse is named after. Mathieu Brossais, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Petrarch museum and library at Fontaine-de-Vaucluse, on the spot where his house stood. Alessandro Colombo, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

What Happened to the Estate After Hayes

Once Hayes left in 1812, the place drifted for a while. The heritage listing says Vaucluse was leased until 1814 and then sat mostly empty, apart from a year's rental to Captain John Piper in 1814. Ownership seems to have been muddled for a few years and the estate "passed through several hands". Piper then acquired it in 1822.

In 1827 William Charles Wentworth bought it from Piper. The heritage listing gives the date as 7 August 1827 in one place, while Wikipedia's history section says 27 August 1827. Wentworth built it up with further grants and purchases to 515 acres (208 hectares), stretching from the Macquarie Lighthouse on South Head to the eastern heights of Rose Bay. Over the next decades he and his wife Sarah turned the farm cottage into the Gothic mansion we know now.

Hayes's little house didn't vanish, though. According to the heritage listing, parts of his Vaucluse Cottage are still there inside Wentworth's house: the vestibule, the little tea room, the east end of the dining room and the stone walls inside the drawing room. There's also a good chance the Wentworths' kitchen garden was first laid out by Hayes. The State Government bought Vaucluse House in 1910 and opened it to the public, and today Museums of History NSW looks after it.

Vaucluse House photographed by Sam Hood for Cinesound in November 1932. Sam Hood, State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Vaucluse House in the 1930s, by then a public museum. Royal Australian Historical Society, Osborne Collection, no known restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

Vaucluse House in 2009. Bgabel, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Timeline

• 1762 – Henry Browne Hayes born in Cork, son of Attiwell Hayes.
• November 1782 – Admitted a freeman of the city of Cork.
• 1783 – Marries Elizabeth Smyth.
• 1790 – One of the sheriffs of Cork, and knighted.
• 1793 – Thomas Laycock granted 80 acres on the south side of the harbour, the future Vaucluse.
• 1794 – Death of his wife Elizabeth.
• 1795 – Robert Cardell granted 25 acres next door.
• 22 July 1797 – Abducts Mary Pike and takes her to Vernon Mount. She is rescued and he is outlawed.
• April 1801 – Tried at the Cork assizes, prosecuted by John Philpot Curran, and found guilty. His death sentence is commuted to transportation for life.
• 29 November 1801 – The Atlas sails from Ireland.
• 6 or 7 July 1802 – Arrives in Sydney and is given six months' imprisonment over his clash with surgeon Thomas Jamison.
• 1803 – Buys the Laycock grant and the land next to it, builds his cottage and names it Vaucluse.
• 14 May 1803 – Holds the Masonic meeting regarded as the foundation of Freemasonry in Australia.
• March 1804 – Castle Hill rising. Hayes is suspected, but no evidence ties him to it.
• King's time – Sent to Van Diemen's Land for defying Governor King.
• 1808 – Sides with the deposed Governor Bligh and is sent to the Newcastle coal mines. Released after eight months.
• May 1809 – Back at Newcastle and charged by Lieutenant William Lawson.
• 1809 or 1812 – Pardoned (sources differ, see below).
• December 1812 – Sails for home on the Isabella with Joseph Holt and is shipwrecked in the Falklands.
• 1814 – Captain John Piper rents Vaucluse for a year.
• 1822 – Piper acquires the estate.
• August 1827 – William Charles Wentworth buys Vaucluse from Piper.
• April or May 1832 – Hayes dies in Cork and is buried in Christ Church. Mary Pike dies the same year.
• 1910 – The NSW Government buys Vaucluse House.
• 2016 – Vernon Mount in Cork is gutted by fire.

Where the Sources Disagree

• Arrival date. The ADB and the Dictionary of Australian Biography say Hayes arrived on 6 July 1802. Wikipedia's article on the Atlas says the ship arrived at Port Jackson on 7 July 1802.
• Mary Pike's fortune. The ADB says £20,000, the Dictionary of Australian Biography says "over £20,000", and Wikipedia's Hayes article says anywhere from £20,000 to £80,000.
• His children. Wikipedia says one son and three daughters. The ADB says "several children".
• How he was caught. The Dictionary of Australian Biography says he walked into a family follower's shop and invited the man to claim the reward. Mary Pike's Wikipedia entry says he wrote to her offering to surrender if the reward was withdrawn.
• The pardon. The ADB says Bligh made out a pardon in 1809 and Macquarie honoured it. The Dictionary of Australian Biography says Bligh couldn't issue it without the Great Seal, and that Hayes was pardoned under Macquarie in 1812.
• Where he was exiled. The ADB says Van Diemen's Land under King, then Newcastle under the rebel government. Norfolk Island is sometimes mentioned in connection with him, but in the ADB it was his friend John Grant who was sent there, not Hayes.
• Who had Vaucluse after him, and when Wentworth bought it. The ADB says it "passed to John Piper after Hayes's departure" and went to Wentworth "in 1829". The heritage listing says Piper rented it in 1814 and acquired it in 1822, and dates Wentworth's purchase to August 1827, either the 7th or the 27th depending on which part of the article you read.
• Why "Vaucluse". Every source agrees the name comes from Vaucluse in France. The Petrarch connection is given as fact on Wikipedia's Vaucluse suburb page, but the Vaucluse House article only says "probably".
• The snake-proof turf. The 1949 Dictionary of Australian Biography says there is only "some warrant" for the story, while the 1966 ADB tells it as fact. It's best read as a legend with something behind it.

My Earlier Posts

• Vaucluse House
• Vaucluse from North Head
• The Wentworth Family of Vaucluse – Vaucluse House, the Wentworth Mausoleum and a Full Family Tree
• Philip Gidley King – Third Governor of New South Wales
• The Castle Hill Rebellion – Battle of Vinegar Hill – 5 March 1804
• Arrest of Governor Bligh – The Rum Rebellion – 26 January 1808
• The Rum Rebellion – 26th January 1808 – Governor William Bligh Is Overthrown
• Strickland House (Carrara) – Vaucluse
• St Michael's Church – Vaucluse

Sources

• N. S. Lynravn, "Hayes, Sir Henry Browne (1762–1832)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 1, 1966 – adb.anu.edu.au
• Percival Serle, "Hayes, Sir Henry Browne", Dictionary of Australian Biography, 1949 – Project Gutenberg Australia
• "Henry Browne Hayes", Wikipedia – en.wikipedia.org
• "Mary Pike", Wikipedia (drawing on T. O'Riordan, Dictionary of Irish Biography) – en.wikipedia.org
• "Vernon Mount", Wikipedia – en.wikipedia.org
• "Atlas (1801 South Shields ship)", Wikipedia – en.wikipedia.org
• "Vaucluse House", Wikipedia (based on the NSW State Heritage Register listing 00955) – en.wikipedia.org
• "Vaucluse, New South Wales", Wikipedia – en.wikipedia.org
• "Fontaine-de-Vaucluse", Wikipedia – en.wikipedia.org
• Further reading cited by the ADB: C. H. Bertie, "The Story of Vaucluse House and Sir Henry Browne Hayes", JRAHS, vol. 3, 1917; P. H. Morton, "The Vaucluse Estate from 1793 to 1829", JRAHS, vol. 15, 1930; Sydney Gazette, 22 May 1803; Rolf Grunseit, Australia's Rebel Convict (2011).

The Wentworth Family of Vaucluse – Vaucluse House, the Wentworth Mausoleum and a Full Family Tree

If you've ever wandered the lawns at Vaucluse House or walked up Chapel Road to the little stone chapel behind the iron palisade, you've been standing in the middle of the Wentworth family story. It starts with an Irish surgeon who was tried for highway robbery at the Old Bailey and a Staffordshire girl transported for stealing clothes. It runs through their son William Charles Wentworth, explorer, barrister, newspaperman and the man who chaired the committee that drafted New South Wales's constitution. And it ends, more or less, in a vault cut into a sandstone outcrop above Parsley Bay, where William was laid to rest in 1873 in front of a crowd that took up half of Sydney. This page covers the house, the mausoleum, and the family, with a full family tree of who married whom.

Vaucluse House, the Wentworth family home on the harbour at Vaucluse. Cismok, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

D'Arcy Wentworth – The Surgeon with a Past

The Australian Wentworths start with D'Arcy Wentworth, born near Portadown in County Armagh, Ireland. Wikipedia gives his birthday as 14 February 1762, while the Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB) puts a question mark after the year. He was the son of an innkeeper, but the family was very proud of its roots. The ADB says the Irish Wentworths could trace their line back twenty generations to Wentworth Woodhouse in Yorkshire, and they claimed kinship with the great Earl Fitzwilliam. That connection mattered. D'Arcy could lean on Fitzwilliam's influence, and borrow his money, for the rest of his life.

He trained in medicine in Ireland, went to London hoping for a post with the East India Company and then landed in serious trouble. At the Old Bailey sessions starting on 12 December 1787 he was charged three times with highway robbery. He was found not guilty twice and acquitted for lack of evidence the third time. He was back in the dock in December 1789, and again found not guilty. At the end of that case the prosecutor told the judge that Mr Wentworth had taken a passage with the fleet to Botany Bay as an assistant surgeon and wanted to be discharged straight away.

So D'Arcy didn't come out as a convict, despite the rumours that followed him (and his son) for decades. He arrived at Port Jackson in the Second Fleet transport Neptune on 28 June 1790 and sailed on 1 August in the Surprize for Norfolk Island.

Catherine Crowley

Also on the Neptune was a young convict woman named Catherine Crowley. The ADB says she was convicted at the Staffordshire Assizes in July 1788 of stealing "wearing apparell" and sentenced to seven years' transportation. She and D'Arcy began a relationship on board, and their son William Charles was born around the time they reached Norfolk Island. Wikipedia says he was born at sea on the Surprize, standing off the island in a violent storm, on 13 August 1790. The ADB says Catherine arrived at Norfolk Island "with the infant William" on 7 August. Those two dates can't both be right.

Wikipedia says a daughter, Martha, died at four months old, and two more sons followed: Dorset in 1793 and Matthew in 1795. The family returned to Sydney in 1796 and settled at Parramatta, where Catherine died in January 1800. After her death D'Arcy renamed the boys. Dorset became D'Arcy and Matthew became John.

Making His Fortune

D'Arcy did very well in the colony. He was superintendent of convicts on Norfolk Island, then an assistant surgeon, and in time principal surgeon. Under Governor Macquarie he ran the Sydney police as chief police magistrate and was treasurer of the Police Fund. With Alexander Riley and Garnham Blaxcell he built the "Rum Hospital" in Macquarie Street in exchange for a rum import monopoly. He was one of the founders of the Bank of New South Wales in 1817. The ADB says that when he died he was "probably the wealthiest man in the colony", leaving at least 22,000 acres.

His private life was colourful. After Catherine died, Maria Ainslie, an emancipist widow, kept house for him and mothered his three boys. Later he lived with Ann Lawes, a free woman who'd come out as a nanny with the Gore family. The two of them had eight children. D'Arcy died at Homebush on 7 July 1827 (per Wikipedia) and was buried at St John's Cemetery, Parramatta. His tomb reads "an honest man, the noblest work of God".

William Charles Wentworth – Explorer, Barrister, Newspaperman, Politician

William Charles Wentworth, painted by James Anderson in 1872. James Anderson, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

William was sent to school in England with his brother D'Arcy in 1803, according to the ADB. He came back to Sydney in 1810 without much direction, and was soon riding his father's grey gelding, Gig, to victory in the Hyde Park races. In October 1811 Macquarie made him acting provost-marshal and he was granted 1750 acres on the Nepean.

Over the Blue Mountains – 1813

In May 1813 William set off with Gregory Blaxland, William Lawson, four servants, four horses and five dogs to find a way over the Blue Mountains. After twenty-one days, not quite sure they'd crossed the range, he wrote in his journal: "we have at all events proved that they are traversable, and that, too, by cattle". He got another 1000 acres for his trouble.

A page from Wentworth's journal of the 1813 Blue Mountains expedition, 11 May to 6 June 1813. Wentworth, W. C. (William Charles), 1790-1872, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Law, the Book and the Newspaper

Back in England, William entered the Middle Temple in February 1817 to prepare himself to be "the instrument of procuring a free constitution for my country". He wrote A Statistical, Historical, and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales, arguing for trial by jury, free immigration and an elected assembly. The ADB dates it to 1819, while the Vaucluse House heritage history on Wikipedia says 1818. He was called to the Bar in February 1822.

Along the way he learned something that stung. In 1819 the MP H. G. Bennet claimed in print that D'Arcy had been sent out as a convict. William's own digging showed that wasn't true, but that his father had indeed been tried for highway robbery. The ADB says this is when he threw in his lot for good with the Australian-born, the currency lads and lasses.

He came home in 1824 with another lawyer, Dr Robert Wardell, and a printing press. On 14 October 1824 the first issue of The Australian came out, without asking anyone's permission. Governor Brisbane decided to let it run. Under Governor Darling the paper and its owners were at war with Government House, and Wentworth was in the Supreme Court defending the press against seditious libel charges in 1828 and 1829.

When Darling sailed home in 1831, Wentworth threw a party at Vaucluse. The Australian reported that more than 4,000 people turned up. A bullock was roasted whole, along with twelve sheep and 4,000 loaves, and casks of gin and beer were laid on. Bonfires were lit on the highest hill, and the party went on until morning.

Politics and the Constitution

Wentworth entered the Legislative Council in 1843 at the head of the poll for Sydney. He helped set up the first proper system of state primary schools in 1848–49 and led the push for the University of Sydney in 1849–50, sitting on its first senate. In 1853 he chaired the select committee that drafted the new constitution. It proposed an upper house drawn from a hereditary colonial peerage. Sydney's press and public speakers howled the idea down, so the peerage was dropped, but the rest of the constitution went through. Wentworth sailed to England in 1854, and in July 1855 he saw the new Constitution become law.

Sarah Cox – The Blacksmith's Daughter

Sarah Wentworth (née Cox), portrait by William Nicholas. William Nicholas, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Sarah Cox was born in Sydney on 1 January 1805. Her parents were Francis Cox, a blacksmith, and Frances Morton, both ex-convicts who had finished their sentences. They never married, because Cox had a family back in England. Sarah was working as an apprentice milliner when, in 1825, she sued a ship's captain named Payne for breach of promise. It was the first case of its kind in Australia, and she won. Her barrister was William Charles Wentworth.

By then the two were already together. Their first daughter, Thomasine, was named after Governor Sir Thomas Brisbane and born about six months after the court case. William and Sarah married at St Philip's Church, Sydney, on 26 October 1829. Three days earlier he had printed a love poem to her in his own paper, The Australian.

Society wasn't kind to Sarah. The heritage history of the mausoleum notes that she was shut out socially because two of her children had been born before the wedding. William's own illegitimacy, convict mother and his father's highway robbery trials were common knowledge too. And William didn't make it easy. In 1830 he fathered a son, Henry, with Jemima Eagar, the estranged wife of Edward Eagar. The ADB says, with some understatement, that his way of life became "spacious even to the point of lapses from his marriage vows".

A bust of Sarah Wentworth, on show at Vaucluse House. Will Thorpe, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Vaucluse House – Building on Sir Henry's Cottage

The Vaucluse estate began as land grants to Thomas Laycock (1793), Robert Cardell (1795) and Francis MacGlynn. In August 1803 the Irish convict knight Sir Henry Browne Hayes bought Laycock's and Cardell's grants and built a stone cottage. It was L-shaped, with a terrace on its east side, and the house itself actually stood on part of MacGlynn's land. He named the place Vaucluse, probably after Fontaine-de-Vaucluse in the south of France, the spring made famous by the poet Petrarch. The remains of his cottage are still at the heart of Vaucluse House today. There's some support for the old story that he ringed the place with Irish turf to keep the snakes out.

The spring at Fontaine-de-Vaucluse in France, the place Hayes is thought to have named his estate after. Joel Takv, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

Hayes was pardoned and left in 1812. Captain John Piper rented the place for a year in 1814 and acquired it in 1822. Then William Charles Wentworth bought it from Piper. The Vaucluse House heritage history (as given on Wikipedia) puts the purchase on 27 August 1827, and the ADB's Wentworth entry also says 1827. The ADB's entry on Hayes, though, says the estate passed to Wentworth in 1829. With an extra grant of 370 acres, the estate grew to 515 acres (208 hectares).

The family moved in during 1828, and Wentworth spent the next twenty-five years building. George Cookney designed the sandstone stables in 1829. Extensions of about 1834–42 are attributed to James Hume, and a drawing room of 1844–47 to Mortimer Lewis. Wentworth went for the Gothic Revival style of Government House, with turrets and battlements facing the harbour. The heritage history suggests the old-world Gothic look was meant to hint at his ancient family line. There was a big kitchen wing and convict barracks too. In 1830 someone reported that "in this garden there grows the most delicious fruit in the colony".

Vaucluse House, with the Gothic Revival battlements Wentworth chose to face the harbour. Edgars Pudans, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Inside, the drawing room was meant as a place for suitors to meet the Wentworth daughters, since Sarah was so cut off socially. By 1853 it held Brazilian rosewood furniture upholstered in crimson damask. Upstairs, the big upper hall was partitioned off with cupboards to make a bedroom for the second son, Fitzwilliam. The house was never really finished in the 1840s.

Daughters' Houses on the Estate

Two of the daughters got a slice of the estate. Wentworth gave part of it to Thomasine and her husband, Thomas Fisher. They never built on it and went back to England, and the land later became the site of Carrara, now Strickland House. In 1850 Fanny's husband, John Reeve, bought 14 acres fronting Shark Bay from his father-in-law. There he built Greycliffe, a Rustic Gothic villa by John Frederick Hilly, finished in 1851. It still stands in Nielsen Park.

Greycliffe House in Nielsen Park, built for Fanny Wentworth and her husband John Reeve in 1851. Sardaka at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Years in England

In March 1853 the family sold most of the contents of Vaucluse House at auction and headed for Europe. In December the house and 163 acres inside the fences were leased to John Hosking for three years. The family was overseas by 1854. Fanny and John Reeve sailed with Wentworth when he left Sydney that year.

William Charles Wentworth leaving Sydney in 1854 with his daughter Fanny and her husband John Reeve (published 1857). Unknown artist, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Apart from a short trip home in 1861–62, when he agreed to be President of the Legislative Council during a crisis, Wentworth spent the rest of his life in England. The family's return in 1861–62 brought the cast-iron Gothic Revival verandah you see today, a fountain in the pleasure garden and a first-floor bathroom. In England he lived at Merly House near Wimborne in Dorset, and he died there on 20 March 1872. He left his wife Sarah, five of their seven daughters and two of their three sons. His probate was sworn at £96,000 in Sydney and £70,000 in London.

The Funeral – Sydney Turns Out, 6 May 1873

Wentworth had long wanted to be buried at Vaucluse. As early as 1831, after Sarah's father Francis Cox died, he planned to consecrate land there for a family vault. He told the family he wanted to lie near a rocky outcrop on the hill above Parsley Bay, a spot you could see from the front verandah that looked over the harbour and the estate.

His body was brought home. Sarah accepted the government's offer of a public funeral, and the service was held at St Andrew's Cathedral on 6 May 1873. Two thousand people crowded in, and the only women allowed were the women of the family. The whole interior, floor included, was draped in black. On the cedar coffin lay "two wreaths of immortelles and other plants mostly indigenous to Vaucluse".

The day was declared a public holiday. The procession out to Vaucluse was so long that "when the first portion had reached ... Rushcutters Bay, the last of the carriages had not left George Street". The heritage history says 60,000 to 70,000 people lined the route. The ADB calls it a "state funeral", while the heritage listing and the Vaucluse House history call it a public funeral. Either way, the government paid the honours and Sydney turned out.

"The Funeral of the Late Mr. W. C. Wentworth at Sydney", a wood engraving published on 17 June 1873. Unknown artist, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

At the vault, Bishop Frederic Barker consecrated the ground. Sir James Martin gave a long speech. He said there was "no Westminster Abbey in which to place the bones of our illustrious dead", but that here, "under the blue Australian sky, and by the shores of the broad and blue Pacific", they would lay Wentworth's remains.

The Wentworth Mausoleum, Chapel Road

The Wentworth Mausoleum at 5 Chapel Road, Vaucluse, inside its stone and iron palisade. Collywolly, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The mausoleum is Sarah's work as much as anyone's. After William died she sent her son-in-law Thomas Fisher a sketch of the spot and instructions that the vault be cut into a big single rock but "left in its natural state outside". She said she'd go to Brussels herself to order the marble and would bring iron gates and railings back with her.

The newspapers described the finished vault as cut out of the solid rock, built of brick and cemented inside, 28 feet long, 13 feet wide and 7 feet high, with slate shelves all round. The builder was Alexander Dean. Sarah then commissioned the architects Mansfield Brothers to design a Gothic Revival chapel over the vault, to match the house. It went up slowly. In November 1873 one letter complained that the "men are working, but as Miss W said they are drunk and away oftener than at work". The stone and iron palisade fence was finished by early March 1874.

The Gothic Revival chapel designed by Mansfield Brothers over the Wentworth vault. Collywolly, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

"Wentworth's Tomb, Vaucluse", an early 1900s postcard by William Henry Broadhurst. Broadhurst, William Henry, 1855-1927, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Who Lies There

• William Charles Wentworth (1790–1872), buried 6 May 1873.
• Three of his children, whose remains were brought back from Europe and reburied in the vault: William Charles (1827–1859), Sarah Eleanor (1835–1857) and Isabella Christiana (1840–1856).
• Fitzwilliam Wentworth, the second son, who died in Sydney on 8 August 1915. He was buried there after a service at St Michael's, Vaucluse, and the vault was then sealed for good.

The family had hoped for more. Their daughter Eliza wrote that "it was Papa's wish to have my grandfather, my Uncle & Willie & Bell & poor Nellie & we should all like to be there when our time comes". Sarah wanted them to "all rest together in our native place". But she died at Eastbourne in England on 14 July 1880 and was buried in Ocklynge Cemetery there. A brass plaque in the mausoleum to Sarah Eleanor seems to be behind the long-held belief that Sarah herself lies in the vault. She doesn't. On 15 December 2015 a plaque in her own memory was put up inside.

The plaque to Sarah Wentworth placed inside the mausoleum in December 2015. She is actually buried at Eastbourne in England. Trahelliven, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Another view of the mausoleum, now hemmed in by Vaucluse houses. Collywolly, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

On 14 October 1927 the Church of England Property Trust took on the care of the mausoleum by deed. In 1997, with the family's approval, the Historic Houses Trust (now Museums of History NSW) leased it for 99 years. The bush and rocks on Parsley Hill that once framed it have long since given way to houses, so you can't see it from Vaucluse House any more, but the grounds are open to visitors. It was added to the State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999.

The mausoleum on Chapel Road. Sardaka, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

From Family Home to Museum

From the late 1870s the house was lived in by family, friends or caretakers. The unmarried daughter Eliza kept up a strong interest in the place until she died in 1898. In 1900 the contents were auctioned, and the house sat empty.

From the 1890s there was pressure to win back harbour foreshore for the public. On 6 July 1910 the government took control of 9.3 hectares of the Vaucluse estate, which became Nielsen Park. The Vaucluse House history on Wikipedia, drawn from the heritage listing, says the government's 1910 resumption of about 4 hectares secured the house. The same history also mentions some 11 hectares, house and garden included, being resumed after the house had stood empty until 1911. The ADB's Hayes entry says simply that the government bought it in 1910 as a memorial to Wentworth and to responsible government.

The Nielsen Park–Vaucluse Trust opened the house on weekends and holidays, though it was nearly empty. It also pulled down the ruins of the convict barracks and workers' cottages, and in 1917 added two towers to the eastern front to make the place look finished. Today Vaucluse House is a museum run by Museums of History NSW, with the mausoleum on Chapel Road managed as part of it.

Vaucluse House in the 1930s, from the Royal Australian Historical Society's Osborne Collection. Royal Australian Historical Society, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Vaucluse House photographed by Sam Hood in November 1932, in a picture labelled "Cinesound". Sam Hood, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Vaucluse House in 1979. wilford peloquin, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The pleasure garden at Vaucluse House. Sardaka at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Greycliffe House and Nielsen Park, once part of the Wentworth estate. Edgars Pudans, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Wentworth's marble statue in the Great Hall of the University of Sydney, the university he helped found. Sumple, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Wentworth Mausoleum today. Collywolly, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Wentworth Family Tree

Here's the family laid out generation by generation, with husbands and wives where the sources name them. Where I couldn't find a marriage or a date in a source, I've said so rather than guess. Where sources give different years, I've shown both.

Person	Dates	Spouse / partner	Notes
Generation 1
D'Arcy Wentworth	1762 (ADB "1762?") – 7 July 1827	Partners (never married): Catherine Crowley (c.1772–1800); Maria Ainslie (1774–1841); Ann Lawes (1791–1849)	Surgeon, police magistrate. Buried at St John's, Parramatta.
Generation 2: D'Arcy's children with Catherine Crowley
William Charles Wentworth	13 Aug 1790 (Wikipedia; the ADB implies a few days earlier) – 20 Mar 1872	Sarah Cox (1 Jan 1805 – 14 July 1880), married 26 Oct 1829, St Philip's, Sydney	Buried in the Wentworth Mausoleum. Also fathered a son, Henry (b. 1830), with Jemima Eagar.
Martha Wentworth	Died at four months old (dates not found)	none	Per Wikipedia
D'Arcy Wentworth junior (born Dorset Crowley)	23 June 1793 – 21 July 1861	Elizabeth Macpherson, married 27 Apr 1826, St Cuthbert's, Edinburgh	Army captain, police magistrate, MLC 1843–45. No children. Buried at St John's, Parramatta.
John Wentworth (born Matthew)	1795 – 1820	Not found in my sources	The ADB says he died at sea as a petty officer in 1820.
Generation 2: D'Arcy's children with Ann Lawes (dates from Wikipedia; spouses not given in my sources)
George Wentworth	1810 – 1851	Unknown
Martha Wentworth	1813 – 1847	Unknown
Sophia Wentworth	1816 – 1878	Unknown
Robert Charles Wentworth	1818	Unknown	Only one year given
Charles John Wentworth	1819 – 1854	Unknown
Mary-Ann Wentworth	1820 – 1870	Unknown
Katherine Wentworth	1825 – 1898	Unknown
D'Arcy Charles Wentworth	1828 – 1866	Unknown	Born after his father's death
Generation 3: the children of William Charles and Sarah Wentworth (seven daughters and three sons)
Thomasine Wentworth	1825 – 1913	Thomas Fisher (marriage date not found)	Named after Governor Sir Thomas Brisbane. Given land on the estate (later the Strickland House site).
William Charles Wentworth	1827 – 1859	Not found in my sources	Reburied in the mausoleum
Fanny Katherine Wentworth	1829 – 1893	John Reeve, married 1847	Built Greycliffe, 1851
Fitzwilliam Wentworth	1833 (Wikipedia) or 1832 (SMH obituary title) – 8 Aug 1915	Mary Jane Hill, daughter of George Hill (Mayor of Sydney 1850)	Last person buried in the mausoleum, 1915
Sarah Eleanor Wentworth	1835 – 1857	None recorded	Reburied in the mausoleum
Eliza Sophia Wentworth	1838 – 1898	Unmarried	The last surviving unmarried daughter
Isabella Christiana (Christina) Wentworth	1840 – 1856	None recorded	Reburied in the mausoleum
Laura Wentworth	1842 – 1887	Henry William Keays-Young, married 1872
Edith Wentworth	1845 – 1891	Rev. Sir Charles Gordon-Cumming-Dunbar, 9th Baronet, married 1872
D'Arcy Bland Wentworth	1848 – 1922	Not found in my sources
Henry (son with Jemima Eagar)	b. 1830	Unknown	Born outside the marriage
Generation 4 onward: the line through Fitzwilliam (the only grandchildren my sources name)
William Charles Wentworth III	1871 – 1949	Florence Denise Griffiths, daughter of George Neville Griffiths MLA	Son of Fitzwilliam and Mary Jane
William Charles "Bill" Wentworth IV	1907 – 2003	Not covered in my sources	Liberal MP 1949–77, first Minister in charge of Aboriginal Affairs. Great-grandson of W. C. Wentworth.
Diana Wentworth	Dates not given	Mungo Ballardie MacCallum (1913–1999)	Listed in the same generation as Bill
Mungo Wentworth MacCallum	1941 – 2020	Not covered here	Son of Diana and Mungo

Grandchildren through Thomasine, Fanny, Laura, Edith and D'Arcy Bland weren't listed in any source I could check, so they're not shown.

Timeline

• 1762 – D'Arcy Wentworth is born near Portadown, Ireland (14 February, per Wikipedia).
• 1787–1789 – D'Arcy is tried for highway robbery at the Old Bailey and acquitted every time.
• July 1788 – Catherine Crowley is convicted at the Staffordshire Assizes and sentenced to seven years' transportation.
• 28 June 1790 – D'Arcy and Catherine arrive at Port Jackson in the Neptune.
• August 1790 – William Charles Wentworth is born at or near Norfolk Island.
• 1793 / 1795 – Dorset (later D'Arcy junior) and Matthew (later John) are born.
• January 1800 – Catherine Crowley dies at Parramatta.
• 1803 – Sir Henry Browne Hayes buys the Laycock and Cardell grants and builds his Vaucluse cottage.
• May–June 1813 – William crosses the Blue Mountains with Blaxland and Lawson.
• 1817 – D'Arcy helps found the Bank of New South Wales, and William enters the Middle Temple.
• 1819 – William's Description of New South Wales is published (1818 in one source).
• 1822 – William is called to the Bar, and Captain John Piper acquires Vaucluse.
• 14 October 1824 – The first issue of The Australian comes out.
• 1825 – Sarah Cox wins Australia's first breach of promise case, and Thomasine is born.
• 7 July 1827 – D'Arcy dies at Homebush.
• 27 August 1827 – William buys Vaucluse from Piper (the ADB's Hayes entry says 1829).
• 1828 – The family moves into Vaucluse.
• 26 October 1829 – William marries Sarah Cox at St Philip's.
• 1831 – More than 4,000 people celebrate Governor Darling's departure at Vaucluse.
• 1843 – William tops the poll for Sydney and enters the Legislative Council.
• 1847 – Fanny marries John Reeve, and Greycliffe is finished in 1851.
• 1849–50 – William leads the founding of the University of Sydney.
• 1853 – William chairs the constitution committee, the house contents are auctioned and the house is leased to John Hosking.
• 1854 – The family leaves for England.
• July 1855 – The New South Wales Constitution becomes law.
• 1856, 1857, 1859 – Isabella, Sarah Eleanor and William junior die.
• 1861–62 – Brief return to Sydney. William is President of the Legislative Council, and the Gothic verandah is built.
• 20 March 1872 – William dies at Merly House, Dorset.
• 6 May 1873 – Public funeral at St Andrew's Cathedral and burial in the vault at Vaucluse.
• March 1874 – The mausoleum's palisade fence is finished.
• 14 July 1880 – Sarah dies at Eastbourne and is buried at Ocklynge Cemetery.
• 1898 – Eliza Sophia, the last unmarried daughter, dies.
• 1900 – The house contents are auctioned.
• 6 July 1910 – The government takes control of part of the estate, which becomes Nielsen Park, and Vaucluse House is secured.
• 8 August 1915 – Fitzwilliam dies. He's buried in the mausoleum, and the vault is sealed.
• 1917 – Two towers are added to the house's eastern front.
• 14 October 1927 – The Church of England Property Trust takes on the mausoleum.
• 1997 – The Historic Houses Trust leases the mausoleum for 99 years.
• 2 April 1999 – Vaucluse House and the mausoleum are added to the State Heritage Register.
• 15 December 2015 – A plaque to Sarah Wentworth is placed in the mausoleum.

Where the Sources Disagree

• When Wentworth bought Vaucluse. The Vaucluse House heritage history (via Wikipedia) gives 27 August 1827, and the ADB entry on Wentworth also says 1827. The ADB entry on Sir Henry Browne Hayes says the estate passed to Wentworth in 1829.
• When Piper got it. The same Vaucluse House history says Piper rented it for a year in 1814 and acquired it in 1822. It also says the estate "passed through several hands" between 1813 and 1827.
• William's birth. Wikipedia says he was born on the Surprize off Norfolk Island on 13 August 1790. The ADB says his mother reached Norfolk Island "with the infant William" on 7 August.
• William's schooling in England. The ADB says he was sent to England in 1803. The Wikipedia pages on D'Arcy junior and Vaucluse House say 1802, and the D'Arcy junior page adds that schooling began in October 1803.
• The Description. The ADB dates it to 1819, while the Vaucluse House history says 1818.
• D'Arcy junior's age at death. The ADB says he died in 1861 "aged 65". Wikipedia gives his birth as 23 June 1793, which would make him 68.
• Fitzwilliam's birth year. Wikipedia's family list says 1833. The 1915 Sydney Morning Herald obituary, as titled by Obituaries Australia, says 1832.
• "State" or "public" funeral. The ADB calls it a state funeral. The heritage history used for the Wentworth Mausoleum and Vaucluse House articles says Sarah accepted the government's offer of "the honours of a public funeral".
• How much land was taken in 1910–11. The Nielsen Park history says 9.3 hectares on 6 July 1910, with 21 hectares more in 1911. The Vaucluse House history mentions both "some 11 hectares" and a 1910 resumption of about 4 hectares. The ADB's Hayes entry just says the house was "bought in 1910".
• Is Sarah in the mausoleum? For years people believed she was. She's actually buried at Ocklynge Cemetery, Eastbourne, and the old belief probably came from the plaque to her daughter Sarah Eleanor.

My Earlier Posts

• Vaucluse House
• Blaxland, Wentworth & Lawson – Crossing the Blue Mountains
• The Sydney Mint – Macquarie Street (the old Rum Hospital D'Arcy helped build)
• Strickland House (Carrara) – 52 Vaucluse Road – Vaucluse
• Philip Gidley King – Third Governor of New South Wales

Sources

• Michael Persse, "Wentworth, William Charles (1790–1872)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol 2, 1967 – https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/wentworth-william-charles-2782
• J. J. Auchmuty, "Wentworth, D'Arcy (1762–1827)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol 2, 1967 – https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/wentworth-darcy-1545
• "Hayes, Sir Henry Browne (1762–1832)", Australian Dictionary of Biography – https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/hayes-sir-henry-browne-2172
• Wikipedia, "Wentworth Mausoleum" (based on the NSW State Heritage Register listing) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wentworth_Mausoleum
• Wikipedia, "Vaucluse House" (based on the NSW State Heritage Register listing) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaucluse_House
• Wikipedia, "William Wentworth" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wentworth
• Wikipedia, "D'Arcy Wentworth" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27Arcy_Wentworth
• Wikipedia, "D'Arcy Wentworth Jr." – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27Arcy_Wentworth_Jr.
• Wikipedia, "Sarah Wentworth" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Wentworth
• Wikipedia, "William Charles Wentworth IV" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Charles_Wentworth_IV
• Wikipedia, "Political families of Australia" (Wentworth/Hill/Griffiths section) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_families_of_Australia
• Wikipedia, "Nielsen Park" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nielsen_Park
• Wikipedia, "Strickland House, Vaucluse" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strickland_House,_Vaucluse
• Pictures: Wikimedia Commons, with individual credits under each image.

The Greycliffe Ferry Disaster – Sydney Harbour – 3 November 1927

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 on Sydney Harbour. She was a wooden, double-ended steam ferry built at Balmain in 1911 for the Watsons Bay run. Unknown photographer, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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 Greycliffe in Sydney Cove around 1920. Unknown photographer, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Greycliffe coming alongside the wharf at Watsons Bay, from a Rose Series photo postcard. Rose Series postcard, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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.

Greycliffe House at Vaucluse around 1875, the old Wentworth-family house on the harbour that shares the ferry's name. Unknown photographer, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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.

RMS Tahiti in Sydney Harbour around 1920. Australian National Maritime Museum on The Commons, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

The ship as she started life, as RMS Port Kingston, built on the Clyde in 1904. Unknown photographer, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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.

An ambulance waiting at Fort Macquarie on the afternoon of 3 November 1927. Australian National Maritime Museum on The Commons, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

An injured man with a policeman at Fort Macquarie after the collision. Australian National Maritime Museum on The Commons, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

A man carrying an injured boy at Fort Macquarie. Australian National Maritime Museum on The Commons, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

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.

A partially submerged wreck at Bradleys Head, November 1927, probably the Greycliffe. Australian National Maritime Museum on The Commons, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

A sheerlegs crane, probably at work salvaging the Greycliffe, November 1927. Australian National Maritime Museum on The Commons, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

One of the Greycliffe's wheelhouses at Bradleys Head, November 1927. Australian National Maritime Museum on The Commons, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

Part of the Greycliffe's hull after it was dragged to Whiting Beach. Australian National Maritime Museum on The Commons, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

The funnel and a hull section of the Greycliffe on Whiting Beach, November 1927, with Cremorne Point behind. Unknown photographer, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The remnants of the Greycliffe being lifted at Whiting Beach, Mosman. Unknown photographer, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Greycliffe's remains being lifted from the harbour after the collision. Unknown photographer, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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 grave of William Paradice, the Navy surgeon who died in the Greycliffe. Jodie Newell, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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.

Lifeboats pulling away from the sinking Tahiti in the South Pacific, August 1930. Australian National Maritime Museum on The Commons, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

Passengers from the sunken Tahiti waiting to be taken aboard the American steamer Ventura, August 1930. Australian National Maritime Museum on The Commons, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

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.

Bradleys Head seen from Mrs Macquaries Point today. The Greycliffe went down roughly halfway between Garden Island and the headland. Ymblanter, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Greycliffe House, Vaucluse, as it looks today. Sardaka, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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