HMS ''Mermaid'' was a cutter built in

Howrah Howrah (, , alternatively spelled as Haora) is a city in the Indian state of West Bengal. Howrah is located on the western bank of the Hooghly River opposite its twin city of Kolkata. Administratively it lies within Howrah district, and is th ...

, India, in 1816. The British

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against F ...

purchased her at

Port Jackson Port Jackson, consisting of the waters of Sydney Harbour, Middle Harbour, North Harbour and the Lane Cove and Parramatta Rivers, is the ria or natural harbour of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The harbour is an inlet of the Tasman Sea (p ...

in 1817. The Navy then used her to survey the Australian coasts. In 1820 she grounded and in 1823 was condemned for survey work. The Navy sold her to the colonial government which used her to run errands until she was wrecked in 1829.

Career

''Mermaid'' was launched at Howrah in 1816 and the Royal Navy purchased her at

in 1817.

Phillip Parker King Rear Admiral Phillip Parker King, FRS, RN (13 December 1791 – 26 February 1856) was an early explorer of the Australian and Patagonian coasts. Early life and education King was born on Norfolk Island, to Philip Gidley King and Anna Jo ...

used her between December 1817 and December 1820 to survey parts of the Australian coast that

Matthew Flinders Captain Matthew Flinders (16 March 1774 – 19 July 1814) was a British navigator and cartographer who led the first inshore circumnavigation of mainland Australia, then called New Holland. He is also credited as being the first person to u ...

had not already surveyed. King circumnavigated the Australian mainland and conducted a survey of the Inner Route through the

Great Barrier Reef The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest coral reef system composed of over 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands stretching for over over an area of approximately . The reef is located in the Coral Sea, off the coast of Queensland, ...

View of the encampment in Careening bay where the Mermaid was repaired

In 1820 ''Mermaid'' grounded at Careening Bay,

Kimberley, Western Australia The Kimberley is the northernmost of the nine regions of Western Australia. It is bordered on the west by the Indian Ocean, on the north by the Timor Sea, on the south by the Great Sandy and Tanami deserts in the region of the Pilbara, an ...

; gotten off, she only reached Sydney with difficulty. A survey resulted in her condemnation for survey work and her sale in 1823 to the colonial government. In September 1823 ''Mermaid'' carried

John Oxley John Joseph William Molesworth Oxley (1784 – 25 May 1828) was an explorer and surveyor of Australia in the early period of British colonisation. He served as Surveyor General of New South Wales and is perhaps best known for his two exp ...

as he explored the Queensland coast south of

Port Curtis Port Curtis is a suburb of Rockhampton in the Rockhampton Region, Queensland, Australia. In the , Port Curtis had a population of 281 people. Geography The Fitzroy River bounds the suburb to the north-east. Gavial Creek, a tributary of th ...

, discovering the

Brisbane Brisbane ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the states and territories of Australia, Australian state of Queensland, and the list of cities in Australia by population, third-most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a populati ...

and

Tweed Tweed is a rough, woollen fabric, of a soft, open, flexible texture, resembling cheviot or homespun, but more closely woven. It is usually woven with a plain weave, twill or herringbone structure. Colour effects in the yarn may be obtained ...

rivers. At Moreton Bay he rescued

Thomas Pamphlett Thomas Pamphlett (1788?–1838), sometimes Pamphlet, also known as James Groom, was a convict in colonial Australia. He is best known for his time as a castaway in the Moreton Bay area, halfway up the eastern coast of Australia, in 1823. He was mar ...

and John Finnegan, who had been ship-wrecked earlier in the year. In September 1825 ''Mermaid'' transported

Edmund Lockyer Edmund Lockyer, (21 January 1784 – 10 June 1860) was a British soldier and explorer of Australia. Born in Plymouth, Devon, Lockyer was the son of Thomas Lockyer, a sailmaker, and his wife Ann. Lockyer began his army career as an ensign in t ...

Moreton Bay Moreton Bay is a bay located on the eastern coast of Australia from central Brisbane, Queensland. It is one of Queensland's most important coastal resources. The waters of Moreton Bay are a popular destination for recreational anglers and are ...

so he could explore the upper reaches of the

Brisbane River The Brisbane River is the longest river in South East Queensland, Australia, and flows through the city of Brisbane, before emptying into Moreton Bay on the Coral Sea. John Oxley, the first European to explore the river, named it after the Go ...

. In August 1826 John Richardson travelled on ''Mermaid'' from

Fort Dundas Fort Dundas was a short-lived British settlement on Melville Island between 1824 and 1828 in what is now the Northern Territory of Australia. It was the first of four British settlement attempts in northern Australia before Goyder's survey a ...

, on Melville Island, to

Timor Timor is an island at the southern end of Maritime Southeast Asia, in the north of the Timor Sea. The island is East Timor–Indonesia border, divided between the sovereign states of East Timor on the eastern part and Indonesia on the western p ...

to obtain seeds. Around 1829 the ship was rigged as a two-masted

schooner A schooner () is a type of sailing vessel defined by its rig: fore-and-aft rigged on all of two or more masts and, in the case of a two-masted schooner, the foremast generally being shorter than the mainmast. A common variant, the topsail schoon ...

Loss

Captain Samuel Nolbrow and ''Mermaid'' departed Sydney on 16 May 1829, bound for Port Raffles with government dispatches and provisions for King George's Sound. She proceeded on the inner passage to Torres Straits. At 6 a.m. on 13 June she struck an uncharted reef on the southern side of Flora Reef, Queensland. (Nolbrow gave the location as at .) She bilged and her crew abandoned her that evening with no loss of life.

Post-script

An underwater archaeology team led by the

Australian National Maritime Museum The Australian National Maritime Museum (ANMM) is a Australian government, federally operated maritime museum in Darling Harbour, Sydney. After considering the idea of establishing a maritime museum, the federal government announced that a nation ...

in early 2009 rediscovered the wreck.

Citations and references

Citations References * * Nicholson, Ian Hawkins (1996) ''Via Torres Strait – A maritime history of the Torres Strait route and the ship's post office at Booby Island''. (Roebuck Society Publication No.48). *

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Mermaid (1817), HMS Cutters of the Royal Navy Shipwrecks of Queensland Australian Shipwrecks with protected zone

Career

Loss

Post-script

See also

Citations and references

External links