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THE MAHOGANY SHIP.
By George R. Leggett.
ON the coast between Port Fairy and
Warrnambool, buried under the sand-
hills, lies a vessel concerning which there
is no definite history. Her name is un-
known and her history is a matter of
conjecture. I have searched old records in
an effort to trace the earliest allusions
to her, and recently I have had several
inquiries from Portland concerning the
story of this vessel. Mr. N. Learmonth
tells me that the position of the wreck
is 142deg., 23ft., 25in. east longitude; 38deg.,
21ft., 24in. south latitude. He got this
from the notes of T. H. Osborne, and
he goes on to say that the ship lies
embedded under tons of sand, and none of
the present generation has seen it.
I have discovered recently a letter of
Captain John Mason, an old resident of
Belfast (now Port Fairy), and I shall
quote it just as it is:—
"Riding along the beach from Port Fairy
to Warrnambool in the summer of 1846,
my attention was attracted to the hull
of a vessel embedded high and dry in the
hummocks far above the reach of any
tide. It appeared to have been that of a
vessel of about 100 tons burthen, and from
its bleached and weather-beaten appear-,
ance must have been there for many years.
The spars and decks were gone and the
hull was full of drift sand. The timber
of which she was built had the appearance
of mahogany or cedar. The fact of the
vessel being in that position was well
known to the whalers in 1846, when the
first whaling station was formed in the
neighbourhood, and the oldest natives,
when questioned, stated that their know-
ledge of it extended from their earliest
recollections. My attention was again
directed to this wreck during a conversa-
tion with Mr. McGowan, the superinten-
dent of the post-office in 1869, who, on
making inquiries as to the exact locality,
informed me that it was supposed to be
one of a fleet of Portuguese or Spanish
discovery ships, one of them having parted
from the others in a storm, and she was
never heard of again. He referred me
to a notice of a wreck which occurs in the
novel 'Geoffrey Hamlyn,' by Henry Kingsley,
in which it is set down as a Dutch
or Spanish vessel, and forms the subject
of a remark from one of the characters,
who said 'that the English should never
sneer at these two nations, for they were
before you everywhere,'"
I have found mention of something else
which may have some connection with
this historical wreck. During the construc-
tion of the Belfast harbour works Mr.
Smale, diver, picked up from the bed of
the River Moyne a beautifully worked
rapier supposed to have been a naval offi-
cer's sword of the 17th century. The ques-
tion may be asked as to whether it origin-
ally belonged to one of the survivors of
the vessel buried in the sand. Perhaps
a reader of "The Australasian" can tell
me where that rapier is now.
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