The HMS Sirius
collection will be re-housed in the former Protestant Chapel/Youth Centre at
the end of the year via a project funded through a Commonwealth Your Community Heritage Program Grant
and the Norfolk Island Government. We have been busy writing the interpretive panels that will form
part of the new displays and researching the story of how the objects were
recovered has provided some fascinating information.
Items were occasionally recovered from the wreck site
during the 190 years from her wrecking in 1790. Some were washed ashore; others
retrieved from the reef or, in the case of one anchor, deliberately blasted
from the reef in 1905.
This anchor had
remained visible on the reef at low tide prompting a New
South Wales politician Sir Francis Suttor to request it be
retrieved and shipped to Sydney,
to be placed alongside Arthur Phillip’s statue in the Botanical Gardens.
However when the anchor finally arrived in Sydney it had both flukes missing and didn’t
look as imposing or attractive as Sir Suttor expected, so instead he had it
positioned in Macquarie Place.
 |
| Recovered off the reef in 1905 and now in Macquarie Place, Sydney |
The anchor had been blasted up from the ocean floor
by members of the local Methodist
Church. The Administrator
at the time provided the explosives and the men carried out the exercise with
the promise of a 20 pound reward. They
were reminded of their financial obligation to the Methodist
Church in Sydney to encourage their involvement in this
exercise!
Interest was revived in 1965 when a film crew from
the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) arrived on the island. They
interviewed locals to identify the wreck site and were taken out to the area
just seaward of the surf zone. Diving over the area they saw copper fastenings
bolts, rudder and stern post fittings, copper sheathing tacks, lead shot and a
large anchor in-situ. Jack Doyle filmed a story which was aired on the 31st
October 1965 in the Weekend Magazine segment. This was the first underwater
footage of the Sirius site. The visit by the ABC film crew sparked a
desire by locals and others to recover the anchor and other relics known to be
on the reef.
 |
| Now on display in the Norfolk Island Museum |
The anchor seen on the ABC footage was finally raised
by locals in 1973 with the assistance of the SS Holmburn, a Wellington, New Zealand registered ship as
captured in our photo. Apparently she nearly came to grief during the exercise
and her master was reported to have been dismissed on return to New Zealand.
 |
| The Holmburn in 1975 |
Numerous objects were removed from the site by local
divers particularly from the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. The
introduction of the Historic Shipwrecks Act in 1976 with its aim of protecting
the relics of historic shipwrecks prompted many locals to offer the items they
had in their personal possession to the Museum and these items are now
accessioned into the official collection. Relics may not now be removed from
the site without a permit.
Five official expeditions
to recover artefacts from the HMS Sirius wreck site were conducted
between 1983 and 2002. In the
lead up to the 200th anniversary of the landing of the First Fleet
in 1788, it was felt that a project that investigated the remains of the
fleet’s flagship would be at the heart of the Bicentennial spirit. Jennifer
Amess from the commonwealth department with then responsibility for historic
shipwrecks, proposed the project. The Australian Bicentennial Authority
provided the funds to conduct a survey to determine if the remains merited
salvage and if they did a full-scale operation would commence.
The Western Australian
Museum played a pivotal
role, with personnel from the Maritime Archaeology and Conservation departments
on all expeditions. Western Australia
had been at the forefront of maritime archaeology after the discovery off the
coast in 1963 of two seventeenth-century Dutch trading ships. The Western Australian
Museum was given the responsibility
for managing the sites and carrying out excavations, thus beginning maritime
archaeology in Australia.
The West Australians were therefore the most experienced marine archaeologists
to undertake the Sirius project. The Western
Australian Museum
team were complimented in each of the expeditions with other experts from Victoria, Tasmania, Queensland and Norfolk Island.
Diving on the wreck site is
dangerous. The ever-pounding
surf causes rapid shifts in the sand and the rubble cover in the lagoon, as
well as the areas between the inner and outer reefs where the wreck occurred.
Standing on the seawall at Slaughter Bay and looking out to sea across the wreck site, is
to be looking straight down the Tasman Sea;
the surf and the swell are nearly always from the southwest so there is rarely
a calm sea. This makes exploration in this area very difficult.
As a result of these
expeditions many remnants from the flagship of the First Fleet are now
available for all to see and our understanding of the circumstances of the
wrecking and the construction of the Sirius are better understood. The
artefacts of HMS Sirius are the most significant array of First Fleet
cultural heritage and as such they hold National significance. It is fitting
therefore that they will be displayed on Norfolk Island
in a museum dedicated to the Sirius
celebrating her life, wrecking and recovery of her artefacts.
