MMAPSS Success

We are delighted to have received notification from the Maritime Museums of Australia Project Support Scheme (MMAPSS) of our successful grant application to undertake the ‘HMS Sirius Collection Condition Assessment 2015’ project. 

Established in 1995 MMAPSS provides funding to support Australia’s maritime heritage. It is jointly funded by the Australian Government and the Australian National Maritime Museum (ANMM).  The Norfolk Island Museum has been extremely fortunate to have been the recipient of numerous grants over the years; grants that have assisted us in caring for the HMS Sirius Collection and funded the research, conservation, care and display of various aspects of Norfolk Island’s maritime heritage.

Carronades

This year’s project provides for a conservator from the ANMM to visit Norfolk Island to conduct an assessment of the condition of the HMS Sirius Collection, the proposed date for the visit is February 2016.  In 2012 the collection was relocated from the Pier Store Museum into a dedicated HMS Sirius Museum, this is in the old Protestant Chapel or the Prince Phillip Youth Centre as some of us will remember.  This dedicated museum offers better environmental conditions than the Pier Store.  The collection is continuously monitored by the museum staff and preventive conservation is applied to ensure it remains stable in the new environment. 

However, it is seven years since a qualified conservator has undertaken a whole of collection condition assessment.  In this time not only the collection on display has been exposed to movement and a fluctuating environment, but the collection in storage has been rehoused into micro-environments.  This amount of changing activity to the collection now requires an assessment to record its condition. It is hoped the assessment will record the collection is in a good condition due to the environmental improvements over this time.  

Sirius artefacts raised from the seabed

Janelle Blucher

The Carronade’s Tampion

Earlier this year we announced that a tampion (or tompion) had been brought back to the island after being at the Department of Materials Conservation at the Western Australian Museum for twenty two years undergoing conservation.  This tampion had been discovered in one of the HMS Sirius carronades when it was recovered from the wreck site.   We are delighted to finally have this object on display in our HMS Sirius Museum in a special cabinet constructed by K.C. Industries.

Myra Stanbury, now an 'Honorary Research Associate' at the Western Australian Museum, was the Registrar during the expeditions to recover the Sirius material from the reef.  She travelled to Norfolk in March this year as a guest presenter for the ‘225^th Anniversary of the wrecking of the HMS Sirius’, bringing with her the tampion.  She said “In the process of conserving the second carronade recovered from the Sirius wreck site a disc-shaped, lathe-turned wooden tampion (or tompion) was found in the muzzle of the gun. 

Made of maple (Acer sp.), the plug was designed to prevent the penetration of sea water into the bore of the muzzle-loading gun which could cause rust to develop and render the gun unserviceable. Sometimes the tampions were carefully sealed with tallow or putty to make them watertight. This appears to have been the method employed on the Sirius carronade as a ‘waxy-oily’ layer of material was removed from the machine-turned inner surface of the tampion before it was placed in a treatment solution to remove some of the reactive iron corrosion products.Attached to the inner side of the tampion was a lanyard consisting of two 34-cm lengths of twisted twine. This was spliced to a ball of string wadding that fitted snugly within the 131 mm bore of the gun. When loaded with a clean round shot to fit the gun the ball of wadding in the muzzle would prevent the displacement of the tampion by the impact of the round shot as it rolled back and forth in the barrel with every roll of the ship. In this way, sometimes helped by the addition of olive oil or other suitable lubricant into the chamber of the gun, the bore was kept in good condition while at sea”.

This tampion is a very significant object. Not only is it a very rare example of a complete tampion of this period, it is now displayed beside the carronade it was recovered from, and the carronade itself is rare for its early short barreled design –  and it is on display within several hundred metres of the site of its recovery.  Come to the HMS Sirius Museum and take a look for yourself, remember entry is free for residents.   (Our image shows the tampion on display.)

And last but not least, I want to say a huge thank you to two amazing people who have volunteered their time at the museum last week.  Some of you may know David and Michelle Cullen being regular visitors to the island, they have been working hard in the Guard House completing a huge task of sorting papers, creating files and entering data.  I think we’ve exhausted the island’s supply of manila folders.  Thank you, thank you …. and see you again next year.

Janelle Blucher

Touching History

   

This is exactly what 8^th generation First Fleeter descendant Andre Forrester did in our museum this week, touched a tangible connection to the history of his forefather.

‘Do not touch’ is a general rule in our museums, particularly when it comes to metal, the moisture, oils and salts on your skin transfer to the object encouraging corrosion.  However, this particular metal object has a sign beside it which reads ‘please touch’.   This object is a ballast block recovered from the wreck of the HMS Sirius during the ‘2002 Sirius Expedition’ the fifth and the last maritime archaeological expedition conducted on the wreck site of this flagship of the First Fleet.  

This iron ballast block has a long conservation story. For many years it has been immersed in a caustic solution undergoing an electrolytic reduction process to remove the chlorides from the metal.  This took multiple changes of more than 120 litres of solution, rinsing and maneuvering of a block weighing in at approximately 100 kg, hundreds of chloride readings and plenty of patience.  Then it was necessary to remove the remaining accretions cemented onto the block, and finally it was ready for applications of rust converters and waxing.  It is these applications and layers of wax that is providing the protective coating that enables it to be ‘touched’.   To list the names of the people that have supported the Norfolk Island Museum with the conservation of this object over so many years, are too many.  However, we’d like to say thanks to Shane McCoy from the Administration Works Depot for his recent work on the final stages and preparation for display.

This is a wonderful addition to our HMS Sirius Museum, housing the most extensive collection of cultural material from the First Fleet.  The First Fleet consisted of eleven ships, nine of these were privately owned and two British naval ships, carrying over 1400 people they left Portsmouth in May 1787 to arrive at Port Jackson in January 1788, these people are the founders of modern Australia.

Andre’s ancestor Robert Forrester was a convict in the First Fleet, making his voyage to Australia on one of the privately owned ships, the Scarborough.  Originally sentenced to death at the Old Bailey for stealing six guineas in gold with a couple of other characters, his sentence was later reprieved to 7 years transportation.  Robert came to live on Norfolk Island between the years of 1791 and 1793 holding a grant of 12 acres at Mount Pitt Path in Queenborough.  Robert Forrester’s descendants have come back to Norfolk to make it their home.  It was an honour to ask Robert Forrester’s descendant Andre to be the first First Fleeter descendant to ‘touch’ this link to his history.

Janelle Blucher

HMS Sirius Website and the Australian Historic Shipwreck Data Base

HMS Sirius Website and the Australian Historic Shipwreck Data Base

Our HMS Sirius website has a new look, actually it has just been updated to have the same ‘new look’ that you can see presented in our HMS Sirius museum.  Once again we are thankful for the wonderful talents of designer, artist, girl of many talents, Haylee Fieldes.

The Home page states the HMS Sirius is Australia’s most important shipwreck. In 1787 she was the lead ship for the First Fleet of eleven ships setting out from Britain on the voyage to establish the first settlement in Australia. They landed at Botany Bay on the 18th January 1788 and soon after established the settlement at Port Jackson.

Within a few weeks of their arrival at Botany Bay, a small group of convicts under the command of Philip Gidley King had set sail to establish another settlement at Norfolk Island, a rocky outcrop 1,500 kilometres north east of Port Jackson. 
It was on this small isolated island that HMS Sirius was lost on March 19, 1790. Her shipwrecking caused great distress to both settlements clinging to life, never far from starvation.

The story of the life and wrecking of HMS Sirius is only one half of her tale. The other is the story that she left lying for close to 200 years on the seafloor, on the reef at Norfolk Island. The recovery of her artefacts over the past 25 years in particular, have revealed much to us. We now have more answers to the story of the circumstances of British settlement in Australia, the Sirius’ construction as a Baltic trader, and the perilous state of the fledgling settlements when she was lost.
Today, the HMS Sirius artefacts are mostly all housed in the Norfolk Island Museum. They comprise the most significant display of First Fleet cultural heritage held anywhere in Australia or its territories. 

The website is user friendly with easy to follow drop down tabs, guiding you further to reveal the story of the HMS Sirius, the recovery of her artefacts, the legal instruments that protect the wreck site, the artefacts, a gallery of images, our bookshop and a page for news items. Maybe you have some Sirius news we could feature on this page?

The HMS Sirius story is also featured on the Australian Government Department of Environment website www.environment.gov.au.  Click on the topic, heritage and historic shipwrecks tabs to take you to the Australian national shipwreck database (ANSDB).  We are in the progress of populating this database to include not just the HMS Sirius story, but all known shipwrecks around Norfolk Island. Features of the ANSDB include fields of information about the vessels, images, links to shipwreck relics recovered from sites, site environment information for divers and site managers and a history field with the ability to attach documents that include names of passengers and crew.

Also included in this website is a system to facilitate the registration of shipwreck material. The Historic Shipwrecks Act 1976 requires all owners of shipwreck material older than 75 years to register their objects.  Registration simply records the details of your shipwreck material and in no way interferes with your ownership. Please contact us at the Norfolk Island Museum to register your objects. Or if you have any information, historical or contemporary images that you wish to contribute towards any of these websites.

Visit our HMS Sirius website at www.hmssirius.com.au

Janelle Blucher

No Ordinary Week!

Tampion removed from HMS Sirius carronade

With the museum being the home of the HMS Sirius collection and last Thursday being the 225^th anniversary of her wrecking, this week was never going to be anything other than extra-ordinary! Planning for this day began well over a year ago and teaming up with the Norfolk Island Travel Centre (NITC) meant that Graeme Henderson and Myra Stanbury could be invited to join us from Western Australia as special guest presenters and a full week of events planned. The NITC brilliantly organised a very special week for the First Fleet descendants and others who travelled especially to mark this special anniversary. Visitor numbers exceeded expectations with over 200 people sitting down to lunch and presentations at the waterfront on the anniversary day. 

Myra Stanbury, Kandy Henderson, Graeme Henderson, Kalle Kasi

Graeme Henderson and Myra Stanbury were of course key personnel from the 1980s maritime archaeological expeditions to recover the Sirius’ artefacts that are now on display in the museum. Graeme led the expeditions and Myra was the Registrar. Their presentations underscored the importance of the Sirius (Graeme’s final presentation was titled: Australia’s most important shipwreck) and the story of the undertaking of the 1980s expeditions and their findings. In her final presentation Myra estimated that 50% of the people involved in the expeditions were local Norfolk Islanders. This week brought together the story of the ship and her wrecking, with the stories of the people who travelled on her final voyage or one of the other ships of the First Fleet, as so many of our visitors this week were their descendants.

The relationship the Norfolk Island Museum has had with the Western Australian Maritime Museum (WAMM) has continued from the time of the expeditions. In particular this has been via communication and support with the on-going conservation of the collection. A number of objects went to the Department of Materials Conservation at the Western Australian Museum for conservation and gradually returned to the island when their treatments were completed. Myra and her colleague from WAMM who also travelled to Norfolk for the week, Kalle Kasi brought with them one of the final objects that has been in treatment over the past 22 years. It was an absolute highlight for us to receive the tampion (or tompion) that had been found inside one of the carronades and display it for this week.

Drawing: Myra Stanbury

Myra has said about the tampion: “In the process of conserving the second carronade recovered from the Sirius wreck site a disc-shaped, lathe-turned wooden tampion (or tompion) was found in the muzzle of the gun. Made of maple (Acer sp.), the plug was designed to prevent the penetration of sea water into the bore of the muzzle-loading gun which could cause rust to develop and render the gun unserviceable. Sometimes the tampions were carefully sealed with tallow or putty to make them watertight. This appears to have been the method employed on the Sirius carronade as a ‘waxy-oily’ layer of material was removed from the machine-turned inner surface of the tampion before it was placed in a treatment solution to remove some of the reactive iron corrosion products.

Myra and Janelle Blucher

Attached to the inner side of the tampion was a lanyard consisting of two 34-cm lengths of twisted twine. This was spliced to a ball of string wadding that fitted snugly within the 131 mm bore of the gun. When loaded with a clean round shot to fit the gun the ball of wadding in the muzzle would prevent the displacement of the tampion by the impact of the round shot as it rolled back and forth in the barrel with every roll of the ship. In this way, sometimes helped by the addition of olive oil or other suitable lubricant into the chamber of the gun, the bore was kept in good condition while at sea”. 

Kalle, Myra and Janelle unpacking the tampion

The tampion is a very special object. Not only is it a very rare example of a complete tampion of this period, it will be displayed beside the carronade it was recovered from – which is on display within several hundreds of metres of the site where it was when the Sirius was wrecked. 

We have had an extraordinarily busy week at the museum. My sincere thanks to the team of Administration workers employed as our Museum Attendants who have worked so hard to ensure that all our visitors had an extraordinary experience on Norfolk Island this week. 

 Photo of the tampion being put on purpose made stand

 Photo of connecting the hemp wading rope

 Photo of maple plug

HMS Sirius, Mosman and NICS

Close to 200 visitors are arriving on Norfolk over this weekend to join in the events planned to commemorate the 225^th anniversary of the wrecking of HMS Sirius at Slaughter Bay on the 19^th March 1790. As the flagship of the First Fleet, the Sirius is arguably Australia’s most important shipwreck and her artefacts the only cultural heritage material we have of the First Fleet. At the museum we are very excited in particular to be welcoming back to the island as special guest speakers, Graeme Henderson and Myra Stanbury both from Western Australia. Graeme led all the 1980s expeditions to recover the Sirius’ artefacts and Myra was the Registrar for these and the 2002 expedition. Now retired, Graeme was the founding Director of the Western Australian Maritime Museum, where Myra still works.  

The Sister Community Agreement between the Municipality of Mosman and Norfolk Island

In addition to the presentations and an official public event to be held at the Sirius monument site on the morning of Thursday the 19^th March by the Office of the Administrator, our Norfolk Island Central School (NICS) children are involved in marking this important historical event in a number of ways.

A video conference will be occurring on the 19^th between Year 7 NICS kids and Mosman Primary school children. Mosman is located on the lower north shore in Sydney and shares a special relationship with Norfolk Island centred on our shared Sirius histories, which was formalised in 1989 with the signing of a Sister Community Relationship Agreement. Since then there have been a number of exchanges between our two locations. In 1990 on the occasion of the 200^th anniversary of the Sirius wrecking, Norfolk Island received a beautiful gift from the people of Mosman of a bas-relief sculpture of the Sirius made by Dr. Alex Sandor Kolozsy that stands in the compound at the back of the Sirius museum.

A handsomely inscribed certificate (photo seen here) confirming the friendship agreement, signed by the then Mayor of Mosman Mr Barry O’Keefe and the then President of the Legislative Assembly of Norfolk Island Mr David Buffett, hangs in the Legislative Assembly offices. It reads:

Bas relief sculpture by Dr. Alex Sandor Kolozsy

Whereas Mosman and Norfolk Island share a strand of the early history of Australia through their association with His Majesty’s Ship Sirius, which following its return from the Cape of Good Hope with food supplies for the fledgling colony of New South Wales, was careened for repairs and refit between 19 June and 7 November, 1789 in a “convenient retired cove” on the north side of the Harbour which became known as Careening Cove and is now Mosman Bay, and which ran aground on the Reef in Sydney Bay, Norfolk Island on 19 March, 1790 and was wrecked whilst carrying personnel and provisions to the Island.

And whereas the Legislative Assembly of Norfolk Island and the Mayor and Aldermen of the Municipality of Mosman have expressed a desire to strengthen the links between peoples of the two communities.

And whereas the Mayor and Alderman of the Municipality of Mosman in Council assembled on the eighth day of August in the year of our Lord One Thousand Nine Hundred and Eighty Nine resolved to enter into a Sister Community Relationship with the people of Norfolk Island.

And whereas the President and Members of the Legislative Assembly of Norfolk Island have also agreed to enter into such a Relationship.

Now these presents confirm the establishment of a Sister Community Relationship between the Municipality of Mosman and Norfolk Island to promote greater awareness of our links and to foster understanding, goodwill and exchanges in diverse fields, including culture, education, sport and tourism between Mosman and Norfolk Island.

Our NICS students have been busy preparing the stories they want to share with Mosman Primary including the wrecking event and what is happening on the island for the commemoration. By using video link-up the kids from Mosman and Norfolk Island can engage directly with each other, fostering the sort of understanding and goodwill that the Agreement envisaged.

Other NICS students have also been busy taking footage of themselves around the island to be sent to the ABC TV show BTN (Behind the News) and made into a ‘Rookie Reporter’ segment, bringing the news of the wrecking anniversary and also life generally on Norfolk to all mainland schools across Australia. BTN is watched daily by students in schools around the country. This is a fantastic opportunity to educate many, many children across Australia of the importance of the Sirius to the Nation. It’s also a wonderful opportunity for our students to proudly showcase their island and unique island life. 

Yet more NICS students, this time the youngest ones, will be displaying art work inspired by the wrecking of the Sirius in the windows of the vacant shop at Leeside Arcade. Make sure you call by during the week to admire their work! Our thanks to Carole and Dan Yager for allowing use of the shop.

And lastly, a NICS primary choir will be entertaining our visitors attending the anniversary day luncheon and presentations by Graeme and Myra which will occur under a marquee behind Slaughter Bay. The students have been rehearsing a song they will present alongside colonial era singer Paul Bonner-Jones. Sincere thanks to NICS Principal Michelle Nicholson and teachers Tanya Delaney, Kate Lindstrom and Mark Hall for embracing this important anniversary and involving our students in so many ways.

The wrecking of the Sirius was ‘the’ major disaster of the earliest years of the new colony. Norfolk Island’s place at the very heart of the start of what was to become Australia has the opportunity to be more widely told and acknowledged through the events happening on the island this week.  It’s going to be a great week to be on Norfolk Island!

For more information on the Sirius see the Museum’s dedicated web site at www.hmssirius.com.au