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

Volunteers come at the right price. They are priceless!

It has been an extremely busy and productive past couple of weeks at the museum as we have benefited from the valuable skills and time offered by two wonderful volunteers.  Sue and Don Brian are not strangers to Norfolk; they left the island eighteen months ago after living here for five years.  Don taught science and chemistry at NICS and Sue volunteered her time to the museum four days a week for the most of that time, Sue had to have Wednesdays off from the museum so she could attend to weaving with the guys at the Golden Orb, and if she wasn’t at either of those places, you could find her volunteering for the National Park.  Outside of these times they were involved in many other charitable activities supporting the island. 

What they have achieved for the museum these past two weeks is just remarkable.   

 

Sue developed a template that enables us to upload multiple entries into our database in one single upload.  This is no mean feat considering there are more than eighty fields and multiple layers of classifications necessary for the cataloguing.   This template has enabled us to finally upload the Les Brown Collection of over 1,000 files, plus books and images into our database.  This week Sue has uploaded more than 2,000 entries into our database.    Sue’s previous volunteer work with the museum was mainly in the field of conservation, with a science background, she was perfect for the job, this week she has been able to provide instruction in conservation techniques to Gaye Evans, who has recently joined us at the museum.

Don originally planned for a one week holiday and extended to two.  He was kept busy for the first week digitising our entire collection of cassette tape recordings.  This digitising work is done in ‘real time’, outsourcing for this project would have cost hundreds.  Amongst this collection of cassette tapes is a recent donation by Chris Nobbs including nineteen oral history interviews he conducted during the 1980s and ‘90s, now we can hear those voices and listen to those stories.

Both Sue and Don have been enthusiastic researchers of everything ‘Norfolk’ even after they left the island, Don has taken on many interesting research projects himself and Sue has recently focused her research time on the shipwrecks of Norfolk, this research can now be seen on the Australian National Shipwreck Database, you can access it at www.environment.gov.au/topics/heritage/historic-shipwrecks/australian-national-shipwreck-database.

The final day of their ‘holiday’ on Norfolk was taken up with performing the next step in the conservation of the artefacts recently recovered from the works in the Blacksmith’s Compound.  More than one hundred ferrous objects were brushed and then placed back into fresh solutions of 2% sodium hydroxide; this part of the conservation process is to remove the corrosion causing chloride from the objects.  Sue’s work on the cataloguing template will be greatly appreciated again when it comes time to record these items into our database. 

These are the major projects accomplished during their two weeks on island, there were many other tasks completed along the way.  Sue and Don, your generosity and achievements are immeasurable, a huge thank-you to you both from a truly grateful Norfolk Island Museum.  Come back soon ..okay!

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