The Colonial Clippers - Basil Lubbock

“LOCH ETIVE.”

“ARGONAUT,” in the Clyde.

In April, 1899, when on a passage to Adelaide under Captain Nichol, the Loch Sloy overran her distance and was wrecked on Kangaroo Island. Captain Nichol was trying to pick up Cape Borda light, but it was shut out from him by the cliffs between Cape Bedout and Cape Couldie, and the Loch Sloy, in the darkness of the morning of 24th April, drove on to the Brothers Rocks and became a total loss in a few moments, the heavy surf sweeping right over her. The crew and seven saloon passengers took refuge in the rigging, but one by one the masts went over the side, and the men were hurled into the breakers. The ship had struck 300 yards from the shore and only four men reached it—a passenger, two able seamen and an apprentice. None of the survivors remembered how they got ashore; they heard the crash of the masts, then felt the wreckage bumping them about in the surf, and finally found themselves lying wedged amongst the rocks, where the breakers had washed them up.

The following account of their subsequent hardships appeared in an Adelaide paper:—

The survivors endured dreadful privations before they reached a settlement. They had plenty of whisky, which had floated ashore from the wreck, but for solid food they had to eat grass, dead penguins cast up by the waves, and shellfish. They suffered terribly through insufficient clothing and lack of boots. Two of them walked along the coast until they came to the Cape Borda light. One went inland to May’s Settlement. The other survivor, David Kilpatrick, the passenger, was so ill that he had to be left behind. When search parties came back for him he had disappeared, and it was not till a week later that a systematic search of the island led to the discovery of his dead body a mile and a half from the spot where the others had left him.

The Loss of Lochs “Shiel” and “Sunart.”

Loch Shiel, the sister ship of Loch Sloy, was lost on the Thorne Rock, Milford Haven on the 30th January, 1901. Her master mistook the Great Castle Head lights and got on the rocks at 8.40 p.m., the Loch liner being bound out to Australia from Glasgow. There was no loss of life, however, on this occasion, half the crew being taken out of the mizen rigging by a lifeboat, and the other half climbing ashore on to the rocks by means of her bowsprit.