At daybreak a boy, the son of Ratcliff, the signal man, started out to look for his goats, and as they sometimes passed the night in the old fowlhouse, he looked in for them. But instead of the goats, he saw the naked cabin boy. "Who are you?" he said, "and what are you doing here, and where did you come from?"
"I have been shipwrecked," replied the cabin boy; and then he sat up and began to cry.
Young Ratcliff ran off to tell his father what he had found; and the boy was brought to the cottage, put to bed, and supplied with food and drink. The signal for a wreck was hoisted at the flagstaff, but when the signallman went to look for a wreck he could not find one. He searched along the shore and found the dead body of the captain, and a piece of splintered spar seven or eight feet long, on which the cabin boy had come ashore. The 'Ecliptic', with her cargo and crew, had completely disappeared, while the signalman, near at hand, slept peacefully, undisturbed by her crashing timbers, or the shouts of the drowning seamen. Ratcliff was not a seer, and had no mystical lore. He was a runaway sailor, who had, in the forties, travelled daily over the Egerton run, unconscious of the tons of gold beneath his feet.
There was a fair wind and a smooth sea when the 'Clonmel' went ashore at three o'clock in the morning of the second day of January, 1841. Eighteen hours before she had taken a fresh departure from Ram's Head to Wilson's Promontory. The anchors were let go, she swung to wind, and at the fall of the tide she bedded herself securely in the sand, her hull, machinery, and cargo uninjured. The seventy-five passengers and crew were safely landed; sails, lumber, and provisions were taken ashore in the whaleboats and quarter-boats; tents were erected; the food supplies were stowed away under a capsized boat, and a guard set over them by Captain Tollervey.
Next morning seven volunteers launched one of the whaleboats, boarded the steamer, took in provisions, made a lug out of a piece of canvas, hoisted the Union Jack to the mainmast upside down, and pulled safely away from the 'Clonmel' against a head wind. They hoisted the lug and ran for one of the Seal Islands, where they found a snug little cove, ate a hearty meal, and rested for three hours. They then pulled for the mainland, and reached Sealer's Cove about midnight, where they landed, cooked supper, and passed the rest of the night in the boat for fear of the blacks.
Next morning three men went ashore for water and filled the breaker, when they saw three blacks coming down towards them; so they hurried on board, and the anchor was hauled up.
As the wind was coming from the east, they had to pull for four hours before they weathered the southern point of the cove; they then hoisted sail and ran for Wilson's Promentory, which they rounded at ten o'clock a.m. At eight o'clock in the evening they brought up in a small bay at the eastern extremity of Western Port, glad to get ashore and stretch their weary limbs. After a night's refreshing repose on the sandy beach, they started at break of day, sailing along very fast with a strong and steady breeze from the east, although they were in danger of being swamped, as the sea broke over the boat repeatedly. At two o'clock p.m. they were abreast of Port Philip Heads; but they found a strong ebb tide, with such a ripple and broken water that they did not consider it prudent to run over it. They therefore put the boat's head to windward and waited for four hours, when they saw a cutter bearing down on them, which proved to be 'The Sisters', Captain Mulholland, who took the boat in tow and landed them at Williamstown at eleven o'clock p.m., sixty-three hours from the time they left the 'Clonmel'.
Captain Lewis, the harbour master, went to rescue the crew and passengers and brought them all to Melbourne, together with the mails, which had been landed on the island since known by the name of the 'Clonmel'.
For fifty-two years the black boilers of the 'Clonmel' have lain half buried in the sandspit, and they may still be seen among the breakers from the deck of every vessel sailing up the channel to Port Albert.
The 'Clonmel', with her valuable cargo, was sold in Sydney, and the purchaser, Mr. Grose, set about the business of making his fortune out of her. He sent a party of wreckers who pitched their camps on Snake Island, where they had plenty of grass, scrub, and timber. The work of taking out the cargo was continued under various captains for six years, and then Mr. Grose lost a schooner and was himself landed in the Court of Insolvency.