To have a sawmill in Brisbane near Queen’s Wharf was one thing; to satisfy the needs of the growing colony for sawn timber was quite another. As the colony developed and to expand his business interests, sawmiller William Pettigrew required access to the timber resources, as well as the capacity to transport felled logs and other goods and materials to and from regional business locations. For forty years, three vessels associated with William Pettigrew served this purpose.

The first of the Pettigrew ships was the Gneering. Originally owned John Williams, the proprietor of the first ferry across the Brisbane River (from Russell Street to Queen’s Wharf), this 60 feet (18.28 metres) sailing ship known then as the John was constructed by David Steel in 1856. The  John was purchased in 1862 by William Pettigrew and his partners, James Low and William Grigor. The latter operated a timber depot at the mouth of the Mooloolah River.  The John was renamed Granite City.

To make it easier to transport logs from Mooloolah to the steam mill just down stream of Queen’s Wharf, the partners adapted the Granite City by lengthening her stern by 18 feet (5.48 metres) and installing an engine and boiler to run the stern-wheel paddle. She was renamed the Gneering, an aboriginal word for black swan. Her main role was to carry people, goods and timber up and down the coast from Brisbane to Mooloolaba.

To supply coal for the steam sawmill, the Gneering steamed upriver to Ipswich. On arrival in Brisbane from one such return journey in February 1875 she was found to be leaking. During an attempt to run her ashore on the south bank of the river, just above the Victoria Bridge, the Gneering filled and sank. It took five months for her to be re-floated and brought back into service. Despite this setback, for the next thirty years the Gneering sailed up and down the Queensland coast until mid-1892. On passage from Noosa to Brisbane carrying timber, the Gneering was wrecked in the mouth of the Maroochy River. Towed to Goat Island, what remained of the Gneering was left to disintegrate.

Waiting for the Gneering to steam up the Brisbane River with its periodic cargoes meant that Pettigrew’s mill was often under-utilised. Another ship was needed. In 1865 William Pettigrew decided to build a tugboat to tow rafts, one that could negotiate the narrow channels of the coastal rivers and sandbars. In late 1865 and into 1866 the sawmill’s shipwright, Matthew Miller, built a stern-wheel paddle steamer, 63 foot (19.2 metres) in length, 12 foot (3.65 metres) in beam, and with a 6 foot (1.82 metres) draft, in a shed on the river bank at South Brisbane. She was named the Tadorna Rahjah, the Latin name for the Burdekin duck, and launched in July 1866. Like the Gneering, she travelled up and down the coast carrying timber, goods and people for nearly 30 years, finally acting as a tender for Pettigrew’s third vessel, the Tarshaw. The Tadorna Rahjah sank during the Brisbane River floods in February 1893, ending up beached at the Hamilton Reach where she was eventually broken up.

In 1884 Pettigrew leased the riverbank below Lot 7 on William Street and erected a large shed where Matthew Miller began building the Tarshaw. Named after Pettigrew’s home in Scotland, the Tarshaw like her sister ships, was used to bring timber down from the Sunshine Coast region. At 113 feet (34.44 metres) in length, with a 20 foot (6.09 metres) beam and draft of 8ft 6 ins (2.59 metres), the Tarshaw was significantly bigger than the Gneering and the Tadorna Rahjah. A twin screwed vessel, she had 3.5 times the capacity of the Tadorna Rahjah.

Tarshaw was launched on 6 March 1886 by Pettigrew’s daughters.  After four months fitting the engines and boilers, her first run was to Maroochydore in July 1886. The ship was not always used for mill-related work. A newspaper report for June 1887 described how the Tarshaw and the Tadorna Rahjah transported 260 employees of the sawmill, along with a brass band, to a picnic at Redcliffe. After the loss of both the Gneering and the Tadorna Rahjah in 1892-93, Pettigrew continued operating with the Tarshaw alone but his business was in trouble. He was declared bankrupt in 1898. The Tarshaw was sold by mortgage sale for £1,250 to the Broadsound Meat Company of St Lawrence in July 1899.

Acknowledgement

The major source of information for this web page has been the 2004 PhD thesis by Elaine Brown, ‘William Pettigrew 1825 – 1906′.

Additional Reading

McLeod, G.Roderick. ‘Two Brisbane Ship owners of the Last Century’, Royal Historical Society of Queensland Journal, Issue 4, 1972, pp 27-43. https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:210084/s00855804_1972_1973_9_4_27.pdf

Under Colonial Secretary Arthur Manning was not aware of the effect his letters were having on the recently demoted Leyburn police magistrate, Frank Sydney Bowerman, until an angry and pleading Bowerman appeared in his office in William Street on the morning of 24 November 1868. Manning’s reply to the confrontation was to tell his visitor that information about Bowerman’s alleged misappropriation of funds was going to the Colonial Secretary that very day.

Bowerman left, only to return in the early afternoon pleading to be able to repay from an advance in salary. Manning advised that it was too late.  A letter from Bowerman’s wife requesting more consideration brought no change in the situation. According to newspaper reports, Bowerman then drew from beneath his coat an American tomahawk that he had just purchased at Simmons General Store. He struck Manning five times on the head and neck, opening up his skull.  Under Colonial Secretary Manning survived, but doctors advised he would have to retire. In consideration of what he had been through, the Queensland government passed the Manning Retirement Bill, providing the retiring public servant with a £600 annual pension for the rest of his life – which lasted a further three decades until 1899.

Frank Bowerman was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to life in prison at St. Helena in Moreton Bay.  Endless petitions organised by his wife eventually brought his release, five years later. Tragically the telegram telling of this good news arrived on the day his wife died.

Frank Bowerman was the son of Henry Boucher Bowerman, whose water colour sketch of Brisbane in 1835 tells us so much about the Moreton Bay penal colony. Frank Bowerman committed suicide one night in 1894 in the Botanic Gardens, Sydney.

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The white marble plaque set in the ground in today’s Queen’s Gardens marks where once was located the altar of St John’s Pro-Cathedral, in the late nineteenth century the fashionable venue for Brisbane society brides of the Anglican faith.

The Church of England acquired what is now the Queen’s Gardens site in the late 1840s, constructing a parsonage on the William Street/Elizabeth Street corner in 1850-51. Running parallel with William Street, the single gabled St John’s Church was constructed in 1850-54. Its first Bishop was Edward Tufnell who was appointed in 1859, when the new Diocese of Brisbane was created. Tufnell declared St John’s a pro-cathedral after he arrived in mid-1860.

During the fifty years St John’s Pro-Cathedral was located on William Street, many weddings were conducted there. Most were acknowledged by one or two lines in the newspapers of the time. However, when wealthy and powerful people were involved, many column inches were devoted to a description of the wedding and the people who attended.

In 1872 Bishop Tufnell officiated when Eliza Russell, the niece of the Marchioness of Normanby (the wife of the Governor of Queensland), wed the Hon. John Bramston, the Attorney-General of Queensland. According to the newspaper report, a large number of people watched as Miss Russell arrived in the company of the Governor and Lady (Laura) Normanby. The bride wore a white silk dress covered with a profusion of beautiful lace made at St Ann’s Industrial School, an institution run by the Catholic Sisters of Mercy from 1868 to provide education and a home for young women at risk. Descriptions of the bridesmaid’s dresses, the wedding lunch at Government House, some of the wedding presents and the honeymoon destination were provided.

Society notables Edith and Evelyn Harris, the daughters of George and Jane Harris and the grand-daughters of George and Jane Thorn, were married from St John’s Pro-Cathedral. George Harris was a Brisbane merchant and George Thorn one of the founders of Ipswich. In 1883 Edith Harris married George Condamine Taylor, the son of the Hon. James Taylor MLC of Toowoomba and one of the founding fathers of that city.

Hundreds of people came to view the wedding event, some even making their way onto the balcony of the then Museum to get a better view. At this time it was not uncommon for the service to be referred to as fully choral – where the service was intoned by a different clergyman to the celebrant. For the Harris-Taylor wedding the Venerable Archdeacon Benjamin Glennie, the first Deacon appointed to the Anglican Church in Brisbane in 1848, performed a semi-choral service assisted by two other clergymen.

The dress Edith Harris wore was imported from Paris, but the bridesmaids’ dresses, with one exception, were made in Brisbane. What was worn by other notable guests such as Lady Julia Griffith, the wife of Sir Samuel Griffith who was the leader of the Opposition in Queensland at the time, and Annie Perry who lived at Miegunyah with her husband, the businessman William Perry, was duly reported. The wedding ceremony was followed by a ball at Newstead House, the Harris family residence.

Younger sister Evelyn Harris married Richard G. Casey of Normanby Station in 1888. He had just been elected as the Member of the Queensland Legislative Assembly for Warrego. Newspaper reports provide a detailed account of this St John’s wedding, where Archdeacon Glennie likewise officiated. Guests in the congregation included Sir Thomas McIlwraith, the new Premier of Queensland following the 1888 General Election, and Lady McIlwraith, the former Harriette Mosman whose sister had been Cecilia Palmer, wife of the fifth Premier of Queensland, the Hon. Arthur H Palmer KCMG. The wedding breakfast for 250 guests was held at Newstead House and the bride and groom travelled to Sandgate for their honeymoon.

In 1891 a wedding which had two and a half full columns devoted to its description in the Brisbane Courier was that of Charles Campbell-Riley of Lanark Station near Clermont, and Kate Walsh, the daughter of the Eliza Walsh and parliamentarian the late William Henry Walsh. Miss Walsh’s godfather, the Hon. Arthur H Palmer KCMG, was also present.

Friends of the bride decorated St John’s with pink and white flowers, a colour scheme continued in the bridesmaids’ dresses and those of the girlfriends of the bride. The ‘pink’ wedding, as the paper called it, appeared to be a novelty but one that was felt could become quite ‘the order of the day’. The wedding service was conducted by Bishop Webber, but the service was not choral. Much detail was given of the dresses, many of which came from the ateliér of Mrs (Janet) Walker, who operated the largest private dressmaking establishment in Brisbane. After the ceremony, the wedding party and guests went to the home of Eliza Walsh where a marquee had been erected on the lawn.

One of the most extensively covered weddings at St John’s occurred in 1894. Thomas H Brown was a member of the Brown family of Scotland which ran the company D.L. Brown & Co., the company which in 1877 had bought the wharf in Short Street from George Harris, and expanded it into a major overseas terminal. Both Thomas and his elder brother John worked with their uncle D L Brown. Both were well known and liked in Brisbane.

On 28 December 1894 Thomas Brown married Mary Eveline Griffith, the eldest daughter of Sir Samuel Walker Griffith, KCMG, former Premier of Queensland and the then Chief Justice. Twelve and a half columns were dedicated to the description of the wedding, the list of guests, the dresses of the bridal party as well as many of the guests, the reception and the wedding presents.

The guest list, as might be expected, ran like a ‘who’s who’ of Brisbane society, starting with the Governor of Queensland, His Excellency Sir Henry Norman and Lady Norman. The service was fully choral. The opening was performed by Canon Stone-Wigg with Rev. A Rivers intoning the final charge and benediction. The wedding attracted several hundreds of spectators who occupied not only the Museum balcony but also that of the Treasury Building. Police were required to control the crowd. Bunting flew from ships in the Brisbane River.

Once again the ateliér of Mrs Walker was responsible for the gowns worn by the bridal party, except for one bridesmaid’s gown which came from the St Anne’s Industrial Home. In great depth the newspaper article covered the church decorations, the guests and their dress and even included a list of the wedding presents. Following a reception for 200 at ‘Merthyr’, the Griffith family home, the bride and groom left for Toowoomba, later sailing for Europe.

The wedding of George Sampson FRCO, organist of the Cathedral, and Amy Winifred Taylor, second daughter of Isabella Taylor and the Hon Dr William F. Taylor, a member of the Queensland Legislative Council (1886-1922), was one of the last society weddings to be held at St John’s before the congregation relocated (1903) and the Pro-Cathedral demolished (1904). The celebrant was the Venerable Archdeacon David. The service, which was fully choral, was intoned by Canon Oakley. Once again Sir Samuel Griffith and Lady Griffith were guests, the former proposing the toast to the bride and groom at ‘Banksia’, the Taylor’s home, where the guests assembled after the service. The bride and groom then left for a honeymoon in Tasmania.

In the twentieth century, St John’s Cathedral in Ann Street took over as the place where society brides and their grooms chose to make their vows.

Sources:

Brisbane Courier, 16 December 1872, p. 2.

Brisbane Courier, 29 August 1883, p. 4.

Brisbane Courier, 24 May 1888, p. 5.

Brisbane Courier, 17 December 1891, p. 6.

Telegraph, 29 November 1894, p. 6.

Brisbane Courier, 29 December 1903, p. 2.

England’s Prince George, Duke of Cornwall and York, and his wife Princess Mary, visited Brisbane in May 1901. To celebrate their tour in this year of Federation two large arches were constructed over George Street-the Grand Arch at the intersection of Queen and George Streets and that pictured above, the Aboriginal Arch. It was located on George Street, between the intersections with Charlotte Street and Mary Street.

The Southern Protector of Aboriginals, Archibald Meston, was given the task overseeing the design and erection of the 30 foot (9 metre) structure. Thomas Pye from the Government Architect’s Office designed the final structure using Meston’s ideas. It was approved by the then acting Premier, the Honourable Arthur Rutledge.

The Aboriginal Arch attracted a great deal of attention, more, one local journal suggested, than the Grand Arch at the intersection of Queen and George Streets. Shaped like a pyramid, the arch was supported by two abutments. It was covered with tea-tree bark, stringy bark and an assortment of native ferns. Atop each abutment was an Aboriginal gunyah occupied by women and children, with skins, mats, boomerangs, spears and dilly bags displayed before them. Underneath the arch were strung strings of shells which glinted in the sunlight.

No less that sixty Aboriginals sat or stood on the arch, including Charlie Samuels, a well-known Aboriginal sprinter. Ten of the men were 6 feet (1.82 metres) tall. The Cooper Creek man at the apex was 6 feet 4 inches (1.93 metres). On his right and left were a man from each of the other States-New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, and West Australia. Most were decorated with emu feathers, their bodies lined out with red and white ochres. They carried weapons from all parts of Australia. After the passing of the party the Aboriginal women started to sing an old song of welcome for the return of a successful war party, a chorus taken up by the men on the arch.

Sources:

Brisbane Courier, 21 May 1901, p. 7.

Telegraph, 13 April 1901, p. 2.

Conner J. 2015. Royal visits to Australia. Canberra: National Library of Australia, p. 38.

Read the Australian Dictionary of Biography entry for Charles (Charlie) Samuels

 

The Government Printing Office on William Street was one of the earliest buildings in Brisbane to be lit by electric power.

The first electric light in Brisbane, according to the Brisbane Courier of 7 July 1878, was demonstrated in front of the telegraph fitters’ shop in William Street. It was a small, self-regulating apparatus of German manufacture and was worked by a sixty zinc-carbon cell Bunsen battery. According to the 1878 report, it threw ‘a most brilliant light for a considerable distance’. This first electric light was to be used at Parker Island, near Lytton and the mouth of the Brisbane River, to identify ships at night approaching the torpedo defences which were then in place on the river.

Members of the Brisbane public saw their next demonstration of electric power on 19 December 1882. Using power from a generator in the JW Sutton & Co. foundry in Adelaide Street, bright arc lights were placed at eight points along Queen Street, between Eagle Street and the Victoria Bridge. JW Sutton & Co. had first used electric power to light their offices in Adelaide Street two weeks earlier.

In a similar fashion, the needs of the workplace led to the introduction of electric light into the Government Printing Office on William Street a year later. The contract, to install and put on trial an electric lighting system, was won by Alfred Shaw & Co. Power was supplied by an 8.5 hp generator coupled to the steam-engine used for driving the printing machines.  The lighting consisted of 50 Edison type incandescent lamps which lit the staircase, publishing and composing rooms.

By 1886 a comprehensive system of 400 lights was operational in the building, run from a two storey engine room with two 40hp steam engines and a dynamo, installed at an approximate cost of £10,000. That same year Edward Barton was appointed as government electrician to complete the installation of electric light to the newly completed Parliament House at the end of George Street. Using the engine room in the Government Printing, office electricity was supplied, via ‘Edison Street Tubes’ run under William Street, to Parliament House. It is believed this was the first legislative building in the British Empire to experience electric lighting. The tubes were considered the first underground electric cables in the Southern Hemisphere.

Barton resigned as government electrician in 1888, although he was retained as a consultant and saw the completion of the electrification of Parliament House in 1892.  In 1887 Barton went into partnership with CF White, as Barton White & Co., the first company in Brisbane to start public supply of electricity. The company’s first customer was the General Post Office. Next came the City Electric Light (CEL), formed by Barton in 1904. This company commenced construction of a powerhouse in William Street in 1910. CEL was one of the predecessors of SEQEB and Energex.

Additional Reading

Queensland Energy Exhibition Centre

http://www.qldenergyexhibitioncentre.com/1880s.html

UQ School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering

http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/pes/early-electricity-usage-brisbane

Australian Dictionary of Biography entry for Edward Barton

Podcasts

Royal Historical Society of Queensland podcast on the Edison tubes of William Street, Brisbane

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Communications technology found an early home in William Street above Queen’s Wharf. The first telegraph messages in Queensland involved an exchange of telegrams on 13 April 1861 from temporary offices on the upper storey of the Commissariat Stores.

While test messages had been sent and received successfully the previous Thursday and Friday, the office was opened to the public for the first time on Saturday 13 April 1861. The first telegram was sent by John Bramston, clerk to the Executive Council in Brisbane, to the Police Magistrate of Ipswich, Colonel Gray. It read ‘The Governor in Council congratulates the people of Ipswich on the establishment of telegraphic communications’.

The government’s first Central Telegraph Office, under the authority of the General Superintendent JJ Austin, was based in what had been the United Evangelical Church building in William Street. It had been purchased earlier in 1861 to provide a premises for the the Telegraph Office though bad weather had delayed its alteration for telegraphic purposes.

Members of the public were eager to use the new telegraph office. Twenty-one other telegrams were sent on 13 April 1861 at a cost of 2 shillings for the first 10 words and 2 pence for each additional word.  The telegraph line was extended seven months later to meet a line from Sydney at the Queensland-New South Wales border.  By 1872 residents in Brisbane and Bowen were connected to the rest of the world through the Overland Telegraph line.

How did it work? Samuel Morse made it seem so simple with his code in 1837. All the system needed was a key, a battery, wire and a line of poles between stations for the wire and a receiver. In telegraphy, long and short pulses are translated into electrical signals by an operator using a telegraph key. A skilled operator at the receiving instrument ‘copies’ these electrical signals as letters, numbers or punctuation. The receiving instrument is called a ‘sounder’. A sounder is a simple transducer which converts the electrical pulses into audible clicking sounds which are ‘copied’ by a highly trained telegrapher.

By the time the Brisbane electric telegraph was established, the introduction of electro-magnets had improved the electrical output to the extent that repeating stations were not needed between Brisbane and Sydney.

More information

Moreton Bay Courier, 13 May 1861.

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Other than the occasional encounter with an explorer or the inclusion into Aboriginal society of shipwrecked persons such as the timber-getters Finnegan, Pamphlet and Parsons, prior to the arrival of the convicts arrived in Moreton Bay in 1824 the Aboriginal clans of the region had had little contact with white people

The first convict settlement of Moreton Bay commenced with the arrival of the brig Amity at Redcliffe Peninsula on 13 September 1824. While the surrounding Ningy-Ningy people were driven off this section of their lands, they would claim it back after May 1825 when the convict settlement was moved to the north bank of the Brisbane River, a location occupied by the Turrbal people. The Turrbal were one of a number of clan groups in the 5,000 population of Aboriginal people estimated to be occupying the Moreton Bay district in the 1820s.

According to historian Raymond Evans, the Turrbal people initially kept away from the new settlement being established on the ridge above Queen’s Wharf. Conflict arose over raids on maize crops grown by the convict workers, the first recorded raid taking place in May 1827 when a guard was speared and the raiders fired upon. These raids continued, more or less annually into the 1830s, subsiding as the convicts were withdrawn. In November 1837, when there were just over 300 convicts in the settlement, Commandant Cotton believed that with the Turrbal and other clans a good understanding prevailed through a balance of conciliation and control.

With the withdrawal of the last of the convict inmates and the removal of the 50 mile (80 kilometer) exclusion zone around the penal colony, south-east Queensland was opened to free settlers and Brisbane became an increasingly busy point of entry for white immigrants looking for land. As in the convict period, restrictions kept the Turrbal and members of other clan members beyond the boundary streets after sunset.

Beyond the town’s northern Boundary Street, one of the camps of the Turrbal, known as York’s Hollow, was in a section of the gully that runs between Normanby and Herston. Another camp was located downstream at Breakfast Creek, a good fishing place. This was referred to as Yowoggerra, a word meaning Corroboree Place. Queen’s Wharf was given no special acknowledgement by the Turrbal, other than it being part of the newcomer’s umpie korumba – place of many buildings.

York’s Hollow was the main camp of the Turrubal into the 1850s. This location took its name from a Turrbal leader known as the Duke of York, possibly the Turrubal man Daki Yakka. As more immigrants arrived, the clan was dispersed gradually from their York’s Hollow gully and the fringes of Separation society. Repression of any resistance to unlawful activity was heavy-handed after the arrival of the Native Police in 1852. Introduced diseases led to a steady decline in clan sizes, bringing about a gradual cultural decay.

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Refurbishment of the B1 level of National Trust House in mid-2013 revealed some unexpected items. Just inside the doorway of one of the rooms, a man’s boot was found beneath the floorboards. Construction of this part of the building occurred in 1899 and it is believed the boot was deliberately placed there at the time.

And there was more. The bones of a cat were found beneath the floorboards of an original (1865-66) section of the building. Construction workers of that period commonly placed items in hidden locations in a building to ward off harmful influences.

Agricultural department workers are believed responsible for pieces of paper that have been glued to a north-facing plaster wall of the basement. The wall ‘paperings’ are cut from newspapers and magazines. Some are of agricultural products, others women’s fashion from the 1920s. One worker had an interest in soldiers in action in the First World War, specifically in 1917. A newspaper report on the fate of these men forms part of this strange collage.

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No single vessel had a stronger connection with Queen’s Wharf than the paddle wheel steamer Lucinda. Commissioned by the Queensland Government to a design that would serve the purpose of lighthouse tending, the steel-built Lucinda was equipped with a level of comfort the Rockhampton Morning Bulletin in February 1885 described as ‘a perfect model of a ship in which the desiderate have been strength, beauty and not simply comfort, but absolute luxury’.

The Lucinda was 172.6 feet (53 metres) in length. Her centrally located paddle wheels 12 feet (3.7 metres) in diameter were powered by a 114 nhp (nominal horse power) steam compound oscillating engine. She was an upgrade on the river steamer Kate which had conveyed immigrants from ships too large to cross the bar to the Immigration Depot and delivered stores to government institutions at Peel Island and Dunwich.

The Lucinda made passage to Queensland between January and May 1885, quickly taking up duties which included mail delivery, picnic and annual excursion cruises, and conveyance of the State’s political leaders and visiting dignitaries. It is in this last capacity that the Lucinda transported Sir Samuel Griffith and others to Sydney for the 1891 National Australasian Convention. On an Easter weekend trip to the estuary of the Hawkesbury River, Griffith and others honed a draft constitution into a document that formed the basis of Federation discussions and agreements.

Anchored in the South Brisbane Reach in 1896, the Lucinda rescued people from the sinking ferry Pearl, an event considered the worst Brisbane River disaster of the nineteenth century. The tragedy came about when the Pearl fouled Lucinda’s anchor chain while steering a quicker but less-safe course across the flooded river.

Kennedy Wharf downstream of the Customs House was chosen as the venue for the welcome reception for the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York when they concluded their ‘arrival’ cruise on the Lucinda in May 1901. The royal party had arrived earlier by train and, after a short time at Government House, boarded the Lucinda for a cruise before the welcome, her expansive upper deck providing a suitable viewing platform for the royals. Lucinda could form the backdrop to the pomp of a regal visit but also be the central, special venue for an excursion of school or church group.

In 1921, after nearly 40 years of service and with maintenance costs rising, the Lucinda was laid up. While various fittings were sold and are in private hands or museums, her hull was converted to a coal lighter for the Riverside Coal Transport Company and used to bring coal from Ipswich to Brisbane. This involved passage along the South Brisbane Reach, where she had once anchored so gracefully, to the City Electric Light Company power house in William Street. Sadly, in 1937 the Lucinda was beached to form part of a breakwater at Bishop Island near the mouth of the Brisbane River.

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The barque Beatrice finished its journeys as a hulk in the river near Queen’s Wharf. In November 1884, following a six-month journey from New York that the Brisbane Courier described as a ‘boisterous passage’, the Beatrice was towed up the Brisbane River and condemned. Built in 1858 at Newcastle-on-Tyne, the oak and teak vessel was moored in the river adjacent to Queen’s Wharf and offered for sale.

The Beatrice had had a chequered career. In 1863, on a voyage transporting coal to Hong Kong, two lives were lost in a failed mutiny. Four seamen involved in the mutiny were convicted and hanged. Following sale to a German firm, many more voyages were undertaken. After being condemned, the Beatrice was purchased initially by shipwrights Campbell and Dunlop. She was sold to the Queensland Government in November 1888 for £800.

One of the retired barque’s first tasks was to act as a flagship for the Anniversary Rowing Regatta on the South Brisbane and Milton reaches of the river in December 1888. By 1891 the Beatrice was being referred to in the newspapers as a ‘health hulk’, a vessel used for quarantine purposes in the event of outbreaks of diseases such as smallpox. Towing the hulk to Peel Island was debated by the Central Board of Health but this did not eventuate.

Along with the considerable other damage which occurred, the flood peaks of February 1893 caused the Beatrice to drift down river. She was re-moored near the Naval Stores at Kangaroo Point. As their boat sheds had been swept away in the flood, the Commercial Rowing Club purchased the Beatrice to serve as both boat shed and headquarters, a function performed until 1896 when, according to one report, ‘the barque, strangely altered from her smart appearance of 1858, settled down quietly on the river bed. Her usefulness was over and she became a danger’. The Beatrice was later broken up for scrap.