A DIVING EXPEDITION AT THE WRECK OF THE ADMELLA.

Tuapeka Times, Volume VI, Issue 284, 10 July 1873, Page 11

A DIVING EXPEDITION AT THE WRECK OF THE ADMELLA.

(From the " Melbourne Leader.")

To any colonist of fifteen years' standing or upwards, the mention of the name of the unfortunate Admella at once brings up thrilling memories of her disastrous wreck, and the sensations of horror and compassion which the story of tho sufferings endured by tho survivors of her unhappy crew spread through the lenpth and breadth of the land. But for such as have arrived later than ISSB, it may be necessary to premise that the Admella was a Clyde-built steamer of 3GO tous register, with engines of 1000 horsepower nominal, constructed in '57. expressly for the Australian intercolonial trade, nM which commenced plying from Adelaide to Melbourne in June of the following year. She had only been fourteen months in this trade, when, on Friday, tho 9th of August, 1M59, at half-past 5 in the morning, she left Port Adelaide with 82 passengers on board, and a crew of 81 hands all told. She had also in her hold 93 tons of copper in cakes anil ingots, and seven horses, of which four were entered for the intercolonial race for the championship, to come off" on the Ist October. Among tho saloon passengers were Messrs A. and Hurtle Fisher, sons of tho President of the Legislative Council of Australia, and Mr. Magarey, a rich Adelaide flourfactor, the owner of three of the racehorses. In a heavy gale that prevailed outside the port, the horse Jupiter got thrown on his back by the rolling of the ship, and she was hove to for an hour or two to remedy this mishap. During this time it was supposed the vessel made a greater amount of leeway than was allowed for in steering, and the captain having mistaken the shore lights she struck on a reef known as Carpenter's Eock, at 15 miles from Port MacDonnell Lighthouse at Cape Northumberland, at 5 o'clock on Saturday morning, and soon became a. total wreck, the sea beating heavily over her, and breaking her in Urn minutes into three pieces, of which only tho afler part remained loivj above water, seventy-nine perished on the wreck, ten in trying to reach the land, and twenty-four were rescued, after enduring almost uuparallelod sufferings, and being for five days without a particle of food or water, notwithstanding heroic attempts made to assist them from the shore, and from vessels dispatched to their succor from Adelaide, Melbourne, Portland, and other places along the coast, whose efforts for that length of time, frustrated by a series of the most calamitous accidents, theintelligence of which, received hourly by telegraph, kept the whole population m a turmoil of paiuful excitement for nearly a week. The horse Barber being cast loose managed to 'swim ashore, and ran afterwards iv the intended race ; but his owner ami George Fisher were amongst tho lost. This sad recollection of a great maritime disaster, which roused such widely spread and intense commiseration at the time, is only introduced here as a preface to my own humble adventures when I went iron-fishing lastsummer on the south-we?tern coast. Be it known, I am (professionally speaking) a pastry-cook, and, although I say it, rather an. " upper crust " at that. My Scotch pies were found to be both succulent and appetising by my enstomers, while my " kidneys " were deemed meritorious, and the fame of my " fruits " had spread into the most distant haunts of larrikindom. But alack and a well-to-day, a rival professor established himself next door to me ; his tarts were a thought larger, and considered (though this was mere idle fantasy) to be jucier. My business went to the dogs — where evil tongues said it came from — and I went to the Insolvent Court. And so it happened that, meeting one Bill Jenkins, a sailor man acquaintance of mine, as I was one day strolling in despondent mood along the Sandridge Pier, T was rudely accosted by< him with " What cheer, mate ? You seem down on your luck." I confessed myself to be in that recumbent position. " Come along wid' me clown the coast," he says. " What to do ?" asked I. " Diving for copper and iron." " But I can't dive," was my hopeless rejoinder. " No, but you can cook the grub for them as can," says my jolly sailor, and I went. We were six in all, including John Sullivan, a professional diver, and we represented six different nationalities, for there was an Englishman, an Irishman, a Welshman, a Scotchman, a Frenchman, and a Yankee. Our object was to set such salvage as was to be obtained from the wreck of the ill-fated ship Admella, which had lain undisturbed on her rocky bed where the fierce winds had cast her on that dark wintry morning 14 years ago, save that aotno ineffectual attempts at dredging had be^n made six or seven years siace, but without a diver or apparatus, and with very poor results.

Wo were provided with both, . and we hoped to got up all the copper that had formed her cargo, all such fittings as were of any value, and, moat tempting bait of all, a certain inch-thick iron-bound cedar case, packed inside a carpet-bag and containing 750 golden sovereigns, which woro known to have" been put on board at Adelaide as freight, and have never been accounted for since. We had bought the right from the insurers, and our enterprise was conducted on the principle of what is called " lays " on board a whaler, where each has a certain number of shares in proportion to his usefulness. Mine, as cook, was not a very big lay ; but then I was considered to have a very easy berth, and it will be seen in the sequel that the ungrateful beggars begrudged me even that much. We left Sandridge by steamer in October last for Portland. There we procured a dray with three horses, and loaded it with our boats. 22 feet long, diving gear, 12 by 10 tent, hammocks, and other necessaries. Stores for two months, and a small dingy to tender the large boat, were on another dray. AYe started with this load for Cape Bridgewater, thirty miles overland, and thence to Port MacDonnell, sixty miles further on to tho westward. The country is extremely ru»«»ecl and sterile, and we made our way with great difficulty over the heavy sand. Arrived at length at tho spot most convenient for our labors, we pitched the tent, and soon had a regular encampment under the shelter of a sand hummock on the wild desolate seashore. The scene was as little cheering as could well be imagined, presenting no object of interest to break tho wearisome monotony except the stump's of a mast and some portions of the mnchiucry of the | ship, about three-quarters of a mile out at sea. We expected to get to work immediately on our arrival, but were sadly disappointed at having to wait three weeks for a break iv the weather, a southerly gale blowing the whole time, that sent such big rollers tumbling in on the beach it was impossible to launch the boat. During tins dreary time, I individually came to great griof, for my mates, having little or nothing else to do, fixed all the energies of their minds upon the contemplation of coining " feeds," so that I, even, with even my acknowledged and perhaps unrivalled skill, found it simply impossible to comply with their insatiable demands for all manner of unheard of dainties to fill their voracious maws withal. At length the weather moderated, and I v»as delighted to sec my never1o be satisfied comrades prepare the big boat and push over the sand out to the reef where the iron bones of the poor ship still lay ; and Sullivan, putting on his ugly headdress with its great goggle eyes, something like a nasty cetopus, such as I saw at home iv a tank at the Crystal Palace. They rowed out to her, and on their return I gathered that she lies in beautifully clear transparent water, on a clean limestone reef, at a depth of eight or nine feet below the surface, broken into three parts, of which only the centre, or midships one, comprising the boiler and machinery, is clear , the others are completely silted up with drift sand. The hull is all reduced to small fragments of two or threehundredweight each, mostly eaten through with rust. Parts of the engine, anchors, chains, and. pieces of miscellaneous ironwork, strew the rocks all rouud under the sand and masses of seaweed that have grown over them. The crank-shaft, fan, and windlass lie away by themselves — the boiler half a quarter of a mile away from the other portions of the wreck. The cargo of lead and copper in cakes is in most cases wedged hard into crevices of the rocks, or securely anchored by tough weeds. W"hen they got fairly to work, it was pleasant , for me, having put my beef on to boil and made my " duff," to sit contemplatively on the beach and — smoking a quiet pipe the while— to watch the i operations of my comrades, who were busily engaged in fishing up from the bottom of old^ ocean miscellaneous scraps of various metal that had lain there so long without becoming transmuted to anything richer or rarer than old iron or copper. The southern coast of Australia is evidently not Prospero's magic isle. Of it could not be said truly — Nothing here but suffer a sea-change Into somit'iing rich and strange, unless rust counts. But although it is interesting, I do pity the diver. Not to speak of his costume, which is decidedly unpic!:uresque— indeed calculated to frightpn a baby into fits — he has attached a hundredweight or so to his pcrpon, to crawl down a ladder" into the sea, like a huge lobster to lie flat on his stomach at the bottom, to cut away with his knife great heaps of sea-weed, which process rouses out monstrous cray-fish and all sorts of hideous abominations, and having at length found a lump of copper wedged tightly into a rocky cleft, to prize it out by sheer manual labor. And at this interesting employment — breathing forcibly compressed air all the time, and subject to be occasionally very rudely upset by a heavy roller tumbling in — he remains eight hours. I'd rather co >k, T must say, unpleasant as it is to bo continually reminded of one'? deficiencies by a set of canuibals who don't know a good dinner when it's prepare 1 for them. After a month or so of this sort of

work \ye (that is they) got about two tons of copper and lead, leaden pip«s and brass taps belonging to tho en«'ue, and one penny in copper coin.T.iis was sentatthreedifferent journeys by tlw i art to Port MacDonnell, to be shipped to Melbourne. But the golden prize, the seven hundred and fifty sovereigns, did not turn up. It is either stowed away in the maw of some all-devouring shark, or it is safely deposited in the strong box of the Great Ocean Bank " full fathom five" below human grasp. At all events we didn't get it, and the result of our months of labor was that we just about paid our expenses. Touching the abundance of fish to be found down there, let not any enthusiastic promoter of deep sea fishing companies be deceived thereby. Fish there are in plenty, and excellent in quality (the boiler of the steamer was full of them, a regular fish preserve), but they are only to be taken by line and hook. There is no ground on all that coast fie for trawling— nothing but sharp, jasrged. limestone reefs, intermixed with flints, jhat would tear any net to pieces like packthread ; harbors, no banks where fish are certain to congregate, and a succession of heavy weather that would render it impossible for fishingboats to put to sea.