Courtesy of Trove Northern Star 13 November 1941 (By N. C. Hewitt.)
In the death of Mr. William Connah at Murwillumbah on November 10, in his 81st year, there was severed probably the oldest living link with the early North Coast shipping trade, the days when schooners and steamers traded to the Brunswick River, when there were no breakwaters at the entrance to the Richmond and Tweed Rivers, when navigation of the bars was the nightmare of all seafaring men who traded to these shores. <snip>
TRADED TO RICHMOND
Arriving in Australia at an early age, Mr. Connah as a steward entered the service of Messrs. B.B. and G. W. Nicoll, which traded to the Richmond River, and later G.W. Nicoll to Byron Bay, and worked his way to be one of their chief officers. Mr. B.B. Nicoll was for some years M.L.A. for the Richmond. After trading to these ports for some years, unmarred by accidents, his first shipwreck in a chequered nautical career was some time in 1880, when he was unfortunate enough to be one of the officers of the steamer Wanganui, chartered by John See & Co. The Wanganui and the old well known Australian (for many years in command of Captains Affleck and Tucker, both of whom were subsequently washed overboard and drowned) had been racing from off Newcastle, and had arrived off the Clarence bar about midnight. To wait for morning meant that the Australian would be first in, so the Wanganui’s captain, whose name he had forgotten, but whose mate was Captain Horatio Woods, later of the “Macleay,” and the Illawarra S.N. Company’s Monaro, attempted to cross in at 1 a.m., with the result stated, and the regrettable loss of two lives.
The second occasion was in 1883, when he was on the Tambaroora (800 tons), named after the diggings on New England, which was lost on the Great Barrier Reef. Owned by Parbury, Lamb and Raff, ship chandlers, of Brisbane and Sydney, she traded between Melbourne and Sydney, but had gone to the Johnston River for a cargo of cedar. He then transferred to the Corea (800 tons), Captain Lowry, later pilot at Torres Straits, which ran between Sydney and Thursday Island, and with steam and sail could log 10 knots.
The third occasion was on January 29, 1884, when, in the first and smaller Richmond, owned by G.W. Nicoll — the second and larger Richmond, which also traded to Lismore, a vessel much too big for the trade, and before her time was never wrecked, but was sold and ran on the N.Z. coast under another name — which went ashore under the old gaol walls at Port Macquarie, and whose remains were still visible there in 1907. The Richmond was in charge of Captain Alfred Peggs (later drowned in the Fitzroy), with Captain Colvin as mate, and was crossing the Hastings outward bound with Pilot Kingston aboard.
The fourth occasion, on May 16, 1885, was on the Richmond River bar in the ill-fated steamer Lismore (215 tons), owned by G.W. Nicoll, the remains of which may still be seen almost embedded in sand between Shaw’s Bay and the Ballina lighthouse. Captain Ben Alley was in command at the time, and she was lost whilst crossing inwards at 5.30 p.m. There were 26 passengers, and tea was just ready.
FIFTH SHIPWRECK
It was then that the first Tweed, a fine iron screw boat of 240 tons, was imported from England by Mr. Nicoll in November, 1885. Captain L. Tulloch had command, Captain L. Paulsen being mate. After several years successful trading to the Tweed River (Mr G.W. Nicoll having retired from the Richmond trade), the Tweed was wrecked on the Tweed bar at noon on April 23, 1888. The tug was in charge of the late Captain T.H. Smith, later pilot at Tweed Heads, and pilot John McGregor was aboard the Tweed, which was in tow of the tug. This was his fifth shipwreck.
About this time Captain Michael Henry French had command of the steamer Fijian (633 tons), which Mr. G.W. Nicoll ran in the Fijian Islands trade between Newcastle, New Caledonia, and Levuka. In June, 1888, Mr. Connah took his old position in this steamer which, it is interesting to note, was the second steamer on this coast to have triple expansion engines, the Barcoo (1505 tons) being the first in 1885. Incidentally, it is worthy of mention that this pioneer steam-ship owner, who was an enterprising man, was the first man in the Fijian trade to get the idea of having shelves fitted in the steamers for the better carriage of bunches of bananas. His invention was adopted by others. When he sold out the Fiji trade to a New Zealander for £16,000, Mr. Connah went into Huddart Parker’s steamers, Nemesis (1393 tons), Age (1493 tons), and the Despatch (230 tons), which traded between Melbourne and Gippsland Lakes. Leaving the Despatch to take up a position in the second Tweed, his place was taken by Jimmy Dodds, previously of the Rosedale, which traded to the Richmond. About this time the Despatch was replaced by the Alert (243 tons), which foundered near Cape Schank, Victoria, on 28/12/’93, when Dodds perished. There was only one survivor, Robert Ponting, who, after being 18 hours in the sea, was cast up on the beach at Sorrento, unconscious. Two women found what they took to be a corpse, but revived it by placing their dog, a large retriever, beside the partly warm body, which acted as a hot water bag to the heart.
Mr. Connah was again ship-wrecked, for the sixth time, when, in the steamer Tweed, also owned by G.W. Nicoll (father of Capt Wallace Nicoll, of Currumbin), in Byron Bay on February 9, 1893. The Tweed was a wooden boat of 185 tons, built by Hardman at Jervis Bay during the great maritime strike of 1890. On her last voyage she was loaded with heavy railway material, and was in command of Captain M.H. French, with the late Captain J.H. Hunter, later of the Wollongbar, as first mate. The Tweed, which had 30 passengers aboard at the time, had been unable to land her passengers at the old jetty. There was a flood in the Richmond at the time. The Tweed, the Byron (which in later years foundered off Newcastle), also the old Coraki (which also came to grief on the Manning bar many years ago), took shelter in Byron Bay. The gale veered round to the north-east the same night, and then to due east. The captains of the three steamers decided to clear out. Unfortunately, when the gale was at its height, at about 4 a.m., the Tweed’s rudder carried away, and the little vessel was helpless. Captain French steamed for the shore, and beached his vessel on the sand. In getting ashore, Mr. Connah injured his leg, and Captain French, after spending ten days in endeavouring to refloat his charge, received serious injuries when the purchase block broke, part of it recoiling and striking him in the stomach. This brought about his death on 27/2/’95, at the age of 44 years. Still undaunted, Mr. Connah kept with his old employer in the Excelsior, that strong and powerful steamer, one of the first coastal steamers to be fitted with electric light. When she was replaced by the Cavanbah, Mr. Connah, who had served his time as a bootmaker at Pyrmont, retired from the sea and founded a business within a few hundred yards of the treacherous bar upon which he so nearly lost his life.
LEFT THE SEA
Mr. Connah also traded to the North Coast with Captain David Harper in the old fashioned but remembered steamer Platypus of 164 tons, whose screws were moved by cog wheels, City of Grafton (Captain John Magee) in 1885, Rosedale (164 tons), Captain M. Prendergast, in 1883, in G.W Nicoll’s Helen Nicoll, in B.B. Nicoll’s Casino, the Truganini, and in the Howard Smiths inter-colonial steamer Keilawarra (784 tons), sunk in collision with the Helen Nicoll off the Solitary Islands, 8/12/’86, when 40 lives were lost.
For five years he was in the Tweed trade with Captain Tulloch, in the old wooden Augusta (250 tons). He often recounted one trip from Sydney in the Augusta with 62 passengers when they had in tow a punt laden with 80 tons of blasting powder used in building the Lismore-Tweed railway (1891 to 1894).
On one trip, when they put into the Richmond short of food, they brought the late Mr. Patrick McMahon, a well known contractor, and later known as “the sugar king,” and Captain F.S. Lowes, who died at Tweed Heads only a fortnight ago. He always spoke affectionately of his old masters, but of none more so than of Messrs. Nicoll, who did so much of the pioneering shipping of the Richmond, Tweed and Brunswick Rivers and of Byron Bay, and who, despite their many reverses, continued on undauntedly, replacing lost vessels by new and up-to-date steamers. Mr. G.W. Nicoll died when only in his fifties.
Mr. Connah was a widower, whose wife and child died many years ago, and he had no relatives in Australia. Though of a retiring disposition, in the days when the ocean was the only district highway, he was widely known to the older generation, who esteemed him highly for his unswerving rectitude in life.
The interment was made in the Tweed Heads Anglican cemetery.