Whose Bell

Wreck Story "All Bunkum", But . . .

Whose Bell Is It ?

By Robert Langdon

The widely publicised story

about an old wreck having been found off the northern coast of Queensland late last year is “all bunkum”, according to a front page story in Brisbane’s Sunday

Truth recently.

NOT only was no wreck ever found, Truth said, but a bell which was said to have been re covered from it was the same bell that had been at the Lockhart River Mission for years.

The wreck story first hit the head lines on December 24 when a Darwin businessman, Alan Darcy, claimed that he and three other men had found the remains of an old wooden vessel while cruising to Darwin in his racing yacht Alvis.

The wreck, he said, was five miles offshore, 200 miles north of Cairns, in six fathoms.

It had been found when one of his crew, Donald Smith, had dived to investigate when the Alvis’s anchor had become snagged on something.

Darcy added that a bell recovered from the wreck bore the inscription: “The gift of Lady Herbert, daughter of Sir John Knatchbull, of Mearchim Hatch, in Kent, in the Kingdom of England, November 30, 1711.”

“I hope to organise an expedition to salvage the wreck,” he said.

“Aboard might be old books or papers still readable. There might even be a sunken treasure.”

“Sensation"

In an article in the Adelaide Advertiser on December 28, I hazarded the opinion that the wreck was probably that of HMS Pandora, which had gone down on the Great Barrier Reef in 1791 while taking 14 mutineers of the Bounty from Tahiti to England for trial.

The publication of my Pandora theory created something of a sensa tion. Next day the Sydney Sun fol lowed it up, splashing a story about the Pandora on its front page and spilling inside.

The Sun quoted author-historian Dr. Colin Roderick as saying that he,

(Continued on p. 142)

too, believed the wreck might be that of the Pandora.

It also published a detailed and colourful version of the finding of the wreck by Donald Smith.

The Sun’s story was republished by several other Australian papers and was also given prominence in the British national Press. Then the fun really started.

English angles on the story were cabled back to Australia; Australian Cabinet Ministers and high Govern ment officials discussed whether the wreck-finders would be legally entitled to salvage the wreck if it really was the Pandora; and a Sydney maritime authority, Capt. Finlay Murchison, said that if it was the Pandora it “ought to be preserved for historical interest”.

Not Pleased All this did not seem to please Messrs. Darcy and Smith. During the next two weeks, Darcy, in Darwin, and Smith, in Sydney, denied empha tically that the wreck was that of the Pandora and insisted that it was probably that of a galleon or privateer laden with gold or silver.

They even “quoted” Admiralty ex perts to support them, although most of the experts’ alleged statements were demonstrably absurd.

Then the two men apparently went quiet. Nothing further seemed to be heard from them until March 26 when Smith bobbed up in Brisbane and told the Sunday Mail that he was on his way to Cairns to head a six-man diving team to investigate the wreck.

Despite the fact that Darcy had stated on January 8 that the Ad miralty “thought it certain that the wreck was not the Pandora ”, Smith said that “London enquiries” indi cated that the wreck would prove to be “either the Pandora or a privateer . . . possibly loaded with silver or gold”.

Two days later, Darcy said in Dar win that the Admiralty had now told him that the description of the bell that he took from the wreck fitted that of a bell “known to be aboard a ship which was last heard of in Timor in 1711”.

This, for me, was the last straw, for if the bell had been presented in England on November 30, 1711, the ship obviously could not have reached Timor until at least 1712.

I sat down immediately and wrote an article for a Sydney paper, listing

some of the demonstrably false and absurd statements that Darcy and Smith had made and hinting that there was something odd about their continual talk about sunken treasure.

This article apparently set the sleuths of Brisbane’s Sunday Truth on the warpath.

Next week-end, that paper’s crime reporter John Burton claimed in at article that he had been supplied Witt “a top-level report to police” which branded the discovery of a wreck Darcy and Smith as a “pack of lies”

Truth also quoted a radio messag( from the Lockhart River Missioi which stated that the much pub licised bell had not been found b] Darcy and Smith, but had mereb been shown to them when they calle< at the mission for repairs to the Alvis Truth claimed that the wreck stor was a stunt.

Assuming the accuracy of Truth’ story, it has yet to be explained ho\ the Lockhart River Mission acquire the bell, who found it, where it wa found, and, above all, what ship i last belonged to.

Everything still seems to sugges that the bell belonged to the Pandorc particularly as the Lockhart Rive Mission is only 50 or 60 miles sout of where the Pandora went dowi and the Pandora is the only shi likely to have a bell with an 18t century inscription that is known t have sunk off the Queensland coas

he precise demands of the strikers both Ocean Is. and Nauru have been officially stated, jt back in Auckland on May 9, NZ Commissioner, Mr. Tennent the workers had been given pay , and also that the BPC would d £A 1,875,000, on new labour for them, s said workers received from £20a month plus bonuses. They d get a 23 per cent, wage in ;e, and weekly child allowances, r. Tennent said the settlement been “mutually satisfactory” and was “very happy”. He was led there would be no more lie in the islands for “a very time, if ever”, he added, iginally. the workers had de d that if the BPC did not grant demands then they wished to be dated, with the wages that would accrued to them had they led their contracts, ic Islanders are recruited ally for the phosphate workings as this gives the able-bodied of these small islands a chance do not normally have of earning cash, a period on Ocean Island auru is highly regarded, len the strikers split into oppos factions in mid-April, it was ly due to the fact that the anti : faction was being urged on by ams from the folks back home were all for their getting back e job.

“They’re Trying to Beat a Fool’s ise”, p. 49.