Community Page |
New findings, opinions and comments (please email us with yours) |
Re painting 'HMS Pelorus at low water' 1839, the year she was wrecked by the hurricane, Mark Stimson, Iowa, USA, comments: Pelorus seems to be on an exposed beach, which leads me to believe she is not there for an intentional careening. Note also that the rig is mostly out of her, another indication of a bad circumstance. She is obviously receiving a lot of attention, so it is surprising that she is said to have been "raised" more than a year later. Perhaps a storm took her back into deep water or her temporary repairs were not good enough to get her to a safe harbor with a dry dock. Note, also, that the term "raised" may not mean, strictly, brought up from deep water. I doubt they had the technology to do much of that kind of salvage work, anyway. So perhaps it just took a long time to get her "raised" from the beach. I checked the tide tables for the New South Wales region and found tide ranges of no more than 2 1/2 meters (roughly 8 feet) so even if she were holed there would be a lot of hull showing even at high water. |
Re the same painting, Gilbert Charbonneau, Boothbay, Maine, USA thinks it could be an intentional careening because there are booms lying out on the port side which would have been used to right the ship. |
>Important update from Ruth Guillard, May 2004: We have just added to the Gallery a definitive series of paintings by Owen Stanley, documenting the sequence of events after the hurricane at Port Essington as Pelorus was being salvaged. The amazing discovery to us is that the artist, Owen Stanley, was Captain of the HMS Britomart, the ship that rescued the survivors from the wrecked Pelorus. I imagine that since his own ship was damaged enough to need repairs, he had plenty of time to sit on shore and do all those watercolours of the events surrounding Pelorus. His life is a story in itself. He was the son of the Bishop of Norwich; he had a distinguished career in the Royal Navy, was a fine artist, a supporter of the natural and physical sciences of the day and and a true gentleman. His tours of duty took him to as disparate places as the South Seas and the Arctic, all the while drawing and painting everything that he saw. He died in 1850 while in command of HMS Rattlesnake at the age of 39. |
Re Pelorus' visit to the Cocos: John Maurice, Picton, NZ writes the following: April 1st 1834 Captain Fitzroy on HMS Beagle, with Charles Darwin aboard, arrives at Cocos Keeling Islands, Home of Captain John Clunies-Ross. (Ruth Guillard comments: it's a good bet that Pelorus was welcomed by the Clunies-Ross family when she stopped at the islands in 1837.) More by John Maurice: About 100 years later, a John Clunies-Ross, purchased the property of Garnes bay, a bay being, part of, Fitzroy Bay of the Pelorus Sound. John Clunies-Ross was the Great-Grandson of Captain John Clunies-Ross. This property remains in ownership of the Clunies-Ross family trust. Coincidental ? maybe the name was the deciding factor in buying this land. |
