Episode 70 - SS Waratah
Taylor: Hello and welcome to Beyond the Breakers, a podcast about shipwrecks, loss, and lessons learned from maritime disasters. My name is Taylor and I’ll be one of the hosts today, joining me as always is Tanner. But first, before we bring Tanner in, I wanna go ahead and thank a new Patron. Eric, thank you very much for signing up, hope you enjoy the bonus content, and uh, just a big thank you. Tanner, I think you had an email to read.
Tanner: Yeah, just wanted to mention we got a nice email from Drew letting us know that they’re checking out the show up on the bridge up in Alaska. We always love to hear from anyone anywhere, we love hearing where people listen to the show, when people listen to the show. We love hearing when we can help people get through the workday, that’s cool. We’re always especially interested when people in maritime-related trades are interested in the show. That’s really cool. It makes us feel like we are putting out a decent product here. Thank you for that email.
Taylor: Well, as far as media stuff goes. This week, we finally have football back. It’s great. It’s wonderful. It looks like the pre-season game for the Steelers went pretty well last night, some good stats, not that the scores really matter, but you like to see certain players performing well and all that. So that’s fun, gettin’ into the football season.
Tanner: I watched a few minutes of the Packers pre-season game the other night, but the Brewers were on, so I mainly watched that.
Taylor: Yeah, it must be nice to have a baseball team that wasn’t eliminated months ago.
Tanner: I don’t know, it was kinda scary after the trade deadline, getting rid of Josh Hader and then they kinda took a nosedive, ‘cause they didn’t really add a lot to the team. And then Josh Hader of course blew his first save out in San Diego. So if they could just undo that for everyone, that’d be nice.
Taylor: [laughs] Other than that, though, I’ve also been listening to the Unexplained podcast by Richard MacClean Smith. It’s good, if you like the Dead Reckoning style, it’s sort of done like that, like it’s just long narration with sound and music behind it, and he does a lot of different mysteries and supernatural stuff and kinda just presents the story and just lets you decide if you wanna believe it or not, which is fun. They’re like 30 minute episodes, it’s kind of a perfect little bite-size thing.
Tanner:: I do like the Dead Reckoning episodes.
Taylor: [laughs] yeah, do you? And then how about you? What have you been up to?
Tanner: For me…reading-wise I’ve been reading Marc Morris’ biography of King John. It’s one that I’ve had for a bit of time, but wasn’t really in that mindset of reading stuff from that time period. It’s really great, like everything I’ve read from Marc Morris. It’s very well told. He presents it in a really interesting way, kinda jumps back and forth in time during John’s life. The funny thing with that is that anything I’ve ever read about King John, fiction, non-fiction, I can only picture John as Richard Lewis from Robin Hood: Men In Tights. He’ll always be what King John looks like in my head. In terms of podcasts, I did wanna mention another one, a new podcast, called Spectre of the Sea. That actually features Bethan from one of our favorite podcasts Eerie Essex, a great ghost and folklore podcast if that’s your thing. And then it also has Owen Staton who has his own really amazing show called Time Between Times. That’s in podcast and he has a YouTube channel also.
Taylor: Nice.
Tanner: And Owen’s just a really great storyteller, very well put together stories, just very well told. It’s a really immersive experience listening to that show, both Spectre of the Sea and Time Between Times. Definitely really cool when you’re just in the mood for a good story, just wanna sit back and relax and I don’t know, drift off to somewhere different…
Taylor: Cool. Yeah, that does sound really cool.
Tanner: Just don’t do it while you’re driving.
Taylor: [laughs] Well. With that stuff out of the way, let’s roll into it, let’s do the thing we’re here to talk about: shipwrecks. Before we get started on this one, I think like we were talking about before, there’s a lot of ship names in this one, which means a lot of difficult things to pronounce. We spent like a solid ten minutes before we started looking up different names, so bear with us. [laughs]
Tanner: Yeah.
Taylor: This week, we will be talking about the Waratah. She was launched on September 12th, 1908 near Glasgow, Scotland, and she was built by Barclay, Curie and Company. She’s 465 feet long, she has a 59-foot beam, and a 27-foot draft. She was owned by W. Lund and Sons and [she’s actually operated by] the Blue Anchor Line that’s owned by the Lunds at the time of this story. Some things’ll happen that’ll be important later that will show you why they don’t own it later on. [5:00] So she’s built at a cost of 139,000 pounds and she’s primarily focused on the trade between the United Kingdom, South Africa, and Australia. All kinds of different parts of the colonies. The Waratah was designed to carry both passengers and cargo. Because she’s going to some of these more remote places, you don’t have necessarily enough passengers to justify [a trip], or enough cargo, so you start mixing it or you make things versatile where one direction you can carry more passengers, one direction you can carry more cargo. So she’s a versatile vessel. She had passenger cabins that could accommodate 432 passengers, plus additional space for 600 passengers in large dormitories that could also be used for cargo. So there you see it, she kinda has two configurations. She has a crew of 154, so you know, overall there’s a lot of people on this vessel potentially. If it’s in full passenger configuration, it’s a pretty large vessel. The Waratah was based on an existing vessel by the name of the SS Geelong. She’s an improved version of this vessel, so she has more modern accommodations, she has more modern equipment, that kind of thing. They went from good to better. So they thought. The Waratah was designed with both speed and comfort in mind, so again, she’s kind of a compromise of everything. She’s just a big general purpose vessel.
Tanner: Love speed, love comfort. Simple as.
Taylor: [laughs] She boasted a stately salon, a music lounge, and even a nursery for first class passengers. But the first class part’s doing a lot of lifting.
Tanner: A nursery to keep…the first class passengers in? Or…the children of the first class passengers?
Taylor: [laughs] I’m pretty confident if you were traveling first class at this time, you didn’t actually wanna be around your children, so yeah it’s probably just like “yes, yes, take them away.” So in addition to her luxury, the vessel played another role. She was also kind of designed with immigration in mind, and that’s where we get those dormitories and things like that. During her trips to South Africa and Australia, her hold would be intended to be used for dormitories for the steerage class immigrants. Obviously, those people are less concerned about creature comforts than price. On a return trip, though, the demand is less for people going back. A lot of these people are on one-way tickets, so you have more space for cargo. Natural resources are abundant in Australia, so what do you do? You extract the natural resources and ship ‘em back to the homeland, right?
Tanner: Hmm.
Taylor: So on her return trips, she would carry things such as iron ore, beef, wool, lead ore, all of the things they were extracting from Australia. She’s actually equipped with a refrigeration system that allows her to preserve this beef as she hauls it back from Australia. She’s also capable of distilling 25,000 liters of fresh water every day on her onboard distilling system. So despite all of these advanced things, you know those are both fairly uncommon at the time, she still does not have an onboard radio. But that isn’t strange, necessarily, that she doesn’t…
Tanner: …right.
Taylor: …that’s still pretty typical of most vessels at the time.
Tanner: Yeah, I would say at this point isn’t it pretty rare for a ship to have that?
Taylor: Yeah, it would’ve been more noteworthy if she had it.
Tanner: I’ve never even really thought about that in any of our ships we’ve talked about, but the water distillation aspect is interesting.
Taylor: Yeah, it’s very interesting.
Tanner: That’s a lot of fresh water.
Taylor: Yeah. So the vessel had a cellular double bottom, with a hull that was divided into eight watertight compartments. This led many people to claim that she was “practically immune from any danger of sinking.” The Waratah’s maiden voyage was on November 5th, 1908, when she left London under the command of Captain Joshua Edward Ilbery. He had previously been the captain of the SS Geelong, and he had over 30 years of experience at sea. So very experienced, he comes from the vessel that this one’s designed on, so you can’t think of a better guy right? She carried 67 first class passengers, 689 third class passengers and 154 crew. Notice the lack of any second class there.
Tanner: I was gonna say, is there just no second class?
Taylor: It’s actually fairly common in a lot of these vessels that you basically had the people that could pay, and then you had everybody else that was trying to be as cheap as possible. Second class kind of proved not always to be economical ‘cause there just weren’t enough middle class people to fill it. Kind of interesting. So it’s not uncommon, especially where she’s switching between more passengers and more cargo and stuff. She would depart Cape Town, South Africa on November 27th, and arrive in Adelaide, Australia on December 15th, 1908. When en route to Adelaide, the vessel actually suffered a small fire which started in her lower starboard bunker, and it eventually made its way all the way to the engine room. The cause of this fire was determined to be inadequate insulation on the starboard side of the engine room, and this issue is actually repaired once she’s in port, but it’s a notable incident.
Tanner: So the engine is just too hot and without that insulation it just sets that stuff around it on fire?
Taylor: Yeah, basically there’s just so much built-up heat resonating in that space that eventually the coal kind of spontaneously catches.
Tanner: Excellent [sarcastically].
Taylor: So that’s a problem. After stopping in Adelaide, the vessel visited Melbourne and Sydney before sailing back to London on January 9th, 1909. Along the way, she would stop at ports at the colony of Natal and the Cape colony. Waratah would arrive in London on March 7th, 1909, completing her maiden voyage. After unloading, she is inspected at a dry dock by Lloyd’s of London. That’s one of her insurers basically, they issue the certificates of safety, that kind of thing. Basically, they’re looking at stuff and making sure that it’s safe.
Tanner: They’re on Twitter, too.
Taylor: Are they?
Tanner: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: [laughs] So they inspect it, they check it out after that first voyage, say everything looks great. During her voyage, though, the captain and crew had some issues with the vessel. Captain Ilbery reported that she was not as stable as the Geelong, from which her design was based. He also had concerns about properly maintaining her stability while being loaded. It seemed like the vessel liked to move a lot, a lot more than he was used to. You know, I feel like if you do that job long enough, you’re gonna pick up on that kind of stuff.
Tanner: The bad vibes.
Taylor: Yes, the ship had bad vibes. Despite these concerns about her stability, the Waratah departed for Australia on April 27th, 1909 carrying 22 first class passengers, 193 steerage passengers, and a crew of 119. This trip would actually prove to be a pretty uneventful one–the steemer would arrive in Adelaide on June 6th. While in Adelaide, she would take on a cargo of 970 tons of lead ore. From Adelaide, the Waratah fought through a gale and reached Melbourne on June 11th. From there she would reach Sydney later in the week and take on a cargo including *7,800 bars of bullion, wool, frozen meat, and dairy products. She would eventually depart on June 26th. She would stop again in Melbourne and Adelaide on her way back. I’m not really sure why, if it was just running mail or topping off on supplies, but she makes brief stops in both of those places. ‘
Tanner: I had to pull up a map of Australia again…
Taylor: [laughs] I know.
Tanner: …cause Adelaide is not one that I can ever remember where it is.
Taylor: Is it in the southwest corner?
Tanner: It’s like the southeast in like the belly of Australia, kind of.
Taylor: This is why we have an Australian correspondent for this show. Thank you Josie.
Tanner: It’s on the Great Australian Bight.
Taylor: [laughs]
Tanner: Bight. B-i-g-h-t.
Taylor: All of this moving around Australia leads us up to June 7th, where she begins her journey back to London.
Tanner: [I’m gonna] cut you off again here. Also it’s right by Kangaroo Island. Real original.
Taylor: [laughs] Kangaroo. There’s probably Kangaroo Creek, Kangaroo Island, Kangaroo Lake…So. June 7th, we begin our journey back to London. Upon leaving Adelaide, she set course for the colony of Natal and the port of Durban. In addition to her cargo, she had around 100 passengers, including a convict being transported to the Transvaal colony and two policemen accompanying him. I just have to wonder, how bad do you have to be that Australia’s like “no, no, you leave here, you go now.”
Tanner: [laughs] when you get kicked out of Norfolk Island, they send you to South Africa.
Taylor: [laughs] I just thought that was funny, I was like I thought they sent the prisoners to Australia.
Tanner: That may have been mentioned at some point in our research that we did for the bonus ones, but yeah, I don’t know why you would be transporting a convict that way.
Taylor: The only thing I can think of is maybe he was actually from South Africa and did something and got like extradited back.
Tanner: Maybe.
Taylor: But yeah, so I thought that was an interesting little tidbit though. The Waratah would reach Durban on July 25th, and while in Durban, a passenger by the name of Claude G. Sawyer, who was an engineer and an experienced traveler at sea, sent a cable to his wife in London. It said: “thought Waratah top-heavy. Landed in Durban.” This would actually be enough for Mr. Sawyer to disembark even though he had booked passage all the way to Cape Town. So he’s so unnerved by this, he decides to leave. He’s bothered by the behavior of the ship during the voyage, but also by a dream that he had. In the dream, Sawyer saw a man “dressed in a very peculiar dress, which I had never seen before, with a longsword in his right hand, which he seemed to be holding between us. On the other hand, he had a *rag covered with blood.” Yeah I don’t know, that's a weird dream.
Tanner: It’s kind of an interesting example of like the interplay between real life and your dreams and how sometimes dreams can seem in some way predictive, or they’re foreshadowing something, when in all likelihood he’s got these concerns about the ship based on his experiences, he’s thinking about that. In his own mind he’s feeling uneasy and therefore that probably gets manifested in this dream that’s kind of compounding this “hey, you should not be on this ship.”
Taylor: No matter what the cause of the dream and the cause of his misgivings, it would actually end up saving Mr. Sawyer’s life. [laughs] The Waratah left Durban on the evening of July 26th with 211 people on board and at that point she would be sighted by a vessel by the name of the Clan MacIntyre early in the morning on July 27th. The ships would exchange information and the faster Waratah gradually overtook the Clan MacIntyre near the mouth of the river Bashee By 9:30 that morning, the Waratah had disappeared over the horizon and the Clan MacIntyre lost sight of her. As July 27th wore on, the weather would rapidly deteriorate in the area, and the captain of the MacIntyre would report that these were the worst seas he’d experienced in his 13 years of service. So again, any time you have a captain saying something’s the worst thing he’s ever seen, like I think you have to take it seriously. After this encounter, we’re actually only left with unconfirmed sightings of the Waratah. The vessel Harlow reported smoke consistent with a steamer on the horizon at 17:30 [5:30] hours on the evening of July 27th, however, they soon realized there’s so much smoke that the captain of the Harlow began to wonder if the steamer was on fire. As darkness overtook, the crew of the Harlow could see the steamer’s lights at about 10 to 12 miles distance. Suddenly there were two bright flashes from that direction and the lights disappeared. At first, the captain was convinced it was caused by an explosion. However, the mate on duty convinced him that it was merely brush fires burning on the shore, which isn’t uncommon in the area. The captain ultimately agreed with this and did not even enter the event into the ship’s logbook. Only after the loss of the Waratah would become apparent did he think that these events might be significant. At the time of this incident, the captain believed they would have been about 180 miles away from Durban. So I think that’s a super interesting encounter.
Tanner: Well yeah, especially seeing one where in retrospect you look back at the details that you perceived and it’s much easier to think now like that was probably what we were seeing.
Taylor: Also interesting with like the fire thing. We had known that there was a fire issue on the previous journey. Did they truly fix the issue?
Tanner: Also, we see some execution of Bridge Resource Management. The captain is listening to the input from his first mate, acknowledging it…
Taylor: …true, true.
Tanner: …taking it into account.
Taylor: Probably should have put it in the logbook, though.
Tanner: Probably.
Taylor: So around 21:30 [9:30] hours that evening, the Union-Castle liner Guelph en route from Cape of Good Hope to Durban passed a vessel and exchanged lamp signals. Due to the poor weather and limited visibility, the crew is only able to make out a small bit of the vessel’s signals. However, they identified the last three letters of her name: T-A-H. Although not disclosed at the time of inquiry, another possible sighting occurred when Edward Joe Conquer of the Cape Mounted Rifleman was posted on the banks of the Xora river with Signaller H. Adshead. He would record in his diary that the two men observed through a telescope a steamer which matched the Waratah’s description. They said that she appeared to be struggling against the heavy seas and they observed waves rolling over the ship and she eventually disappeared from view. The men would report this back to an orderly sergeant at their base camp, however it appears that the matter is not taken seriously and this story was not even public until 1929.
Tanner: Wow.
Taylor: So it’s very interesting. One interesting part of this, though, is that all three of these stories can’t be true based on time and geography. From what I was reading, all of these people could not have seen the vessel. So it’s very interesting how that went down. It’s also interesting that you have multiple stories here where people don’t take it that seriously. They see something but they don’t really note it. If anything, to me, the one about the guys in the military seems to be the least believable? ‘Cause it would be easy to make that up, I feel like. After the fact.
Tanner: Just a huge distance in time between when it went public…
Taylor: Mm-hmm. I thought that was interesting. Let’s talk about the search efforts. The Waratah had been expected on July 29th, however, there was no alarm at first when she’s overdue. We’re still in that time period where ships…it’s not uncommon for them to be days or even weeks late as a result of weather, other delays, again, the ship doesn’t have a radio, so you can’t really communicate. Additionally, with the Waratah being considered “unsinkable” the delay was chalked up to a mechanical issue.
Tanner: I mean, technically probably true.
[both laugh]
Taylor: However, the alarm began to get raised when vessels that had traveled the same course as the Waratah but left after her did not report seeing her. On August 1st, that would result in the tugboat TE Fuller being sent out to look for any signs of her. Although her time on scene was pretty brief, she was forced to turn back by poor weather. This prompted a response by the Royal Navy–the Cruisers Pandora and Forte were deployed to the area. Later they were joined by the HMS Hermes. The Hermes would actually encounter waves so powerful that the captain feared her hull was strained and she was forced into dry dock once she returned to port. So as you can see, not optimal conditions, like it’s nasty out there. Not a great place to be if you’ve got stability issues.
Tanner: Yeah, and this also, I mean, this is an area that I don’t know a lot about like weather patterns and how storms work in that area, so it’s kind of interesting to see a story in a new environment that involves some heavy weather.
Taylor: Mm-hmm. For sure. So on August 10th, 1909, a cable from the colony of Natal to Australia reads as follows: “Blue Anchor vessel sighted a considerable distance out. Slowly making for Durban. Could be Waratah.” The chair of the Australian Parliament actually stops the day’s proceedings to read this in the chamber. I have a quote: “Mr. Speaker has just informed me that he has on reliable authority that the SS Waratah has been sighted making slow progress to Durban.” In a flurry of excitement, bells are rung in Adelaide, however, it would turn out that the ship in question was not the Waratah and the excitement would soon be tempered.
Tanner: Oh nnaaauurr. Naauur. [Australian “no”]
Taylor: [laughs] that was said many times that day. Various other vessels would join in the search for the Waratah, including her sister ship the Geelong, which had altered her course while en route from Cape Town to Adelaide to assist in the search. On August 13th, the steamship Insizwa reported several bodies in the waters off the shore of the Bashee river, near the last confirmed sighting of the Waratah. Later, the captain of the vessel Tottenham also claimed to see bodies in the same general area around two weeks after the Waratah was lost. A tug by the name of Harry Escombe was sent out to search in the area, however, they did not find any bodies. They did find something, though. They were able to find several dead skates that, as they decomposed, kind of resembled human bodies.
Tanner: Hmm. How big are these skates?
Taylor: Pretty big, I’m guessing. I don’t know how big a sea skate is. So I think there’s some thought that maybe what these people were seeing were dead marine life, basically. Despite all of this, many still held out hope that the vessel was adrift at sea. The vessel would have had plenty of provisions and you know, it was possible that she was just waiting to be found in the vast ocean. She also has the ability to distill her own drinking water, so in theory, passengers could exist for a long time, it’s just a matter of being found. This wasn’t totally without precedent. This had actually happened to the SS Walkato, which had suffered a mechanical issue in 1899 and had been drifting for 100 days before being discovered and towed to Australia. So, there is some like precedent that this is something that happens, especially without being able to send distress signals. In September, the Union-Castle steamer Sabine was sent to search for the missing vessel. She would search over 14,000 miles of ocean in a zigzag pattern, however, no trace of the vessel was ever seen. Waratah was officially listed as missing by Lloyds of London on December 15th, 1909. So at this point, it’s official, if you will. However, in early January 1910, relatives of the missing passengers made one last ditch effort to find the vessel. They chartered the Wakefield, which searched the area for 4 months, covering over 15,000 miles. The Wakefield found nothing of note and no traces of the missing liner. At this point, any searching was closed.
Tanner: It is impressive in several stories where we’ve talked about this where the families themselves end up kinda taking it up to do one last search. And like in this case, it didn’t surface anything more but in other stories we’ve talked about like with the Bedfordshire, I wanna say…
Taylor: …no, the Derbyshire.
Tanner: The Derbyshire! The Derbyshire and…
Taylor: …even in the Marine Electric, with families pushing it…
Tanner: …that one also, of how you have the families, the relatives who are the ones who have that final push to get some final answers.
Taylor: Right. Yeah, it’s very interesting. It’s good to see, even in this case, that maybe it does help some families get a little closure, a little more acceptance of it’s gone by doing the searching. So let’s move on to the Board of Inquiry. The British Board of Trade launched an investigation into the liner’s disappearance in December of 1910. Previous reports of instability quickly became a topic of focus. The committee was frustrated by the lack of first-hand evidence, as only a few passengers, including Claude Sawyer, who we previously talked about, had even been on the vessel during his final voyage. So, you know, just not a lot of first-hand information. As a result, much of the testimony of the vessel came from passengers and crew who had been on during her maiden voyage. All expert witnesses agreed that the vessel was constructed and built properly. She had been given a rating of +100 A1 by Lloyds of London, and that’s actually the top rating that could be attained. This can only be obtained if Lloyds of London has inspected and assessed the vessel throughout her design, construction, fitting-out and sea trials. They’ve actually done everything by the books on this, they’re not cutting corners, they’re not trying to be cheap, like they’re allowing this thing to be inspected. However, many of those who had traveled on her stated that they felt she was unstable. She frequently listed to one side, even in calm conditions, and she would continually roll excessively. One passenger even testified [that] while on her maiden voyage, the vessel developed such a list that water would not run out into the baths. She would hold this position for hours before she corrected it.
Tanner: So, I’m looking at the notes here, “it wouldn’t run out of the baths”, so like it wouldn’t drain, I’m assuming? Because it’s tilted so far?
Taylor: Yeah, yeah that or like you couldn’t run water because of the tilt.
Tanner: Gotcha.
Taylor: That’s a significant tilt, though.
Tanner: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: One passenger, a physicist by the name of Professor William Bragg, concluded that the ship’s metacenter was just below her center of gravity. This meant that when the ship slowly rolled toward one side, she could reach a point of equilibrium and stay leaning that way until she was shifted by wind or sea to her upright position.
Tanner: Hmm.
Taylor: So she could almost just reach a spot where she could kind of rock over and list and just sit there and stay there.
Tanner: So she was still stable, but just not be in an upright position?
Taylor: Correct, which is unnerving.
Tanner: Concerning, yeah.
Taylor: Which is like great if the wind and the waves push you to correct it eventually, but if it pushes you the other way, that could be bad.
Tanner: Yeah.
Taylor: It’s not how you’d wanna start things in rough weather.
Tanner: It’d be like punching one of those weeble-wobble things and it just like stays back where you hit it.
[both laugh]
Taylor: Exactly. It’s also noted by those who handled her in port that when not loaded, she was unstable and could not be handled without ballast. So this ship absolutely had to be loaded or have ballast to be moved, even around port she was that unstable.
Tanner: I’m sure this is like an outlier in terms of its severity, if people are commenting on it, but isn't that relatively common with ships? Where if they’re not loaded they have ballast on them?
Taylor: Yeah, I mean I think you would definitely travel that way to have a smoother ride, but to me it almost sounds like this is dangerous without ballast.
Tanner: Yeah, this sounds like it literally won’t sail unless you have it.
Taylor: Even just moving around port and stuff, which seems excessive. The inquiry did not come to any definitive conclusions, and they did not pin blame on the Blue Anchor Line, however, they did criticize the company for some of their practices. They argued that the company was more concerned about the vessel’s appearance and comfort rather than stability and basic seaworthiness. It appears that the Blue Anchor Line assumed that because the design was based on the successful Geelong, that stability [would be] a non-issue.
Tanner: Hmm…
Taylor: So a couple things. Notice that since all the crew died, they couldn’t blame them as much, really, so no one actually got in trouble for this.
Tanner: I guess not unique for stories we’ve told, but it is always odd, especially some of these more recent ones where there is more paperwork and there’s people’s names on everything.
Taylor: It’s just interesting that they did everything in the right way, went through all the processes, and they still put out a ship that wasn’t stable, and no one is really gonna get held accountable for that.
Tanner: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: I just thought that was very interesting. Another factor in the vessel’s stability would have been her varying forms of cargo. It’s pretty different when she’s loaded with people versus loaded with iron ore, as far as weight and how that weight is distributed across the hull. That can always present problems. It’s possible that her cargo of lead concentrate can suddenly shift, especially if the vessel’s already holding some of her list and we’ve seen that happen multiple times where you get the free-surface effect and the ship will capsize quickly.
Tanner: Mm-hmm. And, just to clarify, lead concentrate is not the same as lead ore, correct? It’s like a refined version of it?
Taylor: I think. I’m not sure about the technical changes.
Tanner: I looked a little bit at it, and I believe lead concentrate is a more refined, kind of almost powdery substance, which you can imagine would probably be a bit more shift-y in the hold? Behaving more like a liquid.
Taylor: Yeah, that’s interesting. That’s something that could have also played a role in her stability issues, it’s just varying ways that the hull is stressed, and you know, how things are loaded. So I thought that was very interesting. Let’s talk about a couple of theories. Theory 1: a rogue wave. It’s possible that an abnormally large wave caused the vessel to, you know, if she was already listing, it could incapacitate her and have her lose engines, or just suddenly sink her if she’s already listing pretty good. It’s never good when you’re just left at the mercy of the sea. This theory would make sense, as seas were reported in the area that were exceptionally bad to operate in. They got guys saying it’s the worst weather they’ve ever seen. You have a flawed vessel, clearly, here, that’s listing. To me that makes sense. That’s fairly plausible, I feel like, in this scenario. Theory 2, and I feel like this theory could have worked in conjunction with theory 1, is cargo shifting. We’re pretty familiar with that at this point, we just talked about it, and we’ve talked about it in multiple other episodes, that when that water gets down in there, it causes a lot of problems. I definitely see those working together, almost, in this. Another one that I thought was kind of funny and was popular at the time but doesn’t get a lot of credit now, is that the ship was sucked into a whirlpool.
Tanner: …like a cartoon whirlpool. Like…
Taylor: …yes. Yeah. Yep, like a bathtub drain.
Tanner: Okay.
Taylor: I just have in the notes in bold “NO” because [inaudible]. But that was something that was passed around at the time.
Tanner: I was gonna say, like, before I laugh at that, does that happen? Have any ships been lost to Bugs Bunny cartoon whirlpools?
Taylor: [laughs] not aware of it.
Tanner: I don’t want to offend any listeners.
Taylor: [laughs] then a final theory is that there was an explosion. Given the testimony of the Harlow, it’s speculated that the vessel suffered a violent explosion in one of her coal bunkers. However, it doesn’t explain the lack of debris. It’s unlikely that a singular explosion in a coal bunker would sink a vessel that rapidly that there would be no remains left.
Tanner: Right.
Taylor: So yeah, I find that interesting. I do think there’s a way for all three of these things to work together, and that is that if there’s a rogue wave that causes that cargo to shift, it capsizes her. Once those boilers hit the cold water, you could have an explosion. So I do feel like maybe all of these things could’ve happened.
Tanner: And there’s no debris ‘cause it all got sucked down the whirlpool.
[both laugh]
Taylor: There you go, it’s the unified theory of the Waratah. We’ve done it.
Tanner: Also, they could have hit a submarine.
Taylor: They could’ve hit a submarine. [laughs] We’ll have to edit the Wiki to add that in there.
Tanner: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: So Aftermath and Later Searches. The Blue Anchor Lines suffered, you know, obviously, from this incident. Ticket sales dropped and the cost of construction of this vessel was never…they never got any return on it, so that put the company deep in debt. This was only the vessel’s second voyage.
Tanner: Probably the most tragic part of this story, honestly, that they didn’t see a return on their investment.
Taylor: [laughs] the company was forced to sell its other steamships to its competitor, the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, or P&O. Later in 1910, the company would voluntarily enter liquidation. So, they basically just sold it all off.
Tanner: Is that the same…P&O, is that the same company that’s been in the news recently, like the big one in the UK?
Taylor: Yeah, that’s the same one. Same company.
Tanner: Okay. That’s the one who fired all of their people, right?
Taylor: Mmm, maybe? I can’t remember.
Tanner: I believe that’s the one. I don’t remember enough about the story, but I know that it was a big issue that we should probably look back into, in terms of like union stuff and labor issues. I just wanted to make sure that that was the same company.
Taylor: Yeah. One humorous note about an otherwise not so humorous topic. The Daily Mail, the newspaper, suspected that a rival paper, the Daily Standard, was copying its stories.
Tanner: [laughs]
Taylor: To catch them in the act, the mail published a fictitious article that claimed the Waratah was found off of Antarctica. The Daily Standard not only published the story, but added a quote from a fully fictitious harbor master confirming the story.
Tanner: This is so good. So cool.
Taylor: [laughs] it is. It’s always fun to see.
Tanner: And this is just a timeless trick, because we just saw this deployed just a few years ago with Coleen Rooney doing something very similar to Rebekah Vardy with I think it was her Instagram?...
Taylor: …I think so.
Tanner: …she thought that people were leaking personal stories, so she changed like the privacy settings on her Instagram to who could see what and she rotated through like all of her suspected friends I guess, and it finally came out that it was Rebekah Vardy who was doing it. So very similar tactic, very well executed.
Taylor: Absolutely.
Tanner: You love to see it.
Taylor: [laughs] I thought that was pretty funny. Some of the later search efforts…multiple attempts have been made to find the lost vessel in modern times, however, they’ve all proved to be fruitless. In 1999, reports surfaced that the Waratah had been found off of the coast of South Africa, and a side scan sonar team led by Emlyn Brown stated that they had found a wreck matching the profile of the missing vessel. In 2001, a team of divers revealed that the ship was actually the Nailsea Meadow, a merchant vessel that had fallen victim to a German B-boat in WWII. An actual victim of a submarine.
Tanner: Mm-hmm. [laughs]
Taylor: After 22 years of searching, in 2004, Emlyn Brown stated that he was giving up his search by saying “I’ve exhausted all options. I have no idea where to look.” It’s very interesting that there is just no trace of this vessel. We do not know where she is today. She is the original MH370.
Tanner: I think with the things about finding the vessel and not finding the vessel and determining, or rather verifying, “is this the vessel, is it not” we had something similar with the City of Everett, the whaleback that we talked about how there was this announcement that it was discovered, and then that was retracted because they found the engine plate that said it was from a different ship. I think it’s interesting with these stories because you do occasionally see headlines of “this ship found” or “divers think they have found this ship” and that usually gets a headline and maybe a short article. I feel like there’s much less attention paid when the follow-up comes out of “well, actually it wasn’t this vessel.” And I think that’s what leads to some of the confusion about, you know, which ones have been found and which ones haven’t. All it takes is one hastily updated Wikipedia page, and then suddenly the truth has shifted a little bit.
Taylor: Right.
Tanner: So I think it’s interesting to see Emlyn Brown spend so much time, put so much effort into this, and really come to the kinda logical conclusion of if we haven’t found it now, then it’s just not going to be found without just some freak chance miracle.
Taylor: Right. And that is actually one of the interesting things that happened during the search for MH370. They found a lot of things in the ocean that they wouldn’t have found otherwise. Just not the plane. I think one other little tidbit, kind of a cultural impact of this, it’s interesting reading about this. This vessel sort of suffers from the Titanic effect in the sense that she’s just overshadowed by the Titanic. She happens three years before the Titanic, and it’s sort of one of the passenger liner stories that captivates general society in the UK until the Titanic happens, because I think it sort of has that mystery quality of like is it still out there, you know? Or where are these people?
Tanner: I think the idea you have with this one, you do have the viable option of the ship could still be floating out there. People could’ve survived for however much time, even if that’s not what happened. You can definitely see how that mysterious aspect of it would have some appeal to the public until you get something that’s just so off the charts enormous like the Titanic. I saw this referred to as “Australia's Titanic” in some sources.
Taylor: Yeah, I did see that in a few, which, I suppose. I mean, it probably had a disproportionate effect on Australia.
Tanner: You’ve gotta be careful, because we had Australia’s Titanic last week, we had the Admiral Nakhimov, which has been referred to as like Russia’s Titanic, or the Soviet Titanic. We gotta stop doing Titanics.
Taylor: Knocking out those Titanics.
Tanner: Lithuania’s Titanic. Madagascar’s Titanic.
Taylor: [laughs]
Tanner: Bulgaria’s Titanic.
Taylor: Yeah, I thought this was an interesting story. It does have that mystery kind of aspect to it, which is very interesting. It’s just also one I hadn’t heard of until I came across it, but it, you know, it’s very notable in its time. This was a brand-new ocean liner, there’s no reason it should have been lost in a bad storm. Yeah, I think that’s really all I have. Unless you have anything else to add, I think we’ll wrap this one up.
Tanner: No, I think this was a very informative one. I didn’t know anything about this one. Good to hear about it.
Taylor: Awesome. Well, thank you everybody for listening, and check out the TeeSpring store that we’ve set up. We’ve got, what, a couple different shirts on there, got some stickers. It’s all new, we’re figuring that out, so it’ll probably get better with time. Definitely give it a look, check that out. Listen to our Spotify playlist, that’s a thing, too. So if you wanna check out some of that, and yeah, that’s all I have. Go ahead.
Tanner: Also, bonus-wise, in this month of August we’ve put out our full bonus episode where we watched the movie U-571, you can check out the bonus episode about that, and we also just recently put out the third installment in our Dead Reckoning series, also another fun, kinda different-style episode to check out, and then also we did release the first Dead Reckoning to everyone in the main feed. So if you’re curious about what that is and how it kinda differs from a main episode, give that a listen. They’re only usually about 25 minutes long, so not too much of your time. Just kind of a very different experience. So, give those all a listen if that sounds like your kind of thing.
Taylor: One more thing, while we’re doing this, I know we had talked about it a little but, we’re coming up on 50,000 downloads, which is a lot for us. We were going to do a Q&A for that. So. If you got some Qs, we probably have some As. Send us an email, get us on Twitter, don’t use Instagram DMs ‘cause they’re not the best.
Tanner: They’re very hard to see. They’re very easy to miss, I would say.
Taylor: So if you really wanna talk to us, send us an email or a Twitter DM. But yeah, submit some questions, we’ll post some more stuff about it, we’ll build some of those up, and have a little fun. Yeah, just wanna do something fun for kinda hittin’ a milestone.
Tanner: They don’t necessarily have to be ship questions.
Taylor: Yeah, they can be…we can have fun with it, we can do whatever we need to do.
Tanner: Within reason we can get creative with what kind of questions we answer.
Taylor: [laughs] right. So yeah, check that out, shoot us an email, and have a great week. Thanks for listening everybody.
[background audio of waves on shore]
Tanner: Thanks for listening to another episode of Beyond the Breakers. We love hearing from listeners, and if you’d like to get in touch with us, there’s a couple of ways you can do that:
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