Sub aqua adventures
• Former North Eastern Sub Aqua Club members Tony Jetson, Don Etchells and David Watts with an anchor salvaged from a shipwreck in the 1980s.
By Daisy Baker
May 20, 2020
Nestled in a bed of rocks on Bridport’s Main Street is a rusted anchor from shipwrecked vessel, The Catherine, which was retrieved by the now defunct North Eastern Sub Aqua Club during the 1980s.
The Catherine, a 189-tonne wooden brigantine popularly known as a schooner, was sailing from Hobart to Melbourne carting timber on January 25, 1856 when it sank.
She had 100 piles, 71 beams and 10,000 feet of timber on board.
When the vessel was around 35 miles off Goose Island in Bass Strait, the crew realised it had sprung a leak.
After pumping for hours on end, the crew stopped for a meal and when they returned they lost hope after finding the water has risen to nine feet.
The nine crew members including Captain White abandoned the ship and launched the longboat.
When they were just a short distance away, the Catherine rolled over and disappeared.
The crew were picked up two days later by coastal steamer William Miskin.
Eight months down the track the wreck of the Catherine was discovered on Waterhouse Island.
This is one of the many local shipwrecks that piqued the interest of the young and enthusiastic North Eastern Sub Aqua Club members during the 1970s and 1980s.
One of the club’s founding members Don Etchells was part of the recovery team who retrieved the anchor.
“It was quite an exciting sort of a thing. We hadn’t ever got an anchor off the bottom of the sea before and when we did, it came up that fast,” he laughed.
With three small dinghies and several 44-gallon drums, the crew went out to the wreck site on the Western side of Waterhouse Island.
“When we were above the anchor, we filled the drums with water, sunk them tied them to the anchor which was probably at 30 feet and then we had a compressor and we pumped the air into it,” Mr Etchells said.
“We thought we had them full but the anchor wouldn’t come up so we had to dive down and help it and when it did come up, it shot up.
“We were lucky it didn’t hit one of the boats because it came right up out of the water and frightened the daylights out of us.”
They secured the anchor but the challenge wasn’t over.
“When we went round into the straight where Little Waterhouse island is, we nearly lost control of it because the current was going through that fast and our motors weren’t strong enough,” he said.
“The drift through there was enormous. It pulled us sideways, turned our dinghies around so we were facing the wrong way. It took us ages to get through there. That was the scary part.
“Once we got it past the Little Waterhouse Island we were right then. We put it on a trailer and brought it back to Bridport.”
Former North Eastern Sub Aqua Club president Tony Jetson of Bridport was part of the committee when the anchor was laid at its current resting ground in 1986.
“We decided that something had to be done with it and it shouldn’t be left sitting in a yard rotting away,” he said.
He has fond memories of his days in the club, when most weekends they would go diving and then cook up crayfish and abalone at someone’s house and share it.
“A lot of us, myself included, did a lot of research on wrecks – where they were supposed to have sunk, where they might be and you went looking,” he said.
“This one was well documented and pretty well where it was supposed to be.
“When people think of a shipwreck, they think of a boat on bottom of the ocean. It’s not like that at all. Really it’s sand and maybe a bit of timber.”
While the club was running, the anchor was coated in fish oil once a year to help preserve it.
This is one of two anchors raised from the Catherine.
The first anchor, raised by Clyde Oates and David Watts in the mid 70s is in a private residence in Emma Street.
The pair retrieved the anchor to display in what was then Mr Watt’s yard.
Both anchors serve as a reminder of the 1,000 or so vessels that have been lost in Tasmanian waters over the years.