HMS Roebuck was a small ship of the Royal Navy

Royal Navy

The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...

 and, under the command of William Dampier

William Dampier

William Dampier was an English buccaneer, sea captain, author and scientific observer...

, carried the first English scientific expedition to Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

.

Early career before Dampier

Though there are many discrepancies in the literature, it is now generally agreed that Roebuck (the term HMS did not come into use until late in the 18th century) was built by Snellgrove at Wapping

Wapping

Wapping is a place in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets which forms part of the Docklands to the east of the City of London. It is situated between the north bank of the River Thames and the ancient thoroughfare simply called The Highway...

 and was launched on 17 April 1690 during the co-regency of William and Mary

William and Mary

The phrase William and Mary usually refers to the coregency over the Kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland, of King William III & II and Queen Mary II...

  as one of 12 purpose-built fireships. It carried 8 guns, was 292 ton (builder's measure), 96 feet long, 25.5 feet wide. In June of 1690 Roebuck was present at the Battle of Beachy Head and while it appears in illustrations of the scenes, the images of the many ships involved are too small to provide useful detail. Around 1695 it was upgraded and appears listed as a 26-gun Fifth Rate. Though plans and models of similar ships do survive, being a relatively lowly vessel at its time of construction, neither plans, nor a contemporary model of Roebuck itself have been found. This lack of detail has resulted in considerable disagreement until recently about the configuration and appearance of the vessel. As a result, until recently, only notional images have been available and these have appeared in artwork (see opposite) and on postage stamps such as those issued on the tricentennial of the ship’s loss. These were produced by Ascension island

Ascension Island

Ascension Island is an isolated volcanic island in the equatorial waters of the South Atlantic Ocean, around from the coast of Africa and from the coast of South America, which is roughly midway between the horn of South America and Africa...

 where the vessel was wrecked in February 1701.

Roebuck under William Dampier's command

After a period of relative obscurity, in July 1698, Roebuck was place under the command of William Dampier. The anomalous appointment of a former privateer and buccaneer to the command of one of His Majesty King William's ships is explained by Dampier’s growing reputation as he travelled widely and exhibited the famous tattoed Prince Jeoly and his mother who were purchased on his first circumnavigation and who had been described in a Folio Broadsheet in England of 1691-2 as a 'just wonder of the age' This popular fame translated into instant recognition amongst academics, seafarers, politicians and royalty subsequent to the publication of his sensational 'New Voyage Round the World' in 1697. Dampier's fame and influence at the time and his reputation amongst royalty and powerful men such as the famous naval administrator Samuel Pepys

Samuel Pepys

Samuel Pepys FRS, MP, JP, was an English naval administrator and Member of Parliament who is now most famous for the diary he kept for a decade while still a relatively young man...

 is perhaps best illustrated by following quote from the diarist John Evelyn on 16 August 1698: ‘I dined with Mr Pepys, where was Captain Dampier, who had been a famous buccaneer, had brought hither the painted prince Job [Jeoly], and printed a relation of his very strange adventure…He was now going abroad again by the King’s encouragement, who furnished a ship of 290 tons. He seemed a more modest man than one would imagine by relation of the crew he had associated with’. Roebuck, the naval ship referred to in this quote was a replacement for the Jolly Prize which Dampier found totally unsuited for his plans to search for Terra Australis and to examine the then uncharted eastern coast of New Holland via Cape Horn, a notoriously difficult and dangerous route.

The Roebuck voyage

Having been provided with his replacement ship too late in the season to take his preferred route via Cape Horn, Dampier departed England on 14 January 1699 for the Cape of Good Hope. Trouble, centring on acrimony between Dampier and his first Lieutenant George Fisher RN divided the ship. They were apparently ‘behaving equally as boors without a spark of dignity or self-respect… alternately drinking together, backbiting one another to their confidants, and breaking into personal abuse and even fisticuffs in presence of the crew’. An inevitable state of indiscipline ensued, and en route Fisher was caned by Dampier, clapped in irons and confined to his quarters. The crew were divided on the matter and, concerned at the possibility of mutiny, Dampier had Fisher sent ashore and imprisoned for a time at Bahia in Brazil, before he made his way home.
At the Cape of Good Hope Dampier found that the variation there anomalous, stating in his journal 'These things, I confess, did puzzle me—indeed were most shocking to me'. Admiral W.H. Smyth, a recognized authority on the subject, subsequently made the comment that, ‘though the local magnetic attraction in ships had fallen under the notice of seamen, he [Dampier] was among the first to lead the way to its investigation, since the facts that ‘stumbled’ him at the Cape of Good Hope, respecting the variations of the compass, excited the mind of Flinders, his ardent admirer, to study the anomaly.’ In continuing on after leaving the Cape of Good Hope, Dampier first made landfall in August 1699 on the Australian continent at the place he subsequently named Sharks Bay. There and at places further north including La Grange Bay, just south of what is now known as Broome in Roebuck Bay he provided descriptions and collected many specimens, including shells, subsequently earning the title ‘Australian’s first natural historian’ After calling in to Timor in November, Dampier sailed to the north-west Cape of New Guinea (Irian Jaya) in the vicinity of what is now known as Selat Dampier. There he sent his men ashore at a ‘small woody island’ he called ‘Cockle Island’. His men brought back many giant clam shells. (Dampier Journal, reproduced in Callander, 1768, vol 3:113-115). They then sailed around the northern part of New Guinea, naming Nova Britannia (New Britain). Dampier Strait between the two was subsequently named after him.

Roebuck is lost on the voyage home

Concerned at the state of his ship, and the apparent ineptitude of his carpenter in effecting repairs in March 1700 abandoned his plan to proceed further south to explore the eastern Australian coast, leaving these explorations to Lt James Cook

James Cook

Captain James Cook, FRS, RN was a British explorer, navigator and cartographer who ultimately rose to the rank of captain in the Royal Navy...

  RN well over half a century later. After travelling back into the Indian ocean Dampier headed off south in search of the elusive ‘Tryal Rocks’, scene of the loss of the English East India Company ship Tryal Trial

Trial

A trial is, in the most general sense, a test, usually a test to see whether something does or does not meet a given standard.It may refer to:*Trial , the presentation of information in a formal setting, usually a court...

  in 1622, the first known European ship lost on the Australian coast. Being sick and unable to continue in the search, Roebuck headed to Batavia, the headquarters of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and the centre of a vast trading network with links to China, Japan, India and Europe generally. After effecting repairs they left Batavia, arriving back at the Cape of Good Hope at the end of December. In mid January they left and after staying at St Helena till 13 February they proceeded to Ascension Island, which they sighted on 21 February 1701. While there the ship sprang a very serious leak four strakes from the keel which proved impossible to stem. When a sea breeze began to blow, they ran in toward the shore but were forced to anchor in 7 fathoms when the breeze died. After carrying a small anchor ashore on the night of 23 February the crew warped the vessel in till it grounded in three and a half fathoms of water. The crew then left the ship after saving some items including Dampier’s journals and some specimens. After finding a spring of fresh water inland they remained alive and after many privations they left on 8 April soon after four ships entered the Bay in which Roebuck lost and took them on board. In the process one vessel HMS Hastings elected to recover the anchor and cable, apparently the one used to warp Roebuck ashore. This proved successful, but a grappling anchor was lost. The ships then transported Dampier and his crew home where he published an account of the voyage entitled A Voyage to New Holland again to great acclaim. Though this further cemented his reputation as an explorer, at the inevitable court martial into the loss of his ship Dampier was roundly criticised for his treatment of Fisher, effectively destroying any further attempt at official patronage (See entry on Dampier). He later gave the plant collections he saved from the wreck to the Royal Society and they eventually found their way to the Fielding-Druce Herbarium at the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Oxford.

Conjecture about the whereabouts of the wreck

Though made famous by its association with Dampier the position of the wreck became lost over time mainly because early literature provided conflicting evidence as to its whereabouts. Dampier himself added to the confusion when he wrote to the Earl of Pembroke, President of the Privy Council indicating that his ship may have drifted back out to sea: 'The World is apt to judge of every thing by the Success; and whoever has ill Fortune will hardly be allow’d a good Name. This, my Lord, was my unhappiness in my late Expedition in the Roe-buck, which founder’d thro’ perfect Age near the Island of Ascension'. Many expeditions went in search of the wreck after the advent of SCUBA diving, but all proved unsuccessful partly as a result of this confusion and conflicting arguments in favour of South West Bay or North –West (Clarence Bay) as the location of the wreck. In 2000, after deciding to try to locate the wreck of Roebuck and L’Uranie, transport of the lovers Rose and Louis de Freycinet, who were three of the most important explorers on the coast of Western Australia, specifically Shark Bay, the Western Australian Museum

Western Australian Museum

The Western Australian Museum is the state museum for Western Australia.The Western Australian Museum has seven main sites: two in Perth within the Perth Cultural Centre, two in Fremantle , and one each in Albany, Geraldton, and Kalgoorlie-Boulder...

led by Dr M. McCarthy of the Department of Maritime Archaeology commissioned a search of the primary sources in England. Conducted by contract researcher Hanah Cunliffe, the many primary sources located and copied for the Museum proved that the wreck of the Roebuck lay in the shallows in Clarence Bay. Others had searched there previously, but had proved unsuccessful partly due to the size of the bay and an extensive cover of mobile sand throughout.

The wrecksite is found

In March 2001 utilising the primary sources, the Museum’s team were able to fix Dampier’s position in February 1701 as his ship sank under him. On arriving on the Island, anchoring over that same place and receiving the same rare sustained sea-breeze that allowed Dampier to set a course for the shore 300 years earlier, the team was able to deduce with an element of surety the probable grounding site of HM Ship Roebuck in the bay. The team also experienced more good luck in the process for in investigating the seabed they found evidence of a vast and very recent movement of sand from the Bay, exposing rock and other formations hitherto not seen by the local divers in the 40 years since diving first commenced at the island. In conducting a line search from the beach out to the 3.5 fathoms of water described by Dampier, divers John Lashmar and Geoff Kimpton soon located an exposed bell. Expedition doctor John Williams then located a large clam in a cleft in the reef on the seabed south of the bell and a heavily-concreted grapnel anchor was located in shallower water c. 100 metres south of the bell and c. 8 metres from shore. In a very turbulent location, two heavily-eroded, slightly tapering iron objects, very similar to the remains of heavily eroded cannon were seen. These lay in the wave line and were firmly wedged amongst the rocks. All were left in situ. Being loose and potentially endangered objects, the island Administrator HH Geoffrey Fairhurst subsequently requested that the Museum team remove the clam and the bell in association with the Ascension Island and RAF dive clubs. On retrieval the bell was found to carry a Broad Arrow, confirming its Royal Navy origin. Of all the naval vessels lost on the Island only Roebuck had not been found until that time. Sent to the Mary Rose Laboratories in Portsmouth for treatment and replication, the originals were returned to the Island where they are now on exhibit. Replicas appear at the Shipwreck Galleries of the Western Australian Maritime Museum. Soon after the location of the bell and clam, Mr Jimmy Young, formerly of St Helena and the longest serving resident ( and diver) on the island, showed the team an ornate blue and white ceramic lid and an intact brown earthenware pot that he had found eight or nine weeks earlier projecting above the seabed. These have since proved consistent with Dampier’s time and travels, with the jar probably produced at kilns in Guangdong Province, southern China. The blue-and-white jar lid and the shards are products of the Jingdezhen kilns, Jiangxi Province, China with Batavia (now present-day Jakarta) the most likely trade source. The clam was of the genus Tridacna and possibly the species Tridacna squamosa from the tropical and sub-tropical waters of the Indo-West Pacific Region as far south as about Shark Bay. In respect of the good luck experienced by Dr McCarthy and his team, and of Ascension Island resident Jimmy Young in locating the site almost three centuries to the day since the Roebuck sank, it also needs be noted that a few weeks after the Museum team departed, the beach began to return to its normal configuration—and within a few months the site was again totally covered in sand.

Further research: ship's lines, detailed descriptions and a model

South Australian Maritime historian Bob Sexton is presently assisting the Museum and is producing a detailed analysis, including lines drawings and descriptions of the ship. Model maker Clive Gordon of Perth is presently building a model which is based on Sexton's work. Crucial to this process has been the location of the long-lost contract for the building of Roebuck by Hannah Cunliffe and Sexton. Sexton's reports is in preparation and Gordon's model is near completion.

External links

• HMS Roebuck Wreck Located
• http://wamuseum.com.au/collections/maritime/march/treasures/dampier/roebuck.html
• http://www.museum.wa.gov.au/maritime-archaeology-web/content/dampier