'Mercury', 1813

The Mercury was a colonial schooner that was purchased by Thomas and Mary Reibey for trade with the Pacific Islands.

On 2nd March 1813, the Mercury was wrecked at the entrance to the Shoalhaven River (possibly the Crookhaven River), half an hour after the Endeavour, whilst on a voyage from Sydney to obtain a cargo of cedar.

This is a brief piece that appeared in the Sydney Evening News on 20th November 1897:

WRECK OF THE MERCURY.

Among the craft engaged in it (the timber trade) were the ‘Mercury’ and the 'Endeavor’, but a trip they made in 1813 proved to be their last. The wind was blowing hard when they made the entrance to the Shoalhaven, and in running in the Mercury first lost her rudder on a sandbank lying across its mouth, and then, becoming unmanageable in a rough sea, she drifted for some distance, until she struck upon a rock and broke her keel. The Endeavor had run foul of the bank about half an hour before her; so that both were lying aground in an utterly helpless condition. But for the assistance of some other vessels that happened to be safely anchored there, their crews would have fared much worse than they did. As it was, they were not able to save anything from the wreck. After they had succeeded in reaching the shore, they found themselves without shelter or provisions, the place being uninhabited, and were forced to look about them for such food as they could pick up. There was no game, and the cabbage-tree, growing in abundance in the gullies, was the only thing that gave them any sort of nourishment. But after living on it for a fortnight, five of them, including Chase, master of the Endeavor, could stand it no longer, and determined to risk an overland journey along the coast to Sydney. Sailors without a native guide, a pocket compass, or any knowledge of the country they had to pass through, would have been in a poor plight for such a journey under any circumstances, but these men had not even a day's provisions, and nothing to depend upon but a couple of muskets and a pistol.

The schooner appears on the Australian 20-dollar banknote along with Mary's likeness.