‘Olivia’, 1827

The ‘Olivia’, a 60-ton wooden schooner, was built in Port Dalrymple, Launceston, Tasmania in 1826. She was wrecked south of Twofold Bay on the 19th November 1827.

This is how ‘The Australian’ described the wreck on 14th December 1827:

‘Some particulars have been furnished us of the wreck of the schooner Olivia, belonging to Mr. James Lucas.* She was bound from Launceston to Sydney, and was laden with wheat, coffee, and potatoes. Her passage from Launceston was most unfavourable, and prolonged beyond anticipation, her (drinking) water being entirely, and her sea stock of provisions nearly consumed. On the 19th ult. the schooner had arrived, and was working off the land, a short distance to the southward of Twofold Bay, when the wind blowing her with violence right upon the shore to leeward, she struck the ground; a roaring surf broke over her, and in a very little time the little vessel became engulphed in the waves.

A raft, consisting of four water casks lashed together, was hastily constructed, and on this the people of the schooner committed themselves to the warring element, and by its means all escaped with their lives on shore; but they had saved little more of clothes or other property than what they stood in, and of that little they were stripped, we are told, by the rapacity of the black natives, whom they encountered in their journey over land from the shore upon which their vessel lay a wreck to Bateman's Bay.

The names and description of the shipwrecked men are: John Lucas, owner, Thomas Hammond, master, John Randall, mate, John Ellis, Charles Bacon, John Smith, and John French, seamen, and Fran. Leger, passenger.

They were ten days in penetrating through the bush, before they arrived at any part of the country inhabited by civilized people, and, when they did get to a stock station, at Bateman's Bay, all hands were in a most miserable plight. Here they were supplied seasonably with provisions, and enabled to continue their journey. The owner purposes returning, in order to save as much of the wreck as may be practicable. This vessel is represented as having been lost at Two-fold Bay; but the natives, on whose topographical knowledge some reliance ought to be placed, signify that the wreck did not occur at Two-fold Bay but to the southward of it.’

*James Lucas was the son of Nathaniel Lucas, originally a First Fleet convict who became a flour miller on the Georges River in Sydney and who had farms in Van Diemen’s Land. The vessel was named after Olivia Gascoigne, a convict who arrived on the ‘Lady Penrhyn’, one of the First Fleet ships, who married Nathaniel Lucas. By 1809 Nathaniel was building and selling boats. For his own uses he built the 60-ton schooner, ‘Olivia’, in Port Dalrymple, Tasmania. The ‘Olivia’ was key to the Lucas family goods-shipping enterprise until she was wrecked in 1827.