The Story of a Shipwreck. The Wrecked Ship in Albany (Western Australia)

We brushed up against the story of this shipwreck on Lenin’s birthday, no less. That was when Lady Mary moved from a fabulous mooring buoy among pelicans and the cries of kookaburras to the bay opposite the port of Albany. Beyond the headland, a rusty mast and the forlorn skeleton of some vessel jutted into view. At the time, we knew nothing of its heroic past. On the way to the bay, we ignored the rain and made a detour past the picturesque ruins in Princess Royal Harbour, opposite which the whaler Cheynes II found its final resting place and still lies today at the site of its wreck. The ship did not turn up on Google straight away. Its romantically forlorn appearance prompted us to come back once more in sunny weather, together with our friends Seryozha, Yulia and Mila Galushin. We wrote about our hikes around Albany with our friends here >> Well, the ship’s story really moved us. Here it is. The Early Days Before its inglorious demise, the whaling vessel Cheynes II was almost the Indiana Jones of ships. The steamship was built in Scandinavia, Middlesbrough, in 1947 for whaling out of Norway. It was originally named Thorbryn. In the 1960s, the ship crossed half the world and reached the far south of Australia—the town of Albany. In 1963, the vessel was bought by the Cheynes Beach Whaling Company, which renamed it Cheynes II after itself. From 1963 to 1978, Cheynes II hunted sperm whales along the continental shelf off the southern coast of Western Australia. The catch was towed to the whaling station in King George Sound. Cheynes II returned from its final whale hunt on 21 November 1978. That very day, Australia’s last whaling station closed. From Whaler to Shipwreck With nobody able to think what to do with a whaler that was no longer allowed to kill whales, Cheynes II was sent to the maritime museum in Hobart, Tasmania. This was the easiest, neatest and dullest period in the ship’s life. Cheynes II at the museum in Hobart. Photo from the internet But after four years as an exhibit, the ship returned to open water once again. Cheynes II was chartered by a private scientific expedition to Heard Island. Heard Island and the McDonald Islands lie in the Indian Ocean, way down at 53 degrees south latitude. Storms and freezing cold—that is all you need to know about the weather there. After being caught in a cyclone, the vessel used more fuel than expected. On top of that, something went wrong with the expedition on Heard Island, and Cheynes II was forced to return to Australia “held together by little more than hope and prayer.” The crew brought back steel rods from Heard Island, which were used to make an emergency mast. And so our Cheynes II returned to Australia as a brigantine—under sail. Six hundred miles offshore, Cheynes was taken in tow by a trawler, which hauled it all the way to Albany. Cheynes II underway. Photo from the internet A Heroic Story “My head breaks the surface... for a moment... crushing waves force me back down. As I try to push upward for a life-saving breath, pain grips my leg with every frantic thrust towards the surface. My ankle is broken... from striking solid rock just before I was dragged under. Time passes... the cold seeps into my bones... it is becoming difficult to keep my exhausted body afloat. In the distance, an aircraft can be heard. The sky grows dark; time is running out... Through the deafening roar of the ocean, voices shout, and the lumbering shape of a whale chaser comes into view. With a muffled splash, a man jumps overboard into the cold water—he is my lifeline.” In March 1978, the crew of the whaling vessel Cheynes II pulled a tourist from the savage seas off Albany’s deadly coast, risking their own lives in response to a call for help. Interesting Fact After recovering from his rescue, the tourist, Stephen Matthews, briefly worked aboard the whaler Cheynes II alongside the crew who had saved his life. Original story: maritimemuseumsaustralia.com/profiles/blogs/lifeline?overrideMobileRedirect=1 The Shipwreck After this adventure, the former whaler nearly found a third life and was prepared for conversion into a floating restaurant. Unfortunately, the restaurateur behind the venture went bankrupt at just the wrong time, and the project ended before the refit was completed. The Albany Port Authority towed the vessel to a jetty away from the fairway. It was not exactly a prime spot in the harbour, and in 1992 a powerful storm smashed the jetty to smithereens. The long-suffering Cheynes II was blown to the eastern side of the harbour, where it ran aground. The former whaler, research vessel and would-be restaurant still rusts on that shoal to this day, looking every bit as forlorn as it does romantic. As the ship’s condition continued to deteriorate, signs reading “Keep off—danger of death” were hung all around it. We did keep off; we merely walked around the wreck site once in bad weather and twice more on a clear day with friends. Here are a few more photos. And we wrote about our own adventures saving a yacht from shipwreck in the Caribbean here: Gone with the Wind. How We Saved a Yacht To be continued.