Pearl Shell Divers

This one popped up on YouTube today. Some great history, interviews and sailing footage. Well worth a look.

Thanks 2bish,
That was really interesting. I have a thing for the pearl lugging fleets as a couple of my ancestors died in the March 1899 tragedy when the cyclones Nachon and Mahina converged on Cape Melville. Sadly the pearl luggers fleet had scarpered to Princess Charllotte Bay and Bathurst Bay to gain some protection from the SE winds, only for the two cyclones to combine and hit the fleet from the North.
4 schooners and 54 of their accompanying luggers were lost. Another 3 schooners and 12 luggers were nearly destroyed but managed to be rebuilt.

Not many people know of the resultant tidal wave that followed. Constable Kenny from Cooktown wrote of the devastation he witnessed from on shore where they were searching for a local......
Constable J. M. Kenny, in charge of the Eight Mile Police Station, Cooktown, was able to relate his experience of the cyclone on land, having arrived with four native troopers and horses on March 4 to search for a missing South Sea Islander. He reached the coast at Barron Point and camped on a ridge 40 feet above sea level about half a mile from the beach with scrub and high sand ridge between the camp and the shore. By midnight both tents were carried away by wind and falling branches. The party made for open space guided by vivid lightning, shielding their hands and faces with blankets from the pelting rain which hit as hard as hail. 24 By 2 a.m. the wind was blowing with hurricane force and at 5 a.m. veered to the north-east increasing in velocity still further. Suddenly an immense tidal wave swept onshore and reached the party on the forty foot ridge who stood waist high in it. The wave travelled between two and three miles inland. Late that day fragments of the camp gear were put in a place of safety, as it was impossible to travel with the horses (four of which had been killed by trees) owing to the flooded rivers. On Monday, March 6, a start was made on foot for Munburra. Kenny saw no boats and very little wreckage, but there were great piles of dead fish, porpoises, sharks, dugong, sea snakes, sea birds, land birds and wallabies. The leaves, twigs, branches and bark were stripped from the trees, he says, and the country presented a brown and desolate appearance.

Two of my forebears were lost as where with a couple more surviving along with two of their schooners. The family commissioned a book to record the events of the time, a copy of which my father passed on when he died.

They were tough men and women. Thanks for the video mate.

Captain Porter of "Crest ?of the Wave" with Mr. Arthur Outridge in diving dress. From Monograph of Outridge family.