Underwater Anchor - likely from Charles Eaton Shipwreck

Underwater Anchor - Encaustic painting This anchor is likely to be one of two from a shipwreck called the Charles Eaton which is  situated on the Great Detached Reef in Far North Queensland.    The Charles Eaton was wrecked on 15th August 1834 but for more than a year, nothing was heard of her passengers and crew.   Gradually word started to spread in many and scattered countries that some were still alive but in captivity as slaves.  Two ships were commanded by the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty to ascertain the fate of the survivors and rescue them.  Tigris was despatched  from Bombay and Isabella from Sydney in 1836.    Following is an extract the story and fate of the Charles Eaton and her passengers and crew. The Wreck of the Charles Eaton (ref: http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/4443589 ) A CENTURY-OLD TRAGEDY -By "C. CORAL." One of the saddest tragedies of the straits was the wreck of the Charles Eaton in 1834.  She was a 313 ton barque  commanded by Captain G. F. Moore. She left Brisbane for Canton on July 29. A little more than a fortnight later  she was wrecked while trying to get through the reefs near the Charles Hardy group of islands, out from Cape  Grenville. In addition to the officers and crew therewere about a dozen passengers on board among whom were  Captain D'Oyley of the East India Company's Artillery, with his wife and two boys and a native Indian servant.  When the vessel crashed she fell broadside on. Two of the boats smashed, leaving only one, into which three  seamen jumped, with the carpenter and boatswain, but the captain and officers re-solved to stay on the ship as  they felt sure that the boat would have no chance.  Soon the barque became a hopeless wreck. The upper part held together, however, and there the greater number of the passengers and crew found foothold.  A raft was constructed; it was not very large and could carry only nine people, but upon it were placed Captain  D'Oyley and his family, with some other passengers and one or two officers. A week later another raft left the ship  carrying 17 persons, including the steward's boy, John Ireland and another boy named Sexton.  The Boy Survivors For more than a year the fate of the Charles Eaton was unknown. Then there drifted to Sydney stories of the arrival  at Timor and Batavia of four of the men who had escaped in the boat. The captain of a ship passing trough Torres  Strait reported too, that he had seen a white boyon an island living with the natives. Immediately the Government  of New SouthWales fitted out rescue ship, the Isabella, in the hope that there might be survivors of the Charles  Eaton. The East India  Company despatched the sloop Tigris on a similar errand. The two search vessels met at  Double Island, in Torres Strait,  after the Isabella had successfully accomplished her mission and had recovered  two of the boys -- the only two survivors – from Murray Island. The mournful tale was then told. The two boy's were John Ireland and William D'Oyley.  What happened to the  first raft that left the ship will never  be with certainty, for of its company of  nine all were killed except the two D'Oyley boys. Probably it shared the fate  of the second raft. This, after being at sea for two days and nights, drifted among some of the small islands along  the east  coast. A canoe was sighted in which a dozen or so natives could be seen. They seemed to be friendly  and the castaways were taken to an island in the vicinity.    Thoroughly exhausted, hungry, and without water, the unfortunate people lay down to sleep. Then the natives  clubbed them to death, and removed the heads of their victims, sparing only Ireland and Sexton, the two youngest.  Once more the canoe was launched, and, with their ghastly trophies and living captives, the islanders set sail for  their home in Torres Strait. Every year at the end of  the North West monsoon the fierce and warlike islanders-then  generally known as "Indians"- of Murray and other Torres Strait islands made journeys 200 miles or more down the  coast in then canoes, trading and seeking heads and returning with the South East trades. Apparently this canoe  was one of a flotilla, for when it arrived at the island of Aureed other canoes had already preceeded it, among them  one carrying the two D'Oyley lads. Here the whole party remained for some weeks. A redistribution was made, one  canoe departing with Ireland and the two year old D'Oyley boy, the other taking Sexton and the elder brother. From  then on the boys of the second party were never traced, although the people of Darnley and neighbouring islands,  who have had the circumstances of the affair handed down to them by the old people, tell one that the four lads  were remembered as having been in the islands for some time and that two were taken away before the Isabella  rescued the survivors at Murray. The two lads of the first party, however were taken to Marsden Island, in the  central part of  Torres Strait, and it was there that a Murray Islander and his wife saw them and, according to the  stories of the native rescued them in exchange for bunches of bananas. Their new owners treated them kindly; in  fact when the rescue ship came and ransomed the D'Oyley boy after having obtained the other survivors in  exchange for tomahawks, he did not want to part from his foster mother. Tragic Relics When the Isabella came down to Aureed with her two ransomed captives aboard, on the way back to Sydney, she  made a ghastly discovery. In a hut a large mask was discovered, shaped like a man's face and made of turtle shell.  These skillfully made figures were used formerly for religious rites by the Torres Strait islanders. Once a year the  people gathered at one of the chief islands to make their offerings of human heads at the "Feast of Augad-Au  Ai"  (the feast of the Great God). Acts a propitiation were made, and the young men ate human flesh to make them  brave and strong in fight. Surrounding the large figure at Aureed, and lashed to it with rope evidently from some  ship, were about a score of skulls. Most of them bore marks of violence. They were taken on boardthe Isabella, and  in Sydney their European origin was certified. Almost certainly they were the skulls of the unfortunates of the rafts.  They were interred, and in St. James's Church Sydney, a memorial tablet tells part of the melancholy story. To-day there are no people living on Aureed but the other islands of Torres Strait ​Hashtags:  #marineartistaustralia #marineart  #marine  #shipwreck  #shipwreckart  #shipwreckpaintings  #CharlesEatonShipwreck  #AustralianArtist  #QueenslandArtist  #GoldCoastArtist   #greatdetachedreef  #farnorthqueensland  #encausticpainting  #encausticart  #beeswax