Invariably there has been ships that have, from the day of their launching, had ‘bad luck’ associated with them and a Falklands ship named the Thetis could most probably be added to this category.
Built in Dundee in 1893 at the specific request of the Falkland Islands Company (F.I.C.) the vessel was a steel barquentine of 130 feet by 25 feet 6 inches. Her decks fore and aft were of teak and she was fitted with a double bottom and she was said to spread an unusually large area of canvas (sail) and was expected to be fast and weatherly. But the Thetis did not quite live up to expectations and her maiden voyage to the Falklands was unusually long, and subsequent voyages between the Islands and U.K. took much longer than anticipated.
The vessel was designed to carry wool from the Falklands to Britain and return with general cargo, and she also carried a few passengers. The first sign of bad luck occurred on 21 May 1895 when the Thetis put into Albermarle at Port Stephens to shelter from a fierce wind.
The captain M. Patmore ordered five men, which included the bosun Ernest Stallwood, to take a cutter and find fresh water at West Arm and despite their reluctance to undertake the mission in such dire weather, they lowered the small boat and sailed away.
Soon after a hurricane hit the area and when it subsided a search was conducted and the small boat was found ‘bottom-up’ and there was no sign of the five men who were obviously drowned. Captain Patmore seems to have escaped any form of censure for his mis-judgment.
Bad luck again hit the Thetis while on her way from Fox Bay to Stanley when a gale was encountered and Captain David Thomas was forced to run before the wind and while close to Sea Lion Island one of her boats was washed overboard and another smashed. The main sail and lower top sail were damaged and a fore sail carried away.
But worse was to come as in July 1901 the vessel was engaged to deliver a sheep ‘dip’ to Salvador, before proceeding directly from that farm to England carrying 110 bales of wool and 400 loose hides and several passengers. A sheep ‘dip’ was a large wooden trough usually about 50 feet in length with sides six feet deep and weighing more than two tonnes.
It would be filled with a toxic solution, usually of lime and sulphur, into which the sheep would be submerged with the aim of destroying parasites (keds, ticks, scab etc.) and prevent disease which was known to weaken sheep and damage the fleece. This particular ‘dip’ had been made in Stanley by local carpenters.
Captain David William Thomas from Aberaeron, Wales was most reluctant to carry the cumbersome contraption on the deck of his vessel and this led to a furious exchange between him and Captain Henry Thomas, also a Welshman and a noted ‘fiery character’ who was the appointed Marine Superintendent of the F.I.C.
Captain Henry maintained that there was no danger in transporting the ‘dip’ on the deck of the Thetis. There seems little doubt that Captain David faced being relieved of his command if he did not adhere to his name-sakes orders, and accordingly, and against his better judgment, he agreed to sail, initially for Salvador where he would drop off the ‘dip’ and pick-up more wool, and thence to England.
In another extraordinary example of F.I.C. bureaucracy Captain Thomas had been told that after loading wool at Salvador he would be required to borrow a horse and ride all the way to Stanley, sign necessary papers, clear the ship from Customs and then ride all the way back to Salvador and resume command. It is inconceivable that the master of a ship should have been required to undertake such an arduous task.
The Thetis finally sailed from Stanley on 27th July and apart from being sighted by Captain Willis in the vessel Fair Rosamond, later on the same day off McBride’s Head on the north coast of East Falklands, she was never seen again. A terrible gale hit the Islands on 3rd August but it was expected that the ship would have reached Salvador long before that date. Thick fog was reported a few days after the ship sailed and this preceded a fierce North East gale.
Around the 3rd August the F.I.C. Manager William Harding received reports from Salvador that the Thetis had not arrived but it appears that he did little to alleviate the concern locally in terms of sending out a boat to conduct a search. It was not until 31st August when two local schooners returned from West Falklands with news that wreckage had been seen on all parts of the north of West Falklands, which left little doubt that the Thetis had been lost.
Eventually the F.I.C. Manager sent out Captain Ennega in the Hornet and upon his return he reported finding more wreckage but no sign of the ship or survivors. Carcass Island reported sighting wool and wreckage on the beach and pieces of numbered new wood such as those of a ‘dip’.
In December 1901 a Court of Inquiry was convened in Stanley under the auspices of the Hon. W. Hart-Bennet and Lieutenant’s Moore and Watson of H.M.S. Nymph. Far and away the most interesting and revealing evidence was provided by Lars Bernsten who said that he had previously sailed in the Thetis with Captain David Thomas for San Carlos on the north of East Falklands, but inexplicably the ship ended up off the Jason Islands on the far north west of West Falklands which indicated a huge navigational error.
The Stanley population had frequently expressed their dismay at the lack of an immediate search for the vessel and on this matter Captain Henry Thomas and Mr. W. Harding contradicted each other. Thomas said that it would not have been safe to send out the tug Samson while Harding told the Court that he could not send the tug because the engineer was sick, but that it would have been safe to send her!
In their report the Court of Inquiry members stated: ‘It was strange in the extreme that Captain Thomas did not make Salvador by the 30th July or 31st July but it would seem that he was more of a deep sea than a coasting mariner given his considerable navigational error the previous year’.
‘It appears probable that on this occasion something of the same happened… as he no doubt stood out to sea, as is the practice of coasting mariners here, got out off his course and in making for land in the gale of 3rd August, foundered or struck and went down with all hands at once as the wreckage was all in splinters and small pieces, while pieces of wool were found sticking in the rocks’.
‘It was not until early 1902 before more precise information relating to the fate of the Thetis was revealed. Two men Jensen and Johnson, while working on Grand Jason Island in late October, had found a piece of yard-arm measuring eight feet in length, a skylight and lifebuoy with ‘tis’ written on it. In November they landed on Steeple Jason and discovered large sections of the vessel plus items such as a cook’s rolling pin and potato masher.
The ultimate conclusion being that the Thetis, running before a gale, tried to clear the Islands and ran onto the East or West Jason Cays, which would support the verdict of the Court of Inquiry that there had been a massive error of navigation.
Captain Thomas left a wife and newly born child plus a mother and grandmother of whom he was the sole support.
30 year-old twins George and Robert Betts of Pebble Island, who were passengers destined for the U.K. on holiday, were also lost as were several other passengers in addition to an unspecified number of crew members.
Acknowledgements: J.C.N.A. F.I. Journal.