Cape Bowling Green - rescue and wreckage

As the lighthouse neared completion in September 1874, builder John Rooney and the first Cape Bowling Green Lighthouse keeper Henry Lander Pethebridge saved eight shipwrecked sailors.

When the 1021-ton Guinevere wrecked on Pocklington Reef in Papua New Guinea on September 4^th, 1874 its 29 crew were forced to take to three open boats. They sailed south to the Australian coast, a voyage of some weeks during which the three parties became separated. One boat did not sight land until coming to Palm Island, north of Townsville. The crew were unaware of any European settlements further north than Bowen at Port Denison until they came alongside Cape Bowling Green and met the welcome site of a new lighthouse. Rooney and Pethebridge welcomed the crew and provided what aid and hospitality they could before directing them on to Townsville.  The other two boats eventually made landfall as well, the three having completed the 1,300 km voyage without a single fatality.

The evening of March 23^rd, 1911 Captain Sim ordered his ship, the Adelaide Steamship Company’s Grantala, into a position 11 kms W-N-W of the Cape Bowling Green Lighthouse, in the safety of Bowling Green Bay. Grantala was south bound from Cairns to Melbourne, stopping at ports along the way, but its captain was aware of deteriorating conditions and the danger of tropical cyclones. He sought shelter in the bay, staying clear of the shallows and dropping both anchors in preparation for the heavy weather to come. As Grantala rode out the storm, heavy squalls of rain swept the coast, sometimes even obscuring the lighthouse’s 13,000 candlepower beam that would normally be visible at 25 km. 

In the cottages ashore the light keepers and their families feared that the storm was so strong it might carry away the structures they were sheltering in. The beds rocked on the floor, the roofs seemed like they might be ripped off, and outside sand piled up against the walls to a height of nearly two metres.

Up in the light tower, Assistant Keeper Carter fought to keep the kerosene fuelled light burning, although the tower was shaking so violently he had trouble staying on his feet. The drop in pressure also threatened to extinguish the vital flame, and he had to attend to it constantly to ensure it did not go out. In his sixteen years’ experience, he thought it was the wildest night he had yet seen. 

The storm passed and Grantala resumed its journey the next day, slowed by further heavy weather along the way. Arriving in Brisbane on March 27^th they were met with terrible news: Grantala’s sister ship, Yongala, was overdue and feared missing. Yongala had been northbound on the night of the cyclone and was last sighted by one of the keepers of the Dent Island Light in the Whitsunday Passage, to the south of Cape Bowling Green.

As searchers scoured the seas and vessels kept a close look out for any sign of the missing ship, on the morning of March 28^th the keeper on watch at the Cape Bowling Green Lighthouse noticed what looked like wreckage in the water. Superintendent Kidd’s daughter, Essie, patrolled the beach in the following hours and found bags of chaff, bran, pumpkins and pollard washing ashore. Kidd used the lighthouse Marconi telegraph apparatus to alert the Adelaide Steamship Company’s Townsville office. The news had a devastating impact – the bags corresponded with cargo stowed in Yongala’s lower, number three hold. Its location deep in the holds indicated it was not deck cargo that might have been swept overboard, and the discovery provided the first firm indication that Yongala had been lost. 

Yongala’s wreck site was not confirmed until 1958 when it was identified lying 22 km east of Cape Bowling Green. Among the 122 passengers and crew lost with the ship were Matthew Rooney, his wife Katherine and their daughter Elizabeth. Matthew was one of the founders of the Rooney Brothers firm, builders of several Queensland lighthouses, including the Cape Bowling Green Light.