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55-715: Charles Eaton was a barque , launched in 1833 for use as a merchant ship . Whilst under the command of Captain Fowle, she was wrecked in 1834 among the Torres Strait Islands , off the northern coast of Queensland , Australia, and her passengers and crew attacked and nearly all killed by Torres Strait Islanders on Mer Island . A cabin boy and small child survived and lived with the islanders until being rescued by Captain Lewis and crew on Isabella in June 1836, who also found skulls of some of

110-536: A mizzen topsail . Our Northern Mariners, who are trained in the coal-trade, apply this distinction to a broad-sterned ship, which carries no ornamental figure on the stem or prow." A 16th-century paper document in the Cheshire and Chester Archives and Local Studies Service notes the names of Robert Ratclyfe, owner of the bark Sunday and 10 mariners appointed to serve under the Earl of Sussex , Lord Deputy of Ireland . By

165-663: A sound or to a tree hide . " Barcarole " in music shares the same etymology, being originally a folk song sung by Venetian gondoliers and derived from barca —"boat" in Italian, or in Late Latin. In the 18th century, the Royal Navy used the term bark for a nondescript vessel that did not fit any of its usual categories. Thus, when the British admiralty purchased a collier for use by James Cook in his journey of exploration, she

220-707: A war prize , the USCGC Eagle , which the United States Coast Guard Academy in New London uses as a training vessel. The Sydney Heritage Fleet restored an iron-hulled three-masted barque, the James Craig , originally constructed as Clan Macleod in 1874 and sailing at sea fortnightly. The oldest active sailing vessel in the world, the Star of India , was built in 1863 as a full-rigged ship, then converted into

275-481: A barque in 1901. This type of ship inspired the French composer Maurice Ravel to write his famous piece, Une Barque sur l'ocean , originally composed for piano, in 1905, then orchestrated in 1906. Statsraad Lehmkuhl is in active operation in its barque form, stripped down without most of its winches and later improvements more aligned to the upbringing of future sailors both as a schoolship, training operations for

330-582: A couple from Murray Island (local name Mer ) in the Torres Strait, for a bunch of bananas. The two boys were treated with kindness by the Murray Islanders, being renamed Wak and Uass, and lived with them from about September/October 1834 until June 1836. On 3 June 1836 the 126-ton colonial schooner Isabella , commanded by Captain Charles Morgan Lewis, was dispatched from Sydney Cove to make

385-749: A huge altar stone to record the manner by which they died. When the Devonshire Street Cemetery was resumed for the site of the Central Railway Station in 1904 the skulls and the monument were removed to Bunnerong Cemetery at Botany Bay in Sydney. Captain Lewis took William D'Oyly to relatives in London, departing Sydney on HMS  Buffalo  (1813) on 13 May 1838. Lewis was appointed harbour master at Port Phillip in 1840, but later suffered from insanity and became destitute. The fate of

440-464: A large ceremonial mask was recovered from neighbouring Aureed (Skull) Island after Ireland and D'Oyley were rescued returned to Sydney . The mask was made of turtle shells surrounded by numerous skulls, 17 of which were determined to have belonged to the crew and passengers of the Charles Eaton , who were massacred when they came ashore after the shipwreck. The mask was entered into the collection of

495-630: A member of the Eastern Trans-Fly languages of Trans–New Guinea ; its sister languages being Bini, Wipi and Gizrra. Though it is unrelated to Kalaw Lagaw Ya of the Central and Western Islands of Torres Strait, the two languages share around 40% of their vocabulary. Torres Strait English is a second language. Murray Island is governed by the Community Council, which is responsible for roads, water, housing and community events. The Community Council

550-635: A reputation as fierce warriors and skilled mariners. Warfare (both intertribal and against European ships in transit through the Coral Sea ) and head hunting were part of Torres Strait Islanders' culture. The account of Jack Ireland, a surviving cabin boy from the Charles Eaton , a barque that was wrecked in 1834 at Detached Reef, near the entrance to Torres Strait, is of interest in this respect. Ireland and another young survivor, William D'Oyley, spent much of their time on Mer before being rescued. In 1836

605-463: A search for reported survivors of the Charles Eaton being held captive at Murray Island. The Isabella arrived at Murray Island on 19 June and the two survivors were handed over to Captain Lewis, after which Lewis and his crew took masks from Mer while interacting with the local people. After being told by a group of locals on the island of Massid ( Yorke Island , or Masig) that men from Aureed had taken skulls back to that island, Lewis went to explore

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660-557: A surprisingly small crew—at minimum, 10—and while the usual crew was around 30, almost half of them could be apprentices. Today many sailing- school ships are barques. A well-preserved example of a commercial barque is the Pommern , the only windjammer in original condition. Its home is in Mariehamn outside the Åland maritime museum. The wooden barque Sigyn , built in Gothenburg 1887,

715-519: A temple, in which the sacred barques rested when a procession was not in progress. In these stations, the boats would be watched over and cared for by the priests. The Barque of St. Peter , or the Barque of Peter, is a reference to the Roman Catholic Church . The term refers to Peter , the first Pope , who was a fisherman before becoming an apostle of Jesus. The Pope is often said to be steering

770-444: A traditional ceremony for the burial of a king. In the 2016 census , Mer Island had a population of 450 people. In the 2021 census , Mer Island had a population of 406 people. The people of Mer maintain their traditional culture. Modern influences such as consumer goods, television, travel and radio are having an impact on traditional practices and culture. Despite this, song and dance remains an integral part of island life and

825-401: Is an integral part of community life. The elders of the community hold a position of respect and also have a major influence on island life. Queensland's control was moved from just 3 miles, to a large 60 miles offshore. This brought all of Torres Strait that were within a couple hundred metres of New guineas coast, into Queensland. The laws rose from requests from the public, who were asking for

880-520: Is based on traditional laws of boundary and ownership. Murray Island, in the eastern section of Torres Strait , is a basaltic island formed from an extinct volcano , last active over a million years ago. It formed when the Indo-Australian Plate slid over the East Australia hotspot . The island rises to a plateau 80 metres (260 ft) above mean sea level . The island's highest point

935-408: Is both easier to handle and better at going to windward than a full-rigged ship. While a full-rigged ship is the best runner available, and while fore-and-aft rigged vessels are the best at going to windward, the barque and the barquentine, are compromises, which combine, in different proportions, the best elements of these two. Whether square-rig, barque, barquentine or schooner is optimal depends on

990-651: Is demonstrated through celebrations such as Mabo Day, Coming of the Light, Tombstone openings and other cultural events. In 2007, after two years of negotiations, the skulls of five Islander tribesmen were returned to Australia from a Glasgow museum where they had been archived for more than 100 years. The artist Ricardo Idagi was born on Murray Island. Idagi won the main prize at the Western Australian Indigenous Art Awards in 2009. The people of Murray Island speak Torres Strait Creole and Meriam ,

1045-605: Is now a museum ship in Turku . The wooden whaling barque Charles W. Morgan , launched 1841, taken out of service 1921, is now a museum ship at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut . The Charles W. Morgan has recently been refit and is (as of summer, 2014) sailing the New England coast. The United States Coast Guard still has an operational barque, built in Germany in 1936 and captured as

1100-595: Is of volcanic origin, the most easterly inhabited island of the Torres Strait Islands archipelago , just north of the Great Barrier Reef . The name Meer/Mer/Maer comes from the native Meriam language . In the 2021 census , Mer Island had a population of 406 people. The island is populated by the Melanesian Meriam people . There are eight tribes on Mer: Komet, Zagareb, Meuram, Magaram, Geuram, Peibri, Meriam-Samsep, Piadram/Dauer. The island's organisation

1155-459: Is the 230-metre (750 ft) Gelam Paser, the western end of the volcano crater. The island has red fertile soil and is covered in dense vegetation. It has a tropical climate with a wet and dry season. Murray Island is one of the three islands in the Murray Islands , the others being Daua Island ( Dowar ) and Waier Island ( Waier ). Murray Island has been inhabited for around 2,800 years,

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1210-636: The Australian Museum after the skulls were buried on 17 November 1836 in a mass grave in the Devonshire Street Cemetery in Sydney. A monument was erected in the form of a huge altar stone to record the manner in which they died. When the Devonshire Street Cemetery was resumed for the site of the Central Railway Station in 1904 the skulls and the monument were removed to Bunnerong Cemetery at Botany Bay in Sydney. Missionaries (mainly Polynesian) and some other Polynesians began to settle

1265-565: The High Court of Australia , on appeal from the Supreme Court of the State of Queensland , to issue the " Mabo decision " on 3 June 1992, finally recognising Mabo's native title rights on his land. The decision continues to have ramifications for Australia. Mabo himself died a few months before the decision. After vandalism to his grave site, he was reburied on Murray Island, where Islanders performed

1320-502: The pearling industry. A call for independence from Australia in the 1980s arose as the government failed to provide basic infrastructure on the island. Murray Island's most famous resident was trade unionist Eddie Mabo , whose decision to sue the Queensland Government to secure ownership of his land, which had been removed from his ancestors by the British colonial powers using the terra nullius legal concept, ultimately led

1375-456: The 26 or 27 people and the ship's dog, Portland, remaining with the wreck, only four boys initially survived. The rest were killed by Torres Strait Islanders. They were the two young ship's boys, John Ireland and John Sexton, and the two D'Oyly children, George, aged seven, and William, aged three. Sexton and George D'Oyly died soon afterwards. John Ireland and William D'Oyly lived with their captors for some months, and were eventually exchanged to

1430-546: The Barque of St. Peter. Murray Island, Queensland Murray Island (also known as Mer Island or Maer Island ) in the Torres Strait Island Region , Queensland , Australia. The island is part of the Murray Island Group in the Torres Strait . The town is on the island's northwest coast and within the locality of Mer Island (the locality boundaries are the island's coastline). The island

1485-560: The French word as Egyptian hieroglyphs were first translated by the Frenchman Jean-François Champollion , were a type of boat used from Egypt's earliest recorded times and are depicted in many drawings, paintings, and reliefs that document the culture. Transportation to the afterlife was believed to be accomplished by way of barques, as well, and the image is used in many of the religious murals and carvings in temples and tombs. The most important Egyptian barque carried

1540-514: The Lewis Collection. This was the earliest collection of artefacts from the region held by any institution, and were the only objects held by that museum from that region. In 1882 a fire destroyed Sydney's Garden Palace building, as well as much of the museum's ethnological collection. However, a number of items had been transferred to Denmark's Nationalmuseet in Copenhagen some time before

1595-713: The Norwegian Navy and generally available for interested volunteers. During the summer of 2021, it hosted "NRK Sommarskuta" with live TV everyday sailing all of the Norwegian coast from north to south and crossing the North Sea to Shetland. After this it will perform its first full sailing trip around world, estimated to take 19 months with many promotional events along the way. Scientific equipment has been installed in support of ongoing university studies to monitor and log environmental data. In Ancient Egypt , barques, referred to using

1650-475: The dead pharaoh to become a deity. Great care was taken to provide a beautiful barque to the pharaoh for this journey, and models of the boats were placed in their tombs. Many models of these boats, that range from tiny to huge in size, have been found. Wealthy and royal members of the culture also provided barques for their final journey. The type of vessel depicted in Egyptian images remains quite similar throughout

1705-439: The degree to which the sailing-route and season can be chosen to achieve following-wind. Square-riggers predominated for intercontinental sailing on routes chosen for following-winds. Most ocean-going windjammers were four-masted barques, due to the above-described considerations and compromises. Usually the main mast was the tallest; that of Moshulu extends to 58 m off the deck. The four-masted barque can be handled with

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1760-543: The end of the 18th century, the term barque (sometimes, particularly in the US, spelled bark) came to refer to any vessel with a particular type of sail plan . This comprises three (or more) masts , fore-and-aft sails on the aftermost mast and square sails on all other masts. Barques were the workhorse of the golden age of sail in the mid-19th century as they attained passages that nearly matched full-rigged ships, but could operate with smaller crews. The advantage of these rigs

1815-496: The fire, including a large mask which, it has been suggested, may be the mask from Aureed. Barque The word "barque" entered English via the French term, which in turn came from the Latin barca by way of Occitan , Catalan , Spanish, or Italian. The Latin barca may stem from Celtic barc (per Thurneysen ) or Greek baris (per Diez ), a term for an Egyptian boat. The Oxford English Dictionary , however, considers

1870-614: The first settlers being Papuo - Austronesians who brought agriculture and pot-making with them. Regular contact between the inhabitants of Torres Strait, Europeans, Asians and other outsiders began once the Torres Strait became a means of passage between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean in the 19th century. The inhabitants of the Torres Strait , including the Meriam people, gained

1925-423: The followers of Kulka . Lewis and his men took the skulls and mask, and set fire to everything on the island, including plantations of tobacco . Lewis dubbed the island "Skull Island", although this name was not taken up. Apart from the surviving youths, Isabella also carried back artefacts collected by Lewis as well as the skulls that were found on the island of Aureed , 17 of which were believed to be those of

1980-411: The group of small islands that he called the "Six Sisters", one of which was Aureed. Anchoring there, armed men went on to the island and found it deserted, the village abandoned. After burning the village to the ground, the men found a dilapidated shed, and in it a huge mask made of a single decorated turtle shell surrounded by human skulls of Europeans. This was later identified as a "skull house" used by

2035-681: The inaugural meeting of Island Councillors on Yorke Island resulted in the Torres Strait Islander Act 1939 , giving Islanders more authority in their own affairs and establishing local governments on each island. After the Pacific War broke out in 1941, over 700 Islanders volunteered to defend the Torres Strait. This group was organised into the Torres Strait Light Infantry Battalion . The migration of Islanders to mainland Australia increased as jobs disappeared in

2090-614: The island in 1872 when the London Missionary Society founded a missionary school there. The Queensland Government annexed the islands in 1879. The Australian painter Tom Roberts visited the island in 1892. He witnessed a nighttime dance and depicted it in a painting. In 1936, a maritime strike fuelled by Islander dissatisfaction with the management of their wages and boats by the Protector of Aborigines allowed Islanders to assert control and reject government controls. In 1937,

2145-565: The latter improbable. The word barc appears to have come from Celtic languages. The form adopted by English, perhaps from Irish , was "bark", while that adopted by Latin as barca very early, which gave rise to the French barge and barque . In Latin, Spanish, and Italian, the term barca refers to a small boat , not a full-sized ship. French influence in England led to the use in English of both words, although their meanings now are not

2200-601: The lease of islands Queensland's coast. As before this, all islands that were within three miles of the coast, were under Queensland's control. Murray island waited unclaimed until 1879. In 1879, Britain annexed the island to Queensland. The reason for annexation was to protect the British and their property, control the Torres Strait and sea lane to India, dominate fishing and pearling industries and to extend authority to some non-British areas. Britain also gave all control of Torres Strait islands to Queensland, with no negotiating treaties, in order to avert enemy colonial powers claiming

2255-451: The murdered passengers and crew, after being identified as European skulls by a surgeon in Sydney in November 1836. The skulls were buried on 17 November 1836 in a mass grave in the Devonshire Street Cemetery in Sydney, not far from the grave of the chief officer of Isabella, who had died about a week earlier from an illness brought on by the rescue voyage. A monument was erected in the form of

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2310-504: The murdered people on a nearby island and took them back to Sydney for burial. Reputedly a fine-looking wooden barque, she was built in a shipbuilding yard at Coringa , near Madras in India, where she was launched in January 1833. Registered in London at 313 tons to carry 350 tons burden, she was built of the best teak , and had two flush decks, forecastle, bust head, and quarter galleries. She

2365-411: The oars. They reached a small sandy cay now called Boydang , inhabited at the time by visiting Torres Strait islanders, who killed all the adults and kept their skulls for their daily ceremonial rituals. Only William and George D'Oyly were spared. The second raft left Charles Eaton ' s wreck with the rest of the crew and they, too, were murdered and beheaded by the visiting party of islanders. Of

2420-542: The passengers inspired the book Drums of Mer (1933) by Ion Idriess , which he later reworked into a children's book, Headhunters of the Coral Sea . The story has also been told in other works of historical fiction and non-fiction (see Further Reading below). A collection of anthropological items collected in the Torres Strait Islands by Lewis was given to the Australian Museum in Sydney and became known as

2475-422: The same. Well before the 19th century, a barge had become interpreted as a small vessel of coastal or inland waters, or a fast rowing boat carried by warships and normally reserved for the commanding officer. Somewhat later, a bark became a sailing vessel of a distinctive rig as detailed below. In Britain, by the mid-19th century, the spelling had taken on the French form of barque . Although Francis Bacon used

2530-519: The ship, for use as a sailing ship usable for general purposes and passengers. Her first trading voyage from Saint Katharine's Dock in London was to the Australian penal colonies . Her passengers included an Irish lawyer called George Armstrong and 40 pauper children from the Children's Friend Society . Also on board was a young ship's boy called John Ireland, the only member of the crew who lived to tell

2585-512: The spelling with a "q" as early as 1592, Shakespeare still used the spelling "barke" in Sonnet 116 in 1609. Throughout the period of sail, the word was used also as a shortening of the barca-longa of the Mediterranean Sea . The usual modern spelling convention is that, to distinguish between homophones , when spelled as barque it refers to a ship, and when spelled as bark it refers to either

2640-453: The story of what happened to the Charles Eaton . She cleared the Thames River on 20 December 1833, and set sail the next day with favourable winds. After a stopover at The Downs to collect more passengers from the village of Deal , she collided with another vessel. She left Falmouth , England for good on 5 February 1834 with sundry cargo, including calicoes and lead . Charles Eaton

2695-552: The thousands of years the culture persisted. Barques were important religious artifacts , and since the deities were thought to travel in this fashion in the sky, the Milky Way was seen as a great waterway that was as important as the Nile on Earth; cult statues of the deities traveled by boats on water and ritual boats were carried about by the priests during festival ceremonies. Temples included barque shrines, sometimes more than one in

2750-675: Was coppered to the wales in chunam and felt . She was named after a Captain Charles Eaton, a former ship's captain, trader and owner of several ships, who gave up the sea to settle ashore as the Port Master of Coringa, a town to the north of Madras . He died there in 1827. One of his daughters, Sophia, married William Gibson, at one time the manager of a shipbuilding yard in the region. Eaton's son, Captain Charles W. Eaton, took over his father's role as Coringa's Port Master from 1828 to 1838, and

2805-566: Was en route from Sydney to Singapore by way of the Torres Strait. She had made two stopovers in Australia, at Hobart Town and Sydney. At Hobart Town she obtained new passengers returning to India after two years' sick leave: Captain Thomas D'Oyly of the Bengal Artillery , his wife Charlotte, his two sons George and William, and their Indian ayah (nurse). The barque left Sydney on 29 July 1834 and

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2860-478: Was registered as HM Bark  Endeavour to distinguish her from another Endeavour , a sloop already in service at the time. Endeavour happened to be a full-rigged ship with a plain bluff bow and a full stern with windows. William Falconer 's Dictionary of the Marine defined "bark", as "a general name given to small ships: it is however peculiarly appropriated by seamen to those which carry three masts without

2915-427: Was that they needed smaller (therefore cheaper) crews than a comparable full-rigged ship or brig -rigged vessel, as fewer of the labour-intensive square sails were used, and the rig itself is cheaper. Conversely, the ship rig tended to be retained for training vessels where the larger the crew, the more seamen were trained. Another advantage is that, downwind, a barque can outperform a schooner or barkentine , and

2970-526: Was the part-owner of at least three merchant ships. Charles Eaton , under the command of Captain Fowle, arrived in London with 1000 chests of indigo worth about £45,000. On 14 June 1833 Lloyd’s Shipping List had noted that: "The cargo saved from the James Sibbald , built in Bombay , and wrecked on reefs off Coringa in 1832, has been reshipped per Charles Eaton". Gledstanes & Co. had recently purchased

3025-654: Was wrecked on the Great Barrier Reef near the Sir Charles Hardy Islands on 15 August 1834. Five of the crew took one of the quarter boats and set out for Timor but were subsequently taken captive at an island then called Timor Laut , but now called Yamdena , part of the Tanimbar group of islands. Those remaining at the wreck made two rafts, the first of which set sail with all the passengers, Captain Moore, surgeon Grant, steward Montgomery and two strong sailors to man

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