Enchantress Street

The "Enchantress", a full-rigged ship of 376 tons was built at Bristol, England in 1826. She was a trader between London, Sydney and Hobart from 1832 and involved in transporting convicts. The first convict transports arrived in Australia with the first fleet in 1788 and over the next 80 years 608 ships transported more than 162,000 convicts to Australia. The ships were typically small to moderate sized merchant vessels mainly barques and as the fees the British Government paid for these ships were quite low many were of poor standard. In 1833 she carried 199 male convicts to Hobart. On a voyage from London to Hobart on the 16th July 1835 she made landfall about 12 miles north of South West Cape and decided to seek an anchorage in the D’Entrecasteaux Channel to avoid being blown to the eastwards. The following day she tacked backwards and forwards across the southern entrance to the channel and around 10 pm on the 17th July near Bruny Island the captain David Roxburgh decided to tack offshore and went below to check his charts. He was only below deck for around three minutes when the ship was fatally holed by hitting uncharted rocks half a mile off the western shore of Bruny Island and six to eight miles off Partridge Island, probably the Hen and Chicken Reef. She was holed so severely that the crew abandoned her before she sank. The longboat caught in the rigging and was dragged down with the ship with loss of the second officer, fifteen crew and one passenger. The survivors landed on Partridge Island and the passengers were picked up by the cutter "Friends" and taken to Hobart, while the captain and the four surviving crew set off to Hobart in the gig.

 

Broxam, G.& Nash, M(2012) Tasmanian Shipwrecks 1797-1899 Nararine Publishing,

 

Hobart O’May, B (1985) Wrecks in Tasmanian Waters 1797-1950 AB Caudell,

 

Government Printing, Hobart

 

The Sydney Herald Mon. August 3 1835 P.3