''Maria'' was a

brigantine A brigantine is a two-masted sailing vessel with a fully square-rigged foremast and at least two sails on the main mast: a square topsail and a gaff sail mainsail (behind the mast). The main mast is the second and taller of the two masts. Older ...

built in Dublin, Ireland, and launched in 1823 as a

passenger ship A passenger ship is a merchant ship whose primary function is to carry passengers on the sea. The category does not include cargo vessels which have accommodations for limited numbers of passengers, such as the ubiquitous twelve-passenger freig ...

. On 28 June 1840, she wrecked on the Margaret Brock Reef, near Cape Jaffa in the Colony of South Australia, somewhere south-west of the current site of the town of Kingston SE, South Australia. The wreck has never been located. Aboriginal Australians on the Coorong massacred some or all of the 17 survivors of the wreck as they journeyed to Adelaide, an event known as the Maria massacre. A punitive expedition, acting under instructions from

Governor Gawler Lieutenant-Colonel George Gawler, KH, (21 July 1795 – 7 May 1869) was the second Governor of South Australia, at the same time serving as Resident Commissioner, from 17 October 1838 until 15 May 1841. Biography Early life Gawler, born on 21 ...

that were later found to be unlawful, summarily hanged two presumed culprits.

History

Background

''Maria'' was launched from Grand Canal Dock, Dublin, in 1823. The data below are from '' Lloyd's Register'' (''LR''). ''Maria'' no longer appears in ''LR'' in 1835 and subsequently. She may have transferred her registry to Australia.

Final voyage

''Maria'' left

Port Adelaide Port Adelaide is a port-side region of Adelaide, approximately northwest of the Adelaide CBD. It is also the namesake of the City of Port Adelaide Enfield council, a suburb, a federal and state electoral division and is the main port for the ...

on 26 June 1840 for Hobart Town, Van Diemens Land, with 25 persons on board, including the captain, William Ettrick Smith, and his wife. Passengers included Samuel Denham and Mrs Denham (née Muller) and their five children (Thomas, Andrew, Walter, Fanny, and Anna); the recently-widowed Mrs York (sister of Samuel Denham), and her infant; James Strutt (previously with Lonsdale's Livery Stables, hired as Mrs Denham's servant); George Young Green and Mrs Green; Thomas Daniel and Mrs Daniel; and Mr. Murray. The ship's mate and crew were John Tegg, John Griffiths, John Deggan/Durgan/Dengan, James Biggins, John Cowley, Thomas Rea, George Leigh and James Parsons. During the voyage, ''Maria'' foundered on the

Margaret Brock Reef __NOTOC__ Margaret Brock Reef is a reef in the Australian state of South Australia located in the state's coastal waters on its south-east coast about west of the headland of Cape Jaffa and about south-west of the town of Kingston SE. It is th ...

(named later, after the 1852 shipwreck of the barque ''Margaret Brock''), which lies west of Cape Jaffa on the south-east coast of South Australia. Eight people died, and survivors made their way to the coast somewhere near the site of the present Kingston SE.

Massacre

The passengers and crew safely reached land. Accounts suggest that the passengers commenced trekking on the land side of the Coorong coast towards the lakes ( Alexandrina and Albert), with the sailors heading inland at some point. According to a later account, around from the wreck, in company with some friendly Aboriginals, they came across a track and at once had a dispute as to whether or not to follow it, and decided to split up: Captain Smith and the crew took to the track and most of the passengers continued along the shoreline. Two days later some of this latter group split from the party in the hope of rejoining the Captain. Around this time they were attacked and killed by a group of the

Milmenrura The Tanganekald people were or are an Aboriginal Australian people of South Australia, of the Ngarrindjeri nation. Country The Tanganekald lay to the southeast of the Jarildekald and occupied , predominantly about the narrow coastal strip along ...

(or "Big Murray Tribe", now known as Tanganekald, also known as Tenkinyra), stripped of their possessions, hit over the head, decapitated and buried in the sandNoble, Captain John 1970), ''Hazards of the Sea: Three Centuries of Challenge in Southern Waters'', Sydney:

Angus and Robertson Angus & Robertson (A&R) is a major Australian bookseller, publisher and printer. As book publishers, A&R has contributed substantially to the promotion and development of Australian literature.Alison, Jennifer (2001). "Publishers and editors: A ...

. or in wombat holes. Such detail of how the ''Maria'' survivors came to be widely separated into three groups can only be supposition, as none lived to tell the tale. The body of the captain was found far removed from the others, and no trace of the crew members was ever found, so it is not known whether they suffered the same fate as the passengers. One contemporary noted that survivors of the schooner ''Fanny'' (Capt. James Gill), wrecked in the same area two years earlier (21 June 1838), were given every assistance by, presumably, men from the same tribe. In 2003 Ngarrindjeri elder Tom Trevorrow said that the story was well known among his elders, and that he was told the survivors had met up with their people. According to Trevorrow, the Ngarrindjeri group offered them "fire, water and food...It was the duty of male people to help these people. But every time they'd come to a boundary line, they had to hand them over to the next lakayinyeri (family group) — the Milmendura". He was told that the crew members had tried "to sexually interfere with them". The Ngarrindjeri people warned the sailors that this was not their way, and that their tribal law would punish such behaviour by death. At some point after this, a violent fight broke out, and the survivors of ''Maria'' were all killed.

Response

Word of the murders of multiple white people by natives reached Adelaide and William Pullen. A group of sailors and three Aboriginal interpreters, with Pullen in charge, set out to investigate on 28 July, and on 30 July reached a massacre site, recovering two wedding rings. On 1 August, they encountered a group of Aboriginal Australians in possession of blankets and clothing. They returned to Adelaide with the rings, which were identified as belonging to Mrs York and Mrs Denham. The group reported finding "legs, arms and parts of bodies partially covered with sand and strewn in all directions", and a trail of footprints leading from the area. They also said they had found local natives with blankets and one was wearing a sailor's jacket. Governor Gawler commissioned Major O'Halloran to investigate further and his party left Adelaide on 15 August. Reinforcements were called for and on 22 August, O'Halloran left Goolwa with a mounted troop, including

Alexander Tolmer Alexander Tolmer (1815 – 7 March 1890) was a South Australian police officer and Police Commissioner. He was educated at Plymouth, Rouen, Maidstone and Hawkhurst. He migrated to South Australia in 1840 where he was made sub-inspector by Govern ...

, Captain Henry Nixon,

Charles Bonney Charles Bonney (31 October 1813 – 15 March 1897) was a pioneer and politician in Australia. Early life Bonney was the youngest son of the Rev. George Bonney, a fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, and his wife Susanna, née Knight. He was born ...

, and Pullen. They followed the coast, while boats sailed parallel. On 23 August the force ran into a number of Aboriginal Australians and rounded up 13 men, two boys, and 50 women and children. O'Halloran shackled the men and set the others free, though they remained nearby voluntarily. In his report, O'Halloran stated that his captives yielded up the man who had killed a whaler named Roach some two years previously, and pointed out where one of the ''Maria'' murderers could be found. O'Halloran pronounced a death sentence on them. Two Aboriginal Australians who tried to escape by swimming were shot and wounded. ''Maria's'' log-book was recovered in one of their

wurley A humpy, also known as a gunyah, wurley, wurly or wurlie, is a small, temporary shelter, traditionally used by Australian Aboriginal people. These impermanent dwellings, made of branches and bark, are sometimes called a lean-to, since they ofte ...

s, as were numerous articles of clothing, some blood-stained, and other incriminating evidence. At 3.00pm on 25 August, the two condemned men were summarily hanged from sheaoaks near the graves. O'Halloran was not exceeding his brief; he was following his instructions from

, whose instructions were: :"...when to your conviction you have identified any number, not exceeding three, of the actual murderers...you will there explain to the blacks the nature of your conduct ...and you will deliberately and formally cause sentence of death to be executed by shooting or hanging". In Australia, little blame was apportioned to O'Halloran for his part in this affair; not so for Governor Gawler, who was severely criticised by sections of the press, notably the '' Register''. In London, the Colonial Office was of the opinion that both Gawler and O'Halloran were liable to be tried for murder.Foster R., Nettelbeck A. (2011), ''Out of the Silence''
p. 27-32
( Wakefield Press). The

Aborigines' Protection Society The Aborigines' Protection Society (APS) was an international human rights organisation founded in 1837,
...

roundly condemned Gawler's actions. The Society also questioned the legality of the actions; the Chief Justice, though, was of the opinion that South Australian law could not be applied, because the tribe had not pledged allegiance to the Crown. This reference states that the bodies were stuffed down wombat holes, where others coyly refer to "shallow graves"; it is also one of the few to touch on the contentious possibility of cannibalism. The controversy may have played a part in Gawler's recall some months later. In a sketchbook by the then

Surveyor General of South Australia The Surveyor General of South Australia (also stylised Surveyor-General) is a position originally created for the Surveyor General for the colony of South Australia. The post is held by an official responsible for government surveying Survey ...

, Edward Charles Frome, there is a sketch of a Milmenrura village in the south-east consisting of a cluster of about twelve established homes. It is annotated with the note “burnt by me, October 1840”. On 10 April 1841, members of the Tenkinyra tribe guided Richard Penny to a spot where they promised the remains of a drowned white man were buried. He believed it would be Captain Collet Barker, who was speared to death in the same area on 30 April 1831. They found instead the bodies of four of the five from ''Maria'' still unaccounted for; one drowned and four bashed to death. The Aboriginals told Penny that the attack had followed the shipwrecked party's refusal to hand over clothing that they had considered their just entitlement for guiding and sustaining the group and carrying the children across their land. The ''Maria'' party had promised plenty of blankets and clothing from Adelaide after they returned, but the Aboriginals started to help themselves to the goods and a fight ensued, ending in the killing of the shipwrecked party.

Afterwards

''Maria's'' hull was never found, though pieces of wreckage washed ashore at Lacepede Bay. In 1972 a diver recovered a rubber

gudgeon A gudgeon is a socket-like, cylindrical (i.e., ''female'') fitting attached to one component to enable a pivoting or hinging connection to a second component. The second component carries a pintle fitting, the male counterpart to the gudgeon, ...

which may have come from either the ''Maria'' or the ''Margaret Brock''. There have been rumours of gold sovereigns aboard the ship, but records have not confirmed this. There were stories of coins being passed around the Ngarrandjeri people, which may have been traded by survivors before the massacre. It is hoped that the wreck may one day be located, using advanced remote sensing technology. This would be of great historical value. Senior maritime heritage officer Amer Khan of the Department of Environment, Water and Natural Resources State Heritage Unit, said that such a discovery could help to reveal the chain of events which led up to the tragedy. Khan suspects the wreck lies somewhere near Cape Jaffa, where the treacherous Margaret Brock reef is located. A cannon reported to have belonged to the ''Maria'' and which "was probably carried for the look of the thing or for signalling" was purchased from the Lee family of Middleton by D. H. Cudmore around 1914 as a garden feature for his home "Adare" in Victor Harbor, South Australia, then as a family tradition fired to welcome each New Year. A bell, claimed to have belonged to the ship, was acquired by

Nuriootpa High School Nuriootpa ( ) is a town in South Australia and the major commercial centre of the Barossa Valley, about an hour's drive north of the state capital, Adelaide. The name of the town is reputed to be the local Aboriginal word for "meeting place". N ...

in 1942. A plaque commemorating the wreck of ''Maria'' was unveiled at Kingston SE on 18 February 1966. Maria Creek was named as a reminder of the wreck.

Notes

*Names of Aboriginal groups are as reported in the contemporary press. They must have been tribes or clans of the Ngarrindjeri people but may have no connection with any later group. The group here written as "Milmenrura" has elsewhere been described as the Milmendjuri clan of the Tanganekald tribe.