Eva’s fate still unknown
southern waters, the schooner first came north in about 1862 bringing timber from Maryborough to build some of Bowen’s earliest buildings.
In 1864 it was one of the earliest vessels to visit Townsville.
The Eva’s master, Captain McBeath was well known.
His glowing description of the new port in Cleveland Bay was published in The Port Denison Times on December 31, 1864. Copied in The Queensland Guardian on January 17, 1865, the report no doubt helped to stimulate interest a few months later at the first sale of land in Townsville.
On March 2, 1867, the Eva left Townsville with McBeath, a mate, two deck hands, a cook, and one passenger, probably a Mrs Brain. It departed only hours before a cyclone, the first experienced in the settled Townsville, descended on the township.
Looking from Melton Hill the sea, usually so blue and tranquil, was grey, humped in tossing fury, and the wind screamed like a thousand wild furies, destroying buildings and shredding trees. Townsville’s inhabitants sheltered under laden drays or behind rocky outcrops, terrified by the ferocity of the storm.
It was hoped that Eva had found shelter in Rockingham Bay. Otherwise it was an old vessel that had little chance of surviving the storm.
Hopes were partly dashed when a cask of salt beef, part of the Eva’s cargo, washed up in Cleveland Bay, but it might have been deck cargo washed overboard in heavy seas, so some hope remained.
When no news was received and the ship did not return, it was assumed to have been wrecked. The steamer Black Prince, commanded by Captain Major, searched the shore and islands as far north as Dunk Island for survivors, but found no trace of the Eva or of those aboard.
There the story might have ended, but in October, while passing Hinchinbrook Island, the crew of the Black Prince reported sighting a white man on the beach.
An extensive search by a party from Townsville, with police from Bowen and Native Police led by Lt Murray, located no survivors though, according to the natives, they were somewhere on the island.
The natives showed the searchers a hut where a white woman had lived, but they said she had died.
Reluctantly the search was called off and by April 1868 it was generally agreed that the Eva and all aboard were lost in the storm.
No traces of the vessel have since been found.