Victoria twice named for ships

The Victorian Navy had two ships named Victoria.

The first was HMCSS Victoria (HMCSS meant Her Majesty’s Colonial Screw Steamer), later called HMVS Victoria when we got an “official” navy. In fact the ragtag collection of armed ships we had in the 1880s made Victoria’s navy the strongest in Australia.

New South Wales had a warship before Victoria, but it was only the little “Spitfire”, a locally built gunboat. I’m not certain why she was built, but that is NSW for you.

The Victorians were happy to go one better. With Queen Victoria on the throne, and with our state named after her, the name was a ‘gimme’.

Designed by Oliver Lang and launched at London, of all places, on June 30, 855 she was quickly fitted out and entered Port Phillip on May 31, 1856. She was of particular interest because she was the first British-built warship ordered and paid for by a British colony.

She was a handsome ship of 580 tons, described as a ‘steam sloop’, driven by steam and with propellers, but also with three masts, two of them square-rigged.

She had three 32-pounder guns mounted, considerable power in those days, By about 1877, HMVS Victoria’s armament had been altered to include one 10-inch gun, two 13-pounders, and two 3-pounders.

From 1856 Victoria (the colony) had a warship of its own to protect it, though we did not quite know from what. It was also to be a marine survey ship, a rescue vessel and a lighthouse tender, all in its original charter, so to speak. HMCSS Victoria was to be a very busy little ship.

In 1857 John Price was murdered aboard a prison hulk in Port Phillip (yes, we did have prison hulks) and there was great unrest among the prisoners. Price was the Inspector General of Prisons, and not a popular man. On March 26 HMVS Victoria moved close to the hulk where the main disturbance was going on, just off Williamstown, and trained her guns on the prisoners. That seemed to help calm them down.

In 1859 she went to the aid of the American ship B. Norris, which caught fire in Hobson’s

Bay. Her boats took off the crew but the burning ship could not be saved. Tugs pulled her into deeper water and she sank there.

In 1860 she went off to the Second Maori War, also called the First Taranaki War, as part of the Australian Squadron. When she sailed for the Shaky Isles on April 24 she marked Australia’s first commitment of forces to a ‘foreign’ war. She sailed to Hobart and took on board 120 soldiers of the 90th Regiment (or 134 soldiers of the 40th Regiment according to another source) and landed them at New Plymouth (or Auckland!) six days later.

I’m sorry about the differences in account in that paragraph but I have been unable to work out which is right.

Her duties then included coastal patrols with occasional shore bombardments, and the maintenance of the safe sealane between Auckland and New Plymouth, which it is hard to see being threatened by the Maori canoes.

She went to Sydney to collect General Thomas Pratt and his headquarters and deliver them to New Plymouth. That was in July and she was back there a short time later to evacuate the women and children of the New Plymouth garrison, following heavy Maori attacks on the fortifications, and she was used to transport troops around the coastline.

In December 1860 she landed a detachment of seamen, not soldiers, and they captured Matarikoriko Pa. Only ten days later she was at Kairou, landing seamen to support British troops under attack by the Maoris. Skippered by Captain WH. Norman, HMCS Victoria (Her Majesty’s Colonial Ship Victoria) was reported to have acquitted her duties very well indeed.

In 1861 she went to the Gulf of Carpentaria to search for any sign of Burke and Wills, accompanied by the small ship Firefly. The adventures of that voyage will bear telling another time, including shipwreck, near mutiny, drunkenness, etc, aboard the Firefly. She was back in Melbourne in March 1862 having found traces of the explorers, but no more.

1864 saw her crossing the Strait to Hobart with 100,000 salmon eggs and 3000 trout eggs (how would you count them?) to start Tasmania’s fish hatcheries. That was a genuinely historic voyage when we consider the outcomes.

In 1866 the 944-ton clipper ship Netherby was wrecked on the rocks of King Island. With the SS Pharos HMVS Victoria successfully picked up all of the 452 passengers and 50 crew. The story of the wreck of the Netherby is a dramatic one, as shipwrecks tend to be, but also a story of great courage and great good fortune. I’ll come back to the Netherby.

By this time, and perhaps as early as 1861, our ship’s title seems to have changed so the “Colonial” was replaced by “Victorian”.

According to Wikipedia, which is not always entirely reliable, the British Government wanted to send her to the islands in 1872 to try to stop the ‘blackbirding’ of natives, whereby they were taken to Queensland as little more than slaves. It was a harsh world. I don’t know that she ever took up that duty.

Now described as a survey vessel she took part in yet another rescue when in December the clipper ship Tientsin was sinking in Bass Strait. The crew were taken off safely and Victoria attached a towline, but shortly after the Tientsin rolled over and sank. I imagine the Victoria’s crew worked very smartly to separate the towline.

In 1873 the 144-ton barque Anna coming from Fremantle to Auckland with a load of jarrah misread the lighthouses, mixing up the Cape Wickham, and Cape Otway lights. Thinking the Wickham light was the Otway light the Captain steered south of it and struck the island about six miles south of the light. The few folk on board were able to reach dry land and HMVS Victoria came to their aid, with the Pharos once again.

The grand little ship ended naval service in 1882. It was then purchased by the colony of Western Australia in 1894, but laid up a few years later, in 1897, and then finally scrapped in Sydney 1920.

In 1884 we got a new HMVS Victoria, described as a Third-class Gunboat. She was a sister ship to another called HMVS Albert, of course. I don’t know much about the second one just yet, but I am correcting that.

The second HMVS Victoria would have had a massive task to be as much use as her predecessor – but I know already that she was not.