Noumea May 1880

13 May 1880 the “blackbirder” labour schooner Noumea, on her return trip from Santa Island to Mackay, with ninety nine Islanders, including eight women, struck on Saumarez reef, on May 13, and became a total wreck. Seven of the Islanders were drowned in swimming off from the wreck to the boats, but the remainder, together with the crew, were rescued by the steamer Leichhardt, sent to their assistance by the owner of the vessel

The schooner Noumea was a vessel of some 144 tons approximately 100foot and built at George's River New South Wales in 1873 by Geo and Registered (64437) and owned by Mr Paxton, of Mackay, and was about six years old Her captain (RJ Belbin) was formerly in command of the Lady Darling, and has bad an extensive experience in the South Sea Island labour trade the vessel had, we behave, been recently purchased by Mr. Paxton for £2600, and was on her first trading voyage between the South Sea Islands and Mackay She was insured in the Sydney office of the Australian Alliance Company

Captain South, of the Keilawarra, from Brisbane, reported when he arrived at Sea Hill on the morning of the 18 May of having picked up a boat containing Captain Belbin and six white sailors in great distress of the schooner Nouméa, which vessel had been wrecked on May 13 on Saumarez Reef,

Captain South's report added that there were four white men (including the Government agent) and ninety-nine islanders still at the wreck and the reef, in need of immediate assistance, as they have no food to sustain them

The captain left the vessel the day after she struck, and that, and as up to that time the crew had been unable to save any provisions from the wreck, it is feared the people left behind

Mr WH Paxton, the owner of the Nouméa, arranged with the ASN Company for the Steamer Leichhardt, to proceed to the wreck, and with instructions to bring the islanders from the wreck to Keppel Bay, where they are to be transshipped into the Tinonee for Mackay, which is their destination^[6]

The steamer Leichhardt had arrived at Keppel Bay on 21 May 1880 from the scene of the wreck of the schooner Noumea with the whole of the European crew of the vessel and ninety-three South Sea Islanders. Other islanders were drowned while endeavouring to swim from the wreck to the boats the day after the vessel struck.

Several of the rescued islanders are very weak, but there was no sickness amongst them. The islanders proceed to Mackay in the Tinonee.

The Nouméa was bilged and dismasted, and a total wreck on the north-east point of Saumarez Reef.^[7]

The following narrative of one of the shipwrecked crew is Arthur William Munson, one of the crew of the captain's boat, gives us the. following short account of the wreck :-“We sailed about thirteen or fourteen days ago from the island of Santo, in the New Hebrides, bound for Mackay, with ninety-two South Sea Islanders on board as passengers.

Everything went well till Thursday evening. I had finished my trick at the wheel about two hours before the accident; the course then was south-west half-west. At about half-past 7 in the evening the ship struck the reef, not heavily but grazing ; after that she struck heavier and then bounced right on to the reef high up.

The captain at once got the starboard boat on deck, got her ready, and waited for daybreak. She was then launched over the starboard quarter with a crew consisting of the boatswain, four Kanakas, two black women, and a boy. The boat got through a break in the reef and lay under the lee of the reef on the other side. Then twenty-seven of the islanders took the water and swam through the reef to the boat ; but the boatswain could not take them all in, and I saw seven of them in the water when the boat left for the island or sandspit at the end of the reef. I am sure that of these at least five were drowned.

In the meantime the port boat was launched over the starboard side. I was one of the crew. We took nine more islanders, including one woman, but could not succeed in landing her. I was swimming in the water nearly half-an-hour trying to land the woman, and at last they got her into the other boat. Only thirty-three islanders got out of the wreck, and when we came away in the captain's boat the rest of them were left on board.

They had nothing to eat but bread damaged with salt water, and I don't know how they can have survived. The ship could not hold together long if it came on to blow. This is the second time within five months that I have been wrecked in these seas,"

SS Francis Preston Blair July 1945

SS Francis Preston Blair. American Liberty ship, 7196 tons. Built 1943 by the Marinship Corporation Yard at Sausalito, on the north west side of San Francisco Bay, which built a total of fifteen Liberty ships. Lbd 422.8 x 57 x 34.8 ft. Wrecked on the eastern edge of the Saumarez Reef in the Coral Sea, 15 July 1945. She was used on occasions as a target by the RAAF, which dropped practice and live bombs. Stranding occurred during a cyclone. An explosion hole in the starboard bow at the waterline has never been explained. VIDEO 1964^{[permanent dead link]}