How one ship’s loss changed Australian maritime law: 2

This is the follow up to How one ship’s loss changed Australian maritime law, Part 1

Their ship lost in the Southern Ocean off Tasmania’s South-West Cape, sinking so fast they were unable to send off an emergency message, Blythe Star’s crew of ten men, including the youngest member, 18 y.o. Michael Doleman, took to a 3m inflatable life raft. By the fourth morning, they realised John Sloane, one of their crew mates, had died. That night they buried him at sea. Because no-one knew which route they’d taken on their intended journey to King Island, it wasn’t known where to look for them. The few aircraft available from the RAAF had been sent to scour the entire coastline of the island state. Where they were needed – and nobody knew – was along the south coast.

Worse still, and the crew had no understanding of it, their ordeal would take another week yet before drawing to its conclusion.

Unwieldy and unmanageable though it was, and at the mercy of tide and wind, their inflatable raft continued to support them. At first, swept further south into the Southern Ocean, eventually seas and tides pushed them north and east into the Tasman Sea. Taking an unintentional zigzag course, the tough little craft bore them up and out past Bruny Island and the Tasman Peninsula. In a quirk of current, they came close to Schouten Island, half way up the Tasmanian east coast, before being swept again in a southerly direction.

Morale had deteriorated. Weak from surviving on glucose powder and just 50ml of tinned water a day, a level of torpor would have begun to overtake the men as their bodies attempted to slow down. On the dawn of the ninth day, perhaps because of a change in its movement, Mick Doleman opened the hatch on the raft and looked out, only to discover they had entered Deep Glen Bay on the Forestier Peninsula.

“I made a decision. (I wasn’t) going back out to sea. I jumped out of the raft and thankfully the water only came up to my waist.” They maneuvered their faithful raft ashore in a rocky cove with a small creek. Doleman continued, “The funny part was, we all jumped out thinking we’d all run up the beach… but you can’t walk.”

Despite the miracle of being back on land, their ordeal remained far from over.

The remote part of the Forestier Peninsula on which they’d landed has cliffs that are both sheer and steep, with sharp edges. Weakened as they were, the climb out looked beyond them. One of the crew said they ought to push the raft back out into the water and paddle around the shore, perhaps to Port Arthur. Others, including Doleman, said no. “There’s no way I was getting back in that raft, and I wouldn’t let anyone else in it either.”

At that, the young man took a knife and began to cut up the raft. The material was used to form crude clothing, including a lap-lap and a jacket to keep the wind out. They made a number of attempts to scale the cliffs but without success. In the next two days, two more of the men, John Eagles and Ken Jones died on the rocky beach, almost certainly due to exposure and lack of nutrition.

Finally, hungry and desperate, his only clothing a dead man’s singlet and socks and the rudimentary items he’d made from cutting up the raft, Doleman and two others made a desperate attempt to climb out. They had no way of knowing but the search, such as it was, had been called off by then. The three of them, Doleman, Malcolm McCarroll, and the ship’s cook battled for hours to climb the cliff, then had to fight their way through dense forest.

After huddling overnight under a canopy of tree-fern fronds, they continued through the bush until they came upon a dirt track. After following it for a while, they heard the distant sound of a truck. Somehow finding the strength to run , they got to the truck and bashed at its sides, Doleman yelling, “Don’t go! We’re from the Blythe Star!”

Surprised, the driver, a man named Rod Smith looked out at them in disbelief. He said, “But you’re dead…”

“No,” came the reply, “we’re not!”

It was the eleventh day. Rescuers later got out the three remaining crew, including the captain, George Cruikshank.

• The sinking of the Blythe Star probably came about because the mate mistakenly opened valves that emptied ballast tanks, making the freighter impossibly top heavy.
• An inquiry into the ship’s loss was a contributing factor into the setting up of AusREP, the Australian Ship Reporting System requiring movements to be more closely monitored.
• The same inquiry also led to a mandate for the installation of EPIRBs.

Michael Doleman, the only one now alive, has retired from his position as Deputy National Secretary of the MUA after dedicating his career to improving marine safety.

My thanks to the ABC and the MUA for much of the material used in this article.