Museum dive team confident
it has found historic shipwreck site
Australian National Maritime Museum divers are ‘quietly confident’ they have found the remains
of a British cargo ship wrecked in dramatic circumstances on a remote reef 450 miles off the
Queensland coast in 1803.
The Cato, an armed cargo ship of 430 tons, and HMS Porpoise, a Royal Navy sloop on which
Matthew Flinders was travelling as a passenger, were wrecked together on the reef close to
midnight on 17 August that year.
While Porpoise’s wreck site is well documented, Cato’s elusive resting place has never been
positively identified – despite the efforts of at least five expeditions to the coral outcrop known as
Wreck Reefs in the past 45 years.
Maritime archaeologists in an Australian National Maritime Museum team this morning (Friday)
jubilantly found a 2.5 metre-long ship’s cannon on the reef.
Largely encrusted in coral, the cannon was lying in just 4 metres of water some 600 metres out
from Porpoise Cay, the small sandy island where the survivors of the two shipwrecks camped for
six weeks waiting to be rescued.
This discovery has strengthened the divers’ belief they have found what remains of Cato.
Final proof will rest on closer investigation of another object the team found nearby on the seabed
five days ago.
This is a metal fitting, some 700 mm long, which the team believes is one of Cato’s rudder
gudgeons (hinges).
“We’re seeking permission to raise the gudgeon for inspection,” the expedition leader, museum
maritime archaeologist Kieran Hosty said today. “The gudgeon will tell us the tonnage of the
ship. If we can look more closely at it, we may well find foundry marks and metal analysis would
tell us even more about its origins.”
“These investigations could give us the proof positive we need.”
Hosty said his team had been greatly assisted by the efforts of the earlier expeditions which had
narrowed down the search area for Cato.
Accounts varied on how close Cato ran aground to Porpoise. The museum divers believe they have
now located the exact resting place 200 metres east of the Royal Navy vessel.
The expedition, with three museum archaeologists, a fourth museum diver and 25 volunteer
divers, is also searching the seabed for clues to the identity of mystery ship wrecked on the same
reef at some time prior to 1803.
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So far, they have not succeeded in this second objective.
Cato and HMS Porpoise were travelling north in convoy with a third vessel, Bridgewater, an East
India Company cargo ship, when Porpoise, commanded by Lieutenant Robert Fowler and having
Commander Matthew Flinders on board as a passenger, struck the isolated and uncharted reef.
Porpoise immediately fired a cannon to warn the two following vessels. Cato and Bridgewater
both changed course, but towards each other.
When it became clear what was happening, Captain Park on Cato ordered his ship off the wind to
avoid collision. With this, Cato too went up on the reef.
Bridgewater ignominiously continued on its way to India, with no heed for the plight of the men on
the other two ships.
When the survivors from the two ships crawled to safety on Porpoise Cay, they found the remains
of the mysterious earlier shipwreck.
“We think the earlier ship was probably an American whaler, and we would really like to find
something down there to tell us more about it,” Hosty said today. “But so far, no luck!”
The present expedition has been mounted by the National Maritime Museum in collaboration
with Silentworld Foundation, a part of Silentworld Ltd, an Australian shipping company.
It has been investigating Wreck Reefs for the past 11 days and is due to leave the reef area on
Sunday evening, arriving back in Gladstone on Tuesday morning.
11 December 2009 Media information, Bill Richards 0418 403 472
NEWS 
