The Disappearance of The Waratah

On the evening of 26 July 1909, the SS Waratah sailed from Durban, South Africa, bound for Cape Town. A luxury passenger liner, she was coal-fired and boasted eight watertight compartments. She was said to be “practically immune from any danger of sinking”.

Yet, she never arrived. No wreckage was conclusively identified and no survivors were found. With 211 people aboard, the Waratah disappeared into the Indian Ocean, becoming one of the greatest maritime mysteries of the twentieth century.

The Waratah. Credit: Wikipedia Commons

The Waratah was a relatively new vessel. Built in 1908 by Barclay, Curle & Co. in Glasgow for the Blue Anchor Line, she was designed to carry both passengers and cargo on the busy route between Britain, Australia, and South Africa. At over 450 feet long and displacing nearly 10,000 tons, she was considered modern and well-appointed, with electric lighting, luxurious cabins for first-class passengers, state rooms, a salon, and other amenities. Part of her cargo hold was fitted with refrigerating machinery and cold chambers to carry frozen produce. But when required, this space could also be converted into large dormitories, capable of holding almost 700 steerage passengers.

The Waratah was named after the bright pink emblem flower of New South Wales. In retrospect, the choice proved an unfortunate one. Between 1848 and 1887, no fewer than four other vessels bearing the name Waratah had met with unhappy ends.

Superstition aside, the ship inspired genuine unease. On her maiden voyage to Australia, Captain Josiah Edward Ilbery complained that she rolled excessively and lacked the steady behavior of his older vessel. He was particularly concerned about the difficulty of loading the steamship correctly in order to maintain her stability.

Waratah at Port Adelaide just before her last voyage. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Three months earlier, the Waratah had departed London on her second voyage to Australia, carrying 215 passengers and a crew of 119. She reached Adelaide on 6 June, where her cargo was discharged and replaced with 970 tons of lead ore. From there she proceeded to Melbourne and then Sydney, taking on additional freight that included flour, wool, dairy produce, frozen meat, and 7,800 bars of bullion. The ship then returned to Adelaide to complete her loading before finally setting sail for Europe on 7 July, with just under 100 passengers aboard.

The Waratah arrived in Durban on 25 July. One passenger, a certain Claude Gustav Sawyer, an engineer and an experienced sea traveller, decided he would go no further. Sawyer had been booked through to London, but the voyage from Australia to South Africa had left him increasingly uneasy about the ship’s seaworthiness. He observed that the Waratah rolled heavily even in moderate seas, a characteristic he found alarming. Concerned for his safety, Sawyer disembarked at Durban and transferred to another vessel, the Kildonan Castle, which carried him to Cape Town. After remaining there for a week, he secured passage to England aboard the steamer Galician.

Just before leaving South Africa, Sawyer sent a brief cable to his wife in London: “Thought Waratah top-heavy, landed Durban.”

Eighteen months later, when he testified before the Board of Trade inquiry, Sawyer disclosed that he had also been troubled by vivid, dream-like visions during the voyage from Australia to South Africa. He described seeing a man “dressed in a very peculiar dress, which I had never seen before, with a long sword in his right hand, which he seemed to be holding between us. In the other hand he had a rag covered with blood.”

A First Class cabin on the Waratah. This cabin was occupied by Claude G. Sawyer. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

A four berth first class cabin on the Waratah. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

The Waratah left Durban at approximately 8:15 p.m. on 26 July, carrying 211 passengers and crew. She was due to arrive in Cape Town on 29 July, but never reached her destination. No trace of the ship has ever been found.

The last confirmed sighting of the Waratah occurred in the early hours of 27 July, when the Clan Line steamship Clan MacIntyre exchanged a brief signal-lamp communication with her. As was customary, the two vessels exchanged their names and destinations. The Waratah, being the faster ship, then gradually overtook the Clan MacIntyre off the coast of the Colony of Natal and steamed ahead, disappearing over the horizon at about 9:30 a.m.

Later that day, the weather deteriorated rapidly, as was common in those waters. Winds strengthened, seas grew heavy, and conditions worsened into what was later described as a cyclonic storm. The captain of the Clan MacIntyre recalled that it was the worst weather he had encountered in his thirteen years at sea, with winds of exceptional force driving enormous swells.

Several unconfirmed sightings were reported by passing ships over the next two days. At about 5:30 p.m. on 27 July, the vessel Harlow reported seeing the smoke and lights of a steamship on the horizon. After nightfall, the crew observed two bright flashes in the same direction, after which the lights vanished. They were unable to determine whether the flashes were caused by explosions or by fires burning on shore.

Credit: Wikimedia Commons

First class lounge aboard SS Waratah. Also known as the ladies room or the music room. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Later that evening, at approximately 9:30 p.m., the ship Guelph, steaming north from the Cape of Good Hope toward Durban, passed another vessel and exchanged signal-lamp messages. Owing to heavy weather and poor visibility, the crew of the Guelph could identify only the final three letters of the ship’s name: “T–A–H.”

A further possible sighting came from Edward Joe Conquer, a member of the Cape Mounted Riflemen. While taking part in a military exercise near the mouth of the Xhora River, Conquer observed through a telescope a steamship matching the Waratah’s description, apparently struggling into heavy seas on a south-westerly course. He later stated that he saw the vessel roll heavily to starboard and, before she could recover, be overwhelmed by a following wave. The ship then vanished from view, leading Conquer to believe she had foundered.

Although Conquer reported his observations to his base camp, they were not treated as significant at the time. His account did not surface during the Board of Trade inquiry in London and remained unknown until 1929, when he finally came forward with his story.

When the Waratah failed to arrive in Cape Town on the expected date, there was at first little alarm. Delays of several days were not uncommon, and ships often reached port well behind schedule. As days stretched into weeks, however, concern hardened into certainty that something was wrong. An extensive search was organised. For nearly eight weeks, dozens of vessels scoured more than 14,000 nautical miles (26,000 km) of the southern Indian Ocean. But not a trace was found. Not even a body.

The Waratah on a stormy sea. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

In 1910, the Board of Trade convened an inquiry in London into the disappearance of the Waratah. Testimony was heard from passengers and crew who had sailed on her maiden voyage, as well as from her builders and from those responsible for handling the ship in port.

While expert witnesses agreed that the Waratah had been properly designed and built, and that she had sailed in sound condition, many passengers painted a different picture. They testified that the ship felt unstable, frequently listing to one side even in calm weather, rolling excessively, and taking an unusually long time to right herself after heeling into a swell. Several also remarked on her tendency to bury her bow in oncoming seas rather than rise over them.

One passenger from the maiden voyage recalled that in the Southern Ocean the Waratah developed such a pronounced list to starboard that water would not drain from the baths. She maintained this list for several hours before rolling upright and then settling into a similar list on the opposite side. The witness, a physicist, concluded that the ship’s metacentre lay only just below her centre of gravity. As a result, when she rolled slowly to one side, she reached a point of unstable equilibrium and would remain heeled over until a change in wind or sea forced her upright.

Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Other passengers and crew echoed concerns about her stability, and dockworkers testified that when unladen she was so tender that she could not be moved in port without ballast. At the same time, there were former passengers and crew who insisted that the Waratah was perfectly stable, describing her motion as comfortable and easy. The ship’s builders supported this view, presenting paper calculations to demonstrate that she was not top-heavy.

Faced with such conflicting testimony, the inquiry was unable to reach a definitive conclusion. It could assign no responsibility for the ship’s disappearance. The Board did, however, determine that the Waratah had most likely been lost in a storm. One possible contributing factor was her cargo. At the time she vanished, the Waratah was carrying around 1,000 tons of lead concentrate, which may have shifted suddenly, causing the vessel to capsize.

Ships are lost in storms with grim regularity. Yet the disappearance of the Waratah remains especially perplexing because of the complete absence of wreckage. Even vessels destroyed in catastrophic circumstances usually leave some trace. The prevailing view among maritime historians is that the Waratah sank rapidly in deep water, leaving little time for evacuation and little opportunity for debris to reach the shore.

Nearly seventy years later, a determined South African, Emlyn Brown, mounted a renewed search based on the sighting reported by Edward Joe Conquer, which Brown believed to be credible. For more than two decades he pursued the wreck’s location. In the end, he was forced to abandon the effort. “I’ve exhausted all the options,” he admitted. “I now have no idea where to look.”

Brown concluded that the Waratah had probably capsized during a storm, overturning and remaining afloat long enough to be carried southward by ocean currents before finally sinking into deep water beyond the continental shelf, where her remains would be difficult, if not impossible, to locate.

Credit: Wikimedia Commons