WILLWATCH

I am a Chef, and I promise I will get back to blogging about food shortly.

But first and foremost I am a son. 
Was a son; to a dear mother who passed away 12 months ago.

As part of my getting back to where I need to be, I have a few things I need to do in life first.

An article- blog post about a small Ketch(sailing Ship) sinking in the Bass Strait in 1958 may seem strange to most, but it played a large part in our family over the years.

When I was 21 my best friend committed suicide. It re-wrote a huge chunk of my life as I tried to cope with my best friends loss and understand why, how and the all important; where was I as his friend when he hurt so badly..

This played such a big part in my life as I had lead such an angelic perfect life without loss or tragedy until that moment.

In contrast my mother had not lead an easy life up to her 18th birthday.
Hers was 360 degrees different to the life my sister and I enjoyed.
Our mother worked hard to ensure we had what we needed and where kept away from what we did not need to see or know until 'life' could not be controlled by her any longer. Our family unit was strong and the setting for our youth was perfect, safe, calm.

In 1958 though at the age of 18 my mother, a worker at the Port of Ulverstone, Tasmania experienced a  loss of her own and it remained with her for the remainder of her days.
I understand how it changed her, for I felt the same after my loss at 21.

She knew the men aboard the 96 ton Ketch, WillWatch. She waved it goodbye on the day the Willwatch sailed for King Island and she heard much of the radio chatter on the fateful morning of Wednesday 17th December 1958 as the 2 hour long drama of the her sinking played out and Captain George McCarthy spoke his final words.

My mother cried regularly and felt the loss all throughout my childhood and adult years. The Willwatch was as much our family as a third child would have been. It was an invisible sibling that we all knew too well had not survived.

Few people know the story of the WILLWATCH.

I feel it necessary to impart some facts and advise a new era of people the sad loss of some great men, who left their tragic mark upon our family throughout the fifty or so years since they disappeared.

From here on in, I will get back to food and being a chef, for my role as a son to an amazing mother has finally drawn to a close. 

I was a son , I am a chef. Life needs to move forward.

THE WILLWATCH

The Willwatch  a 96 ton auxiliary ketch with general cargo and three horses was on its way from Ulverstone ,Tasmania, to King Island when she was lost with all hands at sea on Wednesday December 17^th 1958.

The members of the missing crew were as follows;

George “Mac” McCarthy 29, master, married with three children of Spreyton, near Devonport.

Peter Hanson, 45, engineer married of Devonport

Neville Chitts, 20, deck hand, single of Currie King Island

Anthony Dick,18, deckhand, single of Devonport

John Leslie Marcerer,16 deckhand of Devonport.

The search for the Willwatch began soon after signals were picked up that’s the ketches decks were awash and that it was in danger of sinking.

It’s position was given as 27 miles off the north-east tip of Three hammock island, off the North West coast of Tasmania.

The sequence of messages from the Willwatch was;

8.15am the skipper reported that the ship had sprung a leak and the pumps were going.

8.30am; Request for a ship to stand by

8.45am;reported that the ship was under way, steering north-north east at three knots.

The vessel was then heading away from land evidently running before the wind and sea to  minimize the possibility of further damage.

9.15am; conditions are deteriorating, decks were awash and some 50 drums of deck cargo had disappeared into the Bass Strait and they had tried unsuccessfully to launch the dinghy.

9.30am Reported that the bows were down in the water

10.15am; conditions getting worse, unable to launch boat. Crew standing by in lifejackets.

About 10.30am ; Skipper George McCarthy reports  that he had ordered his four crew overboard while he remained in the wheel house.

About 1035 am; he conceded that “the sea has her”.

Another radio transmission around 10.37am heard Mac’s voice penetrate once more through the static and noise of the radio spectrum, “It looks like this is it….see you later, cheerio.”

Rescuers arrived onto the scene within the hour yet nothing was found of the vessel or crew.

Two fishing boats the Olympic from Victoria and the VSP from Stanley Tasmania carried out a wide and difficult 12 hour search and two RAAF aircraft as well as an Ansett ANA DC 3 on a scheduled flight from King Island to Tasmania.

Late Thursday afternoon the following day, wreckage had been spotted although no life raft. Just before darkness halted the search about 8pm on Thursday the fishing boats picked up a lifebelt, two bales of straw, cases of apples and a gas cylinder.

Pilots of the searching aircraft reported huge seas , high winds and poor visibility.

Captain George McCarthy, a Queenslander by birth, was a well known figure in the sailing community along the north west coast of Tasmania, having been the master of the Rawlinna and second mate of the Elmore. He first went to sea as a cadet in the employ of the Australian Shipping Board.

His vessel the Willwatch was owned by Mr A.Kimberley of Ulverstone, Tasmania and it had seen a colorful career since it had come off the sips in 1895 at Blackwall, NSW.

The Willwatch first went into the New Zealand timber trade, where it was considered on of the fastest in its class.

During World War II it was commandeered by the Americans for service in the islands. Later it was bought by a New South Wales fisherman.

Then it came to the Tamar Valley and was subsequently transferred to Devonport from where it entered the Flinders Island trade.

At Devonport in 1953 it was fitted with a new stern and put on the King Island run.

In 1957, a year before the sinking it was fitted with new diesel engines.

The Willwatch was 84 feet long and had a 21 foot 6 inch beam.

Will Watch. Auxiliary ketch, 96/64 tons. # 101141. Built Blackwall, Brisbane Water, NSW, 1895; reg. Melbourne 5/1947. Lbd 84 x 21.5 x 7.3 ft. Master George McCarthy. From Ulverstone for King Island with general cargo, lost in a gale off the far north-west coast Tasmania,  between the Hunter Group and King Island, Wednesday 17 December 1958.

Bibliography;

·      The Front Page of Sydney Morning Herald, Thursday 18^th December 1958

·      Additional information from page 7 Sydney Morning Herald December Monday 22^nd 1958.

·      Additional information from book titled, In the South; Tales of Sail and Yearning by Geoff Heriot (published 2012 ISBN 978-0-9873698-2-6).

·      Photo from Motorboating magazine January 1962 edition.

·      Encyclopedia of Australian Shipwrecks-online.

TIME TRAVEL

I used to love August.
In our youth, a teacher at my high school had a tradition with her brother. No matter how far apart they were they chose a singular day and celebrated it as their own.
As my sister and I parted countries decades ago on our separate paths to our personal futures we agreed to our own day, August 12th which would be ours. We called it Chocolate Day and resigned to send each other something magically chocolate from wherever in the world we were at that moment in time. We both got pleasure for years in sending unique chocolate items to each other.
Last year though, August became tarnished for me.
It is a month I have not looked forward to now for 11 months.

August the 25th 2013, was perhaps the last happy day of my life,  a day I never remembered, due to the events 24 hours later.
If I could travel back in time I would return to 25th August, 2013 and live it like no other.

My mother passed away on 26th August 2013, (she officially passed a few days later but technicalities need not be explained).
While the life support supporting her dragged fiercely to hold her in this world, death pulled harder to have her join the next.
I have seen the moments of her death and she passed, without doubt on the 26th.
Life support was not even a reality.
Few people get to see video evidence of the moment their loved ones pass away, for that, I must truly be in a very small minority of people who have.
I’m glad I did. It made her passing a little easier, even if much more painfull.

Living on the other side of the world to her, it would have been harder to understand her passing and cremation before I got home a few days after on August 28th. Having no one to touch nor to kiss, nor to hug nor just to see and say good bye too, was hard enough, but being given the opportunity to see the moments before and after her stroke in a public place, gave me a sense of being there, an angels view of her passing, so to speak.

My mothers death is one of the toughest things the world has thrown at me in my 45 years. And I have seen my share of “things”.

While it is said that no parent should outlive their children, there are days I wish I had not outlived my mother. She was a ‘pure’ soul on a planet becoming less pure by the second.
As a son who was very close to his mother, I have struggled to maintain my sanity these past 12 months. I wish a higher power had taken me instead, it would have made more sense. My mother did so much good for the world, the community and for others. She reached out beyond her own country and knitted madly for children in far away lands, so that their little hands, feet and heads would not be cold. I would love to know how far afield my mothers woolen kitted goods had travelled, for some of it surely saw reaches of the world my mother only ever dreamt of exploring.
In comparison I have done so little in my life for others. Sure I have fed numerous thousands and have been read my thousands more, but have I done good, I doubt it.

Twelve months on, I can attest that the days are more bearable; the tears flow less, but still as hard when the moment strikes and the moment still strikes often and  when least expected.
But time does soothe the stinging pain of loss, nothing though can ever remove the stinging pain all together. It remains with you wherever you go and what ever you do.
A flower, a bird chirp, the smell of a particular perfume, a bar of soap, a person resembling her frame, a song, a movie or the passing of a particular star or celebrity, all reminders of the dearest woman I am ever likely to know.

A few days after my mother died I returned home to try and get on with the rest of my life, I was, I believe visited by her in my dreams.
The first night home as a slept, I dreamt I was walking through a mall.
I saw my mother looking lost, when I called her name she hugged me and was so happy to see me when I went over too her. I could not believe it was her, having just returned from her passing, I was confused and in the confusion forgot to ask questions of her I wish I had the cognitive awareness to have spoken. Instead my disbelief of seeing her, froze my senses and tongue.
I told her I loved her so much, she told me too that she loved me too. As we hugged she felt frail and asked to sit for a moment, and there before me she passed away one more time. This time with a smile and whisper that she would miss me.

And then she was gone, again.
It was a nice way to say goodbye, even if only in my dreams.
I felt I was truly with her in her last moments and somehow that I had comforted her, and she me.
I awoke streaming tears down my face, as I do again now just tapping the words before me.

If only I could go back to the 25th August 2013 and call her that afternoon before she left home and scream down the phone lines that I loved her so much and that I do not want to live in a world where she is not.
The world would not be perfect, but it would go some ways to calm a stinging pain of loss that rips my heart open on occasions like this.
For some people time travel would mean money, better fortune, grander adventures and more connections, for me it would just mean one more chance to hear her voice, her laugh and the words I miss the most, “I love you son”

I can come to terms I think with the fact that death comes to us all, but I just wish we had a clue as to when. We could better plan for it, say our good byes and be at rest with the facts. The unknowing, the uncertainty, the sudden tragic stinging pain and heartache of loss is the punch that ruins us, and turns our lives on its head.

I will never be the same man I was before 26th August 2013 and I will never be a loving son to a wonderful mother ever again. Time just does not heal all wounds.

My mother was not buried, I have no pilgrimage to make each year to plant flowers or to tell her I love her.  In a singular week in 2013 I went from telling her that I loved her, to having her wiped clean from the planet as she died and was cremated before I had the chance to return home.
If she had been lain to rest, I would have had the following carved into her head stone or memorial plaque.

Mark Twain wrote the eulogy for his daughter and I first heard them in an episode of an eighties TV show, Quantum Leap, at that time I cried for the loss of a young friend who had suicided, today the following verse is for someone far closer.

Warm summer sun, 

     shine brightly here, 

Warm Southern wind, 

     blow gently here, 

Green grass above, 

     lie light, lie light, 

Good night, dear heart; 

     good night, good night.

To my mother; Margaret Ann Maree. 

17th May 1940 - 28th August 2013

(My mothers life was in part defined by the loss of the WILLWATCH, a 96 ton ketch seen here in an old photo. It sank in heavy seas on 17th December 1958 when my mother was 18 years old and worked in the local marine office. The loss of all five men from a vessel she had seen leave port and the 2 hours of radio commentary given by Skipper George "Mac" McCarthy as his boat floundered and then sank with the loss of all aboard, haunted her for the rest of her days. ) I will write about the WILLWATCH in an upcoming blog, among a return to food, after a years absence.