1972: Sixty years after the whalers, in January 1972, a weather station technician, Chris Glasson, tramped to a bay somewhere on Campbell Island’s southern coast.  Here Chris saw a large timber beam with iron spikes sticking out of the peat.  

It had been unearthed by wallowing elephant seals and Chris thought that the iron spikes protruding from the beam had discouraged the monsters from dislodging and burying the beam.  Thinking it to be a wreck relic, Chris took two slide transparencies of the object (this was well before the days of digital cameras!). His photos are shown above.

I first saw Chris’s photos in mid-2006 - digital photos of slides projected on to a screen.  I immediately thought that the beam and its metal spikes had to be of early 1800s, or earlier, shipbuilding technology.  If this were true, it was the first time in 30 year’s research that I’d happened on something historical that was maritime and not terrestrial.  I rang Chris to discuss going down to the island to find the object.  While he was very keen to go, he couldn’t for the life of him remember where he’d taken the photos.  Colin Meurk, Mark Crompton, Colin Miskelly, Mike Fraser, Rodney Russ, and Rowley Taylor (the first two people were later on the 2011 Campbell Island Bicentennial Expedition) knew the Island like the back of their hands and all agreed that the bay in the background had to be Monument Harbour.

Chris and I managed to get there on New Year’s Day 2007 in Spirit of Enderby (with sponsored support by Rod Russ’s Southern Heritage Expeditions – a huge thank you Rodney). Prior to departure, Historic Places Trust issued me with an authority to take two samples from the beam so that the timber could be identified.  

As the tourist ship motored south, Chris and I were telling ourselves that we’d be taking samples of Australian timber from the only shipwreck recorded at Campbell Island, the 1828 wreck of the Australian built brig Perseverance.

That’s what we thought!

BLOG 3 ENDS

[Norm Judd]