Sunday, 18 February 2024
Wharf 7, Pyrmont
Her Excellency the Honourable Margaret Beazley AC KC

Thank you, Hans,[1]

Bujari Gamarruwa

Diyn Babana, Gamarada Gadigal Ngura

In greeting you in the language of the Gadigal, Traditional Owners of these waterways and the lands that border it to the south, I pay my respects to their Elders past, present, and emerging. I extend that respect also to the Elders of all parts of our State from which you have travelled today.

I also thank Uncle Michael West for the warm Welcome to Country that preceded today’s Parade of Sail.[2]

The philosophers amongst us – and, perhaps, the ship restorers, who on occasions such as this outnumber the former considerably – will probably be aware of the ancient paradox known as the Ship of Theseus.

The story, at least as outlined in Plutarch’s Lives[3], is that the city of Athens had preserved the ship in which Theseus legendarily returned from Crete after slaying the minotaur. This was done so the ship could be sailed every year to Delos in honour of Apollo.

A question arose: after centuries of maintenance to keep the ship sea-worthy – of taking away the old planks as they decayed and putting in new ones in their place – was it still the same ship when that last plank was replaced?

I raise this question as means of highlighting what it is we celebrate today.

150 years ago, on the 18^th of February 1874, a three-masted, iron-hulled barque slid into the waters of the Sunderland shipyard, brand new.[4]

Her name was the Clan Macleod and for a quarter of a century she sailed out of Glasgow, criss-crossing the world’s oceans countless times, one of the thousands of sailing provedores so essential to international trade in the late nineteenth century.

By 1900, she had a new home in Auckland, purchased by Joseph Craig to join his fleet plying the Tasman, carrying coal and timber back and forth between New Zealand and Australia. In 1905, as part of the tradition of naming his ships after members of his family, she was renamed the James Craig, in honour of her new owner’s oldest son.[5]

Age, however, and the coming of steam meant that by 1911 she’d been sold to the British New Guinea Development Company and relegated to storage hulk in Port Moresby[6].

That might have been the end of her sea-going days if not for the losses to shipping during the First World War, and the subsequent demand for laid-up ships to be called back into service.

And so, in 1918 the James Craig was towed into Sydney and here underwent her first full refit: “plates in the hull were replaced as well as the decks and all standing and running rigging. By the time [it was over] … there was little which had not been replaced with new gear”[7].

According to Alan Villers, part of the James Craig’s crew in 1920, however, “The refit must have been skimped somewhere, for she had almost foundered on her first passage”[8]. A second round of repairs followed to fix defects and she resumed carrying cargo, but only for a few more years.

In 1922, her hull weakened by age and the storms of Bass Strait, she was taken to Recherché Bay in Tasmania and abandoned, to be stripped and used as a coal hulk for a period before she was finally scuttled.

And there she would slumber, in the shallow waters of this far south-east corner of Australia, for nearly 40 years, before, in the 1970s, coming to the attention of members of the Lady Hopetoun and Port Jackson Marine Steam Museum, predecessor to today’s Sydney Heritage Fleet.

Their vision: to bring the James Craig back to life, not as static museum piece but, instead, a living, breathing one – not only afloat, but sailing.

So began a decades’ long journey – refloating and towing her first to Hobart and then to Sydney, and then her painstaking and fastidious restoration to the glory of her heyday.[9] 

The planks we stand on this afternoon, then, are not the same as those that decked the ship launched in 1874, nor are its masts and rigging, nor, even, its name. What does remain, however, and vitally-so, is the spirit that impelled this ship from the start: the stories over the last century-and-a-half enfolded and brought back to life; the skills required not only to authentically restore, but also to sail, a nineteenth-century barque; and, perhaps most importantly, the countless people working together who have brought us to this point.

A ship without its crew is nothing, and the crew of the James Craig is enormous.

The cost of maintaining a ship like this to the standards it exemplifies – whether in volunteered hours, materials, or donation – is high; the results, however, as the experiences this ship provides, are priceless.

The warmest of congratulations and the deepest of thanks, then, to all involved in the James Craig story – whether restorer, researcher, crew, or supporter, past, present, and future – for keeping our maritime history so tangibly, accessibly, and vividly alive, not only through this ship, but through all in the Sydney Heritage Fleet so proudly parading today.

This is what we celebrate, on the 150^th birthday of this barque, the beautiful James Craig.

[1] Hans Adzersen, Master, Barque James Craig during Parade of Sail, who will be introducing the Governor.

[2] Uncle Michael will be performing a Welcome to Country shortly after the Governor and Mr Wilson board the James Craig.

[3] “The ship on which Theseus sailed with the youths and returned in safety, the thirty-oared galley, was preserved by the Athenians down to the time of Demetrius Phalereus. They took away the old timbers from time to time, and put new and sound ones in their places, so that the vessel became a standing illustration for the philosophers in the mooted question of growth, some declaring that it remained the same, others that it was not the same vessel”: Plutarch, ‘Theseus’ 23.1, in Bernadette Perrin (translator), Plutarch’s Lives, 1914, available here. Also, ‘Ship of Theseus’ article in Britannica online, available here.

[4] ‘Clan Macleod’ entry in the Sunderland Ships website, available here; Jeff Toghill, ‘The James Craig Story’, 1978, available here

[5] Joseph Craig’s fleet, operating as the Craig Shipping Line, comprised “small former deep-watermen that took the Craig family names when they came under New Zealand ownership. There were the Marjorie Craig, the Jessie Craig, the James, Selwyn, Joseph, Constance, and, the last to join the fleet, the Louisa Craig”: James Gaby, ‘A Southern Biscay’ in Hemisphere, vol. 20, no. 7, July 1976, p. 33. “He owned some 72 ships over the years, trading mainly between New Zealand and Australia. Several of his ships – Craig’s Ships - were named after his children. In fact it is said that a ship was named after each of his parents and children, which was a measure of both his success and interest in his family”: WikiTree entry for ‘Joseph James Craig’, available here. “The James Craig was named after my eldest brother and sailed under the Craig flag for 11 years from 1900, carrying out a trading pattern between New Zealand and Australia, exporting timber and bringing back coal, wheat, hardwoods for railway sleepers, etc., etc. My father named certain ships after members of his family and the Clan Macleod became the James Craig in 1905, when her white hull was painted in gunport style in conformity with the rest of the fleet. In 1911, she left New Zealand for Sydney where she was sold”: Lady Jessie Richmond, quoted in reminiscences available here.

[6] ‘Clan Macleod’ entry in the Sunderland Ships website, available here

[7] Jeff Toghill, ‘The James Craig Story’, 1978, available here

[8] Alan Villiers, from chapter 6 of his The Set of Sails, reproduced on the Sydney Heritage Fleet website here

[9] See the articles ‘The James Craig Salvage’ and ‘The Recovery’, by Geoff Winter and Jeff Toghill respectively, available on the Sydney Heritage Fleet website here and here