CYCLONE DATA WARNING 9 am, 23 MARCH - SCANDALOUS!!!

Morning Bulletin, Friday 10 February, 1933.

THE YONGALA

Lost In Cyclone

TWENTY-TWO YEARS AGO

(By ."Junius")

On March 21st, 1911, friends and

relatives of a number of passengers

assembled at a Brisbane wharf to bid

them God-speed. The travellers were

embarking on the 1825 ton steamer

Yongala for North Queensland ports,

and had anyone suggested the 

possibility of their never reaching their 

destination, or that the farewells were,

literally, being taken on the brink of

the grave, it is more than likely that

consternation would have been blotted

out by incredulity. The Yongala was

well-found, properly loaded and in 

excellent trim, and was commanded by

Captain Knight, whose knowledge

of Northern Queensland conditions and

skill in the handling of large vessels

was beyond question. He also had under

him experienced officers, and a staunch,

well-trained crew.

On the same day, a small rotary

storm of great intensity was operating

about 130 miles north from Willis Island. 

There was then no meteorological

station on Willis Island, so that nobody 

knew of the storm's existence, and

even had its presence been suspected,

few people would have connected this

small, virulent body upwards of 1000

miles away with the proud steamer which 

passed rapidly out of the Brisbane River 

to the open sea  and sped northwards 

with her living freight.

On the 22nd at noon the Yongala

was not far from North Reef lighthouse.

A ship at sea really was more of a

colony in those days before wireless,

than now the ether carries its messages

of shore doings with incredible speed

and unswerving fidelity. The company

on board soon settled down to the 

enforced isolation from the kind, and

looked forward to the next port when

contact with world doings would be 

re-established. By this time, the cyclone

had moved on a south-south-west

course, and was about 50 miles west

south-west from Willis Island. These

two strangely unlike bodies had moved

much closer together in the last 24 hours. 

Their paths were converging, and for a 

large ship and 120 souls the sands of 

life were running low.

120 SOULS ON BOARD.

On the morning of the 23rd the Yongala 

steamed into Flat Top, the anchorage at 

Mackay, where she landed 60 tons of cargo 

and some passengers. Whatever was the 

changing of personnel at Mackay, when the 

Yongala steamed away on her last journey at

1.40 p.m., she had on board 120 souls

made up of crew 72, 1st class passengers

29, and 2nd class passengers 19. About

two hours after she sailed the Meteorological 

Department at Melbourne advised coastal towns 

that cyclonic conditions prevailed between 

Mackay and Townsville. That warning was issued

on data which were collected at 9 that

morning and telegraphed to Melbourne.

This is a valuable insight into workings behind the reporting of storm systems. Data at 9 am, 23 March, confirmed the approach of a cyclone. But this data was relayed to Melbourne some 1100 miles distant! This is utterly bizarre centralization! Instead of making this information immediately available to the coastal region in the path of the cyclone, delays were incurred by sending this data to a city on the other side of Australia! At least if this data had been timeously correlated and warnings issued, one could argue in favour of such a system, but this was NOT the case. If this ridiculous system had not been in operation, Captain Knight would have received adequate warning of the cyclone whilst anchored at Flat-Top! There are reports that Bowen submitted a warning directly to Brisbane and then Flat Top, independent of the centralised bureau, but this report still did not get there before 1.40 p.m. when Yongala departed into the unknown.

The reason for this seems to have been

that Melbourne was the seat of the

Federal Government - that is to say, no

other reason worth considering has been

propounded. Whatever the reasons, the

facts were that the 9 a.m. readings

that day showed the existence of a

dangerous storm moving down on to the

coast, and a valuable ship and 120 lives

steamed to their doom, nearly five

hours after those observations were

taken without any warning reaching

them. Bureaucratic pundits in Melbourne 

knew, but the master of a ship on the 

Queensland coast with 120 lives in his 

charge knew nothing of the menace ahead.

No wonder the Inquiry was a whitewash. The bureaucratic system was in large part responsible for Captain Knight NOT receiving a timeous warning!

As the boisterous evening drew to a

close, lighthouse keepers at Dent Island, 

which lay 58 miles from Flat Top anchorage 

along the route taken by the Yongala, saw 

the smoke of a large steamer hurrying north 

through  Whitsunday Passage. The south-east 

wind drove the smoke head of her, sometimes 

enveloping her like a funeral pall.

No wonder Captain Knight thought he was outrunning a south-east change rather than steaming into a 'cyclone'. How was he to know that a hybrid cyclone could produce these conditions so far to the south of the centre of the 'cyclone'. Furthermore this interesting excerpt tells us that the keepers could SEE Yongala, which implies reasonable visibility during daylight. Dusk is 6 p.m. this time of year, and the official Inquiry time given for this sighting was 6.35 p.m.. How could this have been possible????

As she drew near it was seen that she

was the Yongala, but although Dent

Island light station was for years 

described - presumably by some 

humourist - as a signal station, it was 

never connected - or had any means of 

connecting with the mainland. Hence

the station had no news of the mighty

force which lay ahead, and as the 

Yongala surged majestically past at 6.30

she was seen for the last time by

mortals. As she faded into the growing

dusk and increasing welter of storm,

the mists of eternity closed down behind 

her and the sea gained yet another tragic 

secret.

Another weak link in what amounted to a farce on the part of authorities to warn shipping of imminent storm conditions and danger.

From Dent Island the Yongala had

106 miles to run before reaching the

next light on Cape Bowling Green, and

although the area within the Barrier

widens out considerably after clearing

Whitsunday Passage, it is still far too

narrow for ships to fight out a battle

of life and death with a cyclone. 

Additional to this, as the paths of the

cyclone and of the Yongala, were 

approximately at right angles to each

other, the south-east wind which drove

her on her way, and in such a feature

of Queensland coast weather over the

greater part of the year, actually was

the direction the wind would blow in

the forward left-hand quadrant of the

cyclone. That is to say, the Yongala

was within the cyclone field soon after

she left Flat Top anchorage, but there

was nothing on board to show that

the strong wind was other than a 

seasonal south-easter. Only comparison 

of barometer readings at ports along the

coast could tell this, and this, of course, 

Captain Knight did not have. It took 

several years of agitation to get

that simple and obvious safeguard 

established, but that exchange of 

readings has been in vogue now for 

upwards of 20 years, and was extended to

Western Australia. But bureaucracy

resisted strenuously this invasion by

citizens into its preserves.

The statement that Yongala 'was within the cyclone field soon after she left Flat Top anchorage' is bizarre considering that the cyclone was reported to have been a mere 30 miles in diameter. It must have been a hybrid cyclone. The comparison in barometer readings and the interpretation thereof was lying in an office in Melbourne! There can be no louder vindication of Captain Knight's decision to proceed than 'there was nothing on board to show that the strong wind was other than a seasonal south-easter'.

"SIMPLY OVERWHELMED."

What actually happened on board the

doomed ship will, of course, never be

known. How long after night closed

down it was before Captain Knight

realised that the ship was running into

the path of a cyclone is, of course, a

matter for conjecture, but it is hardly

likely that any of the passengers knew

of the imminence of their danger until

the vessel was actually overwhelmed.

There were many theories, including an

explosion and a faint whistle; uncharted rocks 

and even inlands. Searching steamers found 

a copper band on Nares Rock, obviously the 

driving band of a shell fired by one of the 

Queensland gunboats Gayundah on Paluma -

which used this rock as a target when

operating from Bowen on training

cruises. There remained, however, very

little doubt in the minds of experienced

men that the Yongala and the cyclone

centre met sometime in the small hours

of the 23rd when about half-way between 

Capes Upstart and Bowling Green, and 

that the Yongala was simply overwhelmed. 

The cleared track behind Cape Upstart, 

in which huge trees were twisted like reeds 

and thrown down like nine-pins, indicated 

the fury of the gale.

lt is common belief that no trace of

the vessel was even found. This is

wrong, as the beaches of islands to the

north were littered with scraps of

wreckage, much of it easily identifiable 

as coming from the lost ship. But

no human bodies were ever found, 

although the vessels Alert, Barratta,

Magnet, Ouraka, Tarcoola, and Teal

searched the whole of the reefs and the

coast from Cape Upstart to Lucinda

Point was patrolled by special bodies

of police.

Wireless has robbed sea travel along

the coast of North Queensland of many

of its old terrors. Had Willis Island

meteorological station been in existence,

the storm which was to wreck a proud

ship and carry consternation and 

mourning into hundreds of homes, 

would have been located on the day 

the Yongala left Brisbane. As it was, 

the Yongala was in the position of the 

train which is sent out blindfolded to 

cross a line of rails that another train 

is using, with the Angel of Death officiating 

as time-keeper to ensure the two meeting

at the intersection.

In conclusion the Federal Government was in large part responsible for the disaster and it would have hurt, to the core, those who had lost loved-ones with the Yongala. If information had leaked that the delays caused by relaying vital storm warnings to Melbourne and from there back to Brisbane and only then, further up the coast, there would have been an outcry of monumental proportions. 

The Inquiry could have been nothing else but a whitewash. There was so much more scandal associated with the loss of the Yongala than ever reached the mainstream Press.

The following extract gives further insight into how this disastrous situation came about:

Courtesy: Queensland Past and Present: 100 Years of Statistics, 1896–1996

http://www.qgso.qld.gov.au/products/reports/qld-past-present/qld-past-present-1896-1996-ch02-sec-02.pdf

'Recording the weather The Queensland Government appointed a meteorologist in 1866. A colonial weather service was established in 1887, headed by Clement Wragge. Highly influential in the development of weather services in the colony, Wragge held this position until 1903. He was succeeded by J. B. Henderson, a hydraulic engineer, who remained in the position until 1908 when the weather service became a federal responsibility and H. A. Hunt was appointed Commonwealth meteorologist. The number of weather collection stations in Queensland grew rapidly in the 1880s and 1890s. In 1896 there were 504 stations throughout the colony. By 1901 there were 601 stations, and 803 by 1913.8 As Thornhill Weedon explained in 1897: Queensland is intersected by a comprehensive system of climatic stations supplied with first-class instruments suited to the classification of each. The greater number of the observers are government officials—generally belonging to the Post and Telegraph Department—although some are private citizens. In most cases observations are taken thrice daily, and even more frequently (self-recording instruments being provided), and the results reported to the head office chiefly by wire. The Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1901 provided for the federal control of meteorological services. The Meteorological Act 1906 (Cwlth) empowered the Commonwealth meteorologist to take and record meteorological observations; forecast the weather; issue storm warnings; display weather, flood, frost, and cold wave signals; and distribute weather information. The Act also empowered the Governor-General to enter into an arrangement with the Governor of any State in relation to matters such as the transfer to the Commonwealth of any observatory as well as instruments, books, registers, records and documents used in meteorological services, and the taking and recording of meteorological observations by State officers.' 

'In 1996 the Bureau of Meterology had a network of about 6,000 weather recorders across Australia, including about 2,000 in Queensland. About a third provide data to the bureau daily. The bureau processes the data and produces weather reports for newspapers, television and radio.'

This extract does suggest that it was the role of the Commonwealth Meteorologist to collate the data and formulate a storm warning, explaining why the data was sent first by telegraph to Melbourne. However, given that there were 803 weather stations throughout Queensland by 1913, there was no lacking in data information and as an informed reader has commented (see below) delays caused by this laborious, time-wasting system could have been streamlined by decentralizing the weather service. However, the extract implies that this centralized system persisted through to and including 1996. It would be interesting to learn if this system of data collation and transmission to the Commonwealth Meteorologist was 'sped up' as a direct result of the Yongala disaster? After all the purpose of an effective cyclone warning is getting it out as quickly as possible! Not one word of this was mentioned at the formal Inquiry which suggests that the Marine Board of Queensland were fully aware of the implications.