Page 82 - Tropic Magazine Issue 16

TROPIC • REGIONAL HISTORY
Trinity Bay with captain
Clearer waters
WILD WAYS
As Cairns prepares to begin
dredging Trinity Inlet, Tropic
re-lives the adventurous life
of the city’s longest-serving
dredge master.
Words Renee Cluff
82 • Tropic • Issue 16
Photo: Ports North
His name was Captain W. Swyer and
he was skipper of dredging ship Trinity
Bay for 30 years up until his retirement
in 1952, back when dredging was a full-
time job.
By all accounts, when Captain Swyer
arrived in Cairns, he was already well
respected, having clocked up a lifetime Trinity Bay
of experience and adventure, despite
being a young adult.
As a small boy, the sailor’s son roamed He was also asked to skipper the ill-
the waters to the north of Australia fated SS Douglas Mawson, but declined
in small ships and went to school in just days before it went down in a
Ambon, Indonesia, where the locals cyclone, with all onboard lost.
took him under their wing in his At the time, the sinking made national
father’s absence. headlines because of unconfirmed
By adulthood, Captain Swyer was an reports the women on the ship had
expert sailor as well as an accomplished been captured by a local tribe.
diver and used both skills when he took When asked by a reporter from
up a position with the Carpentaria Brisbane’s Daily Standard what he
Lighterage Company, a shipping line thought, Captain Swyer added fuel to
trading across the Gulf of Carpentaria. the fire.
According to an article in Brisbane’s “It was custom of the blacks when
evening paper The Telegraph in 1901, raiding other tribes always to carry off
it was in this role that he was almost the women and this may have been an
killed by ‘natives,’ as he repaired his instance,” he said.
vessel near Kowanyama. In 1922, Captain Swyer took up the
“Three of the natives came out onto the much quieter role of Cairns dredge
beach and said they had a letter from master, but the job did have its
Lochnagar Station, whereupon Captain moments.
Swyer went ashore and received three His dredge, Trinity Bay, was almost
spear wounds,” it reads. taken out by an oil tanker, whose
“Two of the spears were extracted by mooring cables snapped, sending it
his mate, George O’Brien: one spear swinging off Cairns Wharf in 1935.
remains stuck in the Captain’s side. About a decade later, a live bomb in
“He is very weak from loss of blood but Trinity Inlet, the after-effects of World
not likely to die.” War II, forced him to draw on his
Captain Swyer did in fact survive navigational skills.
the ordeal and returned to voyaging, All things considered, though, Captain
trading across the Torres Strait and Swyer lived out the rest of his sea-
the Gulf. faring career in relatively calm seas.