00:00:02.000 –> 00:00:04.000
AJ Blythe: Welcome to the Down Under Mystery Club.
00:00:04.000 –> 00:00:10.000
AJ Blythe: I’m AJ Blythe and joining me is fellow mystery author Ava Ness.
00:00:10.000 –> 00:00:15.000
AJ Blythe: Every week we dive into curious cases, cracking good reads and all things mystery.
00:00:15.000 –> 00:00:19.000
AJ Blythe: Grab a cuppa, settle in and let’s get sleuthing.
00:00:19.000 –> 00:00:22.000
AJ Blythe: Hello dear listeners, I’m AJ and joining me is Ava.
00:00:22.000 –> 00:00:23.000
AJ Blythe: Welcome back.
00:00:23.000 –> 00:00:26.000
Ava Ness: Thanks for having me, AJ.
00:00:26.000 –> 00:00:29.000
AJ Blythe: In a moment, I’m going to outline an Aussie mystery.
00:00:29.000 –> 00:00:30.000
AJ Blythe: I’ve done the research.
00:00:30.000 –> 00:00:32.000
Ava Ness: And I’m coming in blind.
00:00:32.000 –> 00:00:38.000
AJ Blythe: After we’ve discussed the case, we’ll talk about some mystery novels it brings to mind.
00:00:38.000 –> 00:00:40.000
AJ Blythe: I’m quite excited about today’s mystery.
00:00:40.000 –> 00:00:48.000
AJ Blythe: I don’t think it’s had a lasting impression in Australia, which is surprising because today’s case is known as Australia’s Titanic.
00:00:48.000 –> 00:00:56.000
AJ Blythe: The story of the Titanic, which sank after colliding with an iceberg and the loss of 1 1/2 thousand lives is really well known.
00:00:56.000 –> 00:01:04.000
AJ Blythe: But the loss of the Titanic was actually the second time a large passenger steamship had been lost in that three-year period.
00:01:04.000 –> 00:01:07.000
AJ Blythe: And Australia’s Waratah happened first.
00:01:07.000 –> 00:01:08.000
Ava Ness: Wow.
00:01:08.000 –> 00:01:21.000
AJ Blythe: So in July 1909, passenger and cargo steamship the SS Waratah disappeared suddenly on her return voyage from Australia to London via South Africa.
00:01:21.000 –> 00:01:26.000
AJ Blythe: There were more than 200 passengers who went missing as well as all the crew.
00:01:26.000 –> 00:01:33.000
AJ Blythe: This was only her second voyage and she was supposed to be the best of the ships on the seas at the time.
00:01:33.000 –> 00:01:36.000
AJ Blythe: That’s just a bit of a general recap of this story.
00:01:36.000 –> 00:01:41.000
Ava Ness: Yeah, it’s quite eerie already how similar it is to the Titanic.
00:01:41.000 –> 00:01:50.000
AJ Blythe: It is scarily similar because if you look at some of the information that’s available about her design is that she was brand new.
00:01:50.000 –> 00:01:52.000
AJ Blythe: She’d only been built the year before.
00:01:52.000 –> 00:01:56.000
AJ Blythe: It wasn’t her maiden voyage, but it was only her second.
00:01:56.000 –> 00:02:06.000
AJ Blythe: She was a luxurious passenger liner, although in this case did have the intention of being an emigrant ship for people moving between the UK and Australia.
00:02:06.000 –> 00:02:21.000
AJ Blythe: She didn’t have radio or telegraphic equipment or any of the sort of newfangled things, but was considered innovative because not only did she have a distillery that could produce 5 1/2 thousand gallons of fresh water per day,
00:02:21.000 –> 00:02:29.000
AJ Blythe: But she had eight watertight compartments, just like the Titanic, which at that time was still under construction in Belfast.
00:02:29.000 –> 00:02:35.000
AJ Blythe: And so the shipping company said she was practically immune from any danger of sinking.
00:02:35.000 –> 00:02:37.000
Ava Ness: I love that last bit that you just said about the Titanic.
00:02:37.000 –> 00:02:44.000
Ava Ness: So the Titanic’s still being built with this ship that has all these things in common with it, sinks.
00:02:44.000 –> 00:02:47.000
Ava Ness: And they learned nothing from that.
00:02:47.000 –> 00:02:52.000
AJ Blythe: No, and the Titanic was three years after the sinking of the Waratah.
00:02:52.000 –> 00:02:58.000
AJ Blythe: it had the same 8 watertight compartments and yet Titanic’s ship was still considered to be unsinkable.
00:02:58.000 –> 00:02:59.000
Ava Ness: Oh my goodness.
00:02:59.000 –> 00:03:00.000
Ava Ness: Well, let’s keep going.
00:03:00.000 –> 00:03:05.000
Ava Ness: I’m not sure if I want to find out what happens next or not.
00:03:05.000 –> 00:03:17.000
AJ Blythe: The captain of the Waratah was very experienced, had been with the same company for over 40 years and was very highly regarded and had also captained the sister ship to the Waratah.
00:03:17.000 –> 00:03:21.000
AJ Blythe: So was very familiar with that size ship.
00:03:21.000 –> 00:03:25.000
AJ Blythe: It was only the 2nd voyage and they considered a voyage to be returned.
00:03:25.000 –> 00:03:33.000
AJ Blythe: She left from London on April 27th, 1909, arrived in Adelaide on June the 6th.
00:03:33.000 –> 00:03:47.000
AJ Blythe: was loaded up with 880 odd tons of lead ore, traveled to Melbourne and Sydney and took on food, flour, wool and about 7,000, 8,000 bars of bullion.
00:03:47.000 –> 00:03:56.000
AJ Blythe: And there were some concerns at the time by crew and passengers during that local journey that she didn’t handle rough seas well.
00:03:56.000 –> 00:04:06.000
AJ Blythe: But she returned to Adelaide via Melbourne and took on more cargo in both those cities again, as well as taking on the passengers in Adelaide for the return trip to London.
00:04:06.000 –> 00:04:10.000
AJ Blythe: And again, the trip was via South Africa.
00:04:10.000 –> 00:04:23.000
AJ Blythe: On the 7th of July, she left Adelaide for Durban in South Africa and actually arrived in Durban early because she again was new, so therefore one of the fastest ships at sea at the time.
00:04:23.000 –> 00:04:32.000
AJ Blythe: She left Durban at 8.15pm on the 26th of July 1909 with 211 passengers plus the crew on board.
00:04:32.000 –> 00:04:34.000
AJ Blythe: And that was the last time she ever made port.
00:04:34.000 –> 00:04:36.000
Ava Ness: So what happened?
00:04:36.000 –> 00:04:42.000
AJ Blythe: She was seen again at sea at about 4am on the 27th of July.
00:04:42.000 –> 00:04:49.000
AJ Blythe: She was spotted by the Clan McIntyre, which was another steamer ship from the Clan Line Shipping Company.
00:04:49.000 –> 00:04:59.000
AJ Blythe: The Waratah was a faster ship, so caught up to Clan McIntyre and they communicated as they did at the time using signal lamps between the two ships.
00:04:59.000 –> 00:05:01.000
AJ Blythe: The name and destinations of the ships were confirmed.
00:05:01.000 –> 00:05:06.000
AJ Blythe: So this is a confirmed sighting after she’d left Durban.
00:05:06.000 –> 00:05:14.000
AJ Blythe: And Clan McIntyre reported they last saw the Waratah as she disappeared over the horizon at about 9.30am.
00:05:14.000 –> 00:05:18.000
AJ Blythe: But they also reported the weather was getting worse.
00:05:18.000 –> 00:05:23.000
AJ Blythe: And there are reports that there was a nearby hurricane, but the seas were getting very rough.
00:05:23.000 –> 00:05:30.000
AJ Blythe: And the captain of Clan McIntyre has said it was the worst conditions he’d seen in his 13 years at sea.
00:05:30.000 –> 00:05:32.000
AJ Blythe: That was the last confirmed sighting.
00:05:32.000 –> 00:05:35.000
Ava Ness: But there was other sightings that were unconfirmed.
00:05:35.000 –> 00:05:37.000
AJ Blythe: There were, there were three actually.
00:05:37.000 –> 00:05:53.000
AJ Blythe: So on the 27th of July, so the same day that Clan McIntyre saw the ship, which was at 9.30 in the morning as she went over the horizon, that night a ship called the Harlow saw smoke coming out of a steamer they could see a distance off.
00:05:53.000 –> 00:05:58.000
AJ Blythe: And the amount of smoke made the captain of the Harlow think that the other ship was on fire.
00:05:58.000 –> 00:06:01.000
AJ Blythe: As it got darker, they say the lights of the other ship
00:06:01.000 –> 00:06:07.000
AJ Blythe: were approaching, but suddenly there were two bright flashes and then all the lights disappeared.
00:06:07.000 –> 00:06:11.000
AJ Blythe: That captain of the Harlow thought that there was an explosion.
00:06:11.000 –> 00:06:12.000
Ava Ness: Oh dear.
00:06:12.000 –> 00:06:20.000
AJ Blythe: Again, on the same day that evening, a Union Castle liner passed a ship and exchanged lamp signals.
00:06:20.000 –> 00:06:27.000
AJ Blythe: But because of the rough conditions and other weather conditions, only the last three letters were able to be seen.
00:06:27.000 –> 00:06:32.000
AJ Blythe: And those letters were T-A-H.
00:06:32.000 –> 00:06:38.000
AJ Blythe: And then the third possible sighting was actually from Shaw, which I found quite interesting.
00:06:38.000 –> 00:06:42.000
AJ Blythe: And it was a rifleman who was looking through a telescope.
00:06:42.000 –> 00:06:44.000
AJ Blythe: And he recorded this in his diary.
00:06:44.000 –> 00:06:48.000
AJ Blythe: He saw a ship which matched the description of the Waratah.
00:06:48.000 –> 00:06:54.000
AJ Blythe: He watched it struggle in the seas and then suddenly disappear as a wave rolled over her.
00:06:54.000 –> 00:07:00.000
AJ Blythe: None of those are confirmed, but they all kind of hint towards potentially being the Waratah.
00:07:00.000 –> 00:07:17.000
AJ Blythe: The Waratah was due to arrive in Cape Town on the 29th of July, but because she was considered unsinkable, no one was alarmed when she didn’t arrive, especially for that era when ships were often delayed and late, not only days but also weeks.
00:07:17.000 –> 00:07:20.000
AJ Blythe: They just thought she had some mechanical issues and would eventually turn up.
00:07:20.000 –> 00:07:22.000
Ava Ness: Yeah, that’s amazing though.
00:07:22.000 –> 00:07:24.000
Ava Ness: Ships could just turn up weeks late.
00:07:24.000 –> 00:07:27.000
AJ Blythe: Apparently so, because I guess they didn’t have the communications.
00:07:27.000 –> 00:07:34.000
AJ Blythe: So if there was rough seas or they had some issues and they had to repair at sea, then they just got there when they did.
00:07:34.000 –> 00:07:36.000
Ava Ness: I suppose it was just the way it was.
00:07:36.000 –> 00:07:38.000
AJ Blythe: I know, terrifying to think about it now.
00:07:38.000 –> 00:07:41.000
AJ Blythe: If something’s an hour late, we’ve got like search parties out.
00:07:41.000 –> 00:07:54.000
AJ Blythe: And the reason that they did start to get concerned was other ships began arriving from Durban, which is where the Waratah had just left from, behind the Waratah and didn’t see the Waratah on their travels to Cape Town.
00:07:54.000 –> 00:07:58.000
Ava Ness: Yes, that would be a bad sign.
00:07:58.000 –> 00:08:01.000
AJ Blythe: So it wasn’t until the 1st of August
00:08:01.000 –> 00:08:11.000
AJ Blythe: that the first search was launched, a tugboat went out and then some Royal Navy ships, but all had to abandon the search because of poor weather.
00:08:11.000 –> 00:08:26.000
AJ Blythe: By this stage, they’re thinking actually the worst has probably happened because by the 13th of August, there was a steamship that reported some sightings of bodies in the water near the Mbasi River’s mouth where the Waratah was last seen.
00:08:26.000 –> 00:08:33.000
AJ Blythe: The captain of another ship also saw bodies in the water about two weeks after the disappearance of Waratah.
00:08:33.000 –> 00:08:40.000
AJ Blythe: In fact, there was also another ship that they felt they saw a young child in the water wearing red.
00:08:40.000 –> 00:08:45.000
AJ Blythe: And one of the crew gave quite a big description of like black tights and a red dress.
00:08:45.000 –> 00:08:52.000
AJ Blythe: But when they tried to turn around, by the time they got back to that location, there was nothing to be seen.
00:08:52.000 –> 00:08:54.000
Ava Ness: How awful.
00:08:54.000 –> 00:08:55.000
AJ Blythe: It’s terrible.
00:08:55.000 –> 00:09:06.000
AJ Blythe: And in September that year, so we’re talking a couple of months later, the Blue Anchor Line, which is the line that owned the Waratah, they got another cargo ship to have a search.
00:09:06.000 –> 00:09:10.000
AJ Blythe: It had searchlights and other equipment, but it also failed to find any trace.
00:09:10.000 –> 00:09:13.000
AJ Blythe: The Waratah had just simply disappeared.
00:09:13.000 –> 00:09:16.000
Ava Ness: Reminds me of the Bermuda Triangle.
00:09:16.000 –> 00:09:22.000
AJ Blythe: Actually the Bermuda Triangle was a theory that was put out there that there was some force or supernatural occurrence.
00:09:22.000 –> 00:09:32.000
AJ Blythe: But the biggest and I think the most believed reason for the Waratah disappearing is that there was a rogue wave.
00:09:32.000 –> 00:09:35.000
AJ Blythe: And I thought a rogue wave that doesn’t sound like very much.
00:09:35.000 –> 00:09:37.000
AJ Blythe: So I did a bit of research.
00:09:37.000 –> 00:09:42.000
AJ Blythe: Apparently there are occasions that storms and high winds can
00:09:42.000 –> 00:09:51.000
AJ Blythe: produce what is known as this sort of rare rogue wave, which is a single wave, which is much larger and higher than the others that roll before it.
00:09:51.000 –> 00:09:56.000
AJ Blythe: And if it hits something like the Waratah, it would have swamped it because it would have been this great big giant wave.
00:09:56.000 –> 00:10:02.000
AJ Blythe: And even if it didn’t sink her, it could have damaged her rudder, which would have meant that she had no capacity to steer.
00:10:02.000 –> 00:10:08.000
Ava Ness: I mean, it’s just really a wonder that any ships ever didn’t sink in those days.
00:10:08.000 –> 00:10:11.000
AJ Blythe: I know. I guess we think nothing of getting on the plane.
00:10:11.000 –> 00:10:19.000
AJ Blythe: And I suppose back then they thought nothing of getting on the ship, but I think I would have been quite terrified back in those days knowing what we know now.
00:10:19.000 –> 00:10:21.000
Ava Ness: Definitely.
00:10:21.000 –> 00:10:23.000
AJ Blythe: There were other theories about what happened.
00:10:23.000 –> 00:10:26.000
AJ Blythe: She had a lot of weight on her.
00:10:26.000 –> 00:10:37.000
AJ Blythe: So a theory is that the cargo shifted and therefore made one side of the ship very heavy and that it could have capsized because of that.
00:10:37.000 –> 00:10:52.000
AJ Blythe: One that, I’m not quite sure why this is a theory, but that there was a whirlpool that she got caught in, or that maybe just like the Titanic hit something, that there was a rogue iceberg or something large in the water.
00:10:52.000 –> 00:11:06.000
AJ Blythe: Because of what was seen by other ships, an explosion, possibly from the boiler, is a theory, obviously based on the officers of Harlow who saw the flashes.
00:11:06.000 –> 00:11:10.000
AJ Blythe: There was also floating objects that had been seen since.
00:11:10.000 –> 00:11:20.000
AJ Blythe: There was also a strange and unverified report of a life jacket that had Waratah on it washing up on a New Zealand shore more than three years later.
00:11:20.000 –> 00:11:21.000
Ava Ness: Oh my goodness.
00:11:21.000 –> 00:11:26.000
AJ Blythe: Which seems a little odd because Australia is in between Africa and New Zealand.
00:11:26.000 –> 00:11:32.000
AJ Blythe: So I’m not quite sure how it got there, but I guess ocean currents maybe.
00:11:32.000 –> 00:11:34.000
AJ Blythe: No trace of the ship has ever been found.
00:11:34.000 –> 00:11:38.000
AJ Blythe: So until they find a wreck, everything is really only a theory.
00:11:38.000 –> 00:11:45.000
Ava Ness: Gosh, that’s really just incredible, isn’t it, that even today they still haven’t found it?
00:11:45.000 –> 00:11:49.000
AJ Blythe: No, and there are a few odd things that were reported.
00:11:49.000 –> 00:11:59.000
AJ Blythe: For example, Claude Sawyer, who was an engineer on board the ship, he actually left the ship in Durban because he had concerns that the ship was top heavy.
00:11:59.000 –> 00:12:02.000
AJ Blythe: And that wasn’t from cargo, that was just its general design.
00:12:02.000 –> 00:12:09.000
AJ Blythe: So he actually left the ship and its reporter tried to convince some of the passengers to also depart the ship in Durban.
00:12:09.000 –> 00:12:10.000
Ava Ness: Gosh.
00:12:10.000 –> 00:12:16.000
AJ Blythe: So maybe the Waratah had a design flaw or structural weakness that made it vulnerable in heavy seas.
00:12:16.000 –> 00:12:19.000
Ava Ness: Oh my goodness, imagine how he felt.
00:12:19.000 –> 00:12:27.000
AJ Blythe: I know, you’d have that relief of, oh my gosh, I’m alive, but then the guilt that maybe he should have done something more.
00:12:27.000 –> 00:12:33.000
Ava Ness: I guess in terms of modern day mysteries, probably MH370 is the equivalent.
00:12:33.000 –> 00:12:35.000
AJ Blythe: I would think so, yeah.
00:12:35.000 –> 00:12:39.000
AJ Blythe: And interestingly, one of the theories is they both went missing in the same ocean.
00:12:39.000 –> 00:12:40.000
Ava Ness: Oh, really?
00:12:40.000 –> 00:12:45.000
AJ Blythe: That west of Australia, so the same ocean, it’s the Indian Ocean.
00:12:45.000 –> 00:12:46.000
Ava Ness: Yeah, okay, yeah.
00:12:46.000 –> 00:12:47.000
AJ Blythe: Could be quite ironic.
00:12:47.000 –> 00:12:49.000
AJ Blythe: Maybe they find one, they find the other.
00:12:49.000 –> 00:12:51.000
Ava Ness: Well, we can only hive.
00:12:51.000 –> 00:12:52.000
AJ Blythe: Yeah, that’s right.
00:12:52.000 –> 00:12:55.000
AJ Blythe: And of course, there are conspiracy theories around.
00:12:55.000 –> 00:12:56.000
Ava Ness: Always.
00:12:56.000 –> 00:12:57.000
AJ Blythe: This one.
00:12:57.000 –> 00:13:00.000
AJ Blythe: And this one is to do with the name of the ship.
00:13:00.000 –> 00:13:04.000
AJ Blythe: So this was the SS Waratah, which is
00:13:04.000 –> 00:13:05.000
AJ Blythe: flower of Australia.
00:13:05.000 –> 00:13:07.000
AJ Blythe: It’s the emblem for New South Wales.
00:13:07.000 –> 00:13:09.000
AJ Blythe: It’s a beautiful red flower.
00:13:09.000 –> 00:13:18.000
AJ Blythe: And I believe that the saloon or one of the rooms, a lounge or something in the ship was wallpapered with Waratah flowers.
00:13:18.000 –> 00:13:31.000
AJ Blythe: But apparently between 1848 and 1897, there were no less than four other ships called the Waratah that all met unfortunate ends.
00:13:31.000 –> 00:13:34.000
Ava Ness: Woh, what?
00:13:34.000 –> 00:13:38.000
AJ Blythe: So there is a theory that it was the name of the ship that actually forecast its tragic end.
00:13:38.000 –> 00:13:44.000
Ava Ness: Well, look, normally I would think not, but four ships all called the Waratah and they all sank.
00:13:44.000 –> 00:13:46.000
AJ Blythe: I know, it’s quite amazing, isn’t it?
00:13:46.000 –> 00:13:52.000
Ava Ness: I mean, after the third one, they didn’t have any misgivings.
00:13:52.000 –> 00:14:10.000
AJ Blythe: It’s interesting because while there’s all these other theories like, maybe a whirlpool or something, the fact that the ship’s name isn’t a bigger conspiracy sort of surprises me because, especially at that time when they were a lot more prevalent to have that sort of supernatural element to their beliefs.
00:14:10.000 –> 00:14:21.000
Ava Ness: So I wonder though if that’s a sign of the times in terms of information being available because it’s very obvious to us from all the information that we have that there was
00:14:21.000 –> 00:14:23.000
Ava Ness: that in common for these ships that they all had the same name.
00:14:23.000 –> 00:14:29.000
Ava Ness: But as they were being named, I wonder if the people knew about the previous ships.
00:14:29.000 –> 00:14:33.000
AJ Blythe: Yeah, I’m not sure because, they were very superstitious.
00:14:33.000 –> 00:14:38.000
AJ Blythe: And I think if you knew that the three previous Waratahs had sunk, that maybe you wouldn’t get on the 4th one.
00:14:38.000 –> 00:14:39.000
Ava Ness: You would hope.
00:14:39.000 –> 00:14:42.000
Ava Ness: You would hope.
00:14:42.000 –> 00:14:46.000
AJ Blythe: There’s a lot of information about the passengers who were on board.
00:14:46.000 –> 00:14:47.000
AJ Blythe: and why they were on board.
00:14:47.000 –> 00:15:00.000
AJ Blythe: But the one that caught my eye was Agnes Hay, and she was a published author and was actually planning on completing her unfinished novel while on board the ship.
00:15:00.000 –> 00:15:01.000
Ava Ness: No.
00:15:01.000 –> 00:15:05.000
AJ Blythe: That was basically a great big writing retreat for her, I suppose.
00:15:05.000 –> 00:15:11.000
AJ Blythe: But unfortunately, that unfinished novel sank to the bottom of the ocean as well.
00:15:11.000 –> 00:15:14.000
Ava Ness: Oh dear, that’s just even more tragic.
00:15:14.000 –> 00:15:16.000
AJ Blythe: I know, especially
00:15:16.000 –> 00:15:20.000
AJ Blythe: at the time, I wouldn’t think that female novelists were quite so common as they are now.
00:15:20.000 –> 00:15:24.000
Ava Ness: I just have found this page on Facebook, which is a little bit interesting.
00:15:24.000 –> 00:15:25.000
Ava Ness: Have you seen this?
00:15:25.000 –> 00:15:26.000
Ava Ness: There’s A Facebook group.
00:15:26.000 –> 00:15:28.000
AJ Blythe: No.
00:15:28.000 –> 00:15:32.000
Ava Ness: It’s actually just like a page where people are researching people who are on the ship.
00:15:32.000 –> 00:15:34.000
AJ Blythe: Oh, fascinating.
00:15:34.000 –> 00:15:35.000
Ava Ness: Yeah.
00:15:35.000 –> 00:15:37.000
AJ Blythe: We’ll include that link on our website.
00:15:37.000 –> 00:15:45.000
AJ Blythe: So if anyone listening is interested and wants to learn more about the people aboard the ship, because some of them have very interesting stories.
00:15:45.000 –> 00:15:52.000
Ava Ness: Yeah, there’s just a lot of people who are seeking information about the different passengers and
00:15:52.000 –> 00:16:11.000
Ava Ness: I sort of get the impression that maybe there is a few stories being told, a few gaps being filled in and really interesting just to see the details of the people and also where all the memorials are for some of the victims who are sort of spread all around the country.
00:16:11.000 –> 00:16:17.000
AJ Blythe: There were people from Tasmania on board, obviously from Adelaide, but also from Melbourne and Sydney.
00:16:17.000 –> 00:16:23.000
AJ Blythe: So people had either travelled to one of the other major cities or to Adelaide to board the ship.
00:16:23.000 –> 00:16:25.000
AJ Blythe: And there were some really interesting things.
00:16:25.000 –> 00:16:35.000
AJ Blythe: For example, there were two young girls, two sisters aged 10 and 11, who boarded the ship without their parents, which was incredibly unusual for the time.
00:16:35.000 –> 00:16:40.000
AJ Blythe: They boarded with a family that there didn’t seem to be any connection with.
00:16:40.000 –> 00:16:51.000
AJ Blythe: And someone has done a lot of research and discovered that the people these two girls boarded with have a connection through a hotel.
00:16:51.000 –> 00:16:58.000
AJ Blythe: So one of the families ran the hotel, the others owned the hotel, but the hotel went into insolvency.
00:16:58.000 –> 00:17:04.000
AJ Blythe: And so these young girls were traveling with this family and that the hotel was the connection between the two.
00:17:04.000 –> 00:17:05.000
Ava Ness: Wow.
00:17:05.000 –> 00:17:08.000
AJ Blythe: There’s also some interesting connections
00:17:08.000 –> 00:17:16.000
AJ Blythe: to the author world besides Agnes Hay, when the ship disappeared, it did make headlines around the world.
00:17:16.000 –> 00:17:20.000
AJ Blythe: And there was a lot of theories and newspapers were talking about.
00:17:20.000 –> 00:17:31.000
AJ Blythe: And in England, Arthur Conan Doyle, so the author and creator of Sherlock Holmes, conducted a seance to try to contact the passengers of the Waratah.
00:17:31.000 –> 00:17:33.000
Ava Ness: That’s fascinating.
00:17:33.000 –> 00:17:38.000
AJ Blythe: I know, it’s made me wonder if he was into that sort of occult because I didn’t know that about him before.
00:17:38.000 –> 00:17:39.000
Ava Ness: No.
00:17:39.000 –> 00:17:47.000
AJ Blythe: But that’s a really interesting thing and I’m assuming he was unsuccessful because otherwise I guess we would have heard what the passengers had to say.
00:17:47.000 –> 00:17:48.000
Ava Ness: What happened?
00:17:48.000 –> 00:17:51.000
AJ Blythe: That’s right.
00:17:51.000 –> 00:17:58.000
AJ Blythe: The other one is a lot more modern when we’re talking about, you know, author connections and that is Clive Kussler.
00:17:58.000 –> 00:18:06.000
AJ Blythe: He has NUMA, which is the National Underwater and Marine Agency, which is a non- profit foundation dedicated to preserving maritime heritage.
00:18:06.000 –> 00:18:09.000
AJ Blythe: And he was the founder of that.
00:18:09.000 –> 00:18:15.000
AJ Blythe: And he had an expedition to find Waratah in 1987.
00:18:15.000 –> 00:18:21.000
AJ Blythe: And he came about because in 85 he went to South Africa as part of a book tour.
00:18:21.000 –> 00:18:26.000
AJ Blythe: And his book that he was promoting at the time was called Deep Six.
00:18:26.000 –> 00:18:29.000
AJ Blythe: And he’d read about the Waratah and was interested about it.
00:18:29.000 –> 00:18:39.000
AJ Blythe: And he gave a talk in Cape Town and was approached by a South African man who’d spent 10 years researching the Waratah.
00:18:39.000 –> 00:18:49.000
AJ Blythe: And so they had a chat and he became the search director who would actually lead the expedition to find the Waratah.
00:18:49.000 –> 00:18:55.000
AJ Blythe: And interestingly, in 1999, they did find a ship
00:18:55.000 –> 00:18:57.000
AJ Blythe: and believed it was the Waratah.
00:18:57.000 –> 00:19:02.000
AJ Blythe: They wouldn’t reveal where it was because obviously they wanted to find the ship.
00:19:02.000 –> 00:19:17.000
AJ Blythe: But when they were able to go back and actually look at it more closely, they discovered that it wasn’t the Waratah and it was actually a sunken ship carrying evidence of war machines and weapons and things.
00:19:17.000 –> 00:19:22.000
AJ Blythe: So they had to say that they don’t know what happened and they spent a lot of time searching.
00:19:22.000 –> 00:19:25.000
AJ Blythe: The thought is that
00:19:25.000 –> 00:19:34.000
AJ Blythe: perhaps she did lose her rudder and drifted a long way off course and is actually at the bottom of the ocean somewhere that no one has actually looked for yet.
00:19:34.000 –> 00:19:44.000
Ava Ness: I was just having a look at that website, the Clave Castler one, and it’s quite sad really how much effort had gone in and they really did believe they’d found it.
00:19:44.000 –> 00:19:50.000
Ava Ness: In that sort of blog entry he’d written, he said, records show no other iron steamer on the bottom
00:19:50.000 –> 00:19:53.000
Ava Ness: within 60 miles and those are accounted for.
00:19:53.000 –> 00:19:56.000
Ava Ness: Odds favor our find being the Waratah.
00:19:56.000 –> 00:20:02.000
Ava Ness: And then later on, about a year later, the update saying that he’s received a distressed email from Dr.
00:20:02.000 –> 00:20:06.000
Ava Ness: Brown to say it’s a cargo ship carrying military hardware.
00:20:06.000 –> 00:20:12.000
Ava Ness: I and all involved are stunned beyond belief and almost speechless at what was finally seen on the ocean floor.
00:20:12.000 –> 00:20:15.000
Ava Ness: I just feel so bad for them.
00:20:15.000 –> 00:20:23.000
AJ Blythe: Yeah, because they were adamant that they had finally found the Waratah and that they were potentially going to solve the mystery of what happened to her.
00:20:23.000 –> 00:20:26.000
Ava Ness: And they’d done 9 searches.
00:20:26.000 –> 00:20:27.000
AJ Blythe: Yeah.
00:20:27.000 –> 00:20:29.000
Ava Ness: To that point, they really thought they’d found it.
00:20:29.000 –> 00:20:33.000
AJ Blythe: Yeah, but at the time, Castle also said that he refused to give up.
00:20:33.000 –> 00:20:36.000
AJ Blythe: So I don’t know if they have ever done any more
00:20:36.000 –> 00:20:45.000
AJ Blythe: searching for the Waratah, since that time, or whether it’s just going to be one of those enduring mysteries where we never really know what happened.
00:20:45.000 –> 00:20:48.000
Ava Ness: So Claff Castler died, I think, in 2020.
00:20:48.000 –> 00:20:50.000
Ava Ness: I wonder if the work has continued since his death.
00:20:50.000 –> 00:20:52.000
Ava Ness: It’d be interesting to have a look into that.
00:20:52.000 –> 00:20:55.000
AJ Blythe: Yeah, it would be, and I’m not really sure.
00:20:55.000 –> 00:21:00.000
Ava Ness: And it inspired, as I know we’re going to talk about books in a minute, but it inspired one of his novels, didn’t it?
00:21:00.000 –> 00:21:01.000
AJ Blythe: I believe so.
00:21:01.000 –> 00:21:13.000
AJ Blythe: And there was another book, if you’re wanting to learn more about this mystery called The Lost Ship SS Waratah, Searching for the Titanic of the South by PJ Smith, which was published in 2009.
00:21:13.000 –> 00:21:25.000
AJ Blythe: And it’s supposed to be one of the best books about this mystery with a lot of research and information that’s gone into it about the passengers, about the construction of the ship and so on.
00:21:25.000 –> 00:21:31.000
AJ Blythe: all links to the sites we’ve talked about and that book will be on the webpage for this podcast.
00:21:31.000 –> 00:21:34.000
AJ Blythe: Well, I don’t think there’s much more to talk about with this.
00:21:34.000 –> 00:21:37.000
AJ Blythe: I think it’s got, you know, all of the classic signs of a mystery.
00:21:37.000 –> 00:21:40.000
AJ Blythe: It’s got conspiracy theories.
00:21:40.000 –> 00:21:42.000
AJ Blythe: No one knows what happened.
00:21:42.000 –> 00:21:46.000
AJ Blythe: But I think for the moment, there’s not much more for us to learn.
00:21:46.000 –> 00:21:57.000
Ava Ness: No, sadly, I mean, as much as we crave an ending, and I suppose at least the Titanic did have an ending, this one doesn’t, and that’s probably why we’re still talking about it.
00:21:57.000 –> 00:22:01.000
Ava Ness: And even modern technology hasn’t been able to give us the answers to what happened.
00:22:01.000 –> 00:22:04.000
Ava Ness: So it remains an unsolved mystery.
00:22:04.000 –> 00:22:05.000
AJ Blythe: It does.
00:22:05.000 –> 00:22:12.000
AJ Blythe: For today, we’re going to have to say, case closed.
00:22:12.000 –> 00:22:17.000
AJ Blythe: Now we’re going to talk about novels that echo the mystery of the Waratah.
00:22:17.000 –> 00:22:21.000
AJ Blythe: And I think there’s a lot to draw for a mystery writer from the story of the Waratah.
00:22:21.000 –> 00:22:24.000
AJ Blythe: I know I’ve got two books in particular that really echo this case.
00:22:24.000 –> 00:22:30.000
AJ Blythe: And my first book is a 2008 novel by Aussie author Kate Morton.
00:22:30.000 –> 00:22:32.000
AJ Blythe: It’s called The Forgotten Garden.
00:22:32.000 –> 00:22:36.000
AJ Blythe: And it’s a family mystery that spans over 3 generations.
00:22:36.000 –> 00:22:45.000
AJ Blythe: But the part that really caught me with this story is that on the eve of World War I, a little girl is found abandoned on a ship to Australia.
00:22:45.000 –> 00:22:52.000
AJ Blythe: A mysterious woman was supposed to look after her for the trip, but somehow has completely disappeared.
00:22:52.000 –> 00:22:56.000
AJ Blythe: So she arrives in Australia alone with nothing but the little small suitcase.
00:22:56.000 –> 00:22:58.000
AJ Blythe: She isn’t talking to anybody.
00:22:58.000 –> 00:23:03.000
AJ Blythe: The dockmaster and wife take her in to raise her as her own.
00:23:03.000 –> 00:23:05.000
AJ Blythe: So I felt very similar.
00:23:05.000 –> 00:23:06.000
AJ Blythe: It’s a journey.
00:23:06.000 –> 00:23:13.000
AJ Blythe: Somebody goes missing, which is the person who was supposed to be taking care of this little girl, and nobody knows what happened at sea.
00:23:13.000 –> 00:23:16.000
AJ Blythe: But this story goes over 3 generations.
00:23:16.000 –> 00:23:29.000
AJ Blythe: So you actually have the generation before this little girl, and then you have a few generations afterwards as well, because when she turns 21, she decides to go and work out what happened to her.
00:23:29.000 –> 00:23:31.000
AJ Blythe: and then find out her real identity.
00:23:31.000 –> 00:23:38.000
AJ Blythe: And then her granddaughter also tries to find out that century old mystery of this lost little girl.
00:23:38.000 –> 00:23:42.000
Ava Ness: It’s really the only way to tell these stories, isn’t it, where you don’t know what happened?
00:23:42.000 –> 00:23:46.000
Ava Ness: You have to sort of fill in the gaps from the future and the past.
00:23:46.000 –> 00:23:49.000
AJ Blythe: That’s right, because you’ve got to make up the story.
00:23:49.000 –> 00:23:57.000
AJ Blythe: So what led them to being on that ship and then what happened, you know, after the ship or after the mystery, because
00:23:57.000 –> 00:23:58.000
AJ Blythe: you don’t know.
00:23:58.000 –> 00:24:04.000
AJ Blythe: So you then have to try to find out and think about what could have happened to put them in that particular situation.
00:24:04.000 –> 00:24:14.000
AJ Blythe: I think that The Forgotten Garden, it’s quite a slow moving book and some people might think it’s more, probably more women’s fiction.
00:24:14.000 –> 00:24:25.000
AJ Blythe: It definitely has that mystery at its core and it takes the full novel to actually come to the end and find out the answers to the mysteries presented at the start of the story.
00:24:25.000 –> 00:24:26.000
AJ Blythe: What about you, Ava?
00:24:26.000 –> 00:24:29.000
AJ Blythe: Do you have anything that springs to mind?
00:24:29.000 –> 00:24:37.000
Ava Ness: Well, when I was doing some research on the books for this episode, I actually did find a book that is directly linked to the Waratah.
00:24:37.000 –> 00:24:40.000
Ava Ness: It actually has that as part of its premise.
00:24:40.000 –> 00:24:43.000
Ava Ness: It’s called Scend of the Sea by Geoffrey Jenkins.
00:24:43.000 –> 00:24:50.000
Ava Ness: And I’ll just read you the blurb because it’s, as soon as I read the blurb, I thought, I’m interested to read this now.
00:24:50.000 –> 00:24:57.000
Ava Ness: So it says, in 1909, the crack blue anchor liner, the Waratah, sinks without a trace or survivors off the coast of South Africa.
00:24:57.000 –> 00:25:06.000
Ava Ness: In 1967, the Gemsbrook, a vicar airliner of South African Airways, disappears in exactly the same place.
00:25:06.000 –> 00:25:10.000
Ava Ness: To some, it’s merely an uncanny mystery, a coincidence.
00:25:10.000 –> 00:25:11.000
Ava Ness: To others, it’s a tragedy.
00:25:11.000 –> 00:25:21.000
Ava Ness: People like Ian Fairley, captain of the weather ship Wallace Bay, whose father was the pilot of the airliner and whose grandfather was the first officer of the Waratah.
00:25:21.000 –> 00:25:22.000
AJ Blythe: Nice link.
00:25:22.000 –> 00:25:33.000
Ava Ness: Yes, so Ian has sworn he will resolve the mystery, but to do so, he must face cyclonic winds and mountainous seas, risking his ship, his life, and the woman he loves.
00:25:33.000 –> 00:25:34.000
AJ Blythe: That does sound intriguing.
00:25:34.000 –> 00:25:39.000
Ava Ness: Yes, I love that premise that, you know, was his dad and his grandfather.
00:25:39.000 –> 00:25:42.000
Ava Ness: that personal connection, the overlapping mysteries.
00:25:42.000 –> 00:25:43.000
AJ Blythe: Yeah, that’s right.
00:25:43.000 –> 00:25:47.000
AJ Blythe: And that they both disappeared in the same area, but one from sea and one from the air.
00:25:47.000 –> 00:25:48.000
Ava Ness: Yes.
00:25:48.000 –> 00:25:51.000
Ava Ness: So anyway, I will read the book and I will report back.
00:25:51.000 –> 00:25:59.000
AJ Blythe: So we’ve talked about how it’s very hard to find fiction novels that don’t have that open ending like the Waratah mystery.
00:25:59.000 –> 00:26:05.000
AJ Blythe: Obviously we’re having to talk about books that do have a big red bow tied at the end and we do know what happened.
00:26:05.000 –> 00:26:15.000
AJ Blythe: But I thought as well as the stories we’ve talked about that relate to other ships and so on, that it also comes back to stories where something just vanishes.
00:26:15.000 –> 00:26:21.000
AJ Blythe: And I thought of one of your books, Ava, Lady Clues and the Mystery of the Vanishing Valet, which
00:26:21.000 –> 00:26:26.000
AJ Blythe: is one of your novella stories, which is exactly that same premise.
00:26:26.000 –> 00:26:28.000
AJ Blythe: So did you want to talk about that?
00:26:28.000 –> 00:26:29.000
Ava Ness: Yes.
00:26:29.000 –> 00:26:32.000
Ava Ness: So they’re just little short stories, good fun.
00:26:32.000 –> 00:26:41.000
Ava Ness: And, you know, like you said, I think it’s just that premise of being in a country manner, you know, in England in the 1920s.
00:26:41.000 –> 00:26:45.000
Ava Ness: And, you know, the prospect that
00:26:45.000 –> 00:26:57.000
Ava Ness: somebody who’s in service goes missing who is reported by their master or mistress is just something that I thought was just good fun to play with and I’m probably going to use that in other books as well.
00:26:57.000 –> 00:27:07.000
Ava Ness: And there’s lots of possibilities in terms of what could have happened and who the suspects are and what the motive might be.
00:27:07.000 –> 00:27:17.000
Ava Ness: So it is really just a great little trope to use in a short story in particular, but it’s also one that I want to use in the future for a novel.
00:27:17.000 –> 00:27:27.000
AJ Blythe: Yeah, well, I found it very intriguing and very well done in that the character who goes missing, it’s very out of character for that person to actually vanish and they just disappeared.
00:27:27.000 –> 00:27:28.000
AJ Blythe: No one saw them leave.
00:27:28.000 –> 00:27:30.000
AJ Blythe: No one knows what’s happened to them.
00:27:30.000 –> 00:27:31.000
AJ Blythe: There’s no clue.
00:27:31.000 –> 00:27:34.000
AJ Blythe: And so I felt that was very much like the Waratah.
00:27:34.000 –> 00:27:36.000
AJ Blythe: You know, this person normally wouldn’t go missing.
00:27:36.000 –> 00:27:38.000
AJ Blythe: The Waratah shouldn’t have sunk.
00:27:38.000 –> 00:27:39.000
AJ Blythe: It was like the Titanic for anyone.
00:27:39.000 –> 00:27:46.000
AJ Blythe: Listing who’s interested, I will add that to the list of books that will appear on the website.
00:27:46.000 –> 00:27:47.000
Ava Ness: Oh, thank you very much.
00:27:47.000 –> 00:27:50.000
AJ Blythe: I have another book and I’m actually reading it at the moment.
00:27:50.000 –> 00:27:57.000
AJ Blythe: It’s the third in a series by Shelley Burr, who is a New South Wales based author.
00:27:57.000 –> 00:27:58.000
AJ Blythe: And this book is called Vanish.
00:27:58.000 –> 00:28:02.000
AJ Blythe: And the first book that she wrote in the series was called Wake.
00:28:02.000 –> 00:28:09.000
AJ Blythe: And in this one, it’s not set at sea, but it has the same, I guess, echo in that.
00:28:09.000 –> 00:28:11.000
AJ Blythe: people are vanishing without a trace.
00:28:11.000 –> 00:28:20.000
AJ Blythe: You don’t have to have read the first two books in the series to be able to read this book, although my orderly self has to start at #1.
00:28:20.000 –> 00:28:27.000
AJ Blythe: I can’t just jump in at #3, but you could jump in at #3 if you didn’t mind.
00:28:27.000 –> 00:28:37.000
AJ Blythe: And this one here, the lead character is trying to solve a case of a cold case of a girl who disappeared 20 years earlier.
00:28:37.000 –> 00:28:53.000
AJ Blythe: and he finds a lead to a community where, I guess, like a cult, people go there, trying to find themselves, they’re looking for answers, hiding from their past, but some of them seem to go to the farm and disappear without a trace.
00:28:53.000 –> 00:29:05.000
AJ Blythe: I thought in reading this book, and I can’t say how it ends because I am still only partway through the story, that it really echoes the Waratah in that people vanish and nobody knows
00:29:05.000 –> 00:29:07.000
AJ Blythe: what’s happened to them?
00:29:07.000 –> 00:29:10.000
Ava Ness: Well that sounds like another one to add to the TBR.
00:29:10.000 –> 00:29:18.000
AJ Blythe: I think there are some really good books and I’m sure there are a lot more that have you know that sort of premise of people vanishing or something vanishing without a trace.
00:29:18.000 –> 00:29:24.000
Ava Ness: Yeah definitely and I did also find quite a few that had introduced supernatural elements as well.
00:29:25.000 –> 00:29:33.000
Ava Ness: And then there’s sort of similar mysteries where it’s sort of this is filling the gaps of the story, but some of them, were resolved.
00:29:33.000 –> 00:29:41.000
Ava Ness: This one obviously is unresolved, which leaves it open to lots of possibilities, but we just love to be able to fill in the gaps, don’t we?
00:29:41.000 –> 00:29:42.000
AJ Blythe: That’s right.
00:29:42.000 –> 00:29:54.000
AJ Blythe: And I can think of a few as well with that supernatural element where something happens at sea, but you’ve got mermaids and so on that are involved in helping to explain how the ship went missing.
00:29:54.000 –> 00:29:56.000
AJ Blythe: I can think of 1 by Amanda M.
00:29:56.000 –> 00:29:59.000
AJ Blythe: Lee, a Moonstone Bay series.
00:29:59.000 –> 00:30:03.000
AJ Blythe: I think the book is called Brewing Up a Storm and it
00:30:03.000 –> 00:30:10.000
AJ Blythe: involves a yacht that seems to appear and disappear and one person from the yacht is found.
00:30:10.000 –> 00:30:12.000
AJ Blythe: But of course the yacht disappeared a year earlier.
00:30:12.000 –> 00:30:22.000
AJ Blythe: She has no memory of what’s happened because the whole island where the mystery is set is populated by people with mystic supernatural powers.
00:30:22.000 –> 00:30:28.000
Ava Ness: I think this sort of story, stories like the Waratah, they’ve got all the ingredients for the perfect mystery.
00:30:28.000 –> 00:30:32.000
Ava Ness: It’s A confined setting, there’s potentially hundreds of untold stories.
00:30:32.000 –> 00:30:34.000
Ava Ness: I mean, we’ve seen this with the Titanic.
00:30:34.000 –> 00:30:39.000
Ava Ness: There’s no witnesses, there’s no clear ending, and it’s almost the ultimate locked room mystery.
00:30:39.000 –> 00:30:40.000
AJ Blythe: It really is.
00:30:40.000 –> 00:30:48.000
AJ Blythe: And I actually wonder with the Titanic, whether the reason it’s become so big is because they did actually rescue some people from it.
00:30:48.000 –> 00:30:51.000
AJ Blythe: So they were getting firsthand accounts of what actually happened.
00:30:51.000 –> 00:30:53.000
AJ Blythe: Whereas with the Waratah, there is nothing.
00:30:53.000 –> 00:30:54.000
AJ Blythe: It is a complete mystery.
00:30:54.000 –> 00:30:56.000
AJ Blythe: There’s no, like you said, end to it.
00:30:56.000 –> 00:30:58.000
AJ Blythe: There’s nothing to close it off.
00:30:58.000 –> 00:31:04.000
AJ Blythe: And I think that’s why there are so many books that have that same sort of premise, because it intrigues us.
00:31:04.000 –> 00:31:05.000
Ava Ness: It does.
00:31:05.000 –> 00:31:10.000
Ava Ness: And I’m very grateful that we weren’t having to travel by ship in those times.
00:31:10.000 –> 00:31:13.000
AJ Blythe: Oh, me too.
00:31:13.000 –> 00:31:15.000
AJ Blythe: Well, thank you for joining me again, Ava.
00:31:15.000 –> 00:31:16.000
Ava Ness: It’s been a pleasure.
00:31:16.000 –> 00:31:23.000
AJ Blythe: For now, dear listeners, curl up with a good book and we’ll be back next week with the mystery of Canberra’s secret tunnels.
00:31:23.000 –> 00:31:25.000
Ava Ness: Oh, looking forward to that one.
00:31:25.000 –> 00:31:28.000
AJ Blythe: Thanks for joining the Down Under Mystery Club.
00:31:28.000 –> 00:31:33.000
AJ Blythe: If you enjoyed the show, follow so you never miss an episode and share it with a fellow mystery lover.
00:31:33.000 –> 00:31:38.000
AJ Blythe: We enjoy hearing from you, so drop us a comment at ajblythe.com/podcast.
00:31:38.000 –> 00:31:41.000
AJ Blythe: Until next time, club adjourned.
Â
