Charles Eaton (1833 ship)

Reputedly a fine-looking wood barque, she was built in a shipbuilding yard at Coringa, near Madras in India, where she was launched in January 1833. Registered in London at 313 tons to carry 350 tons burden, she was built of the best teak, and had two flush decks, forecastle, bust head, and quarter galleries. She was coppered to the wales in chunam and felt.

She was named after a Captain Charles Eaton, a former ship's captain, trader and owner of several ships, who gave up the sea to settle ashore as the Port Master of Coringa, a town to the north of Madras. He died there in 1827. One of his daughters, Sophia, married William Gibson, at one time the manager of a shipbuilding yard in the region. Eaton's son, Captain Charles W. Eaton, took over his father's role as Coringa's Port Master from 1828 to 1838, and was the part-owner of at least three merchant ships.[3]

Charles Eaton, under the command of Captain Fowle, arrived in London with 1000 chests of indigo worth about £45,000. On 14 June 1833 Lloyd’s Shipping List had noted that: "The cargo saved from the James Sibbald, built in Bombay, and wrecked on reefs off Coringa in 1832, has been reshipped per Charles Eaton."

Advertised for sale in the Guardian and Public Ledger of London as late as 6 September 1833, she was bought by Gledstanes & Co for use as a fast sailing passenger ship capable of use for general purposes.[3]

Her first trading voyage from Saint Katharine's Dock in London was to the Australian penal colonies. Her passengers included an Irish lawyer called George Armstrong and 40 pauper children from the Children's Friend Society. Also on board was a young ship's boy called John Ireland, the only member of the crew who lived to tell the story of what happened to the Charles Eaton. She cleared the Thames River on 20 December 1833, and set sail the next day with favourable winds.[3] After a stopover at The Downs to collect more passengers from the village of Deal, she collided with another vessel.[3][4] She left Falmouth, England for good on 5 February 1834 with sundry cargo, including calicoes and lead.[5][3]

Charles Eaton was en route from Sydney to Singapore by way of the Torres Strait. She had made two stopovers in Australia, at Hobart Town and Sydney. At Hobart Town she obtained new passengers returning to India after two years' sick leave: Captain Thomas D'Oyly of the Bengal Artillery, his wife Charlotte, his two sons George and William, and their Indian ayah (nurse). The barque left Sydney on 29 July 1834 and was wrecked on the Great Barrier Reef near the Sir Charles Hardy Islands on 15 August 1834.[3]

Five of the crew took one of the quarter boats and set out for Timor but were subsequently taken captive at an island then called Timor Laut, but now called Yamdena, part of the Tanimbar group of islands.[3]

Those remaining at the wreck made two rafts, the first of which set sail with all the passengers, Captain Moore, surgeon Grant, steward Montgomery and two strong sailors to man the oars. They reached a small sandy cay now called Boydang, inhabited at the time by visiting Torres Strait islanders, who killed all the adults and kept their skulls for their daily ceremonial rituals.[3] Only William and George D'Oyly were spared.

The second raft left Charles Eaton's wreck with the rest of the crew and they, too, were murdered and beheaded by the visiting party of islanders.

Of the 27 people and the ship's dog, Portland, remaining with the wreck, only four boys initially survived. The rest were killed by Torres Strait islanders. They were the two young ship's boys, John Ireland and John Sexton, and the two D'Oyly children, George, aged seven, and William, aged three. Sexton and George D'Oyly died soon after, the latter possibly from natural causes.

John Ireland and William D'Oyly lived with their captors for some months, and were eventually exchanged to a couple from Murray Island (local name Mer) in the Torres Strai, for a bunch of bananas.

The two boys were treated with kindness by the Murray Islanders and lived with them from about September/October 1834 until June 1836.

The rescue of William D'Oyly, 1841

On 3 June 1836 the schooner Isabella, commanded by Captain Charles Morgan Lewis, was dispatched from Sydney to make a search for reported survivors of the Charles Eaton being held captive at Murray Island. The Isabella arrived at Murray Island on 19 June and the two survivors were handed over to Captain Lewis, who returned with them to Sydney. The ship also carried back 40 skulls, 17 of which were believed to be those of the murdered passengers and crew.

Captain Lewis took a leave of absence to take the young D’Oyly back to England to be placed in the care of relatives.