page_title: Sir Charles Hardy Islands
section_title: Charles Eaton
hierarchical_section_title: Sir Charles Hardy Islands / Shipwrecks / Charles Eaton
caption_attribution_description: English: Identifier: tragedyofseasors01ellm (find matches) Title: The tragedy of the seas; or, Sorrow on the ocean, lake, and river, from shipwreck, plague, fire and famine Year: 1848 (1840s) Authors: Ellms, Charles Subjects: Shipwrecks Publisher: Philadelphia, W. A. Leary: Boston, W. J. Reynolds &amp; co. Contributing Library: The Library of Congress Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress View Book Page: Book Viewer About This Book: Catalog Entry View All Images: All Images From Book Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book. Text Appearing Before Image: ' Text Appearing After Image: DUPPAR BUYS IRELAND AND THE INFANT. 25 sufficient water for their consumption&#160;; and, as Ireland saysthey used a great deal, it must, at least, have yielded fifteenor twenty gallons a day, for the hole was always full. Upona voyage, the) carry their water in bamboo joints and cocoa-nut shells, like the Malays. After remaining here two months, the Indians separated.One party, taking Ireland and the infant DOyley with them,embarked in a canoe, and, after half a days sail, reachedanother islet to the northward, where they remained a dayand a night on the sandy beach&#160;; and, the next morning,proceeded, and reached another island similar to Pullan,low and bushy, where they remained a fortnight. Theythen proceeded to the northward, calling, on their way, atdifferent islands, and remaining as long as they suppliedfood, until they reached one where they remained a month;and then they went on a visit to Darnleys Island, whichthey called Aroob, where, for the first time, Ireland says, hereceived Note About Images Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and appearance of these illustrations may not perfectly resemble the original work.
context_page_description: Sir Charles Hardy Islands is in the reef of the same name adjacent to Pollard Channel & Blackwood Channel about 40 km east of Cape Grenville off Cape York Peninsula.
context_section_description: On board was Captain Thomas D'Oyly of the Bengal Artillery and his family. On its voyage from Sydney to India, it struck the Great Detached Reef, approximately 40 miles east of the Sir Charles Hardy Islands, on the outer Barrier Reef on 15 August 1834. Four of the crew succeeded in launching the only undamaged boat and were subsequently joined by two other sailors who swam across the reef. They set out for Timor but came ashore at what was then called Timor Laut, north east of Timor. Today the island is called Yamdena and it is part of the Tenimbar group of islands.
  Those abandoned at the wreck made two rafts, which separately set out for the mainland. The first raft reached a small sandy cay known today as Boydang, inhabited at the time by about 60 Torres Strait Islanders on a fishing expedition. The second raft, which left the wreck a week or more later, was intercepted by the islanders and taken to a small sandy cay called Wallace Island. The visiting Torres Strait islanders murdered all except two ship's boys, John Ireland and John Sexton, and the two young sons of Captain Thomas D'Oyly and his wife Charlotte. They were George, aged seven, and William, aged three. The Torres Strait islanders had only limited contact with white people in 1834 and believed that they were the ghosts of dead people and therefore already not in the land of the living. Only the four boys were identified as having potential trading value as the possible ghosts of dead islanders.
  They four boys lived with their captors for some months, when two of the boys, the ship's boy John Ireland and young William D'Oyly, were rescued by a husband and wife from Murray Island (local name Mer) in exchange for a bunch of bananas. They were Duppa and his wife Panney. They were able to identify Ireland and William D'Oyly as the ghosts of two relatives. The other two boys, ship's boy John Sexton and George D'Oyly, did not survive for long. Sexton was also murdered but George D'Oyly may have died from natural causes. The Murray Islanders treated Ireland and William D'Oyly with great kindness, from about October 1836 to June 1836, when the schooner Isabella arrived.
  Reports had started appearing in the international press that survivors of the "Charles Eaton" wreck were being held at Murray Island. The New South Wales colonial government was instructed by the British Home Office to send a rescue mission. They dispatched the colonial schooner "Isabella" for that purpose, under the command of Captain Charles Morgan Lewis. Ireland and William D’Oyly were handed over to Lewis in exchange for some gifts. Lewis returned with them to Sydney. The ship also carried back skulls, most of which were those of the murdered passengers and crew. Lewis took leave of absence to take the young D’Oyly back to England to be placed in the care of relatives.
caption: William D'Oyly being taken care of by a native named Oby. Illustration from The tragedy of the seas (1848).
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