SS Alert
SS alert found off Cape Schank.
The SS Alert was an iron screw steamship that foundered in a severe gale off Cape Schank, Victoria Australia on the 28th December 1893, resulting in the loss of 15 of the 16 people on board.
While designed as a steamer, for the ship’s journey out to Australia, SS Alert was converted to a three-masted schooner with its funnels stored in the hold. The Alert arrived in Melbourne on the 30 May 1878. The SS Alert was overhauled and refitted back to a steamer and was put on the regular route between Melbourne, Port Arlington and Geelong. For the next sixteen, mostly incident-free, years the Alert plied the waters of Port Phillip.
On 23 December 1893, SS Alert made a routine trip from Melbourne to Gippsland, arriving in Bairnsdale on Christmas day. Loaded up with 44 tons of cargo, a light load, SS Alert began the return journey from Bairnsdale bound for Melbourne, under the command of Captain Albert Mathieson, with a crew of eleven in calm conditions on 27 December 1893. Conditions were so calm, Alert was forced to stop near Wilson Promontory as the fog was too dense to see the light from the lighthouse at Cliffy Island.
Alert Foundering
Source: State Library Victoria
Once the fog lifted, Alert rounded Cape Liptrap to encounter a large south-west swell and strong south-east wind. By the time Alert rounded Cape Schanck the wind was gale force from the south-west. Captain Mathieson attempted to turn Alert to the north-west towards Port Phillip Heads but as the vessel came about, a wave crashed over the port side.
Water poured in through stokehole covers and a pantry door in the galley. The water put the fires out in the ship’s boiler room and the Captain gave the order to abandon ship. Alert was last seen from the Cape Schanck lighthouse at 3:40 p.m. before disappearing into thick rain and squalls. The steamer sank stern first at about 4.30 p.m. in the afternoon in weather so terrible that no-one saw the vessel founder. The ships cook, Robert Ponting, was the only survivor when he grasped a portion of a cabin door and clung to it for sixteen hours before being washed up on to the Sorrento back beach about 15 km from where the Alert foundered. That morning Ponting was found unconscious and half-buried in the sand by a doctor on holidays who revived him
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKDHbeD35TQ.
Alert was found by Souther Ocean Exploration in 2007 after 113 years lost . IANTD Divers led by Instructor Trainer Mark Ryan have documented this remarkable wrecksite. Being 75 metres deep, diving the Alert is only for very experienced trimix and rebreather divers. The diving conditions in Bass Strait are difficult, with exposed seas, poor visibility and strong currents. Calm conditions are required to dive the Alert.
The site of the Alert is a historic shipwreck protected zone declared under the Australian Government’s Underwater Cultural heritage Act 2018, with a 500 metre radius from:
-38.486944, 144.750556.
A permit from Heritage Victoria is required to dive the Alert. Anchoring is prohibited.
SS Alert Bell
IANTD Divers exiting Port Phillip Heads on Way to Dive SS Alert