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The
Melancholy Loss of H.M.S. Sirius
off Norfolk Island March 19th 1790
watercolour
on paper; 18 x 22.8 cm
Pictorial Collection PIC 3312/1
The painting
is signed Taken from the Flagstaff on the Beach by G.W. Raper and
is a highly narrative painting in which Raper has assembled all the elements
of the story of the wreck. He has chosen to portray the most dramatic
moment, just after the Sirius struck the rocks and the masts were
cut away at Captain Hunter’s orders to lighten the ship. Her sails are
awry, her rigging is snapping and a trailing pennant traces the downward
path of her main mast. Lines of waves drawn with strong contrast churn
hungrily around the ship. The height of the waves as they hover over the
inshore rocks may be Raper’s allusion to the incoming king tide whose
sudden arrival was the precipitating factor in the loss of the ship.
On the left,
the curve of Sydney Bay sweeps round to Turtle Cove. The small island
between Turtle Cove and the Sirius is Nepean Island. In the closing
stages of Captain Hunter’s doomed efforts to tack out of Sydney Bay, he
made an attempt to steer towards the gap between Nepean Island and the
shore. The rocky shore of Nepean Island and the smallness of the gap,
as shown in this painting, are reminders of how desperate such an escape
route would have been.
Behind the
Sirius, the stern of the Supply can be glimpsed, as she tacks
out towards Phillip Island and the safety of open water.
This painting
differs from the other version by Raper in the British Museum with the
inclusion of the flag in the right foreground. The flag and flagpole may
have been included as a compositional device, to balance the motion of
the ship’s masts as they fall towards the right of the picture but their
inclusion may also refer to a narrative element—it would probably have
been from this flagpole that the blue and yellow signal was flown that
tempted the Sirius into the bay as it signified that boats could land
without any danger from the surf.
The loss
of the ship was a disaster for the settlements at both Norfolk Island
and Port Jackson, and a major setback for British interest in the region.
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