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Trial Bay takes its name from the brig Trial which was wrecked there in 1816 and here we have collected contemporary reports on the disaster.
Sydney Gazette, 1st February 1817:
“By this arrival [the colonial vessel Mary from Port Stephens] we learn that a military party consisting of six men who had been dispatched in the Lady Nelson [this is the same vessel Grant commanded] for the purpose of ascertaining the grounds of a report communicated by the natives of a wreck to the northward, had hailed the Mary from the head of the north entrance, and been received on board. This party gave the account of their having fallen in with the wreck of the brig Trail, about fifty miles north of Port Stevens [Port Stephens], which must be somewhere near to Cape Hawke; and learnt from the natives that the people had constructed a boat out of the materials of the wreck, in which a large party went out to sea, but were swamped, and perished within their view. Others had taken to the bush, among whom was a woman with a young child - of any of whom not a single trace or vestige was to be discovered ! - The Lady Nelson had taken on board such of the trifling proportion of the cordage, &c., as had not utterly perished, and proceeded to Newcastle, from whence she may be hourly expected.”
Sydney Gazette, 8th of February 1817:
“On Thursday came in from Hunter’s River His Majesty’s Colonial brig Lady Nelson, Mr. White [or Whyte] commander, having previously ran down the coast in search of the wreck of a vessel which the natives had for some time past given it to be understood was upon a distant beach to the northward, as we mentioned in our last, and a further account of which will be contained in our next.”
Sydney Gazette, 15th of February 1817:
“We last week promised the narrative of the Lady Nelson’s excursion in finding the wreck of the brig Trial.
“Mr. White [or Whyte], Commander of the [Lady] Nelson, left Newcastle the 12th ult. for the purpose of running to the northward, to ascertain the fate, if possible, of some vessel which was reported by the natives to be on shore to the northward of Port Stephens. Mr. White [or Whyte] on the 14th discovered part of the wreck of the brig Trial on the beach of a deep and extensive bay in latitude 30 degrees 20 minutes South. A party of soldiers, who accompanied the excursion were for several days employed in running through the woods to ascertain the fate of the unfortunate persons who had been forced away by the wretches that had captured and taken away the vessel from hence. Every enquiry with the natives, however, proved abortive, further than that a part of the people who were stranded in the vessel built a small vessel out of her planks and timber, and proceeded to sea, but whether they went down or only disappeared from the view of the black spectators on shore, could not be collected from the descriptive signs and gesticulations of the natives who communicated the intelligence. The captain, passengers, and crew, it happens had endeavoured to get their way towards Newcastle, but no account has been further received; and the unfortunate woman, who it appears had secreted herself herself on board the Trial, is supposed to be still living among the natives, in a state the most distressing.”
Sydney Gazette, 22nd of February 1817:
“In what degree can be sufficiently ranked the hardihood of the miscreants who took away the Trial, and who by deliberately forcing away her master, crew, & passengers, have added to the premeditated crime of piracy the destruction of from eight to ten or more innocent and unsuspecting persons, by whose untimely destiny the calamity of the vessel’s loss has been so intensely heightened is scarcely to admit a parallel and in consequence of which a wise local regulation has been adopted of permitting no vessel , belonging to the port, who are in general but slightly manned, to lay any where down the harbour for fear of similar conspiracies and attacks. The unhappy seizure of the Harrington was destructive of the vessel and all that went in her; as the melancholy business of the Venus brig, which was cut out of Port Dalyrmple by Lancashire, and other prisoners, who were even aided by the mate Kelly, and part of the vessel’s crew. Without enumerating examples more remote, we have to observe that such attempts have never succeeded, and that they never can possibly succeed, as must be evident to any thinking man, whatsoever be his condition, who will only for a moment consider the extent of his rashness, before he shall impetuously commit himslef to its dangers, and embitter with the occasion of a fruitless repentance the remainder of an existence which cannot fail to be but very short indeed.
“In the example of the Trial, which is and it is hoped ever may remain the last of the disastrous catalogue, whose miseries would a little previous reflection upon the terrors of their crime have saved to all the persons who unhappily embarked in it; - among the least of which may be almost esteemed the nearly inevitable certainty of shipwreck on this long extended coast, every spot of which is inhabited or rather infested by barbarous hordes of savages, less merciful, than prior to the discovery to the discovery of this vast region it was possible for the imagination to attribute to any of the human species. Cast upon a shore too distant to afford the hope of recovering a habitable region, cold, or burning with the intensity of an almost vertical sun, deprived of food and water, and without the faintest shadow of relief or of resource, but from the building of a little incompetent vehicle which could promise nothing more than the exchanging of one destiny for another, what must have been their sufferings, and how less endurable their horrors at the approach of a destiny to which under circumstances so deplorable they were devoted, and ever in momentary expectation of, before the awful event took place.”
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