Published: 25 Jul 2024
MARITIME UNION OF AUSTRALIA
MEDIA RELEASE
25 JULY 2024
MV Noongah discovered 55 years after sinking in heavy seas off Smoky Cape
The MV Noongah was travelling between Newcastle and Townsville carrying steel when it encountered a storm and sank in heavy seas on 25 August 1969. With the assistance of an MUA crew aboard the RV Investigator, the wreck’s final resting place has finally been discovered by the CSIRO.
Now discovered lying at a depth of 170 metres, the Noongah was a 71-metre coastal freighter lost at sea in 1969 in one of the nation’s worst post-war maritime disasters. She was sailing from Newcastle to Townsville carrying a cargo of steel when a storm and heavy seas led to her sinking on 25 August 1969.
Tragically, 21 of the 26 crew on board lost their lives in the incident. Only one body was reported to be recovered and for almost fifty five years the wreck of MV Noongah had never been found.
The loss of MV Noongah led to one of the largest searches for survivors in Australian maritime history, involving navy and merchant vessels, aircraft, helicopters and shore-based searches of beaches along the coast.
The discovery of the Noongah is the second major discovery of an Australian shipwreck lost in recent living memory to be uncovered by the crew of the RV Investigator, coming after the discovery and mapping of the Blythe Star in April 2023.
CSIRO vessel RV Investigator
The location of the Noongah wreck has now been confirmed through a collaborative project between CSIRO, Heritage NSW and The Sydney Project.
RV Investigator is part of the Marine National Facility, national research infrastructure operated by CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, and funded by the Australian Government through the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS).
The ship’s crew are proud MUA members who perform strategically important work operating the Investigator’s precision equipment, machinery and systems during scientific voyages throughout the open ocean around Australia’s coastline.
While the Noongah discovery was a piggyback project undertaken alongside subsea geomorphology and current dynamics investigations, the work of finding and mapping the Noongah utilised many of the same equipment and skills honed during the mapping and documentation of the Blythe Star wreck last year.
The June 2024 investigation showed the wreck is sitting upright on the seafloor and is largely intact off Smoky Cape.
MUA crew operate precision optical and bathymetrical equipment aboard the RV Investigator alongside scientists from the CSIRO.
“We were lucky to have favourable sea conditions for the survey and our team was able to gather excellent bathymetry and drop camera vision of the wreck,” CSIRO Voyage Manager, Margot Hind, said.
The bathymetry data shows the wreck is sitting at a depth of 170 metres and is approximately 71 metres long, with the vessel dimensions, profile and configuration matching MV Noongah.
Drop camera footage from the RV Investigator showing the bow of the Noongah
The discovery was welcomed by MUA National Secretary Paddy Crumlin, who described it as an important closing chapter in one of Australia’s most tragic maritime stories.
“It was a terrible night and a dreadful, small ship,” Crumlin said. “The loss of the Noongah is possibly the worst peacetime maritime tragedy in Australian coastal waters,” he said.
“The Japanese torpedoed the Centaur hospital ship off Coolangatta with great loss of life in World War II,” he recalled. “But this was peace time. Among the Noongah crew was a 16-year-old deck boy on his first trip to sea. These people were just going about their daily jobs.”
The Union, through the unity of its rank and file members across the country, leapt in to assist families of the crew who perished.
“At the time, our union, the Seamen’s Union of Australia and the Australian Maritime Officers’ Union, made donations. Donations came from all over Australia. Seafarers levied themselves to assist the widows and we assisted their children in their education; in nurturing their lives, so they were able to move on and live their lives with dignity and some comfort despite the great loss they’d suffered through this avoidable disaster” Mr Crumlin said.
MUA Newcastle Branch Secretary Glen Williams commended the CSIRO and the MUA crew aboard the Investigator for the discovery and the careful and diligent way in which the news was first shared with Noongah crew members’ families and loved ones.
“The families are grateful for the knowledge of the ship’s final resting place. It means a lot to them to know their loved ones have not been forgotten and knowing where the ship lies has given them all great comfort,” Mr Williams said.
“While we no longer export steel from the Port of Newcastle, our region continues to ship out massive volumes of vital resources to the rest of Australia and the world, so the Noongah story is not an abstract one for Novocastrians and the many seafaring families who still call Newcastle home,” Mr Williams said.
The Branch has played a significant role in facilitating the notification of families and loved ones of seafarers who perished and those crewmembers who survived but have since passed away.
Recollections of a tragedy
Able Seafarer Bill Cockley was one of five survivors when the MV Noongah went down. Alongside 3rd Engineer Russell Henderson and crew mate John (Jay) Lingard, Bill told the Seamen’s Journal in 1969 of their struggle to survive, and later reflected on his experiences with the Maritime Workers Journal on the 50th anniversary of the tragedy, in 2019.
The bulky was listing badly when the call went out at 4:47am to abandon ship.
At 3.55am the ship’s captain had radioed for help after losing control in the heavy swell and 110 kph gale-force winds. At 4.47am he signalled again. The crew were abandoning ship.
With 26 Australian seafarers on board, the crew had just 14 minutes to escape before the Noongah and its load of steel went down.
“I had hardly completed tying my life jacket when the ship gave a shudder and then, almost instantaneously, disappeared,” Bill said. “I went down with the ship – for what distance I do not know; it seemed an eternity.” Crew mate Jay Lingard was yelling “She’s gone!”
He started to run.
“But the ship went so quickly I’d only got a couple of yards then the sea hit me,” he recalled.
3rd engineer Russell Henderson was partially thrown from the ladder to the boat deck.
“The ship gave one roll to starboard, hesitated and then went down by the head,” he said. “I was swirled around below, then broke the surface. I thought ‘You beauty’. Then I went down again.”
Surfacing, Bill heard his shipmate, greaser Ken McIntyre, calling to swim over to his life raft. It turned out to be the cover.
Moments later Jay surfaced. He drifted with a plank to Bill and Ken and they grabbed on.
The four men were tossed in the dark, heavy seas, when they heard someone calling for help.
“Ken (who wasn’t wearing a life jacket) swam off and brought back the chief cook, Thomas Ford,” said Bill.
“A little later, we heard another man calling out and, once again, Ken went out to assist. This time he did not return.”
Nearby, 3rd engineer Russell Henderson had also made it to the surface.
“We were in darkness, but could see lights from the men’s life jackets and hear them calling and cooeeing to each other,” he said. “I swam toward the nearest group and joined Jay Lingard, Bill Cockley and Tom Ford.”
Later, the chief cook, Tom, drifted off and away from the plank. Russell swam out and brought him back.
Not long after he drifted off again, taking with him the lifeboat cover. “We didn’t see him again,” said Bill.
When dawn broke, the men found themselves alone, well out to sea. Huge waves flung menacing debris at them.
They got hold of a lid and placed it under the plank for buoyancy.
By 10am that morning, the three men sighted a search plane far off. No one was looking that far from shore. Hours went by. They were thirsty. A rain squall came over.
“Now we’re going to get wet,” Jay quipped. Bill laughed.
“The rain was like hailstones hitting us in the face,” said Jay. “I kept looking at Russell and Bill, and among the thoughts that kept going through my mind were – how lucky a man can be to have two mates with him. Two men with more guts than he can explain… men he will call ‘friend’ for the rest of his life.”
By late afternoon they sighted a bulk carrier. They waved and called out. But it passed without anyone seeing them.
Finally, before dusk, after more than 12 hours stranded at sea, they sighted the Adelaide Steam bulk carrier Meringa.
“We started yelling and waving our arms,” said Bill.
“A couple of the crew waved back.” Crew threw life buoys on lines to the three survivors and they were pulled onto the ship’s side where they climbed up the gangway net.
On board, the crew gave them plenty of brandy, hot soup and blankets. Two other Noongah crew in life rafts had already been rescued by the search team.
Ken McIntyre was later given a medal posthumously for giving his life to save others.
Twenty-one men perished. Only one body was ever recovered.
More than fifty years later, Bill Cockley, one of only two survivors known to still be alive, lives down the South Coast of NSW, where he is a long-term volunteer with the local Marine Rescue station.
Looking back, he sees the sinking all in slow motion.
“I still think about it,” he said. “A lot. The night before things started to look bad. I went to have a shower around 5 or 6pm and the water was not running away.”
By the time Bill started the midnight watch the ship was listing. “I knew it was very bad,” he said.
“I talked to the mate on watch around 2am. ‘This ship is going,’ I said.” The 2nd mate shone a light. The deck was awash. The ship was taking water.
The crew worked on the bilge pumps and when the engine went dead, struggled to get it started. The captain was alerted and radioed for help. He got Bill to go down and get all the day crew on deck. “Getting the fellows out of their bunks proved a bit difficult,” Bill recalls.
“They could not believe anything was seriously wrong – until they got up, then they really noticed the list.” The men struggled to get the lifeboats out but, by this time, the ship was almost on its side and they were stuck.
Bill was not meant to be on the Noongah that night. He was rostered on the Iron Kimberley. But he had asked for a transfer rather than “pull a bodgy compo claim to get home” in time for his wedding.
As told to the Maritime Workers’ Journal in 2019 and the Seamen’s Journal in 1969.
ENDS
