During the 1850s John Mitchell senior and George Manning were trading in partnership carrying produce from the Hawkesbury to the Sydney markets with a small ketch of 13 tonnes called Valentine Ward.
Both were local farmers as well as shipowners, Mitchell at Lower Portland and Manning at Sackville Reach.
The ketch was too small for their needs and in 1856 they purchased the Williams River-built two masted ketch of 17 tonnes called Traveller.
They continued trading with the vessel for a number of years and when the partnership was dissolved Mitchell retained Traveller and Manning bought the 22-tonne ketch Maid of Australia from the Books family of Webbs Creek.
Traveller had a series of mishaps during her lifetime. In 1857 she sank in the Hunter River at Newcastle but was raised successfully. During the 1867 flood she was washed up onto the Chaseling property ‘Australian Farm’, at Leets Vale, where she was left high and dry nearly three hundred yards from the river. She remained there until a special carriage was made under the supervision of Thomas Greentree, a local shipbuilder.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported on 4 December, 1867: ‘‘A carriage was made, the wheels of which were cut from a hollow log, the axles being two ironbark trees twelve feet long. The cradle having been fitted, a tramway of logs was laid down and grooves cut in the wheels to prevent them slipping off. With this rough carriage and tramway the schooner was taken to the river over a sandbank from ten to twelve feet high and safely launched without having received the slightest damage from her long stay on terra firma.’’
Unfortunately for John Mitchell, just 18 months later the ketch was lost on the bar at Brisbane Water on November 22, 1868.
The Sydney Mail reported: ‘‘The ketch Traveller owned by Mr Mitchell, of the Hawkesbury River, was lost…on the Brisbane Water bar. The vessel under command of the owner was coming out with a cargo of shells bound for Sydney when the heavy sea running at the time sent her back among the breakers, where she went to pieces in an hour. After she struck, the master and two men were taken off the wreck a short time before it broke up by Captain Blair, of the ketch G.V. Brooke, who with considerable difficulty, managed to get his boat sufficiently close to enable Mr Mitchell and his crew to jump in, when he landed them near the residence of Mr Rock Davis of Brisbane Water…’’
The men received wonderful hospitality after the ordeal, but for John Mitchell, who was well-respected on the river, the loss of Traveller was a severe blow as the ketch was not insured.
- by Jean Purtell, for Hawkesbury Historical Society