British golden ship Madagascar found ?...

[OzSwampfrog]

Fantastic post and great tenacity on your part in tracking down various aspects you shared. Well done and thank you! Yes would love to see the pics of the bell inside and outside.

Thanks for responding. Yeah, I guess I got a bit obsessive with this old legend, but there were so many false stories about it that needed to be debunked. Here are two photos, one inside the bell. I've posted a close up of the symbols in a new thread.

Cheers,
OzSwampfrog

 

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[OzSwampfrog]

Just a few more explanations if anyone is interested. We know that a large bell had been mounted at the Benevolent Asylum for many decades. Various sources confirm that it was rung every morning at 6am, at mealtimes and on special occasions. It was mounted high outside the mess hall, a long rope had to be used to ring it. In 1946, when the Asylum closed and patients were relocated to the mainland, they wanted to take the bell to the new home, "Eventide", because patients were so used to hearing it being rung. They had to take the bell of the steamer "Otter" instead, which was retired from service the same year, because the Asylum bell had gone missing. The bell of the SS Otter is still kept at "Eventide" today.

Nobody knows for sure who took the old bell or what happened to it, but, years later, when Fraser Brown told people he had found a bell on the wreck in the swamp, which he said he had buried in the bush because it became too heavy for him to carry any further on the long way home, he was accused of having stolen and buried the Asylum bell. There is a manuscript on the subject in the island's museum from island identity Bonty Dickson in which he states that when the bell that was found again around thirty years ago, it could not have been a ship's bell, "because it had no ship name on it". Then he states "suddenly it dawned on me" that it was the same bell he "had heard for all those years", the missing Asylum bell. He simply jumped to that conclusion. Because one bell went missing, another was found, therefore it had to be the same bell. His conclusion that the bell that was found could "not be a ship's bell" however is plainly wrong. Many merchant navy vessels had bells with no names on them, often the larger foremast bells, because the ships also had a smaller stern bell and that was the one which often had the ship's name on it.

Dickson, like everyone else still alive today, had never seen the Asylum bell, only heard it. The President of the Islands Historical Society, a very nice lady in her eighties, who had grown up on the island, remembers hearing it too but states that she had never been allowed onto the grounds of the Asylum, so she too had never actually seen it. There are no photos of the Asylum bell, neither in the State Archives, in the Island's Museum, or anywhere else. We have no idea what it looked like. The Asylum bell had been mounted high up, outside the mess hall, for many years, at least since the 1890s but possibly earlier, until the Asylum closed in 1946. The undamaged Mess Hall building was dismantled and re-erected a short distance away, where it still serves as the Island's Community Hall today.

There was never a fire at the mess hall to which that bell could have been exposed. The bell found 30 years ago shows exposure to fire, along with a large missing piece, damage also normally also associated with exposure to great heat. Had Fraser Brown taken the bell and gone off into the bush to bury it, he would hardly have started a great fire to draw attention to himself while allegedly doing something so secretive. Any fire would have been seen all over the island. Typical bushfires on the island wouldn't generate very high temperatures for a prolonged time, which is the only way such a solid bell could lose a piece. Also, why would he have walked or rode such a long distance into the bush to bury it , into an area where he later wouldn't have been able to find it again? That doesn't make any sense at all, while the story that he had found it on a wreck and buried it there on the way back does. The bell is high quality bronze, almost a centimeter thick up where the part is missing. Only great heat could have caused such damage. The writing inside the bell, most likely left after A1 Certification inspection, also points to it being a ship's bell. Why would the Asylum bell have been A1 certified? Obviously, Fraser's story appears to be correct. It's a ship's bell.

One more point regarding the symbols inside the bell. Who would turn up a bell, and leave some quickly noted symbols inside? The only people I can imagine who would have done that would have been certification assessors, who would have had to check bells as part of any A1 assessment, because they were important safety equipment in those days. A pedantic assessor, afraid a bell might be swapped later for cheaper one and afraid of being accused of a negligent assessment,could have identified the bell he had passed with a few marks. Inside, where the normally wouldn't be seen.

The Madagascar was en route to London when she disappeared. Somebody commented earlier, "it's a big ocean", so she could lie anywhere. A group of investors however had paid to search the entire coast of New Zealand for wreckage not long after she disappeared. With no result. Another story tells that she was set on fire off the coast of South America. Why sail that far if the crew had intended to mutiny? There were reports of some of the suspected members of the possibly mutinous crew having been seen back in the goldfields of Victoria again the following year. Could they have got there so soon after slogging it across South America? Or had the ship been landed much closer to home? On Stradbroke Island?

I've added one more photo of the writing, from another angle. I also have a video of the moment I turned the bell over in which you can see it.

 

[Occului Nunc]

Here's an update on the Madagascar Ship Treasure: In search of the Madagascar frigate's treasure | Illawarra Mercury

They went for a look (remote atoll in the Tuamotus) and found some artifacts from a wreck. Sounds like they will be writing a book and may go back soon for another look - if they get financing.