NOVOCASTRIANS all know about Cockle Creek on Lake Macquarie. But what about the 'other' unknown Cockle Creek, once a busy centre of shipbuilding?
It's not near Newcastle, but it's in a suburb of east Gosford, on the Cockle (Kincumber) Broadwater.
Similar to our magnificent Lake Macquarie, it's part of Brisbane Water, stretching about 11 kilometres by seven kilometres wide with Gosford City at its northern end.
And tucked away a short ferry trip from Woy Woy, via the Cockle Channel, or by road off Avoca Drive, are some small waterside villages (the best known ones being Davistown and Cockle Creek), whose origins are all linked to early shipbuilding activity. Today, however, it's all long gone.
By comparison, I was impressed years ago on hearing of the Boyd family of Swansea. Their shipbuilding industry arc went from about the 1870s to 1953, with the best-known family member being shipwright James Lewis Boyd. He's credited with building 200 vessels at three sites on Swansea shores, including 24 ships for the US Navy in WWII and employing 150 people between 1920 and 1952. Like Gosford, there's no trace now of the extremely busy three Swansea shipyards (including Boyd's).
However, around Kincumber and Davistown it's a totally different story thanks originally to historian Gwen Dundon and her research decades ago on legendary local shipbuilders.
More recently, thanks to the Rotary Club of Kincumber, there's now also a Shipbuilders Heritage Walk. The three-kilometre path winds through bushland from a Kincumber reserve with a striking stainless steel skeleton of a ship's bow, to the Davistown foreshore. Along the way are mini-memorials, sandstone plinths paying tribute to the district (initially around Cockle Creek) being the region's early cradle of shipbuilding.
About 20 monuments are planned. One history book though lists an incredible 58 local shipbuilders (mostly small) over more than a century. It seems staggering that 500 registered vessels were built in and around Brisbane Water from the 1820s, but the real figure is estimated to be vastly higher.
One respected shipbuilder was Jonathan Piper (1810-1879), whose Newcastle family link I featured in Weekender a fortnight ago. While this industry pioneer wasn't the first actual shipwright to establish locally, today he is described as "the father of the Brisbane Water shipbuilding industry" for mentoring a tribe of apprentices.
The influential shipbuilder, whose wife had 14 children, owned a 10-acre block on Cockle Creek, Kincumber, moving to the area in 1829. Significantly, he was not an absent landlord like many others were, and soon taught his shipbuilding trade to others. Jonathan had two shipwrights working with him, but, to start with, he enlisted his four sons to help plus taught the Davis brothers, Rock, Tom and Ben.
By 1867, there were four boatbuilders at Kincumber. Jonathan alone built 22 registered vessels. Another nearby boatbuilder, George Frost, also constructed 19 ships, before he died aged 50. It was an era when boats were launched sideways into Cockle Creek.
From 1829 until 1954, shipwrights toiled at yards from Kincumber and Davistown to Bensville, Blackwall (near Woy Woy), Empire Bay, Daleys Point and even Terrigal. Here they built everything from ketches, to ferries and tugs to 27 pearling luggers and a Hawkesbury paddle-wheeler.
The most prolific shipbuilder of the area was Rock Davis Snr who established a major yard across the waters at Blackwall, just south of Woy Woy, probably in 1862. He also cunningly built a landmark "Big Shed", about 160ft (48.7m) long, resembling a huge New Guinea community hut to allow his employees to work in bad weather. Between 168 and 180 vessels were built here. Rock Senior died in 1904, but his son continued shipbuilding on site until 1913. The derelict Big Shed collapsed in a storm in 1923.
Earlier, clan patriarch William Davis had come to Australia in 1833. Five of his sons then became shipwrights. The Gosford suburbs of Davistown and Bensville are their legacy. In 1851, a son Ben Davis had bought 60 acres of land on the northern foreshore of the Cockle Channel (now Davistown) to establish a shipyard. It was further south of original Cockle Creek yards, but this waterfront area (around the present Central Wharf) was easier to work on vessels. He then sold some of his land to his younger brothers Thomas, Rock and Edward for them to establish shipyards.
Ben Davis built at least 49 craft here, mostly ketches and schooners before buying land on the opposite foreshore (today's Bensville) where he built a home and another shipyard. The exact number of ships he built at each yard though is unknown as all vessels were simply registered as being built at Cockle Creek. His last project was a barquentine, which was launched just before his death in 1883.
Fort-foot workboats were then built locally during WWII with some large fibreglass cruisers also in the 1990s. Anecdotally though, a sloop was the last wooden ship constructed on Brisbane Water in 1954, ending 125 years of such shipbuilding there.
All of which brings me to why this story should appear today, the day after Remembrance Day, or the former Armistice Day, when the artillery of World War I finally stopped at 11am on 11/11/1918. Last November, on Armistice Day, I visited Davistown RSL during a commemoration service to check out a story about a district ship's unusual wartime claim to fame. The construction started on Davistown foreshore before she went off in WWII, only to meet an untimely end.
The name of this historic vessel was the Patricia Cam, or 'Pat Cam' built by a Gordon Beattie. Residents fondly remember her as the last commercial timber ship built by a Brisbane Water shipbuilder. A large log for the timber ship's keel was cut and shaped on the Davistown waterfront, near the current ferry wharf. It was then towed south to the Palermo shipyard (now Daleys Point) where the ship was launched on November 30, 1940. The 121ft (36m) long wooden motor vessel was to be a tuna fishing boat, then became a Swansea channel collier before being requisitioned by the Royal Australian Navy for auxiliary minesweeping duty.
Now known as HMAS Patricia Cam, the 301-ton cargo vessel was based at Port Darwin. While supplying mission stations used as early warning coast watching operations, she was bombed by a Japanese float plane in January 1943 and destroyed. Nine of the 25 people onboard were killed in the attack.
Gosford locals now claim their auxiliary warship HMAS Pat Cam has the notoriety of being the only Australian navy ship sunk within Australian waters by enemy action.
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