Maria massacre

History
United Kingdom
Name	Maria
Builder	Grand Canal Docks, Dublin
Launched	1823
Out of service	28 June 1840
Fate	Wrecked, Margaret Brock Reef, South Australia
General characteristics
Type	Brigantine
Tons burthen	135,[1] or 136[2] (bm)
Length	70.19 ft (21.4 m)[2]
Beam	20.99 ft (6.4 m)[2]
Draught	10.9 ft (3.3 m)[2]
Sail plan	Brigantine
Armament	Single cannon
Notes	Passenger ship

Maria was a brigantine of 136 tons, built in Dublin, Ireland, and launched in 1823 as a passenger ship.

On 26 June 1840 she sailed from Port Adelaide under orders for Hobart. Maria was commanded by William Ettrick Smith. With Smith sailed a mate, a crew of eight men and boys, and 16 passengers: four men, six women, five children, and a baby in arms. She wrecked on the Margaret Brock Reef, near Cape Jaffa in the colony of South Australia, somewhere south-west of the current site of the town of Kingston SE, South Australia, two days later. The wreck has never been located.

Aboriginal people on the Coorong murdered some or all of the survivors of the wreck as they journeyed to Adelaide, an event known as the Maria massacre. There were no eyewitness accounts of the killings, and accounts vary as to whether there were 25 or 26 victims; either way, it was the largest massacre of colonists by Aboriginal people in Australia. A punitive expedition, setting out from Adelaide and acting under instructions from Governor Gawler, detained the men believed to be responsible and summarily hanged two presumed culprits. This caused considerable controversy within Australia and back in Britain, as Aboriginal South Australians had been declared to be British subjects with colonisation of South Australia in 1836, and under this assumption were protected under British law.