| History | |
|---|---|
 United Kingdom | |
| Name | Morning Star |
| Namesake | Morning Star |
| Owner | Lackersteen & Co.[1] |
| Builder | J.Scott & Co., Fort Gloster, Calcutta[2] |
| Launched | 26 August 1813[2] |
| Fate | Wrecked July 1814 |
| General characteristics | |
| Tons burthen | 135,[2] or 140[1] (bm) |
| Sail plan | Brig |
Morning Star was launched at Calcutta, India, in 1813.[3] She was wrecked on a coral reef south of Forbes Island, north Queensland in July 1814.
Morning Star arrived at Port Jackson on 10 June 1814 from Bengal carrying merchandise. She left for Bengal on 3 July.[4]
Loss: On 2 or 3 July 1814, whilst on her way from Sydney to Batavia, she was totally wrecked at 12°25′50″S 143°25′18″E / 12.4305°S 143.4217°E off the north Queensland coast. On 30 September 1814 as the ship Eliza was passing Booby Island she sighted a white flag flying on the island. Eliza sent a boat to investigate and found five survivors from the Morning Star that were stranded there.[5] The survivors stated that on 25 September Captain Robert Smart and nine other crew had left the Island for Timor in the longboat. There is no record of their arrival in Timor. Excluding the party with Smart and the five rescued by Eliza, it appears that 22 crew drowned in the wreck of Morning Star.[1]
The crew's usage of Booby Island as a refuge was the first recorded instance of such.[6]
Lloyd's List (LL) erroneously reported on 9 May 1815 that Morning Star, Smart, master, had wrecked on Booby Island in September while sailing from Port Jackson to Batavia. It also reported that the crew had been saved.[7]
On 7 September 1818 the ships Claudine and Mary rescued one of the ship's crew, an Indian lascar named Shaik Jamaul, from Murray Island (Mer), in northeast Torres Strait, where he had been living for four years.[8]
Bateson states that the owners of the ship were a Calcutta firm, Lackersteen (or Lackerstren) & Co.[7]
- ^ a b c Bateson (1972), p. 50.
- ^ a b c Phipps (1840), p. 105.
- ^ "Shipping Intelligence". Bombay Courier. 23 (1110): 390. 11 December 1813 – via Eighteenth Century Journals.
- ^ "Arrival of Vessels at Port Jackson, and their Departure". Australian Town and Country Journal, Saturday 3 January 1891, p.17. Retrieved 18 June 2012.
- ^ Nicholson (1996), p. 35.
- ^ Nicholson 1996, p. 272.
- ^ a b LL №4969.
- ^ Hitchcock, G. (2017). "Manuscript XXXII: The Final Fate of the La Pérouse Expedition? The 1818 Account of Shaik Jumaul, A Lascar Castaway in Torres Strait". The Journal of Pacific History. 52 (2): 217–235. doi:10.1080/00223344.2017.1335370. S2CID 164293629.