03/11/2021
On this day 1927...
The wooden ferry Greycliffe was a commuter ferry whose run took it from Circular Quay to Watsons Bay daily transporting workers and school children to and fro across the harbour. Built in Balmain in 1911 it was less than 20 years of age at the time of the accident. The ship it collided with the Tahiti was a 7000 ton steel hulled passenger liner.
The Greycliffe was on its usual run from Circular Quay to Watson Bay and had just picked up the workers from Garden Island Dockyard and was heading towards Watsons Bay. It was a fine November afternoon, calm, no fog, no storm with good visibility.
The Tahiti an ex WW1 troop ship built 1904, was departing for New Zealand then onto America, leaving the Harbour from the Quay at half speed and after rounding Bennelong Point increased speed to 12 knots, the Harbour has a speed limit of 8 knots.
The deadliest accident on the Harbour to date occurred off Bradley’s Head when the ships cut across each other’s paths. The Greycliffe was half way rolled/capsized but then cut in half with the halves on either side of the Tahiti filling with water and swiftly sinking. The quickness of the sinking contributed to the large number of people drowning. The Greycliffe took to the bottom of the Harbour a vast x-section of the community with her. Amongst the dead were 6 school aged kids aged between 11 and 15, The Science Master of Sydney Boys High School, x3 Doctors, x3 RAN personnel, x7 tradesmen from Garden Island dockyard, x6 holiday makers from NSW and Vic., an architect, x3 retired gentlemen, x7 housewife’s, a x6 time Mayor of Leichhardt and the first woman in Australia to get a pilot’s licence.
Captain Barnes (52) on board the Greycliffe had 10 years experience doing the ferry run and had 30 years experience on Port Jackson.
The captain on board the Tahiti, was Captain Basil Aldwell (late 40’s) was using the services of a local Pilot, Captain Thomas Carson who was at the helm. Carson was to get the ship out the heads and then to transfer to a smaller boat to return to Watsons Bay when the job was done.
Both Captains were questioned during the inquest on the 10th January, 1928, and each blamed each other for the accident. The speed of the Tahiti, was a mitigating factor but no charges were laid. Both were residents of the Watson Bay area and both became persona non gratia in the area. The locals wanted answers and the inquest did not give them any.
Many of the Greycliffe Accident victims are buried at South Head Cemetery Betty Sharp was buried here at Waverley.
The process of recovering the dead, particularly given the age of some of the victims, was distressing for those involved. The emotional impact still resonates through old newspaper accounts, and some of the stories have a lingering power, as is demonstrated in the vivid description of how 15-year-old Betty Sharp was found:
Diver W. Harris on Saturday related the strange circumstances in which he found the body of the schoolgirl, Betty Sharp, in the wreck of the Greycliffe. “Just before finishing work on Friday,” he said, “I decided to have a look around a portion of the wreck which had not hitherto been explored. You can imagine my feelings,” continued Diver Harris with emotion, “when the figure of the little girl, standing upright, and with outstretched arms, loomed up before me. Her clothes were torn to shreds. Further investigation revealed that one of the feet of the little girl had become jammed between a mass of twisted steel rods. I wrote on a slate, ‘Have found the body of a little girl’, and sent the message up to my tender on the pontoon. After a great deal of difficulty, I managed to release the imprisoned foot, and the body was then sent to the surface.”
Diver Harris mentioned that as soon as he got close to the body he knew It was that of Betty Sharp for whom anguished inquiries had been made daily at the Water Police Department. (Sydney Morning Herald, 14 November 1927.)
One victim among many, her story gives us a sense of the enduring impact of loss that remained after the all the bodies were recovered and the wreckage cleared away.
Betty Sharp. Elizabeth O’Connor Collection.
Christened Hazel Beatrice Sharp, the little girl born in 1912 at Greenwich to Arthur Sylvester Ramsay Sharp and Olive Beatrice Barrow was always known as Betty. Her family had deep roots in Sydney and the newly formed Commonwealth. Her paternal grandfather, William Sharp, had been the Member for Redfern in the NSW Legislative Assembly, representing the new the Labor party. He notably argued in Parliament with Sir Henry Parkes and supported equal pay for women who worked in the railways.
William and his wife Eliza lived in Raglan Street, Mosman, with a view that looked directly East across to the spot in the Harbour where the Greycliffe collision occurred off Bradley’s Head. Betty’s maternal grandfather, Isaac Le Pipre Barrow, was a surveyor and map maker who worked for many years in the NSW Lands Department. He surveyed and mapped much of the Blue Mountains.
Her family lived at Girraween, 28 Parsley Road, Vaucluse. Betty’s mother Olive was a vivacious and attractive woman, a gifted pianist who spoke French and had refined artistic tastes, known and loved by everyone in the street. Betty herself took strongly after her mother – athletic, outgoing, with a warm charm that speaks to us even out of the static medium of old photographs.
A friend would recall of her decades later that ‘Betty was always busy doing things… a very bright, active little girl with light coloured hair’. She was a champion swimmer and member of the Girl Guides – poignantly, the only personal effect recorded as recovered with her body was a Girl Guides’ badge with ‘BS’ scratched on to the reverse side.
In the wake of the disaster, the community drew together. Her body was identified by close family friend Thomas Hammond, also a Vaucluse resident. Betty was buried on the afternoon of Sunday, November 13 at Waverley Cemetery, and Olive had cards printed on behalf of Betty’s brother Neville and herself in response to the outpouring of support they received, simply and gracefully acknowledging the ‘sweet sympathy’ expressed by others on their loss.
In later years, Thomas Hammond – the family friend who provided the identification – would see echoes of Betty in the niece she never knew. Elizabeth, Neville’s daughter, recalls ‘Uncle Rob [Hammond] always called me “Betty” as a child, he was the only person to ever do so.’
The ghostly image of the lost girl in the wreck with arms outstretched, as if in appeal, is a powerful and enduring impression of one of the Greycliffe’s victims. Many years later William Harris, the Harbour Trust diver who found her, met Neville’s wife and confirmed the version the newspapers had printed in 1927 about the circumstances of her recovery.
Betty resonates as a symbol of the human toll of a tragic accident, but it is only a part of the story. Alongside it is the enduring brief but potent impression Betty left upon her family and friends, who knew her in life as the ‘bright, active little girl’ who was ‘always busy doing things’, whose brilliant smile still conveys warmth and charm.
