Isabella, Cape Nelson

Meet the site

The Isabella was a three-masted wooden barque built at South Town, Yarmouth, in 1826, 89.7 feet long with a beam of 24 feet. She arrived in Hobart from London in February 1837 with a cargo of sheep, called at Launceston, and on 21 March sailed from George Town for the new settlement at Adelaide. On 1 April 1837 her master, Captain John Hart – later a Premier of South Australia – mistook Cape Nelson for Lady Julia Percy Island at the head of Portland Bay in poor visibility and ran into the eastern cliffs of the cape. All 25 people aboard got away in the longboats and were taken in by the Hentys at Portland, whose settlement was then barely three years old. She was the first recorded wreck at Cape Nelson and is one of the oldest located wrecks in Victoria, five years older than the Children at Childers Cove and contemporary with the Thistle at Port Fairy.

After nearly two centuries in the surge zone under a basalt cliff, the Isabella is an archaeological site rather than a wreck to look at. The Scuba Doctor lists it in about 10 m for Open Water divers, sheltered on the eastern side of the cape, and notes that the GPS mark may vary and the sounder should be used to find the site; what is there is ballast, iron fittings and fastenings in the boulder gutters at the cliff base, with the basalt reef around it carrying the kelp, sponges, crayfish and reef fish of Cape Nelson generally – wrasse, morwong, sweep, leatherjackets, catsharks. Devils Kitchen, a named reef site, is 325 m to the south. It is a dive for people interested in the earliest years of Victorian settlement, best combined with Flat Rock and the lighthouse reefs on a calm day out of Portland Harbour, and it is a protected historic shipwreck on the Discovery Coast section of the Historic Shipwreck Trail; nothing may be disturbed.

What you might see

Southern rock lobster, black-lip abalone, blue-throat wrasse, banded morwong, sea sweep, leatherjackets, draughtboard sharks, kelp, sponges and ascidians on basalt

Location

Site of the 1837 wreck of the wooden barque Isabella under the eastern cliffs of Cape Nelson, 325 m north of Devils Kitchen, in about 10 m; one of the oldest located wrecks in Victoria.

Facilities nearby

Portland Harbour ramps with trailer parking, toilets and showers at the Lee Breakwater; Portland SCUBA for air, gear and courses; Portland town facilities, fuel and accommodation.