Schomberg

Meet the site

The Schomberg was, by reputation, the most perfect clipper ship ever built. Launched by Alexander Hall and Co at Aberdeen in 1855 for James Baines's Black Ball Line, she was a three-masted wooden clipper of 2,284 tons with luxurious accommodation and a design intended to make the run from Liverpool to Melbourne in sixty days. Her master was the celebrated and notorious James 'Bully' Forbes, and her maiden voyage was to be a record. Instead light winds held her up at the equator, and on 26 December 1855, after 78 days at sea, she drifted onto a sand spit off what is now Peterborough while, according to the passengers, Forbes was below playing cards. All 430 people aboard were taken off safely by the coastal steamer Queen the next day, but the ship could not be refloated and broke up over the following weeks. Forbes was tried for negligence and acquitted, but his career never recovered, and the wreck became a byword for hubris on the Victorian coast.

What survives on Schomberg Rock in about 10 m is heavily broken and concreted. No hull structure remains visible of a wooden ship lost in the surf zone 170 years ago; what divers see are the heavy items of cargo and fittings – railway bridge irons and large railway girders bound for the Victorian railways, iron tanks and pots, a mast, deck stanchions – lying in the gutters and cemented into the limestone, with small artefacts such as buttons and buckles visible in the concretion for those who look closely. The site is covered in kelp and other seaweeds and inhabited by the ordinary reef fish of the coast, with crayfish in the crevices. It is a short, shallow dive whose interest is almost entirely historical, and it is diveable only in the rare calm after northerly weather. The Schomberg is a protected historic shipwreck; a diamond ring recovered from the wreck in the 1970s and one of her anchors are displayed at Flagstaff Hill Maritime Museum, and an interpretive sign on the Great Ocean Road east of Peterborough marks the spot.

What you might see

Southern rock lobster, blue-throat wrasse, sea sweep, zebrafish, leatherjackets, kelp and mixed seaweeds over the concretion

Location

Heavily broken and concreted remains of the 1855 clipper on Schomberg Rock in Newfield Bay, just east of the Curdies Inlet mouth at Peterborough, in about 10 m.

Facilities nearby

Peterborough boat ramps, toilets and picnic area at Boat Bay, general store and pub in Peterborough, Schomberg lookout on the Great Ocean Road; no air fills – nearest Warrnambool.