'Tam O'Shanter', under Osmond Gilles charter, brings lively William Finke and first South Australia library books
Chartered by colonial treasurer Osmond Gilles (inset) for the voyage to South Australia, the Tam O'Shanter shared, with most of the South Australian first fleet of ships, the later fate of being wrecked – but its came earlier (in 1837) than the others.
The barque Tam O'Shanter was chartered by South Australia’s first colonial treasurer Osmond Gilles as one of the first fleet of nine ships carrying European settlers to the colony in 1836.
Built in 1829 in North Hylton, northeast England, the Tam O’Shanter sailed to India the next year under a licence from the British East India Company before becoming a West Indiaman trading between Bermuda and Jamaica. In 1835, Thomas Dobson bought her from Captain T. Lindsay.
Leaving London on July 29, 1836, with 74 passengers and captained by Whiteman Freeman, the Tam O’Shanter accompanied the HMS Buffalo, commanded by first governor, captain John Hindmarsh, to the new colony of South Australia.
Gilles travelled on the Buffalo. But he had a significant associate William Finke on the Tam O’Shanter. German-born (as Johann Wilhelm) Finke was a link to Gilles’ time as a merchant in Hamburg. Finke would make his mark in the new South Australian colony in a syndicate with Gilles that in 1839 won the right to buy land in the Adelaide founding suburb of Glenelg.
Finke was chief clerk to Gilles, and in 1839 was put in charge of mining galenafor his Glen Osmond Union Mining Company, the first mine for metal-bearing ores in South Australia and Australia. Finke became an explorer and pastoralist remembered as a sponsor, with the Chambers brothers, of John McDouall Stuart’s journeys.
The Tam O’Shanter arrived at Kingscote on South Australia’s Kangaroo Island on November 20, 1836. In December it took its passengers to the more suitable mainland settlement site at Holdfast Bay. The Tam O'Shanter ran aground on December 19, 1836, when it tried to enter the Port River at Port Adelaide.
While unloading the Tam O’Shanter, a trunk containing 200 books reported fell into Port River. The books were from the South Australian Literary Society, formed in London in 1834, and included 117 books provided by coloinial secretary Robert Gouger, who had arrived in the colony shortly before on board the Africaine. The books were recovered undamaged and became kernel of what became the state library of South Australia.
After months of repair, the Tam O’Shanter sailed on August 20, 1837, from Port Adelaide for Sydney, in ballast, under the command of Phillip Mitchell. A gale at the entrance to Bass Strait caused the already leaky hull to take in more water, and Mitchell decided to run with favourable winds southwards to the Tamar River estuary on Van Diemen’s Land to pump the Tam O’Shanter out. The now-waterlogged ship was driven east until the exhausted crew managed to drop anchor 18 miles away. The winds increased until the master was forced to order the cables to be slipped and the vessel run ashore where it was wrecked.