HMS Porpoise 1803
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Marker: recorded wreck position (Age of Sail).
Key facts
| Name | HMS Porpoise | Wikidata label |
|---|---|---|
| Year lost | 1803 | English Wikipedia lead text (year following a loss verb, parsed) |
| Era | Age of Sail | derived from year |
| Ship type | sloop-of-war | Wikidata P31 instance of |
| Nationality / flag | Spain | Wikidata P8047 country of registry |
| Operator | Royal Navy | Wikidata P137 operator |
| Sea / ocean | Coral Sea | Natural Earth marine areas (public domain), point-in-polygon |
| Position | -22.1939, 155.3558 | Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0) |
About the wreck
HMS Porpoise was a 12-gun sloop-of-war originally built in Bilbao, Spain, as the packet ship Infanta Amelia. On 6 August 1799 HMS Argo captured her off the coast of Portugal. Porpoise wrecked in 1803 on the North coast of what was then part of the Colony of New South Wales, now called Wreck Reefs, off the coast of Queensland, Australia.
Diving & visiting
On 10 August 1803, Porpoise left Sydney under the command of Lieutenant Robert Fowler and in the company of Cato, under Captain John Park, and the East Indiaman Bridgewater, under Captain Palmer, bound for India. On 17 August the three ships got caught near a sandbank, 157 north and 51 miles east of Sandy Cape. With shrinking leeway, both the Cato and Porpoise grounded. Both ships beat on the sharp coral, with the result that they sank quickly. Bridgewater sailed on and later reported both ships lost with no survivors. The crew and passengers of Cato and Porpoise were able to land on a sandbank as both ships broke up.
Matthew Flinders, who was returning to England as a passenger on Porpoise, together with his charts and logbooks, believed that Captain Palmer sailed on despite knowing that the other two ships had…
In 1965 Ben Cropp found the wreck sites of the Cato and Porpoise (22.1939°S 155.3558°E / -22.1939; 155.3558 (HMS Porpoise wreck site)) at Wreck Reefs after extensive research and only fifteen minutes of actual diving. The site is now a protected area with the designation dating to 29 April 1992.
Location
- Recorded position: -22.1939, 155.3558 (Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0); may be approximate)
- Sea / ocean: Coral Sea
Wreck positions on this site are for interest only and are not for navigation. Many wrecks are war graves or legally protected: never disturb human remains or remove artefacts, and check local law before diving.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article HMS Porpoise (1799) (revision 1327159952), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section and section(s) “Wreck and loss”, “Wreck site”; condensed by selecting paragraphs; citations and formatting removed. No text added. This excerpt is available under the same licence.
Wreck facts from Wikidata (CC0).
Nearby wrecks
- HMS Echo 1820 · 111 km
Browse more: Open ocean wrecks · Coral Sea · Age of Sail