Tim the Yowie Man delves into the violent ends and apparent murder amid the chaos of the Walter Hood shipwreck near North Bendalong, NSW.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 [Music]
00:06 On his strolls along the beach, Alan also walks past the final resting spot
00:12 for some of the victims of the Walter Hood.
00:15 But it wasn't the first place they were buried.
00:19 So Alan, this wasn't the first marker of graves from the victims of the Walter Hood, was it?
00:25 No. Originally it was down closer to the water at the entrance to the creek.
00:30 And why did they move it?
00:32 Because it had eroded and the bones, the remains were showing.
00:37 The remains were showing?
00:38 Yeah.
00:39 So they exhumed all the remains and brought them up here?
00:41 That's right. This is a graveyard, not just a memorial.
00:45 So how many people's remains would be at this graveyard?
00:48 I think there's nine. I think there are nine names on the plaque.
00:53 And there's a story about the captain, isn't there?
00:55 The captain, did he or didn't he lose his arm and/or finger during the wreck?
01:01 Yep. Reasonable circumstantial evidence now that in fact he was murdered.
01:05 Murdered by who?
01:06 Murdered by the crew. They blamed him for the wreck.
01:08 And they murdered him during the process of the wreck?
01:10 Yep.
01:11 How did they do that? Or how was it thought they did that?
01:14 He fell overboard or was washed out of his cabin and was trying to regain the ship and he never made it.
01:22 So they pushed him under?
01:24 That's your interpretation.
01:26 It's yours?
01:28 Yeah. They took the axe in fact that they used to fill the mast and they just chopped it off, which is why an arm was found.
01:35 The arm washed ashore a couple of days later, but what was found after that was the hand with the ring on it.
01:42 And that ring belonged to the captain?
01:46 Yeah, well, in theory. It's got his initials on it, but it's got a random additional initial that nobody can really explain.
01:54 So when this monument was opened up in 1927...
01:57 57 years after the wreck.
01:59 57 years after the wreck, one of the survivors of the wreck was here that day.
02:03 He was.
02:04 And who was that?
02:05 He was a West Indian sailor at the time, but later became a tenorant preacher up around Newcastle.
02:12 And yes, he came back for it and he was the one who actually implied that the captain was murdered.
02:18 Right here in front of everyone at the opening of the new monument?
02:21 Correct.
02:23 [Music fades out]
02:25 [BLANK_AUDIO]