Vindicatrix Boy

The move of The Navigator, the memorial to the vessel SS Admella from St Vincent Street to the Queens Wharf end of Timpson Street, Port Adelaide, has been completed on schedule for special commemorations on Wednesday, August 5.
                                        
With its large ship’s wheel, longitude and latitude markers, compass points and a new black granite block, The Navigator will be unveiled at a candlelight vigil at 5.30 am — the time Admella departed from Port Adelaide on her ill-fated voyage 150 years ago.
 
She was last seen at Semaphore, where she picked up three more passengers and a fireman, making a total of 84 passengers and 29 crew, who were about to face a tragedy that rivalled the sinking of the Titanic. 

Over the next eight days, 89 people lost their lives, but miraculously 24 survived, most of them hanging on to the wreck in raging winter seas all that time.
 
The Navigator, sculptor Karen Genoff’s brilliant depiction of the tragic sinking of Admella at Carpenter Rocks, will be commemorated at 11 am on August 5 and many of Port Adelaide and Semaphore’s maritime families will be among the large crowd expected to attend the commemoration.
 
This major South Australian history project is the result an enormous amount of dedicated work by Karen Genoff, the Land Management Corporation (LMC), the City of Port Adelaide Enfield and contractors Seacon and Tillets.

Karen, seen here taking delivery of a 2.5-tonne black granite block for the memorial, has a diverse and widely acclaimed body of public art work across Australia.

 
The move was funded and managed by LMC after a meeting with the Port Seafarers Memorials Committee, founded by Mayor Gary Johanson. Members of the committee include Keith Ridgeway, Rex Munn, Pat Perry, Kevin Jones, John Ford and Keith Shegog.
 
The refurbishment and moving of the sculpture has only been made possible through the generosity and hard work of LMC and its project managers.
 
The commemoration is an opportunity for those involved in the Admella 150 Festival, which starts on August 6, to come to Port Adelaide to mark the start of her last voyage.
 
The festival is being staged by the District Council of Grant, which includes Carpenter Rocks and Port MacDonnell; the Glenelg Shire Council; the City of Portland in Victoria; the City of Mount Gambier; the Wattle Range Council; and the District Council of Robe.

This oil painting of Admella in 1858 by James Shaw (1815-1881) is on display at the Art Gallery of South Australia.

SS Admella was a 55.6-metre steamship of 209 tons, fitted with three masts and sails. The name comes from the route she always sailed: Adelaide-Melbourne-Launceston.

For the full story of the Admella tragedy, described in the Australian press at the time as a national calamity, go to the historical research website Adelaide Proformat.

You can see Karen Genoff being interviewed by Ron Kandlelaars on Channel Nine’s “Postcards” show on August 9.

A 50-ton crane, dwarfing the masts of the 90-year-old ketch Failie, lowers the granite block into position.

Failie was on station at the entrance to Sydney harbour on the night of May 31, 1942, the evening three Japanese midget submarines planned to attack shipping under cover of darkness.

In the opening moments of the strike, Falie grazed one of the submarines lurking under the surface off South Head and reported the contact to command. 

She will remain at Queens Wharf as a fitting backdrop to The Navigator.