Football was the Easy Part

With the AFL frantically juggling to rearrange fixtures, this second story from Russell Kenery’s Book “Curious Voyages” is Perhaps a reminder - in order to live our lives to the full, rather than just exist, we need to accept a certain degree of risk.

In 1888, Port Phillip’s fishing hamlet of Mornington formed a Football Team. In those days clubs arranged matches casually and for the Queen’s Birthday long weekend of 1892, Mornington organised to play an “away game” at Mordialloc, 15NM up the bay.

Mordialloc Creek 1888

A Mornington player, 35-year-old professional fisherman Charles Hooper, offered to sail the team there on his boat PROCESS. The group voted for the boat trip but a few preferred to travel by train; the line recently extended to Mornington. Hooper’s boat was a 28ft double-ender, a popular design for commercial fishing because it has a lower freeboard for easier hauling in fishing nets and is less likely to snag on the ‘pointy stern. The PROCESS also had a yawl-rig, popular on fishing boats because it could be trimmed to follow a course despite minor wind shifts. Her beam was 8ft 6in, and her draft with lowered centerboard was 6ft. She had a mainmast 30ft tall, and a 19ft mizzenmast stepped close to the stern. Hooper was also a competitive yachtsman. He chose to use his racing configuration of a larger racing mainsail with a 28ft luff and 24ft foot, with his ordinary working mainsail on the mizzen plus a stem-mounted headsail.

On Saturday, 21 May, the football team enjoyed a pleasant sail up to Mordialloc in a moderate breeze, the match ended in a draw, and by the time the players re-embarked on PROCESS, it was just on nightfall. Three of the players who had sailed up from Mornington decided to return by train: one being the team captain, Tom Coxhall, who had suffered seasickness. An observer on the Mordialloc pier later said all on board were “sober and in good spirits.” A spectator heard Hooper say that “they expected to reach Mornington between 8 and 9 o’clock.” Also, that “with the fair leading wind, they’d be able to lay Schnapper Point at Mornington on one tack.”

The PROCESS set sail with fourteen men on board, including Hooper and his son Charles Jnr. Fishermen off the township of Frankston later reported seeing Process “sailing well and with some onboard singing in the darkness.” That was the last time they were seen alive.

Mark Young’s Pier Hotel Frankston c1888.
The PROCESS would have sailed through this view.

The train travellers arrived back in Mornington around 8 pm, and one, Henry Short, went along with a local fisherman Tom Hutchins down to the boat harbour to meet and greet PROCESS. A short, sharp storm brought a strong breeze as they waited, and Hutchins said, ‘it would have given PROCESS a shake.’ At 9:30 pm, there was still no sign of the boat, so Short went up to the home of Joseph Grover, whose son and brother were on PROCESS. A very concerned Grover set off at once by horse and buggy for Mordialloc, hoping the boat was still there. Meanwhile, Short re-joined Hutchins at the boat harbour then at midnight went to the home of Reverend Caldwell, whose three sons were on PROCESS. Caldwell roused Police Sergeant Murphy, and the small group waited until an exhausted Grover returned from his 40-mile round trip at 3 am, with the bad news that PROCESS had indeed sailed out of Mordialloc at dusk.

As more townsfolk became aware that PROCESS was missing, anxiety gave way to helpless panic, so friends and relatives began searching in the dark along beaches and around headlands. At dawn, fishing boats in numbers set off on a sea search and soon, not far north from Mornington, a half-submerged, upturned boat was found on Pelican Point, a reef off Mt Eliza. It was PROCESS, surrounded by broken masts, tangled rigging and flotsam. Fishing boats continued searching along the shorelines for survivors, and when none were found, one returned to Mornington with the devastating news.

Lying at the Mornington pier was the big yacht WANDERER, and she sailed to Pelican Point with some fishing boats. Small sea anchors were used to grapple PROCESS off the reef, and WANDERER slowly towed her, semi-submerged with only the bow showing, toward Schnapper Point and the Mornington boat-harbour. On the hull's surface, there were marks and scratches made by men clawing at it, trying to get a grip, before being swept away. When the hull was righted, the body of 19-year-old Alfred Lawrence was found, trapped under the gunwale, entangled by broken rigging. Throughout the day and for days after, search boats and skiffs from Mornington, Frankston, and other hamlets, searched the bay for survivors or bodies, but they only found football clothes, coats and some bags.

A Chart of Port Phillip from 1888

An inquest into the death of Alfred Lawrence was held and speculated as to the probable sequence of events. There were different opinions and theories. A witness, John Baunn, was the captain of the ketch MAGGIE in the vicinity that night and described the sea as moderate with a west-north-west breeze of 17 to 20 knots. Then, during the night, his craft was struck by a sudden gust, and he ‘had to shorten sail’. Another seafaring man had the opinion that PROCESS carried ‘an unusual press of canvas’, but another said that in fine weather and the hands of an experienced boatman like Hooper, there was not too much canvas. Another, the sailmaker who made Hooper’s large racing mainsail, said ‘that it would drown him someday.’ Investigation of the wrecked rigging found that a wire shroud, part of the standing rigging which holds the mast up, was broken along with the halyard used for hoisting and holding up the mainsail. The opinion of the captain of WANDERER, Mr. Peck, was that with PROCESS under full sail, most of the fifteen men would have been up on the windward gunwale, ballasting her upright. When hit by the strong breeze of the sudden squall, PROCESS would have heeled sharply then suddenly depowered when the standing rigging snapped, then capsized to windward under the combined weight of the men on the gunwale.

Shortly after the inquest, the bodies of James Firth and John Kenna washed ashore at Mt Eliza, then a week later, the body of young Charles Hooper Jnr came ashore at Rosebud. No other bodies of the Mornington football team were found. The tragedy had a devastating impact on the 800 townsfolk. It’s hard to grasp today not only the loss of brothers, fathers, uncles, cousins, mates but also the poverty and hardship from the loss of many breadwinners. Australia had no social security system, no widows pension. Mornington launched an appeal to raise money for the many dependents of the victims, and after extending the appeal to football clubs throughout Victoria, sixteen hundred pounds was raised.

Because the footballers had not had a burial, a public meeting voted seventy-five pounds for a memorial. An inscribed stone obelisk was erected at Schnapper Point Drive, where the range of view overlooks the boat-harbour and up to Pelican Point. There it remains today as an indelible part of Mornington’s history and a reminder of Australia’s worst sporting tragedy.

PROCESS, repaired after the accident & sailed out of Mornington by Charles Hooper’s fisherman son George

Russell Kenery lives on the Mornington Peninsula, he’s a yachtsman, an enthusiast for the heritage of boats, and author of ‘Matthew Flinders-Open Boat Voyages,’ and ‘Curious Voyages,’ an illustrated collection of true sailing tales. Copies of his books are available by contacting him here.

The watercolour painting and pen-sketch of PROCESS is by Andrew Murray, an illustrator with a lifelong love of maritime art & the sea.