QUEENSLAND'S GERMAN CONNECTIONS - PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

rufus king: marine mishap or act of war?

These plain-looking vessels, originally from a pre-war British design, were being mass-produced in 18 different American shipyards from three pre-fabricated sections welded together. Liberty Ships were already known for their tendency to break apart – either from poor welding, brittle steel or hard pounding in rough seas – so the quick and clean split of Rufus King came as little surprise.

Matthew Flinders had been the first to find his way into Moreton Bay from the northern end, between Bribie and Moreton Islands, in 1799. But the early colonists who followed found the labyrinthine sandbanks less attractive than the comparatively straightforward bar at the South Passage, between Moreton and North Stradbroke. The first outbound vessel crossed in 1822 and an official pilot station was established at Amity Point in 1826. Wind, weather and tide made it a fickle, sometimes risky, crossing. The loss of the paddle steamer Sovereign on 11 March 1847, after a week’s delay and several attempts thwarted by big seas, was enough. Pilotage was moved to Bulwer, on Moreton Island, the northern entrances marked, a lighthouse erected on Cape Moreton and the South Passage closed to shipping. Poor visibility and rain, however, could continue to deceive ships’ masters – just as they had Cook in 1770 – into mistaking Point Lookout on North Stradbroke for Cape Moreton; during 1853–1889 no less than half-a-dozen vessels came to grief on the South Passage. And it was drizzling rain during the night of 7/8 July 1942, as the American ‘Liberty Ship’ Rufus King approached Brisbane with a cargo of vital war materiel from Los Angeles – and, reported The Courier-Mail on 14 September 1946, “a busted compass”.

Deputy Chief Commonwealth Salvage Officer Captain James W Herd led a 200-strong team of Australian and US Army Medical Department personnel in the recovery of the ship’s cargo, the Americans based at Amity and the Aussies on Reeder’s Point. Despite the challenging conditions, more than 85% of the Rufus King‘s cargo was retrieved, including all the aircraft and the even more pre cious sterilisers and medical equipment. Locals claimed any thermos-flasks of coffee and fresh hospital bedsheets washed-up on the beaches as spoils of war and put them to good use! The drifting 330ft (100m) long forward section was taken in hand for salvage; within four months, it had been sealed, towed into the Brisbane River and converted into its surprising second life. “We worked on the Rufus King … sometimes day and night,” Graham Mackey recounted in Peter Ludlow’s book ‘Moreton Bay Reflections’ (2007), “… we could see [it] was about to become a magnificent floating workshop … a lathe had been installed … also a massive drill machine … toilets, basins, sinks wash tubs, etc and all types of machinery to do all sorts of jobs … also boilers to generate electricity. We left the ship before she was finished … last report we heard was that she was moored off Finschafen up in New Guinea.” The Courier-Mail reported Captain Muller was taken back to America under arrest; others said he was incarcerated there for the rest of the war. Graham Mackey heard at the time: “we were told by a Yankee officer that the skipper … was a German descendant and had run her aground purposely.”

Dimensions (Rufus King / typical): length 441ft 6in (135m) 107.1m, beam 56ft 11in (17.3m). draft 27ft 9¼in (8.5m); 14,400 tons; speed: 11 knots Hull number: 0280 (of 2,710 built) Aboard Rufus King were nine crated B-25 Mitchell bombers plus aviation fuel, and medical supplies and equipment sufficient to outfit three army field hospitals totalling more than 4,000 beds (or more than 17,000 boxes in all). Bear in mind that the Japanese were on Australia’s doorstep to the north, and the Battle of Midway had been fought only the previous month; the Second World War still hung very much in the balance. Captain Muller, his crew of almost 40, and vital cargo aboard a ship less than four months old, came to an abrupt halt in less than four fathoms (7m) of water, barely 18 miles (30km) from their destination. As rescuers began taking off her crew, 12 hours later the Rufus King broke in two.

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