Distressing situation of the 'Guardian' sloop, Captain Riou, after striking on a floating Island of...

Creator: Thomas Tegg (publisher) A hand-coloured print with gum arabic. The 'Guardian' was taking stores and skilled personnel to the straitened and newly established 'Botany Bay' convict colony at Port Jackson (modern Sydney). Eleven days out from Cape Town, on 23 December 1789, its rudder and part of its keel were torn off by striking on a submerged spur of an iceberg in the Southern Ocean, in longitude 41 degrees east. Only the brilliant seamanship and force of personality of the commander, lieutenant Edward Riou, got the ship back to Cape Town after half the crew abandoned ship (half of those being lost). This is a much later image from one of a well-known series of sensational pamphlets about 'dreadful shipwrecks' and not a factually accurate one: the ship is represented more as a frigate than a store ship. See also image number D7673.