BAMOS
Jun 2020
28
Article
The Maitland Gale—5 May 1898
Richard Whitaker
Email: weathersmart@optusnet.com.au
East Coast Lows (ECLs) are intense low‐pressure cells that
regularly occur off the east coast of Australia, including southern
Queensland, NSW and the East Gippsland coast of Victoria.
They can result from a variety of meteorological conditions,
including ex‐tropical cyclones moving south, or cyclogenesis
in‐situ as a result of atmospheric and maritime temperature
contrasts in the area. Typically we see around ten of these
annually and most occur during autumn and winter.
Over the years they have been responsible for many severe
weather events, with the NSW Coast in particular hard hit with
gale to storm force winds, flooding and coastal erosion from
extended periods of large oceanic swells. One of the more
tragic consequences of ECLs has been shipwreck with several
infamous maritime disasters resulting, particularly in the 19th
century before any sort of effective storm warning system was
operating.
A 2008 study by Griffith University academics Jeff Callaghan
and Peter Helman 1 discusses in depth the climatology and
intensity of severe weather events to affect the east coast of
Australia since 1770. They nominate the three most severe to be
The Cawarra Storm in 1866, The Maitland Gale in 1898 and The
Sygna Storm in 1974, all of which were named after the largest
ship wrecked during each storm.
Existing synoptic charts point to ECLs as the most likely cause
behind the Maitland and Sygna storms and contemporary press
descriptions make it highly likely that the Cawarra storm was
also an ECL event.
In this paper, the Maitland Gale of 5 May 1898 will be reviewed,
a storm that produced several shipwrecks as well as widespread
damage along the NSW coast between Sydney and Newcastle.
Fortunately this investigation has been assisted by the existence
of the Todd Weather Folios 2 , a detailed set of synoptic weather
charts kept by Sir Charles Todd, a South Australian meteorologist
and astronomer, from January 1879 to June 1909. One of these
showed the 1898 chart of interest to be reviewed here.
The event
Just before midnight on the 5th May 1898 the paddle steamer
Maitland left Sydney Harbour, bound for Newcastle. The
880‐tonne iron vessel was carrying 36 passengers and 32
crew, and soon after clearing Sydney Heads ran into a rapidly
escalating gale with rising winds and building seas.
The vessel was in trouble soon after, with crashing waves
eventually destroying one sponson house (a structure that
covered the paddle‐wheel) and this allowed seas into the hull.
It rapidly filled with water and extinguished the boiler fires. This
took out the steam engine and the vessel lost all power.
The SS Maitland tied up at Morpeth Wharf, circa 1895.
Source: State Library of New South Wales