The Knives of Victoria's Shipwreck Coast

I really enjoyed reading your post, Chin. Fascinating history and great pictures - that coastline is gorgeous. Thanks very much for taking the time to do it.
 
I, too, thoroughly enjoyed your informative posts about the shipwrecks and their knives. :thumbup::cool::thumbup:
Chin, your time, effort, and enthusiasm are much appreciated!

- GT
 
That was awesome Chin.
Thanks.Ive been to Loch Ard gorge and the 12 Apostles. I theres 13 nowdays . Magnificent in a relentlessly pounded by the ocean way.
Exeter museum in the UK has a collection of spearheads from Western Aus made in the 1800s from discarded glass bottles and ceramic insultors from the telegraph.
Chipped and shaped the same way as flint.
 
Wow, I woke up this morning and was astonished to see your kind comments! Thanks so much all, for taking the time to add your posts to this thread!

Gev, a geologist I'm not, but I take your words as a high compliment, my friend. Like others here who have commented recently in the EDC thread, as soon as I could read, I was off and away, devouring everything I could get my hands on. Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology was one of those books, for me, that really changes the way you see the world around you (and is infused with the ardent spirit of inquiry of those early British scientists - not at all as dry as it sounds). Australia is, I would imagine, a geologists wonderland.

I actually augmented my own photos with some knife images from those museums on the Victorian Collections digital database - hence the good picture quality.

cbr1000, Ratbert and Modoc ED - thanks for your posts.

You're right, it was remiss of me not to include the Minton Peacock. There's actually quite a bit of material that didn't make the cut - in writing longer posts I usually digress onto other subjects in my rough notes, then come back later and condense it all down, trying to keep the focus strictly on knives. Given that I've been pleasantly surprised by the reception of this piece - I'll feel a bit more comfortable in broadening the scope a little in future.

The Minton Peacock's a fascinating story though. I guess the gamut of cargo on those ships was representative in a way, of the layers of social class that were always there in Australia, but were becoming more evident with the vast influx of wealth from gold, wool and the attendant mercantile trade. As well as, say, shipments of crates of German pianos, perfumes and precious objets d'art for the leisured classes, you had a ballast layer (quite literally) of quotidian items like nails, lead shot, grindstones, extruded wire, and cast steel railway line, for the workers, tradesmen, farmers, hunters and merchants of the fast expanding city. Pocketknives of various types spanned all these social strata.

Another photo -


Jack, thanks for those links and those great knives - that's just what I was hoping to see. As always, my friend, your input elevates any discussion of cutlery history to a whole other level.

I think you're right about that Rodgers bread knife. It's the round shape of handle that probably gives it away.

I think I recall you've commented before about good quality table and bread knives being repurposed in Australia as hunting, butchers and utility knives.

Here's a couple of 20th century examples that demonstrate that good Sheffield and Solingen steel was never discarded.

A repurposed Leppington Firth-Brearley bread knife.


And a Felix Solingen piece with a brazed 'rehandling' job.


Jack, do you happen to have any information on the original Sheffield working cutler Dadly/Dadley at all?

Charlie, John, afishhunter, Shawn, redsparrow, GT, BladeScout - Cheers my friends!

Meako - Thanks brother, and yeah - I saw some interesting artefacts from the Territory once: long bolts which had been quite skillfully beaten into thin, elongated war spearheads. You could still see the thread on the haft of them.

I should stress that these are not period or place correct, but here are some examples of indigenous flint tools from other parts of Australia.
(Not my photos.)


The flint knife above is intriguing in its design, as looking at it, it just struck me that if you hold it one way you have a bellied edge useful for hunting, and if you turn it over, you have a straight edge for scoring and utility use. It's actually almost like a fixed blade version of the clip blade/straight edge two blade jackknife combo favoured by many of the aficionados here on the Porch. Very interesting...



And here's some other photos that may be of interest which didn't make the cut.

A sailor's Barrel knife marked 'JE 1874'


Whetstone, lead shot aggregate and possibly a Minton floor tile.


Grindstones


This last one I'm guessing, would have had a long leather belt attached to the pulley wheel, going up to a shaft that ran the length of the workshop ceiling. At least, that's the system I saw still operating in some of the old forges in and around Sanjo, Japan.

There were a lot of table knives, here's some of the more interesting ones.

Sheffield (Maker indecipherable - but I would venture to say it's quite an old example.)


Lockwood Brothers, Sheffield


And a well used Joseph Rodgers dining set


And lastly, a Morton and Davis, Sheffield bowie owned by woolbroker Charles Dennys (1818-1898). Bears the customary doggerel inscription on the blade typical of these knives, of that era. This one reads 'Celebrated Bowie Knife / Ask for Nothing But What Is Right, Submit to Nothing That Is Wrong'.
 
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1500international said:
A great read Chin. I'll have to read back through again and trowel through the photos.

I'd like that Minton Peacock.
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Thanks mate, good to see you on here!

Amazing how it landed on the beach almost completely unscathed in the midst of all that turmoil. (I think a little bit of the beak might have been chipped.)

I guess it just goes to prove that saying about Art being long, while Life is short.
 
Wonderful story with inspiring pictures!!! It does appear that many of the old sea Captains enjoyed their liquor robustly, which never seemed to end well.
It would be interesting to compare knives side by side from various ship wrecks to actual known examples. Enclosed is a similar 19th century all metal knife as compared to the metal handled knife from among the first group of salvaged pictures. Not a fruit knife, but I don't believe the salvaged model is either.


 
herder said:
Wonderful story with inspiring pictures!!! It does appear that many of the old sea Captains enjoyed their liquor robustly, which never seemed to end well.
It would be interesting to compare knives side by side from various ship wrecks to actual known examples. Enclosed is a similar 19th century all metal knife as compared to the metal handled knife from among the first group of salvaged pictures. Not a fruit knife, but I don't believe the salvaged model is either.
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Thanks herder. That's an interesting knife - do you know what alloy the cast handle would be? Or is it some sort of aluminum (or aluminium as we spell it here)?

What would your assessment of those metal handled knives be? I must admit, they are just identified by the Flagstaff Maritime Museum as 'pocket knives'. Some of the museum IDs are clearly wrong though - for example they have a leatherworkers Boot knife identified as a 'Village knife' whatever that is. I had thought they were fruit knives as the handles are obviously some non corrosive metal, but of course it does appear that the blades have corroded which would not be the case if they were silver. Could they be 'Ladies knives', perhaps?
 
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Cambertree said:
Thanks herder. That's an interesting knife - do you know what alloy the cast handle would be? Or is it some sort of aluminum (or aluminium as we spell it here)?

What would your assessment of those metal handled knives be? I must admit, they are just identified by the Flagstaff Maritime Museum as 'pocket knives'. Some of the museum IDs are clearly wrong though - for example they have a leatherworkers Boot knife identified as a 'Village knife' whatever that is. I had thought they were fruit knives as the handles are obviously some non corrosive metal, but of course it does appear that the blades have corroded which would not be the case if they were silver. Could they be 'Ladies knives', perhaps?
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It appears to have zinc plated cast pewter type handle covers pinned to steel liners. It looks like only the non-ferrous handle covers survived on the model from the ship pictures.

Very interesting to see which parts of each knife survived which would have included ferrous, non-ferrous, and organic materials. Some handles still have pins which certainly would have been made of brass or nickel silver, and just holes where steel pins would have been used. Some stag seems to have held up better than others, possibly due to the density of different stag???
 
Lovely lovely. Thanks for taking the time to post that, I really enjoyed it. Maritime history and knife history are two things I find very interesting!
 
Off course, you forgot the most important point about this location. It is also the home district of the mareena dog "Oddball" (as in the movie) and his protected penguins. A lot of the scenery shown can be seen in the movie. I have visited the area as a tourist and it is one beautiful (and dangerous) piece of coastline.
 
Glenn Jones said:
Off course, you forgot the most important point about this location. It is also the home district of the mareena dog "Oddball" (as in the movie) and his protected penguins. A lot of the scenery shown can be seen in the movie. I have visited the area as a tourist and it is one beautiful (and dangerous) piece of coastline.
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Ha, true Glenn. I haven't actually seen Oddball. But those Italian Maremma flock guardian dogs being used to protect the Fairy Penguin nesting colonies from foxes are a fantastic success story.

I'm not sure if it's done overseas, but visitors to Australia will often see one or two Alpacas hanging out in sheep flocks which are also there to protect lambs from fox attack.

Thanks for bringing it up, mate, here's some links.

http://www.warrnamboolpenguins.com.au/maremma-dogs

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35039105

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maremma_Sheepdog#

Returning to things sharp and pointy -

Wurrwulf said:
What an adventure it would be to search that Australian coast line looking for old treasures.
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Shawn, I thought I'd show you a pic of how it's not all Sheffield and Solingen treasure down on The Shipwreck Coast here, my friend.

I scoured the antique shops as well. Most of their wares were outrageously priced rubbish for the tourist trade - and it's very rare to see any knives worth buying in these. But I took a photo of this haul, simply because it's so unusual to see this quantity of even junk knives in a second hand shop here.



I must admit I was mildly interested to examine some, but after waiting around for a couple of minutes at the unattended counter to ask for the case to be unlocked, with no sign of the owner, I decided I had better places to be....

I thought maybe there were a couple on the left hand side that might have been worth looking over, but I haven't lost any sleep over it!

The lack of good knives of the Sheffield Golden era - or any era - in junk shops is a bit a mystery, especially as you can be pretty much guaranteed to find fine old English chisels, drawknives and the like, and classic old American forestry gear (forestry workers used American and Australian axes and saws exclusively, almost never English).

This, for example is a good quality English chisel, with plenty of life left in it, that was sitting right next to the case in the Antique shop above.




At best you might find an old rusted shut Richards or Imperial. At least that's been my experience. I've always had better luck just steering the conversation in that direction when talking to people in country areas.
 
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Jak3 said:
Lovely lovely. Thanks for taking the time to post that, I really enjoyed it. Maritime history and knife history are two things I find very interesting!
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Thanks Jak3, really glad you enjoyed it mate.

Also - Welcome!
 
Wow! Just catching up on this thread. Chin, thank you for taking the time to share all of this with us. It's great stuff and I plan to give it a second, more thorough read later when I have time to let it properly soak in. :thumbup:
 
WhittlinAway said:
Wow! Just catching up on this thread. Chin, thank you for taking the time to share all of this with us. It's great stuff and I plan to give it a second, more thorough read later when I have time to let it properly soak in. :thumbup:
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Excellent, Greg!

When I was considering whether there would be much interest in putting a post together based on this material - it is after all, essentially a bunch of rusty old hafts, most of which have no blades - I knew you would be one of the Porch folk who would appreciate the historical angle. :thumbup:
 
Outstanding contribution that I thoroughly enjoyed this morning with my coffee. I look forward to following the individual shipwreck links down the rabbit hole. Thank you:thumbup:
 
StoneBeard said:
Outstanding contribution that I thoroughly enjoyed this morning with my coffee. I look forward to following the individual shipwreck links down the rabbit hole. Thank you:thumbup:
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Stonebeard, I've enjoyed savouring your own photos and commentary so many times with my own morning coffee, that I'm glad I could reciprocate in a small way!
 
Cambertree said:
Jack, thanks for those links and those great knives - that's just what I was hoping to see. As always, my friend, your input elevates any discussion of cutlery history to a whole other level.

I think you're right about that Rodgers bread knife. It's the round shape of handle that probably gives it away.

I think I recall you've commented before about good quality table and bread knives being repurposed in Australia as hunting, butchers and utility knives.

Here's a couple of 20th century examples that demonstrate that good Sheffield and Solingen steel was never discarded.

A repurposed Leppington Firth-Brearley bread knife.


And a Felix Solingen piece with a brazed 'rehandling' job.


Jack, do you happen to have any information on the original Sheffield working cutler Dadly/Dadley at all?
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Thank you my friend, you're very kind. I think cutlery was repurposed most places, those old folks weren't daft enough to throw good steel away. Thanks for the additional pics :) I'm afraid I don't have any information on him Chin, I'll have to do a bit of research :thumbup:

Great to see so much interest in this thread :)

Chin, I'm sure we can find you some 'sharp and pointy treasure' when you visit Sheffield ;) :thumbup:
 
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