"TSS rosedale" (Entry in NSW Shipwrecks)
TSS "Rosedale". Iron twin screw steamship, 274/164 tons. #74672. Built Dundee Scotland, 1877; reg. Sydney 21/1892. Lbd 140 x 26.1 x 8.5 ft. Owned by the North CoastSteamNavigation Co. Left Nambucca River for Sydney on 15th September 1911 with 30 Passengers and crew; was seen off Crowdy Head battling her way through rough seas, but was not sighted again. One theory presented was that she turned to run for Trial Bay but struck Fish Rock and foundered. Some time later, wreckage from her washed ashore.
The wreck has since been located in 1995 off Port Macquarie NSW.Excerpts from the book "Rosedale Mackays"
In the early years of this century, we had tele-communications but limited transport facilities. People could live far apart in the next valley, this not mean they were in constant communication with each other.
If one received a telegram worded "come quickly mother dying" and signed it with one of the many duplicated family names, it would be easy to assume that a mother had fallen ill, been transported to Sydney without the family's immediate knowledge, and was in the process of dying.
It was the second week of September 1911 when just such a telegram arrived. It was intended for the family of Angus Mackay who had settled at deep Creek, Valla near Nambucca, but delivered to the family of John and Johanna Mackay (Buccrabendinni) west of Bowraville
As such large families married and spread throughout the district, contact would have been limited to an annual event and, therefore, it was assumed Johanna Mackay was in Sydney dying.
Three of her children, one with a new wife, hastily made arrangements to get to Sydney as quickly as possible, a move which precipitated one of the worst tragedies to befall the Australian Abrach Mackays.
So, Elizabeth (Cook), Mary (Murphy) and William, with his wife of six weeks, Ethel Flockhart, managed to obtain passage on the SS Rosedale, due to sail for Sydney from Nambucca that night 15th September 1911.
After taking on freight then passengers, the Rosedale left (the wharf at Macksville) out through Nambucca Heads into open sea & an approaching storm.
The Rosedale never got past Smokey Cape lighthouse and, according to the lighthouse keeper for the day, the ship was six miles of course, steaming towards open sea.
In rising seas, those 30 souls on board, would have been battened down below deck with no chance of survival.
Finally the inevitable had to be accepted. The Rosedale was lost and with her, four members of the Alexander Mackay family.
The older children of the William and Elizabeth Cook family could look after themselves but for the younger ones, Cora, Gladys and Ross, the loss was keenly felt – more so because their father took himself off to live with Jane (Ballard), the daughter of his first wife, thus neglecting these young siblings.
Clare and Gus Gaddes, who were children of Jane Mackay, on the Angus Mackay line of the family, took the girls Cora and Gladys, and reared them. Ross stayed with his sister, Elizabeth Elvie Johanna Amelia, who planned to marry George Alexander Mackay at the time of the calamity.
Johanna Mackay grieved daily and silently for the loss of her children, especially the eldest, Elizabeth. There is no doubt their deaths precipitated her own. She died in April 1912, and the cause is recorded as "apoplexy", but it was more likely grief. She is buried beside her husband in Bowraville in a fenced but unmarked grave.
