Writing inside old ships bell - Lloyds A1 Certification?

[OzSwampfrog]

Writing inside old ship's bell - Lloyds A1 Certification?

Hi,
At first, I took the bottom two letters to read "A L" but the writing is very faint (it's amazing any of it survived at all) and the bottom stroke of the "L" is not the same colour. It appears to be A1. By the way, the photo is the inside of an old ship's bell found on Stradbroke Island, the owner prefers to remain anonymous, but allowed me to photograph it. This post is in relation to a reply I had given to a thread concerning possible news of the "Madagascar". The Madagascar passed a Lloyds A1 survey in 1853 according to the Lloyds Shipping Register for that year. How many wrecks are there in Australian waters of ships surveyed in that year? If it is from the Madagascar, that suddenly makes a few very odd and unbelieved stories from the island fit together.

Something very interesting is located in that swamp in the area identified as containing a large amount of metal.



If there's any interest, I have many photos of the bell from different angles, this is the best angle from which the writing can be seen.

Cheers,

OzSwampfrog

 

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[Jason in Enid]

I don't see any writing, but then a bell would not have any. Why would somebody inscribe the inside of a bell because of an insurance survey? doesn't make sense. But then, I'm more curios in the bell itself. Can you show pictures of the whole thing and the writing on the outside of it?

A ships bell is sacred, it is the soul of the ship and is the most prized artifact you can retrieve, if it IS a ships bell.

 

[OzSwampfrog]

I don't see any writing, but then a bell would not have any. Why would somebody inscribe the inside of a bell because of an insurance survey? doesn't make sense. But then, I'm more curios in the bell itself. Can you show pictures of the whole thing and the writing on the outside of it?

A ships bell is sacred, it is the soul of the ship and is the most prized artifact you can retrieve, if it IS a ships bell.

Hi, I agree, a ship's bell is something really special. I'll attach a photo for you, have many more. The story on the island that this was not a ship's bell was because a large bell went missing when the "Benevolent Asylum" closed in 1946. That bell was mounted outside the mess hall. The mess hall was dismantled in 1946 and re-erected a short distance away and serves as the island's community hall. There was never a fire at the mess hall, so the bell was not exposed to fire there. The person who allegedly stole it and buried it would not have lit a fire big enough for the whole island to see if he was doing something in secret, so the apparent exposure to fire that most likely caused the damage had not happened at the Asylum or after allegedly being stolen. A bushfire could also not have caused it because they don't get that extremely hot for long enough in one spot. Had there been a fire on a ship however, or had the exposed sections of the wreck caught fire in the swamp in a dry season, that may have been able to cause it. Could a lightning strike have caused the damage?

The question is also, why is there anything written inside the bell at all? Those few symbols couldn't just be scratches, so what are they? During an insurance survey, the bell would have been checked as a part of the safety equipment at that time and been checked for corrosion and that the ringer was in working order. Would the person checking it not have noted that inside? It should be noted in the survey at the Lloyd's Museum in London.

Here's the bell, it's interesting, whatever ship it came from.

 

[trsrseeker]

Great pics, thanks. I could go with the 53 and A1. The bells we usually see from shipwrecks simply would not show any writing made in a temporary fashion even if it were once there due to the ravages of the environment. This seems to be a rather unique situation. I do know of bronze land bells (clock tower bells) that have things written on the inside, so it is human nature to make notes inside a bell. Was the Madagascar ever a candidate in your mind for this wreck before you figured out the 53 and A1 or did they lead you to the Madagascar possibility? Also not unusual to see things in high resolution pics that we don't see with the naked eye, happened to me a number of times with bronze artifacts and manufacturer stamps.

 

[OzSwampfrog]

Hi, No, initially some of the evidence so far pointed to it being the Burton Stather, because a fellow named Matthew Heeb had salvaged over 50kg of high quality copper bolts from the wreck in the 1890s, and the Burton Stather had been fastened with such bolts. That ship also fitted with a theory that the 1877 Iquique tsunami had pushed the wreck so unusually deep inland and into the swamp. There are however two distinct areas of wreckage, so there may be two wrecks. There are (were) another two in other areas of the swamp but sandminers simply willfully destroyed one very old one while another is still undiscovered, but it must be smaller and younger because a guy alive today remembers seeing remnants of masts poking up out of the vegetation, each about a meter high and 18 feet apart. Sounds like a schooner, going by these dimensions.

It really took me by surprise that those annoying old island legends suddenly fit with the Madagascar. So does the application for that mining lease in 1915. For a while, I didn't want to believe this, but after the intial shock and annoyance I think there's at least a chance it might be true. We only know of tsunamis hitting the area in 1868 and in 1877, the latter striking an area called Jumpinpin almost exactly at high tide and with great speed (even if the wave was only a meter or so high). There may have been another tsunami a bit earlier that was not recorded because the Fort Denison automatic tidal guage had only been installed in the 1860s. There is another oldtimer on the island who wants to show me a piece of steel cable he says he found on the wreck decades ago, I'd like to get over there again to talk to him. Will post an update if anything interesting comes up.