Black ship 'Notorious' sails into Port amid pirate hype
Black ship 'Notorious' sails into Port amid pirate hype
Thursday October 2 2014, 4:10pm
Anyone that was hanging about the seaside on Wednesday afternoon could be forgiven for thinking a pirate invasion of Port Douglas was underway as the black ship Notorious sailed into port.
Notorious is a recreation of a 15th century Spanish or Portuguese caravel, researched, designed and created single handedly by Graeme Wylie at his home in Bushfield, Victoria.
Graeme and his first mate (and wife) Felicte will be opening Notorious to the public on Saturday when they moor it at the marine fuel depot in Dickson Inlet.
Notorious will remained concealed from the prying eyes of the public (and possibly pursuing Royal Navy ships) until then.
Felicte said the hype surrounding the announcement of Port Douglas as a filming location for the next Pirates of the Caribbean film was a happy coincidence with Notorious's arrival in Douglas.
"Our ship is often called The Black Pearl and the Pirates of the Caribbean movies have definitely had an impact on how people see us," she said.
"We don't mind it at all - people are either very intrigued or very scared by the ship and we're happy to show it off, it's the best part of the job."
Caravels were a revolutionary ship design in the 1500's, enabling European explorers to circumnavigate the world.
Graeme was inspired to recreate a caravel by the mysterious Mahogany ship, an ancient wreck first discovered by Europeans in 1836 near Warrnambool in Victoria.
This wreck was last seen in 1886, and it is thought to have been one of three caravels that voyaged down the East Coast of Australia in 1522.
Interested parties have searched for the wreck for 100 years without success.
The timber, Monterey cypress, was salvaged from farms across southwest ictoria, where it was widely planted in the late 1800s as windbreaks.
Grown in New Zealand since 1860 for shipbuilding, the seed was carried to Victoria with shepherds travelling to the Henty's Portland Bay settlement, the birth place of Victoria.
Many hundreds of these windbreaks were planted, with today's landowners bulldozing and bonfiring the trees with impunity.
Graeme saw this valuable resource being wasted and began salvaging logs from the early 1990s.
Building a horizontal bandsaw with a seven foot mouth enabled Graeme to break down the logs, creating beautiful bespoke furniture for eight years.
Eventually, the 300 ton log pile spoke a different song, and Graeme decided to build a boat.
Two years of research and design followed, with the keel laid in April 2002.
Notorious was launched in February 2011 at Port Fairy, Victoria, with an excited crowd of over 400 people in attendance.
Notorious has a period finish known as black varnish, a mixture of Stockholm tar, linseed oil, pure turpentine and pitch.
Since Notorious' maiden voyage in January 2012, she has sailed over 7000 nm in the Southern Ocean, Bass Strait, Tasman and Coral Seas.
Notorious is Australia's earliest ship reconstruction, and is the only caravel in the Southern Hemisphere.
Notorious is a museum Ship, and open for public inspection, onboard and below deck, when visiting different Ports.
Notorious has sailed from Lakes Entrance, Victoria to Port Douglas, FNQ, in an historic voyage being the first time in over 500 years that a caravel has sailed these waters.
Notorious will depart Port Douglas for her southbound voyage when the northerlies arrive, to attend, as a feature vessel at the Australian Wooden Boat Festival, Hobart, in February 2015.