Talk:SS Yongala

earlier comments

Quote, mail from Townsville Maritime Museum about using the information from [[1]]

Dear Gorm,

Thank you for requesting permission to use the
information on our web site re. SS Yongala -
you have our permission -good luck.

Vivienne Moran
curator

Text from duplicate article

Might be of use here, from Yongala- now redirects to here, though this article looks quite complete.--nixie 01:55, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC) The story of the SS Yongala is often referred to as Queenslands own titanic story. The SS Yongala was at it's time the pride of the Adelade Steam Ship Company. She was a passenger steamer on the busy Melbourne to Cairns run, when she encountered the cyclone that sent her and all 121 passengers and crew to the bottom. She was lost without a trace and wasn't found again 'till Aug 1958.

On the 14th of March 1911 Yongala left Melbourne for Cairns, this was to be her last voyage. On 23rd of March the light house keeper and his family at Dent Island, were the last people to see SS Yongala as she sailed past, at about 6PM that night, 121 people would not live to see the sun rise.

On the same afternoon SS Grantala (Yongala's sister ship) was traveling south from Townsville. When nearing Cape Bowling Green her Captain when encountering strong squalls, decided to take shelter from the cyclone. Grantala's Barometer now dropped to 29.9 with sustained winds of 70 to 80 MPH.

The wreck of the SS Yoingala is now one of the worlds top 10 wreck dives for recreational scuba divers. Not so much for the historical significance, but for the marine life that calls the wreck home. More info and photo's can be found at http://www.geocities.com/diveyongala/

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The above information seems fine, exept the name of the sister sihp. I am quite sure the sister ship mentioned in the above text should be "SS Cooma", and not "SS Grantala". For all I know, there might exist a third ship, "SS Grantala".

Use of language

"Ironically Yongala was due for a refit in Cairns, including installing a radio, at the end of her last journey."

That's not ironic, it's unfortunate. The sentence is also missing a comma. Now, where did I put my red pen? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.150.120.43 (talk) 13:56, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Survivors

Why did no one survive? Weren't there lifeboats on board?Philippe Auguste (talk) 17:44, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

The Name Yongala

I have amended this sentence: "Following company tradition, the vessel was named after a word in the local Aboriginal language; 'Yongala' (originally pronounced Yonggluh) meant "broad water", or "broad wide watering place". It was also the name of the small town Yongala in South Australia." It is not clear where "local" is: Newcastle-on-Tyne?

Almost all Adelaide Steamship Company vessels were named after rural towns or pastoral properties in South Australia: Bungaree, Cantara, Ceduna, Kooringa, Manoora, Minnippa, Paringa, Willochra etc. Yongala is a small wheat town in the southern Flinders Ranges, on the Broken Hill railway. The name is an Aboriginal word from the Nadjuri language, meaning something like "good water". Peter Bell (talk) 05:03, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Register of National Estate

I have carried out some minor editing, mainly moving sentences around in the last 2 sections of the article in order to put information either in a better order or in a better place. The most significant edit is the change to the content concerning the National Estate. For you r information, the Register of National Estate (RNE) no longer has any statutory significance (i.e. closed in 2007 and reference in legislation completely removed by February 2012 - refer http://www.environment.gov.au/heritage/places/rne/index.html, retrieved 21/08/2012).Cowdy001 (talk) 22:43, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Two things

Someone added a tag to the statement that Yongala unloaded 50 tons of cargo in Mackay. In Australia in 1911, a ton meant a British Imperial ton, also known as a long ton. 50 long tons would equal about 56 US or short tons, or 49.2 metric tonnes. What's vague?

The tosh about "a ghost ship, exactly resembling the Yongala" has no place in an encyclopaedia. That comes from Hector Holthouse's book Cyclone, which is not a reliable historical source. Unless there is a primary source from the period, it should be removed. Peter Bell (talk) 06:48, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Overreliance on Townsville Maritme Museum webpage

The article as I came across it earlier today had large sections that were almost a word-for-word copy of the content at the Townsville Maritime Museum's webpage on the ship. I've made a rough pass and tried to copyedit as much as I could, but someone with a little more time on their hands should give this article a good scrubbing to avoid any possible claims of copyright violation. -- saberwyn 12:13, 28 May 2014 (UTC)