It falls to our painful lot to record one of the most distressing and melancholy accidents which has ever occurred in this Settlement.
On Saturday afternoon last, Mr. Edward Payne [Paine] (who arrived recently in the Deveron), Mr. Wickham Whitchurch, Mr. James Kay, and Mr. George Read, Superintendant of Government carpenters, left the port in a boat with three men to go to North-west Bay. On their way, they put into Tinder-box Bay, about 10 o'clock at night; but not finding the landing good, they determined to go on to the Government huts at North-west Bay. When the boat had got about 300 yards from the shore, the halyards being jammed in the mast-head, one of the boatmen went up to clear them, and in an instant the boat overset. With difficulty, and by the assistance of a Government boat which was in the bay, all were saved but Mr. Payne and Mr. Read. There was scarcely any wind or swell at the time; and this unhappy accident was caused solely by the man going to the mast-head, which a small boat would not bear. Mr. Whitchurch is an expert swimmer, and knowing that Mr. Kay could not swim, laid hold of him, and conveyed him within 50 yards of the shore, but from extreme weakness, was compelled to leave him for his own preservation. Mr. Kay, although he never swam before, struggled through a thick bed of sea-kelp in deep water, and made the shore; Mr. W. in the meantime floating on his back to recover his strength, when the Government boat came to their help.
Late on Sunday evening, accounts of the melancholy event reached Hobart Town and upon its general circulation on Monday morning, it occasioned a sensation of feeling and regret proportioned to the estimation in which the unfortunate sufferers were held, and the loss inflicted by their sudden and premature fate.
Mr. Payne came first from England by the David Shaw in 1819, and returned by the Shipley in March 1821; and he came out again by the Deveron to settle finally in Van Diemen's Land, with an amiable partner, to whom he had been united on his return to England.
'Paine, Edward (1784–1822)', Obituaries Australia, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://oa.anu.edu.au/obituary/paine-edward-17008/text28877, accessed 6 December 2024.
6 July,
1822
(aged ~ 38)
at sea
Includes subject's nationality; their parents' nationality; the countries in which they spent a significant part of their childhood, and their self-identity.