The Sydney Gazette Saturday

29 July 1815

On Wednesday sennight four persons were drowned at Hunter’s River; namely, George Pell, settler; Daniel Brown, a baker by profession; - Gudgeon; and Catherine Tucker, formerly Flynn, having been but a few days married to the son of Mr. John Tucker, storekeeper. The above unfortunate persons, with three others, had left the landing place at the Town about three o’clock in Pell’s boat, which contained a quantity of bricks, together with provisions etc. for himself and brother settlers at the first branch of the river, distant from the Town about fifty miles; but in passing a sand shoal upon which there happened to be a heavy swell, the boat went down by the head, and Mr. Tucker’s son gained the north shore; he made all the haste he could to a part of the river where the Lady Nelson lay at the time; and accompanied Mr. Harris, the mate, in the vessel’s boat, which in three hours from the time of the accident arrived at the place where it had occurred; and was still in time to save the life of William Thorpe, who had fortunately remained by the boat, which the others had either abandoned in terror or been driven away from by the force of the waves. She had filled without going down, for the bricks being in her bow here head had sunk leaving her upper stern streak above the water’s edge. He had thrust a finger through the eye of the iron that supports the rudder, and was thereby sustained long after he had lost the power of exertion, as the finger had swelled and kept him thus fastened to the boat until relieved from a situation in which he could not many minutes longer have survived. Gubbage, the other person saved, experienced as narrow an escape from death after more protracted sufferings. He had be the force of the current been driven upon a sand bank half a mile from shore, and was discovered by a boatman the night following by extraordinary accident, in a perishing state, which he could not much longer have survived, having then suffered exposure to the inclemency of the elements at the coldest season of the year for nearly 30 hours. The body of the unfortunate woman was found the morning after; but we do not hear that any of the others had been recovered.