English: Distressing situation of the Guardian sloop, Capt. Riou, after striking on a floating Island of ice
This is a hand-coloured aquatint of the ‘Guardian’ in grave distress after striking an iceberg in the Southern Ocean, in longitude 41 degrees east. The accident happened as she was taking stores and skilled personnel to the straitened and newly established ‘Botany Bay’ convict colony at Port Jackson (modern Sydney). Eleven days out from Cape Town, on 23 December 1789, as she approached the iceberg in order to obtain fresh water, her rudder and part of her keel were torn off when she struck a submerged spur of ice. Through his brilliant seamanship and forceful personality, the commander, Lieutenant Edward Riou, was successful in getting the vessel back to Table Bay at Cape Town by the following February, after half the crew abandoned ship (half of those being lost). This is a later image from one of a well-known series of sensational pamphlets about ‘dreadful shipwrecks’, and not a factually accurate one: the ship is represented more as a frigate than a storeship. The ‘Guardian’ was sold there in 1791.