Explorer Matthew Flinders was onboard HMS Porpoise when it was wrecked in 1803 at a location now known as Wreck Reef. Ben Cropp found the wreck site in 1965. It was probably about that time that he took this photo of “Van Laman beside the “Porpoise” anchor”.
(Source: “Australian Skindivers Handbook” by Ben Cropp)
Ben later took this photo of model Gina Allen holding a cannonball next to one of the wreck’s anchors for Playboy Magazine: -
(Source: “Ben Cropp – blood in the water” by Mike Colman)
This photo of an old Admiralty long-shank anchor was taken by marine archaeologist Toni Massey from Flinders University during an expedition to the wreck site in 2009: -
(Source: “Signals” magazine, Australian National Maritime Museum,
March to May 2010, No.90)
The anchor is said to be “one of three bower anchors carried by HMS Porpoise”. It was found laying “palm down in the breaking surf, whilst a second lies 30 metres or so back from the reef edge in one or two metres of water”.
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