Several things became obvious as the research for the shipwrecks continued.
Australia’s east coast is littered with many hundreds of wrecks despite our relatively short history. The wrecks being researched for the area of ocean off Budgewoi were a part of the coastal trade between Sydney, the Hawksbury River, Broken Bay, Brisbane Waters, Port Stevens and Newcastle. There was little or no overland transport along the coast for many years.
There was a constant high loss rate up of both ships and personel and down the coast and in the rivers and bays.
There were laws which limited all of the seagoing vessels built in Australia and used in the coastal trades to sizes which were not large enough to spend more than a day or sea out to sea safely so that convicts could not leave easily and also so that Australian traders were unable to sail across the ocean and compete with the East India Company.
Most of the things I will discover and post are available elsewhere but I will put them in this blog eventually as I hope to have a different focus by the time it is filled out more