1938, with the British cargo steamer Thistleford, which was anchored in Snail Bay. In January 1939, the small wooden steamer, Stone Fleet ship, and sometime sixty-miler, Belbowrie, en-route for Shellharbour, ran onto a rock shelf and was wrecked, at the southern point of Maroubra Bay. Although the rescue of her ten crewmen was difficult, there were no deaths. Second World War During the Second World War, a number of sixty-milers were requisitioned for wartime service, including Birchgrove Park, Ayrfield, and Paterson. Himatangi was renamed HMAS Coolebar, serving first as a minesweeper and then as a stores carrier. It seems none of the requisitioned sixty-milers were lost in allied service. Despite the presence of thirteen Japanese submarines along the Australian coast and losses of other ships, none of the remaining sixty-milers that supplied Sydney with coal were lost during the war. Some former sixty-milers became enemy vessels. In October 1944, the former sixty-miler Duckenfield—the second ship to carry that name—had been renamed Gyoun Maru and was under the Japanese flag, when sunk by American naval aircraft, south-west of Taiwan, in the South China Sea. A similar fate befell the former Beulah, which had been sold to a Chinese company in 1935; captured by the Japanese and renamed Shintai Maru, she was bombed and sunk by American aircraft, north-west of Tsunoshima, in July 1945. Post-war period In 1947, the small coastal steamer Paterson had just returned from wartime duty with the Royal Australian Navy and on her first trip carrying coal from Catherine Hill Bay to Sydney, when she had to be beached near Norah Head. She was refloated and reentered service but, in 1949, while carrying general cargo, the ship foundered near Norah Head, fortunately without loss of life. In June 1948, the Mortlake Bank, while leaving Sydney for Newcastle, ran into a fishing trawler, the St. Joseph's, near Sow and Pigs reef at night. In 1949, the Munmorah, when arriving to load coal at the South Bulli Jetty at Bellambi, ran aground on the reef and broke up. There were no deaths. In January 1949, the tug Emu was towing Abersea past the open Glebe Island Bridge, when the tow rope snapped. Strong winds blew the tug against a guide pylon of the bridge, where she was struck in the stern area by Abersea. Emu raced for the CSR wharf at Pyrmont, where her crew scrambled to safety and the