passed Cronulla. By the time that the captain returned, the ship was close to striking the rocks at the base of a sandstone cliff and he ordered her engines to be reversed. The Hilda struck the rocks but, under reverse power, came off the rocks almost immediately. She had been damaged and sank within two minutes after her crew abandoned the ship. The crew rowed to safety in Botany Bay and then walked to Sydney. On 24 March 1905, the Bellambi Coal Company's sixty-miler Marjorie ran aground—at night and at high tide—on the reef known as "The Merries", at the north end of "Cronulla beach"—actually north of Wanda Beach on Bate Bay. Fishermen at the nearby locality of Boat Harbour were surprised to see a ship heading straight for the land but their attempts to alert the ship failed. The ship was stranded but not taking water; it could not free itself by putting its engine in reverse. By low water, it was possible to walk almost all the way around the vessel on the rocks. Fortunately, the sea was exceptionally calm and the ship sat on the rocks "as if in a dock". Four gangs of 'coal lumpers' were brought, by the sixty-miler Bellambi, to jettison the cargo manually, to lighten the ship for refloating. She was floated off but had some damage. The Colo was en route from Catherine Hill Bay to Shea's Creek on Botany Bay, with defective steering gear, when she bumped over submerged rocks between Norah Head and the entrance of Tuggerah Lake, at 2:30 a.m. on 20 October 1906, and then drifted broadside onto the beach. Her crew was taken off by the passing sixty-miler, Alice, but the ship was lodged fast, submerged at the stern. Salvage operations were able to recover machinery from the ship including its boiler. In March 1909, the Wallsend bound for Wollongong, ran onto the Bellambi Reef, during a rain squall. Putting the engines into reverse stripped the blades from her propeller, and most of the crew abandoned the ship. When the tide rose, the ship floated off by herself, with only her captain and mate aboard; the other crew then reboarded the ship. She was not making more water than the pumps could handle, but her propeller was destroyed and her bottom plates crumpled and extensively damaged. She was towed to Sydney. There were differing accounts of whether