Doug Cedelland, Ken Summerville and Aaron Cedelland were the major winners receiving $420 for their efforts.

In second place and $300 richer, were Neil Pollard, Ray Hunt and John Hunt. Third place ($180) was taken out by Tony Urquhart, Peter Meehan and Tommy Reynolds.

Fourth place winners ($90) were Barry Dodkin, Mick Audsley and Bill Miernik.

Congratulations to all the winners and thank you to all the players who competed over the four Tuesday nights to make the competition a success.

So what is the story behind this event?

Local historian George Micolich, from the Nambucca Headland Museum, has found this information in the museum’s archives …

The Royal Tar was a barque (three or more masts) of 598 tons, which was built near the original Eichmann’s Mill in Nambucca Heads from bloodwood and bluegum in 1876 by John Campbell Stuart.

It was bought by the New Australia Co-operative Settlement Association, and left Sydney in 1893 carrying a group of Australians led by William Lane for a voyage to Paraguay to set up a new Utopian society.  In 1901, the ship was wrecked off the coast of New Zealand. Alice Greenwood, the great great granddaughter of J. C. Stuart donated the ship’s relics to the Nambucca Headland Museum.

John Campbell Stuart

John Campbell Stuart was a Scottish shipwright, who established his credentials in Balmain in the 1850s. Stuart was one of the original ship-builders on the Nambucca, who constructed ships on a site near the Copenhagen Mill.

Originally from Greenock, Scotland. John, along with his brother Isaiah, learnt their trade in Nova Scotia. John came to Sydney as a ship’s carpenter and married Harriett Russ in 1857, at the age of 45.

He was a strict orthodox Free Presbyterian, stern and silent and a man of immense physical strength.  He built ships at the Hawkesbury, Balmain, Parramatta and Stuart’s Point before moving to the Nambucca River about 1870 and settling near the mouth of the river, now named Stuarts Island. The shipwright worked from models of the vessels and not plans and so was the architect as well as the builder of his ships. 

He preferred to build larger ships such as schooners, brigantines and barques, and in December 1876 launched his first ship built on the Nambucca, the Royal Tar, which was built for William Marshall.

Although not his only ship, it was Stuart’s largest ship and the largest colonial-built vessel up to 1916 (Townsend 1993, 119).

The workforce numbered 40 men, many of whom were specially brought to Nambucca to work on the Royal Tar. They lived in temporary huts in the reserve adjacent to the slipway.  Stuart lived with his family on the island, which by 1875 was to bear his name. This workforce became the foundation of the village (Townsend 1993, 120).

And a more recent connection … the late Clyde Piggott –  

Clyde was J C Stuart’s  great grandson, grandson of William James Stuart (born 1872 at Stuarts Point and died 1955), who was the seventh son of John Campbell Stuart.

His parents, Daphne and Ronald Piggott (Clyde’s parents) named their house after one of his ships, the ‘Arakoon’.