Finding Franklin II

Not even the chill of an overcast winter morning by the docks of the Tasmanian coastal town of Kettering could cool the enthusiasm of Matthew Garth in June 2022, as he chased answers to a mystery more than four decades in the making. 

The 65-year-old Sydneysider, once a Navy man turned helicopter pilot, wound up at the town’s ferry terminal having spent the month prior scouring the bays of Tasmania – starting north, working south – seeking a lost love on which he last laid eyes in 1977, aged just 20. 

It had been 45 years since Matthew last saw Franklin II – a grand, 43ft wooden yacht once an icon for those, like him, who attended the Royal Australian Navy College at HMAS Creswell in Jervis Bay, New South Wales, in the halcyon days of the 1970s.

A veteran of an incredible 12 Sydney to Hobart yacht races between 1962 and 88, Franklin II was once a Aussie Naval stalwart – a staple for those who cut their teeth at the college. But she had inexplicably faded into obscurity after leaving military hands in the mid-1990s.

To Matthew’s knowledge there was not a photo or a sighting in almost 30 years. Forty-three feet into thin air. How does a yacht with such presence and history just disappear?

He had spent many years physically and digitally searching for an answer to that question, and on this wintery day believed he may well be a short ferry ride from an answer.

Australian stories like that which drove Matthew to Kettering are usually played out over a few beers at the local pub. They’re thought bubbles that are touched on and dreamed about. The sort of thing Paul Kelly or Jimmy Barnes might write a song about. 

It’s rare to see a story like this followed to conclusion. But Matthew believed he was close to becoming an exception.

Franklin’s first impressions, Matthew’s stoic search

Franklin II, Matthew explained with coffee in hand ahead of the 9.50am ferry to Bruny Island, was the vessel which most captured his 16-year-old imagination when he began a four-year Navy training stint in 1973. 

Built on Garden Island in 1962 and named for the Tasmanian Governor Sir John Franklin, the yacht was unlike any other Navy boat of its era. It was a fixture of the fleet, on which thousands learned their trade over the decades on the waters around Jervis Bay.

Franklin II was once known for its prominent shape and distinctive paint job – a deep blue with a gold trim designed to replicate the former royal yacht Britannia – which after an esteemed career at sea is now retired and stationed at Edinburgh in Scotland.

While the Queen’s former ship became an international tourist attraction, Franklin II would vanish. After a brief stint with the Army in the early 1990s, the ship was sold into civilian hands in 1995 and disappeared from public awareness shortly after – an Australian sailing mystery worthy of Bermuda Triangle mythos. 

She became the fodder of conversation over drinks, emails and text messages between Navy veterans. Those conversations were fruitless, and the questions around what came of Franklin II endured with no leads throughout the 2000s. 

It was a disappearance that toyed with Matthew’s mind.

After years flying choppers in the North West, his pursuit of an answer escalated on his family’s return to Sydney from WA in 2013, when he started kayaking around the marinas and harbours of New South Wales in search of the yacht. 

“For some reason I had in my mind that she would be in the main harbour at Sydney – the sort of place you expect to find such a grand yacht like Franklin,” Matthew said. 

The expeditions would come up blank, and for many years the pursuit looked dead in the water. However, an unexpected lead would soon emerge and set Matthew on a path for the Apple Isle.

In 2021, the recently retired Matthew spotted a feature story published on Defence News – a government website maintained by Navy staff – which offered his first concrete lead on Franklin since 1977. He learned the yacht had been restored in private hands and was headed to its new home, somewhere in Tasmania.

He did the only logical thing.

“I went to the north of Tassie in May to continue my search, stopping at marinas and calling yacht clubs trying to track her down,” Matthew said. 

As he was about to call off his search, Matthew received a tip from the Wooden Boat Guild of Tasmania. On June 23, it put him on a path for the ferry from Kettering to Bruny Island.

Brothers in arms

Peter Schwartz stood casually at the Bruny Island Ferry Terminal, waiting for a visitor he’d never previously met. 

A retired builder with an accent which pays ever so slight homage to his American heritage, Peter couldn’t have found a better place to embrace his long-held passion for the sea. 

He and partner Karen recently relocated to the island from New South Wales. The couple live at Sykes Cove – a secluded spot where they purchased neighbourless waterfront acreage many years earlier, before the market took off. 

Peter’s current project is a self-sustaining forever home, built to look out over the water and take in the sort of vista you could spend a lifetime searching for.

In some ways, Matthew had.

Peter and Matthew had previously spoken only by phone, but they greeted one another warmly, quickly piling into a car and taking off into the island.  

After about 10 minutes, the vehicle strained past a tree clearing on a cliff overlooking the cove Peter calls home. 

It was here, from the passenger side of a beat-up sedan on a small Tasmanian island, that Matthew laid eyes on Franklin II for the first time in 45 years.

In the cove waters below she rocked gently and alone – no boat in sight save for a small metal dinghy tied to a post near the shore. 

No longer the royal blue of her youth, in 2022 she’s finished in off-white, with golden stripe remaining and a near-immaculate wooden finish to the deck. 

“I never would have found her here,” Matthew muttered under his breath. 

“You would have had a hard time finding her anywhere,” Peter replied. 

“We had her off the water for the best part of 20 years.”

How did Franklin get here?

In the most ridiculous way imaginable, of course. While some of us were trading Pokemon, Peter was swapping boats. And in 1996, he traded a 33ft fiberglass boat to a corporate high-flyer from New Zealand for Franklin II, which after a brief sailing stint was put into a NSW store yard for 22 years. 

Here Peter worked off and on in his spare time over the decades, before the pandemic refreshed his enthusiasm for the project and proved the ultimate catalyst which put her back on the water. That’s a feat in itself – it’s estimated just 50 per cent of the projects in the Taren Point store yard make it back out.

Had Franklin II been in less caring hands, and with less support from knowledgeable shipwrights who helped advise the process, there’s a fair chance her story, and Matthew’s search, could have ended at a New South Wales tip.

Instead, the yacht was rebuilt and refurbished with utmost respect for its past, and a view to a future on the Tasman Sea.

Franklin II finally made it back to water in December 2020. In April, Peter and Karen were invited by the Navy to sail back to Jervis Bay, and presented with the boat’s original nameplate and plaques recording her adventures in the Sydney to Hobart races. 

The account of this event penned for Defence News mentioned Peter and Karen’s intention to take the boat to its new home in Tasmania – and became Matthew’s Tasmanian lead, though a misspelling of their surname set him back to some extent. 

But finally, after about a month on the road, Matthew would soon have his moment at one of the southernmost points in the nation.

He was about to sail on Franklin II once more. 

One man’s life work, another’s life mission

Peter was soon trudging his boots through the shallows of Sykes Cove, reeling in the dinghy beneath ominous skies.  

Before long, with Matthew at the wheel and Peter pulling ropes, the 60-year-old Franklin II was gracefully sailing across the Tasman, hitting a speed of seven knots as it carved its way through the grey waters surrounding the island. 

Matthew asked question after question, and told of the yacht’s significance to those who trained at HMAS Creswell during his era. 

Peter shared his experience with the yacht – filling puzzle pieces which had eluded the knowledge of even the most diligent of Naval historians for decades.

For Matthew, it was a real-life dream moment – one which took him back to the age of 16, and the resolution to a search which most would have abandoned long ago. 

“Sometimes you’re asleep and you’re dreaming, and occasionally you’re awake but it feels like you’re dreaming,” he said at one point, with eyes glued to the ocean ahead.

The yacht sailed for around two hours – perhaps a touch longer – with the overcast conditions doing little to dull the duo’s enthusiasm. 

With the dark beginning to set in, the pair eventually decided it was time to call it a day.

Matthew got one last glimpse of Franklin II on the drive back to the ferry terminal. At least for now. There’s talk of an overnighter on the yacht at some point soon.

Despite that, a significant chapter was now closed. As he rode the ferry back to Kettering ahead of a drive into Hobart and a flight home to Sydney the following day, Matthew was introspective.

“At 60 she’s a little younger than me, but I’m sure she will long outlive me and bring joy to many more sailors for at least another 60 years,” he said. 

There’s probably a Paul Kelly song in that, too.