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Note: Dorothea was on a 23 ton cutter, the Mountaineer, when it was wrecked at Thistle Cove, WA, on the 24 March 1835. http://museum.wa.gov.au/maritime-archaeology-db/strangers-on-the-shore/mountaineer The crew and passengers made it ashore and remained on the beach for ten days before they embarked on a three day journey to Middle Island in the Recherche Archipelago. Middle Island had become a rendezvous point for sealers [Ref: Henderson, Graeme. Unfinished Voyages: W.A. Shipwrecks 1622-1850].
She, along with her brother, sister, and other passangers, were rescued by the pirate Black Jack Anderson. Dorothea became his common law wife. The story of Dorothea and Black Jack was written as a book, Skins by Sarah Hay. Also Dorothea and her brother Jame's story is part of the book, Black Jack Anderson by Elaine Forrestal.
"Skins is the story of a woman called Dorothea Newell who was shipwrecked off
the coast of Western Australia in 1835. She and other survivors became marooned on Middle
Island and sought shelter in a sealers` camp. The leader of the camp was a man called John
Anderson, an African-American also known as Black Jack. Dorothea later revealed in a court
of law that after three weeks on the island, she went to live with him."
"With seven children to feed and a settlement that still wasn`t self-sufficient it was likely the
Newell family were finding life at King George Sound a struggle. Although there was labouring
work there was no money in the colony to pay for it, which is probably why the three eldest
Newell children left on the 'Mountaineer' for Van Dieman`s Land in March of 1835. In the course
of their journey the captain made a big mistake. A storm arose, and instead of sailing into Lucky
Bay where they would have been sheltered, he took the vessel into Thistle Cove, the bay before it,
and ran aground."
"Working backwards from her marriage to Pettit, I found that a Mrs Cooper lived in a house on
Stirling Terrace in Albany, which was at one time listed as a bakery and confectionery store. She
was described as an eccentric old maid who had lived there for years. Her common law husband
was James Cooper who built the house in 1850. He was a limeburner who had property across
the harbour alongside James Newell senior. He seemed to disappear around 1855 and Dorothea
lived alone until she married Pettit in 1875."
"Even though a picture of Dorothea was beginning to emerge I still knew very little about her
relationship with Black Jack. Then I found a letter from Hugh Spencer, the son of Albany Resident
Magistrate Sir Richard Spencer. He was writing to inform the letter`s recipient that he had
distributed the ten bibles he had recently purchased, selling one to a Dorothea (he spells it
Dorothier) Anderson, mariner`s wife. The letter was dated 18 January 1837. The relationship
between Black Jack and Dorothea was clearly more than a six-month affair. Black Jack was
reported murdered on Mondrian Island (off the Duke of Orleans Bay, near Esperance) some two
months after the letter was written."
"There was no doubt in my mind that Dorothea was an extraordinarily resilient woman, but how
sad for her to have endured so much and for the end to have been so lonely. I was interested to
discover where the house on Stirling Terrace might have been, the house where she would have
died. To my surprise I found that it still existed, no longer as a private residence but as a popular
restaurant. Up until the year Dorothea married, the property, which included shops behind the
house, was in the name of James Cooper. When she married it became Pettit's and he sold it a
couple of years after Dorothea died. When I visited the restaurant, I spoke to the then owners
who were unaware of the early history of the house. They told me it was haunted by a little old
woman who sat in the chair by the fireplace and by a man who came up from the sea to keep her
safe."
Who was Dorothea Newell? Sarah Hay. Creative Arts Review, 2002. John: "The leader of the
camp was a man called John Anderson, an African-American also known as Black Jack....As
local legend would have it, Black Jack was a pirate who died in the same manner in which he
lived, violently. He supposedly left behind treasure buried on Middle Island."
"I discovered the person who made the accusation against Black Jack was James Manning, one
of two young lads Black Jack abandoned on the beach at Cape Arid to walk about 400 miles
along the coast to Albany. James Manning had come with Black Jack from Kangaroo Island. The
other boy survived a shipwreck earlier that year at Thistle Cove, which is part of the Cape Le
Grand National Park near Esperance. Interestingly, Black Jack and Isaac Winterbourne were
acquitted. This was due in part to the deposition of Dorothea Newell, a woman in her early
twenties and sister of the lad who was shipwrecked."
"It was at this point my focus shifted from Black Jack to Dorothea who declared in her
deposition that she cohabited with Black Jack on the island. Dorothea, her brother Jem, her sister
Mary, and Mary`s husband Matthew Gill were among nine people who were shipwrecked at Thistle Cove. They sailed in a whaleboat to Middle Island,
presumably for food and shelter. Black Jack knew the shipwrecked vessel`s captain, Evanson
Jansen, for the captain had transported the sealers` camp from Kangaroo Island to Middle Island
some months earlier."
Charged and aquitted of theft on Middle Island, W.A.
Who was Dorothea Newell? Sarah Hay. Creative Arts Review, 2002.
Dorothea Newell may have had a daughter with John Black Jack` Anderson, and that this daughter, implausibly named Emma Webland (Aboriginal name, Wepel), had a son near Byford (outside Perth) with a white settler named Robert Mead. The child was a boy named Fred Mead who was brought up and schooled in the British fashion by the Mead settler family. Fred Mead`s record shows he was highly literate, served in WW1 and that he worked on the Kalgoorlie pipe line. He was a well known Noongar identity loosely connected to the Bolton and Garlett families of the Avon Valley www.theviewfrommountclarence.com/?p=36893
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