The second case was of a young man who generally appeared on deck for about an hour each night. On one occasion the officer of the watch, thinking that he was too close to the side of the ship and fearing that he might get on the rail or fall overboard, touched him with a view to getting him away. The somnambulist at once grappled with the mate and was only mastered after over a quarter of an hour’s desperate struggle. As on an ordinary occasion the mate in question could probably have accounted for three men of the somnambulist’s build and physique, the incident goes to prove that sleep walkers, if interfered with, are possessed temporarily of a madman’s strength.
On her last trip the _Sobraon_ arrived at Melbourne about mid-December, 1891, and after discharging took in sufficient ballast to take her round to Sydney. Here she was sold to the New South Wales Government, who turned her into a reformatory ship, and for the next twenty years she lay moored in Sydney harbour. In 1911 she was handed over to the Federal Government to be converted into a training ship for boys entering the Australian Navy. On being put into dry dock for survey, it was found that, in spite of her age, she was as sound as a bell.
In _Sobraon_ Messrs. Devitt & Moore undoubtedly had possessed one of the finest passenger sailing ships ever launched; this firm, indeed, possessed a very keen eye where ships were concerned. The two partners started as shipbrokers, and loaded ships for the Australian trade as far back as 1836. They always loaded on commission, and I believe the first ships for which they did business belonged to Robert Brooks, afterwards the well-known M.P. for Weymouth. But the most famous shipowner who gave Devitt & Moore his ships to load was Duncan Dunbar. And on the death of Dunbar in 1862 Devitt & Moore acquired an interest in several of his best ships, notably the wonderful old _La Hogue_, one of the favourite passenger ships to Sydney in her day and celebrated for her huge figure-head and single mizen topsail.
Shortly before his death Duncan Dunbar had commissioned Laing, of Sunderland, to build him a 1000-ton frigate-built passenger ship, to be called the _Dunbar Castle_. This ship, afterwards known as the “Last of the Dunbars” was launched in 1866, and sailed regularly in Devitt & Moore’s list of passenger ships to Australia.