NO SINGLE boat builder is credited with designing Queenscliff’s iconic couta boat. It simply evolved between the 1890s and the 1920s in the hands of Queenscliff boat builders such as Andrew Hansen, Mitch Lacco and Peter Locke. These craftsmen experimented and modified the design to suit their customers – the professional fishermen.
Hansen preferred the clinker style of hull construction whereas Lacco used the carvel method, giving the hull a smooth finish.
Peter Locke liked to use Western Australian karri or jarrah for the keel in his boats. The keel, tapered at both ends, was made from a piece of timber 100mm thick by 300mm wide.
Queenscliff’s John Beazley, who spent 50 years as a shipwright with Port Phillip Sea Pilots, tells of his grandfather, fisherman Walter Todd, who commissioned Hansen in 1899 to build him a 26-footer.
“My grandfather called the boat Merri-wee after the horse that won that year’s Melbourne Cup.
“The boat cost 45 pounds ($90) and it is still around to this day,” John recalls.
During the 19th Century, fishermen were net fishing off the beach using five-metre flat-bottomed boats.
“As the supply of fish decreased in the bay they looked outside The Rip to the huge shoals of southern barracouta. These great schools could be nearly 30 kilometres long,” John says. “Fish in these couta shoals were about 80cm long and weighed two kilograms. At the time, there was a huge demand for couta from the Victorian public.
“The 26-footer was a good seaworthy working boat and perfect for couta fishing. Two men could work and sail it at the same time and if they had to get the oars out they could row her easily.”
John says his grandfather would get up at 3am in the 1920s, walk down the pier and join other fishermen in the waiting shed. Here they would yarn before preparing their boats. They’d leave Queenscliff still in darkness about 4.30am, sail out through The Rip and keep going out till daylight before they’d start fishing.
During the heyday of the fishing industry in the 1920s as many as 65 couta boats worked out of Queenscliff.
“Once out in Bass Strait, they had to find the couta” John recounts. The fishermen would watch the gannets. If they were diving on baitfish that’s where the couta would be.
“Often the fishermen would have to sail as far down as Split Point (Airey’s Inlet) about 14 nautical miles in search of couta.
“The fishermen would sail up and down trolling over the couta. They’d flick the fish back under their left arm, grab the head and pull the hook out.
“Couta have a large mouth and they’ve got a nasty set of teeth. I’m amazed no one lost fingers.”
John says the fishermen modified their oilskin coats with extra-thick patches sewn under their left armpits. The patches were almost three quarters of an inch thick and heavily sewn. “The couta would grab at the coat and tear at it with their teeth.”
Queenscliff fishermen used cattle hide as a lure. “They’d buy up a big lot of Hereford hides from the slaughter yards in Geelong and share it around,” tells John.
“It was the white piece from around the Hereford’s head or hooves they preferred.” The hide was cut into five-inch strips with the hair up on the hook so the couta could see the white flash as the lure danced through the water.
“It would keep soft and they could get three or four days out of a piece of hide before it was torn to pieces by the couta.” Fishermen would berley the shoal of couta with handfuls of whitebait thrown over the side.
“They’d go like hell to fill their 20 box limit, always with one eye on their watches so they could get back to The Rip for the flood tide,” Beazley says.
“The only way back through The Rip was on a flood tide, never the ebb.
“The ebb pushed up a wall of broken water with a seven-knot current pushing out.
“Sometimes the men would knock off fishing earlier just to catch the tide.
“When they got close to The Rip and it looked like it was going to be a rough entry they’d strip off their heavy sea boots and oil skins down to their underwear.
“Queenscliff fisherman George Jurgens was one who could read the sea. He would say if the boat ever shipped a big sea over the bow and she went over, he’d go down like a stone in his heavy boots and oil skins on.”
Jurgens kept an empty 20-gallon drum in the boat in case he went over to help keep him afloat. There were lucky escapes among the fleet but no fisherman was ever lost when the full fleet re-entered the bay.
“They carried no lifejackets, flares, no safety equipment at all,” John marvels.
“No one ever stayed out. If you got into trouble when all the boats were out there was always someone nearby to help.
John says it was a magnificent sight to see 60 boats under sail heading back to The Rip.
“As a ten-year-old I used to watch them from the back beach and then race down to the pier and help my grandfather pack the fish into boxes. He would always give me a couta to take home.”
Queenscliff Maritime Museum’s Les Irving-Dusting remembers his grandfather, Hedley Dusting, as a couta fisherman who also went after crayfish.
“They’d haul in the craypots with their bare hands,” Les recalls.
“The pots might contain 20 to 30 big crays.
“Sometimes they would be several miles off the heads when the wind would drop and they’d have to row home.
“My grandfather ended up with ‘claw hands’ in his old age after years of suffering frostbite in the bitterly cold conditions.”
The Queenscliff couta boat fleet gradually diminished as the demand for couta declined. By the 1960s only a handful of couta boats remained at Queenscliff.
In 1971 wooden boat enthusiasts began seeking out the old couta boats to buy and restore them to sailing condition. Some boats were still being used, others were propped up in back yards deteriorating. Hulls were restored, new sails sewn and the boats re-rigged.
Today the couta boat register lists 184 boats. Many are restored original workboats used by early fishermen. Queenscliff celebrates the couta boat each year in March with a weekend of maritime activities including the traditional blessing of the fleet service followed by a couta boat regatta on Port Phillip Bay.
