Daniel Da Silva Garces

At 5.30pm on 4 August 1973, the Helen C and the Teresa were moored at Ashburton Island, off Onslow. Five of the six fishermen were searching for crayfish on the reef at low tide.

A southerly squall at 7.30pm brought heavy rain and 50 knot winds, swinging Helen C on her moorings and causing her stern to hit the reef. The five men walked across the reef and boarded her, with the intention of moving her away from the reef. When the boat would not move in the heavy seas, Daniel Pastorius and George Lang walked back across the reef to the island, while the remaining three men attempted to move the Helen C.

Daniel Da Silva Garces was a fisherman from Madeira, Portugal. He married Veronica Francisco in Beaconsfield in 1968, and they lived in Hamilton Hill with their four-year-old daughter. At the time of his death Daniel was 32 years of age.

Daniel De Silva Garces and the two other men decided to use a dinghy to run out another anchor, and Daniel left the boat and walked onto the island to bring back their 12-foot dinghy. The two men aboard managed to start the motor and move Helen C into open water, and signalled the men on the island with a torch to indicate they had made the boat safe.

Receiving the signal that all was well. Garces and the two men on the island decided to row out to Helen C, and set out towards the boat. Approximately 50 metres from the island the dinghy capsized, tipping all three men into the sea. They managed to right the dinghy and climb back into it.

The men thought the boat would be driven back towards the island, and they would be safe, but the current was washing them around it. The dinghy capsized and was righted again twice more, by which stage it was half-filled with water.

While Pastorius and Lang bailed water out of the dinghy, Garces decided to swim back to the island. Twice he dived into the sea, but both times he returned to the dinghy.The other two men advised him to remain in the dinghy, saying the current was too strong to swim against, but Daniel left the dinghy again. The men could not hear him, and shone their torch where he had entered the water. They briefly saw the back of his head and torso, and thought a shark had attacked him. He sank shortly after and was lost to sight.

Pastorius and Lang eventually managed to empty the water out of the dinghy and after drifting all night, finally landed on Thevenard Island, 14 kilometres from Ashburton Island, at 9.30am on 5 August 1973.

The men on the fishing boats assumed the men would stay on Ashburton Island until the water and weather improved. At day break, they realised the dinghy was gone and the Teresa alerted Victoria Quay Police that three crew members were missing, and they had begun a search. Smoke rising from Thevenard Island alerted them to the survivors’ whereabouts, and they set about picking them up.

They immediately returned to Ashburton Island to search for Garces, without success. The coast was searched for 20 miles south of Onslow and the local islands were searched. Some areas were searched with small boats, and some places were impassable, due to the dense mangrove swamps. After days of searching, the local Coroner was advised that there was no trace of Garces.

An inquest was conducted into his death on 4 November 2004, and the State Coroner found Daniel Da Silva Garces death to be accidental, occurring while attempting to swim from a dinghy to the shore in the strong current and large seas. The cause of his death was not determined since his body was never located.