More about him in a moment, but first we remind that last week's typically poignancy-packed On This Day items in this column made much of the April 1908 wrecking of the S.S. Bega. Now a Canberra connection with the dramatic occasion has emerged, for Canberran Maryann Mussared tells us that she had a relative, this William Mussared, aboard the S.S. Bega when the calamity occurred. His great-grandson is Maryann's fifth cousin.

To recap, the S.S. Bega, to some eyes looking overloaded and listing at the wharf at Tathra (it had about 55 passengers and a substantial cargo of local cheese and butter and livestock), set off from Tathra at 6.30pm on April 5, 1908. It was bound for Sydney but four hours out of Tathra it foundered and sank.

All but one of those humans aboard somehow survived, drifting and rowing all through a harrowing night, reaching a remote beach eight miles from Bermagui.

And on that beach the women survivors (scantily clad because all through the night they had used their dresses to soak up and squeeze out the water invading their leaking lifeboat) led the group in singing some appropriate hymns of thanks.

Surely one of the hymns the grateful, delivered women warbled was The Naval Hymn. We like to enrich this column with a little community singing and so, massed choir of readers, let's all sing the first and last verses of this masterpiece of hymnody. Altogether now:

''Eternal Father, strong to save,/Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,/Who bidd'st the mighty ocean deep/Its own appointed limits keep;/Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,/ For those in peril on the sea!

''O Trinity of love and power!/Our brethren shield in danger's hour;/From rock and tempest, fire and foe,/Protect them wheresoe'er they go;/Thus evermore shall rise to Thee/Glad hymns of praise from land and sea.''

Thank you readers/choristers.*

After our first On This Day mention of the S.S. Bega Maryann told us: ''I'm reminded of one of my favourite family stories … William Mussared, was a cheesemaker on the Kameruka Estate from the 1890s and was on board the S. S. Bega when [in 1908] it left Tathra Wharf destined for Sydney with over 10 tons of cheese. I'm reminded I was told by a cousin that when the boat did start to list due to rough seas and a cargo shift, the crew tried to shift the cargo back without success. When this failed their next strategy was to get rid of the easiest things to move. As a result a large number of pigs were thrown overboard.''

And yes, contemporary newspaper reports confirm Maryann's family folklore, reporting that there were up to 200 pigs on board and that in the panic they were shunted overboard.

What's more (how crammed the S.S. Bega seems to have been!) 100 prize cattle bound for the Sydney Easter Show and several fine trotting horses also perished.

Tathra wharf served a famous dairy-producing district (no trucks and road trains in those days) and some 2100 cheeses, some or all of them being escorted by William Mussared (blessed are the cheese escorters) sank with the S.S. Bega, along with a great quantity of butter.

The poor cattle never did make it to the 1908 Sydney Easter Show and Maryann has seen a circa 1946 letter to a newspaper in which an old man reminisced that he had intended stowing away on the S.S. Bega to go to that Show but had a dream about the ship sinking and decided not to. Later he was glad about his decision because, hiding down there in the probably cheese-smelling hold, he would surely have gone down with the 2100 cheeses.

A marine court ruled that though the disaster had been caused by the Bega taking on lots of ''loose water'', the way the water got into the vessel was a mystery. The court cleared the ship's gnarled old sea dog of a master, Captain Bishop, (50 years at sea, in command of vessels for 27 years) of any blame.

Maryann says that ''William had married his cousin Annie Eliza Grant who was born in Araluen in 1853 … and not long after the sinking of the Bega he moved to Coramba on the far north coast where he ran a dairy business and still made cheese until 1935''.

■ For an especially memorable YouTube version of this hymn go to Eternal Father Strong to Save with the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra and chorus: www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dlXmuYuAYc

Russell Crowe's biblical blockbuster Noah is in our cinemas and readers enjoyed last Wednesday's column's cartoon in which the apparent extinction of unicorns was explained by Noah having inadvertently taken a gay unicorn couple aboard the ark.

Another cartoonist (we've not been able to contact him to get permission to use his work) has another theory. He has a unicorn couple standing in the alarmingly heavy rain and watching the other animals boarding. One unicorn is saying to the other: ''A free 40-day cruise? There's got to be a catch.''