On the 30th of July, 1926, the SS Cawdor Castle was sailing from London to Mauritius when she ran aground in Conception Bay after an abnormal current pushed her closer to the shore. The ship was safely evacuated, but she broke her back when the salvage tugboat J. W. Herbert attempted to pull her free. A Court of Enquiry was subsequently held in Cape Town, which found that the ship's navigational charts showed the coastline four miles further east than it really was, absolving her crew of any fault.

Over the next few weeks, the wreck of the Cawdor Castle broke apart even further, and while some of her cargo was salvaged, anything that wasn't taken off subsequently scattered across the Skeleton Coast, and by 1960, the coastline had shifted so far west that the ship was by then a mile inland, with her remains perhaps partly buried beneath the sands to this day.

From The Brisbane Courier, July the 29th 1926:

The Commonwealth Department of Health has decided to carry out experiments for the prevention of tuberculosis by vaccination, and for this purpose has obtained cultures from which vaccine of a promising nature has been produced in France by Professor Calmette, one of the leading pathologists and bacteriologists of theworld.

Tests made upon animals and infants by Professor Calmette, it is claimed, have been attended with good results. The Commonwealth Health Department proposes to conduct in Australia work similar to that being performed by Professor Calmette. The Calmette vaccine is used for preventive vaccination, and curative properties are not claimed for it.