Standing at the western edge of King Island, eyes narrowing to the blasting south-wester, there is no escaping the harsh reality of Australia's worst peacetime disaster.

"It's like nature's own mincer" said historian and author Luke Agati of the array of sharp and semi-submerged rocks just offshore.

It is reckoned that 400 people, a great many of whom were women and their children, died here when the British barquentine Cataraqui was wrecked in a winter storm.

"It was the early hours of the fourth of August, 1845," Mr Agati said, with default solemnity.

"She hit the first reef and then sat fast between that reef and another, being pounded by huge waves.

"People were scrambling on deck and for hours and hours, in the middle of winter, washed overboard and into — this."

A monument sits amidst the same weather-smashed rocks where the hundreds of Cataraqui passengers died in 1845. ( ABC Northern Tasmania: Rick Eaves )

Many King Islanders are passionate about the often grisly stories of shipwreck death and survival on King Island.

Most of King Island's beautiful museum, in the shadow of the Currie Lighthouse, is dedicated to artefacts, wreckage and numerous volumes of information collected over a century from close to 100 incidents.

The King Island Museum houses a large number of shipwreck artefacts like these sailors' clay pipes found at different sites. ( ABC Northern Tasmania: Rick Eaves )

Only 10 survived the unimaginable Cataraqui wreck, on the island's rugged south west corner.

A simple, memorial cairn sits on an outcrop of rock.

It is subtle, given the scale of the tragedy it marks, but still produces goose bumps.

For Mr Agati, it was back at our four wheel drive when he felt most moved.

Luke Agati admiring a sextant salvaged from one of the King Island shipwrecks. ( ABC Northern Tasmania: Rick Eaves )

It was there he introduced the unlikely heroes.

Under the marram grass, on the low dune just inland, is were most of the 400 people who were killed are interred.

They were all buried by a fur hunter and trapper named David Howie and his two offsiders.

Mr Howie was from Stanley and had been hunting wallaby and possum on the remote island.

The grim task he undertook is too grisly to contemplate.

"They buried around 340 bodies, many mutilated," Mr Agati said.

"There is a descendant of Howie on the island and her grandmother told her he was never the same.

"The image he took to the grave was of women who still had infants tied to their bodies with hair."

Much of King Island's nomenclature is derived from shipwrecks. The popular British Admiral beach, is named after the ill-fated ship of the same name. ( ABC Northern Tasmania: Rick Eaves )

Disappointment Bay a tragic beauty

A day later, Dale Whatley, 82, stands on the sunny north coast, staring out to sea.

Disappointment Bay is one of the more beautiful beaches on the island.

Mr Whatley's gaze is north-west, towards Navarine Reef, the real reason this place did so disappoint.

"That's where the Neva was wrecked," he said quietly.

"There were 150 Irish convict women along with 35 of their own children, and another nine free settler women with 22 more children.

"It was a cruel fate. That's where the 'disappointment' comes from."

There were 239 on board Neva, of which 224 perished.

Dale Whatley at Disappointment Bay, close to the site of the tragic wreck of the Neva, a ship carrying mostly female convicts. ( ABC Northern Tasmania: Rick Eaves )

The 327-tonne barque had left Cork, Ireland, on January 8 and struck the reef on May 14, 1835.

Twenty-two people were washed ashore alive, clinging to flotsam, but seven died soon after.

"A party of sealers came along, took them to their camp and they lit green bush at the edge of the water to smoke a boat in," Mr Whatley said.

Mr Whatley grew up with the Neva story, but the beach was on private property.

Today it has road access and is stunning — despite its past.

"It's beautiful but sad too. Many of those women and children washed up here and were just buried in the dunes," he said.

"Nothing marked. They're just part of the place."

The King Island Museum is full of the artefacts and records the loss of numerous ships and hundreds of lives around the island's remote shoreline. ( ABC Northern Tasmania: Rick Eaves )

Netherby descendant part of island's best survival story

Like most King Islanders, Jim Benn wears many hats — builder, handyman, school bus operator, councillor and head of the local tourism association.

It was not a brochure that first attracted him to the beautiful Bass Strait island.

"I'm actually a fourth generation descendant from the Netherby," Mr Benn said, leaning back on his ute, back turned to the wind and the site of the 1866 shipwreck that is key to his family story.

A room at the King Island museum is dedicated to the wreck of the Netherby. This model was made by local Christian Robertson, for the 150th anniversary of the wreck. ( ABC Northern Tasmania: Rick Eaves )

"My great grandparents and great, great grandparents were on the ship. They all survived!"

About 460 people got off the Netherby. A party of brave crewmen who subsequently walked for three days to Cape Wickham and then rowed to Victoria, also lived on.

"They settled in Queensland and I came here in 2004 to have a look.

"It was family lore to see where we started. Now we have retired here."

The Netherby was wrecked on July 14, 1866, yet another immigrant boat from England, delivering railway locomotives and a population boost for Queensland.

The 944-tonne ship landed on a rock not far south of where the island's main town, Currie, is now located.

Jim Benn at the site of the Netherby wreck. The King Island councillor and handyman is descended from a survivor of the 1866 wreck. ( ABC Northern Tasmania: Rick Eaves )

In 1866, the lighthouse keepers at the northernmost Cape Wickham, along with a few sealers and hunters, were the only people on the island.

"The ship broke up around them during the night which must have been terrifying. But in the morning they used a roped boat to ferry everyone ashore," Mr Benn said.

"A Mrs Cubbin got such a fright when she was landed that she delivered a child on the shore here. Netherby Louise Victoria Cubbin was born right here.

"She became a music teacher in Melbourne, and it was her great grand-niece who organised the 150th commemoration of the Netherby wreck here in 2016."