All that remains now are the half-submerged rusty iron ribs and keel of an old sailing ship launched in Scotland in 1869.

Yet she was once a famous three-masted barque because of her literary association with Polish-English novelist Joseph Conrad (1857-1924).

The clue is in her name, Otago. This shallow inlet where the windjammer finally rests has now even been renamed Otago Bay in her honour. For years, however, the site was just an old ship breaker's yard, out of sight and out of mind, about 10 kilometres upriver of Tasmania's capital city, Hobart. The suburb here is even called Otago.

Beached here more than 80 years ago with her bow in an orchard, the Otago, once a graceful 44.8-metre cargo vessel, was the first and only sea command of the famous Polish mariner and novelist.

Conrad's works have fallen out of fashion in recent years, so if his name is only vaguely familiar, it might be from films his stories have inspired.

A prolific storyteller who hated being called a "sea writer", Conrad penned the novel Lord Jim, made into a major 1965 film with Peter O'Toole.

Remember the 1979 science-fiction horror film Alien? Heroine Ripley's space freighter in that movie was Nostromo, named after a Conrad tale.

Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness, based on the tale of his dark voyage up the Congo River in a steamer in 1890, inspired the Vietnam War classic film Apocalypse Now (1979).

And what older baby boomer doesn't remember having ages ago to read Conrad's short stories, Youth and GasparRuiz?

Less than 20 years ago, though, there wasn't even a public sign to identify Conrad's little barque Otago in this remote Derwent River location, despite literary pilgrims pilfering parts of her for souvenirs for decades.

There's a small plaque there now, opposite a small lane called Conrad Drive. The vessel can be reached by driving over Hobart's Bowen Bridge, and this old, hidden tourist attraction is ironically just across the river from Tasmania's flashy top tourist attraction, the $100 million subversive adult Disneyland of MONA (Museum of Old and New Art).

Over the years, the Otago's bow and stern have disappeared, probably sold as scrap metal.

An enterprising American was even reported once to have grabbed some of the vessel's metal plates to melt them down. They were then reminted as commemorative coins for admirers of Conrad. The American probably made a small fortune.

The ship's ocean-going career lasted until 1903. After that, with her masts cut down, the former graceful sailing ship served instead in a "shabby sisterhood" of floating Sydney coal barges servicing steam ships.

Then she was towed to Hobart in 1905 for similar duty and finally taken up to the ships' graveyard on the Derwent in January 1931, to be dumped alongside another wreck awaiting dismemberment.

At the time, the Otago had been sold to a Henry Dodge for £1 for its scrap iron.

By 1946, however, there was still enough of her beached and rotting skeleton for a fan to obtain the Otago's teak helm.

This ship's wheel was then taken back to Britain and installed at the headquarters of the Honourable Company of Master Mariners based on the ship Wellington, moored on the River Thames, in London.

It was 1949 and the event marked the 25th anniversary of author Conrad's death.

Parts of the Otago have also supposedly ended up in three overseas museums, including in Krakow, Poland. The ship was first dismantled for scrap metal in 1937, then again in 1957. A fire swept through the remaining hulk in 1960.

Intrigued by this, Weekender made a brief personal visit to Tasmania late last year trying to find how much was left of it there, apart from its rusty iron bones.

Part of my interest in the Otago was that it sailed from Newcastle on August 1887 to arrive at Bangkok in December the same year. The ship's captain locked himself in his cabin to play his violin all night. He then died of fever and was buried at sea.

Seaman Conrad, aged 30, was swiftly sent there to assume command of the jinxed ship. It was the one and only time he became a ship's master.

Short, with a limp and speaking in a thick accent, Joe Conrad (born Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski) was until then resigned to probably being a "good third ship's mate" all his career when opportunity finally beckoned in January 1888.

Conrad later referred to the first sight of his new 367-ton barque berthed in port as being "like an Arab steed among a string of cart-horses".

As many of Conrad's stories were based on the author's sea experiences, it's not surprising that memories of his sole command later emerged in his work The Shadow Line. It formed part of a series of three autobiographical yarns he later privately called the Otago Cycle.

Conrad held the command of the Otago for 14 months, six of them trading along the Australian coast, but growing bored, he resigned his command in 1889. Then in 1894, he turned his back on the sea to begin a 30-year writing career.

I would like to say that Conrad visited the Port of Newcastle, but it seems he never did, although the Otago (without him) was here in 1887 and his earlier ship, the wool clipper Duke of Sutherland, was also here in 1884.

However, some of the crew he inherited in Bangkok in 1888 were the same ones listed in the Newcastle Customs House records. Some of them no doubt feature in his stories in the same way his 1906 yarn, Mirror of the Sea, reflects the exotic characters he observed at Sydney's Circular Quay, particularly the French sailor without hands.

So are there any more reminders of the barque Otago around? Well, yes. The ship's 1869 bell is in the Geelong College senior school. Rather confusingly, there were at least three ships called Otago.

As well, a rounded timber companionway hatch has been restored and now resides in the Maritime Museum of Tasmania after apparently lying in a Hobart garden for 40 years.

A little mystifying, however, is where the Otago's anchor ended up. Most sources claim it's in the popular seaside resort of Bicheno, about 180 kilometres from Hobart, above the scenic Freycinet Peninsula.

My visit to the former 1803 whaling and sealing base disappointedly revealed no definite trace. While there's still a mystery, rusting anchor hidden away in a backyard at its former location, the conclusion you reach is that it's far more likely to be from a replica of the historic Tassie ship Enterprise once also there.