A traveling exhibit from the Australian Antional Maritime Museum in Sydney will be featured at the LDS Museum of Church History and Art for a three-month run, which began Friday.

"The Wreck of the Julia Ann" chronicles the fate of the three-masted American ship Julia Ann, which was headed from Sydney to San Francisco loaded with passengers and coal in 1855 when it was blown into a hidden coral reef during a storm. Five of the ship's 42 passengers drowned when the ship broke in half and sunk. The fatalities, two women and three children, were among 21 converts to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints headed for Utah.The remaining passengers survived for two months on coconuts, crabs and sea turtles while crew members repaired the ship's boat and rowed 250 miles against trade winds to Bora Bora for help.

Paul Hundley, curator of the Australian museum's USA Gallery and organizer of the exhibit, led an international underwater exploration team in 1996 to locate the ship. The group found the site near an atoll four hundred miles west of Tahiti. Samples of the remains collected for analysis are included in the exhibit.

"Nineteenth-century Latter-day Saint emigration, mainly from Europe, is a well-known story,' said Marjorie Conder, who coordinated the installation for the Church museum. "Emigration from other places is less well-known, and the story of the Jula Ann is one of those stories."

The museum is located at 45 N. West Temple, just west of Temple Square.