Alexander McCracken was the founding secretary of the Essendon Football Club, the founding president of the Victorian Football League (now the AFL), Chairman of the Royal Agricultural Society and a partner in the McCracken Brewery. He was a prominent Melbourne businessman.
On 2 February 1908, following a holiday in New Zealand, he boarded the ss Wimmera at Dunedin for a return passage to Melbourne via Bluff and Hobart. He was accompanied on the voyage by his two sons, a nephew and his three daughters, as well as family friend, John George Moore Bell.
SS Wimmera 