Paper-knife Made Of Teak From Dusky Sound Wreck

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30213, 19 August 1963, Page 8

Paper-knife Made Of Teak From Dusky Sound Wreck

An 86-year-old historian at Geraldine has made a paper-knife specially for “The Press” of teak from the wreck of the Endeavour, scuttled at Dusky Sound in 1795.

The wreck was recalled when the Navy’s fleet auxiliary Tui arrived at Auckland last month with some relics from the old ship, picked up by the crew when the Tui called at Facile Harbour.

Mr E. Undrill of “The Downs,” Geraldine, was given a piece of teak planking from the wreck by Captain Fairchild of the Government survey steamer Hinemoa in 1805, and since then he has had a lively interest in the matter. According to Dollimer’s “New Zealand Guide,” the Endeavour and another ship. Fancy, left Sydney for India in 1795 with plains to call at Dusky Sound on the way. Just out of Sydney harbour, no fewer than 45 stowaways were discovered m the Endeavour, and when the ships arrived at Dusky Sound the Ship was found to be so unseaworthy that she had to be abandoned. Two years earlier sealers had begun to build a small ship in the sound, and the men from the Endeavour completed her, and named her the Providence. There were too many to be taken in the Fancy and the Providence, so another vessel was buiM on the frame of the Endeavour’s longboat. The three ships set off for Norfolk Island and Sydney, the longboat arriving two months after the others. They had been obliged to leave 35 persons behind, and the~e were rescued by the American ship Mercury in 1797. Heywood’s “Guide to Invercargill,” which Mr Undrill sent to “The Pess,” says the vessel built from the longboat was a poor sort of ship to undertake a dangerous voyage. It was named the Assistance, and sailed for Sydney after the man had been 12 months in the sound living principally on seals and fish. “On the voyage to Sydney these people suffered great hardships,” says the reference, “for ail their provisions were consumed, and when she reached her anchorage she was literally a famine ship.” Heywood’s “Guide” quotes Captain Fairchild’s description of the Endeavour: “She is in a little nook or pocket so small that it was impossible for her to sail in. She must have been hauled in with ropes and made fast to the trees. She is 180 ft long and about 32ft beam. Her outside, plank is sin thick, all East Indian teak. She is sheathed with pure copper, and all the bolts used in building her are copper also. She is built of about onethird English oak and twothirds teak. Her stem is in 20ft of water and her bow in sft only.

“She was known by the whalers to be there 65 years ago. and sire was an old ship then. In the early days the whalers used to chop her away for firewood, and they have chopped her down to the water’s edge, and she only shows a little above the water at low water, spring tides. “She is quite clear of the ocean swell, in a perfect. Snug harbour, and must have been taken there on purpose to be condemned. She has greenstone and chalk for ballast and has some little pieces of bamboo amongst it. “She is a good model, and I think was a fast sailer. She must have been between 700 and 800 tons register. I got one of her rudder braces off her. It was composition and weighed 2001 b. It had the words ’Saville, London’ on it. There are also some pieces of cast iron among the ballast.

"Her upper deck and beams are all gone, and

nearly all the tween decks have been chopped away by the whalers. The wood is quite sound and has not been eaten by worms, as might be expected. There is a good deal of fresh water where she lies, which keeps away the sea worms.” Heywood’s “Guide” says there seems to be a strange fatality abbut Dusky Sound and the wreck that lies there. In 1803 Captain Bass of the brig Venus sailed from Sydney with plans of taking the iron fastenings and the two anchors from the Endeavour and selling them to the Spaniards. “Neither Captain Bass nor his brig was ever heard of again, and none know the mystery of their fate.” The paper-knife made by Mr Undrill has a handle of kauri from the old suspension bridge and an inlay of totara knot taken from an historic tree on Peel Forest station at the end of last century.