SHIPS AND THE SEA

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 50, 27 August 1938, Page 24

SHIPS AND THE SEA

(By "Helmsman.")

A wreck near Wellington which, although it did not result in the loss of life, was the cause of much suffering to the officers and crew, was that of the American four-masted barquentine Addenda, which went ashore at Palliser Bay early in the morning of Friday, October 14, 1904, when bound from Lyttelton to Port Nicholson. Wellington had been experiencing a very severe southerly gale for several days previous to the wreck, and a great deal of damage was done. It was the same gale that drove the steel barquentine La Bella ashore on the beach off Happy Valley on the morning before. Many Wellingtonians will remember the La Bella, for thousands visited her on the Sunday after she was stranded. She was refloated a few days later and towed to Wellington, but the Addenda was not so fortunate. The Addenda, commanded by Captain H. F. Astrup, was a wooden ship of 637 tons net register, and her principal dimensions were: —Length 176 ft Sin, beam 39ft Bin, depth of hold 14ft. She was built at North Bend, Oregon, by her owners, the Simpson Lumber Company of San Francisco. When the ship encountered the gale Captain Astrup shortened sail as he did not want to reach Cape Campbell^

before daylight. At 3 a.m., when, according to the log, the Addenda should have been off the cape, he found himself in a perilous position in the jaws of Palliser Bay. He tried to get clear, but the weather was too heavy and the sails were blown away. Nearer and nearer to the dangerous beach the Addenda went. The surf was pounding in, and the south-wester-ly was of almost cyclonic force. The tempest swept down in great gusts, accompanied by drenching rain squalls. It raged and screamed through what was left of the rigging. At 5.30 a.m. the Addenda struck, on a sandy spit, opposite Lake Ferry. A DESPERATE EFFORT. The position was desperate, for it was feared that, under the fury of the storm, the ship would break up. In a heroic effort to help his comrades the second mate plunged into the boiling surf with a life-line and attempted to reach the beach. He was followed by a member of the crew and together the two struggled desperately to survive. They were carried forward by the breakers and repeatedly dashed back again against the ship by the backwash, failing to find a foothold on the shifting gravel bottom. Once the second mate was pitched right under the ship and as she rolled she pinioned his hand. The soft gravel saved him for had it been a hard bottom the limb, instead of being merely bruised, would have been pulverised. The backwash and scour of gravel and the heave of the ship released his hand and eventually he reached the shore with the line. The seaman also managed to scramble ashore by throwing himself on the crest of a breaker. Waves that eventually hurled the ship itself above the high-water mark (she was carried a hundred feet further than where she first struck) could toss a man like a cork. Once the backwash was eluded, however, the men reached terra firma.

WRECK OF THE ADDENDA

CAUGHT IN PALLISER BA\

When the men were ashore they soon had the line working and the crew of the unfortunate vessel (there were ten in all) were on the beach by about 6 a.m. They were thoroughly exhausted and were cut by the keen southerly and sprayed by the driving rain and breaking waves. They had had nothing to eat since the previous afternoon, when on the run from Lyttelton. Actually they were within a few miles of several homesteads Othere was one about four miles west) but they did not know this. Had they not turned inland in an effort to find shelter and had they struck a track in the vicinity of a ploughed field which they crossed they would have reached this homestead with about half a mile of walking. If they had climbed a low, nearby ridge they could have seen two homesteads and their exhausting wanderings would have been avoided. But the decision to turn inland brought them many miles of hard walking in the storm and many hardships. A WHARE FOUND. They vainly tried to capture a sheep and saw pigs as well. In the ploughed fields the youngest sailor wished to > give way and lie down, but his com-

I rades kept him going. The men forded about five creeks, but, suffering as they were from hunger and exposure, the Ponui River was too much for most I of them. Two of them managed to cross, however, and, wandering around in a pathetic state, they came upon a whare. The occupants, Messrs. A. A. McLaren and S. H. Blanford, at once provided the worn-out sailors with food and warm clothes. Blanford then set out to rescue the others. With the exception of the cook, who was found to be missing, they were one after the other carried over the river by Blanford, who was on horseback. Leaving the exhausted men with his' comrade, Blanford, accompanied by another man, went back in search ■ of the cook who, it seems, had be- ' come dazed and wandered back towards the stranded vessel. He afterwards returned in a very weak state and was taken to the Lake Ferry Hotel. Blanford then returned to Ponui, and, with McLare% rode to Waiorongomai, about seven miles from their whare and fifteen from the sand spit. Three very swollen streams had to be crossed en route, but were safely negotiated. Blanford rode on to Featherston with messages from a police constable and the captain of the Addenda concerning the wreck, and McLaren went back to Ponui with provisions for the crew. These two men, and Blanford in particular, did splendid work in aiding the crew of the stranded vessel; it is evident that the dangers he encountered on their behalf were not a few. Captain Astrup, an American, was highly praised by the crew for his coolness and nerve throughout the crisis. He had hopes of relaunching the vessel "by some novel method of his own," but the mariners' verdict that "nothing eVer comes out of Palliser" proved to be correct in this case at least, and the ship eventually ! became a total wreck.