A LONG-STANDING WRECK

Evening Star, Issue 20421, 28 February 1930, Page 1

A LONG-STANDING WRECK

THE WINDJAMMER ANNASONA Apparently indestructible,'the hull of the old Australian trading “ windjammer” Annasona still stands almost upright on Middleton Reef,' where eh© stranded twenty-three years ago. According to ship masters who pass close to that treacherous - spot, where the remains of other vessels lie, the Annasona rests on an elevation beyond \ the reach of other than abnormal seas. She struck the reef shortly before daybreak on January 18, 1907, while voyaging from Callao, Peru, to Melbourne.' Her plight being hopeless, she was abandoned the same afternoon, the crew leaving the scene in boats well stocked with provisions. Three days later they were picked up by the topsail schooner Sterling, which was proceeding to Middleton Reef with the . object of endeavouring to recover a valuable shipment of .copper bars lost there in a sunken Blackwall liner many years previously. Sir Broderick HartWell was in charge of the expedition. Diverting her course towards Lord Howe Island, eighty miles distant, the Sterling landed the shipwrecked men there some days later, the islanders receiving them with unbounded hospitality. ■ A few hours afterwards the_ small community was again thrown into a state of excitement by the arrival there in lifeboats of the crew of the barque Maelgyn, which they had abandoned in a sinking condition near Middleton Reef the,day before the Annasona met with disaster. With these new arrivals, numbering' fourteen, and twenty-four men from the Annasona, the islanders found their housing accommodation overtaxed. It was only after a stay of seventeen days on the island that , the castaways were taken off by the pilot steamer Captain Cook, which had been specially, despatched from Sydney for the purpose. Their arrival at the New South Wales port aroused unusual interest, it being the first occasion ■when two different shipwrecked crews were landed there from the same ship. Mr N. W. Jensen; now of the Vic toriari lighthouse .staff, who was one pf the crew of the Annasona, states that Middleton Reef is a low, horseshoeshaped coral; patch lying about midway, between Sydney and Fiji. It shelters .a' lagoon infested' with sharks of every known variety; schools of which followed the Annasona’s boats, swimming .so close to them as to cause the occupants some uneasiness. Captain Biackstock threw biscuits among the monsters, in hopes of causing them to fall further' behind.