“POSTED MISSING”

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6849, 2 March 1929, Page 6

“POSTED MISSING”

New Zealand's Long Line of Ships that Never Returned

Tho tale of a shipwreck has for most readers a fascination unequalled by any other of the many forms of tragedy which from time to time sweep sonic unlucky band or section of humanity into eternity, and during last century shipping disasters were all too frequent around our rugged; and little-known coast, writes W. M. Campbell, in- the Auckland "Star.” But these bygone tragedies on our shores have been chronicled, so that small room for speculation remains when the cold light of Marine Court inquiries have been shed on each recurring catastrophe. Far greater is the speculative interest in and tho perennial curiosity regarding the undiscoverable end of the 40 or 5U vessels which left our shores and were never, heard of more. Our list begins in 1865, ■ when, in a storm off the coast of Canterbury, the Lady Franklin, the Mary Ann. Avery, aud the Blue Bell evidently foundered.. Two. years later tho well-laden barque Driver, from,.Newcastle to Port Chalmers, had the ominous entry, "No news” against her name in shipping registers. On a calm, sunny day,- May 13, -1870, the trim little brig Matoaha sailed' out from Lyttelton into oblivion. A worse disaster occurred in 1872,- when-the clipper Glenmark left the last-men-tioned port with a full cargo of wool, £Bo,ooo' worth of gold from, the West Coast diggings, and 50 people, to -vanish for ever from our ken. The Glenmark was' one of the fastest vessels then trading to our shores, having made the trip from Gravesend to New Zealand in 83 days from port to port. Many immigrants whose descendants are still among, us had been carried on this popular ship, but the log of that last voyage will never be completed, and no vestige of . tho beautiful vessel was ever picked up. Then in 1874 two barques, the Eleanor and the Comet, both plying across the Tasman, evidently left their bones far beneath the stormy surface of that lonely sea.

Record of the ’Eighties. T\he record continues in 1880, which year saw the unknown end of three vessels, the schooners Merlin, and Poneke, and' the cutter Three Brothers. The following year two line schooners, the Bee and the Dido disappeared mysteriously at sea. The year 1882 has three vessels, the (schooners (Edith, Josephine, and the Bichard and Mary, marked "fate unknown,” but 1883 holds the terrible record of no fewer than six vessels, and from only one of these was any wreckage found. These six were the schooners Clarinda, Wild Wave and Wave of Life, tho brigantine Adieu,iand the two full-rigged ships Loch Fyne and Loch Dee. Like all the famous Loch line, each of the last two were well equipped and manned, both carried passengers as usual, and both left Lyttelton, the Loch Dee bound for Falmouth, leaving on March 3, and tho Loch Fyne, bound for Ireland, on May 14. No news has ever been received of either ship. How far they sailed, whether they foundered in some typhoon, or struck, some unchartered rock, can never be ascertained. There have been fixes, mutinies, and; piracies at sea; all we shall ever known is that with mariners, passengers and cargoes they have vanished somewctc in the vast ocean.

On June 10, 1884, a young captain and his bride set out from Port Chalmers for the South Seas in the trading schooner Tauranga. It would seem their fate was an unhappy one, let us hope not long impending. Tho mystery slir&uding their honeymoon voyage would serve as a theme for a South Seas novel, but the truth concerning their great adventure will never be known.

The barque Elizabeth should have made port in 1885, but she had to be marked in the maritime records, along with the fore-and-after Malietoa, as “missing.’’ Some of the old hands who knew Auckland in 1887 may call to mind s.s. ketch Sir Donald, and the schooner Columbia. These vessels appear'to have foundered not far from shore, but none of their wreckage was. identified. 1890 A Disastrous Year.

After 1888, when the schooner Mimiha was posted missing, there comes a brief cessation of these uncanny disappearances, but the year 1890 was a mist disastrous one. The probable cause of tho disappearance of no less than five vessels within ten months was more than surmised at that year, when much Polar ice had been reported near New Zealand. A block of ice as large as a house may sink a ship, yot, being just awash, its translucent bulk wauld elude any but the most vigilant lookout-man. One of these fivo ships, the barque Assaye, left some wreckage on the Ckattains, while some books from Sir Walter Buller’s valuable library, which was on board, and some curios from his collection were the only mementos of the calamity which overtook the Assaye so near the end of her voyage. The same year the barques Kentish Lass and Dunedin, as well as tho schooner Rainbow, found unknown graves, but the worst tragedy of the five was the disappearance of the stately clipper Marlborough. On January 29 she left Lyttelton (that fatal last port of call for the ships of those days), with 29 people on board, and an extremely valuable cargo. One of tho finest ships of her class, her fate was for many years spoken of as “the Marlborough mystery.” In this case, however, the mystery was explained years latex, when from different sources came accounts that she had been found afloat in a deep indentation of the precipitous coast of Terra del Fuego. With timbers rotted and green, with ghostly yards a-eroaking, with bleached human skeletons about her decks, this waterlogged derelict lay close inshoro. More skeletons amidst tho valves of seasliells littered the near-by rocks, telling of the cruel fate from starvation and cold of those once jovial sailors who had sung their lusty chanteys to the accompaniment of the concertina or the clanking of the cliain-linka

through the hawsepipe. Her end serves as an indication of that of the many unknown ones around Cape Horn. Toward the Century’s Close. . During 1891 two barques, the Rose M. and the Habil vanished utterly and in the same y.ear the s.s. Kakanui sent to the Macquarie Islands to take off some sealers, embarked eight men there but neither tho little steamer nor any of the 19 men aboard were ever heard of more.. . The• dreadful list 0f missing ships of the last centruy concludes with the schooners Louie and Welcome Home, posted missing in ’92; the schooner Maile, ’93; the Crest of the Wave and the Dunedin, of ’94; the ketch Comet, of ’95; the Lizzie Ellen, of ’97; the barque Fido, of ’9B; and the schooner Marmion, which left Napier during the last year of the century and evidently followed its half-hundred piedecessors to the capacious locker of Davy Jones. Fanciful travellers by sea, or lonely sailormen during the dark night-watch may hear the voices of those lost mariners in the breeze’s whisper or in the seabirds’ cry, but those last tragic voyagos will ever remain weird mysteries of which we can but repeat:

Where lies the land to which the ship would go? Far, far ahead is all her seamen know. And where the land she travels from? Away, Far, far behind is all that they can fc-ay«