THE WRECKED MARLBOROUGH

Otago Witness, Issue 3115, 26 November 1913, Page 80

THE WRECKED MARLBOROUGH

WHAT THE PILOT SAW. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, October 4. According to a cable message from Christchurch published in a London paper this week, a private letter from London has been received in the dominion in which it is stated that “ two survivors of a vessel wrecked of}' Cape Horn found the Glasgow ship Marlborough in a cove with 20 skeletons near by.” 1 have made inquiries in shipping circles in the city, and have ascertained that the discovery was made, not this year, as the cable leads one to suppose, but several years back. The interesting fact, however, has only just leaked out. It appeara that the captain of a round-the-world tramp was off the Pacific coast of South America in the early part of this year —homeward bound for London—when ho had occasion to utilise the services of a pilot. The pilot stated that he had once seen the wrecked ship Marlborough. The captain, who saw his early service in the Shaw, Savill, and Albion Company, was at once interested, because the disappearance of the Marlborough was one of the mysteries of the sea. This sailing ship, in fact, left Lyttelton on January 11, 1890, for London, and was not heard of again, the general supposition being that she sank in a collision with an iceberg. The captain consequently asked the pilot for particulars and the latter explained that it happened when he was a boy. He and a seaman were the only survivors of a vessel wrecked off Cape Horn. They reached land safely in a boat and put into a cove, where they saw the remains of a ship, port painted in the old frigate stylo, with the name Marlborough. On the shore were a heap of shells and the skeletons of 20 persons. Presumably, the sailors had had to subsist on shellfish, and were finally overcome by starvation. The captain asked the pilot why ho had never told anyone of this before, and the pilot said that the other seaman died, and he, now the sole survivor, settled on the West Pacific coast, where the matter was not regarded as of any great interest. The pilot, by virtue of his position, must now have’ reached a fairly mature ago, and if the incident happened when he was a bey. it- is evident that he is relating events of several years ago. There seems no reason iio disblieve tne accuracy of the narrative.