MYSTERY WRECK

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 20058, 15 March 1935, Page 10

MYSTERY WRECK

MAY BE 100 YEARS OLD

During the hurricane which swept Rarotonga the storm-driven waves exposed the remains of an old sailing ship which had long remained buried on the foreshore. Mr J. Paterson, of Wellington, who was at Rarotonga at the time of the hurricane, photographed the timbers and endeavoured to learn the story of the old ship. Inquiries among the older natives elicited the same statement from them all. During the last sixty years no large wooden sailing ship had been wrecked at Rarotonga, and further, they had no oral records of such a ship being wrecked. The date of the wreck therefore cannot be fixed nearer than “more than 60 years ago.”

The main piece of wreckage consists of part of the keelson, sister keelsons, anil floors. It obviously formed part of the midship section of a wooden ship of 1000 to 1200 tons measurement. The timber used for the keelsons is Douglas fir and that used in the floors is American elm. From this it would appear likely that the ship was built on the Californian coast. The method of fastening the timbers and the fact that most of the fastenings are treenails instead of bolts approximately fix the date of the building of the ship at 100 years ago. The vessel was probably of the oldfashioned whaler type—deep keel, flat floor, high sided, with bluff bow and full stern.

Part of the story of the wreckage can be plainly read. The timber is sound and dry—therefore it has not been lying in the water and was not exposed to the sun. It has all been attacked, but not very deeply, by the teredo, the wood-boring worm of the seas—therefore it lay in the water for a time, probably a few months, before it reached the security of the dry coral beach.

It seems likely that the ship was wrecked on the coral reef long ago. There it broke up and this part of the bottom lay on the reef or in the lagoon for a time, where it was attacked by the teredo. Then a storm lifted the wreckage and the seas carried it across the lagoon and left it high and dry above high-water mark. Here successive storms buried it with coral gravel and sand and here it lay and was forgotten until the great hurricane of 1935 brought it once more to the light.

EXPOSED BY HURRICANE