A SEA MYSTERY

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVIII, Issue 21554, 17 January 1940, Page 2

A SEA MYSTERY

LOSS OF THE MARLBOROUGH Fifty years ago the smart Shaw Savill ship Marlborough left port for the last time. Two days later she was spoken by a passing ship, and then she completely disappeared. Built in 1876, the 1124-ton ship was commanded by Captain W. Herd when she sailed from Lyttelton on January 11, 1890, with a cargo of frozen meat and wool, a crew of 29 men, and one passenger. When no news came of her, inquiries were made as to her condition, but they only showed that she was in good trim for the voyage. After many months Lloyd's listed her as “missing," and it was generally thought that she had met with disaster among the icebergs off Cape Horn. In 1891, the crew of a passing ship reported seeing men signalling from one of the Islands off Cape Horn, but the ship was unable to approach, owing to heavy weather. Newspaper Story Nearly thirty years later (in 1919) a Scottish newspaper printed a lurid story, allegedly by the captain of a British ship, describing a ship covered with green slime with the skeletons of her crew where they died, at their accustomed posts. The ship lay in one of the rocky coves off Tierra del Fuego. A second and possibly more likely story is that of a Seattle pilot, told to a Shaw Savill captain in 1913. When he was still a youth, said the pilot, he was wrecked off Staten Island <c,ff Cape Horn), and he and the only other survivor set off to look for a whaling station. While searching they came across a large ship in a cove. He said he distinctly saw the name “Marlborough” on the wreck. Lying near were the skeletons of 20 men, and heaps of sea shells told how they had desperately tried to fight off the hunger that eventually overcame them.