WRECK OF THE COMPADRE.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 1812, 15 July 1891, Page 5

WRECK OF THE COMPADRE.

[I BOM THE DUNEDTN * EVENING STAR.'] "THE STORY OF THE WEECK. The following particulars of the life of the survivors on the Auckland Islandß were supplied by Mr Bales (the chief officer) to tbe 'Southland Times ' :— All hands gotoutonthe jibboom, and, as the vessel struck with a territic crash, everyone made a jump for tbe rocks. All landed safely ; but some were badly cut and bruised. By tois time the oil had become exhausted, •nd tbe sea, regaining its foroe, swept over the vessel with fearful violence, and in ten minutes from the time of landing nothing but loose wreckage was to be seen. The whole ship's company climbed the cliffs, which were several hundred feet high. We saw a mountain in the distance, and made straight for it to get a better view of the island we were cast upon. We found great difficulty in reaching it, being barefooted and scantily clothed, as, previous to leaving the ship, each man had prepared for a swim for life. From the mountain top we discovered a flagstaff close to the beach. We at once made towai ds it, but missing our way in the bush, and night coming on, we made for tbe nearest beach. There we found a few limpets and one little fish, which we divided into sixteen parts, one for each man. This scanty meal was greedily devoured, as we had had only one meal since the fire broke out four days before. What stores were saved from the laztrette had been kept for the boats, and were therefore lost when- the ship went down. 'It was now discovered that one man named Peter Nelson, a native of Norway, was missing. An attempt was made to find him, but the night was bo- dark that the search bad to be given up. ' A most miserable night was spent of ing to the rain and snow, which fell incessantly. In the morning we divided ourselves into parties and proceeded to search for Nelson, but with no success. While searching one party discovered the depot. It is hard to form an idea of what became of him, but we came to the conclusion that he must have lain down in tbe bush and died. We made for the depot, and found all the stores complete according to the list left with them. After living there a fortnight, and not knowing when we should be taken off the island— as we found a record showing that the Hinemoa had been there a month previous searching for the Kakanui — we came to the conclusion to divide ourselves, and that half should go to the other depot at the south end ot the island. Accordingly I (the mate), my watch, and the steward, started for the south end. We endured great hardship on the way, having no boots and very little clothing, as we were obliged to leave what clothes were at the depot for the party remaining there. After tramping for six days over hills and swamps, we finally reached the depot. Oar feet were very much cut and swollen, and some of the men were racked with rheumatism. We found all the stores complete. While searching along the beach for food we discovered an old whaleboat. Though very leaky and rotten, it proved of great service to us. We made oars out of the branches of trees ; but unfortunately while out fishing one day a heavy N.W. wind caught us, and, while endeavoring to reach the depot the oars broke one after the other, and we drifted ashore on Adams Island. We all jumped on the rocks, but the boat went to pieces. Knowing there was a good boat on the island, we searched for it, and after two days' tramp found it. When the Janet Ramsay reached the islands we were on an allowance of three biscuita'a day, and were just coming down to two. During our stay on the islands all the men enjoyed good health, except for the pains caused by exposure. We desire to express publicly to Captain Woods, of the Janet Ramsay,and his crew our deep gratitude to them for the kind and hospitable manner in which they treated us. We cannot thank them sufficiently, but wonld just like to say that everything that could conduce to our comfort was done by them. In conversation with Mr Bales, he mentioned the great service the depots at the Aucklands had been to them, but stated that unless boats are left at the depots it is impossible to live after" about a week there, as the seals and birds soon scent danger from the presence of man and clear out to the outlying islands. The inquiry was finished on the 9th met., the Court findingthatthe wreck wasprimarily caused by the disc d very of fire having compelled the captain to alter his course and make tor a New Zealand port ; that a gale from the south-west drove tbe vessel on ti the Auckland Islands ; and that the small amount of canvas she could carry and the quantity of water in the hold making it impossible to keep her off shore or clear the island, the vessel was beached to save life. (Captain Jones and officers were found blameHen in the matter, the Court expressing the opinion that they had done all that was pos gible to save the vessel. ' A witness named Woods, an A. 8. , asserted that the master, who bad been in the lazaret on the morning the fire was discovered by him, taking an inventory of tbe effects of an apprentice who bad run away at Buenos Ayres, had admitted that he had dropped a candle between the bales of gunnies, and asked Aim and others to say nothing about it. This Alleged remark was not corroborated, and Black, a saaman, whom Woods said conld give similar evidence, on the contrary said that the fire originated about 35ft from the lazaret, and in a place where there was not room for a man to reach. Captain Jones admitted that he bad a candle with him andthat he left it in tbe candlestick on the bread tank when he noticed tbe smoke, and hurried on deck and gave the alarm. He further stated that he had never heard of Wood's story about the candle being dropped between the bales until on board the Janet Rt^nsay, when Wood came to him and <hin£«d that be and Black would clear out of <the way when they got to New Zealand if &c made it worth their while. The captain At onceiaforpied the second officer of Woods's <r«marks. jDaptain Jones states that bad it not been •for the Government stores and domesticated anitrals on the Aucklauds $he crew of tbe Compadre would have been in a .most pitiful g>ligkt. Of sheep tbe crew caught eight, of goats three, leaving, he thinks, sufficient to ikeep the ialtnd stocked. Some of tbe wool the captain 4av#d and washed and brought With him to tbe Bluff. The animals have

never been shorn, and the wool is extraordinarily long and fine. A DESCRIPTION OP THE INLANDS. In a little pamphlet on the * Outlying Island* ofjNew Zealand,' being originally a paper which Mr K. k. Chapman read before the ■ 'tago lustitute in the early part of 1»> t year, om fellowtownsmau has given a very interesting account of the onares, Auckland, Bounty, and Campbell bland*. The first land made after leaving the Snares was a high island called Disappointmeut, vrbicb lieo fi-r<= miles oS the vresc wwt of the main group. It is the onJy out-tier at any d stance from the cl tselj compacted gr< up forming the Aucklands The whole group forms a tri.r.gle, of which the apex points to the north. This ap x consists of thre < small aud several smaller islands— viz , Knderby on the extreme north, Bos» or t c west, Kwing on tbe east, and ( »cean within the harbor. The main island is the same shape as the group vz., a triangle. Th« base of the larger triangle is Adam Island, a long island rnnuing from east to west aloog the fu.utu side of the group, shutting in (Jarnlty Harbor, wLich cuts right in O the he arc of the main island. Adam island is highland, bring a ridge 2 1)00 ft above the sea, and occasionally higher. The main island is very rugged, and h*s peaks said to rise np to 1,600 ft or 1 800 f t; bub Mr Chapman thinks they are higher. In the whole group there are no less than ten fice harbor.-, one of which, Caraley Haibor, in the south, with its mam entrance in the east, is divided into three branches, aud will sheter all the Queen's ships at once. Por* Hobs was called oy Dumunt dOr 'die the fioe-t harbor in the word. Carnley Harbor is in no way inferior ani is vastly larger. . . . The Deny Castle reef Is ut the extreme north poi< t nf the island, and i» so named through a ship of tha r name having gone to pieces there in March, 1887. The few aw vivors from this wreck spent mmy months on the island before being reecued * rebus Cove, in Port Rjss where there is a dep6t, may bo called the histoiical c> ntre of the island group, aud about it may be found enough evidence to show that a country without inhabitants mat have a tai and stirring history. On this point thuß wnttß Mr Chapman :— In the depdt house a simple inscription in chalk upon a board told the utory of the men of the Derry Castle, their sufferings and rescue. Oa a state in the same room was a record of the story of the General Grant. In a little cemetery, a short way off among the t-crub dow covering the site of the clearing made by Mr Enderby's settlers in 1850 62, were several g ayes. o>e neat stone recorded the death of the child of a settler in ISal. Hard by was the grave of a s.ilor who had starved to death. Ue was one of the crew of the Inveiduld, wiecktd on the west coast in 1861 Of the liiueteeu men who sc ambled ashore, tnree oniy were rescued, after twelve months of fearful Buffering, by a Peruvian barque vhich put in for repaiia under the impression that the Euderby settlement was still in existence. This man had apparently temporarily left the p&iy, and came back to find his companions and his last chance of lite vanished Tbe author of the book ' Lea Naufragdsj ou Vingt Mow sur un Recif des llcb Auckland,' however, professes to identify this man, from some fe « letters scratched on a slate found with him, as one of the crew of the 1.E.H., which left Melbourne iff 865, and was never heard of again. Here, too, were several traces of visitors, and amongst others an inscription, fresh and sharp as when cut on the tree in 1865, recording tbe visit of Captain Norman with the Victorian Govern' meut steamer Victoria. A slate on the same tree told how four men of the General Grant had left for New Zealand without chart or nautical instrument. These unfortunates were never heard of again. At shoe Island, a small island in Erebus Oove, said to be highly magnetic, Governor Knderby hud his State prison. The. poverty of the fi-heries of these islands is the strongest feature against them, putting them far behind the dtsolate island" and. coasts of Northern Europe. . . . All that remains of Governor fcnderby's settlement - for he held an independent commission as Governor of these is'ands, then a separate colony, and once paid s >me thing nke a State visit totheGovernor of Van Diem »n's L»nd-is a piece of country which Jo»ks as if it had been cleared, with stum us sticking np here and there, a fe* mouldering graves, and here and there a heap of roi fing Blatee. This is al> that now represents a good deal of English capital and a great deal of misapplied enthusiasm. Mr Knd<-rby went the length of recommending the islandß fur settlement in preference to the norther a part of New Zealand. >n this occasion (January, 1890) Mr Chap man's party visited the bead of the harbor, which penetrates fome miles into the i-land ana end* in a thick forest growth under a m mntain of considerable height (Hooker), and the aspect of the northern coast of the mam Island is by no meant* unattractive. A cursory in-pection led the ob3<;tver on a fine day to th'nk that it was a weU-gnesed country, something like thaof some of the bare hills of Banks Peninsula. At the north- west corner of the island is a good harbor, to which tbere is a sealera' track from Port Ross. W hat looks like rolling hi 'ls of grass from the sea is <* wilderness of high tussock", etabdiug in deep pear, such as the party struggled throng ri in other place?, and in struggli g tnrough which years ago the Invercaud s survivo. s lost four of their number, who died really of the fatigue consequent on travelling a fey/ miles of this country. . . . The northern coast is almost entirety without wood ; this may be due to the want of shelter. The weet coast is too steep for trees; so is the external part of the south coast. Bat everywaere within r he extensive harbors timber i» found. It forms a regular fringe along tbe shore, extending up to abuut 200 ft above the sea -a low limit which attests ti> the severity of the climate thence it merges into scrub for a <ew huadied feet more ; then comes tussock X gras*, and herbaceous plants. The wood l mainly r -ta. witb c everal species of coprosma and a large dracophyllum, a timber tree allied to the heaths, r>ut m appearance resembline a pine, which is common in New Zealand ; bur. does not grow so large. The forest is easy travelling near the shore; but even there you have often to bend to pass under che branches,, and the scrub is extiemely hard to pa*s through. The weßt coatt of the island may be d scribed as a line of «Lff and steeps thirty- five miles long. In otago. in Norway, and in North and r-outh America deep fiords relieve the continuity of thes-i steep ; but here there is nothing of the kind save the strait between the two inland*. On tbe contrary, the only apertures of the kind are six fine harbors, seldom vl-ited, on thn east coast. For the first twenty or twenty-five miles of th" western coast there are numerous places where, if men happened to escape at che right i-pot. they might scramble np to the high land. There is a stretch of a mile whe-e they could get up if strong enough ; but for the next ten mi<es there is scarcely any place where this could be done, Ihe western en* ranee to Carnley Barber is not navigable for v ssels of the Hinemoa's draught ; if It had been, a journey of twenty-five miles would have been saver), Adam Island, on which the cliffs are generally 2,oouft high, a»d som- times high r, is twelve miles long by from two to four wide and contains some 30 dOO acres of land. It is b >ld, with precipitous shores on the south and steep slopes on the north. Near its eastern » nd in a gap in the o iffs forming Fly hwbor, in which there i* ce-p water up to the head, which in one mile and a half from the entrance. Dense forest clothes its steep sides, the only break being under a sheer c'iff. Oarnley Haibor is where Captain Muegrave spent eighteen long and weary months waiti> g for snecor which never came- Again we muse let Mr Chapman speak for himself : — Etr'y next morning we again passed down the deep harbor to the lol£ strait which separates the two islands. We ea'led at the d. pßt, which is maintained at a very unsuitable place, on the edge of a densely-timbered point, accessible only by boat, and visible only from high land. It is, however, supplemented by a boat in a shed lower down the harbor. Then a boat was sent into a cove in Adam Island to search for some senlerb' huts said to exist there They searched the wrong cove, and by chance came upnn a brood of young mergansers (blcrgus Axistralis) with their parents. The old biids got away, but trie chicks were seized ; and I had he satisfaction, through the bjndness of Mr Neil (the ohief officer), of securing a c uple for our Museum. This bird is common in 'he Northern Hemisphere, and is there represented by numerous arctic and sub-arctic species ; in tbe Sou hern Hemisphere it is represented by this one species, found only in a limited part of this small island group. At another landing X saw more specimens of the rar« flightless -uckiand I ■'■and duck, Ncsonetta Aucklandica, which were not distu bed. Here, too, I only saw them on or close to the shore. Anchoring close to Monumental I-land, which stops the entrance from the ocean, we landed, and at once found ourselves in the true plaut-gathering country. This place will now be known by the name wo gave it — Fairchild's Garden. It extends from the strait at the north - west end of the island along tbe shore to the first, piece of bush, and thence up to and over tbe Bummit of the bill— in al perhaps 400 aores— one of ihe most wonderful natural gardens the extra-tropical world oan show. No doubt other parts of Adam Inland and thcr places in the group are equally beautiful, but tbe day we spent hero oan never be forgotten. A peaked rock overhead is 700 ft abore the sea ; the swEajit rooks are

I,looft by the aneroid The whole of the ground op to (bese and beyond tbem for some distance laterally packed with beautiful flowering herbaceous plants. . . . We landed at the cove where the sealers' huto are. though we did not see them. The road led through a bit of bush, very dense, but traversed by a sealers' track. Tneee sealers make an easy road aoross tbe island, and, when they arrive at tbe cliffs at the other side, lower some of their number to tbe ledges and c*ves, where they slaughter seals. The slayers and the skins are then drawu up. It is wholly illegal, but it goes on, bo that the fur-sealn are nearly exterminated. From the rata bush (Metrosidcros lucida) we olltnbed a spur which had been Bwept by aoow killing the gntss and making the ROlng easy. It was a steep climb, witb some tiring work, but nothing very difficult. We orossed the saddle at » height of I,oooft (by the aneroid) in one hour and ten minutes. From here, as from our point of vantage yesterday, we had a wide view of the islands Carnley Harbor, with all its arms, lay as a map before us. Had we sought the summit, a few hundred feet higher, we might perhaps have seen Port Roas and mapped the country. Towards the south the view was uninterrupted as far a) the horzon. From the story of the wreck it will b* remembered that the first land sighted waß Disappointment [sland. eight miles trom the nniuUud, but tbe *torm drove her past it. The ioi t he Htruck ou was the South-west Cape, Buchanan's sketch of which is here given

On c imbing tbe cliff j the shipwrecked crew at once et-pted Mount Hooter, from the summit of which— about l,OUoft above tha sea level— th>-y looked right down on Fort Ross, and saw tne signai stuff erected in Governor Jttnderby'a time, it waa in traversing the dense bush, or rather sotub, between the North-west Gape and r*ort Boss, that nelson got detached from the party ami 10-t his life. At the Port Robs depot were found ample provisions. A portion of the jrew, under the leauership of the mate, went in search ut tne southern depdt, to which they had been directed by the instructions lefs at the Port Boss depde. The white line traversing the sketch map attached will pretty nearly indicate the route these men cook.

White spaces denote food depots and boathouses. It must have been a fearful march, ana its hard ships may ba imagined from the fact that it took them a wtek to journey a little more than twenty mi Us. Had they known of the ex>stet cc of the tinderby Island dep6t they could have made for v, where they would have found a serviceable boat, in which they could have made the voyage with perfect ease from Port Ross along th - eastern toast to Carnley Barb>r, where tbere is also a food depot. This depot, as Mr Chapman points out, is very badly placed, and is not easy discernible from the mainland. t certainly should be shifted to a more advantageous position. The men found a good whaleboat at the boat shed at the western point of Adam Island. On this is and are count ess albatro-ses, the eggs of which are remarkably good eating at this time of the year. The -heep placed on the islands by Captain Fairchild do not appear to have thrived, but the g>atß have multiplied, and the wool from the sheep proved extremely serviceable to the crew of the Compadre. Tr the 'Leisure Hour' for June and July, 1890 appeared an account of a visit paid to rhe Aucklands in January, 186*, by Mr FTarry Armstrong (then Chief uivcyor of Southland, and now reside t in London) who was despatched 'O the islands by the then Superintendent of Southland (Mr Taylor), to rescue any people ah pwrecked there, and to rquip depot of provision". These articles, which are capitally illustrated, are very good read ng just now,