General Grant (ship)
 Illustration in Harper's Weekly of May 16, 1868
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The General Grant was a 1864 in service Bark , which as a passenger ship was used and passengers and freight from the UK to Australia promoted. On May 13, 1866, the ship went off course off the Auckland Islands and was driven against the rocky coasts of Auckland Island . The strong current pushed the ship into a rock cave, where it got stuck because the masts were wedged in the ceiling of the cave . 68 passengers and crew were killed. The 15 survivors spent several months on the uninhabited island. Ten of them were rescued in November 1867, 18 months after the accident , the other five had died in the meantime.
The ship
The 55-meter-long barque, built from oak and pine , was built in 1864 in the Jacob Morse shipyard on the Kennebec River in the US state of Maine . The ship was named after Ulysses S. Grant , a Commander in Chief in the Civil War and later US President .
The General Grant transported passengers and cargo from Melbourne to London . It was owned by Page, Richardson & Company, based in Boston. The ship had accommodations for 56 passengers.
The last ride
beginning of the journey
On November 28, 1865, the General Grant put in Boston under the command of Captain William Henry Loughlin for a crossing to Melbourne. On the second night at sea, the ship was hit by strong winds . The third mate, Rufus Tyler, went overboard and drowned while helping to lower the sails. This was seen as a bad omen by the fellow travelers . The weather was good for the next 68 days on the way to the Cape of Good Hope .
On March 13, the General Grant reached Melbourne , where she was anchored for almost eight weeks and took supplies on board for the onward journey to London. On Friday, May 4th, 1866, the General Grant cast off from Melbourne. On board were in addition to 25 crew members 58 passengers, including six women and about 20 children as well as 2,576 ounces of gold . Many of the passengers were prospectors who had successfully dug for gold in Australia and were now returning home with the wealth they had acquired. Some of the cargo , which consisted mainly of lumber , hides , leather and nine tons of zinc , had originally been intended for the steamship London , which sank in the Bay of Biscay the previous January . This fact was also taken as an omen . It was speculated that the cargo should never reach London.
The ship is off course
In the following six days, the ship covered a long distance in favorable winds and calm seas. On the seventh day, however, strong winds set in, forcing Captain Loughlin to bring his ship leeward . This changed the course according to which the General Grant should pass the Auckland Islands far north. The ship was now on Auckland Island, the main island of the archipelago. In addition, thick fog came up, which threw the ship even more off course.
On the evening of the ninth day at sea, land was made out to port. The ship's command assumed that it was the extreme north of the island, but actually you were on the west side. On Sunday, May 13th, the lookout reported land directly ahead. However, one of the officers, who had binoculars, disagreed and explained that it was just a fog bank. Only when the wind died down did the General Grant ¸ realize that the ship was headed straight for the 120 m high rocky basalt cliffs on the west coast of Auckland Island. All passengers were ordered on deck and all crew members were ordered to their positions.
The accident off Auckland Island
All sails were set in an attempt to get the General Grant off the rocks . However, there was no wind. At one point it looked like the current was driving the ship in a southerly direction, bringing it to safety, but then it was again heading straight for the rocks. An attempt was made to anchor the ship, but the anchor failed to find the bottom. Panic broke out on board and some women and children began to cry.
At around 1.30 a.m. on Monday, May 14, 1866, the General Grant was pushed onto the cliff. The tide lifted the ship and carried it into a rock cave where the foremast collided with the cave ceiling. The impact rocked the ship and turned its stern around. The rudder and the mast that held the foresail broke off and the foremast bored down through the wooden hull . It broke the helmsman's ribs. It was very dark in the cave. Despite lanterns that were hung over the side of the ship, people could hardly see anything. The masts could not be cut because they were wedged in the ceiling of the cave. The ship was pulled further and further into the cave, until the mast that held the royal sail suddenly broke and its remains and the rigging fell on the deck. It was only when the stump of the foremast collided with the ceiling again and this time got stuck that the General Grant came to a halt.
At dawn, the first attempts to evacuate the ship were made. A lifeboat with three crew members was lowered and was supposed to connect the other boats with ropes. In the second boat sat among others the senior officer Bartholomew Brown. Another boat with about 40 people disappeared into the darkness of the cave . Later the ship began to sink. As the water began to slosh over the quarterdeck, panic broke out again. A total of 68 people drowned trying to leave the ship or swim ashore. 15 people survived, including nine crew members and six passengers. The stewardess Mary Ann Jewell was the only surviving woman. Captain Loughlin was among the dead.
The survivors
The survivors settled in Port Ross Bay on the northern tip of the island. The Auckland Islands are uninhabited, and the nearest port, Bluff on New Zealand's South Island, was 465 km north. Only seal or whalers visited the archipelago occasionally. They had started raising pigs and set up a few scattered huts for accommodation.
The survivors found shelter in these huts and ate the pigs, seals and clams. The small group was led by James Teer, an Irish gold digger. He managed to light a fire with the last remaining matches that kept them burning for the next year and a half and was important for their survival. They also sewed sealskin clothing. They finally decided to send a group to New Zealand in one of the surviving lifeboats to get help. On January 22nd, 1867, after eight months on the island, a group of four set out. However, the men did not know the sea and had no charts. They unknowingly followed a course that took them into the void of the Pacific Ocean , and they were never seen again. In September one of the men, 62-year-old Scotsman David McLellan, died after a brief illness, reducing the number of survivors to ten.
On October 6, a ship was sighted on the horizon and the castaways lit a fire to attract attention. But the ship disappeared again. On November 21, 1867, 18 months after the sinking of General Grant , the brig Amherst set out on a seal hunt in the Auckland Islands under the command of Captain Patrick Gilroy of New Zealand . The Amherst discovered the ten survivors and took them in. They were asked if they should be brought to New Zealand, which they refused. They wanted to help the crew of the Amherst with the seal hunt, which took another six weeks. On January 12, 1868, the ship with the rescued arrived in the port of Bluff. As a result, the New Zealand government set up emergency shelters for shipwrecked people on the coast, the so-called castaway depots .
Recovery attempts
Shortly after the survivors had been rescued, the first rescue attempts were made , which were primarily motivated by the gold on board the General Grant . In the first few years, the expeditions were accompanied by survivors of the accident to ensure that the wreck site was found.
In 1868 a crew on board the tug Southland , including survivor James Teer, made the first attempt to locate the wreck of the General Grant . Due to the bad weather, the trip was canceled. In 1870 the schooner Daphne set off with the survivor David Ashworth on board. The endeavor came to an end when Ashworth and five other men disappeared without a trace in their boat while searching for the wreck on the rocky coast. In 1876 the schooner Flora came to Auckland Island with the survivor Cornelius Drew, but this time the General Grant was not found either. The following year, the crew of the steamer Gazelle claimed to have discovered General Grant's cave , but their divers did not search the cave.
By 1912 the value of gold was estimated at £ 500,000. Entrepreneur EC May lost his research vessel on an expedition in 1914 and went bankrupt after another voyage. Over the following decades more expeditions to the Auckland Islands followed, all of which remained unsuccessful. In 1996, Bill Day from the New Zealand salvage company Seaworks Limited found a wreck and was able to recover numerous items such as portholes, cannonballs, lamps and coins. However, none of the coins dated from the period after 1833, so it can be assumed that they are the remains of another, previously unknown ship. The wreck of the General Grant has remained undiscovered to this day.
literature
- William M. Sanguilly: Shipwreck of the General Grant . Harpers Editors, New York 1869. (eyewitness account of a survivor)
- Charles WN Ingram: New Zealand Shipwrecks 1795-1975 . Reed, Wellington 1977, ISBN 0-589-01047-6 .
- Keith Eunson: The Wreck of the General Grant . Reed, Wellington 1974, ISBN 0-85422-119-0 .
- Steve Locker-Lampson, Ian Francis: The Wreck Book. rediscovered New Zealand shipwrecks . Millwood Press, Wellington 1973, ISBN 0-908582-29-3 .
- Nigel Pickford: The Atlas of Shipwreck & Treasure . Dorling Kindersley, London 1994, ISBN 0-7513-0114-0 .
- Steve Locker-Lampson: New Zealand Treasure Wrecks . Halcyon Press, Auckland 1995, ISBN 0-908685-23-8 .
- Jean-Yves Blot: Underwater Archeology . Thames and Hudson, London 1995, ISBN 0-500-30068-2 .