The Shipwreck Archives

he speakers for the General Assembly of New Zealand attempted to open Parliament on schedule in 1862 only to be met with a problem. There were not sufficient members of the Legislative Council or the House of Representatives to achieve quorum. The reason was uncertain but news came soon, the members from the North had been shipwrecked. Ship Name: White Swan Ship Type: Wooden Three Masted Steamer Y...

Charles Dickens wrote in his short story The Long Voyage: “See the Halsewell, East Indiaman outward bound, driving madly on a January night towards the rocks near Seacombe, on the island of Purbeck! …The description of her loss, familiar to me from my early boyhood, seems to be read aloud as she rushes to her destiny.” For Dickens the Halsewell was a vessel to express final regrets and a contempla...

The Boatswain of the SS Austria dipped the hot metal chain into a bucket of tar that had been set aside for the purpose of fumigating the steerage class of the ship. As often happened on immigrant ships of the mid 1800s, the 2,684 ton ship had 450 people in steerage alone, fumigation was often needed. As he dipped his chain in the bucket though, disaster was only minutes away. Ship Name: SS Austri...

The chief officer of La Seyne, also referred to on ship as the Second Captain, was laying in his bunk but he had not fallen asleep yet in spite of the hour. Suddenly the calm of the night on the ship was broken by a loud blast of the ship’s whistle and the chief officer jumped up and rushed to the deck to find out what had happened. Ship Name: La Seyne Nationality: French Built: 1874 Tonnage: 1140...

The crew of the East India Company ship the Sussex, under the command of their captain, got ready to abandon ship. Another East India Company ship, the Winchester, was standing by to take them off. Not all of the crew was united however. There was a small stubborn group who felt that the ship just needed a little repair to be right again. Ship Name: Sussex Nationality: British Ship Type: East Indi...

The Dutch ship, the Amicilia could see a flag flying from the top of a tall tree on a high point of land fluttering over Christmas Island. This certainly bore investigation since it was well known that there was no one living on Christmas Island. The Amicilia launched a boat and some men rowed towards Christma Island. Ship Name: Vice Admiraal Rijk Year Built: 1846 Tonnage: 469 Ship Type: Wooden Sa...

The Kuroshio, also known as the Japan Current, carried the helpless, and unsteerable ship along in its tow. The ship was pulled across the pacific by the current and even though the pull weakened near Hawaii the Hojun-maru and the men on board of her were still carried up the coast towards what is now Washington State. Ship Name: Hojun-Maru Ship Type: Sengoku-bune Nationality: Japanese Year Wrecke...

The Captain of the French steamer Marie Louise watched the Italian steamer, the SS Sirio, get closer and closer to the shore with some concern. It grabbed his attention enough that he commented to his first mate that the Sirio was taking a dangerous course. He had hardly finished speaking when the Sirio suddenly stopped, and the bow of the ship lifted. The Marie Louise changed her course. Ship Nam...

Ten attempts in total were made to pull the men from the wreck of the Barque Mary Stoddart. Each time the boats were beaten back by the terrible storm that had caused the ship to ground to start with. Each time the men clinging to the rigging could see help get closer, and then turn from them again. On the shore the people could see the men in the rigging, so close yet still completely beyond help...

The men on shore kept the bonfires going strong in the middle of the rough winter weather, the night of the 28th of December, keeping an anxious vigil on the stranded tramp steamer in the distance. Their repeated attempts of rescue had failed so far, beaten back by blinding snow and rough waves, but they wanted the thirty men on the Drumelzier to know that they were not alone, so they kept the fir...

As the survivors of the Portuguese shipwreck Sao Bento walked North along the coast of Africa they found traces all along their way of those who had passed before them. Only two years before the Sao Joao had wrecked on this same shore. Survival among the people who had been on the Sao Joao had been minimal, and those on the Sao Bento could only hope that fate would be more kind to them. Ship Name:...

Grace Bussell was given a silver life saving medal for her efforts to save the lives of the passengers of the Georgette. Samuel Yebble Isaacs, a stockman who worked for her family received a bronze. The papers across Australia celebrated an Australian Grace Darling, few of them mentioned the name of Samel Yebble Isaacs. As for who saved how many, that is something we will probably never know. Ship...

The Cristabol Colon had traveled between South America, New York, and Spain along the same route for years but when the Spanish Civil War broke out the Cristabol Colon soon found herself to have little welcome anywhere. She seemed to be a ship that was doomed to wander. Ship Name: Cristabol Colon Nationality: Spanish Built: 1923 Tonnage: 10,000 Tons Ship Type: Steam Passanger Liner Year Wrecked: 1...

The trial of the crew of the Saladin was a celebrated pirate trial, long after the end of the Golden Age of Piracy. The tale of greed, betrayal, murder, and the huge amount of money that had inspired such acts was enough to grip the public imagination for years to come. Ship Name: Saladin Nationality: United Kingdom Built: 1835 Tonnage: 550 Ship Type: Barque Ship Wrecked: Nova Scotia Year Wrecked:...

The Melville Castle, turned Vryheid, had already made many long hard voyages when she was bought to bring soldiers to the Batavian Republic’s colonies on the Cape and Jakarta. It was soon found that she had passed inspection by putting copper and paint over rot however, and what should have been a long voyage only lasted a couple of days, with a horrible cost of life. Ship Name: Vryheid Nationalit...

The L C Waldo was one of many ships that were stuck on the Great Lakes by the 1913 storm. The storm has several nicknames, including the White Hurricane. Many of the men who survived the storm would simply call it the worst storm they had ever seen. As for the men of the L C Waldo, they would say it was a very close call. Ship Name: L C Waldo Nationality: United States Ship Type: Steel Hulled Stea...

La Bourgogne was a story that seemed to overturn every idea of Victorian gallantry, and it horrified the reading public with its brutality. That the ship had sank in a matter of half an hour was not enough to explain its high mortality, but that was swiftly clarified by the surviving passengers, who began to tell of a murderous fight as the ship sank beneath the waves. Ship Name: La Bourgogne Nati...

The Yasaka Maru sinking was a brief matter of great international interest, further proof that civilians were still targets in the current war. Greater disasters preceded it, and would follow, but that didn't stop the ship's name from being added to a growing list of grievances that would lead to an even larger war.  Ship Name: Yasaka Maru  Nationality: Japanese  Tonnage: 11758&nbsp...

John Greenleaf Whittier wrote “wise sound skippers, though skies be fine, Reef their sails when they see the sign, of the blazing wreck of the Palatine”. There was no ship, The Palatine, however. Instead there was a ship of Palatine immigrants called the Princess Augusta, lost to time, and only remembered as a glimmer on the sea. Ship Name: Princess Augusta Nationality: English Built: 1720 Tonnage...

The Forfarshire, it would later be acknowledged, had been in too poor repair to be sailing, and the decision to try to reach her destination had proved to be deadly. The lives lost and the stories of those who had survived would all be immediately overshadowed by a public who only wanted to know about one person however. They wanted to know all about the lighthouse keeper’s daughter, Grace Darling...

The Crete-a-Pierrot was Haiti’s strongest ship, and her nation’s flagship. When Admiral Killick declared that he was taking sides in a brewing civil war, it was therefore not surprising that he took the powerful ship with him into the fight. The vessel had no match so long as it was compared to other Haitian vessels, but soon it would become embroiled in an international incident that would spell...

The Minora went down quickly, giving no time for the seven men on her to prepare. Six of them were strong swimmers, but the captain did not know how to swim at all. It was therefore a wonder when the schooner the Advance brought him into Newcastle, and he told the tale of having been in the water for almost twenty four hours. He was weak, suffering from shock and exposure, but he was coherent and...

The Connaught was the height of luxury travel for her first class passengers, and a way to start a new life in a new country for the many immigrants that boarded her in Galway, bound for Boston. A new ship only on her second voyage, and the second largest ship on the ocean, her passengers could be justified in thinking that they had chosen wisely for the safest and most comfortable voyage possible...

When the Ertugrul set out she was an aging ship beset with troubles. She had an important task ahead of her however, she was to cement ties between the Ottomans and Japan, bringing a diplomatic party on board, as well as gifts from the Sultan to the Emperor of Japan. Though her voyage was full of problems she would succeed in her mission, only to never make it back to Istanbul again. Ship Name: Er...

The luxerious flagship of the French Messageries Maritimes Ship Line set off on its maidan voyage from France to China and Japan. Though there were several bomb threats against the ship, the threat to the ship’s safety turned out to be internal, in the wiring that ran through all of the well appointed cabins, full of flammable carpeting, curtains, and furniture. It would only take an electrical sh...