by Alan Johnson

Cargoes

As a record of seagoing endeavour, courage, and failure the dry narratives of the Board of Trade’s Enquiries into British sailing-ship casualties of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries can have few parallels. They derive from the registration system established by the Merchant Shipping acts of 1786, 1825 and 1854 which required the fact of a ship’s loss to be officially recorded, and in particular the 1854 act which additionally empowered the Board of Trade (today subsumed within the Department of Transport) to conduct enquiries into the loss of British merchant ships. The power was used very sparingly, probably because of the number of losses, for example in the great Storm of 1871 28 ships were lost on the north-east coast, but the records which have survived are even fewer because they were later heavily “weeded”.

Each Enquiry was convened by the Board of Trade under the presidency of a Wreck Commissioner assisted by two or more Wreck assessors (professional sea officers), and had the authority to summons witnesses, allocate costs – perhaps punitively – and withdraw Certificates of Competence from Masters and Mates held culpable. The breadth and competence of the analysis set out in their reports reflect the span and depth of the various seaskills – ship construction, marine finance, cargo stowage, manning, navigation, and ship-husbandry all were under review, their relative extent determined only by the circumstances of the loss and, of course, the evidence which unfolded from witnesses under examination.

Today the responsibility is devolved onto the Chief inspector of Marine Accidents through the Merchant Shipping Act 1995. These stories are culled from the surviving reports of the early Enquiries, and are a testament to the professionalism and humanity of those who went before us.

Hurunui

The Hurunui was launched for the New Zealand Shipping Company (1873-1971) on the Tyne in September 1875, the third of five four-masted iron ships of 1,054 grt, 204 feet loa, beam 34 feet, depth 20 feet. They were all built that year for the emigrant and cargo trade by Palmers Shipbuilding and iron Company of Jarrow at a price of £20,000 each. Hurunui completed in November to carry 300 emigrants and made nineteen voyages for the Company (from 1890 reduced to a barque) before steamers took over the passenger trade to the Colony and she was sold in 1895 to Swedish owners. In 1915 she was torpedoed and sunk flying the Russian flag under the name Hermes.

Migrants and passengers were customarily embarked in London but after 1883, following collisions in the Channel, one coincidentally between the same ship Hurunui and another New Zealand Shipping Company emigrant ship the Waitara both Otago bound, and the loss of a Tasmanian emigrant ship, London passenger embarkation was prohibited for some years, and ships called at Plymouth instead.

Seven years previously, in 1876 on her second voyage, the Hurunui was carrying migrants from London when she was involved in an earlier collision, also in the Channel, and it is the Board of Trade Enquiry report into that accident which provides the background for this story. The other ship was the Pater, a little Greek three-masted barque of about 450 tons which had sailed from Cyprus in the heat of august with a cargo of 470 tons of locustbeans for London. (The beans seem to have been used as a cheap sugar substitute.) She had a crew of eleven, including the master and mate working watch-and watch. She doesn’t seem to have been in a hurry, having called at La Spezia as early as mid September before she finally reached the entrance to the Channel at sunset (around 4.30pm) on 10th November. According to the evidence of the mate, the cook and one seaman who were the only survivors, the wind was then from the south-east, and she started to beat up-Channel. after sunset she was on the starboard tack on a heading of about NE by E (about 056°Mag) (Magnetic variation in the western Channel in the 1870s was of the order of 200W.) and on the watch-change at 6pm in gathering darkness when the ship was probably close to the English coast east of the Lizard, she was put-about onto a new heading of SSW (202°) under shortened sail (courses and topsails) for the night, making between 3 and 5 knots. The Mate took over to stand the last dog and two hours later when the Master relieved him he went below.

He was roused by the violent stamping of feet on the deck above his berth and loud cries, followed by the Master’s shout of, “Hard a-port the helm” and then almost immediately by all the shock and upset of violent collision, as the Hurunui struck their stem at 10 knots, bringing the mizen crashing down and cutting the little barque’s hull to the waterline. The ships broke apart and after an hour the Pater, started to settle, although she had for a little while evidently maintained steerage way as the mate at the helm shaped a course for the shore. The Mate with three of the crew took to the smaller of the ship’s two boats and cut her adrift, while the other survivors tried but failed to free the longboat from beneath the tangled wreckage of the mizen. Lying about three ship’s lengths off in the darkness the mate and his little crew, who were without oars or rudder, stood by helplessly as the ship finally sank and their comrades drowned. Their boat by force of wind and current then drifted onto the shore, presumably on the Cornish coast, where on landing one died and the other three somehow got onshore and were saved.

Collision was only one of the dangers faced by ships in the Channel. The objective dangers of making an arrival or departure there were to be graphically illustrated again in December 1893 when the Hurunui was homeward bound deep-laden from Algoa Bay. at night and in a big storm the ship, intending to shelter off the French coast made a dangerous landfall with the Casquets under her lee, and only just escaped by rounding Alderney and taking the race losing three of her four boats to the weather. A close-run thing, but Hurunui’s fatal collision with the Pater on 10th November 1876 which is the subject of our story, although also in winter was not caused by the weather. Before radar and radio, ship-safety as far as it could be assured came down to a good look-out, a speed which allowed room for error and seamanlike prudence, but even with all these qualities it was inevitable that ship masters relied for survival on a degree of luck.

The Pater’s luck had run out during the first watch on the evening of 10th November. Although the Enquiry had no jurisdiction over the Greek ship it is clear from the text that the assessors did take evidence from the three survivors. The Wreck Commissioner was hampered by that facts that the mate and cook were both below at the time of impact, and that the young seaman who had in fact been the forward lookout and might have been expected to be a key witness could give no coherent account of events. The Commissioner therefore had to make some circumstantial assumptions. One was that, “there is no reason to suppose that the Pater was not in every way fully equipped”, and he accepted the survivors’ important evidence that their ship’s lights were all up and burning brightly. The Commissioner then turned his critical attention to the Hurunui and the extent to which that ship had maintained the lookout, speed and prudence appropriate to the circumstances.

To return to the Hurunui. She had entered service in November 1875 and sailed later that month on her maiden voyage under Captain Boyd arriving in New Zealand after 92 days on 23rd February 1876. She was a new ship and in Captain Boyd the Company would have appointed a known and respected Master. The ship duly returned to London where she was turned round to sail once more for Wellington under his command on 23rd September, with 220 emigrants, 9 saloon passengers and a crew of 40. There was also 8,900 tons of cargo. it must have been a hard passage round North Foreland and through the Downs, because even with a strong new ship he was forced three days later to put into Portland for shelter with storm damage, and perhaps more seriously there were outbreaks of smallpox and scarlet fever (which was then often fatal and with few remedies before antibiotics) amongst the passengers, so that on 6th October she was towed into Plymouth for quarantine and fumigation. In the words of the Commissioner, “she must have been a very unfortunate vessel”. it is not clear whether the short tow from Portland to Plymouth was necessary because of the weather damage or for crewing reasons but Hurunui remained in Plymouth for five weeks, a combination of circumstances which will have considerably vexed the owners and their insurers.

She finally set sail on 10th November passing Plymouth breakwater at 5pm, dropped the pilot thirty minutes later, and then proceeded down Channel under all sail, including top-gallants but without staysails. It will then have been about sunset. Captain Boyd will have placed a fix on the chart, checked the ships’ lights and, using the same wind which was forcing Pater to beat up-Channel, gave his ship a shove to the south-west maintaining, according to the Commissioner, a speed of 9-l0 knots. The ship had made her departure but was in soundings, so he remained on deck while the mates stood successive watches, and at 8pm the second took charge.

it was the task of the Enquiry to unravel the conflicting evidence given as to circumstances surrounding the events of the next four hours, and in particular to determine the relative tracks and positions of the two ships, but of the actual events there was no doubt. Under a good spread of canvas Hurunui was at last under way for New Zealand, heading WSW (about 247°) into the night with the wind abeam, and heeled slightly to starboard where the green of her navigation light occasionally reflected across dark breaking leeward seas. A little way into the first watch the second mate left the deck briefly to visit the chartroom perhaps to check the character of the next coastal lights and the master was in sole charge. above the noise of the wind in the rigging and the hiss of the sea alongside, out of the darkness came a sudden and alarming cry from for’ ad, “Ship right ahead”, but not receiving any acknowledgement from the deck once more the lookout shouted more urgently, “Ship right ahead”. Captain Boyd on the poop 160 feet aft his forward vision obscured by the courses now responded, and shouted back. But to know what was being said the second mate had to look up from his chart at the cries and he started to move back onto the poop. The lookout, who seems to have been a sensible man, repeated his cry and at the same time realising that the other ship was now close upon them yelled out to hard a-port the helm which the Master repeated to the helmsman, but too late. The second was already on his way forward before they hit and was followed there soon afterwards by Captain Boyd who asked the lookout, “is there any damage?” The lookout answered that there was, to which the Master replied, “all right, keep a good look out.” The second sent the carpenter below to check damage, and 10 minutes later he reported that the ship was holed in two places, with the collision compartment flooded and the collision bulkhead under strain. In the meantime the ship had hurried on her course, but on hearing the state of the damage Captain Boyd had her put-about and they returned to Plymouth on the following morning.

These events occurred on the evening of 10th November, and the Enquiry delivered its report on the 28th. it seems remarkable that the Enquiry should have been convened, assessors appointed, Counsel nominated, witnesses examined and a finding delivered in such short order, when today such processes can take months if not years, but the swiftness with which it was accomplished may reflect the frequency of such occurrences as well as the powerful authority of the Commissioners. The Commissioner was deeply concerned that the Master of the Hurunui had failed in his duty to standby the damaged Pater. The law had been laid down by act of Parliament and at the Enquiry Counsel for the Board of Trade placed the relevant Sections of the act in evidence so that they are repeated verbatim in the report. The key clauses stated, with caveats concerning safety, that “in every collision it shall be the duty of the Master to stay by the other vessel… and to render such assistance as may be necessary …. every Master who fails … shall be deemed guilty of misdemeanour ….”

Captain Boyd had patently failed to stand-by the Pater and the Wreck Commissioner was determined to bring him to account. The Board of Trade, which was represented by a lawyer, having heard the various witnesses alleged that the Master was at fault in standing-on ‘at so rapid a rate’ considering the look-out kept onboard, second that he ‘did not render assistance’ to the Pater and finally that he ‘improperly left her.’

Both ships had been heading into the dark to the south west with the wind from port the Pater close-hauled and the Hurunui astern, reaching up behind her. Reconstructing their respective tracks the Hurunui probably overtook on a course of 247° with Pater on 202°, and it seems likely that the British ship closed with the Greek on her starboard bow, to collide with the other’s port quarter.

On giving his evidence Captain Boyd had said that the wind was more southerly than the mate of the Pater had stated and that the Hurunui was close-hauled. The Commissioner chose to disagree, although he might otherwise have mitigated the Master’s predicament, on the grounds that such a wind would have allowed the Greek to proceed directly up Channel without the need to tack, and he concluded that the New Zealand bound ship was “going with a fair-wind at a great rate of speed”. The Master’s situation worsened when the Commissioner turned to the arrangements for look-out and questioned whether they were commensurate with that ‘great rate’. He observed disparagingly that the order to alter course had been given not by the Captain but by the look-out man, that neither the Master nor Second Mate could say who that look-out had been nor whether a regular look-out had been set, and he concluded that not only had the ship been going too quickly for the visibility but that there was a ‘want of proper arrangement and discipline onboard!’ Captain Boyd must now have known that he was being hung out to dry, but the Commissioner made his judgement even clearer when it came to the Master’s actions after the collision.

Hurunui cut deeply into the weakest point on Pater, her stem, with her strongest, the stern, and the two vessels must have been locked together for some minutes before she broke free to hold her course for another ten minutes. She turned back to Plymouth only after the Carpenter had made his report, and despite having so many lives at stake onboard the extent of damage was not sufficient for the Master to decide to shore the collision bulkhead, because he felt that to have done so might have interfered with paying out cable, and for the lack of old spars for the purpose. The Commissioner felt that the decision to return to Plymouth was taken not out of concern for the fate of the Pater, but as a precaution. He stated baldly that on the evidence neither the mate nor the Second Mate ever seem to have troubled themselves about the other vessel and the Commissioner and assessors judged that, “Captain Boyd has shown a great want, not of humanity, but a great want of discretion and a great want of presence of mind. We think that a man in command of such a vessel as this and in whose charge so many lives are placed ought not be deficient in such qualities the want of which may lead to such serious consequences.” They withdrew Captain William Boyle Boyd’s certificate for 12 months, as a warning to other Captains that they were not to leave another ship damaged in collision to its fate.

There is a sequel. The New Zealand newspaper ‘The Otago Witness’ reported in 1899 the death of a Captain Boyd, the local manager of the New Zealand Shipping Company. Captain Boyd born in 1843 was none other than our Captain William Boyle Boyd. Not only had he continued to work for the Company but two years after the Board of Trade Enquiry he brought the burning barque Piako with 288 immigrants to safety in Pernambuco and ultimately New Zealand through a sequence of events during which he displayed such ‘discretion and presence of mind’ that the ship was commended by the Naval Court at Pernambuco and the Master officers and crew received a gratuity from the company for their ability, courage and discipline.