Marlborough was an iron-built two-decked merchant sailing ship which disappeared in 1890. She was built by the firm of Robert Duncan and Co., Port Glasgow and launched in 1876. First managed by James Galbraith for the Albion Shipping Company, she was registered in 1880 to the ownership of John Leslie of London, while continuing to operate within the fleet of Albion Line. Marlborough disappeared during a voyage in January 1890, and has not been seen or heard from in over a century. Searches and investigations have yielded nothing conclusive, and the ship's ultimate fate, and that of her crew, remains unknown.
Origins The ship was commanded by Captain Anderson from 1876 to 1883, with a crew of 29, when she made voyages to Lyttelton, New Zealand and Dunedin, also making some very fast passages home to the United Kingdom, on one occasion, in 1880, travelling from Lyttelton to the Lizard in Cornwall in 71 days.
Marlborough made 14 successful voyages with immigrants from London to New Zealand up to 1890, most often returning with cargoes of wool and frozen meat. She had been converted to refrigeration as soon as the success of the venture was proven by another Albion ship, the Dunedin, and carried her first shipment in 1882. In 1884 Captain Herd took over command and was aboard her at the time of her voyage from Lyttelton to London in 1890, when she disappeared without trace.
Last voyage
On 11 January 1890, the Marlborough departed Lyttelton bound for London, with a cargo of frozen meat and wool, with a crew of twenty-nine men and one female passenger (Mrs W B Anderson). Two days later she was spoken to by Captain Gordon of one J J Craig's barques, The Falkland Hill.Ship Marlborough, Star, Issue 7027, 4 December 1890, Page 3 After this encounter all contact was lost. When no word of her came after a long wait, an inquiry was made as to her condition when she sailed, where it was proved that the cargo was properly stowed and the ship well founded in good trim for the voyage. After some months the ship was posted at Lloyd's as "missing" and general opinion was that the ship had been sunk by icebergs, which were frequently encountered near Cape Horn.Perils of the sea – three lives lost. The missing ship Marlborough, Evening Post, Volume XXXIX, Issue 125, 29 May 1890, Page 2
RMS Rimutaka reported that there were great quantities of ice in the Southern Ocean between the Chatham Islands and Cape Horn when she sailed through the area in early to mid February.Untitled, Auckland Star, Volume XXI, Issue 138, 12 June 1890, Page 4Departure of the Rimutaka, Press, Volume XLVII, Issue 7469, 7 February 1890, Page 4 This was at the same time as the Marlborough would have been in the vicinity. The Marlborough's Captain Herd was noted for running well to the south because the shortest distance between Lyttelton and Cape Horn, using Great-circle navigation, is partially inside the Antarctic Circle and about as far as 68 degrees south at the southernmost point.Tragedy of the deep, Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XL, Issue 13195, 2 October 1913, Page 2
Significant sized Antarctic icebergs have been observed at least as far north as 50 degrees south in the Pacific Ocean, which is well inside the sailing routes of the time., Cambridge University, Annals of Glaciology, Volume 58, Issue 74, April 2017, pp. 28-40, Yury A. Romanov, Nina A. Romanova, Peter Romanov, retrieved 29 August 2019 Cape Horn is located at 56 degrees south.
Alex Carson, a ship's apprentice on Marlborough, was meant to have sailed on this journey but fell ill before the ship sailed. His illness effectively saved his life.Fortunate illness, Press, Volume XLIX, Issue 14788, 4 October 1913, Page 5
Search by HMS Garnet
A search was mounted by , an from the Pacific Squadron under Captain Harry Francis Hughes-Hallett, for the crews of Marlborough and Dunedin in mid-1891 as a result of a rumour that there were crew members sighted near Good Success Bay, Tierra del Fuego. The story that prompted the search had been originally printed in The Daily Colonist, a Victoria, British Columbia newspaper, on 9 April 1891 and stated that a Brown Brothers sealing schooner Maud S under Captain R E McKiel had, in mid to late January 1891, encountered number of men purporting to be shipwrecked British sailors impressed into service by the Argentine government at the life saving station in Good Success Bay.House of Commons, The Times (London, England); Wednesday, 29 April 1891; pg 6; Issue 33311The Bearing Sealing Fleet, New York Times, 24 October 1890Halifax to Victoria, The Daily Colonist, 9 April 1891, page 1 The Garnet searched the bay and surrounding area. No sailors were found, nor was there any evidence of their existence.Anglo-Colonial Notes, New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 8694, 10 October 1891, Page 1
Fate of the crew and passengers Two stories are often reproduced regarding the fate of the Marlborough, which have been debunked by author Basil Lubbock in his The Last of the Windjammers. They were the Ghost ship and the Burley account. The ghost ship story is considered fictional, while the Burley account is considered one of mistaken identity.
Ghost ship
In October 1913, the Singapore newspaper The Straits Times published a story according to which the Marlborough had been discovered near Cape Horn with the skeletons of her crew that were slimy to the touch on board. The Straits Times attributed the story to one published the London paper the Evening Standard of 3 October 1913. The Evening Standard mentioned that the story was based on an "account cabled from New Zealand" which was yet to be confirmed. The ship that sighted the Marlborough in 1913 was said to be the sailing ship Johnson.The cruise of the skeletons, Robert Le Roy Ripley, Believe it or not!, Simon and Schuster, 1929, page 159 The date of the find is said to have been eight weeks prior to publication, which would make the ships finding as being the late July to early August 1913 period.Ship of death, Nottingham Evening Post, Friday 3 October 1913, page 9
The points against this story are that:
The area around Cape Horn is subject to severe storms, strong eastwards currents, and icebergs.U.S. Navy Marine Climatic Atlas of the World: Rounding Cape Horn, 1995. Retrieved 5 February 2006. Any drifting vessel would more likely have been driven on to rocks or into icebergs rather than gently floating around for over 20 years. The Cape was on a major shipping route making the likelihood of any vessel remaining undetected for such a long length of time improbable (the Panama Canal did not open until 1914 and this was the quickest route for ships from the American Pacific Coast to the Atlantic). Punta Arenas was a significant settlement, and minor gold rush had started in the area in the 1890s, further reducing the likelihood of the ship remaining undetected. The area around the Cape was searched quite regularly for missing ships and their crews due to the high number of shipping disasters in the area.Teira del Fuego and its dangers, The Mercury, Hobart, Tasmania, Wednesday, 18 December 1889Searching for castaways, Press, Volume XLVIII, Issue 7940, 13 August 1891, Page 5 Sailing ships like the Johnson would not normally sail on this route to reach New Zealand – the usual route being the Clipper route around the Cape of Good Hope if sailing from England (see map).Missing Glasgow Ship, Aberdeen Journal, Wednesday 8 October 1913, page 9 The Johnson was not listed as being in a New Zealand port between 1912 and 1913.The Press a Christchurch newspaper carried a daily column with shipping movements at Lyttelton where the Johnson was supposed to have called. No report of it being there in 1912/1913 has been found No record has been found of a sailing ship called the Johnson in 1913. Had such an event occurred, it would have been widely reported in New Zealand newspapers at the time the Johnson was supposed to have arrived in New Zealand. There were no follow-up stories in the papers that did report the find, although they indicated they would. The story was considered untrue in New Zealand newspapers in 1914, while the Burley account was thought plausible.The Marlborogh Myth, Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XLVIII, 13 January 1914, Page 7 There was no follow-up search for the Marlborough when this would be likely. The Marlborough did not have a bridge.
Variations to the ghost ship story
1929 version Another account of this story was published in 1929.Around the world, Gossip of the ports, an ocean mystery, Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 52, 2 March 1929, Page 4 In this account the Marlborough was found adrift in January 1899 by the ship British Isles under Captain Hadrop. The British Isles was purportedly sailing from Lyttelton to England. She was a little north of Cape Horn by Staten Island when the Marlborough was sighted and boarded. This story was discounted because there were no reports of the British Isles visiting Lyttelton in the time period, and it was improbable that Hadrop would have waited so many years to report the sighting.
The British Isles was a 2394-ton iron clad sailing ship built in 1884 and owned the British Shipowners Company. She was sold to Thomas Shute in 1899. In August 1898 the British Isles was at San Francisco. She sailed from there to England around the Horn with a load of wheat.Commercial – Harrison's Coal Circular, Newcastle Morning Herald & Miners' Advocate, Thursday 1 September 1898, page 4 The ship's captain on this voyage was James M Stott.San Francisco Call, Volume 84, Number 74, 13 August 1898 This puts the ship in the area at roughly the time claimed, but does not address why the sighting was not reported. It also had the wrong Captain, there being no record of Hadrop ever being a captain of the British Isles and sailing from a port it is not known to have visited.
2006 version In 2006 a further version was published in a book by Tom Quinn.The Ghost Ship, Military's Strangest Campaign's and Characters, Tom Quinn, Robson Books, London, 2006, pages 154-155, In this version the Marlborough was found by a British Royal Navy vessel off the coast of Chile in 1913. Neither the naval vessel nor its captain were named, nor was the source of the information. Given the interest in Marlborough in the newspapers of 1913, it is highly improbable that there is any truth in Quinn's claim. Such a sighting would have been widely reported.
Burley account
The origin of the Ghost Ship story is thought to have been an imaginative story loosely based on Captain Thomas Sydney Burley's 1912 account, which had circulated in England. In September 1913, the Evening Post, a Wellington, New Zealand newspaper, published a story attributed to Captain McArthur of the Blue Funnel Steamers. The story was in a letter by a Shaw, Savill & Albion Line captain to a Dunedin shipping man. This account differed in that it stated that two shipwrecked sailors had found the skeletons of the crew on shore and the ship some distance away. The story was supposedly discredited by October with Captain Herd's son advising that the story had circulated in 1912 and was untrue particularly because his father would not have sailed through Le Maire Strait where the ship was supposed to have been found. Ships tended to avoid the Strait as it was considered hazardous.Magallen Strait to Cape Horn, Atlantic Navigator (1854), Volume 113 of Historische Schiffahrt, Books on Demand, 2009, page 428, , 9783861951704