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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 11, Issue 1 (April 1, 1936.)

The Story of the Ellenita

The Story of the Ellenita.

“As soon as we got out clear of Apia reef and well to sea, look-outs were posted aloft on both masts; and we were all on the alert for a sight of the driftaways. Then we were told that the missing people were from an American brig called the Ellenita, which had sunk somewhere to the north of Savaii Island. The whaleboat that brought the news had come from Savaii, where the captain and some of the crew had landed in a boat. The captain's name was Hayes. That was the first we heard of the afterwards celebrated Bully Hayes, but it was not his first coming to the South Seas. He had been sailoring in the Pacific since about 1853. This Jost vessel of his, the Ellenita, was a brig of some three hundred tons. We heard all about the wreck later. He got a vessel somehow at San Francisco, and hoisted the flag of some fancy little republic called New Grenada. Nine or ten people, one of them a woman, had taken passage in the brig for Sydney. Hayes gave some of them the slip, he sailed without them. It was all of a piece with the tricks he played in the Pacific Islands afterwards. His last day in San Francisco was a Sunday. He persuaded several of the passengers to go to church with him. He left them there—left them in the lurch, waiting at the church, and got away to sea that night, taking all their baggage with him. There was one woman passenger; he didn't leave her behind. His crew were a tough lot some of them, all whites, thirteen men and a boy.

The brig sprang a leak. There was no carpenter on board, and the ship gradually filled and sank. The pump was choked by some bags of beans that swelled. There was only one boat fit for use. Hayes and some of the brig's people got into her, most of the others left the sinking brig on a raft they had knocked together. Boat and raft were provisioned, and each had a mast and sail. Hayes took a couple of the passengers with him— one was the woman—and several of the crew, and took the raft in tow. He told the people on the raft that he would stand by them, but in the night, so the story went, he cut the raft adrift and left them there; perhaps it broke away, at any rate he had disappeared when daylight came. He reached Savaii, and that was how we got the news.