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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 15, Issue 3 (June 1, 1940)

The Loss of the Tory

The Loss of the Tory.

The rest of the story is shortly told. It is a sordid ending to such a romantic performance.

The Tory arrived in Sydney on 7th May, and refitting was begun. This was a costly process and was made more expensive by large expenditure on liquor. Finally, on 15th September, she left for the East Indies for cargo, with Richard Lowry as master and Nicholas Lowry as first mate. Richard Lowry died after leaving Batavia and Nicholas was often confined to his cabin, drunk, leaving the ship virtually in the hands of William Elgar, the boatswain, who, incidentally, was the father of the well-known Elgar brothers, prominent settlers in the South Wairarapa.

Apparently, Nicholas Lowry's habits were known to the company, for on hearing of Richard's death, efforts were made to remove Nicholas from the command of the vessel. However, Nicholas unwittingly managed to forestall them by wrecking the ship on Half-moon shoal in the China Seas on 21st January, 1841. Here, however, we meet one of those episodes of the sea, so many of them unrecorded, which are epics of endurance, hope, despair and frustration. Two small boats with twenty-nine men, no fresh food, in a treacherous sea, surrounded by islands inhabited by head-hunting natives, were a thousand miles from a European settlement. These hardy men, however, set off for the nearest land, 55 miles away, and after landing, cooking the beef, and filling every available vessel with water, set out on the long voyage back to Singapore. This port was 900 miles distance, but the necessity of keeping land in sight added another weary two hundred miles to the voyage. The dangers from the sea were added to by dangers from the shore and on at least two occasions Malayan proas gave chase and were only avoided by a long run out to sea. One moonlight night a sail was seen and after frantic efforts to come up with it, it was found to be a small rock covered with guano, like white-wash. However, on 10th February, twenty-nine exhausted men reached Singapore after a voyage of seventeen days. After recuperating the men returned to England, Nicholas Lowry meeting death on the way home by being lost overboard.

Thus ended the career of the splendid little Tory after an important and romantic voyage. She has left behind a name that will live with the names of her celebrated passengers when the discreditable epilogue to the voyage is forgotten.