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White Wings Vol I. Fifty Years Of Sail In The New Zealand Trade, 1850 TO 1900

Succession of Gales

Succession of Gales.

As a rule the Electra was fortunate in her weather, but in 1878, when in command of Captain Thompson, she met with gale after gale, and limped into Port Chalmers after a memorable passage of 140 days. Sailing from Gravesend on January 13th she met her first gale off Start Point, and lost her spare anchor, which broke adrift.page 211 It was January 27th before she took her departure from the Lizard. She had gales across the stormy Bay of Biscay and as far as the Canaries. The Cape was not rounded until March 30th, and then she met light winds from the north and south instead of the usual westerlies, and to vary this exceptional experience she struck two gales, during which much damage was done aboard, including the carrying away of a considerable part of the bulwarks and the losing of several sails.

After passing the meridian of the Leeuwin she encountered a series of gales from the S.W. to S., and was off the Nuggets on May 12th. She ran past the Otago Heads without sighting them, making her first landfall off Moeraki on the 13th, after which she struck a couple of hard gales that drove her off shore. Oamaru was sighted on May 23rd, and when twenty miles off Otago Heads the skipper took the tug Koputai and dropped anchor in Port Chalmers on the 24th, then being 140 days out from Gravesend.

The passages made to New Zealand by the Electra were as follows:—

To Auckland.
Sailed. Arrived. Captain. Days.
Dec. 14, '76 Apr. 11, '77 Thomas 118
To Wellington.
July 17 Oct. 16, '66 Mowlem 91
July 16 Oct. 22, '67 Mowlem 98
July 24 Oct. 21, '68 Mowlem 89
July 9 Oct. 11, '69 Sellers 93
July 17 Oct. 17, '70 Sellers 92
July 12 Oct. 16, '71 Sellers 96
May 25 Sep. 1, '73 Sellers 99
To Dunedin.
Jan. 13 May 24, '78 Thompson 140
Apr. 9 July 21, '79 Thompson 102
To Bluff.
Oct. 28, '81 Feb. 12, '82 Thompson 108
Dec. 4, '82 Mar. 20, '83 Thompson 106