The Saint Vincent.

A ship that came to a sad end on the New Zealand coast, with much loss of life, was the Saint Vincent, a vessel of 532 tons, built in Sunderland by Pile in 1863.

the Saint Vincent first came to New Zealand two years after she was launched, her port of call being Port Chalmers. She sailed from Glasgow on December 10, 1864, under the command of Captain Morrison. Light winds, gales, and bad weather were met on both sides of the Equator, and the voyage occupied 101 days, the ship anchoring in Port Chalmers on March 22, 1865.

Four years later the Saint Vincent,

the Saint Vincent In The Engl1sh Channel.

under Captain James Barrow, arrived at Wellington after a tedious passage of 120 days, Wellington being reached on January 1, 1869. After landing passengers she sailed on February 13 for Lyttelton, but never reached her destination. The story of this disastrous passage was told by the chief officer, Mr. Stringer, who was saved from the fate that overtook every soul on board except himself and the sailmaker. the Saint Vincent left with a favourable wind, but out in the Strait a southerly came up and developed into a gale that carried away several sails. The ship was carried considerably out of her course, and the following evening at about 6 p.m. she found herself close to land, which was eventually made out to be Palliser Bay. She tried to weather the point and get back to Wellington, but she laboured heavily, and that night at 10 o'clock she struck the land. All hands were trying to clear the lifeboat when a tremendous sea threw the vessel almost on her beam ends, smashed the lifeboat, and washed the bo'sun overboard. The anchors had been let go, but the cables parted, and the doomed vessel was swept broadside on to the rocks, where she soon became a total wreck.

The crew hung on in the main and mizzen chains until three o'clock next morning, when the chief officer and the sailmaker were swept away. Mr. Stringer did not know how he got ashore, but he was washed up in an unconscious condition. When he came to himself he saw the ship, or what remained of her, about half-a-mile off the beach. He thought he was the only one saved, but on going to the house of a Mr. McKenzie he found the sailmaker, and they were the only two survivors out of twenty-two. The beach was strewn with wreckage for over two miles.

A few years after the loss of the second St. Vincent at Palliser Bay,page 215 another ship bearing the same name was launched for the Black Ball Company, and made several very fast runs to Adelaide and Melbourne, on one occasion doing the passage from London to the former port in 79 days, which for a vessel of 830 tons was in those days a very fine performance.

In the early days two large shipping firms, Money Wigram and the Green's Blackball liners, such as the Saint Vincent, Sobraon, City of Adelaide, South Australia, and other fine clippers sailing to Australia, carried midshipmen, somewhat on the same lines as a man-o'-war, and for two years Constable T. H. H. Beddek, now in charge of the Birkenhead district, Auckland, served in the Saint Vincent as one of these "middies," under Captain Barrett, who sailed the ship to Australia during many years. When Captain Barrett transferred from the St. Vincent to take charge of the South Australia, young Beddek also joined the latter ship as a. middy. I am indebted to Constable Beddek for the photograph that appears with this article.

Neither of the forementioned ships must be confused with a ship of the same name that carried troops in the time of the Crimean war, and in which Captain Rose, so well known throughout New Zealand, served his apprenticeship.