"the Countess of Seafield has on board a quantity of iron for the railway at Canterbury, and is otherwise heavily laden, and to this fact we think a good deal of the loss of life and damage to the vessel may be ascribed." So said a Hobart newspaper when a little 432-ton barque limped into Hobart on the first day of June, 1804, her decks looking as though she had been fighting with a tornado. It was a miracle that she ever reached port. Ten men had been swept overboard and drowned, and the damage done by the storm took many weeks to repair. Looking back over the old days, it is remarkable in how many instances the ships that had a strenuous time coming out from the Old Land were carrying "railway iron," as it was called. We speak of "rails" nowadays. It was cruelly heavy stuff.

This Countess of Seafield which had such a wonderful escape was bound from London to Lyttelton, and made a very long passage of it. Mrs. M. Armstrong, of Swannanoa, Canterbury, writes to say that she thinks she is the last survivor of the people that voyaged out in the unfortunate ship. She came out with her parents. She says that from the time the ship left London to the day she put in at Hobart six months elapsed.

In Storm Fiend's Grip.

It was on April 27, when the barque was in the Southern Ocean, that she was overtaken by a west to south-west gale, which blew great guns, and all that could be done was to keep the vessel before it. At night the sea got worse, and just before midnight the labouring vessel was pooped by a tremendous sea which carried away the wheel, the binnacle, the companion hatch, stove in the skylight, damaged the half-deck house, and injured the chief officer. Captain Danvers, the master of the Countess, who seems to have been a thorough sailor, and must have handled his ship with consummate skill to bring her safely through such an ordeal, brought his vessel to the wind and rigged temporary steering gear. The hurricane continued to rage with unabated vigour, and next morning at half-past five o'clock the barque was swept by a sea which carried away the deckhouse and the mainrail, and swept overboard nine of the crew and a passenger.

One of the men was asleep in his bunk in the deckhouse when it was wrenched from its solid iron fastenings and went crashing over the side. The men carried overboard were the second officer (Mr. Squire), Mr. McLean (apprentice), H. Farrow (cook), Edward Freeman, James Firby, R. Sheriff, Thomas Burgess, and William Brand (able seaman), and a passenger named Edward Earl. The fate of the passenger was particularly hard, as it was only owing to his good nature that he was in a position of danger. Knowing that the crew had been having a terrible time battling with the storm, he volunteered to go and make some hot coffee. Some of his fellow passengers tried to dissuade him, but he persisted in going on deck, and shortly afterwards he was swept overboard.

Passengers Man Pumps.

When the deckhouse was swept overboard the solid iron bolts with which it was fastened down were torn from the deck, and a good deal of water got below before the holes were noticed. The hurricane which struck the barque blew such sails as were set to ribbons. Passengers were called to the pumps, as the ship was making water, and a strenuous time ensued. At one time there was 6ft of water in the hold. Eventually the storm abated, and Captain Danvers and the remnant of the crew were able to set about repairs. The passengers helped manfully. Under the circumstances Captain Danvers decided to put into Hobart, which was the nearest port, and after an anxious month, during most of which the weather fortunately kept fine, the barque reached port. After repairs she resumed her voyage to Lyttelton, where she arrived on August 27, over eight months from the time she left the Thames. She lay for a long while in Lyttelton, and the next record of her is that she sailed on July 20, 1865, for Hobart Town. Mrs. Armstrong says that her parents and some of the other passengers, finding that the repairs to the barque would take a long while, came over to Lyttelton in another vessel. The first of the Countess of Seafield's passengers to reach Lytteltonpage 231 were some people who arrived by the barque Christina, which left Hobart on June 12 and made Lyttelton on July 1, 1864. Mrs. Armstrong says she understood that the Countess of Seafield was sold in Hobart, and the fact that when the barque did eventually leave Lyttelton she returned to Hobart suggests that she had passed to Australian owners.