page 110

The First Zealandia.

There was another ship bearing the same name which came out to the Dominion in the 'fifties, and she was also a fine vessel of 1032 tons. She was sent out by Willis, Gann and Co., and ran to Lyttelton on her maiden voyage in 1858, bringing out 400 immigrants from London. The following year she brought out 316 immigrants. Captain Foster commanded the ship on each occasion when she came to New Zealand.

Mr. Henry Chatteris, of Ponsonby, Auckland, who was a passenger on both Zealandias, has supplied me with the following interesting details. Mr. Chatteris writes: "It was in 1869 that I unexpectedly landed as a youth at Cork. In that year I was a passenger by the famous Omar Pascha, bound from Moreton Bay to England. All went well until the tropics, and about mid-Atlantic. There the ship was found to be on fire, and all hands—about 160 in number—were taken on board a little Italian barque bound from Palermo to New York.

Captain Grey, R.N.R., the commander of the Omar Pascha, was a noted saltwater dandy, and had everything aboard ship-shape and Bristol fashion. By virtue of his R.N.R. rank he used to keep up gun drill, and boat drill was a regular weekly event; not the perfunctory sort of thing carried on by masters of many ships, but a genuine drill, every boat being lowered into the water and pulled for a stretch from the ship's side. The result was that when the time came for the Omar Pascha's people to put off to the rescuing barque her boats were all as tight as a drum, in strong contrast to the equipment of the Italian, three of his boats filling and sinking as soon as they were lowered. There were only eleven of a crew on the Italian orange boat, and they were short of water, so it can be imagined what a quandary the captain must have been in when the Omar Pascha's people were added to his list. But there were plenty of oranges aboard, and these were served out to the rescued people.

Mr. Chatteris, in describing the end of the fine Omar Pascha, said she sank by the stern, and for quite a while stood up with her bows right out of the water. Before she finally went down every rat in the ship seemed to have clambered up on the bow, and there appeared to be millions of them.

Being in a pretty well-beaten track the shipwrecked people soon fell in with a large vessel that proved to be the ship Zealandia, loaded with guano and bound from Callao to Cork for orders. She took off the Omar's people, and the captain of the Italian barque was quite sorry to part with them.

When the Zealandia arrived at Cork she signalled to a ship there, "We have on board the passengers and crew of the Omar Pascha, burned at sea," and strangely enough the ship to which she sent the signal replied, "And we have on board the passengers and crew of the ship Bluejacket, burned at sea."

A few months later, in the year 1870, Mr. Chatteris started off on another trip, and by another strange coincidence he sailed on the new Zealandia. By still another strange coincidence the skipper of the new Zealandia was Captain White, who was in command of the Bluejacket when she was burned. "Bully" White, they used to call him; a real hard sailorman who delighted to carry on, and never took a sail in until he was absolutely compelled to do so.

The passages to New Zealand by the Zealandia were:—

^*