MV Joyita was a merchant vessel from which 25 passengers and crew mysteriously disappeared in the South Pacific in October 1955. She was found adrift with no one aboard.
SS Princess Sophia was a steel-built passenger liner in the coastal service fleet of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR). Along with SS Princess Adelaide, SS Princess Alice, and SS Princess Mary, Princess Sophia was one of four similar ships built for CPR during 1910-1911.
Leonidas was a labour transport ship (schooner) that played an important role in the history of Fiji. She had been earlier used to carry indentured labourers to the West Indies, having transported 580 Indian indentured labourers to St Lucia in 1878. Captained by McLachlan, the ship departed from Calcutta, India on 3 March 1879 and arrived at Levuka, Fiji, on 14 May that year. The indentured labourers who disembarked were the first of over 61,000 to arrive from the Indian subcontinent over the following 37 years, forming the nucleus of the Fiji Indian community that now numbers close to forty percent of Fiji's population.
Newnham was the first steamship to bring Indian indentured labourers to Fiji, arriving at Suva on 23 July 1884 carrying 575 passengers. The 1296 ton steamer took only 38 days to reach Fiji as it was able to take the shorter route through the Timor sea.
Ganges was the first of three Nourse Line ships named for the Ganges river in northern India.
Boyne was a 1,403 ton, Nourse Line sailing ship that T.R. Oswald of Southampton built in 1877. She was referred to as the "Hoodoo Ship" for the number of mishaps that occurred to her. She wrecked in 1886.
Hereford was a 1456-ton iron sailing ship with two decks and one cemented bulkhead which was built in 1869 by J. Elder & Company at Glasgow for the Merchant Shipping Company of London. She was chartered by the New Zealand Shipping Company in the 1870s and made three voyages to Lyttelton, New Zealand with approximately three hundred emigrants each time. The first voyage in 1874 took 87 days, and the second took 80 days, arriving in Lyttelton on 19 January 1878. In 1881, she was stranded on Ingleby Reef near Port Phillip Heads, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, and towed off on 12 March 1881 by a tug.
British Peer was a 1428-ton three-masted iron sailing ship built for the British Shipowners Company at the Harland and Wolff yards in Belfast, Ireland, in 1865. She was 247.5 feet (75.4 m) long, 36.4 feet (11.1 m) wide and 22.5 feet (6.9 m) deep. She was bought by the Nourse Line in 1883, and was the fastest vessel in their fleet until British Ambassador was commissioned. In 1878, however, British Peer's sailing power was compromised when alterations were made to increase her tonnage by lengthening her hull by 32 feet (9.8 m), and she was never as fast again. She carried a crew of 23, including her master.
SS Fazilka was a 4,152 GRT steamship with a length of 366 feet (112 m), breadth of 48.2 feet (14.7 m) and draught of 26.5 feet (8.1 m). She was built by William Doxford and Sons for the British-India Steam Navigation Company (B.I.S.N.) in 1890. She had triple expansion, 462 nhp, steam engines with a top speed of 12.5 knots.
Ganges was the second Nourse Line ship to be named Ganges. The first Ganges was built in 1861 and wrecked in 1881. Ganges was a 1529-ton iron barque, built by Osbourne, Graham & Company of Sunderland and launched on 25 March 1882. She was 241 feet (73 m) long, 37.2 feet (11.3 m) wide and 22.5 feet (6.9 m) deep.
SS Admella was an Australian passenger steamship that was shipwrecked on a submerged reef off the coast of Carpenter Rocks, south west of Mount Gambier South Australia, in the early hours of Saturday 6 August 1859. Survivors clung to the wreck for over a week and many people took days to die as they glimpsed the land from the sea and watched as one rescue attempt after another failed.
Tuaikaepau was a twenty-ton cutter, 51 feet (16 m) length, clipper bow, keeler, designed by Archibald Logan and built by Logan Brothers of Auckland, New Zealand and launched in 1903.
The SS Gothenburg was a steamship that operated along the British and then later the Australian and New Zealand coastlines. In February 1875, Gothenburg left Darwin, Australia and while en route to Adelaide it encountered a cyclone-strength storm off the north Queensland coast. The ship was wrecked on the Great Barrier Reef north-west of Holbourne Island on 24 February 1875. Survivors in one of the lifeboats were rescued two days later by Leichhardt, while the occupants of two other lifeboats that managed to reach Holbourne Island were rescued several days later. Twenty-two men survived, while between 98 and 112 others died, including a number of high-profile civil servants and dignitaries.
SS Tararua was a passenger steamer that struck the reef off Waipapa Point in the Catlins on 29 April 1881, and sank the next day, in the worst civilian shipping disaster in New Zealand's history. Of the 151 passengers and crew on board, only 20 survived the shipwreck.
The first recorded presence of a lascar in Fiji was by Peter Dillon, a sandalwood trader in Fiji. The lascar survived a ship wreck and lived amongst the natives of Fiji in 1813. Dillon has written about Lascar Joe who, according to the Cyclopedia of Fiji, deserted from the brig Hibernia. He lived in Fiji with other beachcombers, hiring himself out as a mercenary to different chiefs in the numerous intertribal wars in Fiji. The Indian indenture ships which carried Indians from India to Fiji between 1879 and 1916 were manned mainly by lascars.
The SS Mohegan was a steamer which sank off the coast of the Lizard Peninsula, Cornwall, on her second voyage. She hit The Manacles on 14 October 1898 with the loss of 106 out of 197 on board.
Elizabeth Reef29°57′25″S159°4′32″E is a coral reef in the Coral Sea. The reef is separated by a deep oceanic pass, some 45 km wide, from nearby Middleton Reef, both of which are part of the underwater plateau known as the Lord Howe Rise. It is around 160 km from Lord Howe Island and 555 km from the New South Wales coast of Australia. The Environment, Sport and Territories Legislation Amendment Act 1997 included Elizabeth Reef in Australia's Coral Sea Islands Territory.
MV Monte Cervantes was a 500 ft (150 m) German passenger liner that cruised the South American route from Buenos Aires to Puerto Madryn (Chubut) to Punta Arenas to Ushuaia and return to Buenos Aires. The ship sailed under German registration and belonged to the South American Hamburg Company. After only two years of service she sank at the beginning of 1930 near Tierra del Fuego. The ship became known as "The Titanic of the South."
Woodford was launched at Bristol in 1819. She made one voyage as an "extra ship" for the British East India Company (EIC). She also made two voyages transporting convicts from England to Van Diemen's Land. She sank in February 1829 off Madagascar.
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