SS ''Makambo'' was a
steamship first owned by
Burns Philp & Co. Ltd. She was built in
Port Glasgow in Scotland and named after an island in the
Solomon Islands
Solomon Islands is an island country consisting of six major islands and over 900 smaller islands in Oceania, to the east of Papua New Guinea and north-west of Vanuatu. It has a land area of , and a population of approx. 700,000. Its capit ...
. She carried both passengers and cargo and was principally used on routes between eastern
Australia and islands in
Melanesia
Melanesia (, ) is a subregion of Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It extends from Indonesia's New Guinea in the west to Fiji in the east, and includes the Arafura Sea.
The region includes the four independent countries of Fiji, Va ...
and the
Tasman Sea
The Tasman Sea ( Māori: ''Te Tai-o-Rēhua'', ) is a marginal sea of the South Pacific Ocean, situated between Australia and New Zealand. It measures about across and about from north to south. The sea was named after the Dutch explorer ...
. In November 1908
Jack and Charmian London travelled from Guadalcanal to Sydney on the ''Makambo'' after abandoning their ill-fated circumnavigation of the world on the ''Snark'', a 45' sailing yawl.
Between 1910 and 1931, she travelled a regular route between
Sydney and
Port Vila
Port Vila (french: Port-Vila), or simply Vila (; french: Vila; bi, Vila ), is the capital and largest city of Vanuatu. It is located on the island of Efate.
Its population in the last census (2009) was 44,040, an increase of 35% on the pr ...
in the
New Hebrides
New Hebrides, officially the New Hebrides Condominium (french: link=no, Condominium des Nouvelles-Hébrides, "Condominium of the New Hebrides") and named after the Hebrides Scottish archipelago, was the colonial name for the island group ...
, with stops at
Lord Howe Island
Lord Howe Island (; formerly Lord Howe's Island) is an irregularly crescent-shaped volcanic remnant in the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand, part of the Australian state of New South Wales. It lies directly east of mainland P ...
and
Norfolk Island. On 1 August 1921, the ''Makambos captain sent, by radio, the first report that
flotsam
In maritime law, flotsam'','' jetsam'','' lagan'','' and derelict are specific kinds of shipwreck. The words have specific nautical meanings, with legal consequences in the law of admiralty and marine salvage. A shipwreck is defined as the rema ...
from the missing cargo steamer
SS ''Canastota'' had washed ashore at Lord Howe Island.
She was acquired in 1939 by Okada Gumi KK of
Osaka
is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of ...
,
Japan, and renamed ''Kainan Maru''. She was torpedoed and sunk on 12 June 1944 by the
British
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
* British English, ...
submarine off
Phuket
Phuket (; th, ภูเก็ต, , ms, Bukit or ''Tongkah''; Hokkien:普吉; ) is one of the southern provinces (''changwat'') of Thailand. It consists of the island of Phuket, the country's largest island, and another 32 smaller islands of ...
,
Thailand
Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is b ...
.
Grounding at Lord Howe Island
On 15 June 1918 ''Makambo'' ran aground near Neds Beach, at the northern end of
Lord Howe Island
Lord Howe Island (; formerly Lord Howe's Island) is an irregularly crescent-shaped volcanic remnant in the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand, part of the Australian state of New South Wales. It lies directly east of mainland P ...
. There was only one immediate casualty; a passenger, Miss Readon, was drowned when a boat capsized during the evacuation of passengers and crew from the vessel.
[ The ship was only temporarily out of service until repairs could be made; however, ''Makambo'' was aground for nine days before she was refloated. The incident had allowed black rats to leave the ship and go ashore on the island, where they thrived. This introduction gave rise to an environmental disaster, with the rats causing the extinction of several of the island's endemic birds and other fauna in the next few years through predation, as well as causing hardship to the islanders by raiding their crops and only export commodity, the seeds of the kentia palm.][Hindwood, K.A. (1940). The Birds of Lord Howe Island. ''Emu'' 40: 1-86.]
Problems with the rats led to an attempted ecological solution through the deliberate introduction of Tasmanian masked owl
The Tasmanian masked owl (''Tyto novaehollandiae castanops'') is a bird in the barn owl family Tytonidae that is endemic to the island state of Tasmania, Australia. It is the largest subspecies of the Australian masked owl, the largest ''Tyto'' ...
s between 1922 and 1930 to the island, an action which compounded the disaster by adding another predator to the ecosystem.[ Birds which became extinct soon after the arrival of rats include the Lord Howe Island thrush, ]Lord Howe gerygone
The Lord Howe gerygone or Lord Howe gerygone flyeater (''Gerygone insularis'') was a small bird in the family (biology), family Acanthizidae, brown and greyish in color. Its head was brown apart from a pale grey eye-ring and a grey throat and ch ...
, Lord Howe starling
The Tasman starling (''Aplonis fusca'') was described in 1836 by John Gould as a species which occurred on both Norfolk Island and Lord Howe Island. In 1928 Australian ornithologist Gregory Mathews recognized that the plumage of the race from Lor ...
, Lord Howe fantail and robust white-eye. The Lord Howe boobook
The Lord Howe boobook (''Ninox novaeseelandiae albaria''), also known as the Lord Howe morepork, was a bird in the true owl family endemic to Lord Howe Island in the Tasman Sea, part of New South Wales, Australia. It is an extinct and little-know ...
may have been eliminated by the introduced masked owls. Various seabird
Seabirds (also known as marine birds) are birds that are adapted to life within the marine environment. While seabirds vary greatly in lifestyle, behaviour and physiology, they often exhibit striking convergent evolution, as the same enviro ...
s were wiped out as breeding species on the main island, though they persist elsewhere.[Garnett, Stephen T.; & Crowley, Gabriel M. (2000). ''The Action Plan for Australian Birds 2000''. Environment Australia: Canberra. p.633.] The giant Lord Howe Island stick insect also became extinct on the main island in 1920, and was believed to be completely gone until a tiny population of survivors was discovered on Ball's Pyramid
Ball's Pyramid is an erosional remnant of a shield volcano and caldera lying southeast of Lord Howe Island in the Pacific Ocean. It is high, while measuring in length and only across, making it the tallest volcanic stack in the world. Ba ...
in 2001 (there are plans to reintroduce them). Rats are also implicated in the population declines and extinctions of Lord Howe's endemic lizards, land snails and beetle
Beetles are insects that form the order Coleoptera (), in the superorder Endopterygota. Their front pair of wings are hardened into wing-cases, elytra, distinguishing them from most other insects. The Coleoptera, with about 400,000 describ ...
s.Australian Museum - Science Bytes (17 March 2008): Beetle extinctions on Lord Howe Island.
/ref>
Makambo Rock, north of Malabar Hill on Lord Howe Island, was named after the grounding of the ''Makambo'' near there.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Makambo
Biological invasions
Merchant ships of Australia
Ships sunk by British submarines
Lord Howe Island
Ships built on the River Clyde
1907 ships
World War II shipwrecks in the Indian Ocean
1918 in the environment
World War II merchant ships of Japan
Maritime incidents in 1918
Maritime incidents in June 1944
Environmental disasters in Australia