SS Maori (Union Company)

''Maori'' was a British refrigerated cargo steamship built in 1893 by C.S. Swan & Hunter of Wallsend-on-Tyne for Shaw, Saville & Albion Co. of London with intention of transporting frozen meat and produce from Australia and New Zealand to the United Kingdom. The vessel stayed on this trade route through her entire career. In August 1909 while on one of her regular trips, she was wrecked on the coast of South Africa with the loss of thirty two of her crew.

Design and construction

Early in 1893 Shaw, Saville & Albion Co. decided to sell their three year-old ship SS ''Maori'' and replace her with a bigger vessel capable of carrying large quantities of frozen meat and produce from New Zealand and South America. An order was placed with C.S. Swan & Hunter and the replacement ship was laid down at the builder's shipyard in Wallsend-on-Tyne and launched on 14 August 1893 (yard number 184), with Mrs. James Henderson, wife of the Rector of St. Peter's parish church of Wallsend, serving as a sponsor.

The ship was of the improved three-deck type, specially designed for colonial frozen meat trade and had poop deck, long bridge house and long topgallant forecastle. ''Maori'' had her machinery situated amidships and had her hold subdivided by six water-tight bulkheads and had her holds and 'tween decks insulated. The vessel was also equipped with six refrigerating engines provided by Haslam Engineering & Foundry Co. to cool down her insulated chambers designed to carry approximately 70,000 carcasses of mutton. The freighter also possessed all the modern machinery for quick loading and unloading of cargo, including eight steam winches.

As built, the ship was long ( between perpendiculars) and abeam and had a depth of . ''Maori'' was originally assessed at and and had deadweight of approximately 7,000. The vessel had a steel hull with cellular double bottom throughout and a single
461 nhp triple-expansion steam engine, with cylinders of , and diameter with a stroke, that drove a single screw propeller, and moved the ship at up to .

The sea trials were held on 28 October 1893 off Tynemouth during which the ship performed satisfactorily and was able to achieve mean speed of over several runs on the measured mile. Upon completion, the ship was handed to her owners and proceeded to London for loading.

Operational history

After delivery the ship sailed for London where she entered a drydock on October 29 for examination. Subsequently, the vessel loaded 5,900 tons of general cargo and departed Gravesend on 11 December 1893 bound for New Zealand ports. After an uneventful voyage ''Maori'' reached Port Chalmers on 30 January 1894. Upon unloading approximately 3,500 tons of her cargo and taking on board 741 bales of wool in addition to some quantities of sheepskins, basil and rabbit-skins, the ship departed on February 7 for Lyttelton arriving there the next day. While there ''Maori'' unloaded the remainder of her cargo and loaded over 10,000 carcasses of frozen mutton. The ship then proceeded to visit the ports of Timaru, Whanganui, Auckland, Gisborne, Napier eventually reaching Wellington on March 8. At each of these ports the vessel was loading mostly frozen mutton carcasses, but additionally took aboard other cargo such as wool, margarine, stearin, pelts and tallow. ''Maori'' sailed out from Wellington on March 13 and reached London on May 2 via Cape of Good Hope and Tenerife, thus successfully completing her maiden voyage.

In a storm on 5 August 1909 ''Maori'' ran aground a few kilometres south of the suburb of Llandudno on the west coast of Cape Peninsula near Cape Town. Her crew launched three lifeboats, but her Master and 14 of her crew were left aboard ship.

The coast was remote, inaccessible and very rocky and enormous rollers from the Atlantic Ocean crashed against the formidable granite cliffs that overshadowed the stricken vessel. It was late winter and the water was cold. 32 people died, including her Master and most of his navigating officers.

Wreck

The wreck lies in about of water between granite boulders. Since the 1960s it has been popular with scuba divers, but it can be visited only when the weather is calm and the prevailing southwesterly swell is low. The hull has been vandalized and much of the general cargo that the ship carried has been removed by hunters of salvage and souvenirs over the years. In the 1970s divers dynamited her hull to search for non-ferrous metal.

The cargo included crockery, rolls of linoleum, champagne and red wine. In the 1970s it was still possible to find bottles of wine scattered about the wreck in the sand. Most of these used to explode when brought to the surface. A few would survive but the wine inside them was impossibly foul.

South Africa's National Heritage Resources Act now protects the wreck. In the right conditions it is a popular scuba wreck diving site.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Maori
1893 ships
Ships built by Swan Hunter
Merchant ships of the United Kingdom
Steamships of the United Kingdom
Ships of the Shaw, Savill & Albion Line
Maritime incidents in 1909
Shipwrecks of the South African Atlantic coast
Wreck diving sites
Underwater diving sites in South Africa