''Zanoni'' was a ship built in

Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a popul ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

in 1865 by W. H. Potter & Co as a 338-ton composite barque. It was owned by Thomas Royden & Sons who intended to use it for the

East India East India is a region of India consisting of the Indian states of Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha and West Bengal and also the union territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The region roughly corresponds to the historical region of Magadh ...

trade. It sank in

Gulf St Vincent Gulf St Vincent, sometimes referred to as St Vincent Gulf, St Vincent's Gulf or Gulf of St Vincent, is the eastern of two large inlets of water on the southern coast of Australia, in the state of South Australia, the other being the larger Sp ...

South Australia South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories ...

in 1867. The wreck is now the best-preserved merchant ship wreck remaining in South Australia from the 19th century.

Voyages

''Zanoni'' left Liverpool on 14 February 1866 for

Lima, Peru Lima ( ; ), originally founded as Ciudad de Los Reyes (City of The Kings) is the capital and the largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón River, Chillón, Rímac River, Rímac and Lurín Rivers, in the desert zone of t ...

. There she unloaded the cargo from England and loaded 400 tons of

guano Guano (Spanish from qu, wanu) is the accumulated excrement of seabirds or bats. As a manure, guano is a highly effective fertilizer due to the high content of nitrogen, phosphate, and potassium, all key nutrients essential for plant growth. G ...

bound for Port Louis, Mauritius. At Port Louis, she loaded 4551 bags of sugar for

Port Adelaide, South Australia Port Adelaide is a port-side region of Adelaide, approximately northwest of the Adelaide city centre, Adelaide CBD. It is also the namesake of the City of Port Adelaide Enfield council, a suburb, a federal and state electoral division and is t ...

. and arrived on 13 January 1867. She unloaded the sugar, then loaded 15 tons of bark and some wheat, and proceeded up the coast on 2 February to

Port Wakefield Port Wakefield may refer to. Australia *Port Wakefield, South Australia, a town and locality * Port Wakefield railway line, part of the now-closed Balaklava-Moonta railway line in South Australia * Port Wakefield Circuit, a former motor racing cir ...

to load more wheat, intending to return to Port Adelaide then return to England. The ship encountered a violent squall on the way from Port Wakefield back to Port Adelaide carrying the bark and a total of 4025 bags of wheat and sank without trace. The 16 people on board (captain, 13 crew and two stevedores) were all rescued, but the hull was not located until 1983.

The wreck

Despite several searches and a £100 reward in the weeks following the sinking, ''Zanoni'' was not found in 1867. A new attempt to find it in the early 1980s gained information from a retired fisherman and the wreck was found and identified, about northeast of the position the survivors had reported, southeast of Ardrossan, in of water. The site of the wreck of ''Zanoni'' is now protected by a exclusion zone declared under the South Australian ''Historic Shipwrecks Act 1981'' on 26 May 1983. No boating of any kind is permitted inside this zone, in an attempt to protect what remains of the ship from damage from fishing nets and boat anchors. The

No 5 dumb hopper barge ''No 5 dumb hopper barge'', since being scuttled known as the No. 5 Barge, Zanoni Barge and Ardrossan Barge, was a hopper barge which was built in 1911 at Balmain in New South Wales by Poole & Steel for the then Marine Board of South Austral ...

(also known as the Zanoni Barge) was scuttled in 1984 south of ''Zanoni'' to provide an alternative

artificial reef An artificial reef is a human-created underwater structure, typically built to promote marine life in areas with a generally featureless bottom, to control erosion, block ship passage, block the use of trawling nets, or improve surfing. Many re ...

for fishing and diving.

References

{{Australian historic shipwrecks with a protected zone, state=collapsed Shipwrecks of South Australia Gulf St Vincent 1865 ships Ships sunk with no fatalities Australian Shipwrecks with protected zone Ships built in Lancashire

Voyages

The wreck

See also

References