SS ''Kaffraria'' was a British cargo ship owned by Bailey & Leetham of Hull,

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 ...

. She was built in 1864 by J. Laing & Son, Ltd., of Sunderland,

. She was originally built for the shipping company Ryrie & Company of

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

, which sold her to Bailey & Leetham in 1871.

Construction

Initially the ship was rated at 872 gross register tons, but this was increased in 1873 to 1,039 gross register tons. transcription from the

Lloyd's Register Lloyd's Register Group Limited (LR) is a technical and professional services organisation and a maritime classification society, wholly owned by the Lloyd’s Register Foundation, a UK charity dedicated to research and education in science and ...

of British and Foreign Shipping. She was long and had a beam of with a depth of . She was a single-

screw A screw and a bolt (see '' Differentiation between bolt and screw'' below) are similar types of fastener typically made of metal and characterized by a helical ridge, called a ''male thread'' (external thread). Screws and bolts are used to f ...

schooner constructed of iron, with one deck with two tiers of beams, five cemented bulkheads, a

well deck In traditional nautical use, well decks were decks lower than decks fore and aft, usually at the main deck level, so that breaks appear in the main deck profile, as opposed to a flush deck profile. The term goes back to the days of sail. Late-20 ...

, and a double bottom aft. She had a four-cylinder

compound engine A compound engine is an engine that has more than one stage for recovering energy from the same working fluid, with the exhaust from the first stage passing through the second stage, and in some cases then on to another subsequent stage or even st ...

which produced . The engine was built by the Humber Iron Works of Hull,

. Her Lloyd′s Register code letters were WFVQ and her official number was 49917.

Wreck

While under the command of Captain W. Barron, ''Kaffraria'' ran aground in the

River Elbe The Elbe (; cs, Labe ; nds, Ilv or ''Elv''; Upper and dsb, Łobjo) is one of the major rivers of Central Europe. It rises in the Giant Mountains of the northern Czech Republic before traversing much of Bohemia (western half of the Czech Rep ...

Otterndorf Otterndorf () is a town on the coast of the North Sea in the federal state of Lower Saxony, Germany, and is part of the collective municipality (''Samtgemeinde'') of Land Hadeln. The town, located in the administrative district (''Landkreis'') of ...

, Germany, on 7 January 1891. The ship had a cargo of general export goods such as

kitchen utensil A kitchen utensil is a small hand held tool used for food preparation. Common kitchen tasks include cutting food items to size, heating food on an open fire or on a stove, baking, grinding, mixing, blending, and measuring; different utensils a ...

s, children’s toys, bundles of

wool Wool is the textile fibre obtained from sheep and other mammals, especially goats, rabbits, and camelids. The term may also refer to inorganic materials, such as mineral wool and glass wool, that have properties similar to animal wool. ...

, hand tools, and all kinds of domestic appliances. Local residents quickly removed the cargo both legally and illegally. Later on 8 January, the ship sank. The wreck became a threat to shipping and was removed in 1984. The stern part of the ship with the rudder and screw can be seen today at Otterndorf.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kaffraria, SS Steamships Victorian-era merchant ships of the United Kingdom Maritime incidents in 1891 Shipwrecks in rivers Shipwrecks of Germany 1864 ships Ships built on the River Wear