Victor Billot reviews
The General Grant's Gold: Shipwreck and greed in the
Southern Ocean.
THE GENERAL GRANT'S GOLD: Shipwreck and greed in the
Southern Ocean
Madelene Ferguson Allen and Ken Scadden
Exisle, $34.99, pbk
The story of the sailing ship General Grant is one
that is probably more familiar to older generations, a
genuine stranger-than-fiction South Seas legend. It features
lost gold, mysterious caves, remote islands, shipwrecked
survivors, greed, courage and foolishness.
The sinking of the General Grant in 1866 on the harsh coast of the Auckland Islands, south of New Zealand, resulted in the loss of many lives, and a cargo that included substantial amounts of gold. The vessel was on the long and dangerous journey from Melbourne to the United Kingdom, heading towards Cape Horn, when it came to grief.
This readable and evocative account of the General Grant and its lost treasure is divided into two main sections.
The first tells the story of the ship's fateful last voyage and final hours in a vivid and heart-rending account; the second of the various salvage attempts.
The unusual circumstances of the sinking and the following ordeal of the handful of survivors are recounted. After escaping in heavy seas in open boats, they endured two years of near-starvation and bitter cold before rescue, after managing to light a fire with their last match.
Almost as soon as the survivors had been recovered, attempts were made to find the wreck and recover the large amount of gold. What is most striking in this part of the history is the strange sense of familiarity with a lost world only a few generations ago.
On one hand, the dramatic reports in newspapers of the time and the technology of the era which included telegraph, and on the other, sailing ships being still the mode of global transport.
Numerous salvage expeditions have been mounted, some deadly and tragic, others almost comical in their outcome. Six men were lost in 1870 in one of the first parties, including one of the original survivors of the wreck who had returned as a guide.
Two expeditions were mounted under the leadership of the larger-than-life Bill Havens in the 1950s from the United Kingdom; his first vessel sank north of Port Sudan and the second attempt, aboard the optimistically named Goldseeker, ran aground in East Timor, with the crew eventually struggling across open sea to Darwin in a lifeboat, barely making it.
The authors detail how these and other syndicates have tried their luck right up the present day. Some were drawn by the lure of gold, others driven by less obvious motives. Some have been well-equipped and highly skilled, and others sharp operators who have taken down investors entranced by the idea of instant riches. None have recovered the gold of the General Grant but all have contributed to the mythology.
Original author Madelene Ferguson Allen died in 2003 and her initial work was extended and completed by maritime historian Ken Scadden.
- Victor Billot is editor of Maritimes, the Maritime Union magazine.