3-021-763 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Wreck of the General Grant on the Auckland Islands, 1868. Engraving of a sketch by Mr. W. Tibbits of a shipwreck in the South Pacific on 14 May 14 1866, '...from the description given him by the survivors...Mr. James Teer, one of the passengers [described the event:] "...the heavy swell was constantly setting her nearer and nearer to the fatal rocks...In the darkness we saw nothing save the dark mass above and around us...The stumps of the masts touching the top of the cave brought down large pieces of the rocks...Mrs. Jewell, stewardess, was made fast to a rope, and jumped into the water, her husband following her, and with my assistance both were got in the boat...The hull of the ship was under water. The rest of us wished to save some of those in the water, but in a few minutes they were no more...We had much trouble to get [to Disappointment Island]; our boat having such a quantity of beef, and pork, and bouilli tins in her...". Of the crew and passengers, who numbered altogether eighty-three persons, sixty-eight perished; the rest got ashore in the boats, and managed to live in that dreary place, enduring the severest hardships, about a year and a half, till they were relieved by the brig Amherst...on Nov. 21, 1867'. From "Illustrated London News", 1868.