106 Catch the Fox
Picton’s 168-year-old Edwin Fox is an extraordinary maritime time capsule that spans war, criminals and immigrants.
Picton’s 168-year-old Edwin Fox is an extraordinary maritime time capsule that spans the Crimean War, Australian convicts, New Zealand’s early settlers and our economic evolution. The ship’s salvation – thanks largely to one dogged gentleman – is a remarkable tale of resilience.
For my money the Edwin Fox Museum is one of Picton’s best attractions – but I have a nagging suspicion most people driving off the Cook Strait ferry are blissfully unaware of it. Which is a great pity – considering that in her 34 circumnavigations the 836ton, 48m vessel has amassed a treasure-trove of history – all splendidly presented in her graving dock only a few hundred metres from the ferry terminal.
She embodies an integral part of New Zealand’s DNA – helping its fledging economy to expand trading and engage with the rest of the world at the dawn of the 20th century. She is, in fact, the world’s oldest surviving merchant ship – older than Britain’s fabled Cutty Sark. So, before you dismiss her as another old wreck of interest only to fusty, cob-webbed historians, read on.
For a vessel with so diverse a career, she had an indifferent start. She was built in 1853 near the Indian city of Kolkata (previously Calcutta) by Britain’s William Henry Foster – designed as a workhorse to ply the East Indies-uk trade route. Predating the age of the streamlined clippers, she wasn’t exactly a sleek beauty – her teak hull was often described as ‘stubby’ or ‘tubby’ – and she was noted for her stolid, ponderous pace. But her merchant career was derailed even before it began. She was sold soon after arriving in London in 1854 and commandeered to carry troops/cargo to and from the Anglorussian Crimean War. There are suggestions that the skirmish’s legendary ‘Lady of the Lamp’ – the nurse Florence Nightingale – sailed on board the Edwin Fox, though this has never been corroborated.
In 1856 – following her war duties – she was re-fitted to carry general cargo and passengers and switched to a much more sombre role. She was chartered to transport some of Britain’s ‘ne’er-do-wells’ to a new life in Australia.
Among the convicts were William Tester and James Burgess, two of the four men convicted of the Great Gold Train Robbery in 1855. They’d helped themselves to £12,000 sterling in gold (nearly $2 million in today’s money). Author Michael Crichton wrote a novel about it – The Great Train Robbery. It was later adapted into a movie starring Sean Connery and Donald Sutherland.
The British penal system of the time was brutal – consider the lot of 14-year-old William Messenger. He was sentenced to serve 14 years after being caught peeing on a gravestone. Busting to go, he was busted.
Mercifully, voyages with happier passengers soon beckoned for the Edwin Fox.
SETTLERS
From the early 1870s she began a series of annual voyages to New Zealand (mainly to South Island ports), ferrying British immigrants keen to shake off the shackles of the home country’s rigid class system and start a new life. They received assisted migration through the Vogel scheme – geared to adventurous and pioneering settlers able to farm the land. Tens of thousands took up the offer.
These ‘slow-bucket’ voyages typically took three months in what were often trying conditions. A one-way fare was £16 (about $2,700). Passenger diaries from the voyages make for fascinating reading. The cabins were tiny (especially in steerage) and, while most trips recorded a few fatalities, there were also, remarkably, quite a few births.