John Cooper, ALSA’s Principal Investigator will attend a multidisciplinary conference on the historical Antarctic sealing industry at the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge on 18 & 20 September 2016. He will present a paper on the wrecking of the Solglimt and rescue of its crew at Marion Island in 1908, with co-authors Jaco Boshoff, Social History Collections Department, Iziko Museums of South Africa and Tara van Niekerk, Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of South Africa.
The extended abstract of the talk follows:
The wreck of the Norwegian sealer Solglimt on sub-Antarctic Marion Island: a combined archaeological and historical investigation
“In 1908 the Solglimt, an 83-m, coal-fired Norwegian sealing vessel, run aground on sub-Antarctic Marion Island, with its crew stranded on the island for several months before rescue by Canadian sealers. Archaeological research has included diving on the wreck and site excavation in the shipwreck ‘village’ ashore. Archival research into resources in Canada, Norway and the United Kingdom has yielded published and unpublished material hitherto unknown in South Africa. The inside story of the Solglimt’s last voyage can now be told, including of recalcitrant sailors, a threatened mutiny, arrests for drunkenness, and a subsequent enquiry in Norway which seemingly let the Captain off lightly.
The Solglimt was built in 1881 as the Harbinger by the Sunderland Ship Building Company, in north-east England. In 1907 the ship was sold to Storm, Bull & Co. of Norway, renamed the Solglimt and converted for seal hunting in the Southern Ocean. In the austral summer of 1907/08 she undertook a successful expedition under Captain Anders Harboe Ree to the French Crozet Islands in the southern Indian Ocean, returning to Tønsberg, Norway with 700 tons of oil obtained from Southern Elephant Seals Mirounga leonina and 1880 fur seal Arctocephalus spp. pelts that were killed ashore.
The next season, the Solglimt sailed south again with a crew of 75 calling at Durban, South Africa from where it sailed to Marion Island, arriving on 15 October 1908. The day after arriving the ship hit an uncharted rock that penetrated the hull. In a sinking condition the Captain then run the ground within Ship’s Cove on the island’s north-east shore. Everyone got ashore safely despite reported panicking and several of the crew falling out of an overloaded lifeboat. With calm weather for the first few days much of the ship’s equipment and supplies was remove despite by ship’s boats and mooring wires run ashore. A storm on 27 October caused the ship to break up (and two beached motor boats to be destroyed). The Solglimt crew than erected a number of small huts (which they named) for shelter in a valley behind the cove. After a month ashore living of ship provisions augmented by seabird eggs, and spent preparing a ship’s boat for a rescue voyage to South Africa two small Canadian sealing schooners from Nova Scotia, the Agnes G. Donahue and the Beatrice L. Corcom, arrived on 14 November and took the shipwreck party a few days later to Durban, from here they caught a steamer back to Europe.
As late as 1939, a portion of the ship’s bow and a mast were still visible above the surface. By 1948 when South Africa annexed the island nothing of the ship was visible although it reached with half a metre of the se surface. Only a few remnants, mainly planking, of the ship-wreck village remain visible, due to the removal of souvenirs and disturbance by team members and island visitors over the years since annexation, as well as overgrowth by vegetation, mainly moss. Recreational diving on the wreck also led to the removal of brass piping in the 1980s. The first archaeological investigation ashore took place in 1989, followed by a more intensive investigation in 2013, both during the three-week periods of annual reliefs. Shore-launched dives by marine archaeologists on the Solglimt did not take place until 2011, to be repeated with SCUBA in 2014.
The wreck lies broadside to the beach in shallow water at a maximum of 6 m. The condenser, engine block, crankshaft covers, several boilers and miscellaneous steam fittings stand above the seabed but most of the wreck is covered by sand (with more covered in 2914 compared with 2014. The bow with some plating is visible but the stern section is not. Fire bricks and coal have also been seen. The archaeological digs on land have revealed remains of hut structures in the form of planking and posts along with glassware fragments, parts of the ship metal structures, coal fragments, parts of a cast-iron stove, clay bricks (similar to those within the wreck) and rifle cartridges.
Archival research by Norwegian colleagues has revealed a wealth of new unpublished information to add to the scanty published record in newspapers of the time. The full crew list, with their names, ages and home towns is known. Diary extracts and written accounts by the Captain and Asbjørn Bjørnstad, the ship’s Sekretær (Secretary), that have been translated from Norwegian give an insight into the social life before and after the shipwreck and during the rescue, with some of the crew making complaints about the quality of provisions, becoming drunk, getting drunk and arrested ashore in Durban and after sailing invading the Captain’s cabin and threatening mutiny. Captain Ree complained in a letter to a newspaper that while shipwrecked on the island “[in translation] Apart from a few exceptions, the crew behaved badly. A lot of provisions were stolen. Crates and barrels were broken up, and the contents was scattered all over the ground. Boxes were opened, partly eaten and then tossed away”.
An enquiry conducted in Durban and in Norway revealed the Solglimt had inadequate look outs, made no soundings on the day and did not have adequate life-boat drills when it hit the offshore rock, but in the event only a small fine of one Kroner plus 15 Kroner costs was issued.
Future historical research should concentrate on tracing descendants of the Solglimt complement who may have written or photographic material or are able to pass on stories they have heard from relatives. Somewhat surprisingly, no good photograph of the Solglimt has yet been traced despite Captain Ree taking a camera with him on the Solglimt’s first southern voyage with his photo album of Crozet pictures safely archived in Norway. Further archaeological research requires small boat support for divers and more time ashore for excavations than is available during annual reliefs.
The Solglimt study is the first conducted of a shipwreck in both a marine and terrestrial environment in the sub-Antarctic. Linking the written record with on-site investigations has led to a fuller understanding of Southern Ocean sealing at end of an era at the beginning of the 20th Century.”
Read about Tara van Niekerk’s MA research on the Solglimt here.
ALSA thanks Stig Tore Lunde for the Ree photographs, Erik Evensen for finding and his son Anders Evensen for translating the Norwegian Solglimt texts and Jay Gates for help obtaining newspaper articles.
Feature photograph: “Neptune comes aboard”: the Crossing the Line ceremony aboard the Solglimt on its first southern voyage in 1907. Photograph by Captain Anders Harboe Ree
Reference:
Boshoff, J. van Niekerk, T. & Wares, H. 2015. Preliminary investigations on the wreck of the SS Solglimt, Marion Island. Bulletin of the Australasian Institute for Maritime Archaeology 39: 53-59.
John Cooper, Jaco Boshoff & Tara van Niekerk, Antarctic Legacy of South Africa, Department of Botany and Zoology, Stellenbosch University, South Africa, 15 August 2016