The Norwegian sealer S.S. Solglimt was deliberately beached in a sinking condition on 16 October 1908 in Ship’s Cove, Marion Island after hitting the then uncharted Solglimt Blinder a little way offshore. The whole ship’s complement of around 75 men got ashore safely and erected huts to live in until they were rescued a month later by two sealers from Nova Scotia and taken to Durban, South Africa and thence on to Norway.
In collaboration with Jaco Boshoff, Maritime Archaeologist, Social History Collections Department, Iziko Museums of South Africa and with the help of museum colleagues in Norway, the Antarctic Legacy of South Africa has been researching the wrecking of the sealer. A multi-disciplinary approach is being taken that has included diving on the remains of the shipwreck in the cove, undertaking preliminary excavations in the “shipwreck village” ashore and searching the historical record, both published and unpublished. Much that is new has been learnt in this way. We have a full crew list for the vessel, a photograph of its Captain, Anders Harboe-Ree, and diary, newspaper and inquest accounts, some that have been translated from the original Norwegian, to flesh out the ship’s voyage, wrecking and the life ashore of its crew and their eventual rescue.
Yet all along what has been missing was good information on the sealing ship itself, including what she had looked like. We know the 1135-nett ton Solglimt was built in 1881 as the S.S. Harbinger by the United Kingdom’s Sunderland Ship Building Company for the Harbinger Steam Ship Co. Ltd. She measured 271 ft. (82.6 m) in length, 36.1 ft. (11 m) wide and had a depth of 20.6 ft. (6.3 m) with a two-cylinder compound engine of 170 horsepower built by North Eastern Engineering of Sunderland. At the time of her launching a local newspaper described her as “a very handsome model, having [a] short full poop, raised quarterdeck, bridge and topgallant forecastle…” and stated she is “fitted in every detail with the latest improvements…”.
No photographs of the ship at the time of her launch, nor the ship’s plans have yet been found and a photograph unearthed in Norway of the ship, taken at the Crozets on her first southern sealing voyage, is an unsatisfactory one with her out of focus and far in the background as the photographer concentrated on a Wandering Albatross in the foreground.
The breakthrough came at the Historical Antarctic Sealing Industry Conference in Cambridge, UK in September when I was put in contact with the Captain’s grand-daughter Cathrine Harboe-Ree who lives in Australia and is the University Librarian at Melbourne’s Monash University (click here). Since then has been a flow of e-mails between us with the water-colour painting of the wrecked Solglimt and two photographs of the grounded ship in Ship’s Cove by Captain Anders Harboe-Ree that Cathrine has inherited becoming available to ALSA.
Perhaps somewhere out there exists a photograph of the ship before she was wrecked and we will keep on looking for it. In the meantime the material obtained so far from Cathrine is a great leap forward in our knowledge of the Solglimt wrecking.
A following news item will look at the “shipwreck village” in Ship’s Cove erected by the Solglimt’s crew with more fascinating historical photos obtained from Cathrine Harboe-Ree.
Selected Publications:
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.
Galteland, O. 2013. A/S Kerguelen 1908 – 1921. The Optimism, the Dreams – and the Dull Working Day. Sandefjord: Vestfjoldmuseene. 72 pp.
Marsh, J.H. 1948. No Pathway Here. Cape Town: Howard B. Timmins. 200 pp.
Feature photograph: Water-colour (23 x 31 cm) of the grounded Solglimt in Ship’s Cove, Marion Island by the ship’s Captain, Anders Harboe-Ree, courtesy of Cathrine Harboe-Ree, the Captain’s grand-daughter
John Cooper, Antarctic Legacy of South Africa, Department of Botany and Zoology, Stellenbosch University, South Africa, 05 November 2016
