Shipwrecks
At least three confirmed shipwrecks have occurred off the coast of Inaccessible Island.
The first, and most dramatic, was that of the Blenden Hall, a British ship chartered to the East India Company, which set sail in 1821 with 84 passengers and crew aboard. Intending to sail past Saint Helena, it was carried instead towards Tristan da Cunha due to adverse currents. It ran aground on Inaccessible Island and suffered a broken back, but the forecastle was carried inshore. All but two of those aboard survived the shipwreck, and, subsisting on wild celery, seals, penguins, and albatross, managed to build boats some months later. The first attempt to sail to Tristan failed, resulting in the loss of six people, but the second attempt alerted the Tristanians to their plight. The remainder were then brought to Tristan, where most of them were later taken away by a brig to Cape Town, South Africa.
The other two shipwrecks are the wreck of the Shakespeare at Pig Beach in 1883 and the Helen S Lea at North Point in 1897.
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Famous quotes containing the word shipwrecks:
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—Alice Foote MacDougall (1867–1945)