At the start of this thread I noted that the captain of the Bushnell reported 3 small boats on Gardner Island in late 1939, which he assumed were from the Norwich City. However the accounts of the Norwich City accident indicate that only two boats, the ship’s lifeboats, were dragged ashore by the Norwich City’s crew during the time they spent on Gardner. The Norwich City was equipped with two lifeboats on either side of a structure located just aft of the funnel and two ‘ship’s boats’, located on either side of a structure located just forward of the funnel (see the photo in the
Ameliapedia article on the Norwich City). The accounts of the evacuation of the Norwich City after it hit Gardner’s reef make it clear the two boats removed from the ship on the night of the accident were the ship’s two lifeboats. So one can conclude that the third boat seen by the Bushnell survey party in ’39 was one of the two ship’s boats and that some sort of human intervention was involved in getting that boat firmly ashore on Gardner for the Bushnell party to see in 1939.
There is one aspect of this explanation which I find somewhat unsatisfying: when the Norwich City ran aground it caught fire and the structures forward and aft of the funnel were destroyed. According to Ric in the Ameliapedia article on the Norwich City: “
Photos of the ship prior to the accident show a white-painted superstructure just forward of the funnel and a smaller structure further aft that are missing in Bevington's 1937 photos of the wreck. These seem to have been of wooden construction and were consumed in the fire that engulfed the vessel at the time of its stranding.” What I find unsatisfying is that somehow one of these two ship’s boats managed to survive the fire that destroyed the wooden structure where these boats, also made of wood, were housed. I suppose it’s possible for that to happen, but it does seem a bit odd doesn’t it?
I looked at photos of the Norwich City taken after its collision with a bridge in Vancouver the year before it ran aground on Gardner and the one that best shows how the ship’s boats were stored is attached. These boats appear to have been hanging on davits located on an open deck that extended around a small closed structure with windows, which I’m guessing was the ship’s bridge. Even if one of these ship’s boats was still floatable after the fire that destroyed the forward structure, removing the boat from that wrecked structure to get it to shore would have been quite a task, wouldn’t it? The
Debris Field Analysis report includes the earliest known picture of the Norwich City wreck, taken in 1935 (see attachment or go to link). At first glance I thought the white object that can be seen on the port side of the ship forward of the funnel might actually be a ship’s boat, hanging atilt from its davits, but on second thought I think its too big to be a ship’s boat (perhaps the white object is a remaining unburnt piece of the forward structure?) In any case, from the damage I see in this photo I tend to think the ship’s boats were consumed in the fire or made inaccessible by the damage that the fire wreaked upon the forward structure. I’d be curious to know what other forum members think. Perhaps someone could look at the a more highly resolved version of the 1935 picture.
If the third boat wasn’t from the Norwich City where was it from? The Mystery of the Third Lifeboat continues…
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Topic: The Mystery of the Third Lifeboat (Read 33137 times)
