Fears are entertained for the safety of the vessel.” The barque had not been sighted by any other ship and was long overdue.
Even today ships do not arrive at their planned destinations and are listed first as ‘overdue’, then ‘missing’, before being declared ‘presumed lost’. Only after the formal declaration of ‘presumed lost’ can the owners of the ship and its cargo make claims on the insurers. Fortunately for the insurers, the Ponape arrived in Port Phillip after a passage of 154 days.
A usual passage for a sailing vessel from Norway to Melbourne was completed in under 100 days. The Ponape, however, which departed on December 19, encountered severe storms from the start of the passage. She was driven into the far north of the Atlantic by gales from the south-west, and it was two months before the vessel reached the parallel of the northern tip of Spain.
Ponape was further delayed by calms around the equator and gales in the South Atlantic and the Southern Ocean before again being becalmed in the Great Australian Bight. She finally entered the Yarra River on May 25, having not sighted another ship during the passage. The only land sighted in more than five months, by a lookout in the rigging, was the remote island of Trindade about 1100km east of southern Brazil.
The Ponape was built in Genoa, Italy, in 1903 with the name Regina Elena but was sold to a German company that renamed her Ponape. Renamed the Bellhouse in 1914, she reverted to the name of Ponape in 1925. From 1929 until 1936 she made seven round voyages in the grain trade from South Australia to Europe, with her best passage of 98 days in 1929, but her average was 114 days. She was broken up in 1937.
The Peninsula Ship Society meets at Hastings Yacht Club at 10am on the fourth Tuesday of each month (except November and December). Visitors are always welcome.
