# SS Wiltshire wreck



## spongebob (Dec 11, 2007)

While there is a new ship wreck on the NZ coast we are reminded by the local press of the grounding of the Federal Steamship Co’s vessel SS Wiltshire, outbound from London to NZ ,when she ran on to rocks below the South eastern cliff face of Great Barrier Island situated on the eastern edge of the Hauraki Gulf.
It was a filthy stormy of torrential rain and heavy seas during May 1922 when she grounded and brothers Hugh and Frank Gray raced to the wreck on horseback to help rescue all 113 passengers and crew plus the ship’s cat without loss of life.
The ship soon broke up and the wreckage began to wash up along the Island’s East coast beaches and what a bounty it proved to be. Barrels of spirits rolled in on the overnight tide and the locals soon learned to rise very early so they could bury the barrels in the sand before the Customs and Excise men came on patrol with their hatchets.
The two brothers were house building close by at the time which involved tedious pit and hand saw milling so their interest turned to timbers washing ashore from the wreck. All the derricks were selected Baltic Pine and were rafted up a nearby creek to the house site to be sawn into rafters and purlins. Cabin doors became house doors, match lining from the accommodation became kitchen linings and a snug home quickly became the end result. Hugh Gray and his wife Ida raised six children there before moving to Auckland during WW2.
The house became a family holiday destination for the next fifty years but neglect and disrepair saw it uninhabitable by the 1990’s but in recent times the island community heritage trust has rescued the Gray house- along with the Mabey house associated with the wreck of SS Wairarapa in 1894 and relocated them in the village of Claris as memorials to those two fated ships
Being coal fired steam ships the bunkers may have washed ashore and fueled some home fires instead of polluting the beaches.

Bob


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