BAILEY & LOWE SCHOONER – ENDEAVOUR

During the week Owen Aspden sent in the above phot of the 1904 schooner – ENDEAVOUR.

Owen commented that she was once a familiar sight around the New Zealand coast. Bought by the Aspden Shipping Co. in the 1930s then sold to the NZ Navy for service on the NZ coast in 1943 and bought back again by the Aspden Shipping Co. after the end of the war.

In April 1940 enroute from Auckland to Portland at night she encountered a small yacht upside down 3 miles off Tiritiri Island. The yacht was hoisted onboard and later by phone from Portland to Auckland it was established that three young Naval Reservists had been on the yacht and had drowned. 

Again in June 1940 at the time of the Niagara sinking she was leaving Portland for Auckland with a load of cement when the call came through that the Niagara had sunk off Whangarei Heads. She proceeded to the site but there was only oil to be seen on the surface.  

In in her later life it was used on Stewart Island to service salmon farms and from there sailed across the Pacific as a floating circus, unconfirmed. Do we know what became of ENDEAVOUR.

When your morning dog walk looks like this

You do this 🙂 

We are enjoying a stunning late summer in Auckland, made even better by the arrival of hot cross buns from Beabaes Bakery in Westmere, voted best in Auckland. But you better get there early Dave Giddens (ALLERGY) lives down the road and is a ‘seasoned’ regular 🙂

INPUT ex DENIS O’CALLAHAN – The round bottom coastal trading vessels, like the ones built by Meikeljon at Omaha, were always called schooners, irrespective of the rig.