52 Ancestors - Week 16 - Storm - The Wreck of the Queen Bee
New Zealand's coast is littered with shipwrecks, some caused by the weather and some by poor seamanship. The wreck of the Queen Bee on Farewell Spit in 1877 was caused by the latter, but finding her 30 passengers and crew was made more difficult by a storm. The tenacity of mariners like Olaf Sven Nilsson aka William Johnson meant that all but one were rescued. Nilsson/Johnson must have experienced many storms at sea as he had arrived in Nelson, New Zealand from Sweden as ship's crew in the early 1860s. The Queen Bee should have arrived in Nelson from London early in August 1877 and she was slightly overdue. About 8:30pm on Monday 6 August she sighted the lighthouse at Farewell Spit right at the very top of the South Island, but by midnight she had run aground about 6 miles from shore. As the ship was taking on water, and gunshots, flares and burning blue light had failed to attract attention of anyone on shore, the captain sent the second officer and some crew in a dingy f...