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The Wreck of the ''Grosvenor'', an East Indiaman, occurred on 4 August 1782 on the Pondoland coast of South Africa, north of the mouth of the Umzimvubu River. The shipwreck was close to the place where the Portuguese ship, ''São João'', had gone down more than two centuries earlier on 8 June 1552. The ''Grosvenor'' was a three-masted ship of 729 tons on her return voyage to England when she was wrecked, carrying a crew of 132 and 18 passengers (12 adults and 6 children), and a cargo valued at £75,000. Of the 123 survivors, only 18 reached Cape Town and were repatriated, the remainder dying of their privations or being killed by, or joining with, Bantu tribes.〔''Standard Encyclopaedia of Southern Africa''〕 Four survivors, Robert Price, Thomas Lewis, John Warmington, and Barney Larey, eventually got back to England. ==History== The ''Grosvenor'' had left Madras in March 1782 under the command of Captain John Coxon, falling in with Admiral Hughes' fleet. On 13 June 1782, she set sail for England from Trincomalee in Ceylon. Sailing west near the Cape coast at 1 am and while adjusting the sails to ride out a gale, the crew noticed lights to the west, but dismissed them as something akin to the northern lights. When the lights presently disappeared, they were given no further thought. As it turned out, the lights were grassfires burning on a headland directly on their course, and their disappearance was due to their being hidden by the brow of the hill. At 4 am, Thomas Lewis reported that he thought he could see land, but the idea was rejected by the commanding officer of the watch, Thomas Beale, as everyone on board was certain that they were at least out to sea. The quartermaster Mixon, after some hesitation, alerted the captain, who instantly came on deck. He attempted to club haul the ship, but this failed, and the vessel ran aground on the rocks. In the darkness, the crew firmly believed that as they were a long way from land, they had struck an uncharted island or reef. With a change in the wind direction, the captain felt that they could refloat the ''Grosvenor'' and run her aground in some more convenient place. A fortuitous change in the wind allowed the stern section of the ship, where most of the passengers were trapped, to be hauled into a sheltered inlet. Seventeen of the passengers and ninety-one of the crew survived the initial disaster. Captain Coxon, together with the Second Mate, William Shaw, and Third Mate, Thomas Beale, mustered the passengers and crew on the shore, retrieving what supplies they could from the wreckage of the ship (the First Mate, Alexander Logie, was suffering from dysentery). According to Shaw's apprentice, William Habberley〔W. Habberley 1786 "An Appendix to Mr Dalrymple's Account of the Loss of the Grosvenor Indiaman," in A. Dalrymple 1786, "An Account of the Loss of the Grosvenor Indiaman." London,J. Sewell & J.Debrett.〕 (one of the ultimate survivors of the disaster), Pondo tribesmen soon arrived on the scene, but offered no assistance, being more concerned to recover nails and other iron from the wreck. Coxon and his officers knew that they were a considerable distance from the nearest European settlements, the Dutch Cape Colony to the south and Portuguese colony of Delagoa Bay to the north. In the first few days ashore, there was evidently some further interaction with the Pondo, one of whom apparently pointed to the north-east. One of the seamen, Joshua Glover, walked away with the Pondo (Habberley claimed he was "disturbed in his mind," but he and another of the seamen, John Bryan, were among the few ultimate survivors, later found to be living happily among the Pondo). Coxon decided to press south towards the Cape, insisting that they could reach it on foot within ten to seventeen days. This was a serious miscalculation, because the distance to the Cape was 400 miles, rather than the 250 that he believed (Delagoa Bay was closer). Neither the captain nor his passengers were able to complete their journey. They made camp a few days after they had set out, and most of them died of starvation. A few of the fitter men continued, receiving assistance at several native kraals, and eighteen, including Habberley, eventually made their way to the Cape. Dalrymple's official report to the East India Company concluded that the loss of so many lives had been caused principally by "want of management with the natives," noting that "the individuals that fell singly among them" (Joshua Glover and John Bryan) had been treated "rather with kindness than with brutality." There were rumours that some of the women passengers might have survived in a similar way, but no conclusive evidence for this was ever found. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Wreck of the Grosvenor」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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