The Strange Career of “Antiope.”
The Antiope was one of the earliest of Joseph Heap’s ships, and, like all his others, had a name which no sailor could possibly pronounce correctly. Indeed when she came out many an old salt shook his head over such a name. Who ever heard of a ship called the “Anti-hope” coming to any good? However she upset the predictions of the evil prophets by being one of the luckiest ships ever launched, and at the present day must be one of the oldest ships afloat.
She was Heap’s fourth ship, I believe; her sister ship, the Marpesia, having been launched from Reid’s yard four months before her. The first ship of Heap’s “Thames and Mersey Line” was the little Hippolyta, of 853 tons, built as far back as 1856. Then came the Eurynome, of 1347 tons, built at Whitehaven in 1862.
“ANTIOPE.”
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She had an unenviable reputation for small collisions, so was generally known as the “You’re into me.”
For some years the Thames and Mersey Line was managed by Thompson, May & Co., of Water Street, Liverpool. The ships carried emigrants and general cargo from Liverpool to Melbourne, then crossing to the Bay of Bengal, often with walers to Madras or Calcutta, they came home from Rangoon with Heap’s rice. They generally sailed from Liverpool on the 10th of each month. In the early eighties the line was bought by Mr. Beazley to start his son, and was henceforth known as the Australian Shipping Company, managed by Gracie, Beazley & Co.
The Antiope made her best passage in 1868, running out to Melbourne under Captain Withers in 68 days, and but for being hung up on the line for 10 days would have gone near to breaking the record.
After Beazley sold her she was for some years in the South American trade. Then during the Russo-Japanese war she was captured by the Japanese whilst under Russian colours. The Japs sold her to Mr. J. J. R. Matheson, of Ladysmith, British Columbia, and for a short while she was in the timber trade. The world war found her lying in a New Zealand port, doing duty as a coal hulk for the Paparoa Coal Co. Here the Otago Rolling Mills bought her at a stiff price, and like many another old sailing ship, she came out of her retirement with a new set of wings in order to brave the German submarines and keep the old Red Duster flying.
In 1916, she got ashore on the coast when making for Bluff Harbour in a gale of wind, and there she lay on her side in the wash of the tide for 96 days. At last, with tonnage pretty near worth its weight in gold, an attempt was made to float her. For this purpose a large steam trawler, fitted with pumps to throw 10,000 gallons a minute, was brought down to this most southerly port in the Empire. No progress, however, was made until a journalist named Bannerman, with the inquisitiveness of his kind, got down into the Antiope’s fore peak by means of a rope ladder and discovered the chief leak. Then, with mats over the bow, the pumps slowly overcame the water, the Antiope righted and finally floated. She was then towed round to Port Chalmers, docked, repaired and once more fitted for sea. From Port Chalmers she ran across to Newcastle, N.S.W., in ballast, making the trip in the good time of 12 days. Here she loaded coal for Valparaiso, after refusing a £9000 freight to the United Kingdom. Again she made a good passage. From Chile she went up to San Francisco. And she is still earning money at the wonderful age of 54 years.