The General Grant's Gold: Shipwreck and Greed in the Southern Ocean by Madelene Ferguson Allen

The General Grant's Gold: Shipwreck and Greed in the Southern Ocean by Madelene Ferguson Allen

Author:Madelene Ferguson Allen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography/General
ISBN: The General Grant's Gold
Publisher: Exisle Publishing
Published: 2009-01-01T00:00:00+00:00


Chapter 12

The Enterprise and More Dreamers

Of the early salvage expeditions the most deserving of success was arguably that of the Enterprise over 1915 and 1916. After the failure of the May–Sorensen expedition planned during the period 1910 to 1913, the General Grant licence was put up for auction and bought by a firm of general merchants and engineers from Sydney headed by Percy Vincent Catling, a Londoner by birth, but living in Sydney. They bought a 24-ton oyster boat, the cutter Enterprise, which had been built in Halfmoon Bay, Stewart Island in 1883. The plan was to make two trips: a preliminary voyage in 1915 to survey the area and a second working voyage the following year to recover the gold.

Catling arranged to have two collector’s edition stamps printed for fundraising purposes. The stamps are called ‘cinderellas’ or ‘local stamps’ by philatelists and although they are not official, they are highly prized because of the exotic locations from which they often originate. These stamps are now extremely rare: it is thought that only four or five covers are still in existence. In an Australian auction in September 2001, a block of four stamps of the 1915 halfpenny green and penny red Auckland Islands General Grant expedition cinderellas sold for $A60,287. Individual stamps from this expedition are still procurable through philatelic dealers at about $NZ100 each.

The 1915 trip almost ended in disaster before it even started. Two of Catling’s crew, the diver Paul Suveran (a French-born naturalised British subject) and another man (named ‘Atherton’ in the 1954 ‘Wide World’ magazine article, though his real name remains a mystery), arrived in New Zealand to join the expedition, bringing with them some diving equipment that Suveran had bought in London. However, a zealous customs inspector discovered that they had tried to smuggle Catling’s rifle into New Zealand by concealing it in the false bottom of a crate. They were fined £25 or 28 days in prison. Unable to pay the fine, both men were jailed. To add insult to injury, all the equipment they had brought from London was impounded, and when it was sold at auction they had to try to buy it back. This they could not afford to do, and they were successful in purchasing only the diving suit, air compressors and some sundry diving equipment. Gone for good were their travelling trunks, charts, kerosene lamps and woolly underwear.

‘Atherton’ had been married shortly before leaving England and his wife accompanied him to New Zealand. While preparing for the expedition, his visits to the Enterprise became less frequent and eventually he pulled out of the venture. Frequent visits to the haunts of seafarers led to Catling recruiting Mathias Jorgen (Jack) Olsen, a Swede living in Port Chambers.

The Enterprise cast off from Port Chalmers near the end of June 1915, with Catling, Suveran and Jack Olsen on board. As they were leaving harbour their engine failed and they nearly collided with an incoming ship. When they finally got away, Suveran fell overboard



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