Wreck of SS Norwich City

 shipwreck  Add category

The SS Norwich City was a British oil-fired steam freighter built at the Central Marine Engine Works shipyard and launched in 1911. Engaged in the commercial trades for the next eighteen years, she was operating on a liner routing between Melbourne, Australia and Vancouver, Canada in November 1929 when she departed Melbourne in ballast for the long trip across the Pacific.

Riding high and with her Stern ballasted down to improve her engine's performance, the Norwich City ran straight into a heavy storm during the night of November 29th and was soon struggling to maintain headway against both the wind and seas. With her 35-man crew unaware she was in any danger, the ship was blown onto a collision course with Nikumaroro Island and ran headlong into her outer barrier reef at 11:05PM local time, her high-riding bow moving well aground before her Stern hit the reef and stuck fast. Holed in her #5 & #6 cargo hold and taking on water, the ship was pounded by heavy storm waves and forced further ashore during the night and eventually suffered an onboard fire that forced the ship to be abandoned at dawn the following morning. With the storm still in full force the crew's attempts to utilize the Norwich City's lifeboats were met with disaster as both were carried off by the waves and flipped onto the reef, with much of the crew being thrown into the surf from the second boat. By the time the ship was fully abandoned and all crew were ashore, musters revealed that eleven men had been lost to the sea though three men were later recovered and buried on Nikumaroro.

Survivors of the wreck set about building the first of two camps immediately ashore of the vessel where they waited for four days before being rescued by the SS Trongate and the MT Lincoln Ellsworth and taken to Fiji. The wreck of the SS Norwich City was left onsite and was partially salvaged of non-damaged items over the next three months but as of February 10th, 1930 the ship was declared a total loss and abandoned. Today, the wreck has deteriorated to the point that only her engines and a single boiler are visible above the water during low tide.

tighar.org/wiki/Norwich_City
tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Documents/Norwich_...