Lanercost

Official Number 54912

The Lanercost was a wooden barque built at the Williamson & Son shipyard at Harrington. She was launched on the 7th October, 1865 by Miss A.M.Williamson, daughter of the builder. She was registered at Liverpool, owned in 1870 by P.Dodd.

In 1872 the Lanercost was owned in Adelaide, Australia. On the 21st November 1872 she left Newcastle, NSW, under the command of Captain Simpson, bound for Adelaide with a cargo of 580 tons of coal. At 05.00 on the 24th November she was wrecked near Twofold Bay, Mowarry Point, south of Eden. No lives were lost, and attempts at salvage were confounded by the big seas breaking over the vessel. The vessel broke up, but part of the wreck was discovered in the 1960's, and it is now a dive site.

NB. Another barque named Lanercost was built by the Brocklebanks at Whitehaven in 1842. She seems to have disappeared from the shipping registers at the same time, in the mid-1870's.
 

Sources :

1. Launch reported in the Cumberland Pacquet newspaper, Tuesday, 10th October 1865, page 5. Gives tonnage as 380 tons old measure, 355 tons new measure.
2. Mystic Seaport Library Ship Register Search has shipping register details from 1870 to 1874 - master named as Capt.J.D.Eaton.
3. American Lloyd's Register of American and Foreign Shipping, 1871
4. Shipwrecks of Twofold Bay and Disaster Bay - the webpage includes details of wreck, photos of wreck site and details of recoverd artefacts.
5. Australian National Shipwreck Database - describes the vessel as a barquentine built at Sunderland. There was such a vessel, but she was built in 1874 and survived until the 1890's.