Deep down objects of desire -

Frances Walsh, Writer, New Zealand Maritime Museum Hui Te Ananui a Tangaroa

On a foggy winter’s night in 1909 SS Maori steamer slammed into a rock off the coast of Cape Town. Thirty-two crew perished in the mountainous seas. The Shaw, Saville and Albion steamer was heading to Ōtepoti | Dunedin with 4700 tons of cargo, valued at £120,000 ($NZ21.5 million in today’s currency). It included knick-knacks for the mantelpiece, gravy boats for the table, ceramic dolls for the children, and new season’s ties for the gents. In the hold were also 850 packages of explosives for Briscoe and Co; iron pipes for the Otago Drainage Board; and cheese and cheese-making paraphernalia for J. B. MacEwan & Co. When news of the shipwreck reached Dunedin, a city still in the pink after the gold rushes of the 1860s, the Chamber of Commerce met; president D. McPherson told members that the loss ‘would be felt directly and indirectly by all the inhabitants of New Zealand’. The items salvaged from SS Maori reveal some of what the emerging middle class hankered for in the country—where since the late 1880s household income had soared and by 1914 had more than doubled.

To see more items collected from the SS Maori steamer, see here.