About: Wreck of the Surat

The wreck of the three-masted ship Surat, on New Year's Day 1874, was a major event in the early history of New Zealand's Otago Region. The Surat, a 1,000 ton iron vessel, was under charter to the New Zealand Shipping Company and was carrying emigrants and their belongings from Gravesend, England to Dunedin, New Zealand. She left Gravesend on 28 September 1873, with a crew of 37 under the command of Captain Johnson, carrying 271 passengers and 980 tons of cargo, among it railway iron and equipment for a woollen factory. It was not the Surat's first trip to New Zealand; she had previously carried British emigrants several occasions since the mid 1860s.