''Edwin Fox'' is one of the world's oldest surviving merchant sailing ships.'' Built 1849. The American whaler '' Charles W. Morgan'', built in 1841, is arguably the oldest surviving merchant ship. The Edwin Fox is also the only surviving ship that

transported ''Transported'' is an Australian convict melodrama film directed by W. J. Lincoln. It is considered a lost film. Plot In England, Jessie Grey is about to marry Leonard Lincoln but the evil Harold Hawk tries to force her to marry him and she wou ...

convicts to

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

. She is unique in that she is the "only intact hull of a wooden deep water sailing ship built to British specifications surviving in the world outside the Falkland Islands".Norman J. Brouwer (1993) ''International Register of Historic Ships''. p. 212. 2nd ed., World Ship Trust. Anthony Nelson, Shropshire, England. ''Edwin Fox'' carried settlers to both Australia and New Zealand and carried troops in the

Crimean War The Crimean War, , was fought from October 1853 to February 1856 between Russia and an ultimately victorious alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France, the United Kingdom and Piedmont-Sardinia. Geopolitical causes of the war included the de ...

. The ship is dry-docked at The Edwin Fox Maritime Centre at Picton in New Zealand.

Early history

She was built of

teak Teak (''Tectona grandis'') is a tropical hardwood tree species in the family Lamiaceae. It is a large, deciduous tree that occurs in mixed hardwood forests. ''Tectona grandis'' has small, fragrant white flowers arranged in dense clusters (panicl ...

Calcutta Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, the official name until 2001) is the Capital city, capital of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal, on the eastern ba ...

in 1853 and her maiden voyage was to

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

via the

Cape of Good Hope The Cape of Good Hope ( af, Kaap die Goeie Hoop ) ;''Kaap'' in isolation: pt, Cabo da Boa Esperança is a rocky headland on the Atlantic coast of the Cape Peninsula in South Africa. A common misconception is that the Cape of Good Hope is t ...

. She then went into service in the Crimean War as a troop ship, and later carrying passengers and cargo. On 14 February 1856 she began her first voyage to

Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...

, Australia, carrying passengers, then moved to trading between Chinese ports. In 1858 she was chartered by the British Government as a

convict ship A convict ship was any ship engaged on a voyage to carry convicted felons under sentence of penal transportation from their place of conviction to their place of exile. Description A convict ship, as used to convey convicts to the British coloni ...

bound for

Fremantle Fremantle () () is a port city in Western Australia, located at the mouth of the Swan River in the metropolitan area of Perth, the state capital. Fremantle Harbour serves as the port of Perth. The Western Australian vernacular diminutive for ...

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...

Emigrant ship

In 1867 she was converted from a full-rigged ship to a

barque A barque, barc, or bark is a type of sailing ship, sailing vessel with three or more mast (sailing), masts having the fore- and mainmasts Square rig, rigged square and only the mizzen (the aftmost mast) Fore-and-aft rig, rigged fore and aft. Som ...

, and from 1873 served on the emigrant route to New Zealand, making four voyages carrying a total of 751 settlers to the distant new colony. Conditions on board for the three-month voyage were harsh and luggage strictly limited, and several voyagers did not survive to see their new home. On arrival they often found conditions much harsher than expected, and were also faced with being cut off from family and friends in distant

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

, sometimes for life.

Lamb and coal

''Edwin Fox'' was overtaken by the age of steam, and in the 1880s she was refitted as a floating freezer hulk for the booming sheep industry in New Zealand. She was towed to Picton in the South Island on 12 January 1897 where she initially continued as a freezer ship, before being further dismembered in 1905 when converted into a coal store hulk. By this time she had long since lost her rigging and masts, and suffered holes cut in her sides and the removal of most fittings. The ship was in use until 1950, then abandoned to rot at her berth.

Preservation

In 1965 she was bought by the Edwin Fox Society for the nominal sum of one

shilling The shilling is a historical coin, and the name of a unit of modern currencies formerly used in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, other British Commonwealth countries and Ireland, where they were generally equivalent to 12 pence o ...

. In 1967 she was towed to Shakespeare Bay where she remained for the next 20 years. After much further fundraising the ship was refloated and towed to her final home, a dry dock on the Picton waterfront. She was floated in and the dock was drained to begin preservation. In 2013 the Edwin Fox Society's preservation project received a World Ship Trust Award, the last of its kind to be officially given out due to the winding up of the World Ship Trust, based in London. Initially, it was planned to restore the ship completely, replacing rigging and refurbishing the interior. It has since been decided that this is not practical, not only for reasons of finance but because the timbers required are no longer easily available. She is thus preserved as a hull with an adjacent informative museum. Visitors are able to access two of her decks. The ship and museum were taken over by the newly formed Marlborough Heritage Trust (supported by the local council) in 2015 in order to help safeguard her for future generations. A book, ''Teak and Tide'', was released in 2014. In 2015 Neil Oliver and the BBC show ''

Coast The coast, also known as the coastline or seashore, is defined as the area where land meets the ocean, or as a line that forms the boundary between the land and the coastline. The Earth has around of coastline. Coasts are important zones in n ...

'' filmed the story of the ship for the New Zealand edition of the show. 3D scanning of the ship took place in 2016. This work recorded the hull to within 1mm of its actual size and shape. It is hoped that a virtual restoration of the ship can be achieved at some point. Between 2016 and 2021, the ship was recorded as part of a wider nautical archaeological study into late-eighteenth to mid-nineteenth century British colonial-built vessels. ''Edwin Fox'' has been given category I registration from

Heritage New Zealand Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga (initially the National Historic Places Trust and then, from 1963 to 2014, the New Zealand Historic Places Trust) ( mi, Pouhere Taonga) is a Crown entity with a membership of around 20,000 people that advocate ...

Notes

Citations

References

* * Boyd Cothran, Adrian Schubert: ''The Edwin Fox. How an Ordinary Sailing Ship Connected the World in the Age of Globalisation, 1850-1914''. The University Press of North Carolina, Chapel Hill 2023, ISBN 978-4696-7655-5.

External links

* https://www.edwinfoxship.nz/ *
"The Edwin Fox, Picton, New Zealand" from H2G2
{{DEFAULTSORT:Edwin Fox (Ship) Convict ships to Western Australia Tall ships of Australia Museum ships in New Zealand Museums in the Marlborough Region Picton, New Zealand Ships preserved in museums Heritage New Zealand Category 1 historic places in the Marlborough Region