ARRIVAL OF THE SANDFORD
The New
Zealander July 12th 1856
As we anticipated in our last, the
ship signaled throughout the whole of Tuesday proved to be the Sandford from London which came to her
anchorage at 9
pm after a
tedious and tempestuous passage of 123 days. She
sailed from Gravesend on 7 March and on 11th
took her departure from Start Point. At noon of that day an object
was providentially discovered to be floating on the surface of the water and on the ship’s
closing it, happily proved to be a human being clinging to a portion of a wreck. The Sandford at once hove to, a boat was
lowered and the poor fellow rescued from a watery grave.
He proved to be the sole survivor of the crew of a Prussian vessel which had
come into collision with an English brig and immediately sunk. Throughout the whole of her passage the Sandford
has met with a succession of severe gales. She
crossed the equator on 12 April and the meridian of the Cape on 17 May, from whence to the southern
point, Van
Diemen’s Land, which she passed on 22 ult., she
encountered much heavy weather. From Van Diemen’s Land the weather continued to
be equally tempestuous, hard NE gales driving the ship a long way to the southward. On Sunday she sighted Cape Maria van Diemen and was
off Cape Brett next day, fetching into the gulf at an
early hour on Tuesday morning. She reports the
following ships – off the Island of Trinidad, the Carolina, 70 days out, bound
for Sydney; also for the same port, the ship Oscar the First, from London 9 March;
off the Cape sighted the clipper ship Express homeward bound.