Edwin Fox
Maritime Museum
On permanent display in Picton, New Zealand, the
Edwin Fox is the world's ninth oldest ship with a fascinating
history that took her from a troop carrier to an immigrant ship
to a magnificent museum. The Edwin Fox was constructed at
Sulkeali on the Ganges Delta, in India in 1853, as a Moulmein
trader and the last vessel of her kind, similar to those that
had already been constructed for the East India Company and made
entirely of teak and saul timber in only nine months. The ship
would be sold to Sir George Hodgkinson of London, just before
her inaugural launch, and he would rename the vessel, the Edwin
Fox. On her maiden voyage, to London by the Cape of Good Hope,
she would carry ten passengers and a general cargo, and in less
than a year later, she would be sold to Duncan Dunbar and put
into service by the British government as a troop ship for the
Crimean War, and would carry such famous passengers as Florence
Nightingale. After the fall of Sebastopol, the Fox would be
refitted to carry civilian passengers and general cargo, making
her first voyage to the Southern Ocean in 1856 with five
passengers and cargo, arriving in Melbourne in three months. She
would be used for numerous purposes for many decades, until
1873, when she would be chartered by Shaw Savill Company to
carry immigrants to New Zealand from England, and make four
voyages carrying a total of 751 passengers to the new colony. By
the 1880s, the age of steam had come, and the sheep industry in
New Zealand was going great. The Edwin Fox would be fitted out
as a floating freezer hulk and used for numerous South Island
ports. In 1897, she would be towed to Picton, where she would
remain, as a freezer ship, then coal hulk and then a marvelous
museum.
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