Qualla: SS Maori

SS Maori: Introduction

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter Southwood, CC BY-SA 3.0. For sixteen years, the SS Maori made the same journey: New Zealand to London, loaded to her waterline with frozen mutton carcasses, back again for more. She was not glamorous. She was a refrigerated freighter, purpose-built for the colonial meat trade, her insulated holds capable of carrying 70,000 carcasses of mutton at a time. On 5 August 1909, during one of her regular runs, a winter storm drove her onto the rocks south of Llandudno on the Cape Peninsula's Atlantic coast. Thirty-two people died, including her master and most of his navigating officers.

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Image: Peter Southwood | CC BY-SA 3.0

SS Maori: Built to Carry the Cold

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter Southwood, CC BY-SA 3.0. Shaw, Savill & Albion Co. commissioned the Maori in 1893 as a replacement for an older ship of the same name, ordering a larger vessel from C.S. Swan & Hunter of Wallsend-on-Tyne. She was launched on 14 August 1893, a three-deck freighter specially designed for the frozen meat tr...

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Image: Peter Southwood | CC BY-SA 3.0

SS Maori: The Long Haul

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter Southwood, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Maori's maiden voyage set the pattern for the rest of her career. She departed Gravesend on 11 December 1893 with 5,900 tons of general cargo, reached Port Chalmers, New Zealand, on 30 January 1894, and then worked her way around the New Zealand coast -- Lyttelton, Timaru, Wh...

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Image: Peter Southwood | CC BY-SA 3.0

SS Maori: The Storm off Llandudno

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. On 5 August 1909, the Maori ran aground in a storm a few kilometers south of the suburb of Llandudno, on the wild Atlantic coast of the Cape Peninsula near Cape Town. The coast here is remote, brutally rocky, and exposed to the full force of the Atlantic. Enormous winter rollers ...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

SS Maori: Wine, Linoleum, and Dynamite

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter Southwood, CC BY-SA 3.0. The wreck lies in about 24 meters of water between granite boulders, and since the 1960s it has been a popular scuba diving site when weather permits. The Maori went down carrying not only frozen cargo but general merchandise bound for London: crockery, rolls of linoleum, champag...

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Image: Peter Southwood | CC BY-SA 3.0

SS Maori: Protected at Last

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter Southwood, CC BY-SA 3.0. South Africa's National Heritage Resources Act now protects what remains of the Maori. The hull, battered by both the sea and human scavengers, still holds its shape between the boulders. Diving the wreck requires calm weather and low southwesterly swell -- conditions that may ar...

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Image: Peter Southwood | CC BY-SA 3.0