Castaway depot

A castaway depot is a store or hut placed on an isolated island to provide emergency supplies and relief for castaways and victims of shipwrecks. A string of depots were built by the New Zealand government on their subantarctic islands in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which were kept supplied and patrolled until modern technologies and alteration in trade routes rendered them unnecessary.

The standard trade clipper route from Australia and New Zealand to Europe took a line-of-latitude route in the Southern Ocean. Ships would drop below the Roaring Forties (40°S latitudes) to make use of the prevailing westerlies which carried them around Cape Horn. These winds could be strong and the waters treacherous; moreover, the smattering of islands was often poorly charted. For example, in 1868, Henry Armstrong of the Amherst notified the New Zealand government that the commonly used chart prepared by James Imray in 1851 placed the Auckland Islands 35 miles south of their true position. Regardless of the charts' accuracy, the cloudy weather predominant in the area made navigation by sextant difficult. The uninhabited Auckland Islands lay directly within the standard route. In the event of a shipwreck on any of these islands, due to their subantarctic climate they offered little natural sustenance or provisions to castaways.Thomas Musgrave, captain of the Grafton, which was wrecked on the Auckland Islands in 1864, described the "incessant gales, constant hail, snow and pelting rain" that plagued the survivors.

The Grafton, a schooner out of Sydney in search of tin deposits, ran aground in Carnley Harbour during a storm in January 1864; the five survivors lived in huts made from salvaged materials for 19 months before three members of the crew made the journey successfully to Stewart Island in five days in the repaired ship's boat; Captain Musgrave then arranged a rescue of the remaining two castaways. The same year, the three-masted clipper Invercauld, en route to Chile, was wrecked on the northwestern end of the island. Of the 25 crew members, 19 made it ashore, but only three survived the winter. The others succumbed to exposure; they were unaware of the presence of the Grafton crew castaways to the south. In 1866, the General Grant was wrecked on the western coast of Auckland Islands. Fifteen of the 83 on board survived the wreck, but only ten endured on the island until rescued by the Amhurst 18 months later. These experiences prompted a concerted programme to manage the risk of castaways in the area, and depots were established.

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