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Amazon

It was a short but adventurous life for the 130 ton schooner Amazon which has the distinction of being the first ship built at Jacob's River, now known as Riverton. Captain John Howell who had established a settlement at Jacob's River had the ship built in the late 1840's. 

Burr Osborn, better known as Yankee Jack who was enlisted with the help of Lewis Acker, was sawing timber and rafting it across to the building site. As soon as she was finished Howell sailed Amazon to Tahiti with local character Paddy Gilroy as second mate and Bill Dallas as ship's carpenter.  One of New Zealand's earliest settlers and whaler John Lidiard later recalled Amazon as being completed in 1845 and was working on her when she arrived at Port Nicholson in 1846.

In 1852, many of the menfolk were absent from the Foveaux Strait area, having sailed on the Amazon for California to try their luck in the gold diggings there.  In August of that year, having made it all the way back home safely to New Zealand, the little ship Amazon was totally wrecked at Bluff with no loss of life.

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