Cossack
In mid-December 1822, two ships hove into the Bay of Islands. Mermaid, Captain J.R. Kent, and Cossack, Captain Brown, had come from trading in Hawaii. A month later Cossack arrived at Sydney where she stayed two months before heading for the coast of New Zealand and Sandwich Islands.
Unfortunately Cossack never made it any further than New Zealand's Hokianga where she was wrecked leaving the harbour on 27 April 1823. Her surviving crew scrambled exhausted and half clothed across land for five days until they reached the Christian mission station at Kerikeri in the northern Bay of Islands.
One of Cossack's crew James Spencer was able to work for his keep with the mission until he could arrange to work his passage out of New Zealand on the next available ship. That opportunity came four months later on the mission's vessel Brampton. However, Spencer must have wondered what more could go wrong when that ship too was wrecked as she attempted to sail out of the Bay.
Unfortunately Cossack never made it any further than New Zealand's Hokianga where she was wrecked leaving the harbour on 27 April 1823. Her surviving crew scrambled exhausted and half clothed across land for five days until they reached the Christian mission station at Kerikeri in the northern Bay of Islands.
One of Cossack's crew James Spencer was able to work for his keep with the mission until he could arrange to work his passage out of New Zealand on the next available ship. That opportunity came four months later on the mission's vessel Brampton. However, Spencer must have wondered what more could go wrong when that ship too was wrecked as she attempted to sail out of the Bay.