A Spanish Man-o-War in New Zealand? The 1864 wreck of Grafton and its lessons for pre-Cook shipwreck claims

Abstract

This paper considers the 1864 wreck of Grafton in the Auckland Islands, and its implications for wreck analysis and pre-Cook exploration claims. The captain of Grafton, Thomas Musgrave, stated that the schooner was built from the wreck of a Spanish man-o-war, and archaeological analysis of the wreck found that the timbers are a tropical South American species, and had possibly been reused. The implications of this are clear; it is possible that timbers that originated in pre-Cook (1769) ships lie in New Zealand, but without a full understanding of the historical and archaeological context of any such timbers, including their reuse in later ships, it is not possible to claim proof of pre-Cook European exploration of New Zealand.