The City of Dunedin was a 327-ton side wheel paddle steamer wrecked in Cook Strait near Cape Terawhiti on 20 May 1865 while sailing from Wellington to Hokitika via Nelson with the loss of all on board.

[4] The City of Dunedin was an iron paddle steamer built in Glasgow by Archibald Denny of Dumbarton.

[5][6] She was described as not being elegant in appearance, but .. handsome proportions, and thorough adaption for the trade in which she is to be employed ... She had a full length spar deck, a new type of windlass to aid mooring and unmooring the vessel.

On reaching the Bay of Biscay the ship no longer ran on steam and had to revert to sail.

[14][15] With the West Coast gold rush, Hokitika was added to her ports of call by April.

She was sighted later that afternoon by a 15-year-old girl, Miss McMenamen[17] while she was out horse riding at Cape Terawhiti, close in shore among the rocks.

[19] When the City of Dunedin failed to arrive in Nelson she was initially thought of as being either delayed or having sailed straight to Hokitika.

As time went on and debris was found along the Wellington coast, she was considered to have hit one of the rocks near the Cape and sunk.

[20] The gunboat Sandfly under Captain Fox carried out a search of the shores on both sides of the strait.

[22] The point against these claimed numbers is that the newspapers at the time the ship went missing only referred to 50 to 60 people on board.