Searches and investigations have yielded nothing conclusive, and the ship's ultimate fate, and that of her crew, remains unknown.

Marlborough made 14 successful voyages with immigrants from London to New Zealand up to 1890, most often returning with cargoes of wool and frozen meat.

She had been converted to refrigeration as soon as the success of the venture was proven by another Albion ship, the Dunedin, and carried her first shipment in 1882.

On 11 January 1890, the Marlborough departed Lyttelton bound for London, with a cargo of frozen meat and wool, with a crew of twenty-nine men and one female passenger (Mrs W B Anderson).

When no word of her came after a long wait, an inquiry was made as to her condition when she sailed, where it was proved that the cargo was properly stowed and the ship well founded in good trim for the voyage.

[3] RMS Rimutaka reported that there were great quantities of ice in the Southern Ocean between the Chatham Islands and Cape Horn when she sailed through the area in early to mid February.

[6] Significant sized Antarctic icebergs have been observed at least as far north as 50 degrees south in the Pacific Ocean, which is well inside the sailing routes of the time.

[8] A search was mounted by HMS Garnet, an Emerald-class corvette from the Pacific Squadron under Captain Harry Francis Hughes-Hallett, for the crews of Marlborough and Dunedin in mid-1891 as a result of a rumour that there were crew members sighted near Good Success Bay, Tierra del Fuego.

The story that prompted the search had been originally printed in The Daily Colonist, a Victoria, British Columbia newspaper, on 9 April 1891 and stated that a Brown Brothers sealing schooner Maud S under Captain R E McKiel had, in mid to late January 1891, encountered number of men purporting to be shipwrecked British sailors impressed into service by the Argentine government at the life saving station in Good Success Bay.

In October 1913, the Singapore newspaper The Straits Times published a story according to which the Marlborough had been discovered near Cape Horn with the skeletons of her crew that were slimy to the touch on board.

It appears that some considerable time back the sad truth was learned by a British vessel bound home from Lyttelton after rounding Cape Horn.

Treading warily on the rotten decks, which cracked and broke in places as they walked, they encountered three skeletons in the hatchway.

[23] In this account the Marlborough was found adrift in January 1899 by the ship British Isles under Captain Hadrop.

In September 1913, the Evening Post, a Wellington, New Zealand newspaper, published a story attributed to Captain McArthur of the Blue Funnel Steamers.

This account differed in that it stated that two shipwrecked sailors had found the skeletons of the crew on shore and the ship some distance away.

[30] In February 1914 the Evening Post published a follow-up article attributed to its London correspondent that stated Captain Thomas Sydney Burley of Puget Sound was one of the crew members that had found the boat and that they had been wrecked in the 1890s, not 1912 as Herd's son had supposed.

Burley was the owner of the Tacoma Barge and Tug Company and a pilot for Blue Funnel Steamers when the 1914 article was published.

According to an article in the 24 November 1923 issue of the Auckland Star, in 1919 an additional report had been published in an unspecified Glasgow newspaper which suggested that the crew had been sighted on shore in 1891, but that the passing ship had been unable to rescue them.

The survivors attempted to reach Good Success Bay on Mitre Peninsula, and on the way passed the wreck of a barque named Godiva.

It was also claimed that they had found a tent made from sail canvas and seven skeletons with a pile of mussel shells.

[37] Lubbock points out that the coast of Tierra del Fuego inside the Le Maire Strait would be an odd location for a vessel bound round Cape Horn from the west – as the Marlborough was – to go aground, or even for a boat from her to make a landing.

[13] Another possible explanation for Burley's account, and more likely, is that the boat they found was from the H Fölsch & Co, Hamburg's 899 ton barque Iquique.

The Argentine government established a settlement in Good Success Bay only in late 1887, four years after the Iquique went missing.