Wreck of the Grosvenor

The wreck of the Grosvenor, an East Indiaman, occurred on 4 August 1782 on the Pondoland coast of South Africa, north of the Umzimvubu River.

[1] The Grosvenor was a three-masted ship of 729 tons on her return voyage to England when she was wrecked, carrying a crew of 132 and 18 passengers (12 adults and 6 children), and a cargo valued at £75,000.

[2][full citation needed] Four survivors, Robert Price, Thomas Lewis, John Warmington, and Barney Larey, eventually got back to England.

According to Shaw's apprentice, William Habberley[6] (one of the ultimate survivors of the disaster), Pondo tribesmen soon arrived on the scene, but offered no assistance, being more concerned to recover nails and other iron from the wreck.

Dalrymple's official report to the East India Company concluded that the loss of so many lives had been caused principally by "want of management with the natives," noting that "the individuals that fell singly among them" (Joshua Glover and John Bryan) had been treated "rather with kindness than with brutality."

Eight years after the wreck, a rescue mission, consisting of Boer farmers, set off to find survivors, as there had been persistent rumours that several women had survived and were living among the natives.

[8] The first attempt at salvage was reported on 20 May 1880 by the paper Natal Mercury, in an article stating that Captain Sidney Turner and a friend, Lieut Beddoes, of the Durban Volunteer Artillery, had set off for Port St Johns in the vessel Adonis, had proceeded to the wreck and commenced blasting the rocks with dynamite, retrieving Indian coins and Venetian ducats as well as several ship's cannon, two of which were later displayed at the Local History Museum in Durban.

In 1867, Turner and his brother-in-law, Walter Compton, had bought 600 acres (2.4 km2) of undeveloped Crown land on the Natal South Coast between Umkomaas and the present village of Clansthal, and called the property Ellingham.

In 1881, from the profits of his salvage, Turner floated a company and commissioned the construction of a small coastal steamer, the Lady Wood, built in Greenwich.