VICTORIA schooner 1834

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VICTORIA schooner 1834

Post by shipstamps » Sun Feb 22, 2009 7:20 pm


Given by the stamp “schooner VICTORIA’’ but the vessel depict looks more like a barque rigged vessel.
It is given she was an American merchant sailing vessel, but I cannot find more on her as given below.

I got on her from Foreign Ships in Micronesia:

Schooner VICTORIA, Captain Dowsett, put in Bikini on 31 May 1834. Named the islands “Victoria’s Group.”.
Shore parties were landed to take on water and wood and to recruit natives to dive for pearl shells. Two days after arrival, natives attacked a boat crew. Two men escaped to the VICTORIA, while five others including Captain Dowsett, were killed ashore.
The VICTORIA made sail on 3 June.

A search by the brig WAVERLY of Oahu, Hawaii under command of Captain Cathcart, she visited Bikini in December 1834 to search for Captain Dowsett and the missing crew of the VICTORIA.
WAVERLY remained for four weeks, Captain Cathcart trade beads, cloth and iron for information on the missing men.
When evidence of Dowsett’s former presence was found, 30 hostages were killed.
WAVERLY sailed for Ponape and Kosrae, at Kosrae the ship was captured and the crew murdered, purportedly because of Captain Cathcart’s abduction and drowning of a chief’s daughter.

May 1841 a search by USS PEACOCK and FLYING FISH for the missing men was to no avail, and she sailed through bound for Hawaii.

Marshall Islands 1992 $3 sg508, scott 466 and 32c sg 689, scott 605u

Source: Foreign Ships in Micronesia by Fr. Francis X. Hezel.

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