On a M.S. of Tristan da Cunha issued in 1987 is given in the border of the sheet the wreck of the BLENDON HALL, also the inscription on a stamp of the set gives BLENDON HALL ashore Inaccessible Island.
She was built on the yard of John Tyson & Richard F.S. Blake, Bursledon, Hampshire for Sheddens & Co. (Log Book gives Sheddon).
20 July 1811 launched under the name BLENDON HALL.
Tonnage 473 ton, dim. 123.9 x 29.1 x 18ft. (loaded draught).
Ship rigged.
1813/1814 Is given that she was armed with 2 – 9pdr. guns and 12 pdr. carronades.
At that time she was trading to the West Indies.
December 1813 taken by the French frigate CLORINDE, when she was underway from London to Bermuda and Jamaica, under command of Capt. J.Barr. Her crew were transferred to the frigate, and the BLENDON HALL left drifting.
A few days later she was seen by the Falmouth packet Eliza without a soul aboard. The ELIZA was homeward bound from Malta
Was picked up by HMS CHALLENGER in an abandoned condition and towed into Plymouth on 18 December, the same day as the British ship LUSITANIA arrived there with the crew of the BLENDON HALL.
The LUSITANIA was also captured by the CLORINDE which gave her up to her crew and the crews of several other vessels she had captured.
BLENDON HALL later continued her voyage; it is given that she arrived under command of Captain Barr from London and Bermuda in Jamaica on 08 June 1814.
1814 Bought by Captain Anthony Greig for his own account, from then she became a “Licensed East India Ship”.
18 May 1821 sailed from the Downs under command of Capt. Greig, bound for Bombay and other ports in India.
23 July 1821 during foggy weather she drifted on to the rocks Inaccessible Island.
At that time there were 52 souls on board under which 28 passengers of which were 5 women and 3 children.
Two seamen were drowned by trying to swim ashore, the other made it safely ashore, where they remained in great distress for 16 weeks.
There only food was raw salted pork, which washed ashore from the wreck, and flesh from birds, which was also eaten raw.
When a case with surgical instrument washed ashore things got better, in the case were flints and steel to make a fire, and enable then to cook the food. After a time penguin s eggs were found in great abundance.
The captain son Alexander M. Greig who was a passenger on the vessel kept a diary, and for ink he used the blood of the rockhopper penguin.
Greig’s diary contained an imaginative drawing entitled “The foraging party attacking a sea elephant” and after this drawing is the stamp 0f 11p designed.
After about two months, in which they had repaired a small boat with parts of the wreckage of the BLENDON HALL, the carpenter and five men sailed for help on 19 October 1821 to Tristan da Cunha, they never reached their destination. (but there are rumours that they were picked up by a British whaler.)
After some time and not any help arriving, the survivors of the BLENDON HALL build a new boat, and this boat with on board 3 men reached the settlement at Tristan on 08 November.
Help with two large boats was then sent to the remaining castaways and thereafter brought to Tristan da Cunha in two voyages.
After two months the British brig NERINA made a call on the island and on 8 January 1822 the rescued people (except two, a sailor and a woman servant stayed behind) left the island and arrived at Cape Town 20 January 1822.
Tristan da Cunha 1987 11p and 70p sg 426 and MS 429.
Source: Log Book Vol.16 page 164-166. Ships of the east India Company. Some web-sites.