Vagaries of Voss Visit Recalled

Local man Graeme Ferris reflects on a little-known visit to Oamaru Harbour by J.C.Voss in the 'Tilikum', in 1903. He is interested to hear from anyone out there whose ancestors recall this March 1903 visit to Oamaru by Voss.

During my time of local messing about with boats, I only ever met one person who could recall Voss and this notable event and yet there are many local people who could recall quite clearly the wreck of the large luxury schooner 'Ariadne' on the North Otago coast in 1901, two years before Voss called here. It would be interesting to hear from anyone whose ancestors recall this March 1903 visit to Oamaru of J.C.Voss, his vessel 'Tilikum' and his companion during this part of the voyage, Mr.G.McDonald.

It has been established that my portion of this newsletter was originally to be about the early days of the port of Oamaru, our historic little east coast harbour that nestles beneath what was once an interesting tree clad hillside with scenic walks and solitude. I realised however that the main object that was trying to be presented was something other than a history lesson because much of the history of our slowly but surely decaying harbour had been written many, many times previously, and this, mostly by people with academic qualifications or huge strings of letters after their names. Adding my own non-qualified version to this was hardly something that could be described, even vaguely, as interesting harbour information.

Stalemate? Not quite!

When the names Voss and 'Tilikum' were recently mentioned in association with this Oamaru Harbour awareness newsletter my thoughts went back a century or so to when Captain J.C.Voss, during his world voyaging in a thirty-eight foot (11.58 metres) dug out Indian canoe, hewn from one log of North American Red Cedar, called at the port of Oamaru in this unusaul three-masted vessel he had christened 'Tilikum', a Native Indian name meaning "Friend".

This unique harbour event apparently went unnoticed by the local papers; the Otago Witness printed his March 1903 arrival in Dunedin Harbour, even published a photo of this unusual craft but Oamaru papers it appears simply ignored his arrival from the Otago Harbour and subsequent departure a few days later for Lyttleton, via the port of Timaru.

Voss an expert in the use of a sea anchor in heavy weather, carried on to complete his 'Tilikum' voyage that had started in Victoria, British Columbia in 1901 and concluded three years and three months later in London, England after sailing forty thousand miles across the world's oceans.

Venturesome Voyages indeed.

Graeme Ferris