Timaru Cemetery, Row 0 — April 1877
I have walked over the Free Ground area at the Timaru Cemetery many times. It has only been recently that I have started to learn about who some of the people were who rest there. One of these graves belongs to Thomas Smith, a seaman from the barque Isabella Ridley, who drowned in the surf after one of Timaru’s most notable shipwrecks.
On 19 April 1877, the Isabella Ridley arrived off Timaru carrying a cargo of roughly 2,000 sacks of grain from Newcastle, New South Wales. According to the Lyttelton Times of 20 April 1877 paperspast/LT18770420.2.18 the ship had been “dragging her anchors all day” in a heavy south-east swell. By mid-afternoon, both cables finally parted and the vessel was driven ashore “right in front of the Government Landing Services”.
The wreck happened in full view of the busy port. I would imagine, many landing-service men knew the risks of Timaru’s exposed roadstead. Ships could lie safely at anchor one moment and then be in serious trouble fighting for their lives the next. According to The Press (21 April 1877) paperspast/CHP18770421.2.4 all hands were saved from the wreck, and as the ship wreched at the shore, the crew made it safely to land without needing any rescue help. But not everyone stayed away from the surf that night.
Thomas Smith’s Final Hours
Two days later an inquest was held at the Melville Hotel, fully reported in the Timaru Herald on 23 April 1877 paperspast/THD18770423.2.16
The witnesses pieced together Thomas Smith’s final movements.
According to the ship’s master, Kenneth McKinnon, Smith was a steady seaman and had survived the wreck alongside the rest of the crew. But as night fell, he repeatedly attempted to return to the stricken vessel.
Henry Edward Jordan, steward of the Ridley, testified that Smith was “in drink” and kept trying to wade out to the wreck. Jordan pulled him back more than once and later said:
“He was washed over twice and the third time appeared to be exhausted.”
Sometime around midnight, Henry Edwin Rock, a boatman with the Government Landing Service, encountered Smith again. According to Rock, Smith asked if he could go aboard the wreck, and even offered him a sip of “old tom” gin from a bottle he carried. Rock refused, warning him it was far too dangerous. Shortly afterwards voices on the beach shouted, “He is gone!”
At about ten o’clock the next morning, John Bargfrede found Smith’s body washed ashore near the mouth of the Washdyke. Constable Thoreau noted the sea had battered the face and clothing, and found a shilling and the gin-bottle stopper in his pockets.
The jury returned a simple, stark verdict: “Accidentally drowned on Friday, the 20th.” Thomas Smith was 49. A sailor, probably far from home, buried without a headstone in free ground at the Timaru Cemetery, also known as the pauper ground.
About the Isabella Ridley
To understand Smith’s story, it helps to know the vessel he served on. According to the Lloyd’s Register Foundation ship archive https://hec.lrfoundation.org.uk/archive-library/ships/isabella-ridley-1858
the Isabella Ridley was built in 1858 by Scott & Sons in Greenock, Scotland, and weighed around 233 tons. By 1877 she was working the Australian–New Zealand coastal trade.
The wreck later became part of Timaru’s maritime memory — one of many ships caught by the unsafe anchorage before the construction of the breakwater. A secondary account summarising the cargo and salvage value on Wrecksite notes https://www.wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?285508 that she carried grain and was later sold as a wreck with an insured cargo.
A Grave Without a Stone
Thomas Smith’s burial in the Row 0 Free Ground fits a wider pattern. These graves held workers, sailors, migrants without family nearby, and those whose means were too limited to pay for plots. Many are unmarked today, their stories recoverable only through old newspapers and inquests.
Yet his final hours were witnessed, recorded, and preserved. They reveal a man pulled not so much by recklessness as by a sailor’s instinct — the deep, almost irrational pull back toward his ship, even when she lay broken on the shore.
Standing at the Free Ground now, you would never know which patch of earth belongs to him. But the story remains: the wreck offshore, the surf, the bottle stopper in his pocket, and the long walk of the constable carrying him ashore, is a sad reminder of the risk people took and the lives that the sea took as well.
When we see peoples deaths associated with shipwrecks, it is easy to assume that the rescue crews may have slipped up. In this case, neither the Rocket Brigade or the Alexandra Lifeboat Crew were involved. The first experiments with rocket life-saving apparatus in Timaru were in December 1880, after the Benvenue / City of Perth disaster of 1882 caused public demand for such equipment. The lifeboat wasn't required because the vessell went ashore in the surf zone, right in the beach in shallow water, infront of the Landing Services Building. All of the crew got to the shore without assistance. The danger came after the wreck, when Thomas Smith tried to go back.