Hougomont was unfortunate and damaged on several occasions while at sea. In March 1903 she ran aground at Allonby on the Cumbrian coast. She was bound for Liverpool from San Francisco and had been driven off course by heavy weather. Her cargo included 32,000 cases of tinned pears and 24,000 cases of salmon, which the villagers of Allonby 'harvested' from the shore. In 1910 nine men were washed overboard when a rogue wave hit her stern in a
hurricane. Five of the men were washed back on board by the next wave, but the remaining four were never seen again. In November 1927 her rig sustained damage in the
Bay of Biscay, and she took refuge at the port of
Lisbon,
Portugal, where she was repaired in order to continue her voyage to
Melbourne,
Australia. In 1931 several of her sails were torn to shreds in a storm near
Cape Horn. On 20 April 1932 at 01:00 she was dismasted by a squall in a storm in the
Southern Ocean south of
Cape Borda in
South Australia. She was at the time on her 111th day at sea, carrying deadweight, on her way to a port in
Spencer Gulf, west of
Adelaide, Australia. The wreckage of the damaged rig battered the ship severely and it took the crew 30 hours to free her from it. She was coincidentally spotted by a steamer that wirelessly
telegraphed about the distress to Adelaide, and the steam
tug Wato was sent to assist. However, by the time
Wato had reached
Hougomont,
Hougomont′s crew had managed to build a
jury rig and she was sailing slowly forward. Her
captain, Ragnar Lindholm, refused all offers of assistance from the tug as he wanted to avoid
salvage fees. In January 1933,
Wato towed her to Stenhouse Bay for scuttling. She was scuttled there on 8 January 1933. Today she lies underwater in Stenhouse Bay. Her stern and prow are still standing somewhat upright, but most of her hull has collapsed. Her
figurehead, a blonde lady dressed in a white gown, is displayed in
Åland Maritime Museum in
Mariehamn. The wreck site is officially located at . ==Technical facts==