Islands of the Gulf

by Shirley Maddock

  Great Barrier

  The Wairarapa, a passenger vessel on the trans-Tasman run, belonged to the Union Steamship Company. On her way home from Sydney to Auckland, on Sunday night, 29th October, 1894, she was wrecked and 135 people were drowned. She struck Miner’s Head on the north-west tip of Great Barrier and, even seventy-one years later, the tragedy has never been forgotten on the island. It has a slight kinship to the wreck of the Titanic, though a cliff was nemesis here, not an iceberg. The heaviest casualties were suffered by the passengers, the lifeboats were mishandled and inadequate and, just as the orchestra on the Titanic went down playing “Nearer my God to Thee”, people clinging for their lives in the Wairarapa’s rigging sang “Eternal Father, Strong to Save” as they were swept away.

  When we sailed round with Reg Cooper, it was a grey, threatening morning and Mrs Cooper tactfully repeated her advice about boiled eggs rather than bacon. The West Wind is a good hard-working launch with a narrow bow that cuts through rollers rather than riding them out. Not that there was much of a sea when we left Glenfern jetty and ploughed towards Separation Head. The scow Rahiri rode along beside us for a while. Her master, Jock McKinnon, retired now, is one of the best-known and most respected seafarers in the Gulf and his stentorian voice one of its most familiar sounds. She headed for Man o’ War passage and we went our way in an increasing wind.

  “Looks like a good blow” Reg remarked, his tartan tam pulled well down. “If you feel a bit queasy you can take a turn at the wheel. That’s the best cure.”

  I have discovered pride is a better one and I survived, even if the margin was narrow.

  It is a cruel coast; iron-toothed rocks lurk just beneath the surface, the beaches are shingle and the hills behind lonely and desolate. Reg knows every inch of it, so he came in close to show us where the copper mines had been. The settlement was at Miners’ Cove but not even a chimney remains. We sailed hard by a bluff gouged out like a hollow tooth. This was the main shaft, but there are no picturesque ruins, only the long streaks of copper pyrites, brilliant turquoise and green, indelibly dribbled on the rock.

  A miner called Perry discovered copper here in 1857 and with it traces of silver and antimony. The workings were most active in the seventies and eighties and the miners were mainly Cornishmen who had come to Barrier when the companies on Kawau failed.

  The sky was lower and a misty rain was falling. In about another half hour, we were pitching alongside the grim face of Miner’s Head, the cliff, some six hundred feet high, where the Wairarapa had struck at full speed. There is no sign of her now. Captain McKinnon salvaged what was left of her in 1923. There is only her name, daubed in white-wash, with an arrow pointing where she struck.

  October 29, 1894, was a foggy night with a heavy swell. All that day crew and passengers alike were low spirited and unease afflicted the company sufficiently to inspire a group to hold a prayer meeting in the saloon and sing “Pull for the Shore” and “Eternal Father”.

  Why was the foghorn not being sounded, they asked one another. Why did the ship continue at such a high speed? Would they be safe till morning? Some passengers were cheered when Captain McIntosh dismissed the fog as “a great nuisance” and were sure he was acting as he should. The fog thickened as the night went on and the Wairarapa was still at full speed. At midnight, the helmsman suddenly called “Breakers Ahead!” and almost immediately they had struck the cliff, the vessel forced back on rocks which held her fast, with the heavy sea pounding over her.

  The company panicked. Boats were launched only to capsize, terrified passengers, among them mothers with children in their arms, leapt over the side. There were racehorses hobbled on deck and when they were cut loose many people already in the water were killed by their lashing hooves. Rockets spurted desperately into the dark night, but this was bleak country and no settlers lived close by.

  “See that ledge over there” said Reg and nodded towards a broad platform of rock. “Some of them crouched on that for eighteen hours before anyone could get them off.”

  The Maoris at Katherine Bay were the first to learn of the wreck. They came overland by horseback and on foot or rowed round. No one on the island owned a powered boat, nor was there a telegraph and, while survivors were cared for by the settlers and provided with clothing that was gladly given but ill spared, people on the mainland, desperate with anxiety, besieged the offices of the Union Company to try to discover what had happened.

  The edition of the Herald of 2nd November gives the first word in the press about the wreck. It was some days later before it was established who was drowned and who saved in the worst wreck in New Zealand waters since Tararua was lost, with 130 drowned, in 1881. The sensation caused by the Wairarapa was unrivalled since the Tarawera eruption in 1886. One paper brought out nine editions in a day and the national press vied with the weeklies in reporting the disaster.

  The enquiry opened on 4th November in an emotion-charged atmosphere which grew more bitter as the days went on, with survivors among the passengers accusing the officers and crew of failing in their duty. It was asked how was it that women and children were highest on the list of casualties and there was a reiterated suggestion by the prosecution that Captain McIntosh was either drunk or drugged. This story persists on Great Barrier even now, though his officers and a passenger who knew him well denied this, and his personal steward swore on oath the captain had taken only two whiskies that day.

  Three questions droned like a leitmotif throughout the trial. Why did the captain not change his course, why did he maintain such high speed and (though it could hardly have helped) why did he not give orders to sound the foghorn?

  The Wairarapa was proceeding down the coast on the seaward side of the Poor Knights and the captain meant to take his bearings from them, but he had already missed his way when they were further north off the Three Kings.

  A temporary light keeper on Moko Hinau, which lights the north east approaches to the Gulf, testified that he had seen nothing remarkable on the night of the wreck and that the light was in good order.

  The Chief Officer, when he was called, spoke of his own anxiety which was not much relieved when he and the second officer went to the bridge and urged the captain to slow down. Then the second mate had remonstrated about their course and had been told “This is the Captain’s business. Go over the other side and trim the ventilators.” The Captain then relented sufficiently to tell them he would slow down when he saw the Hen and Chickens.

  The question about drink was raised again, but the Chief Officer denied it warmly and added that “the Captain was a grand disciplinarian, a splendid navigator and a solid man.”

  Then, in spite of his professed admiration for the Captain’s navigation, he told the court that he waited on deck until 11.30, looking in vain for the Poor Knights and, when he lay down in his cabin, he stayed fully clothed except for his boots and jacket.

  When the Third Officer was asked if he thought the Captain was drunk, he also denied it but not so vehemently. He said “The Captain was as he usually was.”

  Junior officers did not lightly question their captain in those days and Third Officer Johnson, obviously in awe of McIntosh and his reputation as a “grand disciplinarian”, had asked not “if” but “when” he was going to slow down. At the trial, the Third Officer said he put his question like this as he was afraid the Captain might “sit on him later in port.”

  Captain Clayton for the Harbour Board: “Had you not sufficient confidence in yourself to know that the captain was wrong and that you were all rushing to your deaths?”

  “I had not a dream of it. All I was afraid of was the Poor Knights.”

  “How far could you see the Moko Light?”

  “Two miles, but in a heavy fog — only as far as you could see a ship.”

  Then another suggestion was raised, that the ship was racing.

  The court was told that captains of the two competing lines, Union Steamship and Huddart Parker, were instructed not to
race, but the defence suggested that the command was given with a wink and a nudge. Captains might not race but they had better not be beaten.

  Mr Fred Alison, who has known the Gulf all his life and whose father founded the North Shore Ferry Company, told me that Captain McIntosh was a friend of their family and that he had visited them a few days before he left on his last voyage. His spirit seemed heavy and he spoke of his fears to his friend Alex Alison.

  “It’s be the end of us, all this racing,” he said. “One day a ship is bound to lose much more than a race into port.”

  When the survivors were called, many of them were more critical of the officers than the captain. A steerage passenger, Joseph Wright, told how the captain remained on the bridge and “acted with great coolness until the funnel broke away and he was swept from his place. I hope I may never see such a sight again.”

  Ghoulish details of the condition of the corpses and the usual stories of passengers prevented at the last minute from joining the ship continued to fill the press. There was heartening news that even in London the wreck had taken precedence over the assassination of the Czar.

  On the Prince of Wales’ birthday, a holiday then, the enquiry was adjourned and Aucklanders took to the harbour in great numbers. Three hundred went on the Clansmen to Mahurangi at ninepence return, the Rose Casey took a big picnic to Waiwera, the Coromandel and the Maori took members of the Primitive Methodist Church to Motutapu and the Wellington carried one hundred relatives of the drowned to Great Barrier, where parties were still at work at the melancholy task of identifying the dead and burying those unclaimed. Annie Besant, the English theosophist, devoted the proceeds from her lecture in Woodville to the relief fund, Pollards’ Juvenile Opera Company turned on a benefit performance of Maritana and the Canterbury Jockey Club donated the day’s gate to the victims’ families.

  In the brief lull before the hearing resumed, a Mr Chamberlin filled the gap with a story he had already given to the daily press and which was now reprinted in the Graphic, embellished with photographs and drawings. The sub-editor built up the impact with judicious headlines.

  “I was taking a turn with my friend Captain McIntosh and suggested a nightcap. The captain refused with the words, ‘Not a drop tonight!’ I retired shortly after, glad I was in such capable hands. I fell asleep and the next thing I found myself on the floor conscious that the vessel had received AN IMMENSE SHOCK.

  I went on deck and many poor people were praying but not holding on to anything and they were the first to be washed overboard.”

  Mr Chamberlin, by his own testimony, kept very calm and seems to have been all over the ship before he joined Mr and Mrs Scoullar and their two daughters at the rail. They were constantly asking Mr Chamberlin what they should do and he continues rather pointedly “The Misses Scoullar’s conduct was REALLY HEROIC.”

  The engineers had swum ashore with a rope line and secured it to the cliff by the rocky platform Reg Cooper had shown us and Mr Chamberlin was one of the few to negotiate it successfully. Most who tried fell and were drowned. The water was full of wreckage and struggling survivors and one by one the heads were fewer, until only a Miss Williams was left. Her long hair had wrapped itself round a spar which kept her afloat while her sister drowned at her side. She was in the water twelve hours before they managed to bring her on to the ledge.

  “All we had to eat” said Mr Chamberlin, “were some oranges washed up. Late on Monday afternoon three Maori boats rounded the point by the Needles; others came from Katherine Bay and I cannot speak too highly of their HOSPITABLE TREATMENT.

  The people were given tea, kumaras and some schnapps that had floated in, and the carpenter, a splendid unobtrusive fellow, caught a lot of herring in the creek.”

  As the hearing continued, bitterness between the passengers and officers came into the open. Some suggested the crew had stormed the boats and, while the stewards and especially a stewardess called Miss McQuaid, who had drowned, were warmly praised, the officers were charged with lack of leadership, even with funk.

  Mr Chamberlin, when it was his turn to testify, declared that the Chief Officer had lacked leadership when he failed to ration the oranges washed on to their rocky platform. But, when he repeated the line from his article that people who prayed, but hung on to nothing, were swept away, a Mr Varley challenged him from the floor of the court and said he lied. Mr Varley also implied Chamberlin was one of the men who selfishly refused to part with his coat to cover some woman’s nakedness.

  No one put forward a satisfactory explanation why the page for 29th October giving distances run and courses marked had been torn from the log. Then, as was bound to happen, on the 10th day a spokesman for the witnesses enquired who was to pay their expenses during the enquiry, which showed no sign of coming to an end.

  When it did, on December 11, the engineers were commended, Third Officer Johnson was praised for his conduct in bringing people ashore and the purser chided. “All I can say about him” declared the judge, “is that he saved himself.”

  The captain, who was not there to answer, was held wholly to blame for the disaster.

  As we lay off Miner’s Head, the mist rolled down until the Needles on the further point were lost, a pair of wild goats slithered about in the scree near the summit and the black water slapped ominously on the cliff.

  I was glad when we were back in the sheltered waters of the sound and that haunted place was behind us.

  * * *

  Four years later, relatives of the victims made a pilgrimage to the graves on the island and the New Zealand Herald reporter sent back his copy by carrier pigeon. It occurred to a pigeon fancier called Walter Fricker that a regular mail might be established and, in a short time, two rival companies were in business. Holden Howie was the better known and the more successful. His loft was in Newton Road in Auckland. The birds flew back to it from stations on Great Barrier, other islands in the Gulf and mining and timber camps on the Coromandel Peninsula. Te Uira (Maori for lightning) and Velocity were the two crack birds. In a good wind they could travel up to sixty miles an hour. The messages were written on fine rice paper, with Te Uira and Velocity’s picture in the right hand corner of the printed letterhead, and were sealed with the first airmail stamps printed in the world. They showed a pigeon holding an envelope in his beak and prices were from 6d. to 1/6d. The stamps are collector’s items now; the most valuable of all is the 1899 forgery.

  In 1901 there was still no telegraph to the Barrier and news of Queen Victoria’s death was flown there by carrier pigeon.

  In the forest ranger’s garden at FitzRoy was a decrepit old loft which I was sure must be a survivor from the Pigeon Post. It leaned at the top of some overgrown steps and Don spent some time filming it while I blew on the cobwebs and set the door creaking on its one hinge. A year after the film was finished, I found the loft was not all it seemed. It was a much more recent relic left by an earlier forest ranger who fancied pigeons in his spare time.

  The road to Katherine Bay is more than a ride, especially in a bucking Landrover; it is an unforgettable experience. We bounced down behind Pia over fissures nine to ten inches deep in the clay.

  Some people run like a continuous thread through the fabric of the Gulf and Toby Davies is one of them. He has Katherine Bay all to himself; the only other signs of the former community are two deserted houses and an empty school. We walked through his ancient orchard, rampant with vines full of bird-bitten bunches of green grapes. The ground teemed with hens, some speckled, some brindled and, more than seemed likely for the season, trailed by a chirruping wake of chickens.

  Toby was sitting on a little bench by his back door, a calico cat at his feet. His family are Ngatiwai of Aotea, kin to Tenetahi and Rahui and, with them, part owners of Little Barrier. Though it was a warm day, he wore a heavy wine-coloured jersey with a pink woollen vest showing at the neck and his eyes were shaded by a venerable felt hat. He wished us good afternoon and Pia chivvied him inside to dress hi
s leg, which had been troubling him.

  Down near the shore was a weathered barn, roof and walls made of kauri shingles. The house with twin gingerbreaded gables was lapped waist-high in cocksfoot; there were old rose bushes with fat white buds veined in crimson, camellia trees bearing red and white flowers on the same branch. The air had the salty bite of late summer and smelled of ripe apples.

  Presently Toby came slowly down the path with Pia and leant on the gate. He looked up at his hill paddocks with the scrub creeping over them and declared it was all a bit much for him now.

  “I get a bit lonely here some of the time. When it gets too quiet I go and visit. I got relations in Auckland — up the coast — all over the place.”

  He had brought out a heavy brass-clasped album filled with family photographs and one of the wreck of the Wairarapa before the ship finally foundered, with men in bowler hats sitting nonchalantly about on the rocks and even on the deck rail. He remembered that night very well and his family going round in their boats and bringing back survivors who stayed in their house, the young Third Officer among them.

  “They didden know where they were, nor what had happen. It was so dark, so misty. My people made the graves on the point. They found a woman and a girl together. We thought they was mother and daughter and put them in the same grave. But people came much later and said they weren’t and took the girl to put in another grave some place else.”

  We walked round to the graves; they had been dug beside the cliff — one large rectangle and one little grave. They were fenced with white pickets but the names on the crosses had long been rained away; a pohutukawa kept the sun off them. We walked back into the light and Pia shivered.

  “A goose walked over my grave” she said. “Like old time Maori tapu.”

  Away up the hillside the cattle were coming, small as an ant-trail, and, behind them, the toy figures of horsemen carrying long sticks in their hands like lances. Faintly we could hear their shouts and the dogs barking and the cattle bellow. The tide was out and the scow Rahiri sat high and dry beside the raggedy stockyards that are submerged at high water.