Title: The Wahine Disaster

Author: Max Lambert

Publication details: Reed Publishing (NZ) Ltd, 1970

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Part of: New Zealand Texts Collection

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The Wahine Disaster

Chapter Eleven

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Chapter Eleven

Before survivors started arriving at Seatoun the foreshore already resembled a disaster scene.

Ambulances, army vehicles and police patrol cars were scattered the length of the beach, and more were arriving all the time.

The first survivors ashore were from the motorboat skippered by local resident Jim Toulis, which cruised in midway along the beachfront. While the bow was held into the moderate swell surging in, the elderly men and women aboard were lifted out and carried up the beach to transport. The apparently lifeless body of little Gordon Hick was gently taken from the boat. The efforts made to revive him were successful, but the tiny boy's brain was later found to have been damaged by lack of oxygen.

Initially it was planned to take all survivors landing at Seatoun to the Fort Dorset army camp, which had been set up as a reception centre since early in the morning. This plan was abandoned when the emergency control centre at the city police headquarters came into operation and the railway station was designated to receive all survivors not taken to hospital.

One of the few to be taken to the camp was seventy-eight-year-old Arthur Welsh, who was lucky to be picked up early by Toulis's motorboat. He remembers being offered soup at the camp but being unable to take it. Somebody said "Give him a whisky", and he swallowed a good nip. After being checked by a nurse he was ordered to hospital. "As I was being taken out I said I wanted to be sick, and I lost the whisky and a lot of water."

The next survivors to arrive at the beach were in the Wahine's number four boat, which rolled in about 2.30 pm on the low surf. While rescuers fought to haul the boat up as far as possible those aboard leapt into the shallows. The heavy craft rocked and slewed like a wild thing, but it was safe.

Able Seaman George Brabander, one of the first out, grabbed a child and dashed up the beach into the arms of the waiting rescuers. It was a dramatic moment, but the question in the minds of people ashore was "Where are the rest?" Off the end of the beach through the rapidly clearing murk they could see the sunken page 139 Wahine with waves bursting over her. Behind her the tug Tapuhi could be dimly seen, but nothing else. One of many helping the lifeboat's complement ashore was Rob Brittain. He knew that his wife Karalyn and baby daughter Joanne had been on the Wahine and he was aghast at the sight of the sunken ferry. "I turned to a policeman and said, 'For God's sake, where are the rest?' They had gone to Eastbourne, he told me, because it was easier for them to go that way. . . ."

The boat quickly emptied but the elderly woman with the broken leg who had gamely helped propel it ashore remained aboard while ambulance men examined her before she was carried to an ambulance.

A young woman survivor with a baby in arms was asking anxiously about her husband who was still out in the harbour somewhere, and a kindly local woman took her and the child into her nearby home.

Clarrie O'Neill, his wife and six children thanked God for getting them safely ashore. "I realised we had been in a terrible situation and my first thoughts were that we had been permitted to go through the valley of the shadow of death. On the law of averages I suppose we should have lost one or two of the children, but apart from being soaked and cold we were all right."

His seven-year-old son Clarence became separated from the rest of the family on landing and his father found him very distressed, sitting on a woman's lap in a bus. "I took him off the bus and a soldier put us all into an army wagon and we set off for the railway station."

The main concentration of police and emergency services was further along the beach at the small wooden wharf.

By 2 o'clock there were more than seventy police at Seatoun with more arriving all the time. There were mounds of blankets, dozens of civilian volunteers, hot soup and drinks supplied by local residents, and an abundance of transport. The ambulance service's Ql four-wheel-drive emergency vehicle was co-ordinating the ambulances. Equipped like a field hospital, the Ql carried blankets, drugs, splints, resuscitation gear and, in fact, everything likely to be needed in an emergency.

The reason for the initial heavy deployment of police and rescue services at Seatoun was a mysterious message at 1.24 heard by a policeman over the VHF radio at Beacon Hill. It said, "We will page 140take the passengers to Seatoun Wharf", but its source was never firmly established.

After the first lifeboat arrived at Seatoun a constant stream of survivors were landed by launches, powerboats, the pilot boats Tiakina and Arahina, the RNZVR launch Manga and the Wahine's number two lifeboat.

Most of the boats turned round after dropping off survivors, and headed back to the eastern side to rescue more, but all except those designed to withstand the heavy conditions close in were forced to stand off unable to help.

After one of her two fouled propellors was cleared, the Tiakina steamed into the wharf, unloaded her five survivors, and set off again. However, with her manoeuvrability impaired by the still fouled propellor she too was unable to get close inshore on the eastern side.

After arriving at the wharf Captain Robertson was taken by a Union Company car to his home. "When I walked through the doorway I had no feeling at all. I just felt numb." His wife Anne was upset by his condition. "He flooded the kitchen with water from his soaking uniform and the wet blanket draped around him. He was shaking all over and shocked. It was terrible for me to see him like that." She could not get him to eat anything or even take a bath.

At Seatoun Wharf the launches were having difficulty unloading some of the more shocked and injured survivors. The swell lifted the boats level with the wharf decking one minute, then dropped them way below the next. After Captain Robertson, the deputy harbour-master, and the more agile survivors had been helped off his launch, Joe Bown had the problem of the two elderly ladies who were nearly comatose. An ambulance man came aboard and said one of them required immediate attention at hospital, but there was no chance of lifting either onto the wharf. Finally Bown had to go a couple of miles round the coast to a more sheltered bay where the two women were, with difficulty, taken off and loaded into an ambulance.

The same problem hampered the handling of the seventy-odd survivors in the Wahine's number two lifeboat.

Some managed to scramble on to the wharf but the elderly, the women, and the children were so cold and shocked by their experiences that it was decided to let the boat drift on to the page 141beach. It came in stern-first with dozens of helpers hauling on ropes to pull it up as far as possible. One of those swinging on the ropes was shipbroker Maurice Crisp, who had been out on the harbour in the Worser Bay Boating Club's pickup boat towing liferafts to a tug until water swamped the motor and forced him and fellow crewman Bob Mclntyre to return. The lifeboat's rudder dug into the sand, acting as a brake until it was wrenched off. The helpers, in their haste to get the boat up were hauling from two or three different angles.

Crisp dragged the ropes together and in no uncertain terms directed that everybody pull in the same direction.. Tempers were fraying and a policeman remarked testily, "You've got a loud voice haven't you?" Eventually all those in the boat were helped out. The serious cases of exposure were wrapped in blankets and raced to hospital by the ever-present ambulances. The other survivors were handed blankets and mugs of steaming hot drinks and loaded into the waiting buses for transport to the railway station.

Hot drinks were held to the lips of some people too cold to help themselves. Mrs Leslea Morgan, still carrying the baby she had cuddled on the way to shore was in this condition: when the boat beached she was so cold and weak she could hardly move. "It took me all my remaining strength to lift the baby over and hand it to the men who were alongside. I had to keep saying to myself, 'You've got to lift it, you've got to lift it.' " Old women, their hair straggling, stood as if hypnotised by it all and had to be helped to the buses.

Some still carried their handbags. One old lady clutched a tattered basket of Easter eggs. "They're for my grandchildren," she whispered. Babies swaddled in blankets were loaded into a taxi. Crisp organised this and also a nurse to go with them. "They were as good as gold, not a cheep, even though they were all soaked and cold."

Their parents didn't seem to be around, so Crisp boarded a bus carrying survivors and said the children had been taken to hospital. "They just nodded happily and old women tsk-tsk'd and said 'Good!' I still didn't know where their parents had got to."

Still the survivors kept arriving. An old woman sat on the wharf and cried before being helped away. A shivering steward asked for a smoke and was given a packet. Volunteer doctors helped a medical team from Wellington Hospital to examine survivors as page 142they arrived. A young house surgeon dressed in white shoes and white cap stood on the road looking as if he had just come from the operating theatre. The rain soaked his thin smock.

The area had been sealed off to all but emergency vehicles and bona fide rescuers. At the city end of the Seatoun tunnel harassed traffic officers argued with people wanting to go through on foot. There were angry scenes when residents of the area were turned back and cut off from their homes and families. Some had been away to get building materials to repair shattered roofs, but still the answer was 'No'. Pressmen sent to the scene received the same treatment, but generally found a way to get through to the wharf, where a police inspector with a clipped military moustache was crisply efficient as he directed operations.

A never-ending stream of messages issued from the radio in a patrol car parked by the wharf which was being used as a local headquarters. The country and indeed the whole world were awaiting news of the disaster, but information was scanty. The newsmen were kept away from survivors being helped to the transport. Some managed to have a few words, but the survivors, grey, cold, and weary were not much interested in talking.

The police officer in charge was questioned closely. A rumour had gone around that one person brought ashore was dead. Asked to confirm it, the officer shrugged his shoulders. No, he couldn't. By 4 pm there was still no news of any deaths.

To many present the whole scene seemed utterly unreal. They had fished, swum, and sailed in the area and regarded it as their playground. It seemed inconceivable that it was the centre of a major disaster that had claimed a proud ship and was still threatening hundreds of lives.

At the Ferry Wharf the Seatoun scene was being repeated. From 3.30 onwards helpers there were busy dealing with those brought ashore by the tugs, fishing boats, and other small vessels.

Among the helpers was accountant John Morgan. Earlier he had been shocked to hear the Wahine was being abandoned and, dressing in his waterproof golf clothes, sped into Wellington from his Petone home. On the way he heard that a lifeboat was heading for Seatoun. "I thought my wife couldn't be lucky enough to be on that." From the wharves he thought he could see a lifeboat out on the harbour and went to the Ferry Wharf. "A policeman there told page 143me he didn't have a clue where my wife might be, and suggested I might as well help with survivors there."

Morgan joined the growing band of volunteers assisting survivors ashore. They took the names of those whisked away in the ambulances and made sure everyone else knew they had to go to the railway station and be checked off. Buses and a fleet of taxis were waiting to uplift those destined for the railway station. The dead were taken to the morgue. As Morgan helped put one stretcher case in an ambulance he tried to save the man's hand being caught in the door. A gruff policeman told him it was too late to worry about things like that: the man was dead.

Union Company foreman Maurice Johnson was also on hand to receive some of the passengers who should have stepped off the ferry there at 7 in the morning. In one boatload he saw a bedraggled Chinese man and his wife and two children. He remembered that the Saturday before this man had badgered him for berths on the ferry leaving that night as he had a few days of holidays left and wanted to see the South Island. Finally Johnson had been able to accommodate him, but the man must have regretted his luck.

At Wellington Hospital the task of thawing out and treating survivors suffering from severe exposure and injuries was under way. At 2 o'clock the hospital was told that casualties were expected and the mobile surgical team was sent immediately to Seatoun to assess the situation.

The rehabilitation department was cleared and turned into a ward, and within half an hour the hospital was ready to receive up to sixty admissions. With a little more preparation it could have taken up to 140. Soon the first of the cold, sick, and exhausted survivors were being carried into the basement by ambulances. Full electric services, disrupted by the storm, were restored just before they arrived and the lifts were available to carry the canvas-covered trolleys up to the ground-floor casualty ward.

Shortly after the alert had been received the police called to say more doctors and resuscitation equipment were needed at Seatoun. This request was cancelled a few minutes later, but at the time the hospital authorities thought of sending the extra medical staff and equipment to Eastbourne on their own initiative. They decided to keep them in reserve until called for, but the call never came.

In casualty the survivors were quickly checked by a team of doctors for injuries and kept back for treatment if necessary. The page 144majority were suffering from exposure and exhaustion and were sent through to the outpatients department where Sister Beatrice Arthur was ready with her team of nurses and fellow-sisters to warm them up before admitting them to the wards. Because of the storm nobody had turned up at the outpatients' clinic, and the normal staff, supplemented by an army of off-duty staff, was more than able to cope with the flood of survivors.

Sister Arthur, her crisp white uniform swirling around her, set about bringing them back to normal. "Piles of mattresses, mountains of blankets, and loads of warm pyjamas arrived. Everybody chipped in and it was really wonderful. The poor people were terribly shocked and blue with cold. Some didn't even know where they were. One poor young mother, soaking wet and shivering, held her little baby with a blanket wrapped round both of them. The little mite didn't have a stitch on."

The padded benches in the room had been pushed out to the walls and mattresses laid in the middle. The clinic was a warm and cosy haven for the shipwrecked, as the steam heaters had not been affected by the powercut. As the survivors came in, some on trolleys, some in wheel chairs, they were stripped, rubbed down, popped into pyjamas, given hot-water bottles, wrapped in blankets and laid on the mattresses. As those in the centre of the rooms regained their colour they were moved to the sides, and from there to the wards. More survivors were laid on the mattresses and so the warm-up operation continued. They were so shocked that dress or undress meant nothing to them. Nurses wrapped a blanket round an old man standing in the middle of the floor wearing only underpants. Bottles of milk arrived for the babies, and gallons of hot drinks for the others.

So many staff were on hand that each survivor had a nurse or aide. Doctors moved among them checking again and again that everybody was all right. Here was a challenge, and the hospital staff responded magnificently. Sister Arthur remembers that the survivors themselves were also wonderful: "One man came in on a trolley with his clothes so sodden that a pool of water lay inches deep on the canvas. He waved away helpers and told them to attend to the others."

It was the first time the hospital had handled a full-scale emergency, yet it coped with this situation as if it were routine.

"Every department worked and acted together so well. It was page break
Captain Robertson confers with Union Company chief marine superintendent Captain Arthur Crosbie (left) and a police officer after being landed at Seatoun Wharf by a private launch.

Captain Robertson confers with Union Company chief marine superintendent Captain Arthur Crosbie (left) and a police officer after being landed at Seatoun Wharf by a private launch.

Two of the lucky ones who survived the landing on the eastern coast.

Two of the lucky ones who survived the landing on the eastern coast.

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A fellow survivor puts a comforting arm around seven-year-old Clarence O'Neill after the Wahine's number four lifeboat landed at Seatoun Beach.

A fellow survivor puts a comforting arm around seven-year-old Clarence O'Neill after the Wahine's number four lifeboat landed at Seatoun Beach.

A young mother cuddles her baby after being landed at the Ferry Wharf by one of the tugs.

A young mother cuddles her baby after being landed at the Ferry Wharf by one of the tugs.

page 145exciting yet heartrending. A young woman with her husband missing was terribly distressed. Another had lost her child. Others couldn't believe they were safe and didn't want to be left alone for a minute. It was thrilling to be able to help them and see the colour coming back "to their faces and their teeth stop chattering," Sister Arthur recalled.

While the survivors ashore felt warmth returning to their limbs, some of the less fortunate off the Wahine were still fighting for their lives out in the harbour.

The close inshore rescue work on the eastern side could be effected only by the shallow-draught boats, and men such as company director Gerald Gibbons braved the huge seas in close to snatch many a helpless survivor from the imminent danger of being smashed on the rocks.

Gibbons' solid 37-foot motor-sailer Rewanui moved towards the edge of the breaking seas, the crew scanning the swells for signs of survivors. As they neared the shore Gibbons saw the orange canopy of a small liferaft, one of the two released by the airport Zodiac rescue craft.

"Slightly to the north was a large raft with about thirty to forty-people in it. We tried to get a line to the large one as we rounded up into the heavy seas, but missed. We were then closer to the smaller raft and those on it called out that they had women and children aboard." The Rewanui was then right in the thick of it, with the huge seas rolling into Camp Bay and smashing on the rocky shore. Those on board could see people in the vivid orange lifejackets being taken by the breakers and dashed on the rocks. The Rewanui manoeuvred close to the small liferaft and managed to get a line aboard. Pulling it close, the crew started dragging the survivors aboard. On the helm was Gibbons' son John holding the sturdy boat with her bow into the incoming seas.

In the raft were four young girls, a boy of about nine, two women and two men. Hanging on in the water were two more men. All seemed in a pretty bad way. With all of them safely aboard Gerald Gibbons looked round for the larger raft and saw it had drifted too close in shore for the Rewanui to venture. "As it was heading towards a small beach and looked as if it would miss the rocks we headed for other survivors we could see in the water to the south."

The survivors picked up by the Rewanui had had an eventful page 146and in some cases tragic experience. One was the wife of Wellington rubber-worker James Hicks. Mr Hicks later said that when the ship was being abandoned he got his wife and two-and-a-half-year-old son Philip out on the starboard deck but then, deciding that women and children should go first, he returned to the smokeroom to help elderly passengers. Mrs Hicks and her son were helped into a liferaft which was hit by a tremendous sea and folded in two like a sandwich. "That appeared to be when our son died, possibly through suffocation. I'm not sure. I don't know."

Seventh engineer Stan Spiers was on the same raft with a little girl he had taken from the ship. When the raft overturned he was thrown clear but the remainder, about a dozen, were trapped underneath. He swam back to it and a man with a baby in his arms surfaced near him. Spiers helped them on to the raft and the man used a penknife to slash the rubber fabric and free the others.

Three people had already died—Philip Hicks, an elderly woman, and a woman of about thirty. Another raft appeared alongside and started picking up the survivors. This was one of the two released by the airport Zodiac. Aboard was student John Wauchop. He had managed to get into a liferaft soon after leaving the ship and sat on the side as it drifted eastward. Wauchop felt safe at first, but as the raft drifted closer to the eastern shore he realised there was almost certain destruction there in one form or another. As he watched, a wave curling viciously on top loomed over the raft, and before he had time to hang on properly the raft was engulfed and he and some others were thrown off.

The water was warmer than Wauchop expected and he floated along, worried mainly about cramp, which he had experienced slightly on the raft. He thought of the book The Cruel Sea, and realised how lucky those with him were to be in warmer water than the frigid North Sea.

"After about thirty to forty-five minutes in the water a motorised rubber dinghy battled its way up to the centre of our group; or, really, more an area of individuals than a group. The three men in it surveyed our predicament for a moment and shouted cheering words to those calling for help."

Wauchop made for the rubber raft the airport men threw over the side and inflated. "Getting there was only half the battle. Getting into it proved a very difficult task indeed. I'm not sure page 147whether it was because I was tired or cold, but my arms could hardly pull themselves out of the water let alone the dripping dead weight that made up the rest of me. What helped me eventually was the fact that I had done a fair bit of bare-back horse-riding, and climbing on to the raft was rather like squirming up the side of a horse and on to its back. Once in the raft the sense of immediate relief made me sit back and think how lucky I was; for about a minute, though it probably seemed like hours to the people in the sea nearby who were hoping for help."

Wauchop set about getting them aboard by throwing the raft's nylon painter out and hauling them to him. The raft floated down towards the one that little Philip Hicks had died in, and more people were picked up.

"We were getting pretty close to the rocks by now and I had given up hope of avoiding them when a large motorised yacht came along. It was taking a very grave risk being so close in shore."

Wauchop and the others were picked up by the Rewanui which then set off after more survivors. Circling out to avoid being swept into the breaking water its crew managed to grab another seven men and women on the verge of being swept into the surf.

Gibbons remembers it as a tricky job with some people unavoidably being missed as the boat swept past. "On one pass we missed one man in a lifejacket who seemed to be doing his best to help a woman who appeared to be exhausted."

The Rewanui was operating within a hundred yards of the shore and Gibbons could see survivors in the water right in close. "Others lay on the boulder-strewn beaches, but there was no transport for them, nor could we see any helpers to assist people being washed ashore. It was about 3.30.

"The people we picked up were so weak that we feared for those close inshore, as it was difficult to see how they could clamber up the beach without help. I considered putting ashore with some of my crew in our dinghy, but as it required two crew members to lift a survivor on board and the helmsman could not leave the wheel, this idea was abandoned."

They had particular trouble lifting one woman aboard. As well as being solidly built she was wearing a mod-style mini fur which acted like a sponge.

After scouting round for a while without seeing any more people in the water the Rewanui headed for Seatoun with eighteen sur- page 148vivors. One of the young girls aboard had a deep cut on her forehead and one woman had a suspected broken arm. Coldness and fatigue were the main complaints of the others. Some of the children didn't seem to be with anyone and Gibbons asked a woman sitting quietly by herself if she could look after them. One of the rescued men whispered in his ear that the woman had lost a little boy, but the woman, putting aside her grief, took a blanket and, holding it round two of the young girls, snuggled them to her. Two of the male survivors had lost their wives.

The Rewanui's crew tried to make the survivors as warm as possible, and while blankets were dug out Gibbons started administering tots of rum. "Some protested they didn't touch spirits but I poured it into them." He thought he recognised one of the men and later discovered they had last met at a Canterbury rowing regatta in 1936.

To the survivors already safe on the city side the disaster was a memory, albeit a recent and vivid one. To the more than two hundred who had drifted past the intercepting rescue boats onto the grim eastern coast it was still frighteningly real.

Some were still in the water, and it was three of these that the launch Nereides was trying to rescue. Initially, owner Allan Pain, and his scratch crew of Mrs Joan Ward and her twelve-year-old son Peter, had believed boats were simply required to ferry the Wahine's passengers to shore. When the launch arrived at the scene the Wahine had already sunk and the three realised they were in the midst of a disaster. Over the eastern side they came upon three people in the water crying for help. One was student Kathryn Dallas.

After slipping through the Wahine's rail into the water Kathryn had been pulled aboard a raft with about six people in it. "They tried to pull another man on, but his head got caught between the raft and the side of a lifeboat we were drifting against and he seemed to sink. Then the propellor of the lifeboat punctured the raft and it sank, tipping us back into the water. We didn't know where we were in the harbour and couldn't see land at all."

Kathryn was well dressed in slacks, wool jersey and a corduroy coat, hush-puppy shoes and lifejacket with her handbag still attached to it. For a while she was on her own and the swell started to make her feel sick. "Two Maoris drifted by, and I stayed with them until we joined about ten other people hanging page 149on to each other's lifejackets. The tug Tapuhi steamed up and tried to get us, but we were in such heavy seas it was impossible. It would be up on a huge wave and we would be down in a trough looking up at the huge black side of the tug towering above. Then it would be down in a trough and we would be looking down on the deck from the top of a wave. This was really frightening and it looked as though the tug would run us over or we would be smashed on to the deck by a wave. They sailed off a bit and threw out two lifebelts with lines attached. I grabbed one along with two other people, but the lines seemed to break and we were left with just the lifebelt. The tug steamed away and the rest of the group in the water seemed to have scattered."

Sharing the lifebelt with Kathryn were Paul Field of Whangarei and Brian Townend, fifty-three, of Cambridge. After jumping from the ship with Diana Lilley of Masterton, Paul had towed her to a chain of people, hoping they would be noticed and rescued more quickly. Diana had cramp in her leg and soon the waves started peeling the group apart. One took Diana and two others away, and for Diana it was perhaps lucky as she was picked up by the tug soon after.

It was after this that Paul grabbed the same lifebelt as Kathryn and Townend. They drifted, each with an arm hooked over the belt which was helping support them. Their lifejackets rode up over their heads and Kathryn blamed this on the ill-fitting neck part. "They were too loose, and kept floating up and letting our heads fall through them under water. I used my spare hand to hold the neck together. Just keeping afloat was tough. Glimpses of land came and went through the rain. There were no rescue boats in sight but on the coast I could make out orange patches where people in lifejackets were being washed ashore. Then we stopped heading inshore and moved out towards the harbour entrance. At this stage huge breakers were hurtling towards us and breaking over us in white water. It got so I couldn't bear to watch them coming. They were enormous. I just shut my eyes and the other two took it in turns to say when one was on its way. Then I held my breath while it broke and boiled over us. After each wave I rose back to the surface, checked that the others were still there, then shut my eyes again. Water kept washing into my nose and mouth. I could scarcely gasp to the others, let alone shout. To contemplate blowing the rescue whistles was almost funny." page 150The three continued floating south and Paul could see people being tumbled among the rocks on the shore. He thought he and his companions would probably go the same way.

Slowly the cold and constant effort to avoid drowning began to take its toll. Kathryn felt it would be easier to give in. "But it was Mr Townend who kept us conscious and determined to live. We began to feel sleepy and he kept us awake by asking us questions about ourselves. Paul and I gave up all hope, but Mr Townend began to pray aloud for us all. Suddenly I saw the mast of a boat appear over the top of a wave."

The boat was Nereides. It circled the three in the water but had difficulty getting close without endangering them. Kathryn remembers trying to swim to the boat with the other two, but in the process the lifebelt was lost. "We had to dog-paddle to keep afloat and this meant letting go the neck of the lifejackets. We then had to fight to keep our heads up."

Mrs Ward was on the launch's helm while her son Peter and Allan Pain managed to drag Paul over the side. The rocks seemed to be reaching out to the little boat as it soared and plunged in the swells. With the help of a boathook Kathryn was snagged and also pulled aboard while huge beds of kelp swirled around threatening to strangle the propellor. The Nereides had to get out, and after a rope was tied round Townend to keep him alongside, the launch moved away from the dangerous shore. Mrs Ward held on to his hand as they towed him clear but still they found it impossible to lift him from the heaving sea. Water was breaking over him constantly and Mrs Ward could see him weakening before her eyes. She held on, trying to encourage him. Then, with a suddenness that surprised her, two black-suited figures appeared in the water. At the same time there was a bump and two seamen leapt aboard from the lifeboat sent out by the liner Southern Cross. With the two black-suited creatures in the water pushing, and the two seamen hauling, the drowning man was brought aboard. It was too late: despite immediate efforts to resuscitate Townend, he died on the deck five minutes later.

Down below in the cabin Paul and Kathryn were recovering. Three and a half hours had passed since they had leapt into the water from the Wahine. Only the young could survive such an ordeal. But Kathryn and Paul also attributed their survival to the page 151calmness and courage of Townend in keeping alive their will to live when they had all but given up hope.

The two black figures in the water who had helped hoist Town-end aboard were harbour board divers Bob Oliver and Sonny Morunga from the nearby pilot cutter Tuna.

The Tuna had been patrolling the coast seeking any survivors still left in the water after standing by while the two divers had first checked the sunken Wahine. Oliver and Morunga had swum from the cutter to the ferry and entered the Wahine through a door on the port side. The ship was still slewing on the bottom as they worked their way along a passageway and shouted themselves hoarse seeking an answering cry from anyone possibly still aboard. Oliver remembers it as an eerie experience: "Luggage was floating around everywhere; suitcases, dresses, shoes like little boats. I saw a big doll with long golden hair and it made me think of the children. There were all sorts of creaking, knocking and scraping noises. It was as if the ship was crying."

There was no sign of anybody left aboard so the divers swam back to the Tuna, coughing and choking in the diesel fuel floating on the water. The cutter headed for the eastern shore and after the two divers had helped with Mr Townend, continued on towards the jagged rocks. All her crew could do was stand off and watch the last of the survivors go through the hell of landing on the coast. "I felt pretty lousy at being able to do nothing," Oliver recalled.

The seaborne rescue was over and most of the armada of upwards of sixty boats of all descriptions had returned to shore. Some carried sad cargoes of people; shocked, injured and dead. But many returned empty, their crews bitter about not having been called earlier.

However, whether they had saved anyone or not, all could take pride in the fact the had done their best. In many cases it had been an heroic best.