At about 4.15 the Wahine was moving steadily with the moderate to heavy following swell, abeam of Cape Campbell, the easternmost point of the South Island. Chief Officer Luly, who first went to sea as a cadet in 1941, could see the Cape Campbell light flashing white every 30 seconds. As the Wahine passed the cape the Chief Officer reduced speed by cutting back the engine revolutions from 188 to 170. As was the usual practice, the officers on watch had let the ship get slightly ahead on time to make it easier for the man on the quarterly watch to bring the ship into harbour on schedule. A slower crossing of the turbulent Cook Strait also made life a bit easier for the passengers.

The wind was still rising in Wellington when company director Stuart Young peered out at the weather from his modern home at exposed Breaker Bay. The bay swings around from the western entrance to the harbour, and with Cook Strait at its doorstep, is rather a bleak place to live. However, it has a certain charm of its own and, despite being only 6 or so miles from the city centre, has an air of remoteness that appeals to many city-dwellers. Young, a builder, had lived in the vicinity for twenty-five years and was well versed in the vagaries of Cook Strait weather. At 4.30 that morning he looked out to see big waves smashing over the rocks across the road from his home.

Almost parallel to the bay and little more than half a mile out is Barrett Reef, an ugly stretch of rocks with an awesome reputation which until 10 April was not fully deserved. East of the reef is the main shipping channel, with a clear width of just over half a mile and a maximum depth of 60 feet.

On the eastern side of the channel is Pencarrow, a rocky windswept coastline fully deserving its evil reputation. Popular fancy has it that the jagged rocks of Barrett Reef have claimed countless ships, but the record shows otherwise. From 3 November 1773, when Captain James Cook, on his second great voyage of discovery, became the first European mariner to sight the reef, few vessels have come to grief there.

The first ship to hit what Cook called "Black Rocks" was the page 29336-ton barque Earl of Southesk. She rammed the southern end of the reef on 28 May 1874 and sank quickly, but her Master and crew of eleven were saved. Two years later a 22-ton schooner, the Hunter, stranded on the southernmost rock of the reef and became a total wreck. Again no lives were lost. Apart from a fishing launch which foundered off the reef in 1927 the rocks claimed no more ships until the fateful April day when the pride of the New Zealand coast, the Wahine, ripped out her bottom on them.

Before the Wahine's grounding, there had been one notable near-disaster. At 11.30 pm on 19 January 1947 the 9,576-ton trans-Tasman passenger liner Wanganella ran on to the southern end of the reef on her first postwar voyage to New Zealand. Her forward hull was badly damaged but after a remarkable (for Wellington) spell of fine calm weather, she floated free on 6 February and was towed into harbour for repairs. The court of inquiry into the ship's stranding found her master, Captain R. Darroch, had mistaken the flashing orange light of the buoy moored south of the reef for the southernmost leading light into the harbour. (The leading light is in the harbour, two and a half miles north of the buoy and would have been hidden by land when the captain saw the buoy light.) The court suspended Captain Darroch's certificate for three months.

Barrett Reef and its history were far from Chief Officer Luly's mind as he paced the completely enclosed bridge. At 5 am the ship was in the middle of the strait with the wind about 5 knots stronger than at 4 o'clock but the sea similar. Taking the logbook from the chartroom table he entered the weather and noted that the ship was scending.

Lyver, the radio officer, had come on duty by then and after switching off the auto-alarm in the radio room went to the bridge. At 5 o'clock he called the Wellington Harbour Board pilot station on Beacon Hill, overlooking the harbour entrance, for weather and shipping movements in the harbour. Using the very high frequency radio telephone from the port wing of the bridge he heard there was a southerly of 50 knots, gusting to 60 knots at Pipitea Wharf. A tug had been called out for another ship to be moved in the harbour, and would be available if the Wahine required it for berthing.

Until now the ship had been a silent capsule with most of those aboard asleep and oblivious to the gale outside. But it was be- page 30ginning to come alive as the light sleepers opened bleary eyes and became aware of the motion and the fact that they were on a ship and not at home in bed.

One of the first up was Colin Bower, who had spent the night bedded down in the lounge. When he woke he went down to his cabin to be sure of getting his cup of tea and biscuits.

Another early riser was fifty-seven-year-old Bill lies in his cabin on G-deck. A clerk with the Railways Road Services in Dunedin, he and his wife Matilda were on their way to Napier to attend a conference as part of his annual leave. Both had slept well without feeling the slightest bit seasick. Looking out of his porthole into the pre-dawn darkness he could hear the wind howling but could not see much.

On the same deck Miss Margaret Millar felt the ship "making such dives I thought we were going to the bottom". She stayed in her bed as the ship steamed on.

At 5.30, on the bridge, helmsman Terry Victory felt the ship was not steering as well as she had been earlier. She was swinging 10 degrees from side to side and he put it down to the following sea although, as he later told the inquiry into the ship's loss, "It might just have been me; I am not a very good helmsman."

Ashore the wind was piping and the Union Company's foreman in charge of the ferries' berthing, thirty-four-year-old Maurice Johnson, was already on his way to the Ferry Wharf from his Stokes Valley home at the northern end of the Hutt Valley. As he drove down the valley towards the harbour the wind buffeted his car.

The wind was already pushing up big seas along the little bays north of the pleasant suburb of Seatoun, just inside the western entrance of the harbour. Residents of some of the houses that snuggle against the hillside across the road from the rocky shore were up and securing anything movable to prevent it being whipped away. Dirty green waves were smashing against the sea walls, leaving the road strewn with debris and pebbles, while seaweed ripped from its element was draped incongruously over gates and fences.

On Beacon Hill, further south along the hill the houses backed on to, Harbour Board signalman George Todd estimated the wind at 6 am to be between 60 and 75 knots. Visibility was down to half a mile because of the heavy rain, and the fog signal at Pencarrow page 31Head which he had switched on at 3.55 was working. In the thirty-two years he had been based on the hill, Todd had seen wilder weather than this: on eight or nine occasions in that time the hill had been swept by winds of over 80 knots.

Wellington earned its reputation of being the windiest city in the country with, on average, winds of 35 knots or more on 151 days of the year and of 50 knots or more on twenty-eight days. The signal station, 430 feet above sea level, is one of the most exposed spots in the city; it has a commanding view of Seatoun below with the harbour entrance beyond, and to the south Barrett Reef and the rocky shore of Breaker Bay. To the west is the airport and to the north a panoramic view across the harbour to the Hutt Valley. With his long experience of Wellington gales signalman Todd was not concerned that the winds had risen and the visibility decreased in the hour since the Wahine had been in contact. He had seen the ferries come in before in identical conditions without trouble.

Back on the ship passengers and crew were preparing for a normal arrival time. Nineteen-year-old Diana Lilley, a telex clerk in the Masterton Post Office, was awake after a night spent wrapped in a blanket on the deck. Returning home after a three-week Post Office course in Christchurch she had been upset the night before by the motion of the ship. After vainly trying to keep her eyes on a swaying television set in the lounge she had set off for bed about 11 o'clock. On her way she felt sick and ducked into one of the toilets. After losing her supper she went up on deck for some fresh air, managed to get hold of a blanket, and bedded down for the night. She changed sides during the night because of spray dashing over the side of the ship and awoke to a solicitous inquiry from a steward as to whether she was all right.

By now the ship was just south of Baring Head, a flat table point 544 feet high at the end of terrace land extending southward from Pencarrow Head on the eastern side of the harbour entrance. On the bridge Chief Officer Luly decided just before 6 o'clock to reduce further the engine revolutions to aid steering. Visibility was good and the Baring Head light could be seen 5 miles away to starboard giving a nine-second flash each 15 seconds.

The lighthouse, 40 feet high and 286 feet above sea level, is visible for 23 miles and is the nearest manned lighthouse to Wellington. It was first lit in 1935 and until then ships had been guided page 32into the harbour by the light at Pencarrow Head, 3 miles north-north-west of Baring Head. The old high-level light at Pencarrow Head first came into operation in January 1859 and was the first lighthouse in the country. The high-level light was doused in 1935 when,the Baring Head lighthouse started operating but Pencarrow's low-level automatic light, installed in 1906, was retained. The old Pencarrow tower remains as a day marker for ships and aircraft, and in 1959 was declared a national historic place.

The coast guarded by these two lights is one of the worst in the country for shipwrecks. The first recorded loss was the 8-ton cutter Matilda which was driven ashore between the two heads in May 1848 and the two crewmen drowned. Since then some twenty-five ships have been wrecked on the coast, most of them before the turn of the century. From 1900 six ships have been pounded to pieces on the rocks, the most notable the 5,489-ton cargo ship Devon, which went ashore in a raging southerly on the night of 25 August 1913, near Pencarrow Head. Her crew was saved in a daring rescue operation but the tremendous seas quickly smashed the freighter apart. In view of the number of wrecks on the coast it is surprising that only five lives have been lost there since 1900.

Even with today's sophisticated navigation aids the coast is still one to be wary of, and most of the ships entering or leaving the harbour are required to have pilots aboard. The ferries, whose masters hold certificates exempting them from pilotage, are an exception to this ruling.

Shortly before 6 o'clock on the morning of 10 April Captain Robertson arrived on the bridge from his quarters on the deck below. The ship was abeam of Baring Head and on the line of the leads into the harbour. Chief Officer Luly reported the ship's position to the Master and her compass bearing of 358°. Visibility was still good, and although it was dark and raining, the lights of both Baring and Pencarrow heads were clearly visible. The wind was still about 50 knots.

Down below all was a bustle as passengers and crew prepared for the ship's docking at 7 o'clock. Dot Smith, an Air Force corporal, was still in bed. She shared the cabin with fellow-corporal and friend Jan Moles and a seventeen-year-old girl. Both airwomen, data processors, had been attending an NCOs' course at Wigram air base near Christchurch. Dot drank the cup of tea offered at about 5.45 but it did not improve her stomach, which was still page break

Captain Robertson looks at a model of his ship at the inquiry into the Wahine's loss.

A fine modern ship, the Wahine steams into Wellington Harbour in idyllic weather. Pencarrow Head is in the background.

page break

A lifeboat can be dimly seen leaving the stricken Wahine while the tug Tapuhi looms in the background. Sailing through the air, just under the starboard wing of the bridge is an inflated liferaft.

page 33churning after the night's crossing. The young girl, a stranger, was up and dressed and Jan was pottering about the cabin in her underclothes. Two up and about was enough, Dot decided, so she lay back in her bunk as the boat rolled, and chatted to Jan. To Jan's suggestion that she get a move on Dot remembers saying "There's no hurry, we're not in the harbour yet."

She had been on the ferries often enough to know that the motion of the ship eased as soon as it was through the heads into calmer waters. She lay back savouring the delightful feeling of being cosy in a bed aboard ship.

Not so slow about getting up was pest-controller Albert Hansen. He had lost his right arm just below the elbow when young in a shooting accident, and got up early to get shaved and dressed "because it takes longer when you have only one arm". After drinking his tea he walked around the ship's narrow corridors watching the stewards on their rounds loaded with trays of cups and saucers. About 6 he collected his wife Ilene and, steadying themselves against the movement of the ship, they went to B-deck for the early breakfast.

While the Hansens were in the cafeteria they heard over the ship's public address system the weather forecast for the Wellington area which Lyver, the radio officer, had copied in shortened form for the information of passengers from the 5.30 NZBC national weather forecast. It told of very severe gales expected in Cook Strait during the six hours from 5.30 with a gradual decrease expected in the afternoon. The full broadcast heard by Lyver had said that the centre of the tropical depression was located just east of Rotorua at 4 am and was continuing to move between south-south-east and south-east at about 20 knots. It added that by midday the centre should be about 100 miles east of Hawke's Bay.

The forecast was sadly astray on the progress of the rogue storm: far from being off Hawke's Bay at midday, the centre was in that bay already, lashing Napier and Hastings and shaking thousands of near-ripe apples from trees in the district's orchards. The advance guard of the savage winds swirling clockwise from the centre was already buffeting the Wahine as she came up to the narrowest part of the channel leading into the harbour.

At 6 o'clock Able Seaman Victory had been relieved at the wheel and he went down to the garage to help release the vehicle lashings. His place at the helm was taken by quartermaster Ken page 34MacLeod, who had earlier been on lookout. It was still dark as the ship passed Baring Head with a ten-minute run to abeam of Pencarrow Head. Had he been at all worried about the conditions the captain could have turned the ship out to sea when abeam of Baring with plenty of room to spare, but from then on the deep-water channel narrows until just past Pencarrow Head where, with the reef on one side and Inconstant Point on the other, it is only about half a mile wide.

Nobody lives on the Pencarrow side of the harbour entrance. Only a few sheep graze the steep, scrub- and gorse-covered hills. A dirt road winds along the coast to just past Pencarrow Head and is used for servicing a sewage line. The other side of the entrance is vastly different. North of Barrett Reef is Point Dorset with Chaffers Passage in between. Over the hilly point, still dotted with the ruins of gun-emplacements from earlier, more anxious, times, is the suburb of Seatoun. As the Wahine, ablaze with lights, made her way towards Pencarrow Head the sleepy little suburb was beginning to awake. Those still in bed could feel the wind rocking the houses while the rain beat a sharp tattoo on iron roofs.

Down at the ferry wharf Maurice Johnson was supervising preparation for the berthing. Arriving at 6 o'clock he reckoned on having 50 minutes before the ferry backed in.

Out in the harbour entrance rain was lashing the bridge of the Wahine and as she approached Pencarrow Head the visibility dropped to 2 miles. Because of this Captain Robertson ordered standby on the engine telegraph, alerting the engineers below to be prepared for an engine order. Just before the ship came abeam of the head at 6 o'clock Captain Robertson glanced at the radar and noticed it was not working properly. It had been operating perfectly only a short time before and he was surprised to find it had failed. He moved quickly to the port wing of the bridge and picked out the two important lights: the orange of the reef buoy on the port, and the red sector Pencarrow Head light to starboard. As the ship came abeam of the head the visibility worsened to 1 mile and the captain signalled for half speed, about 10 knots. He estimated the winds as still at about 50 knots and noted that the ship was pitching heavily in the following swell.

Down below garageman George Brabander came on duty. Normally he started unlashing the cars at this time but after a page 35look out at the weather he decided to leave the lashings on until the ship reached the calmer waters of the harbour.

When the weather was not too bad bosun George Hampson usually went up to the bow and prepared the anchors and mooring lines when the ship was passing Pencarrow Head. After preparing them he usually then stayed on the fo'c'sle head until the ship berthed. The anchors were prepared in case of emergency and, as he told the inquiry later, "When you are coming and going you never know what will happen; whether they will be needed. It's no good to have to rush forward and start getting them ready then."

Yet when the weather looked doubtful it was usual to leave the anchors and lines until the ship entered the harbour. The exposed bow of a ship is not the most comfortable place to be in winds of 50 knots and heavy rain, and so it was then on the morning of 10 April the bosun left the anchors and instead went down to the vehicle deck to help secure the articulated trailer with two huge bins of coke on it that was in danger of toppling.

Chief Officer Luly was informed and came down to supervise. As he left the bridge the ship was past Pencarrow Head with the visibility closing in.

On the bridge Captain Robertson peered ahead through the opened windows and ordered the lookouts to keep their eyes peeled for lights. The weather had closed in more, but with the visibility at about half a mile both the buoy and Pencarrow Head lights were still visible. . . .

Suddenly it happened.

The ship started to turn or sheer to port towards the Barrett Reef side of the entrance. The captain ordered the helm turned hard to starboard to correct the movement. It had no effect. The huge ferry's bow continued round to port between about 20 and 30 degrees off its course of 358. The weather and sea seemed the same but still the ship would not respond to the helm. Captain Robertson ordered full ahead on both engines to try and increase speed and so aid the steering. But still the swing.

With no radar, decreasing visibility and in a narrow rock-fringed channel, the Wahine was in serious trouble.

The atmosphere on the bridge was tense. Down below the passengers were oblivious to what was going on. They continued page 36with their packing and dressing for the disembarkation expected in about 45 minutes.

Realising he was heading round towards the reef the captain decided to order full astern on the starboard engine to try and pull the bow back on course. Before he could give the order the ferry was hit by a tremendous sea on her port side which sent him flying from the port to the starboard wing, bouncing off the useless radar set on the way. All the others on the bridge were thrown about except for helmsman MacLeod, who clung grimly to the wheel.

Remembering that awful moment Captain Robertson had the impression he flew the 74-foot width of the bridge without touching anything except the radar: "It must have been a rogue sea and we had no warning of it. They can come out of the blue, and there's no way of predicting them. I picked myself up, bruised from one end to the other and with some skin missing. Then I heard the awful shrieking of the wind and my first thought was 'We're rushing straight for Barrett Reef at 16 knots!' I knew we had about one and a half minutes before we would go ashore. The noise of the wind was so bad we had to shout at each other to make ourselves understood.

"We could feel nothing, see nothing, and hear only the sound of the wind.…"