By 7 o'clock the harbour board headquarters was a hive of activity as staff organised the attempt to save the Wahine. Deputy Harbourmaster Bill Galloway had been alerted at his home by the harbourmaster at 6.50 and told to get down to the board's office at Queen's Wharf and prepare the pilot launches. Just before he left, one of the pilots rang up to say the tug Tapuhi was already on her way to the ship but with her enormous rope bow fender still on. Captain Galloway ordered the tug back to have the fender removed and the tug equipped with full salvage gear. He also ordered the board's 80-foot pilot launch Tiakina to proceed to Seatoun Wharf, just inside the harbour entrance, and to wait for him there.

The port had two tugs, Tapuhi and Taioma, both owned by the Union Company but available to the harbour board. Normally one of the tugs was sufficient for the everyday working of the port, but the second could be made available on twenty-four hours' notice. Built during World War II, the 232-ton identical tugs were designed for harbour, and not deep-sea work. On 10 April the Tapuhi was ready to go at a moment's notice as it had been required to move a ship in the harbour early in the morning, but the Taioma was dead cold and while salvage gear was being loaded aboard the Tapuhi, the Taioma's crew worked desperately on the other side of the tug wharf to have her ready to go around mid-afternoon.

Arriving at the board's headquarters, just a stone's throw from the commercial centre of the city, the harbourmaster sent his deputy to Seatoun to join the Tiakina and attempt to board the Wahine. The twin-screwed Tiakina had left her relatively sheltered Queen's Wharf berth at 6.55 and, commanded by Captain John Brown, headed out into the 90-knot winds sweeping the inner harbour. Visibility was poor with driving rain and spray obscuring the yacht and small-boat harbour at the Royal Port Nicholson Yacht Club nearby. To get to Seatoun the launch had to run down harbour to Point Halswell before turning south into the teeth of the weather for the harbour entrance. Built to withstand the page 57boisterous Wellington and Cook Strait conditions the beamy blue-hulled craft smashed her way through the huge seas to Seatoun.

She and the smaller 68-foot pilot launch Arahina were equipped with VHF and medium frequency radio, radar, rocket-firing line guns, four-inch hawsers, life raft and lifesaving gear, lines and scramble nets.

At- the ferry wharf just along from the tug wharf, the foreman Maurice Johnson had heard from the company that the ferry was on the reef. With no ship to berth he went along to the Tapuhi and helped prepare it for sea. The tug was taking aboard 1,200 feet of four-inch towing wire to supplement the 4 1/4-inch wire stowed on a reel alongside her funnel.

At Seatoun the Fort Dorset army camp had been alerted and the cooks were preparing plenty of hot drinks and soup in case the ferry was abandoned. The camp is on the western side of the harbour entrance with a low hill between it and the rocky shore. The hill usually provides some protection from southerlies but early that morning the gusts were already pulling at the roofs of stores and other buildings scattered round the parade ground and threatening to topple parked cars, vans and trucks.

Captain Robertson's wife Anne had woken earlier in the morning to find a Venetian blind flying almost horizontally as the southerly poured through an unfastened window. After the uncanny calm between midnight and 2 am she had found the sound of the gale bashing the house almost terrifying. "It was worse than anything I'd ever heard. Quite the noisiest southerly ever." She went back to bed and when she got up for the day was shocked to hear over the radio the Wahine was in trouble. Then the Union company's Chief Marine Superintendent, Captain Arthur Crosbie telephoned to tell her not to worry. Switching from station to station to get the news she could not help feeling concerned: "I did not think of Gordon's safety personally, but just of the battle he was facing out there." She could not see anything of the harbour from the house because visibility was nil and anxiously walked the house, transistor in hand.

While those ashore did what they could and hoped for the best the Wahine was still in a perilous position. Without power she was dragging on her anchors down the eastern side of the reef with the gale increasing all the time. At 7.11 the Marine Department page 58radioed the ship for further information. The reply at 7.14 was in the form of an SOS to Wellington Radio: "Still afloat, please hasten tug."

On the bridge Captain Robertson tried to gauge how much the vessel had settled in the water. It was a tricky task. The huge seas swept along the ship's sides as the captain stood in the starboard wing and tried to keep his eyes on a spot on the hull.

The chief officer had returned from dropping the anchors and the captain had ordered him to break out the lifesaving equipment. Taking the bosun and some able seamen with him, Luly set about it. Liferafts stored in canvas valises under seats on both sides of A-deck had to be dragged to the outer edge of the deck and their painters made fast to the rail. The seats were collapsed to get at them, and the men, soaked by the stinging rain and spray and struggling to keep their feet on the slippery decks, threw the heavy seat sections overboard rather than have to dodge them as they worked. Each of the rafts weighed 235 pounds and thirty-five of them had to be manhandled into place as the ship plunged and bucked like a mad thing in the violent seas. The hooks on the four cranes used for lowering the rafts were also unlashed, and the lifeboat ladders coiled up on the deck underneath the lifeboats were broken out and dropped over the sides. Sections of rail were removed so passengers could shin clown the ladders if necessary. Three canvas-covered boxes of lifejackets on the deck were broken out. They contained bulky orange jackets suitable for people of seventy pounds weight or over, and white Salvus jackets designed for people under seventy pounds in weight. This was the only place where the Salvus jackets were kept. The orange jackets were also available in the cabins.

Overlooked were the grablines, which were left tied into the lifeboats. These drape round the outside of the boats for people in the water to grasp. To stop chafing they are usually kept inside the boats and tied with light twine, ready to be pulled out in an emergency. Luly had no illusions about the fate of passengers and crew if the ship had foundered at that time. Should that have happened, he later told the inquiry, everyone aboard would have been washed ashore dead, whether or not they had lifejackets on. Returning to the bridge he was ordered to assess what damage the ship had suffered from grounding on the reef. Taking a torch, page 59 knife and hammer he first went to the vehicle deck to see if there was any water.

Meanwhile the tug Tapuhi was on her way to help, with those aboard her unaware of the impossibility of their task. Jointly commanded by harbour board pilot, Captain Cyril Sword, and regular master, Captain Athol Olsson, the stubby little craft butted her way through the mighty seas. Good progress was made to just past Point Halswell but from there on the weather and sea conditions worsened, with visibility averaging 100 feet and at times zero. Shipping huge seas the tug was out of control a few times when blown in circles by the 100-knot-plus gusts. Once when this happened the engineer shouted up the voice-pipe to Captain Sword on the tiny bridge that the engine room was three feet deep in water and that his staff were having trouble coping with it. Bracing himself against the violent motion Captain Sword yelled back, "For God's sake keep her going." With no radar the tug was ploughing blind down towards the entrance. At one stage visibility got so bad that Captain Sword had to call up Captain Galloway on the Tiakina to get bearings from the launch's radar.

The Tiakina had already made two determined efforts to go to the Wahine's aid after picking up the deputy harbourmaster from Seatoun Wharf. Both times she had been beaten back in the entrance by the huge breaking seas and strong incoming tide. Only on the radar could they see the stricken ship in Chaffers Passage, less than a mile south of them. Visibility was zero.

The gale was causing dire havoc ashore. Many roads were impassable because of floodwater, falling trees, broken telephone and power lines, slips from the steep hillsides, and debris of one kind or another. The damage had been occurring from as early as 5 o'clock when a police sergeant's roof started to peel off. The police were busy dealing with a deluge of calls on the still usable telephone circuits and other emergency services were grimly aware that it was going to be one hell of a day. With windows of shops and business premises being blown in, the police also had to guard that criminals did not take advantage of the conditions. The police notified owners of property threatened; a car firm's back door was blown in, a boatshed was breaking up at Worser Bay, part of a roof was blowing along Kilbirnie's Coutts Street, part of the roof of a page 60department store was peeling off. And still the storm had not reached its height.

The authorities were still worried about the Wahine. At 7.59 the police radioed the ship seeking her position on the reef and asking whether she was breaking up. By then Captain Robertson had worked out that she had reached a draught of about twenty-two feet and was not sinking any further. She had settled five feet since hitting the reef, and this had her vehicle deck below sea level. His reply within minutes that the ship was anchored, clear of the reef and not breaking up was received with a sigh of relief at police headquarters. Across the harbour a police patrol car attempting to reconnoitre the dirt road running south to Pencarrow Head was recalled to its base at Lower Hutt police station. The police in the car had found the sealed road along the coast "passable with caution" as was the quarter-mile of dirt road they had negotiated when the news came over the police radio that the ship was out of danger. The two policemen checked with headquarters and were told no further patrol was necessary.

One of the first in with an offer of help was Ken Mitchell, chief instructor of the Worser Bay Surf Club, whose headquarters are at the northern end of the bay, just inside the harbour. A forty-year-old foreman at a city printing firm, Ken first heard of the grounding about 7.30 when at work. It occurred to him that surf lifesavers could be useful if an emergency developed and he rang the police. They said everything was under control but as a precaution he contacted several club members and told them to alert all the others.

In the boatshed under the club rooms were two surfboats, double-ended low freeboard craft expressly designed for rescues in surf conditions. Manned by experienced lifesavers surfboats can take a lot of punishment; and if the person to be rescued is among rocks or where the boat cannot venture, they are equipped with a reel and beltman who can swim to the rescue and be hauled back to the boat. The surf clubs in the Wellington area had nine surfboats available on 10 April.

Word of the grounding was sweeping the city, but few realised the Wahine's true predicament.

Among the best informed ashore were two men whose work took them to the scene of the drama. Crouched in one of the disused gun emplacements on the hill beside Fort Dorset the two, page 61newspapermen, looked down on the ship as she swung wildly at the end of her anchor cables. Their clothes saturated by the driving rain, Dominion news editor Alan Hitchens and photographer Barry Durrant saw huge seas batter the ferry as she swung like a huge pendulum in and out of Chaffers Passage, between Point Dorset and the northern end of the reef. The wind shrieking over the exposed point picked up small pieces of rock and concrete and flung them northwards. As the two watched they were joined by policemen, crawling on their hands and knees to save themselves being blown away. As the wind poured over the hilltop it created a suction effect which lifted the back wheels of the newsmen's car clear off the ground. Down below in Seatoun and the army camp it was threatening to sweep away anything not firmly anchored. In nearby Mantell Street a resident scurried across the road to retrieve a milk box and then had problems getting back. Seatoun and the camp were to be badly battered.

At about the time the two newsmen saw the Wahine in Chaffers Passage she was also spotted there by the signal station staff on Beacon Hill, who quickly relayed the news to the harbourmaster. He immediately ordered the breeches buoy equipment stored at Queen's Wharf to be taken to Point Dorset.

On the Wahine Chief Officer Luly started his inspection of the damage at the huge stern door, which was watertight. However, a steel door on the port side which led to the after steering compartment was leaking water into the vehicle deck. He concluded the compartment was flooded and walked along the port side of the deck to check the 21-foot deep after thruster compartment. It was flooded to within three feet of the deckhead.

Further forward he found the number two and three void spaces dry, but the lower section of F-deck was flooded to within two feet of the deckhead. Further forward still he came to the watertight door leading down to the cargo oil tanks but did not open it, fearing that if flooded it would let water run into the vehicle deck. The upper part of F-deck passenger accommodation was dry but when he opened the watertight door leading from the deck down into the forward transverse propulsion space he met the water coming up. He did not wait to see if the space was completely flooded but beat a hasty retreat and hammered the door tightly shut.

As he walked the length of the vehicle deck he saw that the ship's violent motion had caused some of the cargo to shift. A portable ramp normally secured to a pillar on the port-side aft had come adrift and was lying athwart the deck. The two coke containers had slipped off the trailer along the centre-line of the ship and spilt some of their contents, and some ten crates of eggs had fallen off another trailer making an unsavoury mess. Some other light containers had fallen off their bases, and a complete company trailer was on its side, but overall the chief officer felt there was no shift of cargo to cause any worry.

Luly reported back to the bridge and he and the master discussed the situation. They assumed all the double bottom tanks were flooded and added them to the tanks and compartments that the chief officer had found or suspected were full. The motor propulsion room was also swamped, leaving the four main engine compartments virtually supporting the ship. They estimated the ship had three thousand tons of water aboard, but that it was well distributed. The ferry had lost a lot of buoyancy, but the way in which she was acting, rolling to each side and coming back to the vertical, convinced the captain that she had sufficient stability. For fear of upsetting this, he decided not to try and pump out any of the flooded spaces but to use the pumps to keep dry the four compartments supporting the ship.

The time was near 8.20 and the ship was swinging perilously close to the jagged rocks off Point Dorset. Out into the channel she went and then back between the northern end of the reef and the point. At 8.22 the control centre at the harbour board heard the message she sent Wellington Radio: "Slowly drifting up the harbour and barely clear of Point Dorset." At 8.30 the situation seemed even more precarious, and over the VHF Captain Robertson reported: "Drifting towards Fort Dorset will be ashore in a minute." It was a dramatic moment, but as the harbourmaster later said in a deposition to the inquiry, there was nothing further he could do from a nautical point of view. The rocket equipment to secure the breeches buoy equipment had been dispatched and the police alerted.

On the Wahine Captain Robertson was convinced the next time the ship swung in on her stern she would go right into Breaker Bay and stay there. He thought of the engine-room staff and feared they might be trapped when the ferry hit. Chief Engineer Wareing page 63was also becoming anxious, and came to the bridge to see what the story was. Captain Robertson told him to get his men out. Stopping below only long enough to shut down the boilers, the engine-room staff made their way to their quarters on A-deck and waited tensely in the corridor.

For Captain Robertson it was to be another nerve-wracking hour before the ship dragged slowly, inch by inch, past the point, somehow avoiding going ashore.

At their muster stations the passengers were waiting quietly, almost fatalistically. They had been told the ship was off the reef and in no immediate danger, and drifting up the harbour. Most accepted this, not realising how precarious the ship's position really was. Such a situation was completely alien to them. They were used to travelling on the ferries without a thought for their safety. They could hardly believe that this, one of the most modern ferries afloat, could possibly sink under them; drowning them: yet the nagging feeling of insecurity would not go away. Those in the smokeroom and lounge made themselves as comfortable as they could while the unfortunates in the passageways on B and C decks sat or stood in dim, claustrophobic surroundings. Some were still being seasick from the rolling and pitching of the ship.

Australians Gladys and Albert Donohoo sat in a corner on the starboard side of the lounge. Mrs Donohoo remembers watching the terrible weather outside and thinking "If the wind does not drop, and with a hole in her bottom, we will all be lost." She had seen crew members, hard-pressed to keep their feet, preparing the liferafts.

With the Donohoos were three New Zealanders—a young man with his arm in plaster and two young women. They blithely assured the Donohoos that the wind would blow for three days as Wellington's southerly busters traditionally do. One of the women was student Kathryn Dallas. She remembers people laughing when they saw each other in the bulky orange lifejackets, some still dressed in their nightwear. They were served coffee, but Kathryn found "it had so much milk and sugar in it that it was like warm muddy water. I couldn't drink mine."

It was the best that the hard-pressed provedore staff could provide under the circumstances. With no running water the stewards had to rely on what was in the urns and percolators in the galley.

Early in the morning they did well to manage tea, coffee and trays and trays of sandwiches.

In the smokeroom the Kingsburys were sitting at the same table they had occupied the night before. Lynn heard the announcement that the ship was drifting into Wellington. "At first I thought it was propaganda to reduce the fears of the passengers; I knew we wouldn't get to Wellington safely—at least, not while the storm lasted." He and his wife were in a group of about seven, including grounded air hostess Sally Shrimpton whom Lynn remembers as being more concerned about her Jaguar and TV set down on the vehicle deck than herself. Sally knew Gillian Kingsbury from her school days and they talked over old times.

The ship was on emergency lighting with few globes burning but the grey light from outside filtered through the already fogged up windows.

In the G-deck corridors it was cold and depressing. Peter and Sue Madarasz remember a few people being given blankets which they sat on. The rest had to stand or sit on the cold floor and stairs leading up to B-deck.

The passengers, packed shoulder to shoulder, had little idea what it was like outside, which was probably just as well.

Perched on the edge of a table in the smokeroom Mrs Ingrid Munro watched while a crew member in blue jeans demonstrated how lifejackets should be put on. Wellington accountant George Reid who was sitting nearby offered to take Monique on his lap. Mrs Munro kept her eyes open for a vacant seat. Some of the sights amazed her. "I had barely time to brush my hair but some of the passengers had made up their faces and were dressed for a garden party rather than a ship abandonment. Some gave the impression they thought the captain had put on a stunt for their entertainment." A cup of tea and some biscuits made her feel a bit better.

At the next table sat Columban Father McGlynn. Mrs Munro remembers him as "an elderly, kindly-looking gentleman who was busy counting the beads as he rattled prayers off, at the same time holding a conversation with a worried-looking member of his flock."

Also in the smokeroom was Mrs Leslea Morgan, of Petone, who was returning home after visiting her elderly mother in Christ-church. All the seats were taken when she arrived and with none page 65of the men appearing willing to stand up she stood on the starboard side and hung on to a curtain to keep her balance. Outside she could see huge seas but nothing more. Three men were sitting on a table near her and on another sat a Maori woman carrying a child. Nobody seemed inclined to talk and just sat or stood with their private thoughts. Ashore her husband John, an accountant, had been turned back at the wharf gates with the news that the ship would not be in till midday. He presumed it was because of the weather and returned home to be rung by a friend who told him the ship was on Barrett Reef. "I got a hell of a shock, but then the friend rang back to say it was off the reef and in no danger." With the wind causing power cuts all over the place he took a transistor radio with him and went to work.

Quite unperturbed by the whole business, student John Wauchop sat in a cabin on B-deck smoking and playing cards with some fellow Lincoln College cricketers for about two hours after the grounding. They worried only whether they would be in time for their second match. They'd missed the first one for certain. Tiring of cards they moved to the lounge to see what was happening. John remembers it was like walking into a movie theatre, such was the variety of expressions on people's faces. "It was a sea of orange lifejackets with people smiling falsely as if to say 'I'm not really worried at all.' People were just chatting nervously to each other or listening to the storm raging around the ship. I was pretty sure we would eventually be towed safely into port but there was always the thought at the back of my mind, 'Could this possibly be a disaster and some or all of us die?' I couldn't say 'No' to this because there was the potential, blowing itself mad all about us."

Outside the smokeroom Clarrie O'Neill and his wife kept a watchful eye on their six children. He spoke to others around them about their plight. "We realised the helplessness of our position and the need of a higher power to save us. I tried to encourage the others but I was still very worried though this receded somewhat as time went on. I met a man from Greymouth and his wife I knew, and talked to them of God for about half an hour. I was very sad the next day to see his name on the death roll." Mr O'Neill saw children going around dressed only in singlets and pants, and was glad he and his wife had been up early enough to dress their six.

Standing in the corridor nearby was Auckland sales manager page 66Roger Wilson. He remembers most people being fairly calm, but saw two old women sitting on the floor quite terrified; one had been sick. They were cheered a bit by a stewardess. "She was rushing round trying to be like Florence Nightingale full of comfort and reassurance for the older people." Wilson chatted to an old Australian who had a bad heart and was not at all well. "He told me about all the trips he had made by sea from Melbourne across Bass Strait to Hobart and Launceston. He loved ships, and I told him I was born and raised in Australia and did a lot of sailing in Auckland." The old Australian was Alfred Rutland, who died later that day.

Wilson later moved off along the passageway and came across the chap who had appeared by his side when he was looking horrified at the rocks grinding into the Wahine earlier in the morning. "We shook hands as though we were about to die. We had a feeling of comradeship brought about by a common danger."

Nearby some girls in uniform began singing. "It was the last thing I needed at that stage, and I set off to find my friend John Perham."

While the passengers waited in relative comfort at their muster stations the Chief Officer was braving the terrors of the fo'c'sle head for the second time that morning. With seaman Dennis O'Reilly he clambered along the top of the captain's deck across the roof of the accommodation and down on the head. The idea was to rig a lifeline to enable an inspection to be made of the forward end of the ship through a hatch in the deck. They managed to rig the line, but while Luly wrestled to pull up the hatch the wind caught him and threw him towards the port rail. O'Reilly grabbed him just in time.

Later, when at the after end of C-deck, the Chief Officer found a scene of destruction. Seats usually bolted to the deck around the rail, and a compass that should have been in the middle, had been swept into a jumble by the starboard rail. He put it down to the rogue sea that hit the ship on the port quarter shortly after she inexplicably started turning to port when coming through the Heads.

On the bridge Captain Robertson kept a wary eye on the point as the ship somehow managed to drag past without grounding. "At one stage I was certain we were going to hit the rocks. We missed page 67them by feet." By 9.15 the ship was in no immediate danger and moving backwards slowly on her anchors. The captain spoke calmly to his officers and men. He said later: "It is no good rushing around shouting out orders; it panics people right down to the deck boy." North of the ship the tug and the pilot boat were keeping station at Steeple Beacon off the harbour end of Point Dorset. Captains Sword and Olsson had decided it would be suicidal to try and go further down the channel. Earlier the tubby little craft had found it difficult to keep on course for the beacon and would have been lost without the Tiakina providing a bearing.

At the army camp another of the harbour pilots, Captain Keith Mitchell, sat in a gun emplacement with the breeches buoy equipment ready and watched as the Wahine safely passed Point Dorset. The sea in the channel was the biggest he had ever seen and he estimated the winds at more than ninety knots. At 9.20 the ship was drifting along the western side of the channel with her anchors well stretched and the wind and sea mostly on her starboard bow. Captain Mitchell advised headquarters of her position and suggested that if the weather continued the way it was there was a chance she might go ashore on the eastern side of the harbour, particularly if her cables snapped.

Captain Suckling ordered him to return to base with the breeches buoy equipment so it would be in a central position if needed.

The emergency seemed to be easing and a message from the ship at 9.37 that she was riding to her two anchors, not touching and in no danger of sinking, confirmed the harbourmaster's view that she was in a much safer position and in less turbulent seas than when in Chaffers Passage. The harbourmaster realised there was no chance of successfully abandoning the ship at that time and that the passengers and crew stood a much better chance of survival by remaining with her. With the agreement of the Union Company's Chief Marine Superintendent he radioed the ship at 9.40. recommending that the captain ride out the gale in his present position. Captain Robertson must have smiled when he received it. There was little else he could do. . . .

Ashore, only the authorities and a few on-the-spot observers realised how close the ferry had been to disaster early in the morning. On the radio news bulletins there was no hint of any extreme danger to the ship and various spokesmen were quoted as saying there was believed to be no serious damage. At 9.45 in a special page 68news item on the national programme the police were quoted as saying there was no danger of her going aground at Point Dorset, and it was thought that the only danger would be from winds driving the vessel across to the Eastbourne side of the harbour. At 10 o'clock the commercial network reported that there was no danger of the ship running aground at Point Dorset or Eastbourne, and it was planned that she should stay at anchor to ride out the gale. On this optimistic note attention turned to the effects of the gale on the city and surrounding area.

The storm was at its height at 9 o'clock when centred 60 to 80 miles east of the capital and emergency services were flat out coping with the calls for assistance. In some of the more hilly positions exposed to the south the wind was doing tremendous damage, the suburbs of Kingston, Karori, and Northland bearing the brunt. Gusts of well over a 100 knots wrecked houses, in some cases demolishing them to the foundations. Kingston, with its dozens of new and near-new homes, looked as if it had been shelled. Sheets of lethal roofing iron spun through the air with a deadly gracefulness. Pieces of timber, flung like giant javelins by the wind, pierced walls like paper. Terrified residents cowered in basements where possible. Such was the danger that police sealed off the area and started evacuating people whose homes were badly damaged. The problem was what to do with them.

The Wellington City Council had not declared an emergency and the city's civil defence organisation was therefore not called on to any great degree. Its value would have been doubtful in any case, as many of the areas did not even have a warden, never mind a well organised group. It was left to the police and the city council workers to do what they could. The council had been sending out trucks with four-man crews earlier in the morning, but had to call a halt after many of the trucks had been immobilised by salt spray and rain blown horizontally by the wind.

The danger to the men from flying iron and debris was also too great to ask them to risk injury just to secure private property. In the end, only calls to restore essential sendees were actioned. The council decided to man its switchboard with senior officials to calm the frantic women calling about damage to roofing and rain pouring into their homes. They were advised to go to neighbours whose homes were not affected, and to wait for the gale to blow over. In most cases husbands had gone to work before the gale fully page 69developed and, esconced in solid commercial buildings in the city, were unaware of the damage being suffered by their weatherboard homes in the suburbs.

Mrs Margaret Spidy felt nervous as the wind battered her Kelburn home. The storm got so bad that she rang her husband. "I was terrified. I thought the whole house was going to go." Her husband, out in the Hutt Valley suburb of Naenae, which was more sheltered, reassured his wife that everything would be all right, but soon after she had put down the telephone she heard a tremendous crash. "I nearly died," she recalled later. It was the chimney snapping off and crashing through the bathroom roof. Tiles lifted off and floated away in the gusts, and water started pouring into the drawing room, staining the ornate plaster ceiling. In the dining room the french doors blew open and banged incessantly. With the help of her daughters she pushed over a heavy sofa to stop them opening, but the wind still forced the doors open. She managed to get through to her husband again and he said he would be right in. Mrs Spidy remembers that in the midst of her troubles she heard a radio advertisement plugging the film Gone With the Wind.

Down in the city the police had solved the problem of the Kingston evacuees. After contacting the council it was found that by 9.30 no arrangements had been set up for housing the homeless, so the police at the Taranaki Street Station cleared out their inquiry room to put them there. Soon after the council made the Town Hall concert chamber available, with the Salvation Army, early on the job as usual, available to comfort the distressed.

The wind was acting freakishly, striking at pockets of individual homes and leaving others nearby unscathed. Out of three or four houses all built by the same builder using the same method of construction, one would be almost wrecked and the others untouched. At Karori, a mature macrocarpa tree was wrenched bodily from the ground into the air and deposited upright yards away, leaving a sizeable bomb-type crater in the ground. Still the wind raged.

The police asked the NZBC to broadcast radio warnings to people to stay off the streets. Already there had been a considerable number of casualties and one death. The Free Ambulance service was busy dealing with them, and between 7.30 and 10 o'clock handled forty-three urgent cases, including people who had been page 70blown around by the wind. The ambulance was also called to a Northland home where a young girl had been killed by a piece of timber which smashed through the window of her bedroom. In the room with her was her sister, who was seriously injured. By agreement with the Wellington Hospital Board, which largely subsidises the ambulance service, it had been decided early in the morning to cancel all routine treatment cases. It was a wise move, as the service's Wellington area fleet of seventeen ambulances and the special four-wheel-drive emergency vehicle, Ql, were needed constantly through the morning to deal with storm calls. One ambulance had to be abandoned at Houghton Bay, on the Cook Strait coast, where it joined twenty other vehicles blown over or bodily thrown off the road by the wind. Later it was recovered with the white paintwork on its seaward side sandblasted to the bare metal, which was dented by flying stones.

From early in the morning the ambulance service had maintained liaison with the police on the Wahine's situation, as had the Wellington Fire Brigade. At 10 am the harbour board asked the brigade if pumps would be available if needed. They were told yes, and a little later the Union Company also asked the brigade about pumps but were told the harbour board had sought them already. Like the ambulance service, the brigade had a hectic morning but only one of the fifty calls answered was actually a fire. This was at suburban Newtown where an old lady died. The rest were false alarms caused by the sensitive automatic fire alarms in many buildings being triggered by the buffeting winds. At one stage calls were coming in at such a rate that only one appliance could be sent to the scene instead of the usual two, three, or four.

The emergency was also keeping the hospitals busy. At Wellington Public Hospital the handling of the influx of storm casualties was complicated by having to operate on emergency power. This kept the essential services going but meant that the lifts, among other facilities, were not working. The lifts were not a luxury, but were needed to bring stretcher cases up from the ambulance bay to the casualty ward and also for the shifting of patients to the other wards. At 9.10 the hospital was alerted by the police that there could be casualties from the Wahine; the evacuation of one of the surgical wards, which normally holds thirty patients, was started and casualty, the X-ray department, and admission office were alerted. Thirty minutes later the police rang back to say the ship was not page 71believed to be in any danger, but the hospital stayed on general alert.

The casualty department was already busy dealing with the seventy-odd accident cases; most of them were minor, but some patients had severe head injuries caused by falling trees or flying debris. Though under pressure, all members of the staff really pulled their weight and the Wellington public never had a better service. For once there were no people waiting on the benches outside the casualty department. So many extra staff had volunteered for duty that patients were being treated as soon as they arrived.

The Hutt Hospital also was busy. All the theatres were out because of flooding, and the hospital was on emergency power. Only two of the fourteen telephone lines into the hospital were operative. The staff was aware throughout the morning that the Wahine was in trouble, but did not anticipate it affecting them.

The police were still not too happy about the Wahine and decided to have another look at the coastline through to Pencarrow. At 9.40 a patrol car with an inspector, sergeant and constable aboard set out from Lower Hutt. Slowed to 15 mph by the conditions, the patrol car crawled around the Eastbourne road past the Gracefield reclamation. All sorts of debris covered the road and the incoming tide, whipped up to an abnormal degree by the wind coming straight in the harbour entrance, had eaten into the tarseal in places. Boats ripped from their moorings and thrown on the road signposted the way, and at York Bay the patrol had to seek refuge.

Bus driver Mark Powell had taken three times longer than usual to get into the city terminal and it was after 9 am when he headed back to Eastbourne. At Gracefield the police stopped him. The roof of a large building in an oil company compound was threatening to take off, and it was feared it might hit the bus and injure the schoolchildren aboard who had been sent home from their Hutt Valley schools. Powell headed back the way he had come and joined five other buses sheltering in a Petone cigarette factory's grounds.

At Wellington Airport, exposed to the full blast of the wind, all flights had been cancelled from early in the morning but several aircraft were reluctant to stay on the ground. A Bristol Freighter and an Air New Zealand Electra were jumping up and down on page 72their mooring ropes as aircraft workers tried to secure them with wire hawsers. The Bristol broke loose and was badly damaged as the wind repeatedly lifted and dropped it on the tarmac. It narrowly missed collecting the turboprop Electra but finally both were secured. Helping to keep them intact was Alun Williams, a crash fire officer with the Civil Aviation Department fire brigade at the airport. Apart from airport firefighting duties the firemen operate two tough rubber Zodiac liferafts powered by 40 hp petrol driven outboards. The 14^-foot craft are permanently inflated on a trailer and are designed primarily for picking up survivors from ditched aircraft—always a possibility at Wellington with sea at both ends of the runway. As he returned to the airport fire station that morning after securing the planes Williams, a forty-year-old married man with four boys, little knew how useful the Zodiacs were to prove later that day.

While the airport staff were securing aircraft, members of the Worser Bay Boating Club were working quickly to save yachts threatened by huge seas sweeping over the exposed point on which the clubhouse is sited. Sleek flying fifteens perched on trailers by the club were in imminent danger of being swept away before the members, aided by local residents, could pull them to safety. Then a weatherboard-covered section of the concrete boatshed under the clubhouse was smashed in by the waves, and masts, yachts and trailers were mixed together in a scene of incredible confusion. The doors on the shore side were opened to let the destructive seas out and the helpers worked like men possessed to clear the shed before the boats were damaged. The harbour was shrouded by driven rain and spume and they were aware the Wahine was in trouble, but were reassured by the NZBC broadcasts which said all was well.

Round at Port Nicholson too, yachties were working to save boats whose moorings had broken in the usually sheltered boat harbour. Extra lines were strung in all directions until the harbour resembled a gigantic spider's web. At the Evans Bay marina the scene was the same. Further north in the bay the boats were exposed to the full fury of the wind, and the keeler Aorere was a victim, sinking near the patent slip. Across at Shelly Bay wharf two fishing trawlers foundered.

The commodore of the Worser Bay Boating Club, Kerry Leydon, had problems at his home in the bay to contend with as well as page 73looking after the boats. The quaint 110-year-old former pilot house that he and his family lived in was creaking and groaning with every gust of wind. During the morning the veranda took off, including the framing which had weathered a thousand storms since the house was built in the sailing ship era.

Further around the bay towards Seatoun, stevedoring supervisor George Boswell had just returned home from a shopping expedition. An Englishman, he had grown to like New Zealand from his visits as an officer on Port Line ships. With his seaboots hung up he had settled with his wife and six-year-old son in one of the more modern houses in the bay, just across the road from the beach. The weather was so foul that morning he could hardly see a hundred yards out into the harbour. He had gone shopping without realising just how bad it was, but when he reached Seatoun shopping centre he got a shock. The pohutukawa trees along Dundas Street were blown almost flat. "Bits of wood and odds and ends were flying around and I suddenly realised that I was out in a hurricane. It compared with TV scenes of Houston and Miami in cyclone season, and I had weathered enough hurricanes at sea to know this was the real thing." He hurried home and heard for the first time over the radio about the Wahine. Out in the harbour he could see the tug appearing and disappearing in the rain and spray. He fretted about not being able to do anything and wished his friend Garry Walker, who lived nearby, would come home from work. Walker, a twenty-three-year-old refrigeration engineer, had the use of an 18-foot launch which was wallowing in the huge seas sweeping into the bay and foaming over the normally sheltered beach. Boswell had a feeling that the launch might be needed.

He could see the tug despite the shocking visibility because she had been driven off station at Steeple Beacon, about a mile east of the bay, by the ferocious conditions.

Guided by the pilot launch the tug had sought refuge in the bay. Around 10 am Captain Crosbie of the Union Company sought information from the Wahine on the extent of the damage she had suffered, as up till that time there had been no indication from the ship on this question. The request was sent over the harbour board's VHF radio and at 10.10 Chief Officer Luly replied that the forward and after thrust compartments and the steering flat were flooded and there was some water in the engine- page 74room. Luly thought he also told shore that the after end of F-deck was flooded, but this information was not received ashore. Luly did not pass on. the assumptions that he and the captain had made on the double bottom tanks being flooded, as he knew the company was aware the ship had been on the reef. The company concluded from the information received that the ship had 1,700 tons of water aboard whereas it actually had about 3,000 tons. From reports on the ship's trim by a staff member out at Seatoun and the knowledge that the flooding was in compartments at either end of the vessel with the main engine-room compartments intact. Captain Crosbie considered there was nothing to be greatly concerned about as far as stability went.

For some time shipping at the Wellington wharves had been alerted and the rail-ferry Aramoana, fishing boats, a naval launch, and the harbour board's rubbish scow Success were standing by. The harbourmaster had received offers of help from small boat owners who had requested permission to go out to the Wahine's aid, but in view of the conditions he regarded such action as unsafe. Conditions in the inner harbour were bad enough, and off Seatoun where the Wahine was, they were even worse.

Seatoun was reeling from the effects of the gale and the arm)' camp and nearby private homes had suffered cruelly. On the camp's parade ground twenty-three cars and vans were flung into a heap at the northern end. Another casualty was a five-ton truck blown, sucked or dumped on its side. The camp suffered $40,000 damage in the morning. The southern end of Mantell Street nearby was also hit hard. The roof on one half of a modern L-shaped house was peeled off and flung across the street straight through the huge plate-glass lounge window of another home. The room looked like a scrap-metal yard. Power poles, already at breaking point, had roofing iron wrapped round them like wet paper.

Incredibly, nobody was injured but there were plenty of lucky escapes. In the camp one officer turned around after getting out of his car to see part of a roof smash through the back window. It would have impaled him if he had been at the wheel. Through the morning the camp had been turned into a receiving station for survivors. The camp cinema was prepared for Wahine survivors with the gas fires turned on, dry clothes on hand and hot drinks page 75by the urnful. Soldiers were allotted vehicles still serviceable and briefed on what part of Seatoun Beach to go to if necessary.

Along the rugged, gale-lashed coastline on the opposite side of the harbour there wasn't a soul. Two of the police party stranded at York Bay had been picked up by a truck from Trentham Army Camp at the north end of the Hutt Valley, and were taken to Eastbourne. The 118 trainees at the police training school, Trentham, were on standby. At 10.35 the Lower Hutt police station contacted headquarters in Wellington and heard the Wahine was expected to ride out the storm at anchor. In view of this and the NZBC news bulletins, the Lower Hutt police felt no further immediate action was necessary and the training school was advised that the trainees on standby were no longer required.

Out in the harbour entrance the ship was still being blasted by the gale and rolling violently as she sheered on her anchors. Though the threat of going ashore on the point had been averted, a new problem had cropped up: water was entering the cavernous vehicle deck. The chief engineer noticed it around 10 am when he and his staff returned to the engine-room after the Point Dorset scare was over. As he opened the door in the engine-room casing leading on to the deck the water slopped over the two-foot sill as the vessel rolled. The water had collected in the dip in the deck by the casing and appeared to be spraying through ventilators on the port side of the deck which went down to flooded spaces below.

After discussing this with the captain, the chief engineer set about getting his men to plug the ventilators with sacks and canvas. Still the water seeped in. The chief engineer was well aware of the threat to stability of the slopping, or free surface effect, of water in a ship. When sixth engineer on the ill-fated Union Company liner Tahiti he and other crew members had fought vainly for sixty hours to save the ship foundering in mid-Pacific in August 1930, after the starboard propeller shaft had fractured. The crew and 128 passengers of the 7,898-ton ship were saved in the nick of time by the Matson liner Ventura, which steamed 760 miles to the rescue. Though thirty-eight years had passed, the Tahiti's dramatic fight to stay afloat was still a vivid memory to the chief engineer.

News of the water on the vehicle deck reached the chief officer and he came down to have a look. As a further move to stop water accumulating on the deck the engineers had broken off a page 76scupper pipe allowing the water to run into the engine-room where it could be pumped away. To stop eggshells and other debris slopping over the door sill and blocking the pumps a crude strainer was made of egg boxes.

The ship, still dragging backwards on her anchors appeared quite stable and, though rolling, returned to an upright position with a positive movement.

She was getting close to Steeple Beacon and, as she swung out and in, it looked at one stage as if she was going to collect it.

At 10.40 the harbour board was advised over the VHF that the ship was dragging past the beacon.

To Kathryn Dallas in the lounge the beacon looked close enough to touch. She remembers some people claiming they could see crabs crawling over it. "The last time we went past most people crossed their fingers. It was so close we could only see the tip of it over the deck rail outside the window. We waited for the crash but incredibly it did not come; the ship had slid past again."

By this time most of the passengers had become bored with the interminable waiting. Over transistor radios they heard of the damage ashore caused by the storm. They also heard the news that the ship had reported she was quite safe with the tug just waiting for the weather to moderate before taking her in tow. Over the ship's public address system every half-hour came messages that there was no immediate danger and that "tugs" were on the way to assist. There was no mention that the ship might be abandoned, and many of the passengers took off the uncomfortable, bulky life-jackets. Kathryn saw several children sleeping, using the big orange lifejackets as pillows. The smaller Salvus jackets were not distributed. Albert Donohoo told his wife not to take hers off, adding "We are not safe until we tie up."

Down below in the smokeroom Mrs Karalyn Brittain also kept her life jacket on. The fact that her home was just over the hill from Worser Bay was comforting, but at the bottom of her mind was the nagging fear that perhaps the ship was in danger.

She remembered her seaman father telling her that when life-jackets had to be donned it meant things were bad. Although the announcements were reassuring they did not mention anything about removing the jackets, and she worried about her little daughter Joanne not having one. She asked a passing crew member what to do and he fetched one of the big orange ones and, placing page 77it on a table, showed her how to make a kind of crib. He explained how to tie the cords so the baby would not fall off. Around her the people had cheered up and were singing It's a Long Way to Tipperary and other songs. "When they sang Michael Row the Boat Ashore I nearly cried. They seemed to think there was no danger but I kept thinking of what my father told me about life-jackets." Though not supposed to smoke, the temptation got too great and together with another woman nearby she lit up. A voice from somewhere said to put the cigarettes out and Mrs Brittain remembers feeling rather sheepish.

She enjoyed the food passed around during the morning, as did the Kingsburys sitting nearby. To Lynn the ham was the best he had ever tasted. His wife Gillian later judged all ham by the "Wahine standard". They were among the few who seemed to honestly enjoy the morning and both found it passing quickly. Gillian considered one of the most amusing episodes the time a stewardess came in to mop up some water entering the smokeroom from the doors leading on to the deck. She was using a wringer-mop and bucket without much success when Gillian offered to show her how to use it. This tickled some of the other passengers who sang the chorus of the pop tune Sadie the Cleaning Lady.

Sitting quietly in the smokeroom, Miss Margaret Millar of Gore prayed earnestly and tried to sleep. She had not been able to find her Christchurch friends, the Nathans, and had not seen them since the night before.

Mrs Phyllis Robertson of Wellington remembers strain showed on most faces: "It was a terrible feeling, wondering what was going to happen." She sat tight in the smokeroom and didn't venture away, even to the toilets.

Peter and Sue Madarasz had moved into the smokeroom from the cheerless G-deck corridor where they had spent the earlier part of the morning. They did not talk much to the other people but a steward they knew vaguely said hello at one stage. After a spell they went into one of the nearby cabins and fell asleep. Sue could not help remembering a frightening nightmare she had had during their honeymoon: the ship had sunk and she had seen herself dressed in the pink twinset she was wearing that day swimming in the sea. "Beneath me in the water were two men wearing suits. I would not look down because I knew that one of them was Peter and I knew that he was dead." page 78In another cabin Father McGlynn was finishing his Office, interrupted when the ship had gone out of control. Outside people were still sitting on the floor of the corridor and the merry-eyed priest chuckled when he heard one young woman confide to her husband that she would never wear a mini-skirt again. As he prayed he thought of the skipper and his vigil on the bridge. "He must have had a terrible time. He did everything to keep the people calm and told us everything was under control." Earlier in the smokeroom he had felt sorry for those with children. "Nearby was a young couple with a six-month-old baby and what with cold milk and other things they were having a trying time." Outside he could see a wild scene. "The wind was howling and the waves were mountain high."

In the smokeroom nineteen-year-old Dianne Houltham was feeling sad and alone. "I felt tears on my cheeks and a steward came over and told me not to worry." She saw Mrs Hick needed help with her children and took three-year-old Alma from her. Gathering together half a dozen other small children, she sang to them. "One little boy of about six asked me if I was frightened or if we were going to sink. I had to say no and he said 'Well, if you're not scared take off your lifejacket.' I took it off thinking it would make the children feel more at ease.

"Time dragged on, and we swayed to and fro and up and down. Still we heard announcement after announcement that we were in no danger and that everything was under control. Some of the children became bored and tired and made their way back to their parents. Alma, a beautiful little blonde with blue eyes, stayed with me, as we had become great pals. Then after a time she wanted Mummy. Once again I felt alone."

Clarrie O'Neill and his family were also in the smokeroom after an uncomfortable wait outside. The six children lay on the floor, still in their lifejackets, and Mr O'Neill managed to get a seat for his wife, who was pale and not looking too well. He remembers one elderly woman saying "Your children deserve a medal." Another added, "The parents deserve a medal for looking after them so well."

"I turned round and said medals won't help us now. What we need is help from above. They both agreed."

Nearby was an American couple, Ernest Crosby, a retired steamship operator, and his wife Frances, who were in the course of a page 79tour of the Pacific. Mr Crosby remembers Mr O'Neill as a "rather high-tension character who announced he was quite ready to meet his Maker. There was also some singing of hymns, but only a small minority betrayed such symptoms. In retrospect it is difficult to analyse one's emotions at that time. Fear there undoubtedly was, but not as much as one might expect. When nothing serious happened for quite a while some of us went to sleep, resting our heads on the high, rigid collars of the lifejackets."

One of the Tiki Tour party, Mrs Constance Martyr, a sixty-two-year-old widow from Henley Beach, South Australia, was also sitting near the O'Neills. She remembered the wonderful help given to the passengers by the stewards and stewardesses. "They were laughing and joking all the time, especially one English boy who came from Coventry. Someone asked him if we could have some music and he replied, 'Sure, bring me a bucket of sand and I'll sing you the Desert Song.' "

The announcements over the public address system convinced Mrs Martyr that the ship would tie up at the wharf any minute, and she did not think those aboard were in any real danger.

Not so sure was Mrs Betty Wood, also in the smokeroom with her husband. "What an endless morning it was. I was so very frightened and yet a calmness pervaded me. The reassuring announcements helped to buck me up." Providing a bit of light relief were two young men who pretended they were interviewing survivors off the Wahine. "We all had a whistle tied to our lifejackets and one elderly man near us tried to knock out a tune from his."

The young were not so apprehensive, and telex clerk Diana Lilley joked with Colin Bower and Paul Field about what they would do if they had to abandon the ship. After a while they became bored and for a laugh Diana massaged Paul's back for a couple of bob. Later they moved up to the lounge and played euchre. A couple of air force girls joined in, and Paul and Colin played five hundred with them. Diana took off her lifejacket and shoes and, wrapping a blanket around herself, settled down to learn how to play.

The air force girls in the lounge included Dot Smith, Jan Moles, and Pinky Brown. Pinky talked with an old lady who was deaf and more concerned about her budgie at home in Wellington than about herself. She helped the old lady to the toilets, which were page 80out of order, and shouted out the messages coming over the public address system so she could hear them.

By 11 am the weather appeared to be moderating fractionally but visibility was still nil, with huge seas pounding through the harbour entrance. The wind was still averaging more than 70 knots and gusting to over 90. Captain Robertson decided to ask the tug to have a go at dragging the ferry into the more sheltered area off Worser Bay. The Tapuhi had been trying to stay on station in the bay but when the Wahine's request for the tow came, she was well out in the harbour by the front leading beacon.

The plan was for the ferry, after securing the cable from the tug, to shorten the anchor cables to give the tug a chance of dragging her stern first. It was a slim chance. The tug could muster little more power than the Wahine's thrusters developed. At one minute past eleven the Wahine advised Wellington Radio that the ship was quite safe and about to make fast to the tug.

Captain Olsson manoeuvred the Tapuhi into position near the Wahine, which was still swinging in an arc of up to 120°. On the stern of the ferry Chief Officer Luly supervised the firing of a line to the tug.

With magnificent seamanship Captain Olsson managed to get the tug's stern within 25 feet of the Wahine's. A rocket was fired and the line grabbed by the tug's crewmen, who were having a tough time keeping their feet, so violent was the motion. A three-inch rope messenger was tied to the line and the four-inch steel towing wire attached. The Wahine's crew started pulling it aboard by hand as there was no power for the winches.

The news that the tug had arrived was greeted with relief by the passengers. Auckland sales manager Roger Wilson decided to go out on deck and have a look. "The conditions were quite fantastic, tremendous winds, poor' visibility and a big swell. The poor little tug was having obvious difficulty in getting into the right position. Her propeller was right out of the water at the top of each swell and the captain must have had very little steerage way. He did a magnificent job in a tug which was designed for anything but the ocean-going work she was being asked to perform."

In the smokeroom Karalyn Brittain saw the tug appearing like a ghost ship through the murk. She told a man near her and the word went around. A half-hearted cheer went up and a bit later page break

The Zodiac rescue craft from Wellington Airport arrives at Seatoun Wharf full of survivors plucked from the water. Mrs Mary Lee of Kaitaia (second from right) was being pounded by huge seas when the Zodiac crew rescued her "in the nick of time".
Rescuers struggle through the low surf to help those aboard the Wahine's number two lifeboat, which was towed into Seatoun Wharf.

page break

Wahine crewman George Brabander carries a young boy to safety from the Wahine's number four lifeboat which landed midway along Seatoun Beach.

A young girl from the Wahine's number two lifeboat is helped by rescuers at Seatoun.

At Seatoun Wharf a policeman holds a young child swaddled in a blanket.

page 81 it was announced over the public address system that the tug was going to try and tow the ship up the harbour. A wag called out: "Glad they said try." The people around laughed, but rather nervously.

The cable secured aboard the Wahine, the tug started trying to tow the ferry at 11.50. Shortly afterwards the Wahine advised that power had been lost on the windlass and that it was impossible to shorten the anchors.

Then an enormous sea picked up the tug and flung it northwards. The cable tautened, then snapped. To save time the tug crew just cast off the broken wire and immediately started preparing another. The wind ripped at the tug's crew as they worked on the second wire and eventually blew two of them down, slightly injuring them. Among the crew on the Tapuhi was Captain Robertson's brother Neil, who normally worked in the Union Company's gear store at the wharves. The tug retired to the shelter of Worser Bay to prepare the second wire.

The pilot launch Tiakina had been hovering round to assist the tug if necessary and also to try and get the deputy harbourmaster aboard the ferry. The chance came at noon when, with the tug gone, the Wahine swung once more into the channel with her huge bulk protecting the starboard side from the weather. The Tiakina nosed in with Captain Galloway ready to leap. Captain Robertson watched from the starboard wing of the bridge as the deputy harbourmaster leapt for one of the boat ladders hanging down the ferry's side. "He slipped down a couple of rungs and I thought he was going to be chopped in two by the launch when it came back and hit us," Captain Robertson recalled.

Captain Galloway was lucky. The launch's bow just missed him and he scrambled up on to the slightly listing ferry. Going to the bridge, he offered his assistance to the master.

Because of the swing of the ship, both sides were being swept by heavy seas. Any lifeboats launched would have been swamped or smashed against the sides, and both men agreed that the passengers were better off remaining on the ship.

After offering Captain Galloway some lunch, which he declined, Captain Robertson decided, at 12.30, to leave him and for the first time that morning left the bridge to do a tour of inspection with the Chief Officer. They went first to the stern door, which was still watertight. The engineers were still trying to block off page 82the water coming through the ventilators, but more water was on the deck than when the Chief Officer had been down before. Water extended from the stern door to a third of the way along the deck, ranging from about two inches deep aft to 15 inches forward. At 12.30 Luly was quite confident the ship was stable and was optimistic that with the weather forecasted to moderate it would be possible to tow the ship round to calmer waters.

Ashore, the harbour board had received a request from the Wahine at 12.30 for pumps. They were already prepared at the fire station and were sent down to be loaded on the pilot launch Arahina. Around the same time as the Wahine called for pumps a naval officer from the RNZVR launch Manga, which was on standby, called at the harbour board to see what the situation was. He was told the situation was easing and the Manga's crew could be stood down. The officer declined the offer as it was just as easy to keep the crew on standby.

On the Wahine the captain and first officer walked forward along the vehicle deck and looked down the stairway at the water on F-deck before checking the watertight door leading to the forward transverse propulsion unit. From there they went back to the bridge.

In the lounge student Jan Travaglia noticed the ship had developed a slight starboard list around noon. At first he took little notice of it, but by 12.30 it had increased and he was beginning to feel worried. His friend Joan Hodgson kept drawing his attention to the ever-increasing angle between the window and the curtain. "Eventually I stood up and looked out of the aft windows. The stern was tilted at an alarming angle. I quickly replaced my lifejacket which I had been using as a pillow."

Mrs Mary Lee, a music teacher from Kaitaia, noticed shortly after noon that the ship was rolling to starboard but not to port. This continued until she was in no doubt that the ship was listing. On a few occasions she felt a definite settling feeling to starboard. She and her husband were worried and could not understand why the messages over the public address system were of such an encouraging nature.

In the smokeroom Kathryn Dallas felt the list and worried about the people who were not wearing their lifejackets. She saw several children sleeping, using their jackets as pillows, and one woman also without one, walking out on deck to take pictures of the tug page 83steaming past. Outside waves still broke over the ship and the rain was torrential.

Sitting with Kathryn, Mrs Gladys Donohoo noticed the ship starting to wallow and a big man began pacing up and down. "A young woman said he made her nervous and I asked him to sit down, telling him that if he fell on anyone they would be badly hurt."

A little later the increasing list interrupted other activities. At 1 pm Kerry Armstrong, captain of the Lincoln College cricket team, was writing to his mother in Whangarei. "Just been listening to the news, and we aren't in a very good position yet. They have been treating us very well on board here, but haven't been putting us in the picture very clearly. It is surprising how fast any rumours carry through the six hundred passengers . . . we don't know what has happened to our gear. Someone said that the doors have been sealed in our cabins [F-deck] and we won't be able to get it until she goes into drydock. We will just have to wait and see. . . . Every now and then in the lounge someone's seat is toppling over." Armstrong did not write any more.

Earlier, down in the engine-room, around 12.30, the chief engineer noticed that the water accumulating in the after end suddenly seemed to run forward. At the same time he felt the ship shudder. He said to the chief electrician Hamer who was with him: "What the heck was that?" Hamer surmised that the ship must be going aground. Then they noticed she was listing. The chief engineer got the impression that something had given way or the ship had touched and that something further had happened to it. Right up to the time he felt the ship shudder he was confident she would stay afloat to the extent of discussing who would have to stay aboard all night when she berthed.

On the bridge the deputy harbourmaster noticed just before 12.45 that the ship's position was deteriorating rapidly. She seemed to be sinking aft and the degree of list and feel of the ship were unsatisfactory. He radioed the tug on the VHF and told them time was running out. The weather was moderating and the visibility improving as the tug backed up to the stern again. The first rocket from the Wahine dived into the sea and the line on the second was lost as it was not secured on the ferry. The tug had drifted to the east and had to make another approach.

Just after 1 o'clock the abnormally high tide in the harbour started to run out, an hour before expected. It seemed to catch the ferry and she swung out with her bow pointing to Seatoun. From the starboard wing of the bridge the deputy harbourmaster saw the starboard side of the ship was now sheltered and realised there was an opportunity to abandon ship. He went to the port wing to confer with the master and saw the port side was awash with breaking seas. The ferry was listing up to 25 degrees to starboard. The captain then decided to abandon ship.

The time was near 1.15 and round at the Port Nicholson boat harbour the yachties relaxed, their boats no longer threatened by the wind. From noon the wind strength had dropped by a third until at 1 pm it was averaging only 44 knots at Wellington Airport. Over at Eastbourne the small police party were instructed at 1.15 to return to their Lower Hutt base.

But out at the harbour entrance the Wahine was about to be abandoned.