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Chapter Thirteen

Harry Wilkins was enjoying a quiet beer in the clubrooms of the East Harbour branch of the Wellington Returned Services Association at 1.45 pm on 10 April when Len Satherly burst in with the news that people were jumping from the Wahine.

Satherly, a Lower Hutt policeman and a former constable at Eastbourne, told the startled Wilkins and the three men drinking with him that the police wanted the clubrooms as a reception centre for possible survivors. Wilkins, branch secretary, and the others were moving almost before Satherly finished speaking. They lit electric and oil-fired heaters, put water on to boil for tea in the kitchen, and began alerting other RSA members for help.

John Stichbury was at his home, about three-quarters of a mile away, when Wilkins phoned. His car had been knocked out by sea water earlier in the day so he ran to the RSA, a couple of hundred yards from Eastbourne township's small shopping centre. Stich-bury's wife Elsie, president of the association's women's committee, was under a dryer in a hair salon when she got the news she was needed.

The car that picked her up to take her to the clubrooms halted briefly at a store and the local telephone exchange to collect two more women. When the three of them hurried into the RSA, the men had things well organised. The women took over the kitchen. News of the disaster and the fact that the clubrooms were to be used for survivors spread swiftly through the close-knit community. Offers of help, food and clothing began to pour in and more helpers arrived.

Response was immediate when RSA officials began telephoning local businessmen for supplies. Dairy-owner Derek McClellan sent milk wanted for tea, and started preparing soup. Bill Munro consented instantly to the request for sandwiches but was out of bread. He dashed from his bakehouse down an alleyway into the shopping centre and almost bumped into a bread van. The driver had no spare bread but when Munro told him about the Wahine he handed over half a dozen large sliced loaves and declined payment: "I guess the firm can stand it." page 173Munro sought the aid of a draper, a barber, and a couple of women store assistants to prepare food. A little later they delivered the sandwiches to the RSA along with soup and trays piled with buns, scones, muffins, pies and cakes. There was close to $20 worth. Munro would not accept payment.

The RSA was a warm, cheering, well-stocked sanctuary for the first survivors when they arrived, cold, dripping, and shocked.

Police manpower resources on the eastern side of the harbour were limited, initially, to the men on duty in the Hutt and Petone areas but the police wasted no time once the emergency developed. The first indication the Lower Hutt police had that the Wahine was being abandoned was at 1.30 pm when duty senior sergeant Bryan Courtney overheard a radio message from a police car at Seatoun that the Wahine was listing badly and that passengers were jumping overboard. Courtney drove from the station at 1.36 pm. A sergeant and two constables accompanied him in one car and another car followed a few minutes later. Then an army truck bearing more police pulled out. A constable left at the station alerted Hutt Hospital.

The little convoy careered toward Eastbourne, through Seaview, Point Howard and along the coast, dodging trees, fallen power and telephone lines, boulders, smashed boats and other litter tossed by the storm all over the road.

As Courtney drove toward Eastbourne, seven or eight miles from Lower Hutt, he felt sure survivors would be swept to the eastern side of the harbour, but at that time he didn't know how right he was. The police cars hurtled down Muritai Road, main route through Eastbourne, to Burdan's Gate. By 2 pm thirty-three policemen had reached the gate. Most of them scurried on down the coast road on foot. There was no chance of driving. Courtney was told the condition of the road had deteriorated considerably since the inspection earlier in the day. Two hundred yards south of Burdan's Gate a landslide had spilled rock and earth over the road, and until this obstruction was cleared the road was impassable. It was an unfortunate development, one that seriously hampered the rescue operation. In the early stages, no vehicle could get down the coast to bring in survivors as they emerged from the sea.

One small, privately owned flatbed truck was manhandled over the blockage but was held up by debris further along the coast. A Land Rover bogged down completely on the slip.

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Police calls to contractors and local bodies for earth-moving machinery were slowed by dislocated telephone services, so appeals for help were relayed over local radio stations. Gradually, heavy equipment began rolling toward Eastbourne from the Hutt Valley. But until front-end loaders and a bulldozer arrived and got to work on the slip and the road, there was no chance of vehicles getting far along the coast road. When the front-end loaders and bulldozer finally arrived, after 3.30 pm, they made short work of the slip and rapidly cleaned up the road. Then Land Rovers and a fleet of twenty-two Austin Gypsies, supplied by Magnus Motors, Lower Hutt, were able to begin moving.

At 2.05 pm Chief Inspector Twentyman placed Courtney in charge of the eastern rescue effort. The sergeant established a control point at Burdan's Gate and remained there for the rest of the afternoon, directing operations as best he could. Over the police radio he called for more men and was told three carloads were already on their way from Wellington. Recruits from the Trentham Police Training School, who had been stood down earlier in the day, were being assembled for dispatch.

Five buses from the Eastbourne Bus Company were driven through Burdan's Gate to the Gollan Valley turnoff area, to provide transport for survivors. Across the harbour the Wahine was barely visible through the murk.

Two hundred and twenty-three people came ashore and remained alive on the Pencarrow coast that day. Many were shocked, exhausted, and suffering from cold and exposure, particularly those who had floated across the harbour in the water or drifted over in liferafts without the protection of canopies. Some were not even sure they were safe when they reached shore. Police had to scramble up a steep fifty foot bank to rescue a couple who dashed up the hill in a desperate bid to get away from the sea. A young man was found cowering in a patch of scrub by the roadside.

The younger survivors were generally in reasonable shape. The older people suffered more. Seventy-five per cent of the dead were over fifty years of age. Theirs had been a terrifying and unequal struggle against the sea, surf and rocks. Some died in the water near the ship, some in mid-channel after being thrown from rafts or the Wahine's motorboat, others as they were washed ashore. However they died, the sea eventually yielded most of their bodies page 175on the eastern coast. Only four dead were picked up by the rescue flotilla.

When 10 April was over forty-three bodies had been taken away from the eastern side of the harbour. Four more were recovered in succeeding days.

The living began coming ashore at 2.15 pm and continued to do so until nearly 5 pm. By the time the last few were straggling ashore there were plenty of rescuers available, but in the earlier stages the police and the civilians who rallied to their side were stretched thin. The main stream of survivors landed along the mile of coast between the southern end of Camp Bay and Hinds Point. The far end of Camp Bay, a mile from Burdan's Gate, was a tough, energy-sapping hike. As rescuers moved to the main landing area the more northerly arrivals from the sea were demanding help. Their rescue delayed the southerly trek, and some survivors were ashore and walking out before help arrived.

The first survivors who reached the RSA clubrooms were not taken in there. They were in an ambulance which paused only briefly while the driver inquired for a doctor. There were no medical men present at the time so the ambulance left at once for Hutt Hospital.

The ambulance hadn't been long gone when survivors, brought by a bus, sloshed into the RSA. Steaming mugs of tea were pressed into shaking hands while RSA people began stripping sodden clothes from numbed bodies and searching for suitable replacements in the piles of dry clothing set up on trestles. Men rubbed down male survivors while volunteer nurses dealt with women until they were needed to treat the injured. Then RSA women members took over.

Rubbing cold, wet bodies was a tough assignment and the supply of dry towels began to diminish rapidly. Eastbourne's two hair-dressing salons were contacted and both promptly emptied their establishments of towels. Despite their dazed condition some of the survivors were a little reluctant about undressing in public, particularly as the afternoon wore on and the men-to-men, women-to-women principle began to blur in the rush.

One man being stripped by an RSA woman clutched his underpants and demurred when he was asked to shed them. But the woman insisted he remove the wet garment and at her urging he page 176 did so. He grinned: "No one has asked me to do that for twenty-five years."

Sand and pebbles were caked on the inside of the clothes worn by one hairy-chested survivor. He raised a smile when he was asked, "Don't you know it's an offence to take this stuff away from the beach?"

One batch of survivors who didn't get to the RSA was the group from Victory's lifeboat, most of whom were in reasonable condition and taken straight to Wellington railway station by bus. But four had to be hurried to hospital by Upper Hutt free ambulance driver Lawrence Perry, who met Victory's boat as it came in on the sand by the Eastbourne recreation reserve at the foot of Tuatoru Street. Lawrence was diverted to the landing spot by an ambulance driver further south, who reported seeing what he thought was a lifeboat heading up harbour towards shore. Perry reached the end of Tuatoru Street just as the boat touched.

Survivors, hardly believing their good fortune, poured from the boat, jumping into thigh-high water. The elderly and injured were helped over the high sides of the craft. Perry radioed for assistance and began sorting out those needing treatment. Flocks of nearby residents materialised and some took survivors to their homes. Perry was told an old man who had suffered a heart attack had been taken into a house, so he directed another ambulance to the address and asked another driver to pick up Mrs Alma Alexander, of Christchurch, who had been so sick the night before and had somehow cut her hand badly during the abandonment. She also had been taken to the home of a local resident. On the beach were three elderly women who, Perry decided, needed hospital treatment. One had a nasty shoulder injury. He wrapped all three in blankets and put them in the ambulance. A Wahine crewman handed Perry a boy about two years old. Perry asked the crewman where the child's parents were but the crewman didn't know—he had just grabbed the child on the ship and jumped with him into the lifeboat. The boy was cold and frightened, and looked at Pern' with dazed, empty eyes. The ambulanceman put a blanket around him and fastened him into a seat belt on the passenger seat in the cab.

On the ride to Hutt Hospital Perry heard reports of the grim scene further south and at the hospital told the Casualty Ward what to expect.

George Reid, fifty-seven, was in relatively good shape when he climbed from the lifeboat and credits his spell on the boat's propulsion gear with keeping him warm. He stood about on the roadside for about ten minutes, then the bus arrived to take him and the others into the city. When it left a short time later it had a full load. Reid's accountant mind counted thirty-four seated and eight standing—plus the policewoman who was taking names. Reid noted the four who had gone in the ambulance, the two young men who had drifted off with the declared intention of drinks at the local pub, the others taken in by Eastbourne residents, and arrived at his estimate of between fifty and sixty in the boat.

Bill and Shirley Martyn bundled three survivors into their car and Mrs Martyn drove them to her nearby home. Martyn, a teacher, remained by the boat to see what else he could do. When the police arrived they wanted Martyn to bring the survivors back. He demurred, but agreed to get their names. When he returned to his home his wife was busy giving the three surprise guests—a middle-aged woman, and Mr and Mrs H. L. Keenan of Waimate —baths, dry clothes, hot drinks and food. Later in the afternoon someone picked up the woman but Mr and Mrs Keenan were tucked into bed and remained until the next day. In the middle of the night a son telephoned from Australia. He had heard where his parents were and wanted to be reassured they were all right.

The Martyns' heart-warming gesture was typical of the succour given Wahine survivors by Eastbourne residents.

Grace Girdlestone, a married woman with a grown family spotted eleven-year-old Ivan Farmer as he came from Victory's boat. The boy was alone, so Mrs Girdlestone gathered him into her arms and into her car, along with an American and his five-year-old son. She drove them to her home and popped both boys into a hot bath before dressing them in dry clothes and plying them with hot drinks. Then she took Ivan and the other boy and his father to the RSA.

Mrs Girdlestone gathered from Ivan's rather confused story that he was sailing on the Southern Cross next day with his mother and page 178two brothers to join his father, who was in Rhodesia. Mum and his brothers had been on the Wahine but he didn't know where they were. The boy was not at all well. Mrs Girdlestone didn't learn until later that Ivan was only a few days out of hospital after treatment for spinal meningitis.

The well-organised reception given the survivors from Victory's lifeboat was in sharp contrast with what was happening on the coast further south.

The rescuers' task was difficult and dangerous. Huge waves threatened police and civilian rescuers as they plunged chest-high into breakers to save lives. On several occasions waves beating high up the beaches dragged survivors back to the sea from positions that had appeared safe.

As survivors stumbled from liferafts and from the sea, there were no hot baths, drinks, blankets, or dry clothes waiting. A few probably perished where they landed, some were too exhausted to move and could only wait for the help that eventually came. The majority faced the long walk to Eastbourne over the ferocious coast road. Many were without shoes.

There were as many civilians and men from other agencies down the coast that afternoon as there were police. Civilians such as bus-driver Mark Powell, schoolboys John Sarginson, seventeen, and Bruce Mitchell, eighteen, and accountant Stephen Phillips, all of Eastbourne. Others like John Barnhill, 23-year-old Wellington radio serviceman, a member of the St John Ambulance light rescue squad, who made his way to Eastbourne when he heard the Wahine had capsized; Eastbourne fireman Hank Duba, who was an early arrival at Burdan's Gate after being called from his garage to start an ambulance which was out of action; nineteen of Duba's fellow-firemen, who were not called into action until 2.34 pm; Petone firemen; transport department officers, the medical people and ambulance men.

Mark Powell was driving one of the buses that had been requested for survivors. After parking near the Gollan Valley turnoff he and his fellow drivers spotted two liferafts floating in. They didn't know at the time that these were the two that had blown away empty during the early stages of the abandonment of the Wahine. One bus moved out to follow the rafts ashore and another went later when Victory's boat was seen moving up the harbour. Powell thought he could be useful further down the coast, and page 179was given permission to leave his bus when he explained that mechanics present could drive it if required. A policeman gave Powell the keys to the second gate, just beyond the turnoff, and asked him to open the gate and clear debris away from it. An ambulance man went with Powell.

By the time they had cleared the debris from the gate and got around into Camp Bay they were meeting survivors. The first group were youngsters of university age, probably from the cricket teams travelling on the Wahine. Powell was surprised. The survivors looked all right, and it didn't seem possible they could have come out of the sea, alive and apparently uninjured. There were no liferafts in sight in Camp Bay but around the point there were many—to Powell it looked like an invasion scene from a movie. Many survivors were still in the water and needed help. Powell and the ambulance man darted about plucking people to safety. Then they found a young man clad in only a pair of underpants. The rocks had dug a nasty gash in his temple. Powell went on while the injured survivor was treated by the ambulance man.

Powell told dazed survivors where they were and which way to go to find the buses.

"A lot seemed to want to walk the wrong way. One chap I pulled out was badly shocked. He looked just as if he had been drinking. He was quite determined to go the wrong way and I had too much to do to argue, so I let him go. We were together a few minutes and then he discovered his wife. It had obviously been his intention to find her, but he was in such a state he couldn't talk and tell me." Powell remembers that few of the survivors talked: "They were stunned. They looked as if the whole thing had been a dream."

One wave swept Powell off his feet as he bent to help a man with badly cut knees. The wave dragged both men out but another threw them back to shore. Powell grabbed a discarded lifejacket and put it on. The bus-driver found another man, who appeared to have only one leg. Then he discovered the missing limb was buried deep in the sand. He dug the leg free and someone with a knife cut the drawstrings on the man's lifejacket which had tightened in the water, worked up under his throat, and bitten into the skin.

Another of the civilians down the coast early was Stephen Phillips. He remembers the police at Burdan's Gate at 2 pm page 180seemed to have only a hazy idea what was going on. There was no invitation to help, but Phillips set off along the coast road—or what remained of it—with a couple of policemen. Round Camp Bay Point the surf was thick with survivors.

"There was an incredible number of liferafts," says Phillips. "They were just everywhere. And so many people. We waited for the right moment and grabbed." He and the police on the scene ventured into the water as far as they dared, risking their lives to pull survivors to safety. The rescued said little to the men who saved them. They were too exhausted and shocked to talk.

There were bodies too. Tenth April was the first time Phillips had seen a dead person, but before that afternoon was over he had seen many. The bodies, some horribly mutilated, lay crumpled among the rocks, on the beaches, or washed about in the waves. Some were stripped of clothing and this, together with injuries, later made identification of some victims difficult.

Schoolboys John Sarginson and Bruce Mitchell began pounding along the coast between 2.30 and 2.45. Both wore heavy boots. John was dressed in a shirt and longs, Bruce in a football jersey and shorts. They soon met survivors, bedraggled and numbed by the cold. The ordeal they had been through showed plainly in their expressionless faces. They walked mechanically.

Toward the far end of Camp Bay the boys found the Wahine's motorboat, overturned and wrecked in the rocks near the water's edge. John pulled a dazed survivor from the water about twenty yards short of the boat, and then a policeman asked him to return to the Gollan Valley turnoff and tell the police there medical supplies, stretchers and blankets were needed. Messages sent by runners were the only way by which the forward police could communicate with Courtney. There were no portable radios. Bruce moved further south, pulling people from the water and half dragging them up the beaches. "We couldn't do anything else. There were few rescuers there at that crucial moment. We couldn't stay to look after the people we had rescued because there were more in the water to be saved. They were coming ashore either so injured or so tired that they didn't have the strength to pull themselves out of the sea."

After John Sarginson returned from the police control point, holding one end of a stretcher loaded with blankets, he found an page 181elderly woman and helped her back to the buses. The woman had a coat on but was without shoes. John gave her his boots.

When the police found that John Barnhill was connected with the ambulance service they let him take his car through Burdan's Gate to the Gollan Valley turnoff. Survivors were dribbling through, some alone, others assisted by policemen, firemen, and local residents. Immediately, Barnhill was helping people to waiting ambulances and buses. He remembers there was a serious shortage of blankets and stretchers in the early stages of the rescue operation. Someone had thrust an armful of blankets into his car as he drove through Burdan's Gate, and when he parked his car they disappeared instantly, wrapped around the shoulders of frozen survivors. Ambulances were taking the injured and worst shock cases to Hutt Hospital. The buses were being driven out quickly to get other survivors to the warmth of the RSA.

Later, Barnhill got well down the coast checking liferafts to make certain they were empty. Some were full of water and it took fifteen to twenty men to haul them clear of the water. One, punctured, collapsed and waterlogged, yielded a body.

Fireman Hank Duba felt so sorry for the survivors he met in the Hinds Point area that he didn't have the heart to tell them how far it was back to Eastbourne. He found a seventy-four-year-old single woman from Invercargill who had dragged herself ashore through the treacherous surf. All she had on was a bra and the remains of the sleeves of a dress, hanging from her wrists. She was purple with cold. Until a vehicle arrived and took her away, an hour after she had landed, Duba sat with her on the beach. He wrapped his jacket around the old lady and massaged her chilled limbs. Though she was exhausted her pulse was strong and regular, and she told Duba that members of her family didn't give up easily. She had lost everything apart from the rings she wore, which were made of gold dug years before by her father.

On the way back to Eastbourne Duba assisted an hysterical woman who kept asking over and over "Where's my husband?"

By 3.05 pm 55 police were engaged in rescue work. Fifteen minutes later there were 92 and by 4.15 pm the number peaked at 113. Many of the newcomers were recruits from the police training school at Trentham. Others came from the city as the Seatoun situation eased. Police numbers were more than matched by civilians, a few army men and the other rescuers. One welcome page 182unit was the civil defence squad of eight trained men from the cigarette factory of W. D. & H. O. Wills, at Petone.

A few persons who offered help apparently got the impression they were not needed, and did not get through Burdan's Gate. But such incidents were few and misunderstandings were bound to occur under the chaotic conditions.

Because the Salvation Army is a great believer in the restorative power of a cup of tea, the Army's top Lower Hutt officer, Major Gilbert Beale, was on the job at the Gollan Valley turnoff by 3 pm, handing out tea in paper cups with the help of his son Stanley, and daughter Joanne. An Eastbourne woman took over the Major's role when dairy-owner Derek McClellan turned up with 2| gallons of hot tomato soup. Beale and McClellan staggered off along the coast road carrying the huge pot while Joanne ladled out the soup to grateful survivors.

When they rounded Camp Bay point the scale of the disaster hit Beale. The dead were everywhere. "It was like a battlefield. I saw more bodies that day then I had during my service in the Pacific Islands in the last war."

Mrs May Hickman of Ashburton, who had lost her husband when the Wahine's motorboat overturned, cut her head badly on the rocks as she was tossed ashore. Someone dragged her to safety on the side of the road and when she regained consciousness she heard a policeman say: "We've got to get this one to hospital, she's in bad shape, but she's alive." Mrs Hickman was aware of her head being bandaged and then she was being carried on a stretcher. It seemed an awfully long way to the ambulance. She asked where she was and was told "near Eastbourne". The ambulance sped her to Hutt Hospital where doctors put more than fifty stitches in her head. She remained there until 15 April.

His pelvis broken, one-armed Albert Hansen was also borne away on a stretcher to an ambulance. But, understandably, Hansen doesn't remember much about it. He was unconscious most of the time.

When Max Nelson staggered ashore after being washed from the motorboat and found his wife, the man helping her was trying to cut her lifejacket off. Nelson's had gone; he didn't know how. About a hundred yards away police were running toward them in Indian file and when they arrived one carried Mrs Nelson and page 183said a vehicle would take her out. Nelson, stiff and sore, set off to walk towards the buses.

After student Roger Bush was pulled from the water near the overturned boat he too started walking out.

Fortunately, Graham's boat from the Aramoana was holed as it smashed ashore through the rocks. The water that had cascaded in when the craft was swamped drained through the gaping holes in the hull and the survivors in the bottom escaped drowning. Big waves were still breaking around the boat as Graham and those of his crew still aboard got the survivors out. As Arthur Elliott and Geoff Mortensen stumbled across the beach the Aramoana's purser shouted at them to help get the boat further ashore. Gradually the craft was moved out of the reach of the sea, one of the crewmen using an oar as a lever. Occasional heavy waves helped lift her in over the rocks.

Elliott was given the small boy who had been rescued earlier from the wooden raft, and he carried him in his arms along the beach for about three hundred yards. Elliott was still dazed and remembers that walk as the longest he has ever made. Then a rescuer took the child and galloped off. Later, Elliott saw the boy on the back of the old flatbed truck.

Mrs Karalyn Brittain remembers the boat grinding to a halt and water washing over her. Then she was walking over rocks, arms draped over a man at each side. "I didn't feel cold. It took everything I had to keep my legs moving one after the other. I didn't have time to think of anything else." Mrs Brittain and her rescuers eventually reached a vehicle. Someone slung a parka over her shoulders and she crawled into the back of the vehicle with other survivors. Then it jolted off.

After Graham had removed the survivors from his boat police began to arrive, and he went with them further south to help others coming in on liferafts. In his words, the condition of the survivors he saw was "appalling".

"I can only compare it with descriptions I have read of people fleeing from the Blitzkreig of the last war—vacant faces, staring eyes and utterly exhausted." He said the scene was pitiful on shore. "We could not afford time to make any survivor comfortable; just wade in, grab them, pull them out and drop them."

The survivors were still coming in and so were the helpers; private doctors hurrying to the RSA, Red Cross workers, civilians, page 184more ambulances. At 3.15 pm the Petone Fire Brigade despatched three machines and sixteen firemen who collected 150 pairs of blankets, stretchers, twelve dozen hot-water bottles and a load of towels from local sources before heading for Burdan's Gate. Ron Edmonds, a twenty-year-old first class fireman drove one of the engines, with four of his buddies aboard, to a meat company hostel to pick up the blankets. After parking the machine at Burdan's Gate, Edmonds and the others found a man on the roadside nearby, apparently unconscious. The firemen grabbed their resuscitator and started to work on the victim. Then a policeman said the man had been dead for half an hour. Edmonds draped a towel over the body and went on.

There was plenty to be done down the coast and Edmonds moved right down to Hinds Point. By then the survivors were thinning out so he joined the search for the dead. Edmonds found rescuers trying to open a partly deflated liferaft draped with seaweed. He hacked the seaweed away with his axe but the raft was empty. He came across a fire lit by rescuers, burning on the shore. Around it were the ripped and sodden clothes survivors had cast off in an attempt to keep warm. The fire burnt on, the only warm spot on a bleak coast. Rain hissed into the embers.

By mid-afternoon the RSA was jammed with survivors, dripping water over the floor, drinking hot tea and soup, eating, pulling off sodden clothes, being dried down, dressing in anything that would fit, and then being taken off by bus to the Railway Station. The folding doors dividing the bar lounge and the bar had been drawn back to make more room. RSA president Eric Lander dispensed free drinks behind the bar. Whiskies and brandies were handed out in stiff slugs. One survivor downed a double brandy and passed out. A big Irishman asked first for a shandy and followed that rapidly with brandy.

At 3.30 pm Eastbourne's Roman Catholic priest, Father Bernard Miles, phoned 2ZB at the request of Harry Wilkins and an announcement over the air shortly after that more clothes were needed brought another flood. Mrs Mary Thomas, owner of a local dress shop, walked in with bundles of underwear from her store. One large woman was glad to get into a $7 brushed nylon nightie Mrs Thomas donated.

The RSA people had trouble finding something suitable for another extra-large woman and solved the problem by pinning two page 185blankets together. The clubrooms, a converted cinema, lined with photographs, unit badges and other mementoes of war had never seen anything like this. . . .

Mrs Grace Girdlestone sat quietly in a corner nursing Ivan Farmer, who appeared a lot younger than his eleven years. He was white with shock, and frequently sick, and he kept asking for his mother.

At the rear of the hall, shielded by the kitchen and bar, beautifully-kept billiard tables were stained with seawater and the blood of several seriously injured survivors who were being treated by doctors and nurses until they were taken to hospital. The ambulance arrived too late for one man, who died quietly on the green baize.

Still survivors kept coming in. So many that local officials and the police directed several busloads to the East Harbour Women's Club, and then to the primary school hall nearby. The clubwomen didn't give a damn that their well-cared-for carpet was wet and stained, and members responded magnificently to requests for food, clothing and blankets. The school hall was equipped with one oil heater, but electric heaters materialised for every power-point in the building.

The Hutt Hospital coped easily with the emergency. The one problem was not knowing how many survivors might be brought in; the only available information came from ambulance drivers. Ambulance headquarters tried to phone the hospital, but only two of the fourteen lines were working after the storm, and both were jammed by distressed callers seeking news of relatives and friends. More beds than proved necessary were organised. Staff on duty were asked to work late, and off-duty nurses reported in.

When it was all over, forty-eight survivors had been taken to casualty. Thirty-eight, including three of the four crew of the Tahi Miranda's were admitted. Of those sent to hospital one third were suffering from serious injuries or severe exposure, with four or five unconscious.

Ambulance driver Lawrence Perry took a medical team of two doctors and half a dozen nurses and their equipment from the hospital to the Pencarrow coast after he had delivered his survivors from Victory's boat.

Everything that the sea did to the living and the dead was seen by Perry. The road where he stopped his vehicle to operate as a page 186forward dressing unit was about a foot deep in mud and debris. Two old women were lying on the roadside in the rain. The nurses, who had stayed while the doctors went on ahead, helped Perry and Vince Thompson, another ambulance man, wrap the women in blankets and place them on stretchers. The two men lifted one of the two women on the back of a Land Rover. Thompson used a resuscitator on her as the vehicle headed off.

As the survivors trudged by, Perry and the nurses, their light theatre-gowns soaked, sorted out those well enough to go to the RSA. The others were sped off to hospital.

Perry's vehicle was a warm oasis in a scene of frigid desolation. The motor was running and the heaters were on. When the nurses looked too cold Perry ordered them inside the cab to warm up.

Still the survivors came. Many of them had been cut by the vicious rocks, but were so cold that they hardly bled. Some seemed to have been thrown up in the air and dumped on the rocks, their buttocks torn and ripped. Buses backed to the ambulance to ferry away survivors. More blankets arrived in a Union Company truck. They were badly needed: many survivors had lost much of their clothing as they were flung and twisted in the surf. One girl who told Perry she had swum all the way without a lifejacket arrived unaided at the ambulance dressed only in the remains of tights. She said she had been wearing a pullover when she left the ship and at no stage took it off. Yet when she was hauled up on the beach the pullover had gone. The rescuers wrapped a blanket around her and put her on one of the buses.

Perry watched people still in the water. "I could see them coming in—but there was this line of rocks, and nobody could do anything to help them. Police cadets were in the water up to their necks, arms linked, straining to reach them, but they couldn't get out to the rocks. It was terrible being so powerless. I could hear them hitting the rocks with a plopping sound. They didn't scream or anything."

When he had time Perry scanned the sea inside the rocks, hoping he would be able to pull someone out. Once while he was standing right on the water's edge the body of a woman appeared suddenly and unexpectedly close by. Perry presumed the sea had carried her in along the bottom. He certainly hadn't seen her on the surface.

Salesmanager Roger Wilson was elated to be alive and ashore though he was very wet and very cold and a little dazed by what page 187had happened. The raft had come in near Hinds Point. Wilson and friend John Perham helped get the others out, then stood and wondered exactly where they were. They scrambled through a patch of scrub and started off after the others. Then, realising they were in pretty fair shape, they returned to the beach to see if they could help. They found two bodies lying in the water and pulled them clear after making sure they were quite dead.

Then they spotted an old woman and a man wandering about in a daze. Both were badly cut on the legs. "We took them in tow and had a terrible job keeping the old woman from stopping," says Wilson. "She kept saying she wanted to sit down and couldn't keep going, and to let her die there. But we knew she was frozen and must keep moving. We walked for about three quarters of a mile before we could get four police officers to carry her in." Wilson and Perham walked on to the road-head and the buses which took them to the RSA.

Mrs Phyllis Robertson didn't have the remotest notion where her raft had landed and it seemed that no-one else who had been on board had much idea either. She remembers one of the men saying they might have to turn the raft over and sleep under it. Mrs Robertson felt for sure she'd be sleeping on the beach that night.

But two young men crossed hands to make a seat and they carried her off, her arms around their necks. Then she found she couldn't hold on properly and at her request the two men put her down. "The darlings. I was shaking from head to foot. They sat me on a log and I had a good old cry. Loud as could be." Then a man in a black coat and black hat was at her side, rubbing her hands and body. He lifted her on to his back and humped her along the beach. She hung like a sack of coal. She has no idea how far the man carried her but finally she was lowered gently into a rescue vehicle. As it moved off she held on to an old man whose plight seemed worse than hers. He was trying to talk but couldn't.

Sue Madarasz's rescuer held on to her as she stood dripping on the cold beach and stayed with her until she recovered her senses. When Sue got moving she and a young man assisted a badly shocked steward. Together they walked him about half a mile before a policeman took over. Sue tried helping a woman, but both discovered they could walk more easily if they let each other alone. Sue resumed the long hike with the young man who had helped her with the steward. By a quirk of chance the man was page 188also on his honeymoon. He didn't know what had become of his wife.

Australian nurse Sue Smith saw the injured from her raft loaded on a vehicle but she and others walked. Male survivors carried the two children who had been in the raft. Neither child was injured but both were cold and frightened.

As Sue neared civilisation she was met by Derek McGlellan, whose soup had just run out. The dairy owner bundled Sue and three male survivors into his car and took them back to his shop. Alison, his wife, closed the dairy, and while McClellan set about making more soup she cared for Sue and the others with baths, dry clothes and drinks.

After freeing his trapped wife from under the raft Lynn Kingsbury sent her on ahead and stayed to give what help he could. He pulled in one woman with a nasty gash on her face, exposing the upper part of the lower jawbone. Others had minor cuts and grazes. Some were half-drowned.

Gillian Kingsbury was in no state to help anyone but she soon discovered there were many people on the beach in a far worse condition than herself. And apart from one lone policeman and fellow survivors there was no-one to help the injured and dying. Gillian set out along the beach on the worst and longest mile-walk in her life. The shoreline now was littered with lifejackets and liferafts. On the way to the buses she was passed by more police and other rescuers, but she felt they were about half an hour too late for some people. One of the police tried to remove her life-jacket but she declined to let him; the jacket at least prevented rainwater running down her neck. She was taken to the RSA where she was reunited with Lynn when he arrived about 4.30 pm.

On the beach airwoman Pinky Brown acted more like a rescuer than a survivor. There were no policemen about when she came ashore and so for a start she and another survivor pulled bodies from the water's edge. Several of the victims were women, half-naked and battered. Then Pinky found an old couple wandering about. The woman told Pinky she had only one lung, had had an operation recently and felt ill. Her husband was blue. Pinky's shoes were too small to fit the woman, so she half carried her until a policeman arrived. Scattered about were other elderly survivors, exhausted, sitting and asking for a fire. Pinky tried slapping and massaging hands to get the blueness out. She helped others along page 189the beach and, as if that wasn't enough, found reserves of energy to carry a tall thin Wahine steward on her back, alone and unaided. The steward, glassy-eyed, numbed and shivering, was sitting on the side of the road when Pinky found him. He was still dressed in his white coat. Using all her strength Pinky slung the steward over her back and lurched along the beach, her slight 5 ft. 2 in., 7 st. 8 lb. frame bent almost double. She felt quite proud of herself. Then a rescuer found the pair, decided it somehow wasn't quite right that a young slip of a girl should be carrying a man, and took over. Pinky walked on to the buses.

Mark Powell was in the thick of rescue work when he spotted another liferaft coming in. Because it was riding deep in the water and because its canopy was up, Powell got the impression the raft was full. But it wasn't. As Powell splashed alongside the raft he found it was floating deep because there was over six inches of water sloshing about inside. And then he saw the boy: about nine years old, he was alone in the raft, lying on his side, inert and apparently dead. His face was unpleasantly grey.

Powell grabbed the boy by his lifejacket and blue blazer, lifting him feet first from the raft; water was trickling from his mouth. Powell turned and ran up the shingly beach, stumbling under his load. He put the boy down on his back and undid the top button on his shirt. His clip-on bow tie slipped off one collar point. Powell pushed the boy's head back and leant over him, one hand keeping the small mouth closed tightly. Deeply and evenly Powell breathed into the boy's nose.

"After the first ten breaths his colour lightened a little and I could see there was some circulation. But he didn't move. I had to breathe into him for about twenty minutes before he began to respond. Then his eyes flickered. About ten minutes later he was coughing and trying to vomit, so I rolled him over on his side. He was virtually breathing on his own and I only had to give him occasional assistance."

A few minutes later Powell sat the boy up and put his head between his knees so he could be sick if he wanted to. Another raft was coming in and there was not much more Powell could do for the boy right then. Powell told him not to move, and said that he would come back and carry him along the beach. When he returned about a quarter of an hour later after helping more survivors the boy had gone. Powell didn't see him again, and never page 190discovered who he was or how he had come to be alone in the raft.

Once survivors emerged safely from the beached Wellington Airport liferaft, Alun Williams turned away to aid people thrown from a Wahine raft into the surf nearby. He grabbed several who were close in and helped them ashore. But three others were still twenty yards out and not making much progress against the breakers. Williams left the safety of the beach, swimming out to the rescue. As he was returning from the third trip a wave hurled him on to a rock. The blow at the base of his spine knocked the stuffing out of Williams, cracking a bone and causing internal bruising. He had rested on the beach and returned to his own life-raft to inflate and drape his life jacket around an exhausted woman before he saw two policemen. He waved them further down the rocks where he could see other people coming ashore. Williams watched the police swimming out to drag people in.

Then, barefooted, he walked back along the coast. "It was bloody grim," he remembers. When he reached the buses he spoke to a fireman operating a radio on an Eastbourne Fire Brigade vehicle. The brigade's radio log for the afternoon notes that Wellington fire headquarters was told at 4.37 pm that Williams was safe.

The man who helped fifty-four-year-old Miss Margaret Millar from the cold sea walked her up to the road and sat her down. Then he dashed back to aid others still in the water. Miss Millar did not sit long. The breeze was cold and the rain still beating down. She struggled to her feet and staggered off in the direction where all the helpers were coming from, saddened by the sight of the not-so-lucky. She couldn't help the less fortunate, for it took her all her time to keep herself going. "As I walked barefoot on those sharp rocks I didn't have much feeling, but next day, they were bruised and burning." Halfway to the buses, a mile or so from where she came ashore, a rescuer took off his windjacket and gave it to her. She praises the "wonderful" work of the rescuers but says there were not nearly enough to care for those who were not strong enough or injured. The windjacket warmed her chilled body a little and she tried to assist a young man with an injured back who was having difficulty walking. Two rescuers passed and told them, "Keep walking. You have to keep walking." The young man replied, "I can't." The rescuers looked at him and said "Try", and moved off.

"We just looked at each other," says Miss Millar. The man page 191grimaced and quipped, "We'll have a race." They moved off again but the injured man kept stopping because of the pain. Miss Millar tried to help him but felt she was more of a hindrance. Two more rescuers arrived and she left him with them. Later, she saw the young man carried into the RSA on a stretcher.

A few minutes after police sergeant David McEwen got ashore just north of Hinds Point he spotted David Bradley, the young steward who had also jumped from the Wahine's port side belting, coming in through the surf. McEwen helped Bradley to safety and then they set off the wrong way—toward Pencarrow.

As McEwen said later: "At that stage I didn't know exactly where we were. In fact, while I was swimming ashore I thought we were still out in the straits [Cook Strait] because the shoreline I could see looked familiar and appeared to me to be the Makara coast, and I was saying some pretty nasty things about them telling, us we were in the inner harbour."

McEwen and Bradley began moving toward Pencarrow but as they did so McEwen saw people coming ashore behind and retraced his steps. After helping and talking to other people he realised suddenly he was in the inner harbour, south of Eastbourne. He had quite a chase after Bradley, who was still walking away from civilisation.

Bradley, exhausted by his long, numbing swim, sat down on the road. McEwen went back a little way and struggled to get a dead woman from the water. When he had done this he met two constables who were in the van of the police helpers. McEwen told them where Bradley was and started the long tramp to Eastbourne. As he walked McEwen saw elderly people sitting or lying on the beach, exhausted and unable to move. He found a man who was trying to support a woman. McEwen tried to help but the woman was too heavy. She lay down and McEwen wrapped her in a police tunic which was lying on the beach.

Later McEwen discovered another woman sitting on the roadside. Apart from her lifejacket she was practically naked. She also was heavy. McEwen couldn't move her so packed life jackets around her and gave her his own jacket.

For what seemed like hours at the time, but was probably only ten or fifteen minutes, Aucklander Graham Poole lay helpless on the beach after his nightmare trip across the harbour. Slowly he got to his hands and knees and crawled up the beach. A wet, cold page 192survivor picked him up and half-carried him down the rough rocky road. They passed people stretched out dead on the beach.

"Then we met one policeman in uniform, running. He told us to keeping moving," says Poole. "Then we met five more and then a host, all running in the same direction. Shortly after a Land Rover came along and five or six of us were put in." The vehicle took them to the buses.

When Dianne Houltham recovered her senses on the beach she tried to stand but couldn't. While she waited for the strength to flow back into her limbs she sat, wondering where she was, what she should do, and what had happened to Chris Morrah, the purser with whom she had drifted across harbour. In time Dianne found she was able to stand and shuffled off over rocks and driftwood.

"Somewhere I could hear voices and then could see people coming my way. Someone came running toward me; his face I knew and welcomed." It was Fred Rossiter from Dianne's hometown of Waipawa. He was a steward on the Wahine, although Dianne had not seen him before that day. Rossiter told Dianne where she was, and together they walked about a mile. Then a policeman carried Dianne. "I couldn't walk another yard."

By 4.15 pm bus-driver Mark Powell had got down to Hinds Point. He was wet and exhausted. But as he headed back toward Eastbourne there was more for him to do. He met steward David Bradley and helped him to walk. Bradley was without shoes and Powell was down to his socks. He had given his shoes to one woman. His oilskin had gone to another and he had wrapped his jersey around the boy he had revived.

As Powell made his way back he found a woman sitting on a rock with the water lapping her feet. She was choking on sea water. Powell laid her down and gave her ten deep breaths. The woman began breathing normally again and thanked Powell and said "I'll be all right now." She got up and moved slowly away.

The crew of the wrecked yacht, Tahi Miranda were among the last ashore. Nick Cass lay on the beach without any feeling. He was naked. The surf had torn off every stitch of clothing. He vaguely remembers being carried to an ambulance that also contained his mates Colgan, Devitt, and Lysaght.

"I saw this old woman's hand move. It was terrible. Everybody thought they were all dead. We pulled her out and got to work with the resuscitator. She came around and was taken to hospital."

The vehicles ground by. One passed with a naked body draped over the spare wheel on the front. A man remonstrated with the youth behind the wheel but received only a blank stare. He was obviously overcome by the tragedy of the afternoon. The body had probably been placed there by a desperate rescuer who had no time to consider his action.

The only laugh Perry had all afternoon was when someone reported the startled reaction of a policeman searching through piles of deep kelp who was suddenly confronted by an angry sea-lion, rearing and startling. True or not, the story added a glimmer of colour to a grey, stark afternoon.

When Powell got to the Gollan Valley turn off at about 5.30 there was a bus-load of survivors ready to leave, but no driver for the bus. So he piloted the vehicle to the school hall. As he arrived a Gipsy screeched to a stop with two survivors aboard in urgent need of oxygen. Powell jumped on the vehicle's bonnet and guided the driver to the RSA. Pie had hardly got through the doors of the clubrooms when he was being stripped of his wet clothes. Now he remembered that the oilskin he had given to a woman earlier on the beach contained his $42 pay-packet. When he had finished dressing Powell began to search for the woman and his coat. He could not find them.

The flow of survivors was easing but the hall was still busy. Policemen were taking names and addresses of survivors, Post Office staff were jotting down messages to be sent by wire, and survivors were phoning relatives and friends. Roger Wilson, who remembers the RSA organisation as "superb", got through to his wife in Auckland on the telephone. "She didn't sound the slightest bit concerned when I told her I was all right and not to worry, because she had been assured, earlier in the morning, that the ship had berthed and all passengers were ashore. Her boss had also blocked the news getting to her to save her concern, luckily. She sounded quite surprised when I told her that I had no luggage or the car." page 194Pinky Brown's telegram to her mother in Napier was brief and to the point: "Was on the Wahine. All right. Be home soon."

RSA member John Stichbury phoned the wife of a young Wahine crewman and went back to speak to the man. The pyjamas the crewman was now wearing looked familiar, and Stichbury realised with a jolt that they were his own. His wife had been home during the afternoon and raided the linen cupboard.

Mrs Grace Girdlestone was still sitting with Ivan Farmer. Neither the boy's mother nor his brothers had turned up. The police wanted to take Ivan into the ralway station, but Mrs Girdlestone was loath to let him go. When Dr Bill Treadwell of Wellington walked into the RSA about 5 pm after helping earlier at Seatoun, the local doctors had the few remaining injury cases well in hand and Treadwell found there was virtually nothing to do. But a policeman said he was concerned about Ivan, and when Mrs Girdlestone found that Treadwell was a doctor and would look after the boy she surrendered her charge. Treadwell took Ivan out to his car and left for the railway station.

From the RSA Mark Powell hitched a ride to the women's club and there discovered the woman who had worn his oilskin. But the garment had long since been shed in a police car. It wasn't until nearly three months later that Powell recovered his coat and pay-packet. A fellow rescuer had taken it home thinking it was his, and didn't discover his mistake until early July.

Mrs Phyllis Robertson and Sue Madarasz were at the women's club. Mrs Roberston was waiting for her family to come and pick her up. She had sent simple telegrams to her husband and sisters in Oamaru. "Saved," said the messages. She sat now dressed in tweedy tights, two men's pullovers, red socks and men's sandals. The women at the hall had poured half a cup of brandy into her. Nearby sat an elderly man, crying over and over, "My wife never came up, my wife never came up."

Sue Madarasz was waiting for transport. She had written out a telephone message to her mother: "Ask if Peter rang. Tell him I am OK. Not to worry. Susan."

Tired and all as he was, Powell's long day wasn't quite finished yet. A driver was needed to take survivors from the women's club to the railway station. Powell boarded the bus and kicked the starter into life. As the bus moved off toward the city, a fleet of vehicles was heading for Wellington with the dead from the eastern shore.