WAIRARAPA WRECK

Hokitika Guardian, 2 November 1931, Page 2

WAIRARAPA WRECK

OLD TRAGEDY RECALLED. RED FUNNEL SHIP LOST. RAN ON GREAT BARRIER. The present generation cannot realise how slowly news travelled even as late as 37 years ago. The Union Company s intei colonial Jtqsimer AVairarapa was lost on Miner's Head, Great Barrier, on Sunday, just 37 eyars ago on Tuesi day last, but although the tragedy oc- ' mured only 60 miles from Auckland, jiews did not reach the city until the | following Thursday, when the NorthI ern Company’s usual weekly boat reI turned from the island. The town was horror-struck, and everyone felt all the more helpless when it was realised that the tragedy had’ happened ’ and was practically over before Auckland people knew about it. The AVairarapa, though a mere cockleshell compared to the big ships oi to-day—-sh e "'as only 1786 tons—was ! considered a very lino craft 37 years 1 ago and when one oi tile Red Funnel I skippers rose to command such a vesj sol he was as proud as the present--1 day commodore of a big trans-Atlantic fleet. She used to run in the intercolonial trade, Sydney to Auckatnd, down the coast to Bluff, and then hack to Australia. The passenger trade on the New Zealand coast must have been fairly lucrative, for those were the , days before the North Island Main Trunk railway. Foggy Weatncr. No one ever explained how the AVairarapa came to be wrecked, but it was always tacitly understood that she was trying to adhere to time-table—those i were the days when there was compefc!if ion in the Sydiiey-Aiickla.nd ,run — and that she kept going in foggy wea- | tlier when prudence demanded that she should have slowed down. It was j said that she turned the corner at the i top end of New Zealand in n fog, and that she struck the Barrier instead of the channel, a little to the west of I where she came to grief, because she j was c redited with having run a greater distance than she had. In plotting off the course from th e point where ■ she was assumed to be, a difference of | a mile or so was of vital importance in striking the channel between the Great Barrier ami the Little Barrier.

The spot where the AVairarapa struck head on is wild and rocky and the wonder is not that anyone was drowned but that anyone was saved. The high, rocky cliffs seem to offer no hold at all at their wave-dashed feet, and

the steamer was fortunate in striking one of the rare ledges on that part of the oonc+.

Struck At Midnight

It way shortly after the watch had been changed at midnight on Sunday, October 28, 1894, that the look-out unw u black muss loom out of the mist right ahead, When the order was given to go astern, it wag too late, and perhaps it was just,,as well, for, as it was, the wreck hung on the ledge, and out of the 230 people on hoard 137 were saved. Owing to the angle at which the hull lay it was •possible to launch only two of th,e ship’s boats, and they could only take some GO people. Th e others had to remain on the wreck. -As the stern sank everyone crowded to the for’ard end, and the survivors were at last driven into the fore rigging. Many were washed overboard by the waves, and some succumbed to sheer exhaustion. The sen was so rough that one* of the boats capsized as soon as it hit the water, and all in her were drowned. At dawn one of the stewards managed to get ashore with a line, and by tiiis means a number of lives were saved. Those who did get ashore on the rocks had to spend 39 hours in scanty clothing, and with only oranges for food. Ma oris and other residents on the island helped in the rescue work, and the survivors were taken to Catherine Bay. Bodies wore washed ashore for days after the catastrophe, and these victims of the workt disaster that has happened in Auckland waters, were buried on the shores of Catherine Bav.