INTER ISLAND Steamer

Korero (AEWS), Volume 3, Issue 3, 12 March 1945, Page 18

INTER ISLAND Steamer

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Circumstances the master of the inter-island steamer express, “ Wahine,” was saying, have to be exceptional for our crossing time-table to be altered ; we steam to a schedule that is set to the minute and run to routine. In fact, the third officer said (indicating the clock in the wheelhouse) we find this something of a nuisance : it keeps perfect time, of course, but it’s electric and the minute hand advances at thirty-second intervals ; it means we can keep our position accurate only to the half minute. The ship swung into the stream ; we were on our way.

Suddenly, breaking the quiet, somebody came running ' fast, his shoes smacking against the deck ; a someone that was a civilian, hat in hand, and he came puffing up the steel ladder to the navigation bridge. The master unclasped his hands from behind his back, the third officer stepped forward, the helmsman looked and grinned, we wondered ; only the ship seemed to notice nothing unusual about a civilian coming running to the navigation bridge with hat in hand. The urgency of the position did not call for introductions. “ Captain,’’ he said gasping, looking red, “ I’m,aboard.’’ He took a breath, and seemed to resent the time it wasted. “ But I shouldn’t be. There’s been a mistake, my wife’s at home and I should be too; I came on board to do some business and I’ve been left behind.” He took another breath. In his despair and excitement he dropped his hat, his face was colouring even redder. The ship, with her cargo and mails and six hundred passengers, including the one “ left behind,” was on the way to Lyttelton, the Wellington wharf was lost far back in the twilight.

There was a pause for the master to say his mind, then to make it up. Away, dimly through the evening, was a racing skiff with crew of four practising, backs bending to the count of the school-boy cox. The light craft was skimming over the harbour water. “ Perhaps we can hail ’em; we’ll give’it a go,” said the captain. Orders went to the engineroom, the ship slowly lost speed ; a rope ladder dropped over the side swished through the water ; to attract the attention of the skiff’s crew a seaman flashed, blinked, and winked with an Al dis lamp ; the third officer with a megaphone to his mouth began to shout. Unable to understand what had happened, passengers clustered to the rail, wondering and supposing and finally realizing ; knowing what had happened, the unwilling passenger stood twisting his hat nervously in his hands with nowhere to look— dismayed embarrassment on his face, showed plainly that if he was a stowaway it wa? through no wish of his.

“ Can you come alongside ? ” the voice roared from the bridge across the quiet water and through the still summer evening. But to the skiff’s crew it was a message easier to hear than to understand : what on earth, you could imagine them asking each other, does .a 4,000tonner with two big funnels want with us, a 12 ft. racing skiff ? If the question had been, Our engines have broken down ; can you give us a tow ? ” it could have perplexed them no more. They lay on their oars. Then thinly across the water came a small voice. “ Who said so ? ’’ 'it asked. More shouting from the bridge made the position as clear as distance would allow. Oars dipped and flashed and feathered, the skiff drew

nearer with strong rhythmic strokes. Already ■ our stowaway, his hat now jammed tightly over his ears, had carefully but thankfully lowered himself down the swinging rope steps until he was no more than a foot or two above the water. A false step would land him either in the harbour or through the frail shell of the skiff : he was between the devil and a sea that was salt and wet if not deep blue. He knew it, and so did all the spectators; apart from the instructions from the stroke to his men, there was not a sound to be heard. At last the manoeuvring was successful, the passenger stepped as lightly and as carefully as nervousness and haste would allow on the centreboard of the skiff and crouched in such room as there was between the cox’s knees. There was a cheer from the decks. A hat was waved in thanks to the master. Deep down in the bows, the skiff drew away from the ship’s side ; the stroke gave a last glance to the bridge which seemed to say, “As one skipper to another, ' I hope you won’t allow this sort of thing to happen too often.” The master, hands clasped again behind his back, glanced at the wheelhouse clock ; it ticked over another half minute. Yes, but how did he get on board without a ticket ? the ship’s officers asked each other. We steamed down the harbour into the night. The turbine steamer “ Wahine,” built in 1913 at Dumbarton, on the Clyde, has spent the most of her thirty-two years’ service on the interIsland run ; by now she knows the way as surely as her master. Her speed of about 17 knots would be kept up effortlessly until Lyttelton was reached early next morning. Partners on the run, the two ships, “ Rangatira” (Big Chief) and “ Wahine” (wife of Big Chief), sail on alternate nights from either Wellington or Lyttelton, carrying passengers, mail, light cargo, motor-cars, and stock (particularly pedigree animals and racehorses). Sailing schedules allowing for easy steaming generally are run to clockwork, and although delays in departure sometimes are caused (especially at Lyttelton and usually through the late arrival of railway trains carrying passengers and

mails), berthing in both Lyttelton and Wellington is usually to the minute. And late arrivals are caused more often by poor visibility and fog than by dirty weather. More important than strict time-table running is safety of passengers and crew, and the company (the Union Steam Ship Co.) has a record that not often has been marred since the service began in 1879. Through the years there have been mishaps, some, of course, more serious than others, but generally the damage has been not to human life or to cargo, but to the ships. More often than not fog has been the cause. “I- suppose you could find your way with your eyes shut after all these years,” some one said to the skipper of the “Wahine” while we were on the bridge. “ Yes, we have to — when it’s foggy,” he replied. In its seventy years of passenger and cargo ship management in New Zealand, the Union Steam Ship Co. has from time to time introduced the latest and most modern improvements in transportation by ocean-going vessels : the first overseas ship of mild steel and bilge keels, the “ Rotomahana ” (1879) ; the first tripleexpansion steamer to sail the Pacific, the “ Mararoa ” ; the first vessel ever fur-

nished throughout with incandescent lighting, the “ Manapouri ” (1882) ; first turbine-driven ship, the “ Loongana ” •(1904) ; first passenger vessel using oil fuel under Board of Trade certificate, the “ Niagara (1913) ; at the time of her entry to the Pacific mail-service, the ■first large ship using motor engines, the ■“ Aorangi ” (1924).

The “ Rangatira,” the first steamer propelled by the turbo-electric system to ■sail in Australasian waters, was launched in the yards of Vickers, Armstrongs, Ltd., at Barrow in Furness, on the Clyde, on April 16, 1931, by Lady Wilford, the wife of the High Commissioner, Sir Thomas Wilford. Lady Wilford, with the best wishes of the builders, was presented (according to a newspaper report) with “ the little memento of a diamond "brooch, in the form of a true lover’s knot with a big centre diamond, and on behalf ■of the company, with a bar brooch with three diamonds on platinum.” The ceremony was as quiet as possible because of the great depression in the ship-building industry at that time ; and with her launching the hope was expressed that •she wouldn’t last as long as the “ Takapuna ” (in service round New Zealand from 1883 to 1924) because of the need for further orders.

In all ways the “Rangatira” came through her trials successfully (developing on the Skelmorlie measured mile in the Firth of Clyde more than 22 knots without the full overload capacity of her engines). After an uneventful voyage via the Panama Canal at the easy speed of 13 knots, she arrived at Port Chalmers ; she carried no passengers and made no stops except to refuel at Curacao and to navigate the canal.

With the arrival of the “ Rangatira ” there passed from active service another of New Zealand’s pioneer steamers, the “ Maori,” the first ship to be built specially for the inter-island run. In her twentyfour years of regular, uneventful service she saw the retirement of the “ Rotomahana ” and the “ Mararoa,” and the coming of the “ Wahine,” for many years her partner on the run, and the “ Rangatira.” To-day, in spite of her age, she stands bv to take over service when

necessary. On November 5, 1931, the new steamer berthed to the minute after her first trip. It was the “ Maori’s ” last regular run ; and to the new arrival she sent a message of greeting which, when translated from Maori, read :— Welcome O Son, the aged must give place to the young. Quit you like a man. be < strong, be brave. The “ Rangatira ” replied : — Farewell O mother of mine. Thy son will till the fields you have prepared. And from the “ Wahine ” to the “ Rangatira ” came the greeting : — Greetings from your brother. We join in service for our people. Love. It’s hot enough, we said tugging at our ties, to grow bananas down here ; and although we had been down below only a minute or two our hands were clammy and hot when we shook hands with the “ Rangatira’s ” engine-room Chief. We were wearing light summer battledress, and the night on deck had been chilly, the wind keen from the sea ; perhaps for that reason we found the heat so noticeable. The Chief said no, it wasn’t hot enough to grow bananas to-night, it was only 115 degrees F. ; sometimes in the tropics the temperature had risen to more than 140 degrees. After we had been below for thirty minutes or more, we understood more clearly what had caused a fireman on a ship in the Mediterranean to rush from his stoking one noon to the deck where he took a flying jump over the side. Apart from the heat, the engine-room is more suggestive of a steam-driven power-house than the usual “ underworld ” of a steamer. And a steamdriven power-house is what it really is : 11,000 kilowatts are generated, enough current to supply all the needs of a small town. In fact, the Chief said, once when Arapuni broke down and Wellington was short of power, a suggestion was made of employing the generating power of the “ Rangatira ” to relieve the need of the city ; the means were there, and it was only technical difficulties that stopped the change-over.

The first five vessels to be fitted with turbo-electric machinery were built during the Great War to special Admiralty “ hush-hush ” order ; the “ Rangatira ” was only the nineteenth. Simply stated, her motive power is provided by six boilers heated by oil fuel supplying steam to two separate turbo alternators, each fitted with condensing plant and auxiliaries. The alternators drive two electric generators, which in turn develop the current to drive two double-unit synchronous motors, each of which is coupled direct to one of the two propeller shafts. Isolators, also, are provided to enable each alternator to be connected to its respective motor or either of the alternators to both propeller motors. Provision is also made for one half unit of each motor to be isolated when the ship is running only on one turbo alternator set. The explanation of the machinery given here is very simple, but it would not be helped, probably, by a visit to the “ works ” : in addition to the heat, there are hundreds of controls,

levers, and switches, there are instrument panels, and the whole place bristles with warning devices which sound bells or show red lights as soon as anything is wrong. For instance, take the pumps : there are a ballast pump, bilge pumps, sanitary pumps, an auxiliary bilge pump, fresh-water pumps, oil-transfer pumps, an oil-bilge-well pump, and a distilled-water pump—thirteen of them, all electrically driven. The engineers talk of volts and kilowatts, ratings, phases, and pulses, balancer booster sets and excitation purposes, r.p.m.s, ■ s.h.p.s, and B.T.H.s. The only thing we had no doubt about was that everything went; the only thing we had doubt about was how. With the propelling and auxiliary machinery the emphasis is on safety; each unit is duplicated, and should there be a breakdown in one section there can be practically instantaneous switch-over to an alternative unit. It is not hard to believe the claim that a turbo-electrically propelled vessel has never been known to have a complete mechanical breakdown.

After a time in the engine-room we couldn’t help coming to the conclusion that the only thing that doesn’t register is the heat. And how any person could stay long enough even to start the machinery is more than we could imagine. On the bridge it was as black as thunder and blowing a gale. It was nearly midnight and the sea was moving and rolling into blackness, tossing in an angry restlessness : the round moon was falling drunkenly through clouds, pulling, shoving, tugging, and bumping its way so violently through the night that we would have felt no surprise to see it give up its stormy efforts and fall into the sea round us. On watch was the third officer, the helmsman, and the lookout who shares the trick at the wheel (it must be a relief for him to shelter from that tearing wind in the comparative quiet of the wheelhouse). At midnight they will be relieved, not to be called again (except in emergency) until the ship is outside the heads at Lyttelton. We are running at 17 knots into a sou’wester, an easy speed ; the “ Rangatira ” can steam at more than 22 knots (she has touched 24 knots on the run to Picton), but on the 174-mile trip from Wellington to Lyttelton no such effort is necessary. In 1924 the “ Wahine ” set an inter-island express record run of 8 hours 21 minutes (averaging 20-9 knots) that was not broken until 1933 when the “ Rangatira ” covered the distance in 8 hours 16 minutes. As far as is known, the actual record for the

trip is still held by H.M.S. “ Diomede,” which in 1933 took less than seven and a half hours. But to-night we are attempting to break no records ; the two propellers are turning at only 152 revolutions a minute. No light shows on the bridge except for th* 1 faint glow from the illuminated instrument dials. In one corner is the fire-detector panel which encloses the mouthpieces of a number of tubes leading from the engine-room, the holds, and other parts of the ship. A draught of air flowing continuously through each of the tubes draws smoke in any section of the ship into the alarm box. In the holds smoke from a cigarette is sufficient to sound the alarm ; and one night a stable lad who was attending his racehorses in their stalls was most surprised and mystified when an officer from the bridge popped his head into the bold and said, " Please put out that cigarette.” But the fire detector is only one of the gadgets v to be found on the bridge. Not the least interesting of the others is the latest in depth-finding apparatus and a Marconi direction-finder. Telemotor control from the bridge is used for the electro-hydraulic steering gear and for use in manoeuvring is a bow rudder. If it wasn’t for the howl of the wind, the swish of the sea tops, there would be quiet on the bridge with an almost complete absence of vibration, which is one of the advantages of a turbo-electric-driven ship. On we cut through the night and over the miles. It was nearly 1 o’clock, a light was winking from the coast; somewhere there was Kaikoura with its fishing fleet, its collection of shops, buildings, and houses, its farms, and those high grand mountains behind, the snow, and the bush. But to us there was only midnight blackness, with the regular flash of a light about • ten miles away over our starboard bow. At least there was no fog to-night. Soon we would be passing the “ Wahine.” Few would know about the meeting of those two ships in the night : except on the boat deck, where an accordion had been playing earlier and people had been dancing and singing, where there were still couples quiet in the even deeper

shadows of the lifeboats, all the ship was asleep. But in the wind the lookout was waiting for the colour of the " Wahine’s ” foremast light, the second officer was glancing at his watch. This nightly meeting is usually to the minute.' Cutting their bulk roundly through the shadow, the lifeboats seemed to keep a watch of their own ; there are twelve of them, with gravity lowering davits and handworked propellers (like railway jiggers) swung ready for action over the railings. Nearly seven hundred of the passengers and crew can be carried in the boats ; and, if necessary, there is plenty more room on the floating rafts.

Since 1795, when the sailing ship "Endeavour” (not Captain Cook’s vessel, but a whaler) piled up in Dusky Sound, there have been more than one thousand three hundred wrecks on New Zealand coasts and outlying islands—a toll of the sea that is amazingly high considering the comparatively few years of European navigation in these waters. These wrecks, which have been fairly evenly distributed round the coast, include ships burnt, foundered, and pillaged in addition to the commoner disasters caused by rocks and river bars. And more than forty vessels have left New Zealand harbours never to be heard of again. One of the most interesting of these mysteries was the clipper " Glenmark," one of the fastest sailing ships ever to come to New Zealand ; in 1872 she left Lyttelton with a full cargo of wool, /80,000 of gold from the West Coast diggings, and fifty people. She vanished forever.

The year 1890 was disastrous: in ten months five vessels left New Zealand never to call at another port. Polar ice, with its translucent bulk just awash and almost impossible to see, was probably the main cause. It was certainly the explanation of what for many years was known as the Marlborough ” mystery. The stately clipper, on what was her last voyage, left New Zealand with twenty-nine people and a valuable cargo. She never arrived at her next port of call. Many years later she was found still afloat in a deep indentation in the precipitous coast of Terra del Fuego. Her timbers were rotted and green, her ghostly yards were

creaking, and on the decks were the bleached human skeletons of the pa: - sengers and crew, who had died from starvation and cold. Her end gives an indication of what was the fate of many of those ships never heard of again after leaving harbour in New Zealand.

The inter-island steamer expresses have never got up to things like that. But they have had . their mishaps. Compared with the " Wahine ” and the " Maori," the " Rangatira ” has not been a lucky ship. After she was launched and shortly before she was to sail for New Zealand she caught fire and damage was caused that delayed her departure by several weeks. In 1933 at Lyttelton she gashed several plates in a collision with the floating crane, " Rapaki.” In February, 1936, there was nearly a disaster. Off Sinclair Head, Wellington, in a sixty-mile-an-hour gale she struck a submerged rock, holing herself badly in the bow. With her screws out of the water, deep down in the bows, and with a slight list to port, the crippled ship crept stern first down the harbour through wild weather. There was 30 ft. of water in her forward hold.

For three months the "Rangatira” was in dock for repairs. For ships the Wellington heads always have been a death-trap; many sailing ships and steamers have been wrecked there, the

loss of life has been more than one hundred and twenty. Years ago it was often days before news of the disasters was brought to Wellington : once the first the authorities knew of a wreck only a few miles from their offices was when the captain rode into the city on a horse with the information and a request for help. Another time homing pigeons were sent with a message for assistance. Worst disaster of all was when the ferry steamer “ Penguin ” returning from Picton was wrecked ; the vessel was a total loss and seventy-four of her passengers and crew were drowned

It must have been an exciting night for Wellington in April, 1938, with the water of the storm-ridden harbour whipped by gusts of seventy miles an hour, the wave-crests picked out by glaring searchlights, the wink and flutter of Morse lamps between two cruisers, and a collision between the stern of the “ Rangatira ” and the bow of H.M.N.Z.S. “ Achilles.” The steamer damaged herself, and “ Achilles ” more, that night of a north-west gale when an anchor which was dropped to stop her drifting from control fouled the cruiser’s anchor cable. Nearly three years later she holed herself again when one morning of dense white fog she slid gently on to the reef at the western headland of Pigeon Bay, twenty miles from Lyttelton. For ten hours she remained hard aground until she was helped off on the afternoon tide by a tug and an intercolonial steamer. The seven hundred and fifty passengers were transferred to a cargo steamer to finish their journey.

The “ Wahine ” has been luckier. Probably the most serious of what have been , minor mishaps was when she crashed in a dense fog into Pipitea Wharf at Wellington in 1936. For 20 ft. she ground and tore a way through massive piles, iron stanchions, and reinforced concrete to stop, shuddering, only a few feet from the wharf buildings. Pushing, pulling, and straining by two tugs for four hours moved her only a foot ; to stop her filling with water from the making tide she had to be cut from the wharf by oxy-acetylene lamps.

More damage was caused than in all her years of service in the Great War. One morning before daylight in 19x5 the “ Wahine,” then a new ship with an uncommon turn of speed, slipped through the heads at Port Chalmers to sail for the other side of the world. It was 1919 before she returned. The bright brass plate in her saloon summarizes her years of war. It reads : “ Record of War Service —H.M.S. ‘ Wahine ’ —October 13, 1915, to May 28, 1916, Dispatch vessel to Gallipoli Forces ; July 22, 1916, to April 21, 1919, minelayer. Number of mining operations carried out, 76. Total number of mines laid, 11,378. Presented to the officers and ship’s company serving in H.M.S. “Wahine” on the conclusion of hostilities.” Not the least of her exploits during the war was on a trip from Mudros to Malta when she landed a direct hit on the conning tower of a German submarine which was preparing to launch a torpedo at her. No one, unfortunately, knows the result : the “ Wahine ” didn’t stop to see.

It’s early morning and Lyttelton is still grey. To lessen the force of a wash which once swept a most surprised fisherman and his son off the rocks into what had been, a minute before, a flat sea, and which has caused, sometimes, small craft to smash into each other, the “ Rangatira ” steams down the harbour at half speed. We are on time—at least, to the half minute. “ I have a faint recollection of some pitching, Sir,” says the master to the first officer ; but at least last night the waves had not been 40 ft. high ; we would take fifteen minutes to berth (stern first), not the two hours the “ Wahine ” took (stern first) one roaring sou’-west morning. Soon the passengers are on the wharf and away to their trains. The mail is unloaded ; soon after follow the motor-cars and the cargo from the holds. The horse stalls are swung up from down below. Some of these thoroughbreds, yearlings from the Trentham sales, give trouble. One, a colt, has to be led, coaxed, pushed, pulled, and finally carried into his box. “ Must be a stayer,” grunts one of the wharfies.