Island’s killer sulphur enterprise
An element of mystery will forever lie over the 1914 event that killed 11 sulphur miners on White Island, as Jessica Long reports.
It was early in the morning when a part of Te Puia o Whakaari’s (White Island) crater rim collapsed, causing a landslide that buried 11 men.
Like a bulldozer, the earth swept down the natural walls of New Zealand’s most active volcano into the crater’s lake.
Rubble buried the factory below and the sulphur miners camped within, possibly pushing their bodies deep into the sea.
The ‘‘catastrophe’’ on the Bay of Plenty island occurred on Thursday, September 10, 1914 but, without any survivors, exact times had to be roughly pieced together.
A ‘‘disastrous thermal eruption’’ was believed to follow the landslide, later blamed on debris blocking the blowhole, according to a 1914 New Zealand Herald report of the incident.
‘‘A dense volume of black smoke was seen rising from the island’’, and a tremor was felt about 50km away at Opotiki the next day.
Albert Mokomoko, the Northern Steamship Company’s pilot, raised fears for the workers’ safety after he lost contact with the men.
He had met the labourers at the island just a few days earlier but it was almost a week after the disaster before Mokomoko decided to investigate the shoreline.
The factory where the men were believed to have slept was built close to the water’s edge, inside the crater’s 2km diameter. Mokomoko edged his boat along the water’s edge in failing light but there was nothing, and nobody, in sight.
The area he scanned was once a lake but had been drained in the hope of finding rich sulphur deposits below.
He turned back to Opotiki to report what he had seen and on Saturday, September 19, search parties were sent
‘As long as it’s smoking, it’s fine because it’s releasing pressure . . . locals still go with that story.’ White Island Tours general manager Patrick O’Sullivan
to investigate the landslide.
Police found portions of AJC McKim’s manager’s house, his wire stretcher and employees’ whares along the coastline and floating at sea.
‘‘The material was so hot and steaming that work had to be stopped,’’ the first Herald article about the event reported.
The men who searched the area found mounds of dirt and rock spilled over about 40 acres (16 hectares).
Initial reports were uncertain whether 10 or 11 men had been killed. A cook raised the number of workers but details of his whereabouts were unclear.
‘‘No bodies were ever discovered. I guess they didn’t keep very good records,’’ White Island Tours general manager Patrick O’Sullivan says.
The island’s resident cat, ‘‘Peter the Great’’, survived but was found in a ‘‘manic state’’.
O’Sullivan says one theory was that the cat prowled the outer parts of the crater in search of wildlife that night, leaving the men alone in the factory.
Today, the remaining mounds of the fatal landslide and remnants of the fallen crater walls lie at the bottom of the ‘‘lake’’.
A second factory was built in the 1920s above the original site and mining continued for another decade or so before it was permanently closed.
The mined sulphur was of a poor standard, mainly used for fertiliser, and eventually the business became unprofitable.
The New Zealand Sulphur Company produced 11,000 tonnes of sulphur in its 30 years of production. Thirteen of its workers lost their lives in that time.
The year 1914 had been an unlucky one for the company. Three months after mining began, a man was killed by a large retort which burst in May. It was believed to have been a result of corrosion and the plant was then closed for maintenance.
Soon after, another man was killed by ‘‘exploding molten rock covering him’’, O’Sullivan says.
Decaying machinery is all that remains now.
The island is a private reserve owned by the Buttle Family Trust. Tours are run to view the steaming vents as plumes of white steam and gases stretch metres into the sky on a still winter day.
In 2014, a commemoration ceremony was held at Te Puia o Whakaari to honour the lost men. Seven of those who died in the 1914 landslide were from Auckland. It was understood that all but one, a J Byrne, was single.
A search for the men’s descendants was made but it wasn’t until last week that a possible connection was found.
O’Sullivan says he received a call from a Tauranga man who claimed his wife was related to the labourer, Byrne.
Work is under way to verify that claim, he says. ‘‘We thought the story got lost.’’
There is an urban myth that keeps locals calm about the deadly island, he says. ‘‘As long as it’s smoking, it’s fine because it’s releasing pressure ... locals still go with that story.’’