A honeymoon wreck at sea
For three days New Zealand life went on unaware of the tragedy on a remote point of a remote island. Tom Hunt reports.
James Johnston’s African grey parrot was missing. It was somewhere out there fluttering its red tail flying around Auckland.
A girl named Sully was recovering from phosphorous poisoning and a curious dognapping for ransom phenomenon was plaguing New Zealand’s owners of ‘‘fancy dogs’’.
The hum of New Zealand – in newspaper classifieds and briefs – drummed on almost entirely unaware that 121 people had died when their Sydney to Auckland steamer, SS Wairarapa, slammed into rocks at the northern end of Great Barrier Island.
It was October, 29, 1894 – 122 years ago this week – and the incident would become New Zealand’s third-worst shipwreck.
In the Auckland Star the next day, just two words were given to the ship: ‘‘Wairarapa overdue.’’
Meanwhile, the lucky ones who survived were clinging to rocks on the north end of Great Barrier Island with nothing but crates of oranges, which had washed ashore for them to eat.
It would be three days before news reached the mainland as the only contact the island had with the outside world was a weekly steamer.
When the news broke, second mate Joseph Lucas Clark was among the first to talk.
The weather from Sydney had been good but going past Three Kings Island near Cape Reinga early on the Sunday morning the air was ‘‘thick and foggy’’. It worsened through the day as the ship steamed towards tragedy.
It was 12.10am on Monday morning when the ship struck.
‘‘We felt a severe shock, which roused everyone on board.
‘‘It soon became known that the vessel had run on the rocks, although the night was so dark that no land was visible until the steamer struck.
‘‘There was then a big sea running, the passengers behaved with great coolness.’’
The life boats were put out. ‘‘Some of the lady passengers got into them with great difficulty, as the ship had filled with water, and the sea was breaking over her, washing people away.
‘‘We tried to launch the starboard boats, but owing to the heavy list of the vessel and the heavy seas, they were smashed, and a few who were in them were precipitated into the water.
‘‘I do not know whether they were saved.’’
Two of those among the rescued were Mariano Vella with his new wife Elizabeth, whom he was bringing back to New Zealand on their honeymoon.
Their great-grandson Phill Simmonds, these days an animator on Kapiti Coast, has had the story passed down from generation to generation.
After the boat went into the sheer, 100-metre cliff the captain had reversed back before the ship went down.
In the water was absolute blackness as Mariano groped frantically for his new wife among the panicked horses and people.
‘‘He recognised her by feeling her long hair in the water.’’
They held on to the ship’s rigging, saving a boy’s life in the process.
While mainland New Zealand was slow to hear of the tragedy, local Maori Ngati Wai, effectively exiled to the island’s north end by European occupation, saw debris in the water and launched a ‘‘massive rescue mission’’.
Simmonds was a baby when his grandmother – the last survivor from the wreck – died but as an adult he made the trip north to the site with his 11-year-old son as he researched an animated film on his family’s history.
The tragedy ‘‘may have well have been yesterday’’ as they looked at those sheer cliffs, plunging straight into the deep sea.
‘‘It was more profound than I expected when I stared onto those rocks and looked into that little bay.’’
Years later, he got hold of a voice recording of his greatgrandmother talking of the sinking. He and his brother Jeff Simmonds animated the story, and her words, in A Very Nice Honeymoon.
She recalled, in a still-thick Dalmatian accent, being in the water till 6am, when local Maori came.
She feared they had come to eat them but it soon became clear they were there as rescuers.
There were two days at the pa – ‘‘one blanket with five women’’ – before they were collected.
According to to Nzhistory.net.nz, Captain McIntosh had been steaming at 13 knots – or 24kmh – through thick fog, despite concern from passengers and crew, when the Wairarapa smashed into rocks.
A Court of Inquiry found he was too blame – not just for the excessive speed but also a wrong course he had taken long before, near Three Kings Islands, north of Cape Reinga.