Marlborough Express - Weekend Express
Remembering the Wahine
Author’s scariest story is his night on doomed ferry
A young Peter Jerram was nursing a hangover when his cricket team’s ferry hit a reef on the morning of April 10, 1968.
The Wahine shipwreck became the scariest episode of his life.
“I can still remember the dreadful feeling that overwhelmed me when we were told to abandon ship,” Jerram said.
Now aged 86, his memories have been combined with interviews with survivors and three years of deep historical research for a new book, The Team That Hit The Rocks.
The collective memories and three years of deep research produced a story that featured a great sea of foaming water, and a maelstrom bringing absolute chaos onto the ferry, he said.
The book described a stampede that followed the announcement to abandon ship: “A mass of humanity pushed, bolted, shouted, heading for a way out.” Jerram said he went through an unusual physiological event called amygdala hijack, during which a person would lose control of their body after an overdose of adrenaline.
The book also featured a critical discussion of the trial that followed the Wahine disaster, he said.
The book aimed to tell the story of the team that survived the tragedy at the entrance of the Wellington Harbour, as well as to provide a historical account of the events of that day, Jerram said.
“We didn’t even talk about the event afterwards. We never talked about the Wahine. It was sort of British stiff upper lip stuff, you know, the Victorian attitudes of the time.”
He said that 25 years later, he contacted the team members and organised a reunion in Blenheim, where he had relocated to in 1979 and later became a Marlborough District councillor. The event was tearful, he said. He went on organising reunions, and on the 30th anniversary of the Wahine disaster, he asked the other cricket team members if they wanted to share their memories.
Some sent him a written account of their recollections, and for others he organised face-to-face interviews.
He said they were connected by an unbreakable bond.
Despite the traumatic event, Jerram went on to finish his degree at Lincoln University and enrolled at Massey University to study veterinary science.
He said that before the Wahine disaster, he had really enjoyed working with farmers and rural people, who in the book were described as warm, generous and straightforward people, “devoid of bullshit”. And he continued working with them as a veterinarian of farm animals, until he retired.
Jerram also co-authored Cock and Bull Stories, a collection of funny stories about life as a country vet, which was published in 2011.
The Team That Hit the Rocks by Peter Jerram was published by Bateman Books on April 1.
The author will speak about the book at the Marlborough Book Festival from July 25-28. Writers confirmed for the event are Anna Smaill, Chris Tse, Emily Perkins and Rachael King, with the full lineup to be confirmed this month, and tickets on sale from late June.