The 10th of April 1968 I Questions and Answers
Why did the Wahine sink? I Timeline of Events

The 10th of April 1968

© Photo by Martin Cahill. Gratefully acknowledged to Martin Cahill and not to be reproduced without his prior permission. Barrett Reef (foreground) and the entrance to Wellington harbour, with Pencarrow Head and its two lighthouses at right. The camera is looking eastwards, with north on the left hand. The Wahine was moving right to left across the photo, between Pencarrow and the reef, as she came in through the harbour entrance on 10th April 1968. Cook Strait is at right, out of the photo. The entrance channel between Pencarrow and the reef has a width of approximately 1,000 metres; the Wahine was 134 metres long at her waterline.

Shortly before daybreak on the morning of Wednesday 10th of April 1968, the Wahine went aground on Barrett Reef in very severe weather, just inside the entrance to Wellington harbour. Aboard were 610 passengers, 123 crew and one stowaway, nearing the end of what had been a routine overnight voyage from Lyttelton. On the Wahine’s vehicle decks were 75 cars, four trucks, 114 bags of mail and 24 “Seafreighters”. These were tarpaulin-covered pallets mounted on wheeled trailers and loaded with general cargo.

Hidden by the night, a huge rogue wave had, 27 minutes earlier, caught the Wahine when she was just to the north of Pencarrow Head. The wave rolled the ship Poseidon-like onto her starboard side. She had recovered only to then be overwhelmed by catastrophic winds and seas that, in less than a minute, had more than doubled to hurricane force. Again and again the Wahine’s Master battled to turn her back out to open water in Cook Strait. He succeeded only to once more lose control of his ship as she was driven onto the rocks.

The Wahine was blown across Barrett Reef, regaining deep water at the reef’s northern edge with her underwater hull extensively damaged and all steering and propulsion lost. Despite her injuries the Wahine miraculously remained upright and afloat. In an act of bravery that has never been recognised, her Chief Officer Mr R S Luly and Bosun Mr G H Hampson went out onto the Wahine’s exposed foredeck in hurricane winds to let go the ship’s anchors. For the rest of the morning as the storm worsened, she drifted stern-first on her anchors up the harbour in mountainous seas. She was close to the Fort Dorset shore, not under control and sheering from side to side through arcs of up to 130 degrees under the immense force of the wind.

Views of Barrett Reef

Barrett Reef, looking westwards from the deck of a passing ship. During the storm of 10 April 1968 the Wahine was driven across these rocks, from left to right, for a period of approximately 30 minutes. © Murray Robinson 2008

© Photo by Martin Cahill. Gratefully acknowledged to Martin Cahill and not to be reproduced without his prior permission. The rocks of Barrett Reef with the beach of Breaker Bay below the saddle in the hills, centre right, and Point Dorset at far right. The red light buoy marks the southern edge of the reef. Diagonally above and at right of the light buoy, just protruding from the sea's surface, is Pinnacle Rock which the Wahine struck first as she went onto Barrett Reef at 6.41 am on 10 April 1968. The larger rock at right, with its curious square-angled indent, is Outer Rock. Huddart Parker's trans-Tasman liner Wanganella went aground on this rock while entering Wellington harbour in calm weather on the night of 19 January 1947.

© Photo by Martin Cahill. Gratefully acknowledged to Martin Cahill and not to be reproduced without his prior permission. A near-similar view of the reef but on a nicer day, also taken from a passing ship entering Wellington harbour. It was a near-identical light buoy to this newer one, anchored to the seabed, that Captain Robertson glimpsed through a break in the tumult just before the Wahine was driven aground on Pinnacle Rock. A massive buttress of greywacke, the top of Pinnacle Rock peaks innocuously above the sea diagonally at left from the light buoy.

© Photo by Martin Cahill. Gratefully acknowledged to Martin Cahill and not to be reproduced without his prior permission. Another view of Pinnacle Rock (left) and Outer Rock (right) at the southern end of Barrett Reef. On 4 May 1968 Royal New Zealand Navy divers found the Wahine's starboard propeller, tailshaft and shaft bracket lying on the seabed beside Pinnacle Rock, which lies some 35 feet north-west of Outer Rock. The broken tailshaft, roughly 20 feet in length, was orientated in a north-south direction with the propeller at its southern end. The near-continuous line of rocks running through the centre of the picture are those extending out from Palmer Head, on the western side of the harbour entrance. Chaffers Passage is the area of water between these rocks and both Pinnacle Rock and Outer Rock. It was on the west or Chaffers Passage side of Pinnacle Rock, at a depth of about 30 feet, that the broken tailshaft was located. (See further down this page for an illustration of the Wahine's rudders, propellers and tailshafts).The divers on examining Pinnacle Rock found that its western side had been recently and heavily damaged from the top of the rock down to a depth of about 25 feet. All of this was the result of the Wahine's impact at 6.41 am on 10 April 1968.

Water soon began entering the Wahine’s main vehicle deck from flooded lower compartments, coming up through doors and ventilation trunks that were not water-tight. Herculean efforts were made by the ship’s engineers to counter this but by late morning when an attempt was made to tow her, the Wahine was well down by the stern. Shortly after midday she touched bottom off Steeple Rock and began listing to starboard.

The passengers had spent the morning in their lifejackets, assembled and waiting in the Wahine’s public rooms. Now, as the ship heeled over, they were ordered into lifeboats and life rafts. Many of these were carried across Wellington harbour to the rugged shores of Eastbourne and Pencarrow. It was here that most of the 51 fatalities occurred.

At about 2 p.m. the Wahine lay over on her starboard side and sank to the harbour floor, just off the Wellington suburb of Seatoun. Partially submerged and exposed to the winter storms, she could not be refloated and was broken up where she lay.

Much of the controversy about the Wahine had its beginnings with the Report of the Court of Inquiry into her loss, published in November 1968. The report cleared the Wahine's Master, Captain H G Robertson and his Chief Officer of wrongful acts, finding however that they had made serious errors of judgement under conditions of great difficulty. But three of the Court’s four nautical and engineering assessors, whose role was to assist and advise the judge hearing the inquiry, dissented from this. In a detailed 15 page appendix to the report, they were much more sharply critical. So instead of the inquiry bringing full and final answers, the reasons for the Wahine’s loss and in particular the actions or lack of them on the part of Captain Robertson, have remained shrouded in uncertainty.

Even now, four decades later, it still seems incredible, unbelievable that such a tragedy could occur. The Wahine was not in trouble far away off some remote, inaccessible, uninhabited shore; she was inside Wellington harbour and only a few kilometres from downtown Wellington City, Capital of New Zealand. The ship was near-new, fully operational, fully manned, on time, on her proper course and correctly loaded. There were two highly experienced, fully certified master mariners on her bridge: Captain Robertson and Chief Officer Luly. She had survived a mauling on Barrett Reef and had then just as miraculously avoided going ashore on Point Dorset. For many hours, despite her injuries and as the storm worsened, the Wahine remained defiantly afloat and upright. Then, with the weather rapidly moderating and when her prospects should have been largely in the clear, the Wahine slowly, quietly rolled over and sank. At the time of her abandonment and sinking the Wahine was scarcely half a kilometre from the wide beach and residential streets of Seatoun. Yet 51 people died in the sea.

The copyright ownership of this picture is not known, but will be fully acknowledged if the owner would like to contact this website. This is most probably the very last photo ever taken of the Wahine prior to 10th of April 1968. It shows her berthed at the Lyttelton Inter-Island Terminal on Tuesday afternoon, 9th April 1968. The stern door is closed, which means that vehicles and Seafreighter trailers from the previous night have all been disembarked, with loading of cars for the coming night's voyage yet to commence. The seats at the Wahine's stern just above the green hull were all swept from their mountings when the ship was hit by the rogue wave the following morning. Large aft-facing windows above these seats are those of the B Deck passenger cafeteria. The A Deck passenger lounge is above the cafeteria.

As is the case with all traumatic events that involve major loss of life, the narrative of the Wahine is a complex one filled many layers of detail all of which must be studied in order to gain a full understanding of what happened. But if we were to compress it all down into an EXECUTIVE SUMMARY, these are the key points:

• The Wahine had been inspected and certified by the Marine Department of the Government of New Zealand as fully compliant with all maritime laws and safety requirements in force in 1966, 1967 and 1968. This included what had been provided on the ship by way of lifejackets deemed suitable for children

• Wellington, a major commercial port, was not equipped with modern salvage tugs able to go to the assistance of an ocean-going ship disabled and in distress in heavy weather.

• On the morning of 10 April 1968 the Wahine was on time, on her correct course, fully manned and fully operational in all respects as she approached Wellington Harbour. There were two fully certified master mariners on her bridge: Captain Gordon Robertson and Chief Officer (second-in-command) Rod Luly.

• The weather in Cook Strait was bad: heavy seas, reduced visibility and gale southerly winds holding at 50 knots. But this was nothing out of the ordinary for Cook Strait and the Wahine was built to operate in such conditions. The weather was in line with official 24 hour forecasts received aboard the Wahine.

• Today the "Interislander" Cook Strait rail ferries do not sail in very rough weather. This was not the case in 1968. The Union Steam Ship Company (owner of the Wahine) required its masters to take their ships to sea in all but the very worst storms, and to show ability and determination when handling their ships in such conditions. Masters deemed not to have these attributes were replaced.

• Captain Robertson reduced the Wahine's speed to improve steering as she began her passage through the harbour entrance channel. This was entirely normal procedure. When he gave this order he did not know that the weather was about to change dramatically.

• The Wahine was hit entirely without warning and close to Barrett Reef by the most extreme winds and seas ever recorded in Wellington. In less than a minute the wind strength went from 50 to 100 knots - hurricane force - overwhelming the ship.

• As the result of the Wahine grounding on Barrett Reef, all steering and propulsion was lost and compartments in the bottom of the ship below the main vehicle deck were extensively flooded.

• The Wahine was not designed to remain afloat with the quantities of flood water inside her; but throughout the morning of 10th April 1968 she remained stable, intact, upright and not sinking further. This, combined with her anchors holding and her escaping destruction on Barrett Reef and then on Point Dorset, led Captain Robertson his senior officers to conclude that she would survive her ordeal.

• Water entered the Wahine's main vehicle deck from the flooded lower compartments at her stern, through internal doors and ventilation shafts that were not watertight. There was no drainage and no pumping equipment on the main vehicle deck for removing this water. It gradually built up during the course of the morning despite prodigious efforts by the Wahine's crew to stop it.

• Captain Robertson and his senior officers under-estimated the huge danger to the Wahine's stability from this water accumulating on her main vehicle deck. It was not reported to the authorities on shore. These were errors of judgement on Captain Robertson's part.

• At no time did Captain Robertson cancel or downgrade the SOS emergency he had declared in his radio message when the Wahine grounded on Barrett Reef at 6.41 am. This was, in 1968, the highest level of maritime emergency and it remained in force throughout the day.

• Drifting out of control, as she had been all morning since leaving Barrett Reef, the Wahine touched the harbour floor at around 12.30 pm. This caused her to sink deeper by the bow, which in turn caused the flood water on the main vehicle deck to run into the ship's forward garage, which until then had remained dry. By a process known as Free Surface Effect this water, moving freely over a much larger area, destroyed what remained of the Wahine's stability so that she could no longer stay upright. The ship began listing and after some two hours rolled over onto her starboard side.

• Up until 12.30 pm and although heavily damaged, the Wahine had given no indication that she would sink. Her Master and officers were fully confident she would be alright especially as the storm dwindled away. Then, in the space of less than an hour, the Wahine rapidly had to be abandoned as her list grew. This sudden, catastrophic turn of events came as the most profound shock, one that devastated Captain Robertson and, along with the Annex to the Report of the Court of Inquiry, hastened the end of his life.

• The Wahine was lying very close to Seatoun Beach when she was abandoned, but because of the strong outflowing tide many life rafts and swimmers were carried out into the harbour and across to the totally inhospitable Pencarrow shore. Forty seven of the 51 fatalities occurred here. The outflowing tide was completely unforeseen.

• The Wahine's lifeboats could not have been loaded with passengers and successfully launched at any time prior to the moment when 'abandon ship' was ordered, because the heavy breaking seas running along the sides of the ship would have quickly swamped and overturned them. Hundreds would have drowned as a result.

Copyright © 2008 and 2009 Murray Robinson www.thewahine.co.nz

Sources:
TEV Wahine Transcript, 1968
Statements, affidavits and exhibits placed before the Court of Inquiry (held by Archives New Zealand)
NZ Government TEV Wahine; Report of Court and Annex Thereto, November 1968
Union Steam Ship Company archives, Wellington Museum of City and Sea
Private papers of Captain H G Robertson
Conversations with Anne Robertson (Captain Robertson’s wife) Noeleen Knott (Captain Robertson’ sister) and Ken MacLeod (helmsman on the bridge of the Wahine during 10 April 1968)
Auckland Star, Evening Post and Dominion newspapers.

© Sam Parker C Eng FRINA. Gratefully acknowledged to Sam Parker and not to be reproduced without his prior permission. This is the only photo that the writer has ever found showing the view forward over the bow of the ship from inside the Wahine's bridge windows. It was taken in 1966 during the ship's trials; the Wahine is in the Firth of Clyde, Scotland. The area in the foreground is the roof of the passenger accommodation at the forward end of the Wahine's superstructure, with the base of the foremast at right. At left is the exposed handrail along which Chief Officer Rod Luly and Bosun George Hampson made their way in hurricane winds while the Wahine was on Barrett Reef. The rail led to a near-vertical ladder down to the Wahine's foredeck, where the windlass and anchor release mechanism were located. The B Deck door in the forward face of the Wahine's superstructure, through which access was normally gained to the foredeck, could not be opened because of pressure from the wind and the seas sweeping the foredeck. Part of the windlass can just be seen over the front edge of the roof area.

Questions and Answers

Many questions still persist today about what happened to the Wahine and those aboard her on the 10th of April 1968. If he was alive today, what are the answers Captain Robertson might give?

1. Why did he proceed with entering Wellington harbour in such severe weather, when he should have foreseen that wind and sea conditions were about to get much worse?

The Wahine's loss is often attributed to Captain Robertson deciding to carry on with entry into Wellington harbour regardless of the violent storm that was taking place. This is all completely false. Assertions of this nature can still be found on otherwise reputable websites. The Christchurch City Libraries website, for instance, states: "By now the winds were gusting at between 130 and 150 kilometres per hour. At 5:50 am on the morning of 10 April the Captain of the Wahine, Captain Hector Robertson (sic) decided to enter the harbour." The winds were NOT gusting between 130 to 150 km per hour as the Wahine entered Wellington Harbour. Christchurch City Libraries doesn't even take the trouble to ensure Captain Robertson's name is accurately stated. And there's the New Zealand Meteorological Service's website: "Although forewarned of the possibility of extreme weather, the ship's master attempted to enter the harbour in deteriorating conditions." This is utter claptrap: Captain Robertson was NEVER "forewarned of the possibility of extreme weather."

In reality, the storm of 10th of April 1968 struck the Wahine when she was just to the north of Pencarrow Head, after she had come in through the entrance to Wellington harbour. The storm rose out of the darkness with great suddenness, immense ferocity, and entirely without warning. Up until that point the weather, although very rough, had been within the Wahine's capabilities as an ocean-going ship.

Wind and sea conditions did not deteriorate during the Wahine's passage across Cook Strait and as she came towards the harbour entrance. Throughout the night since departing Lyttelton at 8.43 p.m. the ship had met with a steadily worsening southerly gale, the winds and seas coming from astern. By 5.50 a.m. the wind was gusting to 50 knots and had been consistent at this strength, without increasing, for the previous hour or so. One knot is 1.852 kilometres per hour, so 50 knots equates to 92.6 km per hour.

The last weather forecast received aboard the Wahine, at 8.30 p.m. on 9 April from the New Zealand Meteorological Service and applicable for the next 24 hours, had begun with the words "Storm Warning". "Strong northerlies changing to southerly after midnight tonight" were forecast, with the southerly winds "gradually increasing to gale or storm from tomorrow morning." There would be "rain and poor visibility." Storms and gales are regular events in Cook Strait and Wellington harbour, as people who live and work in Wellington City will attest. There was nothing in this forecast that warned of "the possibility of extreme weather."

This is the weather forecast that was published in Wellington's "The Dominion" newspaper on Tuesday 9 April 1968, the day before the Wahine Disaster. It contains not the slightest hint of the hurricane winds and seas that were about to descend on Cook Strait and Wellington harbour in less than 24 hours' time. Note the words of the section entitled "Outlook for tomorrow" (tomorrow being 10 April 1968): "Unsettled with rain or showers at times."

And this is the weather forecast that was published on page 11 of "The Evening Post" newspaper in Wellington, late afternoon on Tuesday 9 April 1968. It gives the Meteorological Service forecast for the next day, 10 April 1968: "Wellington, Hutt Valley and Wairarapa. - ....... A change overnight to cooler southerlies, with gales developing in exposed areas; unsettled, with some long periods of rain, heavy locally." As with the meteorological information received aboard the Wahine, there is no indication here of the extreme weather about to unleash on Wellington.

Mr Luly the Wahine’s Chief Officer had, as normal, taken over the watch on the bridge at 4 a.m. relieving the Second Officer Mr W T R Shanks. Fifteen minutes later Mr Luly saw the light on Cape Campbell 16.8 miles (27 km) away on the ship’s port beam. Cape Campbell marks the beginning of Cook Strait at its south-eastern limit. Course was now altered to 358 degrees and engine revolutions were decreased from 188 to 170 per minute, giving a speed of 16.5 knots. This would place the Wahine off Wellington harbour entrance at the usual time of around 6.10 a.m. At 5 a.m. Mr Luly wrote in the bridge log: "strong SSW gale, rough sea, heavy southerly swell. Overcast, with continuous heavy rain, visibility moderate 6 (equivalent to five miles or 8 km). Vessel scending and rolling heavily at times. Wind SSW 40-50 knots.”

Also at 5 a.m. Mr R J Lyver, the Wahine’s Radio Officer, arrived on the bridge and, using the ship’s VHF radio telephone, called Beacon Hill Signal Station. Operated at the time by the Wellington Harbour Board, the signal station is located on a hilltop above Breaker Bay overlooking the entrance to Wellington harbour. Staff on duty at the signal station advised Mr Lyver that winds inside the harbour entrance were southerly and blowing at 40 to 50 knots. At Pipitea Wharf near the Inter-Island Terminal the wind was up to 60 knots. A tug would be available to assist the ship in berthing, if needed.

Standing beside the Radio Officer, Mr Luly heard the signal station’s report. It told him that conditions at the harbour entrance were no different from the middle of Cook Strait where the Wahine was. The weather also was consistent with the forecast received the night before. During the Chief Officer's watch the wind had increased only slightly, by no more than 5 knots, and at 5.30 a.m. was blowing at around 50 knots. Visibility remained good: at 5.50 a.m. the light on Baring Head, just south of the entrance, was clearly discernible to starboard even though it was raining heavily and the Wahine was some five miles (8 km) away.

All this meant there was nothing out of the ordinary about the gale in progress that morning as the Wahine came across Cook Strait. Understanding this is fundamental to appreciating why Captain Robertson and Mr Luly continued with entry into Wellington harbour. The seas were rough, the winds were high and it was pouring with rain. But this is normal for Cook Strait. Gales and storms are commonplace there and around the entrance to Wellington harbour. To quote from the New Zealand Pilot: "Cook Strait is particularly affected by the frequency and strength of north-westerly and south to south-easterly winds due to ‘funneling’ between the high land on both sides; these are the only violent winds but they give rise to the worst storms experienced in New Zealand waters, averaging about 25 a year."

What Mr Luly, 41 years old and a fully certified master mariner, was seeing from the bridge windows as the Wahine steamed towards the harbour entrance, was therefore not unusual in the slightest and no grounds whatsoever for surprise or dismay. It was typical of Cook Strait. Ship’s masters routinely brought all manner of vessels into and out of Wellington habour in such weather, and they were fully expected to do so. Likewise, the forecasted gradual deterioration in wind and sea conditions was no cause for alarm. Winds of 50 knots and more were frequently encountered on the Wellington-Lyttelton service. So often misleadingly referred to as a ferry, the Wahine was an ocean-going vessel designed specifically to operate in such conditions. Captain Robertson, who took over navigation of the ship after arriving on the bridge as usual at 5.50 a.m., had previously brought the Wahine in through the harbour entrance with winds gusting to 62 knots, entirely without trouble. He had done so countless times on many other ships during his long career. Answering questions during the Court of Inquiry about the significance of the forecast, Captain Robertson made this telling response: "We very often through the years received exactly the same information day in and day out (for the weather) around Wellington. Reaching gale force in Wellington is nothing."

Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. Railway Collection, F-148074-1/2

Archives New Zealand/Te Rua Mahara o te Kawanatanga, Wellington Office (Alexander Turnbull Library, ½ 148074 F: (AAVK, W3493, F659/8)) Seafaring in Cook Strait. The rail ferry Aramoana heading out through the entrance to Wellington harbour for a crossing to Picton. The top photo was taken in 1964, the lower photo ten years later in 1974. The winds and seas on 10 April 1968 were much, much worse. Today's rail ferries do not operate in very rough sea conditions but in the 1960s and 1970s the Aramoana, the Wahine and all other vessels on the Cook Strait and the Wellington-Lyttelton services always did so and were fully expected to. Ships' masters who baulked at proceeding to sea in weather like that shown in the above photos, were not employed on these services. Only in extreme weather were sailings cancelled. This does not imply recklesssness, it means that ships' masters were expected to demonstrate all the necessary skills to take their ships to sea and into harbour in adverse weather. This in turn is because wild sea conditions are nothing unusual for Cook Strait. Understanding this is fundamental to understanding why Captain Robertson carried on with entry into Wellington harbour on the morning of 10 April 1968. Today we might be appalled at trying do come through the narrow harbour entrance in such huge waves and in darkness, but he was doing nothing out of the ordinary for that time.

During Mr Luly’s watch the barometer in the Wahine’s chartroom had registered a fall in atmospheric pressure, usually an indication of worsening weather. Both Captain Robertson and Mr Luly likewise did not view this as significant. In their experience on the Wellington-Lyttelton run and especially in Cook Strait with its complex pattern of currents and tidal streams, the barometer would often go up and down for no apparent reason at all.

Just before 6.10 a.m. the Wahine was directly off the entrance to Wellington harbour, steaming at 15.5 knots. Heavy rain had set in, decreasing visibility to between one and two miles, but Pencarrow Light had been sighted from the bridge away on the starboard bow. The wind was steady at between 40 to 50 knots, the same as it had been for the last hour. Again, none of this would have prompted Captain Robertson to suspect that anything was amiss. In all his years of navigating vessels in and out of Wellington he had never known weather conditions to alter markedly over the short 2.5 mile (4 km) distance separating Baring Head from Pencarrow Head. There was nothing causing him to doubt that it was safe to enter harbour.

The Cook Strait rail and vehicle ferry Aramoana with her fully enclosed bridge. Captain Robertson commanded this ship for a total of 33½ months between June 1963 and December 1965 (he was also appointed briefly as master of two other ships during this same period).

There is a significant body of opinion that maintains the Wahine’s fully enclosed bridge was a key contributor to the events of 10 April 1968. Had Captain Robertson and Mr Luly been navigating the ship from a bridge with open wings, they would have been outside in the weather. Doing so may have helped them detect that the winds and seas were about to change radically. Perhaps there is some validity to this, though against it is whether a master mariner of Captain Robertson’s length of experience would have been deceived in this way. He was entirely familiar with navigating in Cook Strait from inside a fully enclosed bridge, having done so for nearly three years as Master of the Aramoana. Also, the Wahine’s bridge did not remain fully enclosed; shortly after taking control of the ship at 5.50 a.m. Captain Robertson slid open the centre bridge windows so that he could better pick up the lights at and inside the entrance to Wellington harbour. Ken MacLeod, the Wahine’s helmsman that morning, remembers the amount of rain and sea water on the floor of the bridge from the open windows, and the prospect of his having to remove it all once the ship had berthed.

2. Why did Captain Robertson reduce the Wahine’s speed as she came in through the harbour entrance, only to then lose steering control?

Even more than the nonsense about ignoring the weather, Captain Robertson’s decision to reduce speed continues to be asserted as the failure that led ultimately to the loss of the Wahine on 10 April 1968. If he had maintained full speed, so the argument goes, the Wahine would not have been driven off course as she came abreast of Barrett Reef. Reducing speed may indeed have been a mistake had Captain Robertson known the weather was about to change so dramatically. But he did not know this. At the moment when he gave the "half speed" order, the winds and seas were very rough but no different from conditions typical of Cook Strait and the harbour entrance. He was seeing and doing nothing out of the ordinary.

The Wahine’s speed was reduced deliberately to assist her steering and improve her ability to hold her course. This was because in following winds and seas, she steered more easily and maintained her heading if speed was decreased. All ships have their individual handling and steering characteristics and during her short life the Wahine had proved difficult to keep on course when she was in winds and seas coming from astern. Conditions were the same as this on the morning of 10 April 1968. From around 5 a.m. the Wahine was yawing off course by as much as 10 degrees and her helmsman was having to continuously turn the wheel to bring the ship back to her correct heading. When advised of this, Mr Luly at around 5.45 a.m. further decreased the propeller revolutions from 170 to 165 a minute. The result was an improvement in the ship's steering. Her speed was now 15.5 knots.

When the Wahine, rolling and pitching in the heavy swell, was almost at Pencarrow Head and the start of the entrance channel, she once again began falling off her correct heading of 358 degrees. This was no place for anything less than full helm control, so in line with the Chief Officer's earlier actions Captain Robertson decided to reduce speed further. At 6.09 a.m. he ordered Mr Noblet, the Wahine’s Third Officer who was manning the engine telegraphs, to ring "half ahead". This brought her speed down from 15.5 to about 10 knots. The wind at this time was holding steady from the south-south-west at about 50 knots and visibility in the teeming rain was approximately half a mile. It was just after this that, stepping back from the bridge windows to the radar console, Captain Robertson found the Wahine’s single radar unit to be no longer operating correctly.

The Wahine, her speed reduced, held her course for a few minutes but then, at around 6.12 a.m. with Pencarrow Head just astern and the Barrett Reef light broad on the port bow, she began once more to veer away from her heading. Ken MacLeod states that initially the ship went to port but he was able to correct this by applying full starboard wheel. But then she went right round to starboard until her bow was facing the Pencarrow shore, beam-on to the wind and seas. Captain Robertson and Mr Luly both later testified that she went to port in the direction of Barrett Reef, 30 degrees off her course, and stayed there. To straighten her up the Master ordered "full ahead" on the Wahine’s engines with the wheel hard-to-starboard. The time was just after 6.13 a.m. The Wahine did not answer. Now the Master decided to go full astern on the starboard engine with the port engine full ahead and the wheel still hard-over to starboard. From where he was on the port wing of the bridge Captain Robertson turned towards Mr Noblet, standing behind him at the telegraphs. But before he could speak the engine orders the Wahine lurched suddenly, heavily and violently onto her starboard side. The great storm of 10 April 1968 had struck.

Why did the Wahine go broadside to the wind and seas, to then be caught in this predicament when the storm hit her? Inside the narrow, funnel-like entrance channel, exposed directly to the south, the seas that morning would have been short and very steep. Plunging in and out of the water with the movement of the ship, the Wahine’s twin rudders and screws would have had their effectiveness fatally diminished. As she veered from her heading, the high superstructure at her stern may have acted like a sail, catching the wind and pushing her round. “The ship took charge,” Captain Robertson was later to say in his succinct seaman’s language.

© Photo by Martin Cahill. Gratefully acknowledged to Martin Cahill and not to be reproduced without his prior permission. The sea area inside the entrance to Wellington Harbour, where the Wahine was struck by the storm of 10th April 1968 and driven onto Barrett Reef. In this photo a big southerly swell is running, typical of weather in Cook Strait and the harbour entrance. The top of Outer Rock, at the very southern edge of the reef, is in the centre of the picture while Pinnacle Rock is at right. Pinnacle Rock was the first the Wahine hit as she went onto the reef at 6.41 that morning. The light tower on the beach at Pencarrow Head is at top left, on the opposite side of the entrance channel about 1,000 metres to the east of Barrett Reef.

3. What was Captain Robertson trying to do in the period immediately before the Wahine went onto Barrett Reef?

This question has exercised the minds of many writers and commentators over the decades since 1968. Was he trying to get his ship back out to sea? Was he persisting instead with his attempt to get into harbour? Did he succeed in getting the Wahine back out into Cook Strait only to then try again to enter harbour?

When the Wahine rolled Captain Robertson was thrown across the bridge for a distance he later estimated at 74 feet, striking the radar console then landing heavily in the starboard wing. Bruised and probably concussed, though he subsequently made no mention of this, the Master regained his feet but everything had changed. The bridge was trembling with the force of winds that, steady at 50 knots a minute ago, had now accelerated to over 100 knots. It seemed to be coming from all directions. Visibility was nil, the air laden with spray and pounding rain. Opening the centre window, Captain Robertson put his head and shoulders out into the maelstrom, searching for a landmark or light that might tell him where they were in relation to Barrett Reef. He would later describe the wind as “just screaming”  and the state of the sea as "atrocious", "a white froth, you could not face it, you could not even look at it… I have never seen anything like it before".

For the next 26 minutes from 6.15 to 6.41 a.m. the Master tried repeatedly to turn the Wahine to port so as to bring her head to sea. Leaning out of the centre bridge window he issued a stream of helm and engine orders to Mr Luly, who was standing beside him. The Chief Officer relayed the orders, shouting above the roar of the wind, to Third Officer Noblet at the engine telegraphs and Quartermaster MacLeod at the helm. Double and triple rings were sent down on the telegraphs to the engine control platform in the main turbo-alternator room, demanding emergency full ahead and full astern as Captain Robertson sought to use the full 18,000 horse power of the Wahine’s electric motors to force her round. Nearby on the starboard wing, Mr Shanks the Second Officer had been ordered to make any sighting he could in the darkness and rain to establish the ship’s position.

“What’s her heading?”… is she answering?…. is she coming round?.” Time and time again Captain Robertson and Mr Luly called to Quartermaster MacLeod who had the compass repeater in front of him. It was to no avail. The Wahine lay broadside across winds of hurricane force in a cauldron of raging, tumbling white seas piling up on each other, walls of spray hundreds of feet high assaulting the ship. Along with his engines Captain Robertson tried to use the Wahine’s bow thrusters to push her round. She remained out of control and overwhelmed by the storm, her bow coming to the south only to be constantly driven back again.

© Diagram prepared and contributed to this website by Martin Cahill. Gratefully acknowledged to Martin Cahill and not to be reproduced without his prior permission. Looking down on the interior of the bridge of the Wahine during the minutes before she went onto Barrett Reef. The location of some of the bridge personnel changed during that time, but this graphic reflects where they mostly were. On the port and starboard wings (top and bottom) stand Able Seaman Finlayson and Second Officer Shanks, both having been ordered by Captain Robertson to watch for the light at the southern edge of the reef. They can see nothing in the oblivion of rain and darkness. Quartermaster MacLeod is at the steering wheel controlling the ship’s twin rudders at her stern. Third Officer Noblet is at the engine telegraphs on the port wing control console. Next to him, Second Electrician Langbein is operating the side thruster controls. Beside Mr Langbein is the steering wheel for the Wahine’s bow rudder while the object in front of the wheel is a timber floor mat. There is a near-identical control console located on the starboard wing beside Mr Shanks. Mr Lyver is in his radio office abaft the bridge. The Captain’s Steward was on the bridge for a short period, spreading salt and placing lengths of carpet on the linoleum-covered deck to try and stop bridge personnel sliding about as the Wahine heaved and rolled in the storm. Captain Robertson stands with his head and shoulders outside the opened centre bridge window. In the raging cacophony of wind, rain and spray he is trying to judge the seas so as to turn the Wahine. Beside him, Chief Officer Luly repeats Captain Robertson’s helm and engine orders, yelling to make himself heard above the bedlam of the storm.

The Wahine’s bridge was equipped only with a magnetic compass; the ship had no gyro compass. Magnetic compasses rapidly lose effectiveness in any conditions where the ship is swinging or rolling heavily. The availability of a gyro compass would have made a critical difference to Captain Robertson and his officers in their efforts to pinpoint where the ship was. This is because a gyro compass would have been linked to the radar to give a stabilised north-up display on the radar screen. With a magnetic compass this was not possible; had the Wahine's radar remained operative, the display on the screen would have been very blurred as the ship’s head changed rapidly. Also, a gyro compass is much steadier and would have made the manual steering of the ship easier. Had a gyro compass been fitted aboard the Wahine, there would have been repeater compasses on the bridge wings and at the forward windows of the bridge, allowing the Master and his officers to monitor the ship's heading much more effectively.

Painting entitled "Full Astern" by Martin Cahill. Gratefully acknowledged to Martin Cahill and not to be reproduced without his prior permission. The moment the light at the southern end of Barrett Reef is sighted through the all-enveloping rain and darkness. Captain Robertson immediately orders "full astern" on the Wahine's engines.

Then at about 6.28 a.m. the Master succeeded in regaining control of his ship, turning her to port so that she was now headed south in the direction of Cook Strait and the open sea. In the blinding rain Barrett Reef could not be seen from the bridge, but in the narrow entrance channel this turn to port meant the Wahine was very close to the reef’s eastern edge. Captain Robertson knew from his seaman’s instincts that the rocks must be nearby but visibility remained absolutely nil. Slowly, punching her way into the face of monstrous winds and seas, the Wahine continued south along the reef’s flank. Around 6.36 a.m. a flashing orange light emerged through the torrents of rain, right in front of the ship. It was the light buoy marking the southern extremity of Barrett Reef. This light was the very first landmark of any description sighted from the bridge since the storm had overwhelmed the ship 22 minutes earlier. Now came a last desperate rush of telegraph and helm orders, the Wahine’s thrusters and motors at absolute full power and the wheel hard over to port. She refused to answer.

As if in mockery of his frantic efforts the torrential rain parted briefly and Captain Robertson, his officers and lookouts saw the black, wave-swept jaws of Barrett Reef. Rocks were ahead of the ship then along her starboard side and astern of her. She was being blown sideways down onto them; there was no escape. Captain Robertson later described it as the worst moment of his life. After ordering all water-tight doors closed he told Mr Luly to have Mr Lyver, the Radio Officer, send an SOS distress call. The Wahine struck on her starboard quarter at 6.41 a.m., the impact breaking off the starboard propeller, the shaft bracket and 20 feet of the starboard tail shaft. The starboard rudder was bent and crushed up into the ship. For a few minutes the port propeller continued turning until the port motor shorted out as the propulsion motor room filled with water.

The Barrett Reef Light Buoy, lifted out of the water by the floating crane Hikitea.

Having brought the Wahine’s head to sea, with Barrett Reef now astern of him and the comparative safety of Cook Strait right in front, should Captain Robertson just have kept going when the light buoy at the southern end of Barrett Reef was sighted? The answer to this, with the luxury of hindsight, is "possibly yes". But we need to see it from Captain Robertson’s perspective at that moment in time: deafened by the wind, soaked to the skin, caught in avalanche-like seas, the bridge of the Wahine shuddering and rocking like a see-saw, utter loss of visibility in the narrow entrance channel with absolutely nothing seen for 22 minutes. Then the flashing light of the reef buoy suddenly appears right in front of the ship. A split-second decision is needed; there is no time for review of options. The instinct of any competent seaman when an object is suddenly observed in front of a ship is immediately to use helm and engines to turn away. This is what Captain Robertson did. Unfortunately, control of the Wahine was then lost once again.

The alternative of ignoring the light buoy and keeping the engines at full ahead might have been the correct decision for Captain Robertson and the Wahine, but equally it might also have proved disastrous. If the Wahine’s bow had collided with the light buoy as she went past, damage to the ship’s hull would have been minimal and of no significance compared to the peril she and the 734 people aboard her were in. But the light buoy was fixed in place to the seabed by heavy steel cables. In the storm, the light buoy was being tossed around violently and there was every possibility that these cables may have snagged the Wahine’s twin rudders and twin propellers. Fouling cables around her rudders or propellers in this way would have been catastrophic; all steering and drive would instantly have been lost.

The reef inflicted massive damage on the Wahine’s underwater hull. Stabbed, battered and ripped, no part the ship’s bottom was spared as she was forced slowly northwards over the rocks. On 16-17 April 1968 a Royal New Zealand Navy diving team inspected the ship. One of the divers described the multiple lacerations to the Wahine’s hull as "like a huge file (that) just cut bits out of it. One of the holes was about a hundred feet long….and one hole you could drive a car through…." The destruction was so widespread that, had the Wahine survived, it is conceivable that repairing her many have proved either technically unfeasible or too expensive.

The copyright ownership of this photo is not known. If the rightful owner would like to email this website, ownership will be acknowledged in full. This photo, taken while the Wahine was in the Wellington Floating Dock for her annual survey and refit in April 1967, shows her portside rudder and propeller with its tailshaft (at left of the propeller) and bracket (just behind the propeller, securing the tailshaft to the hull). The starboard propeller at right and the starboard rudder (out of the picture) were identical. When the Wahine struck Barrett Reef the starboard tailshaft, bracket and propeller, rotating at full speed astern, were completely broken off by the impact with the rocks and fell to the seabed. The starboard rudder was twisted and driven upwards into the ship by the same impact.

The Evening Post This diagram, split in two for clarity, was published on the front page of Wellington's Evening Post newspaper on 11 July 1968. It shows the Wahine lying on her starboard side on the harbour floor, almost half-buried in sands and gravels. The damage from Barrett Reef that was visible to Royal New Zealand Navy divers examining the wreck, has been recorded on the diagram. The worst damage was located on the starboard or lower side of the Wahine's hull but this could not be seen because of the gravel (grey shaded area) that had built up against the hull. The diagram thus only gives a partial indication of the mauling the Wahine received. The numbers denote the many splits, holes, dents and cracks in the hull steel extending over the full length of the Wahine: 1. hole 2 feet in diameter 2. hole 4 feet in diameter 2A dents and splits over a 12 x 6 feet area 3. split in hull 3 feet long 4. hole 4 feet in diameter 5. hole 6 x 4 feet in size 6. vertical crack 8 feet long 7. dents and cracks over a 15 x 10 feet area 8. diagonal crack 15 feet long 9. hole 6 x 4 feet in size 10. split 8 feet long 10A hole 4 x 1 feet in size 11. hole 10 by 8 feet in size 12. hole 8 x 7 feet in size 14. very large hole, 20 feet long, width unknown 14A dented area 4 x 3 feet 15. split 15 feet long 15A triangular-shaped split, 1 foot in size 16. hole 4 x 3 feet in size 17. hole 4 x 2 feet in size 18. hole 6 x 6 feet in size around the starboard rudder post 19. bent and broken remains of starboard propeller shaft 20-23 and 29 extensive holing where propeller shaft bracket has sheared off 24. bending, splitting and crushing of starboard rudder 25. port rudder intact 26-28 port propeller intact but two propeller blade tips slightly damaged

Why did the Wahine go broadside to the wind and seas, to then be caught in this predicament when the storm hit her? Inside the narrow, funnel-like entrance channel, exposed directly to the south, the seas that morning would have been short and very steep. Plunging in and out of the water with the movement of the ship, the Wahine’s twin rudders and screws would have had their effectiveness fatally diminished. As she veered from her heading, the high superstructure at her stern may have acted like a sail, catching the wind and pushing her round. “The ship took charge,” Captain Robertson was later to say in his succinct seaman’s language.

4. Why did Captain Robertson send radio messages saying that the flooding aboard the Wahine was under control when it was not? What was he doing all that morning on the bridge of the Wahine; why didn’t he go below and see for himself the flooding on her vehicle deck?

After coming off Barrett Reef and with all steering and propulsion gone, the Wahine was blown across Chaffers Passage towards Point Dorset, sheering on her anchor cables in steep, short, breaking seas through arcs of up to 130 degrees. Radio messages from the ship conveyed the gravity of her situation: “Slowly drifting on Point Dorset. I think she will be ashore next swing” and "Drifting towards Fort Dorset, will be ashore in a minute". At approximately 8.30 a.m., with the ship now very close to the huge white surf breaking and exploding across the rocks of Point Dorset, Captain Robertson ordered the Wahine’s Chief Engineer, Mr Herbert Wareing, to evacuate all personnel from the ship’s boiler and turbo-alternator rooms.

But somehow she evaded this fresh catastrophe and did not go aground on Point Dorset. Her survival seemed nothing short of a miracle. Once the Wahine, continuing her slow drift, was north of Point Dorset and away from this danger, the radio messages sent by Captain Robertson understandably convey a tone of relief and optimism. From this distance they seem entirely misplaced in light of what was to happen later that day. When considering his radio messages we must, however, try to visualise what was going through Captain Robertson’s mind at that moment in time, mid-morning on 10th April 1968. He knew better than anyone that he and the other 733 people aboard the Wahine had just escaped near-certain death twice over. The Wahine should have broken apart and sank after the punishment she had taken on Barrett Reef or otherwise she should, in those colossal winds and seas, have been smashed to pieces on Point Dorset. Hundreds if not all of her passengers and crew would have drowned. It was with a profound sense of astonishment and deliverance that Captain Robertson ordered the messages now transmitted from the ship:

Around 9.37 a.m. the Wellington Harbour Master (Captain R E Suckling) was advised by Captain Robertson that the Wahine was “not touching (the rocks) at all. No danger of sinking”. A few minutes later at 9.40 a.m., the Wahine radioed: "Dragging (on anchors) very slowly. All under control". At 10.12 a.m., also by VHF radio telephone, came "Flood control in hand". Then at 11.01 a.m.: "Master advises we are quite safe and about to make fast to a tug".

Captain Robertson worded these messages this way because at the time, he genuinely considered the Wahine was not in any imminent danger of sinking. His failure to also tell to authorities on shore about the water on the Wahine’s main vehicle deck, proved later to be a critical error of judgement. From the reports of his officers, particularly the Chief Officer who was responsible for damage control, the Master decided that the extent of flooding on the main vehicle deck was not sufficient to be of concern. Mr Wareing, the Wahine’s Chief Engineer, shared this view; he was worried about the flooding but not alarmed, believing it to be of manageable proportions.

In his defence it must be said that at no stage did Captain Robertson either downgrade or revoke the SOS emergency declared in his 6.41 and 7.02 a.m. radio signals. This remained in force throughout the day.

There were no computers or instruments on the Wahine’s bridge that could tell her Master how the ship’s draught and stability had changed as the result of the flooding in her lower compartments and on her main vehicle deck. For this Captain Robertson relied on the feel of the ship beneath his feet. The Wahine was rolling moderately, between five and eight degrees, and each time she came readily upright without hesitation. This did not change in the slightest as the morning went on. Captain Robertson calculated from this that although the ship was badly holed and there was widespread flooding, the Wahine had retained enough stability so that there was no immediate prospect of her sinking.

His assessment was later confirmed by Captain D W Galloway, Wellington Deputy Harbour Master and Second Pilot, who at 12.15 p.m. succeeded in getting aboard the Wahine from the pilot launch Tiakina. Captain Galloway would later tell the Court of Inquiry that the Wahine "felt all right to me” when he boarded her. He described the ship’s motion as a "nice, easy roll with a (5 degree) list on it", and that she "kept coming back" to the vertical every time in seas he estimated at 12 midday to be some 15 feet high.

Also at the Court of Inquiry it was alleged that the Master of the Wahine had stood "paralysed into inaction" on the bridge of his ship, "benumbed" by the “disaster” of earlier that morning. Of all the criticism levelled at Captain Robertson, this one brought him the greatest pain. Standing on either wing of the bridge, he spent much of the morning constantly observing points on the ship’s hull just above the waterline. There was no other way of determining how low the ship was in the water and whether her draught and trim were changing. From this the Master calculated that the Wahine’s draught was approximately 22 feet, an increase of some five feet, and that she was not sinking further.

His conclusion was reflected in the tenor of the radio messages sent ashore. All morning Captain Robertson continued to monitor the ship’s draught in this way, watching for any change. Meanwhile the wind increased in ferocity, reaching its height between 10 and 11 a.m. - the severest weather ever recorded in New Zealand up to that time. Gusts of up to 123 knots shook the bridge while the rain thundered unceasingly at the windows. Although he had never before met a storm as violent as this, from his long experience of Cook Strait and Wellington harbour Captain Robertson knew that the storm would most probably be of short duration. Having reached their peak, the winds and seas would quickly abate. Changes in the weather normally coincided with the turning of the tides; high tide in Wellington harbour that day would be at 2 p.m. This was only a few hours away. Captain Robertson’s plan was to ride out the storm until that time when, correctly as it proved, the storm would die away to no more than a light gale. Once that happened the tug Tapuhi, sheltering in Worser Bay, would be able to reach the Wahine and get a towing wire aboard. "I was confident," Captain Robertson later wrote, "that we could be towed into the relatively sheltered waters of Worser Bay where all the passengers could be landed safely."

© Vic Young. Gratefully acknowledged to Vic Young and not to be reproduced without his permission. (see the link to Vic's website) The tug Tapuhi, photographed in 1967. On 10 April 1968 under the command of Captain A R Olsson, this gallant little ship fought to reach the Wahine and take her in tow. In the raging seas and with consummate seamanship, Captain Olsson manoeuvred the Tapuhi close under the Wahine's stern where Chief Officer Luly used a line-throwing gun to get a messenger line across to the tug. A 4.5 inch towing wire was then passed back to the Wahine. Because flooding on the main vehicle deck had shorted out the switchboard supplying electricity to the winches on the Wahine's aft mooring decks, this towing wire had to be hauled manually through the sea and up onto the Wahine's stern. This was done by the Wahine's seamen. Just before midday, with the towing wire made fast, the Tapuhi went slowly ahead on her engines to take up the strain and begin the tow. Her courageous effort and that of the Wahine's seamen proved in vain. The wire was too small and the Tapuhi too light for such a difficult task. Tossed about in waves up to 17 feet high, as soon as the weight of the crippled ship came onto the towing wire it snapped at the bollards on the Wahine's stern. The broken wire was jettisoned and immediately the Tapuhi retired to the shelter of Worser Bay to prepare for a second tow attempt. It was not to be. When the Wahine was abandoned the Tapuhi rescued 170 of the ship's 634 passengers and crew, landing them safely at the Inter-Island Wharf in Wellington. Powered by triple expansion steam engines, the Tapuhi was built at Aberdeen, Scotland in 1945. Captain Robertson's younger brother Neil was one of the Tapuhi's seamen on 10 April 1968. Assisting Captain Olsson on the tug's bridge that day was Captain C M Sword, the Wellington Harbour Board's Third Pilot.

On the main vehicle deck Chief Engineer Wareing was in charge of flood control along with Mr Luly, the Wahine’s tireless Chief Officer. There was no need for Captain Robertson personally to go there either to inspect or direct operations. Sixty-one year old Mr Wareing was immensely experienced and the most senior chief engineer in the Union Steam Ship Company’s fleet. Captain Robertson was fully justified in accepting the reports about the flood situation that Mr Wareing himself was bringing to the Master. With his ship in the predicament she was, it would have been completely unthinkable to Captain Robertson that he leave the bridge at any time that morning.

Even if the Master had more fully understood the lethal threat from the water on the vehicle deck, there was another much more urgent concern that required his attention on the bridge. This was the Wahine’s anchor cables.

When the anchors were let go during the half-hour the Wahine was on Barrett Reef, the cables could not be stopped from running out to their full extent. They paid out so rapidly that the brake linings of the windlass caught fire and were burnt out; from his position on the bridge Ken MacLeod saw sparks flying up from the foredeck where the windlass was located. Without engines or steering, and with no ship in Wellington or nearby that could reach her, the Wahine was utterly dependant on her anchors and cables holding together.

Run out to between 700 and 800 feet, nearly twice the ship's length (490 feet overall), the cables were under the most terrific strain as the Wahine sheered from side to side before the storm’s onslaught. Had either cable parted, the other could not have held the ship on its own. With her anchors gone, the ship would have been carried across to the Pencarrow coast on the opposite side of the harbour and wrecked probably somewhere along the desolate, rocky shoreline south of Camp Bay. Few of the Wahine’s complement would have got ashore alive. Captain Robertson was fully aware that there was a real possibility of one or both cables breaking at any moment.

The Wahine’s hull was low in the water at the stern; if she touched bottom as she sheered back and forth into the shallow waters north of Point Dorset, the impact would crunch bulkheads and tank tops already weakened and under enormous pressure from flooding. The result similarly would bring about a new and immediate crisis. Captain Robertson could not leave the bridge and did not do so until around 12.35 p.m. when, with Captain Galloway relieving him, the Master hastened below to the main vehicle deck.

Photo by Mrs Edith Beck The Wahine's anchor cables, brought ashore from the wreck and landed on the Taranaki Street Wharf in Wellington, where they were consigned for scrap. Note the shellfish at left that have been cleaned from the cable links. It was the strength of these cables that saved the Wahine and those aboard her from total disaster on the morning of 10 April 1968. Parts of the Wahine can be seen in the background. The large wharf shed behind them is where Te Papa Tongarewa, Museum of New Zealand now stands.

5. Why did Captain Robertson have reassuring messages broadcast to the ship’s passengers, never warning them of the likelihood of their having to evacuate the ship?

Much criticism was subsequently made about the manner in which passengers had listened to regular broadcasts over the Wahine’s public address speakers, telling them that all was well and that they were safe. Around 12.50 p.m., coinciding with the Master's return to the bridge, the previously very slight list began to worsen. By 1 p.m. the midpoint of the list was around the 15 degree mark. For the moment the Wahine heeled no further. Announcements confirmed that the Wahine was listing but assured passengers the ship was in no danger. On the bridge Captain Robertson and Captain Galloway were waiting anxiously for the tug Tapuhi to return to the ship for a second tow attempt.

The Wahine’s Master was a seaman of the old school. Foremost when dealing with passengers in any crisis was the maintenance of calm and order. Passengers were to be kept informed but also reassured; nothing was to be said that might trigger alarm or anxiety. No sea-going master mariner of Captain Robertson’s generation would have disagreed with this. The Purser Mr B A Clare, who was making announcements every half-hour, was not deceiving his listeners; he and the Wahine’s officers and crew were totally and genuinely confident that, after having escaped Barrett Reef and Point Dorset, the Wahine would be all right. Regularly before making his announcements the Purser visited the bridge where he was told by the Master that the Wahine was not in immediate danger. The reassurance Mr Clare was emphasizing came direct from Captain Robertson.

Not only did the Master and his officers think that lifeboats and life rafts would not be needed, there was no point in forewarning passengers about their use anyway. Evacuation of the ship was impossible in the wind and sea conditions that besieged the Wahine right up until the time when “abandon ship” was ordered. Even if they had made it down the ship’s sides and away from her, the lifeboats would have been swamped and destroyed. Crowded into the Wahine’s public rooms and forbidden to remove their lifejackets, passengers could see for themselves through the windows how terrible the storm was. Any announcements or briefings about going out on deck in such conditions to board open lifeboats or life rafts would only have spread fear and tension amongst hundreds of people young and old, packed closely together.

6. What was Captain Robertson hoping to achieve when he requested the tug Tapuhi to attempt towing the Wahine, shortly after 11 am? Surely it was a pointless exercise; he must have known the Tapuhi lacked the draught and the engine power to get the heavily water-logged Wahine under control as she sheered about, and that it would be impossible to shorten his anchor cables and get the Wahine's anchors up?

Many passengers at the large windows of the Wahine's general lounge on A Deck, aft in the ship, saw the tug Tapuhi and the towing wire that, for barely ten minutes, linked the two vessels. Survivors afterwards commented on how useless it seemed; the Tapuhi was herself having the greatest difficulty weathering the very heavy seas while her 4.5 inch wide steel towing wire looked no bigger than cotton thread, breaking almost as soon as tension was placed on it. Captain Robertson knew that the tow most likely would not succeed; he was well aware of the Tapuhi's limitations. But in the complete absence of anything better, it was worth a try. At the very least, Captain Robertson hoped the Tapuhi with her towing wire might hold the Wahine's stern and stop her wild sheering movement. This would lessen greatly the risk of the Wahine drifting into shallow water and hitting more rocks or the sea floor - the very thing that happened at 12.30 pm. If the tug could do that until high tide at 2 pm, when he expected the storm to rapidly die away (as it did) the port of Wellington's other tug, Taioma, might then be available and would double the towing effort.

Perhaps during all this it might have crossed Captain Robertson's mind Wellington's utter lack of preparedness for responding to a ship disabled and in distress in heavy weather. For 40 years up until 1947 the Terawhiti, a big, powerful, ocean-going salvage tug owned by the Union Steam Ship Company, had been based in Wellington. Having a tug with her capabilities was essential; every day passenger liners, cargo vessels, oil tankers, warships and ferries linking the North and South Islands of New Zealand came and went through the narrow entrance channel, past Barrett Reef. The Wellington Harbour Board had long debated the need for replacement tugs but in 1968 they still had just the 23 year old Tapuhi and the 24 year old Taioma, both of them harbour tugs not designed for the task the Tapuhi was called upon to perform on 10th April 1968. The Taioma could not move from her wharf; her boilers were cold and steam had to be raised in them, a task that, even with her boilers being forced, would take six to seven hours until around 2 pm.

Once the Taioma eventually reached the Wahine, Captain Robertson planned to have the tug come under the Wahine's bow so that with the Tapuhi controlling her stern, the ship would then be held fore and aft. He would next endeavour to move the Wahine round into the shelter of Worser Bay, just a short distance away, by slipping one and then both the anchor cables. Passengers and non-essential crew would then be disembarked in the ship's eight lifeboats and landed at Seatoun Wharf. With this done, a decision could be made either to beach the Wahine in shallow water or move her immediately to the floating dock. All of this became irrelevant after 12.30 pm when the Wahine's list, steady at no more than 5 degrees throughout the morning, began quickly increasing.

© Photo by Martin Cahill. Gratefully acknowledged to Martin Cahill and not to be reproduced without his prior permission. Steeple Rock at left, with Steeple Beacon on the right and Seatoun Wharf in the background above the beacon. Seatoun beach, where lifeboats S1 and S2 landed, runs from right to left across the centre of the photo with the township of Seatoun behind it, reaching up into the surrounding hills. This photo was taken from a passing ship in 2009 but the scene remains near-exactly as it was in 1968. The bow of the Wahine was at this same position, pointing towards Steeple Rock, when she was abandoned. The view shows how reassuringly close she was to land. Yet perversely, perniciously, so many of her people were carried away from the rescuers lining this shore, out into the harbour and across to the deserted, wave-thrashed, annihilating coast of Pencarrow.

7. Why after having survived so much during the morning, with the storm dying away and when the worst seemed to be over, did the Wahine roll over and sink?

Around 12.30 p.m. the Wahine, still drifting up the harbour on her anchors, touched the sea floor near Steeple Rock, just off the eastern end of Seatoun Beach. The impact was very slight, no more than a nudge; Captain Robertson later described it as a single, gentle "bump". His strategy of carefully nursing his badly damaged ship while waiting for the storm to abate, would very likely have succeeded but for this. It was the fatal blow. Somewhere up forward a bulkhead or tank top, already under enormous strain from the flooding, gave way as a result of the impact. More water entered the ship, changing her fore-and-aft trim so that she went deeper by the bow. Up until that point the fore part of the Wahine’s main vehicle deck, known as the forward garage, had been dry. Water now ran into it from the flooded aft end of the main vehicle deck. Roughly 80% of the entire main vehicle deck was now covered with water, its depth no more than a few inches in the forward garage and up to three feet on the starboard side at the main vehicle deck’s aft end.

Through a process known as Free Surface Effect this water, moving freely about, destroyed what was left of the Wahine’s stability. She increasingly began to hang on each roll to starboard, no longer coming fully upright. Mr Shanks the Second Officer had been directed to watch the inclinometer above the chart table; at about 1 p.m. he told the Master that the Wahine was listing to starboard "between five and 22 degrees". For the moment she did not heel further. The mid-point of this list was approximately 15 degrees off the vertical.

Then suddenly, just before 1.25 p.m., the Wahine went over to 25 degrees. Up until then the Wahine’s Master, his senior officers and Captain Galloway had still been confident she would be alright. Now everything changed; it was imperative to get the passengers off. Caught by the easterly set of the out-flowing tide, the Wahine at about 1.15 or 1.20 p.m. began turning on her anchors. Slowly the ship swung round until her bow was facing Steeple Rock and her stern lay towards the northern end of Camp Bay, across the harbour on the Pencarrow shore. The tide held her there, broadside to the wind and seas with her port side facing the harbour entrance. Once in this position, the Wahine ceased her sheering movement for the first time since leaving Barrett Reef six hours earlier. The ship instead began a slow, sluggish rolling motion, dipping her starboard rails lower and lower.

The Wahine's change in heading meant that her starboard side was now sheltered from the weather. On the bridge Captain Robertson saw his opportunity and made the decision. At 1.25 p.m. alarm bells suddenly began ringing throughout the ship. The voice of the Wahine’s Purser came over the speakers: "We are abandoning ship. Would all passengers proceed to the starboard side of B Deck. The starboard side is the right hand side facing the front of the ship”. Passengers who had spent hour after hour sitting and waiting now found themselves caught up in all the haste and drama of a full-scale abandonment.

The list increased quickly while the boats and life rafts were being launched. By approximately 2.30 p.m., some 30 minutes after the last passengers had left the ship, the Wahine was right over on her side with the starboard wing of her bridge in the sea. In this position she settled onto the harbour floor in water 41 feet deep at her bow and 48 feet at her stern.

Captain Robertson was the last very person to leave the Wahine, jumping into the sea from the ship’s stern just before she sank.

The Wahine just after she rolled onto her starboard side. She is still afloat and about to sink to the harbour floor a few metres below her. Heavy seas are breaking across the ship's port bow. From a photograph found with Captain Robertson's personal papers.

Photo by Mrs Edith Beck Steeple Rock at left with Steeple light on its concrete tower mounted on the seabed, at right. Between them is the Cook Strait rail ferry Arahura. The wreck of the Wahine was located just off the starboard side of the Arahura at the point where she is in this photo. The eastern end of Seatoun beach is in the foreground.

8. The Wahine was so close to the shore, inside Wellington harbour with all its resources to hand, so why did so many people die?

The fatalities occurred because of what happened to wind and sea conditions on Wellington harbour as the Wahine was abandoned. Forty-five passengers and six members of the ship’s crew died - seven per cent of the Wahine's total complement of 734. Ninety three per cent survived. Nobody died aboard the Wahine; everybody was evacuated from the ship though many suffered injuries and trauma. Of the total of 51 deaths, all except one were found by the Wellington Coroner to have died from drowning. The one exception had suffered cardiac arrest while in the sea. Three children under the age of 10 lost their lives. The youngest victim was aged two, the oldest 80.

People in Wellington City, the Hutt Valley and Eastbourne were astonished at how rapidly the storm departed. It was still bitterly cold but by 2 p.m. the southerly wind and rain had gone completely. Any relief felt by the authorities in Wellington at the weather's dramatic improvement was soon cut short. Up until 2 p.m. local radio had featured news principally about the damage and disruption on shore. The Wahine had been a lesser story; news reports described her as anchored in the harbour with a tug in attendance, waiting for the storm to pass until it was safe for her to berth.

Then from 2 p.m. news bulletins carried the first reports that passengers from the Wahine were leaving the ship in her lifeboats. With the rain's departure the Wahine was now, for the first time, clearly visible from the Seatoun foreshore and from nearby Worser Bay. She was anchored just off Steeple Rock, lying broadside to the entrance channel with her bow towards the eastern end of Seatoun beach. To the handful of policemen, reporters and onlookers gathered there, it was clearly evident that things were going seriously wrong. The Wahine was listing at an alarming angle, lifeboats and life rafts were heading away from the ship and many people could be seen in the water around her.

The news came like a thunderbolt to Police and emergency services hoping for some respite after the intense pressure they had been under during the last eight hours, dealing with the effects of the storm in Wellington city and the Hutt Valley. Police commanders now learned that a major shipwreck involving several hundred people was taking place out on the harbour, and that without delay they would have to mount a full-scale rescue operation both at Seatoun and at Eastbourne, on the opposite side of the harbour. At 1.30 p.m. Police officers at Seatoun and Beacon Hill Signal Station notified the Wellington Central Police control room by radio that the Wahine was being abandoned. Immediately Police, ambulances and Union Steam Ship Company staff began converging on the Seatoun beach area. The same radio message was overheard by the Lower Hutt Police Station. All available officers from Lower Hutt quickly set off by Army trucks for Burdon's Gate, the point just south of Eastbourne where the narrow, winding road to Pencarrow begins.

Meanwhile, word travelled swiftly along the Wellington waterfront. The Wahine was in trouble off Steeple Rock and the Harbour Master had directed all vessels capable of doing so to proceed to her assistance. The response was immediate. Along with the rail ferry Aramoana, from 1.30 p.m. a succession of coastal vessels and fishing boats left the wharves. At 1.35 p.m. the Royal New Zealand Naval Volunteer Reserve's motor launch HMNZS Manga got underway from her berth at Waterloo Quay, along with the pilot launch Arahina. Motorised lifeboats were sent from ships berthed in the port. Many private launch and yacht owners also followed on their own initiative.

Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. Dominion Post Collection, EP/1968/1576/.F This is Wahine lifeboat S4, aft-most of the ship's starboard-side lifeboats, disembarking her passengers after landing on Seatoun Beach. Rescuers are hauling the fully loaded lifeboat further up the sand while others assist those coming ashore. S4 was under the command of Mr T R Dartford, one of the Wahine's quartermasters, and had some 100 occupants aboard, 30 of whom had been pulled from the sea after the lifeboat left the Wahine. Initially she was caught by the tide and pushed out into the middle of the harbour, but was then taken in tow by the pilot launch Tiakina. The Tiakina's master was Captain John Brown. Lifeboat S2 also made landfall at Seatoun, coming alongside the wharf there. S2 had some 70 occupants aboard and was under the command of Mr P W Bennett, the Wahine's Fourth Engineer. Lifeboat S3 was carried across the harbour to the eastern shoreline where her commander, Able Seaman Terry Victory, very skillfully landed the boat on Muritai Beach. S1, the Wahine's starboard-side accident boat, was not so fortunate, being capsized by the waves off the Pencarrow shore when her diesel motor was swamped. All her occupants were thrown into the sea and many became casualties. S1 was under the command of the Wahine's Third Officer, Mr Grahame Noblet.

The occupants of the first lifeboats and life rafts to leave the Wahine soon found that, instead of being able to make for Seatoun beach, they were being carried in a south-east direction, away from the ship and out into the harbour. Soon the surface of the sea was dotted with the heads of swimmers who had jumped from the ship expecting no difficulty in reaching the nearby shore, only to be swept away from land. Although sea conditions had moderated, there was a heavy, lumpy swell running in the harbour. Many people were thrown into the sea when life rafts capsized and when lifeboat S1, the accident boat under the command of Mr Noblet, the Wahine's Third Officer, was swamped and overturned by the waves.

Although they were cold, wet, seasick and terrified, those who reached the shore aboard the Wahine’s three big lifeboats numbered S2, S3 and S4 were the most fortunate of all the Wahine's 734 passengers and crew. For the others, the ordeal confronting them was dreadful in the extreme. The storm that had raged throughout the morning had driven a huge quantity of additional water into the harbour. Now, with the southerly winds gone and the tide out-flowing, this water began flooding back down the habour to the open sea, taking people from the Wahine with it. The result was swimmers and life rafts scattered over a distance of two miles along the Pencarrow coast, from Camp Bay as far south as Hinds Point. This was totally unforeseen. Captain Robertson and Chief Officer Luly had expected the evacuation of the ship to be a relatively quick and straight-forward task of moving the Wahine’s passengers the very short distance to Seatoun Beach. Likewise, the Wahine’s closeness to Seatoun meant that the hurried response to the ship’s abandoning had, logically, been focused there. It was not expected that the heavy out-flow of the tide would take so many across to Pencarrow.

© Photo by Martin Cahill. Gratefully acknowledged to Martin Cahill and not to be reproduced without his prior permission. The Pencarrow Coast, looking south to Hinds Point with Pencarrow Light in the far distance. Thirty per cent of the Wahine's total complement of passengers and crew struggled ashore here, walking, crawling or being pulled out of seas many times larger than those shown in this photo.

Along this coast, barren, rock-strewn and exposed, a steep tumbling sea was running. Passengers and crew from the Wahine began coming ashore from around 2.15 p.m. They continued doing so for the next three hours, most landing between Hinds Point and the southern end of Camp Bay. Some 223 people made it through the monstrous surf and past the barriers of inshore rock. Thankful as they must have been to escape the from sea with their lives, the surroundings that greeted them could not have been more desolate. Unlike the huge assemblage of rescuers and vehicles on hand at Seatoun, there was no shelter from the cold, no transport, no medical attention and pitifully few people to help them. Slips, logs and wash-outs blocking the road meant that for the first few hours the only assistance consisted of two Landrovers and a small number of Police officers together with volunteers from nearby Eastbourne. Much of the life-saving work was done by two young Police constables based at the Lower Hutt Police Station, who were the first to reach Pencarrow. Time and time again on seeing orange lifejackets, they waded into the surf among the rocks to drag survivors up the beach. A quick word of reassurance then back into the waves to pull the next survivor to safety. Many were hypothermic, some were very badly injured, others so traumatized that they attempted to climb the scrub-covered hills at the head of the beach in their desperation to escape the waves. Neither constable subsequently was given any recognition for the uncounted lives they saved.

All the survivors were wet, cold and tired, most were barefoot and had lost clothing. Their injuries ranged from knocks and bruises to fractured limbs; many people who had been in the water or on upturned life rafts were suffering from exposure. Facing them was a slow, painful trek on foot for as much as two miles. The Pencarrow road was bleak, windswept and treacherous, its surface littered with rubble and running with mud. Especially for those without shoes it must have been the most gruelling of forced marches. Around them as they walked could be seen the flotsam and tragedy of shipwreck. Landrovers crawled and bumped their way past, heaped with injured, unconscious and dying. Rescuers had lit driftwood fires beside the road to try and sustain others waiting for transport. Most terrible of all, bodies lay in full view on the beach or next to the road, sprawled and dishevelled. There was no time to worry about them as the desperate efforts went on to save as many as possible from the sea's clutches.

Forty seven people lost their lives along the Pencarrow coast that afternoon. They drowned in the surf, were thrown against the rocks or, having gained the shore, perished from hypothermia. Rescuers would later tell of venturing as far as they dared into the gigantic seas, trying to grab exhausted swimmers only to have the undertow sweep them out of reach. Some were plucked from the sea on the very edge of death then had to be left while their rescuers went back for others. Without warmth or medical attention they died where they lay. Of the 47 fatalities an estimated 12 reached land alive only to succumb either on the beach or on their way to hospital.

Just offshore, a rescue fleet of fishing boats, little ships and private launches was combing the eastern side of the harbour, pulling survivors from the water. They were under the direction of Captain Galloway the Deputy Habour Master, who was aboard HMNZS Manga. Rescued from the sea himself after jumping from the Wahine, he had realised what was happening and immediately taken command of operations off the Pencarrow coast. The tug Tapuhi arrived at the Inter-Island Wharf in Wellington around 3.15 pm with 174 survivors - nearly one quarter of the Wahine's entire complement of passengers and crew - packed aboard after having rescued them from the sea at Pencarrow. As soon as they had been disembarked the Tapuhi returned to Pencarrow where the search for survivors continued well into the night.

Photo by Kay McCormick This photo was taken by Kay McCormick, a Wahine survivor, on Thursday 10 April 2008 exactly 40 years after the Wahine Disaster. It shows one of the beaches on the Pencarrow coast where many survivors landed from the sea. Ahead of them was a long, punishing walk of up to two miles in arctic-like temperatures and mostly in bare feet. The older of the two Pencarrow lighthouses can be seen on the hilltop at left. By 10 April 1968 nineteen year old Kay McCormick had almost completed her training as a registered nurse. She spent that morning standing in the vestibule area forward of the Wahine’s Smoke Room on B Deck, helping children and seasick passengers use the toilets located there. When the Wahine was abandoned Miss McCormick joined a long queue of passengers out on the freezing, tilting decks waiting to embark in the life rafts. When her turn came the B Deck rails, over which she climbed, were level with the sea. The listing Wahine seemed to tower directly over her 25 person life raft, threatening to roll on top of it. Removing her shoes Kay McCormick dropped into the sea, kicking with her feet to propel the life raft away from the ship. There were many examples like this of bravery and selflessness from among the Wahine’s passengers, crew and their rescuers, very few of which were ever acknowledged.

Photo by Kay McCormick Rocks at Pencarrow, taken on the 40th anniversary of the Wahine Disaster, 10 April 2008.

MV Aramoana. Painting in ink and acrylics by Murray Robinson, 2007 Captain Robertson was Master of the Aramoana for almost three years from September 1962. © M Robinson

On 10 April 1968 the largest of all the rescue vessels that responded when the Wahine was abandoned, was the Cook Strait rail ferry Aramoana. Commanded by Captain A Dodds, the Aramoana had been on stand-by throughout the morning and left the Cook Strait Ferry Terminal at full speed at 1.36 pm. When she reached the Wahine her two motor lifeboats were launched to assist people in the sea. Both boats, one under the command of the Aramoana's Chief Officer Mr C E Graham, and the other commanded by Third Officer Mr J King, headed across to the Pencarrow side of the harbour. Both were lost in the very heavy seas; Mr King's boat was capsized and Mr Graham's boat went ashore after having been swamped. The report Mr Graham gave of the scene on the Pencarrow shore, where he landed, depicts graphically the condition of the survivors there: "I can only compare it with descriptions I have read of people fleeing from the Blitzkrieg of the last War. Vacant faces, staring eyes and utterly exhausted."

The above painting of the Aramoana shows her with the red, black and white funnel logo she wore later in her career. In 1968 the New Zealand Railways shield was mounted on her funnel.

9. Why were the many coastal vessels and pleasure craft in Wellington harbour not told earlier to go to the Wahine, so that people in the sea could have been rescued before they were swept across the harbour to Pencarrow?

From 1.30 pm many small boats and ships left immediately for the area off Steeple Rock in response to the Harbour Master's request for all vessels to assist those aboard the Wahine. Their departure took place at the same time as the start of the evacuation of the ship, so that there was a considerable interval until these rescue vessels arrived. The first did not get there until just after 2 pm, by which time the Wahine had been fully abandoned and many of her passengers were in the sea.

Although conditions had moderated, out beyond Point Halswell the armada of little rescue craft was soon battling the heavy, lumpy swell in the harbour's main channel. From around 1.20 pm the storm that had raged throughout the morning quickly disappeared, a light north-westerly gale springing up in its place. But prior to then, sea conditions on the harbour had remained far too extreme for small boats. The 232 ton, 112 feet long Tapuhi, trying to get close to the Wahine's stern just after 1 pm so as to reconnect her towing wire, had experienced the greatest difficulty holding her position in the mountainous seas. The rescue vessels could not have been directed to leave any earlier without the lives of their crews being put at very significant risk.

Painting entitled "Wahine the Day After" by Martin Cahill. Gratefully acknowledged to Martin Cahill and not to be reproduced without his prior permission. Had there been full visibility for divers in the seas around the Wahine after she sank, this is what they would have seen: the ship lying on the harbour floor with her port side above water. Clouds of silt and leaking fuel oil from the ship made undersea visibility near to zero, but Martin Cahill's painting vividly captures how the Wahine must have looked immediately following the disaster.

10. What did the Union Steam Ship Company, owner and operator of the Wahine, do to provide support and assistance?

By 1968 Captain Robertson had worked for the Union Steam Ship Company for nearly three decades. Loyalty to his employer forbade him from any public statement about the role the company played on 10 April 1968, a role that, with hindsight, can be described as less than proactive. "More could have been done" was the verdict of the Court of Inquiry when remarking on the company’s performance that day.

The Head Office and operational nerve-centre of the Union Steam Ship Company was, in 1968, located on Customhouse Quay in Wellington City, just a few miles from where the Wahine was. During that morning the company could hear the radio transmissions to and from the ship, but because of a fault with their radio equipment, head office staff could make no direct contact with Captain Robertson, even by radio telephone. Little effort seems to have been made to get round this problem, despite the gravity of the situation. The head office knew the Wahine had been aground on Barrett Reef, that she was holed, badly flooded and without engine power, held only by her anchors in the most severe weather, and that there were 734 people aboard. Not yet two years in service, the near-new Wahine was, at the time, the Union Steam Ship Company’s finest ship. The company’s apparent lack of interest in what was happening to her seems quite astonishing. Key questions such as "what is your draught?", "are any of your passengers or crew injured?" and "is there water on your vehicle deck?" were never asked. A quick check of the builder’s plans for the Wahine, of which the head office had a full set, would soon have refreshed the company’s technical personnel about the non-water-tight doors and ventilation shafts leading up to the main vehicle deck from flooded compartments below. Knowing this, it should then have been logical to check with Captain Robertson that he was also aware of it, and whether he understood the priority for curbing the water entering the Wahine’s main vehicle deck. This was not done.

The company’s answer to this was that Captain Robertson was their man on the spot. He was the company’s senior master, he was in command of the Wahine, and if he needed to report any specific problem or seek any specific advice, he would do so. Radio messages from the ship were, instead, assuring them that all was well. In the meantime, it was preferable not to distract Captain Robertson with questions that might interfere or suggest he did not have their full confidence. There is some validity in this, but the seafarers among the company’s head office personnel must have appreciated the tremendous pressure and difficulty Captain Robertson was under and, in these circumstances, the likelihood for mistakes. A few carefully chosen questions would soon have confirmed whether or not the Wahine was truly in no danger, as her Master was reporting. But nothing was said and not one request for more information was made by the Union Steam Ship Company to Captain Robertson throughout that morning or early afternoon.

Just prior to 12 midday an attempt was made by the company to get their freighter Katea (Captain F Kelner) berthed at Pipitea Wharf in Wellington, out to the Wahine to try and assist with towing her. Compared to the tug Tapuhi the 3,790 ton Katea was a much bigger vessel with a deeper draught and more powerful diesel engines. She conceivably may have made a difference but the plan was soon aborted. With 60 knot winds blowing in the inner harbour it proved impossible to shift the Katea from her berth. There is no record of any attempt having been made to use the radio facilities aboard the Katea to establish direct communications with the Wahine.

11. What significance did the failure of the Wahine’s radar have?

The answer to this is: none. Doubts still linger as to what really happened to the Wahine’s radar as she came through the harbour entrance on the morning of 10 April 1968. Did the radar genuinely fail? Or was it mistakenly (or conveniently) believed to have failed, and then switched off? Would the radar have saved the Wahine from Barrett Reef had it remained operable?

The Wahine was equipped with one radar unit, a British-made Kelvin Hughes High Performance Marine Radar Type 14/12. The rotating scanner was located on a platform high up on the ship’s foremast, in front of the bridge. Inside the Wahine’s bridge, the display screen and controls for the radar were mounted on a pedestal about two metres to the right of the steering wheel. The radar had a maximum range of 24 miles. There was no separate, backup radar although this was not unusual at the time aboard merchant ships.

Photo acknowledged to Glasgow City Archives A close-up of the Wahine showing the radar scanner on her foremast. The large flag flying from the halyards above the Wahine's bridge is that of Fairfields (Glasgow) Ltd, the Wahine's builders. This photo was taken in the Firth of Clyde late in May 1966 and is one of a series recording the very first occasion when the Wahine steamed out to the open sea, just after she had been completed. The purpose of this short voyage was to carry out sea trials; the flag denotes she is still in the hands of her builders.

Throughout the overnight voyage from Lyttelton and the early morning crossing of Cook Strait, the Wahine’s radar had been switched on and functioning normally. In darkness just after 6.10 a.m., as the Wahine steamed past the flashing light on Pencarrow Head, the rain became heavier and visibility dropped to half a mile. Captain Robertson stepped back from the bridge windows to confirm his ship’s position on the radar screen. He had done so a number of times since taking over control of the ship twenty minutes earlier. Normally Captain Robertson would have expected the screen, dimly illuminated in orange, to show the coastline of the harbour entrance ahead of the ship and the navigation beacons inside the harbour, on which the Wahine was lined up. But this time the screen was different. The PPI, or present position indicator, was not reading correctly and for some reason the entire picture on the screen seemed to have gone upside down.

For a few seconds Captain Robertson manipulated the radar controls but, when he could not restore the screen’s normal picture, he left it and crossed to the port wing of the bridge. He did not switch the radar off. Loss of the radar was a nuisance but not a setback; Captain Robertson could navigate and determine the ship’s position just as capably without it. For him and for seafarers of his generation, radar was an aid to navigation only; they did not depend on it and radar was never regarded as a substitute for the eyes, judgement and knowledge of masters and watch-keeping officers. Theirs was an era when ships had none of the computerised technology that features on ships’ bridges today. Automatic navigation tracking systems, global positioning systems, electronic chart display information systems, integrated bridge systems – nothing of this had been invented in 1968. Instead, it was the human skills and seamanship of the master and his officers by which ships were guided.

After the storm had struck, both Second Officer Shanks and then Chief Officer Luly tried to get the radar screen functioning again. From the bridge windows Mr Luly could see that the radar scanner on its platform high up the foremast was still rotating. He could also see that the foremast itself was shaking violently with the movement of the ship and the impact of the wind. Crossing to the passageway at the rear of the bridge that led to the radio office, Mr Luly called out to the Radio Officer, Mr Lyver, telling him to come and check the radar and see if he could put it right. This was at about 6.20 a.m.

Mr Lyver was responsible for all the Wahine’s telecommunications equipment, including the radar. When he came onto the bridge Mr Lyver found the picture on the radar screen very murky and confused. After trying without success to identify and fix the problem, at around 6.28 a.m. Mr Lyver told the Chief Officer that there was nothing he could do. He continued to watch the screen. At approximately 6.45 a.m. when there was still no improvement, Mr Lyver switched the radar off. Later it was determined that the radar had failed firstly because water from the torrential rain had leaked into the scanner equipment on the foremast. Secondly, the scanner's normal rotation had been disrupted by the force of the wind and the excessive shaking and vibration of the foremast. The radar simply had been overcome by the wall of rain and spray through which it could neither transmit nor receive signals. Even if it had functioned normally, conditions that morning after the storm struck were so extreme that Captain Robertson would have distrusted any information the radar screen gave him. An unstabilised radar, such as the one aboard the Wahine, rapidly loses effectiveness in any conditions where the ship is swinging or rolling heavily. Without a gyro compass to stabilise the radar as the Wahine swung out of control, the picture on the screen would very likely have been indecipherable (see Question & Answer 3).

The radar had failed once before during the Wahine’s short life. In July 1966 while the ship was on her delivery voyage from Scotland, water had leaked into the scanner mechanism on the foremast during a heavy rain storm. The leak was soon repaired but this early malfunction showed that, located near the top of the foremast, the scanner was particularly exposed to winds and weather. Had the Wahine survived, the radar scanner would in all likelihood have been shifted to a lower position, maybe adjacent to the master compass platform above the bridge.

12. Why didn't Captain Robertson order all the lifeboats filled with passengers and lowered before the Wahine heeled over to the point where the four port-side lifeboats could no longer be used?

Loading and then launching the Wahine's lifeboats at any time up until just before 'abandon ship' was ordered at 1.25 p.m. would have resulted in their being either swamped, overturned or flung against the Wahine's hull by the heavy breaking seas running along the sides of the ship. Added to this, the Wahine's uncontrolled movement from side to side as she drifted on her anchors would have made launching the boats even more hazardous. Hundreds would certainly have drowned in the sea as a result. It was only from about 1.20 p.m. when the Wahine stopped her sheering movement for the first time since coming off Barrett Reef, and when a sheltered lee formed along her starboard side, that it became possible to put lifeboats into the water. By that stage her list meant it was no longer possible to lower the port-side lifeboats.

Copyright © 2008 Murray Robinson www.thewahine.co.nz

THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE ARAHINA AND CAPTAIN NEWEY

The prodigious efforts by the hand-full of Police officers and volunteers on the Pencarrow shore were just part of the rescue story on the eastern side of Wellington harbour. Close offshore, a fleet of small craft toiled among the rocks and waves, plucking survivors out of the sea. Foremost among them was the pilot launch Arahina, commanded by Captain Doug Newey. In a display of courage and skill matching the finest traditions of the sea, Captain Newey time and time again took the Arahina up to survivors who were about to be hurled against rocks or into the tumbling surf. Fifty-five people were rescued in this way from near-certain death. Afterwards, no official recognition was given to Captain Newey, nor has his story ever been accorded the prominence it deserves in the collective memory of 10 April 1968.

The Arahina was one of two pilot launches owned by the Wellington Harbour Board at the time of the Wahine Disaster. She was a very good sea boat, deep-draught, strongly constructed and able to handle all types of weather. Nineteen metres in length and of 36 gross tonnage, the Arahina was built in Auckland in 1925 of native kauri timber. Her engines comprised one 150 hp Fairbanks-Morse five cylinder diesel coupled to a single propeller, plus a smaller auxiliary engine. Because no gearbox was fitted, the diesel had to be stopped whenever the Arahina moved from ahead to astern. It was then restarted in the opposite direction by a shot of compressed air. For this purpose, compressed air storage bottles were kept topped up by the auxiliary engine. The Arahina's engineer on 10 April 1968 was Mr Jock Cain.

That afternoon the Arahina left her wharf at 12.45pm with a large pump and hose sections onboard, which Captain Newey had been ordered to take out to the Wahine. The pump gear belonged to the Wellington Fire Brigade and accompanying it aboard the Arahina were the Wellington Fire Chief, two firemen and two Police officers. Neither the Arahina nor the Wahine were equipped with derricks or cranes, and just how the pump gear was to be transferred to the Wahine in the still very heavy seas was not made clear to Captain Newey. But as the Arahina "turned the corner" off Point Halswell and the listing Wahine came into view, it became obvious that the pump would not be required. The Wahine was being abandoned and Captain Newey was advised on VHF radio by Captain John Brown, Master of the pilot launch Tiakina, to hasten across to the eastern side of the harbour and save life.

In the sea off the Pencarrow coast Captain Newey found large numbers of lifejacketed swimmers who had been carried across the harbour from the Wahine. Steep breaking waves up to 30 feet high were running along the coast and exploding across the many outcrops of black rock just offshore. Captain Newey remembers seeing a yacht rearing up on the crest of a wave, its rigging and bowsprit torn away. The swimmers were being swept into this tumult where they would be smashed against the rocks, snagged in beds of kelp or drowned in the surf. Among them were the occupants of Wahine's overturned accident boat which had been under the command of Third Officer Grahame Noblet.

Captain Newey manoeuvred the Arahina alongside many of these swimmers, the firemen and Police officers hauling them aboard one-by-one using ropes and a cargo net rigged over the launch's starboard side. Doing so required Captain Newey to hold the Arahina in position despite the towering waves and the rocks very close-by. He did this by quartering the seas - working the helm to keep the Arahina with her stern at a 45 degree angle to the waves. Survivors were all around the Arahina, desperate for rescue. Each time she went astern or ahead to get them, the launch's engine had to be stopped then restarted by compressed air, which soon became depleted. So close inshore did the Arahina go that Captain Newey felt her touch bottom at least once.

On being pulled aboard, the survivors were immediately sent below decks to the Arahina's cabin, where they would find warmth and also help preserve the launch's stability as the numbers aboard her grew. Once this accommodation was fully occupied, survivors were placed in the launch's wheelhouse. The Arahina engineer counted 55 of them in total. Included was Third Officer Grahame Noblet, Senior Assistant Purser Ray Ferenczy, her Bosun Harry Hampson and also Ken MacLeod, the Wahine's helmsman that morning. All had found themselves floating adrift in the very cold, treacherous waters of Wellington Harbour after the Wahine had been abandoned. There is no question that most if not all these passengers and crew members owe their lives to the skill and bravery of Captain Newey on the 's that day. Saturated from spray coming in through the front window of the wheelhouse, which he kept open for better visibility, Captain Newey also had to contend with steering problems from the Arahina's rudder having been bent 23 degrees off the centre-line by a heavy sea. In addition, the launch's auxiliary engine began over-heating from the constant work of replenishing the compressed air bottles.

Captain Newey took the Arahina across to Seatoun Wharf where all 55 survivors were landed safely at around 3 pm. They were immediately taken by bus to Wellington Railway Station, which was being used as a collection centre for survivors. Without respite, the Arahina set off again for Pencarrow where she continued searching the seas for anybody still to be found. No further survivors were located. At 7.10 pm Captain Newey finally brought the Arahina back alongside her berth in Wellington harbour.

Despite he and his small crew made up largely of volunteers having saved 55 lives, Captain Newey was not called to give evidence at the Court of Inquiry, and no mention was made of the Arahina in the Report of the Court. Even the section of the Report entitled "Gallantry" contains nothing about the Arahina. Subsequent anniversary events, publications and TV documentaries have all but forgotten the contribution made by Captain Newey and the Arahina. In 1969 Wellington's Chief Fire Officer, who was on the Arahina, received an award but he was the only one. For his magnificent work in saving so many lives, the honour denied Captain Newey is indeed a sad reflection on how the Wahine Disaster has been chronicled.

Captain Douglas Newey died at his home in Paraparaumu, New Zealand on Monday 20 July 2009 following a stroke. He was in his 90th year.

Copyright © 2009 Murray Robinson www.thewahine.co.nz

Sources:
TEV Wahine Transcript of Court of Inquiry, 1968
Statements, affidavits and exhibits placed before the Court of Inquiry (held by Archives New Zealand)
NZ Government TEV Wahine; Report of Court and Annex Thereto, November 1968
Union Steam Ship Company archives, Wellington Museum of City and Sea
Private papers of Captain H G Robertson
Conversations with Anne Robertson (Captain Robertson’s wife) Noeleen Knott (Captain Robertson’ sister) and Ken MacLeod (helmsman on the bridge of the Wahine during 10 April 1968)
Shipbuilding and Shipping Record, 4 August 1966
N H Brewer A Century of Style
Martin Cahill
I J Farquhar Union Fleet
A A Kirk Fair Winds and Rough Seas
M Lambert & J Hartley The Wahine Disaster
G McLauchlan (Ed) The Line that Dared
Vic Young
Ray Ferenczy
Captain Doug Newey
Captain John Brown
Kay McCormick
Auckland Star, Evening Post and Dominion newspapers.
May 2008 edition, Issue 132, "Navy Today" newsletter, Royal New Zealand Navy

Photo by Mrs Edith Beck The Wahine lying on her side and partially submerged in Wellington harbour, just a few days after the disaster. Brown fuel oil leaking from ruptured tanks in the bottom of the ship has smeared the white superstructure at her bow, also the bridge. Just visible below the sea’s surface can be seen the Wahine’s funnel and both her masts. A white arrow has been painted on her green hull to denote where cracks have appeared. More cracks opened during the following days, quashing early hopes that the ship could be refloated and put back into service.

As with most transport accidents and disasters, there was no one single cause for the Wahine’s loss. Instead, a sequence of events and circumstances came together and built up throughout the morning of 10 April 1968 to produce the final outcome. Had any one of those events and circumstances not been present, the chain would have been broken and the Wahine likely would have remained afloat.

1. At 6 a.m. weather conditions at Beacon Hill Signal Station, located 440 feet above sea level inside the harbour entrance, were deteriorating sharply. The wind strength there had reached 60 to 75 knots compared to 50 knots at 5 a.m. It was raining very heavily and visibility had dropped to half a mile. The weather information received on the Wahine’s bridge from the signal station one hour earlier at 5 a.m. was thus no longer correct. The staff on duty at the signal station did not radio the Wahine to warn the ship of this change, even though they knew she was about to begin her passage through the entrance channel. The protocol followed by the signal station was to supply weather information to ships only if and when it was requested. If ships did not ask, the signal station would not tell them even if weather information given as recently as one hour before was no longer accurate.

2. Just before the storm struck the Wahine had turned 30 degrees off her correct course so that she was lying almost beam-on to the approach of the storm’s winds and seas. Caught in this position at the moment when the storm hit her, the Wahine was, as a result, much more vulnerable to its impact. Had she instead been on her proper heading and under full helm control, the weather would then have been on the Wahine’s stern and not on her beam, and with her engines returned to full ahead she might have been able to run before the storm past Barrett Reef to the inner harbour, where there was more sea room.

3. The Port of Wellington did not have modern, deep-draught salvage tugs capable of assisting an ocean-going ship disabled in heavy weather. In 1968 the only tugs available in Wellington were the 232 ton Taioma and Tapuhi. Of Second World War vintage, both were harbour tugs entirely suited to normal day-to-day tasks around the wharves. Only the Tapuhi had steam up on the morning of 10 April 1968, and although she made courageous efforts to assist the Wahine she was too light and her towing gear too puny. The following year the Wellington Harbour Board ordered the first of three new, much larger tugs. Had they been there that day, the outcome for the Wahine would have been entirely different.

In August 1971 the Wellington Harbour Board took delivery of the Kupe, first of two diesel-powered, deep-draught tugs equipped with salvage gear that were ordered in the wake of the Wahine Disaster. Vastly superior in every respect to the elderly Tapuhi and her sister Taioma, Kupe was joined in February 1972 by a second, identical new tug, the Toia. What might have been achieved had vessels like these been despatched to the Wahine on the morning of 10 April 1968! Of all the shortcomings revealed that day, top of the list was Wellington's lack of modern salvage tugs capable of going to the assistance of a ship in distress in heavy weather. The Tapuhi courageously did her very best but she was too small, while the Taioma could not move from her wharf because her boilers were cold and several hours were needed to raise steam in them. As with aircraft, ships often get into trouble as a result of accident, breakdown or weather. Lamentable is too feeble a word to describe how a major commercial port like Wellington could have had no suitable tugs for handling a full-scale maritime emergency, especially given the port’s location on the doorstep of Cook Strait, one of the world’s most tempestuous seaways. It equates to an international airport knowingly having fire trucks that are too small and too under-powered to put fires out when responding to a big plane crash. © Murray Robinson 2008

4. For removal of water from her main vehicle deck in the event of flooding, the Wahine had a system of 24 drainage points known as scuppers. Their total inadequacy was cruelly exposed on 10th April 1968. The scuppers consisted of small gratings set at intervals into the deck. Each was connected to a pipe six inches in diameter that ran beneath the main vehicle deck to a non-return valve mounted on the ship's outside hull. Under normal load conditions the non-return valves were positioned approximately three feet above the Wahine’s waterline. With some 3,500 tons of sea water inside the ship, her draught increased by approximately five feet so that on 10 April 1968 they became completely submerged. Moreover, the scupper non-return valves could only to be opened when the ship was either alongside a wharf or in calm, sheltered waters. While the ship was at sea they were required always to be kept closed. This meant that, in any type of emergency involving bad weather or damage that caused the ship to sink lower into the water, the scuppers were quite useless. No other means was provided for getting water off the main vehicle deck in the event of flooding.

How this shortcoming could have been permitted seems, in hindsight, quite incredible. The explanation lies in the way the ship was designed. The interior of the Wahine’s hull below the main vehicle deck was divided into 13 compartments separated by water-tight bulkheads. She was built to stay afloat with any two adjacent compartments flooded. In this condition, the Wahine’s draught would increase by about two feet to just over 19 feet, leaving the scupper non-return valves on the outside hull just above the waterline and, theoretically, still able to be used. If a third compartment became flooded, the valves would go below the surface of the sea but by then they would be irrelevant because, with more than two adjacent compartments flooded, the Wahine would not stay afloat.

On 10 April 1968 however, nine of those compartments were either fully or partially flooded. Only the two boiler rooms, the auxiliary turbo-alternator room and the main turbo-alternator room were free of water. In addition, the Wahine was floating on her tank tops – the steel floors inside each of these compartments. The areas beneath these floors, comprising the very lowest part of the ship immediately above her keel and known as the double bottoms, were open to the sea for the entire length of the Wahine as the result of Barrett Reef. Yet not only was she still afloat, she was stable and upright. The Wahine's builders had provided information in the form of two booklets carried aboard the ship for the guidance of her master and officers during flooding emergencies. These booklets were entitled "Trim and Stability Particulars" and "Damaged Stability Criteria". They went no further than what to do if two adjacent compartments were flooded. Since the Wahine was meant to sink with any flooding beyond that, the booklets said nothing about an eventuality where up to nine compartments were breached. As such, these emergency instructions proved on 10 April 1968 to be as worthless as the scuppers.

© Murray Robinson. Not to be reproduced. Inside the Wahine’s main vehicle deck. This photo was taken on the port side from a point forward of the stern door, and looks up towards the bow. The ramp at left provided access for cars to the upper garage on the deck above. There was an identical ramp on the starboard side of the ship. At right is the engine casing. This was a narrow rectangular steel box that ran down the centre of the main vehicle deck at its aft end, bisecting it. The engine casing provided ventilation and access by ladder to the main turbo-alternator room and the propulsion motor room on the deck below. The area in the foreground, as well as the area immediately behind the camera, was where the water entering the main vehicle deck built up during the morning of 10 April 1968. It was here that the Wahine’s engineers and seamen under Chief Engineer Herbert Wareing and Chief Officer Rod Luly, laboured throughout that morning trying to combat the flooding. The circular recesses set into the deck were for lashing vehicles in place while the ship was at sea.

The Wahine's Achilles Heel; how the sea got onto her main vehicle deck. This photo shows part of E Deck from the Wahine's general arrangement plans. E Deck was the floor of the ship's main vehicle deck, with the stern door at left. The red blocks denote the five steel doors, known as "tunnel escapes", inside of which were stairways that led down to the compartments under the Wahine's main vehicle deck at her stern. On 10th April 1968 all these lower compartments were filled with sea water from top to bottom. The doors themselves were fire-resistant but not watertight. The yellow blocks denote the tops of five vertical steel trunks that allowed air to circulate into these same compartments below the main vehicle deck. The trunks, or shafts, were rectangular in section and each had openings in their tops and bottoms that were covered by wire mesh. The openings at the top were 18 by 10 inches and 16 inches by 16 inches in size, and were cut into the front of the trunks four feet up from the floor of the main vehicle deck. There were no covers or flaps by which these openings could be sealed off in the event of a flooding emergency. On 10th April 1968 flood water slopped and spurted up through these openings with the rolling and pitching of the ship. Water also dribbled across the sills of the non-watertight doors.

5. Along the sides of the Wahine’s main vehicle deck at its aft end were a number of access doors and air ventilation shafts or trunks that came up from the compartments immediately below. All these compartments were filled with sea water. Because of another crucial fault in the design of the Wahine, the doors and the vents at the top of each of these shafts were not water-tight. As the Wahine rolled and sheered about in the storm, water from flooded lower compartments slopped over the sills of the doors and spurted up through the vents. The ship’s engineers worked strenuously to try and block off the vents, ramming sacks and lengths of canvas down into each, but the water that found its way onto the main vehicle deck came primarily from this source. No water leaked through the Wahine’s stern door. Throughout the events of 10 April 1968 the stern door remained fully closed and water-tight.

6. In addition to these internal doors and ventilation trunks there were other openings onto the Wahine's main vehicle deck and upper garage that similarly were not water-tight. At the after end of the ship, 33 feet from the stern, was a narrow rectangular hatchway in the roof of the main vehicle deck, leading directly out onto the open deck above. Known as the tonnage hatch, it was 4 feet long, 24 feet wide and served no practical purpose whatsoever as all cargo, stores and equipment taken on and off the ship were moved through the stern door.

This hatch was, instead, a device for reducing the Wahine's gross register tonnage (grt) and thereby lowering the port charges her owners had to pay. Gross register tonnage is the total of all permanently enclosed space above and below decks aboard a ship, with 100 cubic feet or 2.83 cubic metres equalling one ton. Port charges were calculated on net tonnage, which is the gross tonnage minus those spaces such as the bridge, crew accommodation and engine rooms that are not used for earning money when occupied by passengers and cargo. By fitting a tonnage hatch that could be opened, the Wahine's cargo spaces on the main vehicle deck were deemed not to be fully and permanently enclosed. They were, therefore, excluded from the ship’s gross tonnage, thus decreasing it substantially and resulting in much lower port charges in Wellington and Lyttelton.

In order to qualify in this respect, the tonnage hatch had to be positioned right aft on a ship's weather deck, and it had to be openable in the same way as a normal cargo hatch. On the Wahine the tonnage hatch was covered by wooden hatch boards on top of which were tarpaulins secured in place by rope spliced around the hatch coaming. By the late 1960s new methods for assessing ships' tonnages were being adopted and the practice of fitting tonnage hatches was lapsing into disuse. Located where it was, the tonnage hatch on the Wahine was very exposed and vulnerable to heavy following seas of a type often encountered on the Wellington-Lyttelton run. Immediately below this 96 square feet opening was the main vehicle deck. The tonnage hatch lay directly in the path of the rogue sea that struck the vessel at 6.14 a.m. on 10 April 1968.

The Wahine's upper garage on D Deck had glazed windows along its sides but at the rear of the garage there was, on both sides of the ship's hull, a row of 12 open rectangular ports without glass. These ports were known as tonnage openings and served the same function as the tonnage hatch. They had canvas covers for weather protection, and they were located beside the car ramps that ascended into the upper garage from the main vehicle deck below.

With the ship at her normal loaded draught the tonnage openings in the upper garage were 19 feet above the Wahine's waterline. But as her list worsened on the afternoon of 10 April 1968, these tonnage openings on the Wahine’s starboard side leaned closer and closer to the sea. Once the list got to around 30 degrees and the sea reached them, water would have spilled unhindered into the upper garage and down the car ramps onto the main vehicle deck. There was no provision for sealing the car ramps and the upper garage off from the main vehicle deck.

© Vic Young. Both photos gratefully acknowledged to Vic Young and not to be reproduced without his prior permission. Top photo: the Wahine’s tonnage hatch was located on the open deck just under the portholes below the row of nine large windows on the aft face of the ship’s superstructure. The large windows were those of the Wahine’s cafeteria on B Deck. The rogue wave that hit the Wahine at 6.14 on the morning of 10 April 1968 came at her from roughly the same direction as where the camera is in this photo. All the chairs, equipment and fittings on the deck at the Wahine’s stern, where the men can be seen standing and sitting, were torn from their mountings and swept against the starboard rails by the impact of this wave. Tarpaulins covering the tonnage hatch similarly were ripped away, allowing rain water to run between the hatch boards onto the main vehicle deck immediately below. In the bottom photo can be seen the tonnage openings on the port side of the Wahine’s upper garage. These are the larger, darker windows near the top of the ship’s green hull, immediately forward of the open hull door under the bridge wing. There was an identical row of windows on the Wahine’s starboard side. None of them were enclosed with glass. In the photo the windows are far above the sea, but this was no longer the case as the Wahine listed further to starboard after 1.30 pm on 10 April 1968. Hundreds of tons of seawater would have surged in through the windows on the starboard side without restraint as the list went past 30 degrees. It is remarkable that the Wahine continued her slow list and did not immediately roll over as soon as this happened.

7. The Wahine was not equipped with portable water pumps. Two or three of these, set to work on the main vehicle deck, would have soon eliminated the floodwater there. The ship had three main bilge pumps fixed permanently within her boiler and main turbo-alternator rooms, and these were all linked by a system of pumping lines built into the ship that enabled the pumps to remove water from any of the compartments below the main vehicle deck. This system unfortunately did not extend to the main vehicle deck itself. The pumps had flexible hoses that could have enabled them to drain the main vehicle deck, but these hoses were all stored inside the propulsion motor room which had been completely flooded when the Wahine grounded on Barrett Reef.

8. All the ship’s heavy engineering and carpentry tools were also inside the flooded propulsion motor room. Denied access to these, the ship’s engineers were unable to remove the four openable, circular plates set flush into the vehicle deck above the main turbo-alternator room. These openings were there to allow lifting chains to be lowered through them when the turbine casings needed to be lifted for maintenance work on the turbine machinery. When not needed for this, the openings were permanently sealed to make them water-tight and gas-tight. Power tools were needed to loosen and remove them. Had it been possible to do so, the flood-water on the vehicle deck would have drained down into the main turbo-alternator room where the bilge pump system would have discharged it overboard.

9. The reason why more effective flood countermeasures were not provided on the Wahine’s main vehicle deck was because, when the ship was designed, it was fire and not entry of seawater that was seen as the most likely threat. With up to 200 cars parked inside the ship for each overnight voyage, often in rough seas, spillage or leakage of petrol was an ever-present hazard. Very elaborate fire detection and fire suppression systems were therefore incorporated into the main vehicle deck and the upper garage. In particular, there were no openings or pump inlets between the main vehicle deck and the boiler and turbo-alternator rooms below, through which split petrol could find its way into these lower compartments. Electrically powered machinery throughout the boiler and turbo-alternator rooms meant unlimited sources of potential ignition by which this petrol could have caused a devastating fire. Fatally for the Wahine, the same attention was not given to the possibility of flooding in terms of improved drainage, more comprehensive pumping equipment and doors and air vents that, when closed, were water-tight.

Also, in 1966 when building of the Wahine was nearly complete, Lloyds Register of Shipping in London assigned to the ship a freeboard height of 3 feet 9½ inches above her waterline when she was riding at her normal draught of 17 feet 3 inches. Lloyds Register was the organisation responsible for surveying and certifying the Wahine as fully in compliance with all requirements of the British Board of Trade. "Freeboard" is the height from the waterline of a ship to the upper deck level at her normal draught when fully loaded. Ships therefore have a "freeboard deck", which is the deck level from where this height to the waterline is measured at the centre of the ship.

Aboard the Wahine, E Deck, or the floor of main vehicle deck, was the freeboard deck - it was located 3 feet 9½ inches above the waterline. In 1966 all openings below this level such as doors and vents, had to be either weather-tight or watertight. But openings above the freeboard deck did not have to be weather or water tight. Hence the non-watertight internal doors along the sides of the Wahine's main vehicle deck at its aft end that led down the compartments immediately below. Similarly, the openings for the air ventilation trunks rising from these same lower compartments were not provided with flaps or covers by which they could be made watertight in a flooding emergency. In hindsight, the freeboard deck aboard the Wahine was much too low; it should have been set two decks higher at C Deck instead of E Deck, and thus the internal doors and ventilation truck openings would all have been required to be watertight up to the level of C Deck. If this had been the case, no sea water would have entered the main vehicle deck from these sources on the morning of 10 April 1968.

10. It was the water on the main vehicle deck that caused the Wahine to list, roll over and eventually sink. The quantity was deceptively small; it comprised no more than about 200 tons of the total 3,500 tons of flood water inside the ship. When Captain Robertson saw it at around 12.40 p.m. he estimated there was between 15 to 18 inches of flooding at its deepest point. With hindsight, it is clear that he and his senior officers did not fully appreciate the enormous hidden danger from this water. Through a process known as "Free Surface Effect", water that is free to spread and move around over a very large surface area without barriers or bulkheads to confine it, will gradually destroy a ship's stability so that she lists and sooner or later capsizes. This is what happened to the Wahine. The water need only be a thin film; it is its area and not its weight or depth that is the critical element. But even if Captain Robertson, his Chief Engineer and his Chief Officer had more fully understood the threat from the water on the main vehicle deck, without tools and additional pump gear there was little if anything more that they could have done about it.

© Murray Robinson. Not to be reproduced. This diagram shows the flooding inside the Wahine. All the areas with sea water in them are shown in blue. The compartments at the stern of the ship (left) were totally flooded, while those forward of the two boiler rooms (right) were either fully or partially flooded. How the Wahine stayed afloat, stable and upright throughout the morning of 10th April 1968 with all this water inside her, is simply incredible. The black hatched area comprises the main vehicle deck, the forward garage and the upper garage (on D Deck). The two thin wedges of flooding on the main vehicle deck are also shown in blue. It was this water, moving freely about and spreading into the forward garage, that eroded the Wahine's stability and caused her to list and then roll over.

11. Around 12.30 p.m. the Wahine, still drifting up the harbour on her anchors, touched the sea floor near Steeple Rock, just off the eastern end of Seatoun Beach. The impact was very slight, no more than a nudge; Captain Robertson later described it as a single, gentle "bump". But it was the coup de grace for the Wahine. Captain Robertson’s strategy of carefully nursing his badly damaged ship while waiting for the storm to die away, would very likely have succeeded but for this. Somewhere inside one of the flooded lower compartments, the impact was enough to cause a bulkhead or tank top, under terrific strain since the mauling on Barrett Reef, to give way. The Wahine’s trim and stability, already on a knife edge, changed immediately as more water entered the ship. She went deeper by the bow; the engineers working on the main vehicle deck saw the flood water there, which been concentrated near the stern, quickly run forward as the Wahine’s fore-and-aft trim altered. The fore end of the main vehicle deck, known as the forward garage, had previously been dry. Now there was water covering some 80% of the entire main vehicle deck, its depth no more than a few inches in the forward garage and up to three feet on the starboard side at the main vehicle deck’s after end.

How could water as shallow as this threaten a 9,000 ton vessel like the Wahine? With Free Surface Effect it is not the depth or quantity of water that is critical, but the surface area over which it is free to expand and move about. Water covering 80% of her main vehicle deck, which was 380 feet in length, meant that what remained of the Wahine’s stability was soon destroyed. She could no longer stay upright. By around 1.10 p.m. the ship was listing between 15 to 25 degrees and it was just a matter of time before the Wahine rolled over. She did so at 2.30 p.m., less than an hour and a half later.

12. If it was this water on the main vehicle deck that caused the Wahine to list and then roll over, why was it not correctly identified as a deadly threat to the ship? There can be no denying that Captain Robertson and his senior officers under-estimated how hazardous this water was. On his visits to the bridge Chief Engineer Wareing advised Captain Robertson that, while the flooding on the main vehicle deck was of concern, it was not sufficient to cause alarm and could be managed. Captain Robertson accepted these reports from his Chief Engineer, as he was fully entitled to do. For them the essential factor was that despite the flooding the Wahine was stable, coming fully and easily back upright at the end of each roll. The winds and seas were so extreme that, if the ship was losing stability, they knew they would very quickly have noticed a change in her behaviour. She would have become sluggish and would increasingly have failed to come upright when she rolled. This was not the case; for hour after hour the Wahine continued to weather the storm without any alteration in her draught or her movements. As long as this remained the case the ship’s Master, Chief Engineer and their officers were justified in believing the Wahine would be all right. Everything changed when the Wahine struck the sea floor off Steeple Rock at 12.30 p.m.

The Evening Post. The Wahine glimpsed by a very brave photographer near Steeple Rock, late on the morning of 10th April 1968 around the time the storm was at its height. She is clearly stable and upright, riding to her anchors as if not troubled in the least by the hurricane winds and seas. From the look of her, there is no suggestion that she is disabled, heavily flooded, not under control and will sink in just a few hours’ time.

To the eye there was not a large amount of water on the main vehicle deck. The Wahine’s engineers and seamen worked zealously to limit the ingress of water and remove it as best they could. Their principal means of doing so was by allowing the water to drain through an open door from the main vehicle deck down into the main turbo-alternator room. The bottom of this doorway was, however, fitted with a 24 inch high steel coaming. The engineers had no cutting gear by which to remove this coaming and thereby allow much more of the water to drain away. Once the Wahine began listing to starboard and the floodwater ran to this side of the main vehicle deck, this door, located on the port or upper side of the engine casing, was of no further use.

13. Why did Captain Robertson not make any mention of the flood water on the main vehicle deck in his radio signals to the authorities on shore? This after all was surely a matter of the greatest significance? Captain Robertson's failure to report the vehicle deck flooding was, in retrospect, a serious error of judgement on his part. To explain this error, we have to put aside our preconceptions and try to understand what it was like for him on the bridge that morning: saturated, freezing and concussed, in command of a disabled, heavily flooded ship drifting on anchors close to land, caught in a huge and worsening storm, the winds at hurricane force and increasing, responsible for the lives of 734 people, utterly on his own as he knew there was no vessel that could get to him with help. Captain Robertson knew the Wahine was designed to remain afloat with any two of her 12 compartments below the main vehicle deck flooded. More than this and she was expected to sink. On 10 April 1968 only the two boiler and the two turbo-alternator compartments were dry; the rest were either partially or totally flooded. All the compartments aft of the main turbo-alternator room were full of sea water. Yet incredibly the Wahine was still upright and afloat.

Although he was confident the Wahine was all right and would survive, Captain Robertson was fully aware that it just needed one more thing to go wrong and total disaster would ensue - an anchor cable breaking, the hull touching another rock as she sheered about, a sudden bulkhead failure allowing water into one of the dry compartments. In this context a few inches of flooding on the main vehicle deck seemed immaterial. Captain Robertson viewed the water there as part of the overall knife-edge flood situation aboard the Wahine. He did not see the vehicle deck as a problem that was separate and much more threatening compared to the rest of the flooding. Mr R D Jamieson, the magistrate and member of the New Zealand Judiciary who presided over the Court of Inquiry into the Wahine’s loss, was fully correct when he ruled that the omissions and errors of judgement made by Captain Robertson had occurred "under conditions of great difficulty and danger." They therefore did not amount to wrongful acts or negligence.

The Wahine’s senior officers, all highly experienced seafarers, clearly felt the same as Captain Robertson: their ship was going to be all right and she would make it through her ordeal. The Wahine had survived Barrett Reef, avoided Point Dorset, the storm had reached its peak, she was upright, stable, riding to her anchors, not sinking further and well inside the harbour with a large floating dock to lift her out of the water just a few miles away. It was simply a matter of hanging on and containing the situation for just a short while longer. In these circumstances, and with all the other damage to the ship, there was no point in getting too anxious about some water on the main vehicle deck. Again, they did not see this water as a separate, much more immediate and far more dangerous problem. In the context of the Wahine being in harbour and not out at sea, her draught and trim not having changed for several hours and with the storm receding, they were fully justified in thinking this way. Appreciating this is key to understanding the conduct and the decisions of the men on the Wahine's bridge and main vehicle deck that morning. Unlike us, they did not have the benefit of knowing what was going to happen from 12.30 pm, after the ship unexpectedly struck the harbour floor. It came genuinely as a massive shock and surprise when the list started increasing and it was realised she was about to roll over.

But having decided the worst was over, that they were almost in the clear and that it was now just a question of waiting for the storm to moderate, it seems that a sense of non-urgency crept onto the bridge of the Wahine late on the morning of 10 April 1968. At 12.15 pm, alarmed at how deep in the water the Wahine's stern had gone, Captain John Brown of the pilot launch Tiakina manoeuvred alongside the Wahine so that Captain Bill Galloway, the Deputy Harbourmaster, could leap aboard and confer urgently with her Master. Both men displayed very great skill and resolve in doing this, Captain Galloway risking his life to climb the side of the out-of-control Wahine. On telling Captain Robertson that his ship looked to be much more dangerously flooded than earlier radio messages implied, Captain Galloway must have been more than a little surprised to then be asked if he would like some lunch.

Copyright © 2008 Murray Robinson www.thewahine.co.nz

© Tom McGrattan. Photo gratefully acknowledged to Tom McGrattan and not to be reproduced without prior permission. Part of one of the Wahine’s main steam turbines and a condenser, removed from the wreck and landed on the Taranaki Street Wharf in Wellington in 1972, after four years submerged. In the right foreground is a section of the ship’s tank tops and double bottom. The steel is being cleaned of marine growth and will then be cut up and trucked away for scrap.

Photograph by Gladys M Goodall for the Felicity Card Co Ltd. (W.T. 494) The Wahine berthed at the Lyttelton Inter-Island Terminal. She lived through just two southern hemisphere summers before her loss and, judging by the brown hill slopes in the background, this photo was taken on a fine afternoon during one of them.

© Pat Corkery. Gratefully acknowledged to Pat Corkery and not to be reproduced without prior permission. The linkspan at Lyttelton that was used by the Wahine and the ships of the Wellington-Lyttelton Steamer Express Service, photographed in August 2008 but unchanged from 1968. Cars and trucks drove over the bridge, shown raised, then through the Wahine's stern door and onto her vehicle deck. It was from here that the Wahine departed on the evening of Tuesday 9 April 1968, on her last voyage. Only the linkspan itself remains. The terminal buildings that once occupied the wharf area at left in the picture have all been demolished and the rail tracks for passenger trains connecting with Invercargill and Dunedin have also gone. Preserving the linkspan as a historic place would be a fitting memorial for those from Christchurch and the South Island of New Zealand whose lives were lost in the Wahine Disaster.

Copyright © 2008 Murray Robinson www.thewahine.co.nz

Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. Dominion Post Collection, EP-Accidents-Sea rescue-Wahine folder, 4 of 4-01. An often-published photo of the Wahine that was taken on 11 April 1968, the day following the disaster. The storm has vanished and Wellington harbour is calm, the weather fine and sunny. Police and Royal New Zealand Navy divers in the foreground are searching the wreck for bodies while Union Steam Ship Company personnel are checking each porthole in case there are survivors trapped inside the wreck. Oil from the Wahine's fuel tanks has already begun leaking and smearing the ship's hull. In the background is the Pencarrow coastline where so many people had struggled and died less than 24 hours previously.

Photographic Archive, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington New Zealand No: EP/1968/1594/2 Saturday 13 April 1968, three days following the disaster. Bodies are still coming ashore; the final count will be 51 dead, 7% of the Wahine’s total complement of 734 passengers and crew. The Wahine lies on the harbour bottom, her port side above water and smeared with leaking fuel oil. The ship’s masts and funnels are just below the surface of the sea. Below and abaft the wing of her bridge can be seen the portside lifeboats, stowed in their davits. They could not be used on 10 April because of the Wahine’s list. At the front of her superstructure is the ladder down which the Wahine’s Chief Officer and Bosun climbed, doing so in winds of over 100 knots, to release the ship’s anchors while she lay aground on Barrett Reef. Above the ladder is the single window for four-berth passenger cabin number A4.

Sources:
TEV Wahine Transcript of Court of Inquiry
Statements, affidavits and exhibits placed before the Court of Inquiry (held by Archives New Zealand)
NZ Government TEV Wahine; Report of Court and Annex Thereto, November 1968
Union Steam Ship Company archives, Wellington Museum of City and Sea
Private papers of Captain H G Robertson
Conversations with Anne Robertson (Captain Robertson’s wife) Noeleen Knott (Captain Robertson’ sister) and Ken MacLeod (helmsman on the bridge of the Wahine during 10 April 1968)
Shipbuilding and Shipping Record, 4 August 1966
N H Brewer A Century of Style
Martin Cahill
I J Farquhar Union Fleet
A A Kirk Fair Winds and Rough Seas
M Lambert & J Hartley The Wahine Disaster
G McLauchlan (Ed) The Line that Dared
Kay McCormick
Captain John Brown
Sam Parker CEng FRINZ
Auckland Star, Evening Post and Dominion newspapers