What really sealed the fate
He says he followed his usual practice of turning up the light on the compass, ready to take over the wheel, and noticed the ship was already not steering well not unusual for a tail swell and square stern ship and the lack of visibility made it difficult to sight the buoy on the left before Barrett Reef. The weather was not pleasant and to improve the view from the bridge the windows were opened, letting the storm in and turning the polished lino floor into an ice rink. Keeping on ones feet was a major problem. But, unlike the others there, Mr MacLeod had the wheel to hold on to and stayed upright.
By then, the Wahine was rolling heavily, but he was comfortable with its progress as they made their way into the harbour.
At 6.10am, George Brabander, in charge of the vehicle deck, came into the wheelhouse and, at his suggestion, Captain Gordon Robertson ordered all lashings left on the vehicles till the ship was safely in the harbour. Mr MacLeod recalls that it was then that the crucial order, which he believes sealed the fate of the ship and those on board, was given. And it is here that his account differs from that of the court of inquiry.
Captain Robertson ordered half- speed on both engines. Was he thinking of the comfort of the passengers, or the safety of the cargo when he gave this order? This, to me, was the most crucial moment. From then on we were in trouble. In other words, it was the beginning of the end, he wrote.
At the same time, the weather suddenly changed for the worse. Immediately, he says, he noticed the ship start to move to the left, or western shore. He turned the wheel two, then three, turns to the right. The Wahine was still moving left, toward Barrett Reef.
Mr MacLeod was constantly giving gyrocompass readings to Captain Robertson and with the wheel hard to starboard (right), but the ship still going to port (left), the captain ordered a series of engine manoeuvres to get it back on course to no avail. We had lost so much speed, the wind and sea had taken over, and we were now out of control. She kept going starboard, coming beam- on to the sea and thats when she started rolling and I mean rolling. I have never experienced anything like it in my life, Mr MacLeod wrote.
She went completely flat on her side, then over to the other side. This went on a number of times. You wondered if she would come upright again, but she did. No one on the bridge was left standing except for myself. I had the wheel to hold on to.
When the ship became briefly stable again and all regained their footing, they got the the shock of their lives when they looked out of the window. The Wahine was fast approaching the rocks and beach of Pencarrow.
There, right in front of us was the beach on the eastern shore. You could see breakers on the beach and the pale skyline above the beach as dawn was breaking. We were heading for the [eastern] shore.
The order was given for full astern and Mr MacLeod watched as the red Pencarrow light receded. He knew exactly where they were. Red meant they were north of Pencarrow Head.
The last two engine movements he recalls were full astern, to back away from the eastern shore, and, shortly afterward, full ahead when the second mate called rocks astern.
But it was too late. The ship did not respond and drifted on to the rocks of Barrett Reef.
There was a lot of jolting then as both engines stopped and the ship went into darkness. All the lights went out.
The court of inquiry acknowledged the difficulty of ascertaining the exact sequence of events. But Mr MacLeod is in no doubt he could see the compasses and was the only person upright, he says. Captain Robertson had been thrown the length of the bridge during a violent roll and had collided with the radar equipment. The inquiry concluded that the engines were used to straighten the ship; that it was not heading toward the eastern shore and that the intention was for it to head back out to sea. It also said the Wahine drifted into Chaffers Passage that finding was based largely on testimony from a Mr and Mrs Young who saw the ferry from their house on the western shore.
Mr MacLeods written evidence is in direct contrast, disputing that the Wahine could ever have gone into Chaffers Passage; that he could have misread the compass or that the Wahine was trying to head back out to sea. He says that, if, as the report concluded, the Wahine had kept going toward the western shore, it would have ploughed head first into Barrett Reef. And if it had gone into Chaffers Passage, it would have grounded, leading to even greater loss of life. He is adamant that his version of events is borne out by the fact that the Wahine hit Barrett Reef stern-first.
The day after the sinking, Mr MacLeod dictated his version of the ships course, engine movements, times, velocity and the condition of the sea and the events that lead to the grounding on Barrett Reef to his teacher wife Shirley.
A question remains in Mr MacLeods mind as to why the inquiry ignored his evidence, and that of many others on board, plus accounts of rescuers happy to offer testimony, preferring instead witnesses who saw the Wahine through the stormy haze from a house on shore. He has concluded that though everyone did what was humanly possible on board, and that the captain was masterful in handling the ship, the Union Steam Ship Company and other interested parties needed an explanation that did not attribute blame to the vessel or harbour board.
Whether the Wahine would have made it to port if it had not reduced speed at the crucial point it entered Wellington Harbour remains a question that haunts him to this day.
Ken MacLeod is retired from the sea and lives with Shirley, his wife of more that 40 years, in Otaki.
THE POLICEMAN 17th April, 1968. Dear Mum, Dad and family. Well, I thought I had seen just about all of it, but I was wrong.
So begins a letter from young police constable Bill Dunn to his parents, William and Isobel, in Christchurch a letter remarkable in its understated poignancy and clarity, which reveals some of what happened after and behind the scenes of probably New Zealands most written- about tragedy. That five page letter has become a treasured heirloom, read often by family members young and old, and passed down to Mr Dunns sister.
In it, the 22-year-old constable, who had been stationed at the Wharf Police, recalls standing on Seatoun beach, peering through the swirling rain as the huge hulk of the Wahine was belted with 30 foot rollers finally toppling in a cloud of steam. Then he tells of being neck deep in the tumultuous waves, launching private boats to go out to Steeple Rock and pick up people out of the water.
No one at that stage realised people were dying, he wrote. It was not until I was [now dry] and sitting in the Watchhouse listening to the police radio that I knew the extent of the disaster. The police at Eastbourne had called for more assistance; they had pulled about 30 bodies out of the sea. Survivors were dying on the beach because no one could attend to them. Army trucks were requested to take away the dead. But while Bill had the chance to get warm and dry after helping with the rescue efforts, his own ordeal was not yet over.
I went up to the City Mortuary at 9pm that night, he told his parents. It was ghastly: the bodies were laid out in rows and the floor was awash in blood.
I finished at 11 after 10 hours and was required to go out on the harbour board tug at 7am the next morning. By 11am we had picked up two bodies and one life raft. The harbour was dead calm and we got a good look at the Wahine. She was starting to leak oil already.
During that trip, the tug captain told Mr Dunn of his fears for his vessel during the rescue: He said he had been really scared of losing his tug. His tug had picked up over 100 people. Two of his crew were in hospital.
In his role, Bill was to take many statements that revealed the full extent of the tragedy to him. Many said that one of the hardest things to witness had been people just giving up and going under: A man who after clinging to some sort of raft called out that he was going. His wife had tried to hold him up but couldnt. The man just slipped out of his lifejacket and drowned. The wife had tried to take her lifejacket off and drowned also.
Bill worked 14 hours that day. Every policeman in Wellington was working no matter what. No one complained about being on days off or anything like that: they just wanted to be doing something, he wrote. Actually everyone, public alike, gave of themselves. Its restored my faith in mankind.
On the Friday, he worked another 12 hours; on the police launch and out on the Wahine a dangerous and very slippery task, as the officers looked for, and secured, anything that might be a hazard if it floated off. It was a beautiful and clear day. Everything was covered in diesel oil.
He wrote his letter over two days and, as he finished it a week after the sinking, he wrote: We found our 50th body yesterday. The body was a mess.
But he concluded his account of his experience in typical, rookie style: So what I got out of it was some memories of awful sights, spectacular sights and an awareness that anything can happen at any time, even in New Zealand, and a dry-cleaning bill for two complete uniforms. It could have been a lot worse.
Mr Dunn devoted 35 years to Wellington police, retiring as inspector in 1999; the longest-serving commissioned officer at that time. He continues serving as the firearms vettor for Lower Hutt police. Having lost a son in a hit-and-run accident and his wife to cancer, he says: I am familiar with tragedy now from personal experience, and would now have more empathy than I would have had at that time. Such is life.
THE PASSENGER
Well, today I was shipwrecked. This simple understatement begins Kay McCormicks diary of events of April 10, 1968.
Her first diary sank with the Wahine, but a week later she began putting on paper her horrific survival experience in an effort to stop the nightmares and get some sleep. Over the following weeks, the 19-year-old trainee nurse sketched, painted and wrote, trying to come to terms with what had happened.
But that diary, 19 small pages in pencil, stapled together, and a painting, Waiting to Die, done at the same time, would then lie untouched for almost 40 years. But in May last year, a few months after returning to New Zealand after 30 years in London, Ms McCormick recalled a promise to me at the Museum of Wellington: I was woken at 4.45am this morning by the wind howling and raging around, she writes in a letter accompanying the diary notes, so I thought of my promise to you, got up and took out my old diaries and started typing out what I wrote.
On April 10, 1968, at dawn, after a challenging journey over Cook Strait, Kay and her friend were directed to leave everything, get into lifejackets and clear out quick to the muster station. Her diary continues: I have never seen anything more coldly, wildly beautiful than the sea that morning a million flecks of pure white in pale green mountains of waves. And between clouds of grey rain I could see the hills so comfortingly close.
Upstairs, mothers and children were sitting down in the lounge, but of course there wasnt enough room for all of us in there. So I stood in the corridor. Every time I sat down, I felt sick so I just stayed standing. For about seven hours.
She saw a middle-aged couple, the man of whom put his head in his hands and stayed like that all day . . . a young Maori couple, who took the opportunity to have a wee necking session and then went to sleep on one anothers shoulders. The other lady opposite us sat on the floor in her nylons, with her hat on her lap, worrying about being late for a doctors appointment at 8.30.
Lights, water and heat were OFF. I spent some of the morning putting little children on the toilet. I have found out since one of the little girls a three-year-old blonde was drowned.
Ms McCormick missed any announcement to abandon ship just the announcement repeated in an increasingly higher-pitched voice, to go the starboard side, she wrote.
I had seen the sea that morning and just didnt believe we would stand a chance on a raft in those waves. By then, the floor was at a very steep angle and the older people seemed to be tired of holding on and were sliding down, their hands bleeding from knocks they seemed to have decided they were just going to die.
Eventually she made it into a raft. Those waves were so enormous . . . the wave would disappear from beneath us and another one would be coming towards us, as high as I could see.
She watched the interisland ferry Aramoana rise up in front of us, terrifyingly close but it passed by in a gigantic wave that nearly swamped us . . . I have no idea how long we sat on the raft, getting colder and colder, but then the tug, viewed earlier through the Wahine windows as so flimsy and bobbing uncontrollably, loomed safe and sturdy beside them.
Darling, I heard and a big laughing bearded man picked me up in his arms and put me down on the tug deck. I was not dead, then. I had been so sure I would be and finally we arrived at the ferry terminal wharf.
Kay McCormick has retired as a nurse and is now an accomplished artist. She recently exhibited at the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts. She has lent the painting Waiting to Die painted the month after the disaster to The Museum of Wellington for the 40th anniversary of the Wahine sinking.
On her return to New Zealand last year, she was confronted with the on-going New Zealand fascination with this tragedy an experience still intensely real for her.
She regrets not having contacted Captain Robertson before his death in the early 1970s: They gave him such a hard time and I wanted to let him know I didnt blame him.
Freelance writer Shelley Seay has had a long association with the Wahine disaster. At age 15, while at Wellington East Girls College, she was one of hundreds of school children evacuated because of the weather, and taken home in army trucks. That evening, she learned of her aunt and uncles gruelling survival as Wahine passengers. More recently, as a history teacher and education coordinator at the Museum of Wellington, several people involved in the disaster have shared with her their personal accounts, and opened diaries and letters of 40 years ago, now family heirlooms.
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