The Wahine Disaster Full Documentary (The award-winning story of a tragedy at sea)

[Music] the 10th of april has been the blankest day in wellington's history [Music] maury and i just sat around and we prayed he said he'll die with me i can't swim and i said well he'll die with me because i'm pregnant and can't swim then i saw the blood i thought well that's what could you do you know and why did he take my brother and sister why not me it's april the 9th 1968 and new zealand's newest and grandest ferry wahine is getting ready to set sail on her overnight journey from the south island port of littleton to the capital wellington [Music] built in scotland wahine was launched and set sail out to new zealand in 1966 she was promoted as one of the finest passenger liners in the world but less than two years into service she would set out on what would be her final journey board with 734 passengers and crew [Music] it was a beautiful evening in littleton the stars were out there was no wind we remarked on how beautiful it was and that we're going to have a good crossing because i'm not a good sailor trip up to wellington was just as normal it often traveled on on the on the ferry and it was just quite not a normal night we had just normal anticipation maureen was not a good sailor so i had we had first class cabins i remember getting on the boat and yeah looking forward to the trip it wasn't rough but i've been told by some of the crew members that i knew that we should go on board early and get children on board because it was going to be a rough trip back but few could have guessed how rough the wahine was sailing into the most ferocious storm new zealand had ever seen we slept well all night and although the ship was a little rough we weren't aware just how bad the storm was [Music] i was lying in bed when and trying to get dressed lying in bed because it was so rough i couldn't stand up this original weather map shows the storm as it headed south wahine was unaware that the storm was gaining momentum and even changing direction as she continued her journey north you have to remember this is 1968 there were no computer models or anything like that available so things were done more on a sort of extrapolation basis so they had a picture of what the storm was like 24 hours ahead of say when it hit wellington and they predicted that it would carry on in a south easterly direction mapping what was a cyclone forecasters broadcast the following warning heard by wahine strong northerly's changing to southerly after midnight tonight the southerly is gradually increasing to gale or storm from tomorrow morning [Music] i guess by the time the boat was approaching the harbour the winds had got up to about i think by six o'clock they were up to 60 knots that doesn't happen every day i mean 10 minute average winds of 60 knots not just gusts of 60 knots so that's starting to get pretty serious but it wasn't until about nine o'clock that the winds got up to about 80 knots now that is serious and you don't see that often at all in fact there might be return periods of 500 years for that sort of intensity [Music] the ship was nearly 500 feet long it was a very big ship biggest roll-on roll-off ferry of its time and um well-equipped to deal with those sorts of weather conditions around new zealand by the time we got to uh the heads and wellington heads in the morning of course that's when the storm was really really doing its best and that's when the waves and everything was so high the second steward asked me to go up to the mess room where the stewards have their breakfast because the knives and forks and everything was starting to slide around off the tables the captain was woken up at about six o'clock in the morning to to go up on the bridge for the approach to the harbour entrance at that time he would have been made aware by the office of the watch what the weather conditions were doing that he was notified also that a tug would be standing by to assist the ship if required to birth so apart from that it was business as usual the waves of cook strait were growing and wahine was now rolling heavily her propeller is often out of the water but sailing through gale force winds was not unusual for wellington the crew though did note the barometer was falling indicating the storm was going to get worse but it would often go up and down here and they ignored it it was time for wahine to begin her entrance into the arms of wellington harbour and it was at this critical time too that the storm arrived in wellington standing next to one of the crewmen or one of the purses on the boat he said oh if we've been on another ship he said we've been on those rocks by now when things really started to go wrong the ship was really committed it was like an aircraft they're coming in there's a point of no return you're committed and that was really where they were at the ship was first it was first went off course heading for the pink color lighthouse and then when they realized they were going towards the shore they decided to try and back the ship out into the safety of their cook straight in the end he had to try and feel his way around and zero visibility that's the you have to remember it was dark there was spray there was big waves 30 to 40 40 foot high and and heavy rain so he had to feel his way around he knew the reef was somewhere there and unfortunately for him another 20 feet she would have made the turn and quite safely got back out to sea and we wouldn't have been doing this documentary now it would have just been a non-event the stewardess put my cup of tea on on the table i had sat up expecting the cup of tea and when she she lurched hard to one side and i was looking up like looking up at a cup of tea coming towards me at great speed and i just managed to move forward for it to fly behind my back and smash against the wall so that was my first introduction of of the impending disaster the crew began to lose control of the ship they slowed her down to regain steerage but she continued to be thrown off course towards the dangerous rocky coastline and it was then that a giant wave struck the side of the ship unfortunately for the poor captain he got flung from one wing of the bridge across the the almost the width of the bridge without touching the deck and until he crashed into the radar console which is a fairly large hefty metal object flown literally through the air maybe 60 or 70 feet and crashed into something i mean what would that do to you overlooking the harbour was stuart young's house he was woken by the fierce storm the wind and the rain lashing against his windows when he looked out he couldn't believe what he saw he was the first to call the emergency services half past six we were watching out to the through our front windows and there the wahine was it suddenly appeared out of the mist right in front of our house on the western side of barrett's reef where no ship should ever be pointing directly at us a blaze of lights that stage it was quite distressing and i called the police on 111 and said the waiheny was in serious trouble [Music] on duty that morning was a young policeman jim mason curious to see the ship he set off around the eastern coast on the other side of the harbour there was much activity from the storm happening there were trees coming down there were a lot of motor accidents there were calls coming in for people wanting help with roofs being blown off and just general storm damage we had on the nzbc radio the wahine was in trouble in the wellington harbour and well we didn't think too much of it so be being inquisitive we hadn't been instructed at that stage to go around eastbourne but we thought it was in our area to patrol so we started to drive around point howard around and we couldn't get very far because the waves were crashing over the road there was driftwood up on the road and uh seaweed and all sorts of obstacles on the road but we thought well we'll keep going just as we were approaching the end of the eastbourne road i could see through the grey mist and cloud i could see the big shadow of the wahine with the winds screaming the seas atrocious and the visibility nil for the next 26 minutes the crew wrestled to control wahine but at 6 41 am she crashed into the rocks of barret reef while i was dressing armor and all of a sudden there was just a horrendous bang and we all sort of jumped and somebody said what was that and someone said we must have hit something and there's a lot of talk don't be silly when it can't hit anything you know unfortunately as she turned she clipped the most outer rock of barrett's reef with her um propeller which broke it off broke the shaft off so water started to enter into the engineering and within minutes they lost power and then essentially the ship was at the mercy of the the sea he came back with another cup of tea and and then the uh announcement over the loudspeaker was telling us to get dressed put our things away and make towards our station there's a lock at the door and the stuart came bursting and said you have to get up on deck we're thinking and i went to reach for my handbag to get my contact lenses so i could see what i was doing so if you haven't got time just go some people were getting dressed completely as if they were going to date the races they were determined to get everything on and handbags everything others were just streaming out and then the children that would trying to get up the steps and everyone was just was really quite panicky and i thought we're going to go down be somewhere on the rock we're going to go down before we actually get up on deck [Music] when the ship hit barrett's reef a mayday was put out and wellington radio received it and so did beacon hill so they were aware of what the problems that the ship was in trouble captain john brown was the duty pilot for the wellington harbour board which means he was waiting for a ship to come in or sail that he was going to guide in or out of the harbour at about 27 i heard this call come out from the wahine to beacon hill that was the single station to say that he'd touched barrett's reef and he had let them know if he wanted any assistance which was quite a dramatic thing for a ship to hit barrett's reef captain brown was one of the few people that day to speak directly to captain robertson the ferry captain told him he'd lost both engines and had dropped both anchors he hoped captain brown could tow him to safety the worst thing was the visibility there was just no visibility at all and we couldn't really see where the next wave was coming from this was down about the area where the wahine eventually sent we were in that area and we had a radar and we could see the wahine on the radar down to the south of us a big blob but we couldn't see it visually captain robinson kept on saying well if i can get a tug we can get a line up and he can tow me to safety but i still had doubts about how he was going to tow the wahine anywhere because there was he had two anchors down at the stage we both agreed that he had a lot more water on board than what he'd indicated to us by saying everything was under control with the pilot alongside the ship the deputy harbour master david galloway made an incredible leap on board the captain had stayed on the bridge watching closely the anchors they were struggling to hold wahine and captain robertson knew that if one cable were to part the ship would smash onto the rocks the total loss of life was now a real possibility and i believe it was him going on board at that stage it must mean just after 12 when he got on board i think he said to robinson a couple of things about well do you really know how serious you are i think you better go down and have a look and that may be the first time that robinson could get off the bridge and go down to the vehicle deck where it came out later on that there'd been water in there since about eight o'clock but robinson certainly didn't intimate that to anybody as sure because we could hear all the messages that were going over the vhf and he certainly didn't say anything about water on the vehicle dick and any of the messengers up for that time why not i don't know and i think that he didn't know a few hundred yards off shore the inter island ferry wahine is drifting helplessly backwards up the harbour most of the time it was obscured by the driving rain and sleet and spray ripped up off the sea but a few moments ago it was visible clearly visible from the shore and it appeared to be moving slowly backwards towards the rocks a few hundred yards from the shore we sat there and waited and just playing like normal kids do the little fella behind me we were playing well we didn't know the boat was sinking [Music] and it took us unawares it took us that's everybody in the in the area were completely unawares you know one minute there was we were all sitting around chatting away and there was this buzz going on with people chatting and then the next instance of the ship gave a lurch and things went flying off the table and so there was dead silence all the time the sea was just so rough and then the ship started to have a bit of a list and it would tip over one way and come back up a bit and tip over a bit more come up a bit and then this one particular time it just tipped right over and you could hear people falling and screaming and glass breaking and furniture crashing in the um lounge next door to where i was standing it was terrible noise terrible at 20 past one the tide turned the ship lurched and wahine was now in immediate danger of capsizing then i asked one of the crew that i'd been friends with he'd go back and get gordy some clothes and we're on d-deck and a guy went down he came back and he said sorry shirley i can't get into your cabin it's underwater some people were starting to panic i mean it's hard to relive it now yeah maury and i just sat around and we prayed we spent some time in prayer and yeah we thank god for our lives and we asked him to spare us rachel let's see new zealanders reeling from the storm which had brought devastation across the country were now hearing the news wahine with 734 people on board was in trouble but the captain chose to keep those on shore and those on board calm and few realised just how great the danger was we had one transistor radio somebody had one on in the lounge and um just all the time they were coming over we'd be in port soon we were quite safe when you looked out the window with waves breaking all over you i don't think we sort of realized what was going on the chair started tipping to the side a bit and we thought this is it it's going over we're going to have to make a move soon to get off gordy's lying on the life jacket because there wasn't room to have nurse him like that so he'd be better lying on my knee he was very much mum's boy he wouldn't have gone to anyone else in any case [Music] keeping the kids quiet we were singing morning town ride basically a lot of other ones but it was my kids favorite song i don't know why we used to sing rock and roll and ride in all across the bay all bound for morning town many miles away sometimes there is sunshine sometimes there is rain sometimes sarah's morning town all along the way but shirley was becoming increasingly anxious as there were no child life jackets for her children [Music] see how the life jacket comes out of her it's only a little face showing [Music] when the when the tide turned and the ship listed over on its side all happened quite suddenly it was 25 past one on april 10th that time ran out wahine was about to keel over the captain ordered everyone on board to abandon ship the siren went and the the awful chilling sound of abandon ship everybody made a rush for the door of course and we got on quite a lean it sort of went like that and people started to slip away from everybody and um alma slipped away and we all got separated our went one way gordon went another fearing that the ship would sink before they could even get off some passengers jumped in others slipped and fell into the water i put my feet to stop me from the impact and that's when i broke my ankle and i ended up in the water all the heavy furniture broke loose and came down on top of me we headed back out to the ship and the time we got there the ship had started to take a big list to starboard and when they saw us with their life rafts they were trying to inflate them on deck some of them were blowing away up the harbour carp building up the harbour at this stage the lower end of the boat was only a few feet above the water and then we could see people jumping in the water so we could try and go to some of these people but as soon as they got on the water they were swept away over to the eastern shore [Music] i just found myself just on this piece of wood with this elderly gentleman hanging onto the side of it i tried to help him i was just too young basically just let go and and he went under halfway down maureen caught her foot underneath the capsule she couldn't get it out a guy comes along and he said oh can i take your little girl and put her into a lifeboat and i said yeah and she didn't want to go and i smacked her butt and told her she was a naughty girl and she was to go [Music] then a steward came along and i said would he take gordy and he said no he didn't want to because he said he'll die with me i can't swim and i said well he'll die with me because i'm pregnant and can't swim and so he did take him and i could hear him screaming and screaming and screaming and he jumped over the side with him into the water and i could still hear him screaming a little bit later stewards helped me and we i slid down and went over the side and i could still hear gordy screaming and then all of a sudden he stopped and i sort of knew he'd gone i got off and the ship was so far tipped over that she didn't have to jump or anything the rail was right down on the seas so you just climbed over a little rail you know about three feet high try as we might we just couldn't get her foot free from the capsule and eventually in desperation still with one hand on this other on the rope i wasn't going to leave that go and i gave her a desperate yank and her foot came free [Music] and someone handed me a baby i don't know where from or where to so i handed it in to my friend who was in the um raft someone said to me throw her in and then jump so i picked maureen up and i threw her into the boat [Music] while we were getting away from the boat um there was a cry from on the top deck and i looked up and there was this crewman yelling out catch up with him or something like that and then he threw this parcel was white and as it came towards us the wahine went that way our boat went that way and the gulf widened and the parcel went straight down between us and i saw it was a shawl with a baby in and it just went straight down i never saw it surface again [Applause] [Music] just standing at the back of the boat and singing this wonderful noise of a lady singing maori just and all the wind and rain whipping it around it was astonishing [Music] many of the tragedies that day had been on the same lifeboat as alma the starboard or s-1 lifeboat the officer in charge of that i don't know why but he decided to head out into the cook straight again and got swamped south of where the wahine rohingya sung so why did they go the wrong way back out to sea when they'd been so close to the beach at sea tune crew member frank hitchens says they had no choice got the engine started on that and then took off to try and start picking up any survivors in the water but very soon after that it got either swamped by a wave well they didn't put the plug in i'm not too sure which but it got full of water anyway swamped and sinking an attempt to rescue them was wrecked by another huge wave i looked across and the miss kind of cleared a weenie bit and i saw this other lifeboat and the tug coming towards it and as i looked the tug came up on a wave and the lifeboat was there and the tug came right down on the lifeboat the lifeboat turned upside down throwing everybody into the water i'll never forget hearing those screams either you could you know just coming at you across the sea it was chaos there were people around everywhere the boats were trying to get away two lifeboats did make it to sea tune the emergency services and locals rushed here to help but the strong current and winds were carrying passengers across to the dangerous eastern shore [Music] we went around one one bay two bays and we thought nothing much here you know nothing much was happening here and then as we got around another bay which is probably about three three or four three kilometers away from where from the gate around we would walk we started we saw i saw an orange life raft and it was upturned on the edge of the of the edge of the rocks and i just floated and i thought just lying there floating and thinking oh waves were high and i'm thinking oh well if the sharks and the harp are too bad i'm not very worried you know i've lost my kids so you know that was it when we saw the liver i thought i mean oh my god this is something serious you know this is bigger than what we thought we thought you know this was really something that happened hundreds of passengers were now in the freezing seas rescue vessels and locals working frantically to reach them i think the tug picked up 120 people out of the water then we were confronted i remember by people in orange life life vest walking towards us and uh they were no shoes they were wet cold shaking and uh they're saying well thank god you come to help us you know but we we didn't know you know we had no idea how we could help them we decided that we'd go right out we went straight out and we could see two people way way in the distance and we thought we'll get the furthest ones out we could see so we'll get them all of a sudden the boys came along in a lifeboat yeah i'm on a live boat and now we picked shirley up first we started to see people in the surf and uh out beyond the beyond the rocks they were out there bobbing around the surf and their life jackets [Music] by this stage we get here on our car radio that the wahine was in difficulty at sea tune at the entrance to the harbour so i thought i'd go out there see if there was anything i could do the storm and the demand on the emergency communications proved too much they were flooded and crashed but one man managed to help keep them in contact i had my radio equipment with me in my car which and a policeman was he was trying to use his radio but it wouldn't work and i said to him i've got communications with amateur radio can it be any help he said they wanted ambulances on the other side of the harbour though there was no sign of help for jim i remember trying to grab people to pull them out and we got hold of one or two and pulled them up onto the beach and we'd pull them up and we had to take them a good 10 meters up the beach otherwise the waves would come in and catch them and suck them back out again as jim tried to reach passengers from the rocks out in the open sea ray was trying to rescue shirley he was held on to me and i said just let me go you know i don't want to go on anymore and there's we're in the boat we'll be quite safe and the next thing a wave caught us the boat went straight up the curve of the wave over she went everybody fell out into the water and the boat coming down didn't hit anybody thank goodness [Music] i remember trying to make my way between some rocks there's a little bit of beach between these rocks i'm trying to make my way between them one shocking instrument that really really struck me was this old lady she was probably about 60 years of age and she was bobbing around out beyond the rocks and i went out between two rocks to try to to get here i got her i got her by the arm and i'm holding her and pulling her in but the force of the sea when it went back was too strong i couldn't hold her and it sucked her out of my arm and i remember getting ducked by the big breakers a couple of times and then the last big breaker came along and i just remember being docked totally and everything went dark and quiet and that's the last thing i remembered she was sucked back out to sea and the next thing on the next wave she came in and i can see it now i can see it as clear as it was yesterday her crashing on the rock and her head and her shoulder they just smashed on the rock and then i saw the blood i thought well that's what could you do you know and yeah excuse me it's it's as clear as it was yesterday and i thought man it could have been my mother you know that's how it affected me [Applause] within an hour of the call to abandoned ship all passengers had left wahine alive captain robertson the last to leave but many had yet to make it ashore safely with hundreds blown across to the desolate rocky coast [Music] their clothes were stripped off them they the woman were in there just panties and bras old ladies they had no shoes they had big grazers down their legs their arms were were shredded on the rocks and and there were others being uh washed up onto the beach and it was it was just horrific and ray trying to save shirley's life was also now trying to save his own we all were clinging to the upturned lifeboat and we were being washed out further and further out towards pancara lighthouse we were all on the underneath of the lifeboat it was turned upside down and we were lying across it out of the blue appeared a trawler and it turned out i think it was a new fish that it took a hell of a long time to get us up into there they had a heck of a job getting me into there because we had to go up this tiny thin rope [Music] we were just pulling them back up onto the beach and i remembered uh trying to to make a fire on the beach and i tried to to get this fire going with these old bits of wood and stuff and to try and give some warmth to the people that had come out and uh it was a pretty futile attempt it didn't really do much but the people at least they sat now all we could say to them was look help's coming help's coming you know and not that we at that stage didn't even know any help was coming warcraft came out boat fishing boats came out you know as they were the real heroes craft of every description are heading out and have been heading up for the past quarter hour uh from worship bay there have been surf life-saving boats from the surf club along here dingies launchers motorboats uh a whole truckload of inflatable light bars came through 10 minutes ago they've all gone out to help when the um tug pulled up to the jetty as i went to get off to go in to get into the bus the sea actually washed up over the jetty it was so rough and that's when i screamed the first time you know just it made you realize what we had survived you know what we've been through so it was a terrible day i wasn't in a lifeboat maybe i was lucky not to be in one because i might have ended up in my sisters six years old david was also carried across to the eastern coast he'd survived by clinging to a piece of wood until he too was was sitting on the rocks there's no clothes on very cold i had a cop i think it was taking me through and he said oh he said just let her through she's lost to children we're putting them up onto the beach and but some of them when they came in they were so frightened they just kept going they just went up the beach and they started climbing up through the gorse bushes at the back on the on the side of the hill they just to escape the the waves and they were in a state of shock [Music] and i was sitting down there it was about four o'clock in the afternoon and his radios were on down there and so they'd said that they'd found the body of a little girl over pink hair rock and um just as i was walking out i said to her am i that's my girl and we did what we could to save as many as we could but um we were pulling them out we were pulling them out they were dead you know many were dead we were just pulling bodies dragging the bodies up the beach and laying them on the on the on the shingle and just leaving them there i can i can still see it today as clear as you know these bodies young young ones man woman just laying there with their clothes their legs stripped beer and it was a horrific sight it really was bodies from the wahine have been brought to shore at many points around the harbour bodies have been recovered from the eastern beaches from pincaro to eastbourne [Music] this is me sitting or lying on the back of a truck here with my feet hanging over the back there and i believe that some of the people on the air could have been dead crewman frank hitchens was so cold and lifeless it was thought he too had died this land rover the first chilling signaled to the emergency services of the catastrophe unfolding on the eastern shore jan willis was a nurse on duty that day he had been further around to the end of the eastbourne road where the beach gets quite rocky on the way to pink harrow and he had a land rover and he said i found some people on the beach and they're dead i've got them in my land rover at last jim would get the help he needed and frank scott had his prayers answered his lifeboat was carried ashore between the rocks at the crucial moment a huge wave lifted us up carried us right up onto the beach and we stepped into water and no deeper than our knees and what exactly happened well we could have passed half our six we had a over the interest in the come we had the instructions for the passengers april the 10th was gordy's first birthday it spent it being resuscitated i said to the doctor and i said what did you do that for and he said we've got to save a life and i said it's no life i said it was my beautiful boy my year old boy and that was his birthday he did the backpacker's birthday yeah gordy suffered permanent brain damage surely cared for him for 22 years before he died the day itself claimed 51 lives and many more suffered terrible physical and psychological injuries oh my immediate reaction is one of humility i feel very very humble thankful that my feeling of a clear conscience has now been vindicated [Music] a court of inquiry found that captain robertson and his chief officer were not guilty of any wrongful acts it did note though serious errors of judgment had been made but these were made under great difficulty and danger [Music] but nautical assessors who assisted the inquiry were more critical they challenged the captain's decision to bring the ship into the harbour in the bad weather his messages to show that all was under control and his failure to report the extent of the vehicle deck flooding in the captain's defense it's argued that he not only tried desperately to get the ship back out but did everything he could to save both wahine and its precious cargo of 730 lives [Music] people said he should have abandoned earlier i don't think so as far as coming into the harbor now i think if he the ship could have gotten to the harbor quite easy that morning i don't the weather was bad but if he had um used his uh announce and kept the speed up in that he would have been in a bit early but he would have got on safely but it was unheard of on these enter island ships to be in early years that the boy is 16 minutes past six the court went on to make a number of recommendations they changed passenger shipping around the world to try and prevent a similar disaster from ever happening again [Music] it's acknowledged that if the ship had sunk at barrett reef after striking it or within a short period of striking it the loss of life was likely to have been totaled but i do remember it being a huge difficulty to carry on living you know because you know you're going to die so everything stops somehow and for a long time afterwards i found it quite hard that i was still alive [Music] the wahine disaster has affected my life in so many ways and it will affect my life well basing to the day i go on the abandoned shipment said we'll grab a kid each he grabbed a kid i grabbed a kid i lost mine when she went yeah lori haven't seen him since uh no one was left behind were they not as far as i know there's quite a lot of jackets the children father followed their mother around you know they wouldn't let her out of their sight and when when she go to the toilet she'd come out of the toilet they'd be standing outside waiting for her to come out [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: MyStormuk

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Id: ZpdY2FkHX4M

Length: 52min 56sec (3176 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 25 2020