The Wahine Ferry Cyclone Disaster of 1968 | Episode 72

Some people think it's weird when they hear travel by Sea described as romantic. Between the vomiting and the contusions and the lacerations and the spinal injuries, I am confident that this episode will help you discover whatever the opposite of romance is. Hello, and welcome to Doomsday, History's most dangerous podcast. Together, we are going to rediscover some of the most traumatic, bizarre, and awe inspiring but largely unheard of or forgotten disasters from throughout human history and around the world. On today's episode, you'll learn why Captain James Cook left Hawaii with a knife in his head and chest and back and abdomen and face. You'll learn about the clothes eating, skin ripping, skull flattening results of jumping feet first into an act of hurricane. And you will hear about a recovery effort that is somehow more damaging than the original disaster. And if you were listening on Patreon, you would discover why in about six hundred thousand years, New Zealand will be some of the most prized real estate in the world. We'd clarify why a corpse and a captain's outfit is not a must have for every disaster, you'd get a sad reminder that not all ship crews are created equal. You'd hear all about the Marmite disaster of twenty eleven that killed over twenty thousand people and injured another eighty three hundred, and you would learn of the horrific tale of the worst, most sea sickening voyage of all time. This is not the show you play around kids, or while eating, or even in mixed company. But as long as you find yourself a little more historically engaged and learn something that could potentially save your life, our work is done. So with all that said, shoot the kids out of the room, put on your headphones and safety classes, and let's begin. You ever see the Lord of the Rings movies? A bunch of Hobbits and wizards and orcs, all living and laughing and loving on a version of Earth imaginatively enough called Middle Earth. Beautiful is not the word you'd used to describe the story, but it is the best way to describe the terrain of Middle Earth. You got the shire. It's lush, it's got green pastures, quaint rolling hills, and idyllic pastoral beauty. The misty mountains are described as having onspiring peaks, rugged cliffs, and expansive valleys most often covered in snow, were shrouded and mist and when Peter Jackson wanted to recreate the Hobbit universe on the big screen, he could have just green screened in some cigied uncanny valley paradise, but he was all, screw that. Here's me giving that plan the finger. No CGI necessary. They're giving me two hundred and eighty one million to make these things. So yeah, we are flying to New Zealand. Lush forests, pristine beaches, dramatic mountains and sparkling, serene lakes. These are just a few of the reasons everyone loves and wants to move to New Zealand. Now, all that said, my introduction to New Zealand culture was from a nineteen ninety four film called Once Were Warriors and if you are familiar with it oof. It is the tale of a poor Maori family living in South Auckland, living in something best described as halfway between the nineteen seventies New York City of the Warriors and District nine, and the daily life of these people had them dealing with poverty, gangs, alcoholism, domestic violence, sexual assault and suicide. As stories go, it's terribly heartbreaking and it's grim and it's violent. Oh but it stars Rena Owen, who is probably my all time favorite New Zealand actor, and to Mura Morrison, which some of you may know better as Boba fet but Captain Solo in the Cargo Hold. It was a terror way to sell in New Zealand, and in spite of it, I'd still move there in a heartbeat. As a fellow member of the British Commonwealth, I figure I could probably just slide right in there, only really worry about them understanding my accent. Much like Canada, they've got unique native wildlife, hiking, skiing, water sports, you know, all that stuff. They've even got their own built in native culture, the Maori, who is every bit as expressive and vibrant as our own, but arguably with more flare and facial tattoos. The only real difference I see is the Maori arrived on the land by boat from East Polynesia, while the first North Americans walked across the bearing straight Landbridge from Siberia to Alaska. And don't go looking for it. Land Bridge not there anymore. Disappeared about ten thousand years ago, after the last ice Age, there was a one way trip. I'm also guessing that New Zealanders love the Manarquy as much as we do. And in the time it took for me to say that is how long it took from my eyes to roll from one side of my head to the other. Just give me the excuse and the opportunity and maybe do a bunch of the footwork for me. And I'm there. When you look at a map or atlas, actually when you look at a mapp or an atlas, is New Zealand even there. It's not a trick question. I know Australians love to complain that they're so little thought of by the rest of the world, and rightfully so. But New Zealand is so little thought of it doesn't even make it onto some maps. It's a frustrating phenomenon that the New Zealand government has acknowledged, and they even went so far as to put a map of the world where the country is deliberately not included on the four h four error page of their official website. To those who do acknowledge its existence, they see it and think of it as two large islands which is really dismissive of the other seven hundred or so that make up the country. Think of it like the Bahamas. The Bahamas have over seven hundred islands, even if only thirty of them are really populated, and that sounds like a lot. But for reference, Can has over fifty two thousand islands. We just don't make a big whoop over it. New Zealand's islands are all remnants of the larger land mass that we were talking about that now sits beneath the sea. The north island Taika Maui is slightly smaller than the South island of teway Panamu, and I will forgive you your pronunciations if you can forgive mine, And if you can't pronounce the traditional names, that's okay too. Most of the world is bumble tungued and they just call them the North and South Islands. Picture the North as having vistas of rolling farmlands, volcanic plateaus, and beautiful coastlines. And the further north you go on the island, the warmer it gets because you're entering into an actual subtropical zone. So fair warning. Its national parks have active volcanoes, geysers, and hot springs that you can visit, set among lush forests of green It's two major cities are Auckland, which is the biggest, and Wellington, which is the capital. It's located right on the southern tip of the North Island and that is where we will be spending most of our time today. Tay Ypanamu is known for more dramatic scenery like mountain ranges, fjords, glaciers and rolling plains. Again real Lord of the Rings kind of stuff. The North is more industrialized and urbanized, while the South is more agricultural and recreational. It all goes back to the eighteen hundreds when the South Island was heavily settled by whitey. It means that you're going to find a lot more historic architecture and colonial heritage in its major cities, like christ Church and Dunedin. Christ Church was the site of an earthquake in twenty eleven that collapsed a lot of buildings and historic sites, quite famously like the christ Church Cathedral. You have to remember we're in the Pacific here the land, well not the land, but the home of earthquakes, volcanoes and cyclones. The people may be friendly, but the weather isn't always welcome to a tea roa teyo who yes point out the original inhabitants of the land did not call it New Zealand. The Maori originally referred to it as ot tey a roa well a tayo roa me tey Wapinamu, to be exact in spirit, if not in pronunciation. The Dutch sailed by in the sixteen forties and they slapped the New Zealand name on it from one of their home provinces, and then they just bounced. They kind of lost interest and everything was cool for about the next hundred years until Captain James Cook swept in took over and kept the Dutch name, but just tweaked the spelling of it. Regardless of what you call it, I hope you survived the experience. Now, because aquacars and car boats never really took off, the best way to get between the two mainlands is a ferry. It's not as fast as flying, but it's cheaper, it's more comfortable, and you can bring your own car. The Union Steveship Company runs a service from Picton, just north of Christchurch, to Wellington and back. It's about two hundred and thirty nine miles. That's two hundred sixty five regular miles or four hundred and twenty five kilometers. The journey typically crosses the Cook Strait, which separates the North and South Islands, and it's basically open ocean. They named it after Captain James Cook, the British explorer who macked the coastline back in seventeen seventy. He's kind of famous for his discoveries, said in quotes, Uh, how do I make you understand how he's thought of? Well, okay, there's a statue of him standing in Gisburne, and the locals regularly treat it to fresh coats of graffiti. And less than ten years after murdering and humping and kidnapping his way across New Zealand, Captain Cook traveled to Hawaii. And how did that go? Okay? Well, he defaced a burial ground, he stole a boat, he kidnapped one of their tribal chiefs, and he shot another. So quicker than his time in New Zealand. He wore out his welcome, and the neighborhood watch had had enough and Captain James Cook was stabbed and clubbed to death in the shallote pristine waters of k A La Keikuabey And this went on for a while, well past the point where he'd been rendered into a kind of chum. And oddly I read one account that said that regrets were felt by both sides in the incident. But there is simply no way that that is true. Anyway, no one is getting stabbed in today's story. Actually yeah, I think people were stabbed in the story, but with cutlery and not on purpose. We'll get there. The ship that we will be voyaging on today is the Wahini and when she launched in Scotland back in nineteen thirteen, the Wahini was described as the world's largest drive on vehicle. I actually called them rowrods, short for roll on roll off, And that's what you do. If you can roll a car, a truck, motorcycle, semi trailer, a bus or even a railroad car onto this thing, it'll sail it from one place to the next. Sadly, for the Wahini, as soon as she was put to see she was immediately drafted into war and during World War One she served as a troop ship at Gallipoli and later as a mine layer and she laid more than eleven thousand mines in the North Sea during the war, which is really impressive considering that only two hundred and thirty five thousand sea mines were deployed in total. That was a busy ship. But as a reminder, no one was going around collecting these things after the war, so fair warning there are some of those mines still out there. During the Second World War, the Wahini served as a troop ship, again mainly in the South Pacific, and after the World Wars were over, she was chartered by the New Zealand government to transport troops to Korea until she ran aground on Massala Island off the coast of Timor and was written off. Well thanks for listening. If you like what you heard, why not consider becoming a Patreon listener. Oh wait, hold on. In nineteen sixty five, a second vessel, also called the Wahini, was launched from Scotland, and this was said to be one of the finest passenger ships in the world. She was almost five hundred feet long and she came with two full decks of parking, which also made her one of the largest ferries in the world. She could accommodate up to nine hundred and twenty four passengers on six decks A through f. She had dining lounges and bars, and three hundred and eighty one sleeping cabins, observation decks and even play areas for kids. Everything you could possibly need for a comfortable and enjoyable sea going experience. And don't be fooled. This is an ocean going vessel. New Zealand, when you do find it on a map, is bordered by the Tasman Sea to the west, separating it from Australia. Then there's the Coral Sea to the north and of course the Pacific Ocean to the east of it. Although technically, to keep things simple, New Zealand is primarily situated in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. Between the North and South Islands runs the Cook Straight. Like we said, it's not that big. It's only twenty two kilometers or fourteen miles at its narrowest point, and it acts like a natural wind tunnel. It is widely considered one of the most dangerous and unpredictable waters in the world, which makes it one of the wildest and wooliest commuter roots in the world. But just try to put that out of your mind. As we prepare for today's voyage. Seventy one passenger vehicles were already on board the two garage levels, with each vehicle lashed to the deck for safety. The passenger capacity was nine hundred and twenty four, but tonight only six hundred and ten, including forty one children, were taking the trip. Add in another one hundred and twenty five crew, and that puts the total souls on board at seven hundred and thirty five. Captain Hector Gordon Robertson will be tending the helm for us this evening. He'd been at sea for forty one years, and most of them actually with the Union Steamship Company, the owner of the Wahini, and maybe ironically, Robertson had actually served as a deck officer aboard the original Wahini. When you board a boat like this, one of the the first things that they instruct you is where your muster station is. Muster stations are the place that you go in case there's an emergency. But what could possibly go wrong on a boat? You ask, Well, historically, more often than not, that would be the weather. And speaking of the day to day is April tenth, nineteen sixty eight. If we were wind the clock back to April the first, there was this butterfly that had landed on the deck of the Wahini and fluttered its wings, And within a few days a disturbance arose near the Solomon Islands, about three thousand miles northwest. This weather system moved in a south by southeast direction, and by the fifth of April it was lining up for a visit to New Zealand. By the ninth of April, it passed along the east coast of the North Island and crossed into the Cooks Strait. The Bohemi was well into its overnight ferry service, and she knew about the weather. It had all been forecast, but she was unaware that the storm was currently gaining strength and momentum an even changing direction as she continued her journey north. You have to remember this is nineteen sixty eight. There were no computer models or anything like that available. If they had, they'd have known that a combo of warm tropical air and pulled air dragged up from Antarctica was producing exceptionally violent storm conditions. In this time, it had morphed into a severe extratropical cyclone known as Giselle. Say hi everybody. As it tracked across the Tasman Sea towards New Zealand, We'll skip the training montage and just tell you how it morphed from a tropical cyclone into an extratropical cyclone. And as it approached it met up with a southerly stormfront and voltronnd into something even worse. The Meteorological Service had issued a storm morning, like I said, and they predicted that it was just going to carry on in a southeasterly direction and would keep strengthening by morning. But by then it was just going to be a bunch of whales problem, no big whoop. The ship was going to take a bath and maybe write some sea shanties about their weekend. But they were going to be just fine. Yet, to remember, a sea captain experienced with the Cook Strait, they don't scare easy. Of course, what they didn't know on this evening was that they were about to sail into one of the worst storms ever recorded in New Zealand's history. By the time the Wahemi approached the harbor entrance, winds had increased to about sixty knots. That's about seventy miles or one hundred and ten kilometers an hour, And for reference, sixty four knots it's the threshold for hurricane speeds. And although I'm going to keep saying cyclone, I'm probably also going to say hurricane, because the name badges are pretty interchangeable. By about nine o'clock, the winds increased to eighty knots, and this was having a profound effect on shore as the storm round to the North Island clockwise. Flooded streams burst their banks and landslides, blocked highways and gisborne. The wind tore roofs off, smashed fences, flattened farm buildings, flipped cars, and ripped out countless trees. I mean, this is some pretty powerful stuff. And imagine going to the hospital because you've got a rooftile sticking out of your chest, or maybe you got some cranial mailbox damage, who knows, but you're there hoping for help when suddenly all the windows blow out. Well, it happened. And if there is a kind of an evacuation messier or more chaotic looking than a hospital evacuation, I don't know what that is. All across the island. The night sky was lit blue from random exploding power connections, and in saying that this was powerful, Giselle was called a five hundred year storm. It's how they describe a storm that you might really only expect to happen every five hundred years or so. A storm that strong only has a zero point two percent chance of happening in any given year. Different way to think of it is if this was roulette, your number would statistically come up only once every five hundred years. So yeah, not great odds, but hey, the ship was nearly five hundred feet long and it had been built well above cod She was more than well equipped to deal with bad weather, same as all the officers and crew on duty. Again, a little pitch and roll wasn't going to concern them, and the Wahini had powerful turbo electric engines and a built in stabilization system that pumped eighty seven tons of tank water from one side to the other to correct for roll. You know you're acclimated to bad weather when you can sleep through something like this. They woke up the captain about six in the morning for the approach to the harbor entrance, and by the time they got to the harbor entrance, the ship was rolling so heavily that the propeller started rising out of the water. Most of the plates and callery on board were now in pieces on the floor. But like we keep saying, sailing through gale force winds was not unusual for the Wellington crew. Wellington already had a reputation of being the windiest city in the country, with average winds over thirty five knots on most days, and on this day, the Wahmi and the storm were both trying to enter the harbor at the same time, and the barometer was falling quickly into caate that the storm was strengthening. Meanwhile, passengers found themselves hanging on the walls and furniture as they tried to walk the ship. Furniture even began to slide around from port to starboard and back in the heavy swells, and not just from side to side. Wind and waves were coming in from all sides, so the ship was maneuvering like a toy in a bathtub. It's hard to keep an anti nausea down when you've been riding large white caps since midnight and you can't stop vomiting. The rising deck made passengers feel as if they were being compressed, and then when it fell, they became weightless. There was, however, very little panic, even though the power was flickering on and off and the sound of breaking glassware and light wretching could be heard from throughout the ship. And yeah, most of the passengers had also been expecting some kind of weather and wather they got. So you got talked into a boat trip, but the captain is trying to hop the ship over white caps and your stomach just ain't having it. Would you know what to do? Yeah, you find yourself on a boat doing the Chasha hustle, and you can only throw up so many times in a twenty four hour period, So let's see what you can do about it. In a perfect world, you find a concrete pier in the middle of the ocean to leap onto and you just hug it out. But that doesn't happen very often, so the next best thing is to try to stay in the middle of the boat. Picture it like the center of a teeter totter. You get the least motion in the center. People will tell you being on higher decks as best, But if your ship is swaying in any direction. That just can't be true. While cabins on higher decks have better views, the angles that the boats will sway to in rough weather is going to be greatly exaggerated up there. Even on land. In a tall building in the wind, you know that the higher floor toilets are going to get a better workout than those on lower floors. If you know that dizziness or nausea is a problem for you, pro tip, book a cabin on the lowest floor. I used to get vertigo myself, and that's where the whole world would spin uncontrollably. It's like seasicknesses lands. And when you get that which way is up feeling, you want to keep your eye on a fixed position on the horizon. This helps your brain reconcile what you're seeing versus what you're feeling, and it helps. Air helps too. Oh. I'm a huge fan of fresh air, and when I die, let it be known that I want it to be outside with a cool breeze on my face, not throwing up in some medical officer's cabin or hospital bed. Fresh air is a freaking cure ale for all kinds of things, and it certainly helps reduce symptoms of nausea. Another tip is to try facing the direction that you're actually traveling in. You'll notice it. In a car, passengers will always get sick in a way that drivers just never do. There's just something about the way that your brain processes being control of your motion that makes it less worried about it. Obviously, you show up on the bridge all covered in puke, and yeah, they're not going to let you take the wheel, but you can only ever ask. Oh, and if you know that you are up for a night of doing ab exercises into a toilet, just make sure that you keep hydrated and eat small things. Nothing spicy, nothing greasy, No heavy stuff, I mean, the most boring, lightest thing that you can find, like crackers. Boring. Having something light and really inoffensive in your stomach can ease nausea, and it'd be great if it was the opposite. But delicious or acidic or heavy foods are gone to make your sickness way worse because they just sit in there. They're slow to digest, and they take a lot of energy to eject. And maybe stay away from pop brownies. I can't say for sure, but anecdotally people have experimented with CBD and THCHC on rough seas before and reported mixed results. I imagine finding yourself hungry, wild, nauseous aren't the ideal conditions for a first date. They also say to take ginger, and there are wristbands that apply pressure to specific points on your wrists that sound like complete garbage, but they have one hundred percent worked on my son in the past, So there you have that. But if you are all, hey, what are ways that I can spend money to fix this? Well, over the counter medications like dramamine or meclazine should do it. But if you're of little faith or just really hate barfing, a doctor can prescribe stronger medications like promethesine or scapolamine. People swear by scopolamine. You can get it in an adhesive patch that you just slap on like you're trying to quit smoking, but in this case you're just trying to quit barfing, and then you are good to go. But anecdotally, the stuff acts like truth serum. It makes you all chatty and completely kills any conversational filters that you might have. You also can take dramamine or benadryl and just try to doze your way through your trip. If you're looking for more woo woo solutions, you might want to try sniffing peppermint. Or take a look at your wrist. You see how there's a line where your hand and your wrist meet. Try applying pressure, maybe an inch below that point, on one or both wrists for a few seconds until the symptoms pass. And I know this from personal experience. You're gonna want to distract yourself, obviously, but reading or staring at a screen is not going to do it. Some people distract themselves by laying down flat on their back, maybe listening to something, maybe doing some mind games. Others find it better standing up and just try to mimic the boat's motion. Truth is, we're all different and what might work for some of you may not work for others. So the best bet is to pre prepare with the right stomach contents and drugs, and from there you're just going to want to test out different combos of strategies until you find whatever works best for you. Oh and bring a change of clothes. Now. In the harbor, the wind was blowing the ship off course. They realized that they were blowing towards the shore, and they decided to try to back the ship out and away from the harbor, back into the comparative safety of the Cook Strait. But with sea spray and heavy rain and wind and forty foot waves rolling by, making the ship do what they wanted was impossible. It was like trying to three point turn a car on an ice rink during an earthquake. Captain Robertson was forced to navigate by radar, but as he was looking at the unit, it fits out. They were forced to just kind of feel their way around, and at this point the winds had increased to one hundred miles or one hundred and sixty kilometers an hour. Water was blasting past them sideways the entire time, and their ability to see was trash. And then the ship started to turn towards Barrett Reef. Barret Reef is described as an ugly stretch of rocks sitting about parallel to the bay, a little more than half a mile out from shore. It is said to be as dangerous as it is ugly, and one of the most hazardous reefs in New Zealand, and It has a long history of ships running into it on the eastern side of the channel they were in is Pancaro, which is basically a rocky, windswept coastline with its own long history of collecting ship parts. And the captain being without radar or eyeballs, really in this narrow channel between the rocks and the shore with no visibility and the winds made controlling the vessel almost impossible. The captain ordered the helm turned hard to starboard, but it had no effect. The ship just didn't respond to the helm no matter what they tried. The atmosphere on the bridge was tense, obviously, but before Robertson could give another order, Wahemy was plowed by a tremendous wave on her side. Almost everyone was sent flying except for the helmsman, a man named a Cloud, who clung to the wheel. Not like the captain, he not only flew across the entire width of the bridge from the port to the starboard side. When he was halfway across, he collided with the radar console, which I'll describe as being bulky and heavy and immovable and not the kind of thing that you want to crash into. Anyways, he did, and he completed his flight in a kind of an aerial cartwheel. And this is what happens when your ship is sided on to towering waves. It's how the Poseidon adventure started. If you could have been seeing what was happening to this ship in this harbor as seen from a satellite, the course the ship had taken since losing all visibility looked like a cursive capital R. The vessel was being pushed towards the Barrett Reef on the western side of the harbor entrance, and there was nothing they could do to stop it. The ship seemed to be lifting and dropping onto something hard. There was a grinding, crunching finality, and then the ship just stopped, like when you've been listening to construction equipment outside your house all day and then they finally leave. But better because on the Wahimi this meant you could finally settle your stomach, I mean sort of. It was still dark and the seas were still awful, and men in orange jackets were running on to deck into the screaming hell outside to investigate what had happened. They'd clipped the southern tip of Barrett's reef with one of their propellers, which broke off at the shaft, and the hull had been literally bouncing up and down on the reef, and she wasn't finished. Her steel plating was tearing like a tin can below the waterline as her nine thousand tons round onto the rocks in the swell. And at this point there was a strong smell of diesel oil and a voice over the public address system warned against smoking or lighting matches. Oh and water began pouring into engineering. It only took minutes for the Wohmi to lose power, and with that they were now at the total mercy of the sea and storm, well mostly the storm, which had increased over ready one hundred and sixty miles or two hundred and fifty kilometers an hour. They lost both engines and there was no way to see where the next wave was coming from. Captain Robertson ordered that all watertight doors be closed and both anchors dropped. Many of the passengers didn't know what was specifically happening outside of the ship taking an obvious and ferocious battering, and people began begging with their gods because they thought they were going to die. And no judgment here. As a reminder, I once prayed for a plane that I was on at the time to kindly crash all because the turbulence was so bad, and no, I did not want to die. I just wanted to transfer to a bus if I survived. People vowed that they would never set foot on another ship if they survived the night. And that's when an announcement came over the loud speakers. Good news, everyone, we've stopped moving because we've struck a reef mm bad news. Would you please return to your cabins and collect your life jackets. And still there wasn't really any panic, not really. People played cards, and they chatted and listened to the radio while children ran around playing. People laughed about the life jackets and all the announcements asking people to move around from different lounges and decks, and every now and then an officer would run past, saying everything's under control, you're all quite safe. And at this point they could see a harbor tug coming through the rain. Lines were fired to the ship from the tug around lunch time, but they broke. Still no real reason to panic. Passengers enjoyed a light meal and coffee as the crew ran round outside uncovering life rafts in the merciless wind. Oh, and the ship started to list alarmingly to starboard, and with that people started to look worried. The PA kept assuring everyone that everything was all good, but it was obvious that something was seriously wrong, and everyone was still pretty cool about it, sort of until the one o'clock news came on the radio. The crew made it seem like they were running a little late to an ice cream social, but the news on the radio flat outside that the Wahini was sinking. She'd been seen from shore through the storm, listing helplessly, and people called it in to one one one, which is the number for emergency services in this far corner of the world. And once they heard that the ship was sinking, it was kind alike in airplane when they announced that they'd run out of coffee. It was as if someone had flipped a switch. What was previously just a kind of roiling anxiety turned into full on panic. There may have been an abandoned ship announcement, but who would have heard it over the people screaming and shouting and running every which way. You could hear people falling and glass breaking and furniture crashing in the lounge. Remember, they were still kind of riding in a bathtub on a roller coaster. Some starboard cabins were completely under water, and the Wahini was in danger of capsizing, and they were still trying to navigate the ship with nothing but gut feeling, like driving a car blind two wheels missing. If the captain sensed the ship was approaching rocks ahead, like a disturbance in the force, he would order them back off. Knowing if in fact they were moving ahead or astern was impossible to tell, and much of the time the propellers were said to be spinning uselessly out of the water. They were so close to shore, but there was just no way for rescue to reach them except shortly after noon and the failed tug rescue. The deputy harbormaster, a man named Galloway, who should have been launched halfway to Fiji in this really ballsy Hollywood move, managed to leap from a vessel on to the Wahini. He was a real pick up your phone kind of guy, you know, the kind of guy you move your schedule around for. Well, it was a quarter after one and the Wahini was listing heavily, like maybe forty five degrees to starboard and it was slowly dragging backwards along the eastern side of the reef, dragging her anchors with her bow pointed into the weather. Oh and the lower level of f deech deep in the ship flooded like to the ceiling. You've likely never seen a ship evacuation where people leap from the bow or just jump off the stern, and it's mainly because life rafts are always lowered from the sides. And in a heavy list, two things happen. First, fifty percent of your potential evacuation space is underwater, and this leaves the port side, which is also sideways and pointing upwards. It's a little like evacuating a crashed plane by climbing on its roof, but not before walking along its walls. Oh and do all of this in horrifying weather. It's not like the harbor became a parking lot for an entire regatta of rescue vehicles. They were pretty much on their own. Captain Robertson thought it was safer for the passengers to remain on board than to throw them into the crazy seas, completely exposed to the elements, but by one thirty he relented and the order was finally given to abandoned ship. A full capacity two fifty person motorized lifeboats, six non motorized ninety nine person lifeboats, and thirty six inflatable rafts capable of carrying twenty five people. Well each should have been able to carry more than enough people, except only four of the lifeboats could be launched, and many of the inflatable rafts were just blown into the ocean, never to be seen again. It was so wet and slippery, and hundreds of people clawed their way along the safety rails as shrieking winds ripped at their clothes, but many were just blown overboard, sliding and screaming the whole way. With no other options, passengers had to voluntarily jump into the cold and furiously pitching water, and what the storm did to those people is hard to imagine. Before I tell you what the wind did to them, I'm going to point out something that I just learned. There's an exhibit at the Titanic Museum. It's this pool of water, and it's kept to the same temperature as the ocean was that night when the Titanic sank. It invites you to put your hand in it and just keep it there for a couple of minutes, and yeah, it's cold. But what happens is at some point people wiggle their fingers and they hurt. And the reason is, yeah, nobody wants to be submerged in water that's almost ice. But when you move your limbs, you get an incredibly painful pins and needle feeling, and it's the heat leaving your body. That crackling, flaming feeling that you have all over your skin is actually the feeling of you dying. Now let's get back to the wind. What the storm did to these people is really hard to imagine. People found themselves blown off the deck, like I said, but they were lifted by the wind and tumbled through the air like they were in a kind of a wet dryer, and flung haplessly ass over tea kettle into the ocean, but not before completely denuding them. M hmm. It was as if Poseidon himself rose from the seas, picked people up, ripped off all their clothes real fast, and then sent them on their way. The Australian coast was four seventy five kilometers or twenty five hundred and thirty miles away, and that's where survivors could expect to collect their clothes. So that motorized lifeboat I was talking about before, that sounds pretty nice. Yeah, well it got flipped pretty much immediately like a bath toy, and it pitched everyone out into the ocean. And all those deflated life rafts, yeah, they kind of got uselessly flipped over or filled with water or punctured by wreckage was a whole thing. And of the four that actually managed to get in, one was swamped almost immediately and everyone was tossed under the water, while two other ones made it to seatown and the last landed by Eastbourne Beach, along with about two hundred people bobbing the water who'd also been blown across the harbor to shore. Mind you in saying that they didn't all arrive alive. Some were dashed to death on the rocks, and of those that did successfully climb ashore, some ended up dying from exposure and exhaustion before rescue was able to arrive. About two thirty that afternoon, the Wahini capsized in about forty feet of water and clarmed heavily into the seabed. The Wahine was in sight of land and at this point, many other vessels, including the smaller New Zealand Railways Wellington Picton Ferry Aramawana, stood by to pluck survivors out of the water. And yet the captain was last to leave the ship, and he spent about an hour bobbing in the water before he was rescued. Because of a lack of communication, those on shore didn't know just how bad things had become, and emergency services on shore were already beyond capacity dealing with people who'd been stabbed by trees coming through their homes, or playing catch with flying roof tiles or a car tire or a swordfish. At no point in this story do I want you to forget this whole thing is set in a hurricane, said in italics for emphasis. And you know that scene in the Titanic movie after the sinking, with all those people in the water, all freezing and collectively growing quieter and quieter over time as people slowly drowned, Well, it was the same thing here, except Titanic survivors did it on a flat sea. They did not face their makers surrounded by forty foot tall white caps in gale force winds. People arrived at shore clinging the debris in overturned rafts, naked unconscious with broken limbs and massive flesh wounds after being battered bloody against debris, rocks and other people. And the details of all this could literally be an hour of the show right here. There were skull deformations, spinal injuries, deep lacerations, shattered limbs, you name it. But it was so cold in the water that some of these injuries barely bled, which is good because you know, sharks love Wellington II. Many people were deeply in shock. They kept crawling up the shore away from the water. They were so afraid of what they just experienced. They just kept crawling up the shore as if on autopilot. Anything to get away from the water. Nudity and dangling skin be damned, but help was coming. Warcraft, motor boats, tugboats, fishing boats, and every kind of available vessel all headed into the surf on a mission of mercy. Hundreds more would have died without this public intervention and a lot of resuscitations. Another three hundred and seventy one police and one hundred and fifty civilians brave the weather and comb the shore to rescue survivors throughout the night and many at their own peril. Some while trying to rescue people, found themselves being dragged into the sea by the pull of the surf. And from here, let me tell you, I read a two hundred and fifty eight page book of nothing but tales of people giving the clothes off their backs and opening their homes to waterlog strangers. I may very well know more about the Kiwi response to danger than any other aspect of their culture at this point. Very quick aside about kiwis nope, not the fruit. The kiwi is a small flightless bird that is native only to New Zealand. It looks kind of like a footed ball with a beak, if that makes sense. And they are so beloved they became the national bird of New Zealand, also their national symbol, their icon of the military, and the nickname of all New Zealanders. And to clarify, Kiwi the fruit is not even from New Zealand. It's Chinese. Now, speaking of Australia, there is a very old stereotype about how the life and was settled by white criminals that England dropped off back in the late seventeen hundreds, and how they've been pickpocketing and inbreeding ever since, and today they are willing to drunkenly fistfight you the moment you arrive at the airport. And of course, because people think about New Zealand even less than Australia. When asked about a New Zealand stereotype, most people will say something like is it about sheep? Well, I'm going to tell you the Australian stereotype is false. Just let them smell your hand and then buy them a beer and they will be your mate for life. As for New Zealanders, just based off reading more individual rescue tales than I have read for any other episode of this show, the New Zealand stereotype that I will never be able to shake is that they are warm, open, caring, sharing, brave and selfless. It took some time to tally everything that happened here, but six hundred and eighty four people survived, fifty one did not. Forty three were found along the eastern shore of the harbor, four were removed from the harbor itself, and the remaining four were found later at sea. Seven of the victims were Australian, the rest were Kiwi. So what the hell happened? Captain Robertson later said it must have been a rogue wave. We had no warning of it. It was fearsome and you couldn't see or hear or feel anything. It would burn your eyes just trying to look into it. And then he said man is useless when he is confronted by the forces of nature. Captain Robertson was not an arrogant man, and rogue waves could easily have been their own episode. Rogue waves can come out of nowhere with no way of predicting them. The storm that blasted Wellington was one of the worst ever recorded. Many will say it was the worst worst. Winds exceeded ninety three miles or one hundred and fifty kilometers an hour in most areas, with gusts reaching up to one hundred and thirty five miles or two hundred and fifteen kilometers an hour. That's basically a Category two hurricane with Catagory four gusts just at heavy rainfall, and you are looking at significant flooding and landslides to boot the storm caused extensive damage to infrastructure, homes, buildings, downpower lines, and countless uprooted trees. And the reason it was so aggressive unforeseen voltrony. The first storm began several days before as a minor tropical cyclone to the far north, like we said, but on the night of the disaster it changed course dramatically and bingoed in on Wellington Harbor, and at the same time a deep depression was heading up the South Island side. Note because weather tracking reports literally stopped when the weather wind went to bed, nobody had been tracking this as it happened. Amazingly, both storms arrived at the same place at the same time and multiplied their effects, and no one could have stood up to the results, or could they. A court of inquiry was held. Eighty one witnesses were called, and to save you the trouble of reading through the entire findings, the court ruled that the prime cause of the Wahini's loss was that the ship was struck by the worst storm ever and was forced off course in zero visibility, with no control and no radar. It then had to be piloted using the force until all control was finally lost, allowing the mass of waves and hurricane force winds to force the ship onto Barrett's Reef, where she was ripped open to the sea. She lost her starboard propeller and her port engine, leaving the ship without any way to move before the engine room flooded and she lost power altogether. The ship's two tiered vehicle deck could hold over two hundred cars and spanned nearly the entire length and breadth of the ship. So as water on the vehicle deck slashed from one side of the ship to the other, this only increased the vessel's list to starboard four compartments, and the vehicle deck flooded beyond the point where she was balanced enough to stay upright, forcing the captain to order those on board to abandon ship, and the rush of people to the starboard lifeboats created a quick shift in weight strong enough to destroy any prayer for the ship to stay upright. The court said that had the order to abandon ship been given earlier or later, the loss of life would have almost certainly been worse. They did, however, blame the captain for trying to maintain calm and not telling those on shore just how bad things actually were, but not enough to strip him of his title or anything. The public was also very much on his side during the whole proceedings. He received three thousand letters of sympathy and fifty telegrams of support every day. So what became of the ship? Well, funny story. It sat there on its side, four hundred meters or about thirteen hundred feet from shore for a while. And the plan had been to remove all the cars and furniture to lighten it, and then fill the cavity with a special plastic foam to refloat the hull so it could be moved into deeper waters in the strait, and then they scuttle it. And so they got to work until May the eighth, nineteen sixty nine. The next year. See, they were in the middle of raising the ship when a vicious gale ripped through Wellington Harbor again, with winds gusting up to one hundred miles or one hundred and sixty kilometers an hour. Well the Wahine was not in great shape and broke into three separate sections. The Evening Post reported that the Wahini no longer exists as a ship. It looks like it had been sliced by a huge guillotine or split with a gigantic canopener, all gashed and torn and crumpled into unrecognizable shapes. There were three Chinese warships in the harbor at the time, and they also struggled against the wind and one of them almost ended up on Barrett Reef. It really points out just how much nature doesn't care about your plans. This disaster led to improvements in safety regulations, better forecasting, and communication systems to prevent similar tragedies in the future. Cyclone Gazelle is remembered as one of the most severe storms in New Zealand's recorded history, and the Wahini and those affected by the disaster and those who lost their lives are commemorated in New Zealand, particularly in Wellington Harbor, with memorials and ceremonies honoring those who will never forget that night. In nineteen sixty eight, when I was in school, a bunch of friends rented a house boat and we just kind of took off for a week around a lake system up north. The trip ended after three days. We lost hydraulics, which meant the last steering and we ended up unintentionally entering a lock system where we hit another boat and stripped the trim off of another. So believe me when I say no steering is no joke. There are always legends that rise up around certain disasters, mostly naval disasters, and here is the Wahinis. There is a story. As things seemed their worst, a Maori woman stood and sang the most wonderful traditional music over the wind and the rain, sort of a my heart will go on moment, thirty years before Titanic came out. I can't say whether this was true or not, but it was a beautiful story. I did this episode as a thank you to a kind listener from Alteo Roa who supported me on Patreon. And if you yourself are from New Zealand, before you even ask, yes, we will be back. But before we do, if you are a regular listener, why not consider becoming a supporter. It would really help me fulfill my dream of doing this full time. And if you and a few thousand of your friends could spare a buck or two, you would really help me keep the show alive. Before I tell you about Patreon, if you're into it but you're not looking for a whole relationship, you can visit, buy me a coffee, dot com slash doomsday and make a one time donation. And those of you who do, I appreciate you from a deep place. I myself think that getting episodes a little early, with no sponsor interruptions and with additional ridiculously interesting material in each new episode is worth it, and if you agree, you can find out more at Patreon dot com, slash Funeral, Kazoo and now a quick but heartfelt shout out to Mimi Saheen, Travis Baker, Blair Haley, Julie Jacobson and Marie Wheeler, Naomi Little, Michelle Ebsbury and Elevator for supporting the show on Patreon. You can reach out to me on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook as Doomsday Podcast, or fire an email to Doomsdaypod at gmail dot com. I do love hearing from you. For those of you've done it recently, I will be sending out stickers and barf bags as soon as the post office reopens. Older episodes can be found wherever you found this one, and while you're there, please leave us a review and tell your friends. I always thank all my Patreon listeners, new and old, for their support and encouragement. But if you could spare the money and had to choose, I also ask you to consider making a donation to Global medic. Global Medic is a rapid Response agency of Canadian volunteers offering assistance around the world to aid in the aftermath of disasters and crises. They're often the first and sometimes the only team to get critical interventions to people in life threatening situations, and to date they have helped over three point six million people across seventy seven different countries. You can learn more and donate at Globalmenic dot CA. On the next episode, it's been a while since we did a bad day of work story. There've always been a personal favorite mine, and as you know, sometimes when things go bad at work, you get the rest of the day off. Other times, when things go bad at work, you see a tunnel of bright white light with all of your coworkers all huddle together waving you inside. It's the Damascus nuclear missile disaster of nineteen eighty. We'll talk soon. Save to goggles off and thanks for listening.