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Chapter Three

By midnight the wind had shifted to the south and increased in force to 25 knots, still only a strong breeze according to the Beaufort Wind Scale. Large waves with white foam crests were beginning to form and the ship was pitching moderately. Rain was falling. The barometer showed 998.5 millibars. When Second Officer William Shanks relieved Third Mate Noblet for the midnight to 4 am watch the Wahine had sailed a shade under 50 miles from Lyttelton. She was handling well.

Only the seasick passengers were unhappy. Others were sleeping easily.

Seventy-eight-year-old Arthur Welsh of Gore, travelling north with his wife to visit a son in Masterton, hadn't been on an inter-island ferry for fifteen years but: "I slept fairly well, waking once or twice to feel the ship moving slightly. It was like a rocking-chair. I thought it was a good crossing."

Sales manager Roger Wilson: "I slept soundly. Being a yachtsman I am used to the sea and feel at home on it. I'm never seasick and do not recall the ship being anything but stable. She was running before the breeze anyway."

Decimal Currency Board accountant George Howatson, sixty-three, of Wellington: "She was dipping a bit, not much, and I wasn't seasick."

Odd passengers were neither seasick nor asleep. Lynn Kingsbury's wife Gillian was wide awake. She became so tired of tossing and turning that she switched on her bedside light and began to read a magazine. But the light, dim though it was, woke her husband and so she snapped it off again and resigned herself to listening to the creaking of the cabin walls as the ship pitched and rolled.

At 1.30 am the southbound Maori passed the Wahine, almost 3 1/2 miles to port and closer to land. Ten minutes later Second Officer Shanks could see the light on the Kaikoura Peninsula winking 12 miles away off the port wing of the bridge. He noted the sighting in the bridge log. The Wahine was now halfway to Wellington.

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Far to the north the cyclone was battering the east coast. Auckland escaped the full fury of the storm but caught the backlash with winds severe enough to do a considerable amount of minor damage, unroofing at least one house, driving several pleasure boats ashore, and playing havoc with power and telephone lines. At midnight the storm centre was near Great Barrier Island, in the Hauraki Gulf, east of Auckland. As the new day began the cyclone started curving to the south from the forecast south-easterly direction that would have taken it further away from land. The gales and rain fronting the centre swept down the east coast, leaving a trail of damage. Six inches of rain fell on the exposed Coromandel Peninsula; heavy seas in the Whitianga Harbour estuary washed two fishing boats ashore.

The 2.20 am forecast to shipping, unheard on the Wahine, reported the storm still moving at between 20 to 25 knots. It added that strong southerly gales were expected to develop in Cook Strait as the centre moved to an area off Hawke's Bay within the next 6 to 10 hours.

On the Wahine, the barometer was falling and those on watch >felt the wind rising. Mrs Phyllis Robertson was still being ill. Sick also were Christchurch widow, Mrs Alma Alexander, who was going north to a daughter's home in Stratford, and Miss Margaret Millar, of Gore, who vomited spasmodically from midnight and was unable to sleep. Seventh Day Adventist Clarrie O'Neill heaved a couple of times and the seasick tablets his seven-year-old son Clarence had taken proved a wasted investment.

At 2.38 am Second Officer Shanks noted the light on the highway bridge at the mouth of the Clarence River, 14.4 miles to port.

In Wellington the lightest of southerlies was ruffling the harbour and heavy rain was beginning to fall. The fresh northerly that had blown all evening had died at midnight and for two hours it was calm—so calm that the silence woke Mrs Anne Robertson, wife of the Wahine's Master. It was uncannily quiet. Mrs Robertson remembered her husband telling her a sudden calm sometimes preceded a severe southerly. She knew a southerly was predicted and hoped her husband would get his ship in before it began to blow hard. She got out of bed and wandered around the new house on the Western Hutt hills into which she and her husband had moved two weeks earlier. She was a little concerned; but there was nothing she could do so she went back to bed.

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The 3 am forecast on the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation's all-night programme located the cyclone's centre off the eastern coast of the southern part of Coromandel Peninsula. "Present indications are that the centre will be located about a hundred miles east of Hawke's Bay by midday today." The weathermen were right when they predicted "gale force and above" southerlies in Cook Strait in a few hours, but their estimate of the centre's location at midday was to be proved sadly inaccurate by one factor largely unknown to them: the storm had speeded up. At 3 am it was over Tauranga, building up huge seas on the coast, ripping down power and telephone circuits and in nearby Whakatane pulling a section of roofing from the toll and telephone exchange.

The storm was lunging south at 40 knots, doubling its earlier speed. Fragmentary reports from a few weather stations manned around the clock indicated something unusual was happening, but the reports were not detailed enough and too few to enable an accurate reassessment of the situation to be made.

The fringes of the storm built up the southerly over Wellington dramatically between 3 am and 4 am. At 3 am the anemometer at Wellington Airport, close to the harbour entrance, registered 10 knots. An hour later it showed 42 knots with a maximum gust of 60. The rain that would not let up until 3.30 pm was driving across the exposed runways.

In the eastern Wellington suburb of Miramar, the longest, most harrowing day of Rob Brittain's life was beginning. Brittain, a carpenter, woke at 3.30 am to hear the wind and rain beating against his home. Pie thought of his wife Karalyn and fifteen-month-old daughter Joanne on the Wahine. Unable to sleep, he remembered his wife had forgotten to take her raincoat with her when she went to visit her mother in Christchurch. The rain told Brittain the coat would probably be needed when the ferry berthed at 7 am so he got up and hunted it out. Mrs Brittain had planned to go home on the Maori on 15 April but she had fancied a trip on the new ferry and changed her booking. She was in a single-berth cabin directly under the smokeroom; red headed, blue-eyed Joanne snuggled in with her. Mrs Brittain had preferred to have the baby with her rather than in a cot which the company provided for children of under four years, who travelled free on the ferries. Mother and child slept well.

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In the four hours that Bill Shanks had been on watch on the Wahine's bridge the weather had worsened considerably. When Chief Officer Luly reached the bridge at 3.55 am a typical Cook Strait southerly of 45 knots was blowing. Dense streaks of foam showed on the rough sea and the wave crests were beginning to roll off into the troughs. Visibility was moderate. At times the ship was scending, pitching in reverse, as the following swell overtook the ship and lifted her stern first, but she was rolling easily and handling well. Before Luly relieved Shanks he read and signed the ship's night orders, studied the log and noted the falling barometer, down almost 3 millibars since midnight. He was not unduly perturbed about the fall in barometric pressure: from his experience on the run he knew the barometer had the habit of going up and down like a yoyo.

Like Captain Robertson, the mate was not concerned about the storm. On the basis of the 8.30 pm weather forecast he expected the centre to be in the Bay of Plenty at 6 am when the Wahine would be entering harbour. Its southerly radius of 150 miles would be in the vicinity of Hastings, in Hawke's Bay, well to the north, "in which case there was no earthly reason why we should not proceed on the voyage". Later he was to say he did not think his assessment of the weather would have been assisted by the 2.20 am marine forecast, and that at 4 am conditions did not make it appear likely the storm situation had changed during the night.

The fast clip of the storm was rapidly outdating the forecasts: the centre was now far south of where Luly figured it should be, and intensifying, causing stronger north-easterlies in the north and southerlies in Wellington and in the Wahine's vicinity.

Chief Officer Luly was unaware of the damage being wrought over Gisborne in northern Hawke's Bay, where the gale was tearing roofs off, smashing fences, flattening farm buildings, ripping out countless trees. One tremendous gust damaged Cook Hospital. Patients were evacuated from one ward. The wild night sky was lit by flashing power lines.