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Chapter Eight

Suddenly she lurched a couple of times to starboard . . . and stayed there. The harsh jangle of the alarm bells and the abandon ship order a few minutes later punctured any complacency that remained. Six hundred and ten passengers were faced with the stark reality of getting off the ship into a still wild sea.

Fright showed clearly on many of the faces of the men, women and children jammed into the B-deck smokeroom and cafeteria, passageways and cabins and in the A-deck lounge. For a few minutes panic was imminent as passengers surged to the exits in their desperate desire to get on deck. Frantic parents sought children lost in the jostling. Families and friends separated in the confusion shouted questions and answers at each other. Some searched frenziedly for discarded lifejackets. In the smokeroom one man was heard yelling to his wife above the babble, "I love you, I love you."

The disorder in the smokeroom was heightened by the jumble of passengers and their belongings, and by chairs and tables hurled against the starboard walls when the ship lurched. Stewards and passengers fought to free those trapped among the furniture, helping people to their feet and pushing them towards the exits.

South Australian widow Mrs Constance Martyr, sixty-two, looked at her watch at 12.55 pm just before the Wahine heaved violently. Then she and others toppled from their chairs: "We tried to hold on to the tables but they came away, and over we went to the windows." Instantly she regretted having earlier loosened her lifejacket tapes, which now wrapped tightly around a chair. Mrs Martyr lay on the floor and called for help to get them free. Through the starboard windows she could see lifeboats being lowered to B-deck from above. She dumped her handbag and camera as she stumbled up the sloping, slippery floor. "I couldn't hang on to them," she said later. "They could have meant my life." Not all women acted similarly. Some, even in the worst crisis of their lives, refused to be parted from their bags. Mrs Martyr reached the deck in time to get into a lifeboat.

Canterbury University cricketer Roger Bush joined a human chain from a pillar in the smokeroom to the starboard forward page 86exit. Many passengers slid from the port side of the room to the chain and then floundered out into the six-foot-wide passage fronting the smokeroom, and thence to the deck. Bush helped for ten minutes until a sliding passenger knocked him into the pile of chairs and tables against the starboard wall. Several elderly passengers were still caught up in the furniture. Bush and a steward helped get them out, while two stewards were trying—unsuccessfully—to smash the windows with a table-top.

Seventy-eight-year-old Arthur Welsh and his wife clung grimly to a table that had not overturned and watched passengers scrabbling for lifejackets, and stewards taking young children from mothers' arms. Another steward came to the aid of the Welshs, tied their lifejackets securely and took them to a port side door.

Despite confusion and uproar the smokeroom began to empty rapidly. Passengers poured on to the decks on both sides of the ship.

When Captain Robertson stabbed down on the alarm system deputy harbourmaster Galloway strode to the port wing of the bridge and barked over the VHF to Beacon Hill, "We are abandoning ship, we are abandoning ship." On the same channel he ordered the Tapuhi to forget the tow wire and begin to save lives, and asked for the Aramoana to be sent out. As he talked, Purser Clare made the abandon-ship announcement over the public address system; it was his job under the ship's muster rules. He had tried telephoning the bridge when water began lapping the portholes of his office on the starboard side of D-deck, but the phone was dead. He started off for the bridge and was almost there when he met Third Officer Noblet who was looking for him to tell him the ship was to be abandoned.

Captain Robertson told Clare to make the announcement. Noblet twisted the switches on the console so the message would go through all compartments of the vessel and Clare began speaking. "We are about to abandon ship. All persons are to proceed to the starboard side of the ship, the starboard side of the ship being the right-hand side facing the front." He kept repeating it.

Chief Engineer Wareing too was on the bridge. He went to his cabin, phoned his engine-room staff and told them to get out. Then he went below to check his men off as they came out. Third Engineer King was the only one missing. Wareing asked the second electrician, Roy Langbein, to find him. "Chief, have I got time?" page 87Langbein asked. "I won't leave here until you come out," Wareing replied. Langbein went forward and found King.

Colin Bower of Whangarei was in a toilet when the alarm rang. He raced aft to the smokeroom to find his mate, Paul Field, and Diana Lilley of Masterton. Paul was standing by one of the tables that had not careered to starboard. He was holding two women to prevent them sliding, and his legs were grasped by Diana. "One of the women asked me what was going to happen and the only thing I could say was that it would be all right. This boat will take at least two hours to sink," Paul said later. The youngsters helped the women to the port doors and there they all kicked off their shoes. They knew they would be better without them on the wet deck.

Mrs Karalyn Brittain also managed to clutch a table. Alongside, a man was holding Joanne. Another woman clasped Mrs Brittain's light cotton frock and Mrs Brittain guided her hand to a grip on the table before heading off after her child. She heard the order to go to starboard and, being the daughter of a seaman, knew which way to go. But the slant of the floor made it impossible to cross with any degree of safety so she and the man carrying Joanne made their way from table to table toward a port exit.

One who realised the ship was going to go over before the alarm bells sounded was Miss Margaret Millar, of Gore. The list told her so. Grabbing anything she could lay a hand on to keep herself upright, she left the smokeroom from a forward exit. She watched the confused rush to starboard for the lifeboats and saw women and children and thought to herself: "There won't be room for me." She heard crewmen calling out "Port side is the top side or high side," and, not knowing that they were emphasising instructions to go to starboard, she turned toward port. "We had no instructions about abandoning ship so I just did as I was told." She had never been on a ferry before and had no idea which side was which.

Miss Millar fought to keep her feet from whipping from under her. Everywhere people were falling, and sea and rainwater, trapped on the port side when the ship was level, were washing through the passages to starboard making the uphill walk more difficult. Miss Millar managed to grab a door at the end of a passage, hung on to get her breath, then scrambled through an open weather door on to the deck. She shucked off her shoes.

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"I didn't think it would be that bad, or that we would have to get off the ship," Mrs Phyllis Robertson of Wellington recalls. She began to realise the seriousness of her plight when chairs and tables began falling and passengers began to scream and leave the smokeroom. Clutching her handbag and a lightweight zip-up suitcase containing Easter eggs for her family, she crawled to the aft port door of the smokeroom and rolled over the sill on to the deck. Instantly she was drenched by salt spray and rain. The storm was dying but the sou'wester was still at 45 knots, gusting to 60, with heavy driving rain. Away from the relative calm of the starboard lee, bruising seas were pounding up the harbour. The Wahine was wallowing and the list was increasing. From shore the ship was shrouded in mist. In turn, the land, even though only a few hundred yards away, was barely visible from the ship. Many passengers did not have the faintest idea where they were.

Captain Robertson had left the bridge to supervise the loading of boats and help launch liferafts from the forward stations. Galloway remained. A few minutes after the abandon ship order he could see passengers filing on to the port side. He pointed out this development to the purser. Jammed between the end of the chart table and port chartroom door Clare spoke again, directing people to the "low" side of the ship. "The low side, the low side, the low side," he repeated. But the port side was crowded and the public address system began to play up. A light on the console, showing green when the set was operating correctly, started to flicker.

Radio Officer Lyver, intent on his work behind the bridge, was probably the only man on the ship who did not know it was being abandoned. His headphones shut out the sound of the bells and Clare's announcements, so he was happy when the Captain told him shortly before he left the bridge that passengers were being put into the boats. He knew the tug had been trying to get a line aboard, and he assumed that the operation had succeeded and that passengers were to be off-loaded. He was sadly disillusioned a little later. Lyver had been given no order to tell ZLW the Wahine was being abandoned, and could not do so without the Master's authority.

The alarm signal and abandon ship order roused many passengers from passageways and cabins on B-deck forward of the smokeroom. Some were in accommodation they had occupied the page 89night before, others had taken over empty berths. When Mr Samuel Folkard and his wife Christobel, of Raumati, near Wellington, came out of a cabin well forward, they ran into a bunch of fifty or sixty people making for the port side. Folkard explained to the others they were headed the wrong way, and most turned and got out on the starboard deck. In one of the two luxury cabins Max Nelson of Wellington zipped a few personal belongings into the pocket of his reefer jacket while he waited for the packed corridor outside to clear. As the crowd retreated a woman was left lying in the passage with two chairs on top of her. She was only semiconscious and it appeared the people ahead had either trampled her or stepped over her in their haste to get on deck. Mr Nelson picked her up, and with his wife helping, got her down a cross-passageway leading to starboard.

Peter Madarasz and his bride were tumbled from another cabin, where they had been reading and napping, by stewards in the passage yelling orders to get out. The stewards gave them incorrect directions. "They pushed us out on the wrong side, the port side. They were getting quite carried away telling everyone to go to that side." Sue laughs now: "We thought they wanted us to go to the high side and balance the ship." She and Peter got out on the port deck but then heard Clare's "low side" announcement and turned back.

Hanging on to handrails in the passage in front of the smoke-room they started to starboard, helping several elderly people including one old woman who wouldn't don a lifejacket because she didn't want to remove her hat. Sue insisted, and the woman put on her jacket. At the door leading to the deck Peter peeled off into the smokeroom to pull out an old man of seventy or eighty who didn't want to leave. He helped drag the old man out. "We had to," he said later. "He'd never have gone on his own. Stewards had to bring out another old woman." Many of the old people were reluctant to go: "They were frightened, and would rather have stayed. Some of them had to be pushed out the door and over the rails into liferafts," Sue says.

The smaller general lounge on A-deck was being evacuated somewhat more easily. Its carpeted floor offered a reasonable footing and its heavy armchairs and settees were less inclined to sail off than the chairs and tables on the polished smokeroom floor.

One-armed Albert Hansen and his wife Ilene heard the alarm page 90bells but nothing else as people yelled and scrambled for the exits. At a door leading to the deck a crewman ordered "Women and children first", and a man who tried to get through was bopped on the nose by a seaman. Hansen sent his wife ahead and, bracing himself against a wall, leant over so that passengers moving past could steady themselves on him while they kicked off their shoes. Hansen watched a growing heap of shoes of all shapes, sizes and colours.

"Bloody hell," was student John Wauchop's reaction when he heard Clare's first announcement. Several months later Wauchop remembered "After the initial screams and cursing, people started to act instead of vocally expressing their concern. It was women and children first."

Wauchop and his teammates tried, with mixed success, to convince elderly women that their handbags wouldn't act as lifesavers. "One woman put down her bag to take off her shoes, then swiftly snatched it up again as though it was worth the proverbial million." Wauchop saw two cameras on the floor as he left the lounge and felt guilty because he almost wanted to save them. "I remember thinking too that this was one hell of a way to die."

Air Force woman Pinky Brown was among the last to leave the lounge. She found a lifejacket for the old woman who was worried about her budgie and a steward went off with her. Pinky had taken her own jacket off earlier and it slid away when the ship lurched. One of the students found her another. "The University boys were wonderful. They ran about assisting anyone they could," she declared later. Two of them helped her from the lounge to starboard. Some of the passengers in the lounge had gone to port, but Pinky knew the ship would be abandoned from the low side and shouted "The right, the right." Others echoed her cry.

Chief Officer Luly got the word to abandon ship while he was directing rocket-firing operations on the wide open expanse of the aft end of C-deck or poop. Second Officer Bill Shanks shouted the order from the tail of A-deck. Luly and the crewmen with him had not heard the bells or the announcements because of the wind. Luly bolted up two flights of ladders to the port after-end of A-deck when he spotted a knot of passengers there. In the few seconds it took him to reach the group people were already in the water between the stern of the Wahine and the Tapuhi, standing close by, thereby effectively preventing the tug from moving into page 91the lee formed by the listing Wahine. They had not awaited developments, but had leapt into the sea.

Seamen helping, Luly heaved several of the 235-pound life-rafts over the side hoping they would float to the people down below. It was not a very successful move: some inflated as they hit the water, but the wind promptly picked them up and wrapped them around the ferry's stern. Others were blown on to C-deck on the way down.

Luly told the passengers to go to B-deck where the Wahine's four lifeboats had been cleared away and lowered to embarkation level. In the ship's muster rules the starboard side of the ship was Luly's responsibility. Wet through by hours of rain and spray he went down to B-deck to supervise loading. Half a dozen crewmen had swiftly dropped the boats under Shanks's direction. Quartermasters Ken MacLeod and Tom Dartford had been sent to A-deck at 1 pm by Captain Galloway to drain rain and sea-water that had collected in the boats during the morning. They had just completed dealing with the port four when the ship was ordered to be abandoned. There was no time to drain water from the plugholes on the starboard boats. Dartford returned to the bridge while MacLeod strode to No. 4 boat, slipped the quick-release, mechanism on the grips, and worked the winch to lower the craft to B-deck. Then he gave a hand to get the other three down. It took one minute to clear each boat away.

When Luly reached B-deck the four boats were already swinging at deck level, several feet out from the side of the listing ship. In theory they could accommodate more than half the passengers. Furthest forward was the number one, or accident, boat, smallest of the four and the only one with a motor. Twenty-six feet long and powered with a diesel engine it was designed to take fifty persons. Strung behind were numbers two, three and four boats, identical hand-propelled 31-foot, 99-person craft. Number four was opposite the smokeroom's aft exit. All four were built of stout fibreglass with two tiers of moulded benches running fore and aft around the sides.

Dartford sped from the bridge to number four boat, which was under his command. It and the others were loaded quickly once the hesitation of some passengers had been overcome. Because the boats were hanging clear it was necessary for passengers to jump or be helped in. Initially Dartford encountered resistance from page 92women who would not move without their husbands or children, and from those standing back for others. But once the first passengers were aboard others followed and embarkation went more smoothly. Generally it was women and children first, but as loading progressed many passengers began sliding down the deck and crewmen had more or less to take people as they came.

Clarrie O'Neill, his wife Lydia and their six children, were in a good spot to get off the ship when the command was given. They were together near the aft starboard exit of the smokeroom. At their father's command Stephen, Mark, Clarence, Karen, Ruth, and Daniel crawled to the tiny vestibule leading from the smoke-room to the deck. Mr O'Neill picked up one of his wife's new shoes but then realising it was only an encumbrance threw it away. As he did so he remembered that earlier in the day he had heard a passenger asking a steward for permission to go to her cabin to change her shoes because they did not match her outfit.

When the doors to the deck were opened the wind and rain came howling in. "There was a lot of pushing," says Mr O'Neill. "My wife slipped over on the deck and hit the rail and so did one of the children." Dartford's boat was right there. Mr O'Neill grabbed Daniel and swung him from the rails across the wide gap to a crewman in the boat. "I held him by one arm and swung him with all my force, and the crewman grabbed his other arm." Mr O'Neill repeated the process with three more of his children and then helped his eldest two and his wife to jump in.

Mr O'Neill saw a woman throw a baby to someone in the lifeboat, but the child didn't go far enough and splashed into the sea. Someone retrieved it. "The boat was looking pretty full and I was wondering whether I would get in when the crewman said 'Are you the father of these children?' I said 'Yes' and he replied 'Well. you had better get in.' I did so and almost simultaneously a woman jumped from A-deck above and landed right in the middle of my back. Many others were diving into the water."

Mrs Ingrid Munro of Christchurch managed to get her daughter Monique aboard Dartford's boat. She and Monique, her brother Warner and his friend Stuart had been in the lounge above when the alaim sounded. As they reached the deck Monique said to her mother. "Isn't this exciting Mummy?" Mrs Munro could hardly agree, particularly when she skidded into a rail a few seconds later. She got to her feet and, holding Monique by the hand, went page 93down the companionway to number four boat. Monique was passed to a crewman in the boat but the yawning gap between the rails and the lifeboat was too much for Mrs Munro and she wasn't keen, either, on landing on the people already covering the bottom of the craft. She watched a steward nearby launch a liferaft and saw Warner and Stuart jump for it. Mrs Munro thought "It's now or never" and leapt from the rails.

Further along the deck the other three lifeboats were being loaded. There was not much variation. Passengers slid to the rails and jumped in. For some reason number three boat wasn't quite as full as the others. Railways accountant George Reid decided number four was crowded enough. Reid, a non-swimmer, was worried that it might capsize if there were too many in it so he headed for the other boat, which had only a dozen aboard as he came abreast of it. It was swinging slightly below deck level. Still clutching his briefcase, Reid leapt in. Others followed.

Philip Bennett, the Wahine's young fourth engineer, who had been on the ship only five days, had charge of number two boat. One of those who got into it was Christchurch businessman Frank Penman. He had been in his luxury cabin when the alarm bells clanged, and he thinks the initial "go to starboard" order was bad. "Few knew starboard and fewer still which was the sharp end." But he considers one good side-effect was that there was less of a rush to one side of the ship and that there could have been more injuries had all passengers gone to starboard. Mr Penman fell heavily getting to the lifeboat and saw others do likewise and suffer injuries. He remembers no panic or selfishness near him and he and other men helped women towards the lifeboat. When he got to the rails a crewman asked him to get in and give them a hand.

Once before Penman had left a sinking ship. He was on the Cunard-White Star liner Laconia when it was torpedoed at 8.15 pm on 12 September 1942, off the west coast of Africa. Penman, a Ferry Command air pilot, was on his way back to England from Cape Town after a bout of diphtheria. The ship went down in 55 minutes after a hellish abandonment, the pandemonium caused largely by 1,200 panicky Italian prisoners of war. For 22| terrible hours Penman clung grimly to a tiny wooden raft before he and 268 others were rescued by a German U-boat. He spent the night and most of the next dav aboard while the submarine page 94waited for a French cruiser due from Dakar to take off survivors. Toward evening Penman was transferred to a lifeboat so the people who had been in it could shelter in the U-boat. The submarine reappeared next morning and Penman, his face and legs blistered and swollen, rejoined the submarine.

Then the U-boat with lifeboats in tow set off to rendezvous with the cruiser. It hadn't gone far when a RAF Liberator flew over. One of its bombs smashed a lifeboat. Penman and the others were ordered on deck. They were washed into the sea as the U-boat dived. This time Penman held on to a waterlogged lifeboat. Six hours later, half dead, he was dragged aboard an Italian submarine. The French warship arrived in due course but Penman and a Fleet Air Arm pilot were kept aboard the submarine as prisoners as it headed for its base at Bordeaux. In the Bay of Biscay RAF Sunderlands located the submarine and for four days Penman endured the terrors of depth-charge attacks. At dawn on the fifth day the submarine surfaced warily and got safely into Bordeaux. Penman had been on the ship for thirty-two days. He was carted of to a prisoner-of-war camp.

Aucklanders Gordon and Betty Wood also made it to Bennett's boat. Someone pulled Mrs Wood through a door and she slid down the deck and clung to a section of railing between boat-loading points. She could not see her husband anywhere and there were people all round her feet. Then she heard her husband yelling to her to get in the boat. He had lost sight of her, and boarded in the belief that she was already on. Mr Wood leant out and pulled his wife into the lifeboat.

The motorboat was to be an unfortunate and in some cases fatal choice for those who joined it. While it was swinging alongside the ship it looked as good a bet as any; better, in fact, to the few who spotted it had an engine. Because it was across from the door leading from the B-deck cabins many of those who boarded came from the accommodation areas forward of the smokeroom.

Mr and Mrs Folkard were among the first into the boat. They were waved in by a crewman as they emerged from the cabins area and the craft was immediately packed with further passengers. Mrs Folkard was in the bottom of the boat and all her husband could see of her in a few seconds as others crowded around them was her head, which he held in his hands between his legs.

Half-carrying the woman he had found in the corridor, Max page 95Nelson slid on his haunches to the railing and tried to hand her to the boat's commander, Third Officer Noblet. The woman fell, however, and struck her head on a seat. Chief Steward Gifford, standing on deck to direct the flow as best he could, ordered the Nelsons to jump the three or four feet into the boat.

When Gifford started loading number one he found passengers trying to run down the steep wet deck to the boat. Some of them became tangled in the padded rails so he shouted to oncoming passengers to slide on their backsides. Apart from the few who continued to charge down the deck, most followed this advice. Several of Gilford's staff made the accident boat. One of them was Steward Frank Robinson. He had photographed passengers, the tug and the rocket-firing party earlier, and was in his cabin when he heard the alarm bells and Glare's first announcement. He told the Wahine Inquiry he remained there for another five minutes processing two of the four rolls of film he had exposed and then went up to Noblet's boat with the films, developing tank, and a camera. "I slid down the deck and asked the chief steward would I get in and he said 'Yes'. Just at that time some elderly women came out of a doorway, so I stood aside and let them get in and then I asked the chief steward if I could get in and again he said 'Yes'." Robinson threw the developing tank containing two rolls of film, to the Wahine's butcher in the boat, and climbed in. The other two rolls of film were in Robinson's pocket. The boat was well crewed. There were ten crew aboard according to Robinson. Among them were a couple of assistant pursers carrying two bags of the ship's official papers, one of which was to be lost.

Another of number one's occupants was Father McGlynn. Before he jumped in, carefully, to avoid hurting anyone, he murmured a general absolution for passengers and crew.

Mrs May Hickman of Ashburton was also in Noblet's boat with her husband, Henry. She was helped down the deck by a crewman and more or less pushed in. She told him "I can't get in there." He replied "Yes you can!" and made sure she did.

The boats were not full but it was time they were gone. Conditions away from the ship were such that a craft loaded to capacity could be in serious trouble, and the ever-increasing list of the ship and the dangers of the overhanging davits and big books made it imperative to get the four lifeboats away from the ship's side. Luly ordered the men in command of the boats to get out of it and page 96to pick up anyone in the water they were able to reach. Up above Quartermaster MacLeod got the word from Luly and let Dartford's boat down the few feet into the water. Further along A-deck crewmen lowered the other three. As MacLeod got down to B-deck the motorboat, its engine running, appeared below him. MacLeod slid down a rope and jumped in.

As the lifeboats tried to clear the ship, the sea was already thickly dotted with passengers clad in their bright lifejackets. From the stern of A-deck it looked to John Wauchop as if a fruit freighter had gone down and its cargo of oranges was bobbing about in the waves.

The passengers on the port side of the Wahine worried Captain Galloway and he made the first of two trips to that side of the ship urging them to go to starboard. The crew had done their best to marshal passengers to starboard but some of the exit doors to port were not manned, it was impossible on the listing ship to get everyone to the low side, and some crewmen helped people to port. As it turned out almost all passengers finally left the ship from starboard and probably in a more orderly fashion than would have been possible had there been a sudden mass arrival on that side. In the confusion some passengers did not hear the alarm bells or the announcements directing them where to go, and it was natural that many went to the high port side.

The immediate problem of those who did emerge to port was to find somewhere else to get off the ship. There was no choice of direction. From the smokeroom and accommodation sections of B-deck, aft was the only way to go without returning through the ship. Some trekked to the aft end of B-deck, others down the companion ways to the C-deck poop.

As Mr Donohoo pulled his wife to her feet she told him she thought she had broken her back. But he insisted she wouldn't be able to talk if it were and, hooking his arm through the tape of her lifejacket, hauled her to the rail. "I hung there getting my breath back," she said later, "then we decided to go hand over hand along the rail. Albert started to move further ahead of me as if he thought I was following. But I was still feeling the effects of the fall and couldn't let go of the rail. Albert came back twice and I don't think I could have made it without his help. He could have saved himself much more easily without me." As they shuffled along the steeply slanting deck, they caught up with another Australian couple on the Tiki Tour, Mr and Mrs Jack Tabuteau of Tralalgon, Victoria. Mrs Donohoo heard Mary Tabuteau. sixty-four, tell her husband, "I don't think I have the strength." Somehow she managed to keep going; but she was to lose her life before the afternoon was over.

The Donohoos went down a deck and finally arrived at the open end of C-deck. Passengers lined the rails around to the starboard side. Some were sliding across the forty feet to the far side but Albert warned his wife against doing so and they kept moving until they got to the stern and a spot where it was possible to jump safely. "I called out to my husband 'I'm going to jump'," and with that she and her husband leapt into the sea.

People jumped from the stricken ferry as soon as the abandon ship command was uttered and continued to do so until the ship was empty. They jumped from amidships and the after end of the Wahine, from the starboard side of A, B and G decks. A few even managed to leap from D-deck aft before it disappeared under water. The jumpers faced quite a leap in the early stages, particularly from A-deck, but towards the end people were simply climbing the rails and stepping into the sea.

Like the Donohoos Miss Margaret Millar inched her way along the deck, clinging to the rails. At the stern she remembers deckhands yelling: "Get off, you've got a minute and a half left." There was more time than that, but Miss Millar knew a sinking ship was no place to be, "So with no thought but to get off the ship I page 98climbed the rail and just let go." She fell four feet backward into the water.

Mrs Phyllis Robertson crawled aft to the stern. She could see blood pouring from the legs of one woman near her as she struggled along the inside of the deck. She lost her shoes on the way. A crewman toward the stern shouted at her and others, "Come on, you women." Thoroughly frightened, Mrs Robertson reached the stern. The wind was howling. The handbag and light suitcase with its Easter eggs she had somehow dragged along the deck suddenly vanished as the same crew member yelled at her to hurry and get over the side. She screamed back, "I can't swim, I can't swim." Then she lost her grip and plunged down the deck on her back. She crashed into the starboard rails, cracked her head and thought for a minute she had broken a leg. In the water, not far from the railing, was a liferaft with about a dozen people in it. They were trying to paddle away from the doomed ship. A crew member helped Mrs Robertson to her feet. "She's going to go," he shouted to her and then screamed at the liferaft, "Come back for this one." Then he hoisted Mrs Robertson up on to the rail. "You've got to go," he said, and shoved her into the water.

Rain and spray soaked Mrs Brittain's light dress as she got out on the deck. The man was still carrying Joanne. They went down to C-deck and, as others did, worked around the rails. When they reached the poop the ship was listing heavily and all they could do was hang on. Mrs Brittain and the man tried to bundle Joanne up in a lifejacket but the child was crying and wriggling. Mrs Brittain was grateful when a seaman took her. They continued moving around the rails. Some passengers tried the short cut of getting to starboard by sliding across the deck. After watching one lose control and crash head first into the railing Mrs Brittain decided that wasn't the way for her. A girl in front seemed on the point of trying the same thing but Mrs Brittain grabbed her arm and said "No."

When Mrs Brittain and the seaman carrying her daughter were directly above the stern doors she heard someone cry, "Jump for it." "I looked up to see an officer a deck or two above us. I turned to the seaman and asked if he was coming. He said 'yes' so I clambered over the rail. We hung on a minute or two with our backs to the sea and then jumped." page 99Other crewmen were taking children with them as they left the ship. Seventh Engineer Stan Spiers, twenty-five, helped clear passengers from the A-deck lounge, then went to C-deck to assist. While he was there he was told there were women with children under the lifeboats, still hanging uselessly on the port side. He went there and found a small girl. Spiers carried her to the aft end of C-deck and gave her to Chief Officer Luly, who put the girl into a liferaft. Spiers followed.

Able Seaman George Brabander, thirty-seven, went off the stern with a baby boy aged between twelve and eighteen months. The child's mother handed him over before she jumped. The child had a big red lifejacket hooked around its neck. Brabander tucked the baby under one arm and helped the mother off. While he was doing so the lifejacket blew off the baby. Passengers nearby were not keen on taking care of the baby so Brabander went over the side with the little chap.

Able Seaman Al Finlayson, aged twenty, plunged three or four feet into the water off C-deck without a lifejacket after a woman refused to let him take her young son. Someone prised them apart and threw the boy to Finlayson. Twenty-nine-year-old seaman Laurie Sayers jumped in immediately after with another child. Sayers, father of four young children, was one of the seven crewmen to lose their lives that afternoon.

Second Steward Bryan McMaster, thirty, who couldn't swim a stroke, carried Mrs Shirley Hick's year-old son Gordon into the sea. Gordon was the last of her three children to be taken. Mrs Hick had already had a terrifying ordeal but there was worse to come. David, Alma and little Gordon had started to slide away from Mrs Hick when the ship lurched, just before 1 pm. A couple of girls grabbed the children by the scruffs of their necks and returned them to their mother. Holding Gordon, she shepherded the other two out a door on to the port deck. After she had been standing by the door for some time with the two older children, David and Alma, leaning against deck seats, an unknown male passenger told Mrs Hick that people were being put off the other side. The man took Alma with him. It was the last time Mrs Hick saw her daughter alive.

"David was standing there screaming and wouldn't move, and I wouldn't go without him. Two stewards appeared and told me 'You have to keep moving.' " Mrs Hick told the man she wouldn't page 100until David went. The stewards bent down and tied David's life-jacket. Then one of them picked David up and took him down to C-deck. Mrs Hick followed and watched as the steward slid David down the deck. Another crewman caught the little boy and put him in a liferaft. Then McMaster found Mrs Hick. He took Gordon from her arms and slid to the starboard railing. The water was lapping the deck. Luly took the child while McMaster got over the rail into the sea. Somehow, sometime, someone had at last broken out the white Salvus lifejackets. Luly placed one around Gordon and passed the child to McMaster in the water. The little boy wore only a T-shirt, nappies and pants. The wind was still blowing strongly, there was heavy rain and, just beyond the Wahine, the seas were tremendous.

The ship's crew managed to launch most of the thirty-five life-rafts aboard during the abandonment. The operation was far from "copybook" but was effective, and the rafts saved many lives. Few of the crewmen had seen a liferaft inflated more than once or twice. For several years the New Zealand Seamen's Union had been unsuccessfully pressing the Government and shipowners for practical shore training in the use of rafts. The drawback to regular shipboard instruction was the makers' recommendation of as little handling of the rafts as possible, and also the fact that once a raft had been inflated it had to be sent ashore for repacking. Ship drill to the extent of hooking rafts to davits, inflating and loading them with crew and lowering craft and men to the water was "out" on the Wahine and other Union Company vessels.

Captain Arthur C. Crosbie, the Company's chief marine superintendent, testified at the Wahine Inquiry that the Company would not carry out this operation because it was considered a "most dangerous procedure". He said a sudden gust of wind could upset a raft and throw crewmen into the water. The Company would not risk men's lives to that extent. Bosun George Hampson told the Inquiry he was on one raft that was lowered fom the Wahine shortly after it arrived from England. He was hit on the head and had to have four stitches. It was the first time he had seen a liferaft inflated. The Wahine's crew learnt a good deal about rafts on 10 April.

The majority of the twenty-five-man rafts, all on A-deck, were heaved straight over the side. As they inflated on the water some emerged from their cocoons upside down or with canopies not up.

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Several were promptly blown away empty. Some inflated before hitting the sea, ending up on the lower decks. Because of the listing ship a few, still in their envelopes, hurtled straight on to B and C decks. Others, until their painters were released from the rails, lashed around in the air like kites. Some punctured on superstructure projections. But upside down, partly inflated or damaged, they supported life amazingly well.

The rafts launched from the forward A-deck station on the starboard side drifted down the side of the ship and were loaded with passengers aft. One of the more successful launching operations was carried out at the aft starboard station. Several were properly inflated on the davit, loaded with passengers and lowered to the sea.

Sales manager Roger Wilson was one of those who boarded a raft at the davit. He had been in the lounge and, before changing his mind, considered jumping and swimming for shore when the alarm bells sounded. "The ship was listing quite quickly then and I suppose we did not feel we had time to get down to B-deck and the lifeboats to escape before the ship toppled over and sank. One always has visions of ships sinking and dragging people into the water. People seemed to appear in a flash, screaming and yelling, then froze with fear when they got to the deck doorway and saw the boiling sea and wet sloping decks with people jumping. Add the high winds, and it must have looked shocking to those who could not swim and cope with this sort of thing. They were looking at death and the uncertainty of what would happen to them."

Wilson, his friend John Perham, and John Fulton supervised the short slide to the rails. Passengers waited patiently for the chance to get into a raft. Two rafts were lowered successfully but something went wrong with the third and it dropped to the sea before any passengers were aboard. The fourth was inflated properly and it had room for Wilson, Perham and Fulton. They went. Air Force woman Pinky Brown was also loaded into one of the rafts from A-deck.

Colin Bower, Paul Field, and Diana Lilley got down to C-deck and slid down to the rails. Paul remembers Colin smashing into the railing yelling the pop tune title Hurray for Hazel and vanishing over the side. "He looked up at us and suddenly turned and page 102swam off faster than I have ever seen him swim before." Paul and Diana followed Colin into the water a few seconds later.

Student Kathryn Dallas, hair and clothes soaked, clung with other drenched passengers to the after G-deck railing. The line moved slowly toward the stern. She noticed a broken string of pearls in a puddle of water before a man trying to hang on to his wife forced her off the rail. Kathryn slid across the deck and into the sea.

Mrs Tressa Dunford of Christchurch saw the body of a man float past as she got to the starboard railing: "His lifejacket was over his face. He was dead." Mrs Dunford also saw debris in the water and empty lifejackets floating past. When she reached the G-deck rails she thought to herself, "If this is it, this is it. I can't do anything about it," and plunged into the sea. Her husband followed.

One-armed Albert Hansen remembers doing a silly thing when he left the ship: He jumped into the sea between the side of the Wahine and the motor lifeboat. He had become separated from his wife. Mrs Hansen dimly remembers sliding down a rope into a liferaft.

Airwomen Dot Smith and her friend Jan Moles leapt from directly above the stern doors. Air hostess Sally Shrimpton boosted herself over the rails aft. George Howatson stayed until near the end helping people, then he dropped over and landed on his stomach in a raft.

New Plymouth farmer, Cecil Benton, sixty-five, also remained on the ship late helping others. Then he jumped into the sea and thought, "What a b-------, and no boats around."

Diane Houltham of Waipawa was given a lifejacket on the open decks and a steward told her: "Jump. It's now or never. I'm coming in after you." Diane did as she was told.

The confusion separated Mr and Mrs lies of Dunedin. Mr lies fell into the sea after shooting across a deck. His wife slid down a rope into a liferaft, burning her hands and losing her grip on her handbag containing air tickets and $200 in cash. She never saw it again. Lynn and Gillian Kingsbury jumped together on to a raft floating past the stern of C-deck. Sue Madarasz was loaded into a liferaft amidships on B-deck where the lifeboats had been. The water was lapping the deck when Peter clambered aboard another raft after helping others. They were separated by the "women and children first" edict.

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Another couple who boarded a liferaft from B-deck were Edna and Arthur Gatland of Tauranga. Like the Madaraszs, they had come from the port side through the crowded passageway in front of the smokeroom and had had a frightening struggle getting across. They could never have accomplished it without the aid of the handrails. Mrs Gatland saw an old man crash down the passage and someone gasped "Oh, Dad." In front a woman with a daughter of about twelve sobbed and moaned, but most people were quiet and intent on what they were doing. The Gatlands reached the storm door to the deck as the last lifeboat was lowered and Mrs Gatland turned and kissed her husband because she thought it might be the last time she saw him. Fortunately it wasn't, and Mr Gatland stayed right behind as a crewman took his wife's elbow and stepped over the sill. "Sit down and slide on your bum. The rail will stop you," the crewman told her. Mrs Gatland did as she was asked. She climbed to her feet at the rail, saw liferafts being dashed by the wind and waves against the davits and boat ladders as they sailed down from the forward A-deck station, and heard the hiss of escaping air as they punctured. Crew members were urging passengers to jump on to the rafts a few feet below, whether the craft were a hundred per cent seaworthy or not. Mrs Gatland's turn came and she did not hesitate. Her husband followed.

Seventy-eight-year-old Mr Arthur Welsh of Gore watched his wife slide across the stern of C-deck and hit the rails. Two men got to her before Mr Welsh could and heaved her over the side. The old man jumped after her.

Student Jan Travaglia and his friend Joan Hodgson got to the starboard side of B-deck round the aft end. "Many elderly people there seemed badly shocked and several appeared to be injured. One old woman had fallen against the rail and couldn't get up. I tried to help her but someone else picked her up. I was aware of little else than the will to get off the boat and somehow on to dry land. I had seen several rubber liferafts in the water and had decided to try and reach one of them. Strangely enough, I had never entertained the idea of getting into a lifeboat. Ever since I had first travelled on the ferries I had decided that in an emergency, a liferaft would be the best means of getting to safety. I have no idea why this was so. Nor had I thought of actually getting into a raft. I had decided to go into the water and to hold on page 104to the ropes about the sides of the raft." Jan spotted a crowded liferaft with space for a couple of people to hold on. He jumped. Joan followed.

While Lincoln College cricketer John Wauchop was on the port side of A-deck he looked down into the water and saw a woman without a lifejacket spreadeagled on top of the water. The sight of the woman, apparently dead, didn't shock John, but the fact that he wasn't affected by the sight shocked him. He reached the starboard rail with a thud and wondered what the hell he was supposed to do next—"Watch the boats mill around as if it were the Henley regatta?" He spotted a raft pulling away from the side of the ship on an outgoing wave. He was over the side after it before he had time to think.

A few passengers weren't eager to leave the dying ship. Lawyer Bernard Knowles knew the depth of the water where the Wahine wallowed was too shallow for her to disappear completely when she rolled over. Later he did not kid himself that he would have been perfectly safe had he not left the ship, but he regarded his position as fairly satisfactory and watched developments. He remained on the port side until an officer on A-deck insisted he move to starboard. Knowles did as he was asked and eventually stepped off the deck into the sea.

Half a dozen brave souls quit the ship from the port side. One of them was Wellington Detective Sergeant David McEwen. He had helped several people to the starboard but returned to port in an attempt to move a man who was holding on to the rails and refusing to budge. At this point an officer told McEwen to get off the ship, so the policeman simply swung over the rails and hand over hand climbed twenty-five feet down one of the boat ladders to the twelve-inch wide steel belting around the Wahine's hull. The belting was five or six feet out of the water. McEwen turned, steadied himself, and dived out from the side of the ship as far as he could. The man who had refused to leave the rails changed his mind and followed McEwen. Another who went down the port lifeboat ladders was seventeen-year-old steward David Bradley.

The officer on A-deck who shouted to Knowles and McEwen was Bill Shanks. During the abandonment Shanks spent most of his time hanging on to the A-deck rails telling passengers on the deck below to go to starboard. Because there were no passengers forward of the lounge he could move about freely and was better page 105able to direct operations from A-deck than by going down among the milling passengers. Most obeyed his instructions, but three or four elderly women declined to shift and hung grimly to the port side seats. Shanks checked the lounge. It was empty. The B-deck cafeteria. Empty. Smokeroom. Empty. To his dismay he found the women still sitting when he emerged. It took Shanks, two stewards and a young male passenger to get them moving aft. They half-carried them.

As the little group reached the rear of B-deck the list was acute. The narrow deck outside the cafeteria windows was at an alarming angle. Suddenly one of the woman slipped from the men's grasp and slid from port to starboard. She smashed into the rails, breaking bones in both her legs. Two seamen extricated her and as gently as possible lifted her over into the water. She was picked up a few seconds later by a raft holding nearly twenty people.

Those on board, including Radio Officer Lyver and Purser Clare, were among the last to leave the ship. Lyver had been told by Galloway to get out of the radio room just after 1.30 pm. He felt he could not leave without advising Wellington Radio and got Galloway's permission to send an urgency signal and tell ZLW and other stations the Wahine was being abandoned. At 1.37 pm Lyver sent the signal—a series of Xs and the message "We are abandoning ship."

The Wahine was listing about 45 to 50 degrees. Lyver hung on to the transmitter. His message was received by ZLW but he was told the signals were weak and chopped up. Out the window he could see the aerial was still intact but because of the list was brushing a steel halyard and earthing. He stuffed the radio log into a plastic bag. Then the Aramoana called as it left its berth. Lyver urged the ferry to hurry. Asked for the ship's position by ZLW at 1.39 pm he replied immediately with the final message from the Wahine: "Alongside Steeple Rock. Anchored. Some men in water and some boats away OK."

Before he quit his post he switched to the automatic key to send an automatic SOS. The signal began to pulse out, but a few seconds later smoke puffed from the key and the output indicator winked out. Lyver reverted to manual, attempting to work the transmitter with his left hand while he hung on with his right. There was no response from the set. ZLW noted that the Wahine's transmission ended at 1.44 pm.

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Lyver lunged for the doorway. He made it, but dropped the plastic bag containing the log, which skidded out of sight. (A diver later recovered it.) When Lyver reached the bridge it was deserted. He spotted Captain Robertson on B-deck. Intending to join the master Lyver climbed down the ladders to the same level but then became aware of three women and a man emerging, very late, from the passenger accommodation. The radioman turned to help the seaman accompanying them. The passengers were herded into a raft and Lyver and the seaman followed them aboard. They were joined by Clare, who had arrived from A-deck. The raft drifted slowly down the side of the ship and was in the right spot at the right time to pick up the woman whose legs had been broken earlier.

After seeing her lifted over the side, Shanks shouted to Luly that as far as he could see all passengers were off the ship. As he started to go down a ladder to C-deck he fell, crashing flat on to his back. His left leg buckled under him, breaking near the knee. Shanks flopped over the rail into the water, and a few seconds later he was aboard the same raft as the injured woman.

It was about 2 pm and now only four men—Able Seaman Donald Maclnnes, Luly, Galloway, and Captain Robertson—remained. Save for the occasional crashes from below as equipment and cargo moved, the ship was spookily quiet. In three-quarters of an hour 732 people had left the Wahine. Considering the conditions, the abandonment had gone amazingly well.

After making a second trip to the port side, Galloway had stalked back to the bridge intending to use the VHF to direct the rescue operation. But the VHF was dead. After telling Lyver to beat it he picked up a package wrapped in oilskins and tied to a lifejacket. It contained the bridge log, tapes recording the engine-room movements of the voyage, and other papers. Galloway tossed the package and jacket into the sea (they floated ashore) then hastened through the B-deck accommodation shouting, "Is anybody there?" There was no answer.

He emerged on the starboard side and joined Captain Robertson. Galloway got lifejackets for the Master and himself and then the two men went up one deck aft. Maclnnes joined them. From C-deck Luly yelled that everyone else was off the ship. The seaman jumped and Captain Robertson waved his executive officer off. Luly floated over the rails.

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In the tradition of the sea Captain Robertson would be the last man to go. He turned to Galloway. "All right, Bill, it's your turn now." The deputy harbourmaster jumped. A few seconds later the Wahine's skipper left the ship he had come to love.