Tararua (ship)
The Tararua was a passenger steamer of the New Zealand Union Steam Ship Company . It ran aground on April 29, 1881 on a reef off Waipapa Point off the Catlins on the South Island of New Zealand and sank the following day. This was New Zealand's worst civilian shipwreck . Of the 151 passengers and crew on board, only 20 survived. In New Zealand it is only exceeded by the sinking of the Orpheus with 189 casualties.
ship
The Tararua was a propeller-driven steamship with 116 kW propulsion power, 67.8 m length, 8.5 m width and 4.9 m draft. Built in 1864 in Dundee by Gourlay Brothers and Co. , the ship had a tonnage of 523 tons, which was later increased to 563 tons.
Shipwreck
The ship had left Port Chalmers in Dunedin on April 27, 1881 at 5:00 p.m. on the voyage to Melbourne with stops in Bluff and Hobart . The night was dark and the sky was clear, but the land was haze. The captain, navigating along the bank, turned the ship west at 4 a.m. on April 28, believing he had left Slope Point behind. After hearing the surf at 4:25 am, he steered a more southerly course for 20 minutes and then steered west again. At around 5 a.m., the ship hit Otara Reef , which extends into the sea about 13 km from Waipapa Point.
The first lifeboat leaked when it was launched. On the second boat, a volunteer managed to get far enough to shore to swim ashore and raise the alarm. A farm worker rode the 35 miles to Wyndham to the nearest telegraph . The news reached Dunedin at 1:00 p.m. However, it was not marked as “urgent”, so the ship Hawea did not leave for a rescue operation until 17:00 . In the meantime the wind and waves had increased. At midnight, six passengers who were good swimmers managed to get close to the coast. Three of them managed to get through the surf with the help of helpers on land, the others drowned. Another man tried to come ashore on the reef but had to turn back, and three others drowned trying to swim to the beach. A third boat capsized in the surf when it tried to bring a line ashore. Eight of the nine occupants survived, but the boat was damaged and the locals gathered on the coast were unable to repair it. The remaining boat could no longer reach the ship because of the waves, it steered out to sea in the hope of being able to get a passenger ship to help. The Tararua took over 20 hours to sink, the stern sank at 2:00 p.m. and the rest of the ship the following night. The final screams of victims were heard at 2:35 a.m. Only one man managed to get to the shore from the ship.
74 bodies were found, 55 of which were buried on a nearby piece of land now known as the "Tararua Acre". Three tombstones and a memorial stone have been preserved to this day.
examination
A judicial investigation found that the accident was mainly due to the fact that the captain had not correctly determined the position at 4 a.m. before setting his course to the west. It was also found that the lookout had neglected to keep an eye out carefully, otherwise one would have heard the breakers of the surf in time. The court recommended that steamers have enough life jackets for all passengers on board - the Tararua only had twelve. In addition, the Waipapa Point Lighthouse was to be built. This went into operation in 1884.
As early as 1865, the Tararua had narrowly escaped shipwreck when she ran aground on a beach near Cape Farewell without suffering any damage .
Cultural monument
The lighthouse was registered on June 26, 2009 together with the site of the Tararua shipwreck by the New Zealand Historic Places Trust under number 7785 as " Historic Place Category 1 ".
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ A b New Zealand Disasters - SS Tararua Shipwreck , Christchurch City Libraries. accessed January 20, 2008.
- ↑ Gerard Hutching. Shipwrecks - SS Tararua , Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand. Retrieved January 20, 2008.
- ↑ a b c d Tararua (1881). Archived from the original on August 13, 2007 ; accessed on January 15, 2016 . , from Ingram, CWN (1990) New Zealand Shipwrecks: 195 years of disasters at sea , Beckett Books: Auckland, Dive New Zealand website.
- ^ A Narrow Escape from Shipwreck , Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle , Vol. XXV, Vol. 5, January 11, 1866, p. 3. Retrieved January 21, 2008.
- ^ SS Tararua Wreck Site, Tararua Acre, and Waipapa Lighthouse Site . New Zealand Historic Places Trust , accessed January 16, 2015 .