Wreck of the Wairarapa. Getting out the mails, 2 November 1894

This extract originally appeared in New Zealand Photography Collected: 175 Years of Photography in Aotearoa (Te Papa Press, 2025) on page 104.

In heavy fog, just after midnight on 29 October 1894, the steamer Wairarapa ran at nearly full speed onto the rocks off the coast of Great Barrier Island. As the first news came through, hundreds, ‘pitiful to see’, besieged the office of Wellington’s Evening Post for news of survivors: ‘Strong, silent men, with set faces, waiting for the worst, there were, and some, too, with wet cheeks, unable to endure the agony of the most terrible uncertainty of their lives.’1 About 130 people drowned, some in their cabins, others when they were swept off the steeply tilted deck by heavy seas or while trying to swim ashore. The Auckland Star painted a graphic picture of the harrowing scene: ‘The dense darkness, the thundering of the breakers as they dashed over the ill-fated steamer and against the beetling cliffs, intermingled with the cries of terrified women and children, were enough to appal the stoutest heart.’ The newspaper went on to describe acts of bravery, including ‘the pathetic . . . fate of the second-class stewardess, who, after calmly performing her duty in the face of death by fastening the lifebelts round lady passengers, was herself swept away by the merciless waves’.2

1 ‘A mourning people’, Evening Post, 1 November 1894, p.2.

2 ‘The Evening Star’, Auckland Star, 1 November 1894, p.4.