LOOKING ASTERN….
On my Facebook page recently, I came across a Noel Lee film clip of ‘The last scheduled sailing of the Wairua’, and her departure from Bluff for Suva.
Built in Auckland by Mason Bros in 1961, the 627 tonne 45.72m. Wairua at that time was the largest vessel built in New Zealand.
From what I can gather, she was originally intended as a ‘maid of all tasks.’ She was to service the Chatham Islands from Bluff, She was to service the southern lighthouses and the meteorological station on Campbell Island. She was to provide transport for the families travelling to the southern Mutton Bird Islands. And in between all that she was to be the Stewart Island ferry, maintaining a 3 x week schedule in Summer and a 2x week in winter and including special excursion sailings.
(This was a different era, an era of public service, an era in which the national airline NAC was ‘owned by the people and run for the people’. )
Political pressure from the Canterbury ‘mafia’ (who wanted the Chathams to continue to be serviced from Lyttleton) eliminated that role early on, before the vessel was built. I have often wondered if an extra hold had been planned in the original design for this role and eliminated as a late modification. That would certainly account for the rather odd appearance of the ship – ‘like the back end of a bumble bee’ as Harold Bennett (chief pilot for Amphibian Airways) commented to my parents at the time.
The service life of the Wairua was comparatively short. The crewing demands of the maritime unions and other factors changed an operation from one where operating costs were roughly covered by operating revenue, to one that made an increasing and unsustainable operating loss.
Wairua was a funny little ship. One of her more endearing characteristics was her inability to steam in a straight line. You could steady her on course for a minute or two, then for some reason she would sheer off to one side or the other and have to be coaxed back on course, only to lurch off again in a minute or two. This made ship handling ‘interesting’ (and probably many passengers seasick.) In contrast, going astern, she was quite docile and controllable – which is why she was backed into her berth at Bluff.
Wairua was withdrawn from service in 1985 when the Government deemed it no longer economical to provide Stewart Island with a ferry service. She was sold to Interport Shipping of Fiji and was used as a ferry and freight service vessel to Rotuma, Fiji’s northern Polynesian outlier and the Tokelau Islands. She ended her life wrecked near Nai Koro Koro, Levuka, Fiji.
I have often wondered if her demise was brought about by one of those classic unpredictable ‘lurches’ off course, which would have been fatal trying to negotiate a pass through a tropical reef.
And it is interesting to ponder that in a couple of years or so the service life of the very successful locally designed and built ferry Southern Express will have caught up with that of the Wairua.
BILL WATT
