Ngataki arrived at Raoul just on dusk in July 1936, and Wray hove-to for the night before making his approach. ‘It’s not wise to get close to these uncharted islands in the dark,’ he wrote. Guided by GPS and radar, Southern Salvor sailed straight on in and by dawn we were rolling in the swell off Fishing Rock — the Raoul Island landing spot. Big green seas burst against the ragged rock outcrop and, after an exploratory trip in the tender, skipper Robert Williamson decided to land the people at a safer site in Denham Bay, on the north-west coast, instead.
Meanwhile it was all hands to the hold as the chopper began ferrying things ashore. The genset flew off, along with the 30,000 litres of diesel that would fuel it, and other machinery, for a year. Cargo nets full of equipment, tools and supplies all soared shorewards.
Within a few hours Southern Salvor had been discharged, and we steamed by the sheer volcanic cliffs off the northern coast, past the stark, white homestead glaring out from the bush-draped hills and into Denham Bay, where the people were taken ashore by tender.
While the team that would take over Raoul Island for the next 12 months got the hang of the place and were trained in weather-recording techniques and equipment maintenance by MetService staff, we busied ourselves on board Southern Salvor with maintenance work. Denham Bay’s cliffs rang with the clatter of chipping hammers and needle guns.
The 377-hectare island is roughly the shape of a triangle with 10-kilometre sides and rises to a height of 2740 metres above the sea floor (or 516 metres above sea level). The first human arrivals are believed to have been Maori from the Kura Haupo waka which wrecked there. They were rescued by the Aotea canoe.
Among the first Europeans on the scene was French explorer D’Entrecasteaux in 1791, who named the island Raoul after his quartermaster (and L’Esperance after his consort ship). Captain Raven in the Britannia turned up three years later and, not knowing that the Frenchman had beaten him to it, named the island Sunday, after the day he spotted it.
By the late 1800s, dozens of whalers had dropped their anchors on the shingly bottom of Denham Bay and many attempted to settle the island, but were scared off by volcanic eruptions or the tribulations of farming on remote Raoul. The first people to cultivate the island were the Bell family, hardy Yorkshire folk who owned a drapery business in Samoa. In December 1979, Thomas and Frederica, with their six children aged from 11 down, were dropped off by the schooner Norval, and there they stayed for the next 30 years.
After we had been a few days in Denham Bay, the wind swung to the west and made the anchorage untenable, so we moved to Boat Cove on the north-east side of the island. With the ship snugly anchored under the stark rock faces and bush-green hills, I had a chance to step ashore and walk the 10 kilometres to the homestead.
Rats were introduced, it’s thought, by the wreck of the sailing vessel Columbia River in about 1917, and they set about dining on the local fauna. Bird species came close to extinction — or moved to offshore islands — until DoC eradicated the rodents with an aerial poisoning campaign in 2002.
Climbing the hill from Boat Cove, a brilliant green kaka cocked its head inquisitively to peer at our passing, and scores of tui soared through the tree tops. Fresh from the rumbling main engines and generator clatter of Southern Salvor, the cool bush enfolded us in green foliage and we talked in hushed tones, interspersed with the clear calls of bird song.
Raoul has its own species of pohutukawa (most of which were in scarlet flower), five finger, coprosma, hebe and nikau, so although the bush seemed familiar, it was exotically not. Many of the species introduced by the well-meaning Bell family have become invasive pests: passionfruit, peach, olive, guava … and oranges. Teams of nine DoC volunteers join the full-time staff there for four months a year and painstakingly weed grid patterns over the rugged terrain, destroying the alien flora and preserving the island’s pristine ecology.
After a few hours tramping, we emerged into the bright sunshine of the cleared area near the homestead and the equally bright company of the people who had lived there for the last 12 months — and their replacements.
We strolled down to the weather station, near the Bells’ brace of towering Norfolk pines, and marvelled at the equipment, checked out the vintage Lister generator chuffing away in a nearby shed, played volleyball on the rolling lawn and, as the sun set, sat on the verandah and sampled Raoul’s famed home brew and very alcoholic ginger beer.
During a quiet moment, I snuck out the back and up to the orange tree behind the homestead. For several moments I sat and thought about Johnny Wray and Ngataki, then climbed the tree and began filling a bag with oranges.
Two days later we re-embarked the MetService technicians, diesel mechanic, builder and home-bound DoC staff, then sailed for Auckland. The trip was smooth, with many hands making light work of the culinary duties, a warm atmosphere of fellowship aboard and the warm glow of a job well done.
I left Southern Salvor at her Tauranga base and flew home, close to overweight, my bag bulging with oranges. Straight after arrival I went to visit an old sailor, a man in his late 70s who had built his own boat and voyaged many miles offshore. I plumped the bag of oranges on his kitchen table. His rheumy eyes twinkled and a big grin spread across his face.
‘Aahh,’ he sighed, ‘Johnny Wray oranges…’
Postscript: Ngataki is alive and well. The veteran yacht completed a circumnavigation with owner/skipper Debbie Lewis in 1995, and is currently being refitted by the Tino Rawa Charitable Trust.
IN THE WAKE OF KUPE
At school in New Zealand, history lessons were about Wars of Roses and Lord Nelson inviting his mate Hardy to osculate with him … and maybe a quaint native myth about people drifting around the Pacific Ocean in canoes. But I’ve never doubted that Kupe sailed to Aotearoa/New Zealand many times and committed tracts of her convoluted coastline to memory.
Just because something isn’t written down, that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. People from oral cultures, without the luxury of ink and paper to record their data, develop very long memories. A Polynesian navigator might be 40 years old before he got to guide an ocean-going waka on a voyage across the vast Pacific, and he would have spent 35 years — or about five doctorates for a modern scholar — of intensive education to earn that ultimate responsibility.
Perhaps it’s a reflection of cultural philosophies but no wonder the Polynesians looked askance at the first white men with their funny hats, tight white breeches and all-male crews, who arrived in ships shaped like bathtubs which required a huge press of sail to move them through the water. Whole Polynesian villages had already been exploring, migrating and trading around the planet’s largest ocean for centuries on slim, hydrodynamic hull forms which only need an easily handled modicum of sail area to send them skipping across the ocean.
On my own trips around the coast of Aotearoa, I often imagine great waka looming out of the dawn, their inverted triangles of pandanus sail catching the wind as they gingerly approached this foreign shore, crews agog at an amazing land of white-headed mountains soaring skyward like wise old gods, towering forest and flightless birds as big as palm trees, all soundtracked by a clamour of bird calls.
Ancient Polynesian navigators knew that the North Island (Te Ika a Maui) was shaped like a fish, and explained its piscine profile with the legendary demigod angler, Maui, who hauled it from the depths.
Naming these islands Aotearoa — the Land of the Long White Cloud — makes sense. Navigating through the Pacific Islands using a sextant and stars, modern sailors became accustomed to looking for the small puffs of white cloud which form over most islands. Land heats more quickly in the tropical sun than the deep water around it does. Warm air rising off the minuscule land (or coral) masses in this vast ocean, condenses as it cools with increasing altitude, and forms small, puffy white clouds which serve as distant markers for navigators to confirm their whereabouts. Aotearoa is about 2200 kilometres from the nearest landfall, and the first indication that the land-hungry eyes
of an ocean navigator might perceive of its existence is the long, white band of cloud hovering over its bush-clad hills.
Polynesian navigators carried their own sextant, nautical almanac and an intimate knowledge of a range of natural phenomena, wave shapes and bird migrations in their heads, and used them time and time again to locate their vessels in the mighty Pacific Ocean that covers about 40 per cent of the planet.
Captain James Cook reported that the double-hulled ocean-going ships built by the Polynesians, without the benefit of iron, were only marginally smaller than his own tubby colliers and sailed about two to three knots (3.7 to 5.6 kph) faster on all points of sail. That’s nearly 150 extra kilometres further every 24 hours. Crewed by whole seagoing villages, they sailed, settled, traded, fought and procreated on a regular basis all over the entire Pacific Ocean at a time when Europeans considered the eastern edge of the Atlantic to be the ‘known world’.
To a sailor, the design of their waka makes sense. The towering figureheads at the stern of the waka, similar to those used in Norse Viking ships, acted as a wind vane to keep the bows into the wind whilst riding out wild weather. The low-wooded waka must have shipped a lot of water, but they had plenty of hands to bail them out and the ornate handiwork on some of the remaining bailers are, perhaps, a testimony to their vital role in keeping the whole operation afloat.
I once sat on the bridge of a ship in the Marshall Islands port of Majuro and watched three young men reaching backwards and forwards at speed in a 6-metre-long traditional outrigger sailing canoe. They got something wrong, and with a spectacular splash, crew, mast, sail, boat and outrigger all parted company and were left floating about in the lagoon, a kilometre or so from the nearest land.
I leapt into the ship’s big inflatable rescue boat, started the 90-horsepower outboard motor and roared across to the scene of the calamity, intent on rescuing the hapless sailors. The three crewmen were all lying back in the water laughing their heads off in exhilaration. They politely waved me away, but I sat and watched while they swam around and reassembled their vessel; they were back up to speed before I’d tied the rescue boat back to the ship.
They and their boat belonged. Later on in the same trip, we passed an old man out fishing in a 6-metre outrigger canoe, about 60 kilometres from the nearest atoll. Intent on rescuing what we thought was a lost fisherman, we brought our ship to a halt a few metres from where he contentedly sat, the mast and sail furled together across the outriggers of his boat. We had no language in common, but he bemusedly shook his head to our offer of rescue, pointed to his plantain-wrapped food bundle when we offered him food and gracefully accepted a plastic bottle of water — as much, I suspect, for the plastic bottle — which are coveted in many islands where receptacles are rare — as for its contents.
Years ago, I returned from a 10-year sailing trip to the European country which my colonial forebears called ‘Home’ in my own yacht, with a wife who’d never been to New Zealand. We approached Cook Strait on a black night with a plummeting barometer and a north-westerly gale slashing the sea surface into ribands of foam.
We raised the low lighthouse on a rock off Cape Jackson and picked our way into Queen Charlotte Sound while I explained the historical importance of our destination: Ship Cove, where Captain Cook had based himself for both his expeditions to New Zealand. Marlborough Sounds williwaws sent horizontal rain slashing out of the dark as we motored into Ship Cove to anchor, but even in the wee hours, a galaxy of red and green navigation lights and white anchor lights stood out against the black bush backdrop. We anchored in a quiet corner of the cove, had a cuppa, and retired.
Daylight came early and I was woken by a rhythmic thumping. Crawling from the cabin, I slid the hatch back and noted that the wind had dropped and a thick, grey mist had closed round the cove. Suddenly, the high prow of a Polynesian waka pierced the fog, paddled by a team of warriors who thumped the gunwale with their paddles between each stroke. I yelled excitedly to Sarah, who squeezed into the hatch aperture beside me as the waka was swallowed back by the mist.
Each of the waka crew wore a bright-yellow raincoat, and we learned later from the radio that the Picton waka had been turned back from a Cook Strait crossing by bad weather — but that didn’t matter.
For a minute, I was back in Kupe’s country.
ASKOY LIVES TO SAIL AGAIN
The small hours of 7 July 1994 were ink-black in more ways than one: for the sky over northern New Zealand which was covered by hurtling black clouds, for the yacht Askoy, for myself and, as it turned out, for Belgian maritime history.
I’d single-handed Askoy, a 60-foot steel double-ender rescued from Fiji, cleared customs at Opua, and set out to rejoin my family at Port Taranaki. The weather forecast was for 30 knots north-west, a good sailing breeze and a good angle for the course to New Plymouth. Several people had asked to come with me, but I was reluctant to involve others in delivering what was still pretty much a hulk.
I rounded Cape Reinga near noon and turned Askoy’s rusty bows towards Taranaki; the eyes I’d painted on either side, Greek fisherman style, keeping an eye out for us both. They must have been blind. Darkness fell on a sky the colour of bruised liver, and within hours Askoy was labouring heavily in about 50 knots of due westerly, her Gardner 6LW diesel and sole jib, which I flew rigged as a mainsail, strained to the max. Watchful of the land close by to the east, I was trying to ease her as far west as I could and was just managing to lay the rhumb-line course towards Port Taranaki and home.
Some time that night, the jib tore to shreds with a crack that shook Askoy’s rigging and my already jangled nerves. By now the wind had increased considerably — media reports later varied between 130 and 150 knots at the time, but I think the 80-knot gust recorded at the Auckland Harbour Bridge was closer to reality.
Askoy and I held our own against the storm until the engine started to overheat. I lashed the wheel hard a-weather and dived into the engine room to investigate. The cooling water’s circulating pump had lost its prime. I turned the engine off and lay beside the hot Gardner in my wet-weather gear, sweat streaming off me as I worked frantically at plumbing in a back-up salt-water cooling system I’d organized using the bilge pump.
There was a huge crash on deck, and my first thought was that I’d run into something. ‘Oh beaut’, I thought as I clambered back out into the maelstrom on deck, ‘what next?’ But it quickly became obvious that Askoy was wallowing beam-on to the weather in the outside line of breakers, and the crash on deck had been a breaking wave. A seething mass of ugly, broken white water heaved in Askoy’s lee.
I dove back below, hurriedly completed the emergency cooling-pump hook-up, re-checked all the hose clamps, and climbed back into the cockpit. The Gardner chugged readily and reassuringly to life, then settled to a steady beat and I eased her into gear. Askoy was alive again — maybe we’d both be able to survive the night after all.
After a minute or so, I wound the engine up to 1500 rpm and we began making way parallel to the breakers, still several miles offshore. Big waves roared in from the dark Tasman Sea, smashed against her steel flanks and poured into the cockpit. Rain and spray slashed against my wet-weather gear as I stepped the revs up to 1800, ran off downwind a little to get speed up, then tried to bring her bows up into the wind and get her heading offshore.
Each time I tried to gain some westing, waves reared out of the black night to smash Askoy’s 40 tonnes of steel hull and machinery back towards the shore. Finally, one huge set of waves swept through, roaring and tumbling out of the Tasman like an out-of-control freight train. Tonnes of tumbling seawater smashed against her starboard bow, and Askoy headed for the land at breakneck speed. Her big rudder couldn’t get a grip in the aerated breakers beneath the stern and Askoy, surrounded by a heaving, tumbling mass of water, soared towards the low, black shape of land on the horizon, tracking unerringly eastward like a giant surfboat.
Soaking wet and shivering cold, I clung to the big stainless-steel ste
ering wheel as Askoy roared uncontrollably through the night. I remember hoping that I was headed for a sandy beach — if we hit a cliff at that speed, we’d end up like a beer can on the Southern Motorway.
All apprehension aside, it was an exhilarating ride — charging through the dark and ultra-stormy night, clinging to the wheel for my life. In a perverse way, the struggle for survival, Askoy’s and mine, had been taken out of my hands. There was nothing more I could do — just hang on and hope that I walked away from the conclusion.
Eventually Askoy struck the sandy bottom, pivoted on the leading edge of her stub keel, and crashed down heavily on her port side. I remember seeing her big timber main-mast splinter and crash over the side, and a wall of green water poured over the cockpit coaming and punched the cabin top off the aft cabin just behind where I hung on for dear life.
The receding wave smashed her down on the starboard side, and the next incoming breaker smashed her back down to port. Among the scrambled messages reaching my brain was one that said if I somehow hung on, I’d probably survive. I’m sure that same stainless-steel steering wheel has 10 very deep indentations where my fingers were wrapped around it.
Each successive wave nudged Askoy a little further up the beach until, eventually, she lay on her port side and the seas slammed into her exposed rump without moving the boat. I clambered into the main cabin where about a metre of seawater sloshed around. The practical functions of the aforementioned brain were still functioning sufficiently, and instructed me that I needed to take some hot fluids or food on board my shaking body. A gas bottle and burner I’d bought in Suva bobbed around, and I hefted them out of the water onto a ledge. Among the flotsam were a number of watertight plastic boxes, so I sought out the one with the matches and another with teabags. Next I collared a small aluminium cooking pan, which I half-filled with fresh water from a floating jerry can.
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