Professional Skipper Magazine from VIP Publications

THE ORPHEUS DISASTER BY LYNTON DIGGLE A n ���orchestrated litany of lies���, is perhaps what Justice McMahon may have said had he also, presided over the inquest into the sinking of the Orpheus on the February 7, 1863. Someone had installed incorrect co-ordinates into the computer used by Captain Collins on that fateful Air New Zealand DC10 flight which crashed into Mt Erebus Antarctica on November 29, 1979. Air New Zealand tried to blame only Captain Collins. Someone also provided the commander of the Orpheus, Commodore WF Burnett, with an outdated and incorrect Admiralty chart for the Manukau Bar and the navy tried to blame Burnett for that tragedy, along with the son of the signalman, Captain Wing. Captain Collins died in that crash into Mt Erebus, along with two hundred and fifty passengers and crew. Commodore Burnett also died, when the Orpheus crashed into the Manukau Bar, along with 189 of his crew: the two worst transport disasters ever to strike in New Zealand���s territory. Thayer Fairburn���s book, The Orpheus Disaster, describes the wrecking in great detail. ���By 5.30 the guns were beginning to break loose and p g about plunge ORPHEUS THE WRECK OF THE o sees by Ian Wedde ach my grandson Seb there From the summer be ing and swirling out s are seagulls swarm what he think horizon s up across the lumpy and tide where the sea hump ves breaking as wind t birds I tell him it���s wa but that���s no s, gull-white water shifting sand-shallow es shove seawater across the ghost-ship breach ry which way where chopping eve uring into the bay bar, the silty river po , and breaks up at the anks heaved sideways tide the other, sand-b one way, the -floor. fting across the sea them stay. the tricky channel shi m, stall them, make s maps can���t stop the Man���s useles pheus that day. and trapped the Or Shifting sands tricked at low tide cutting the headland bolts, In a rock-pooled gut at-timbers with rusted rnacled bo Sebo finds broken, ba with mussels, d bulkheads clustered d giant splintered beams an , look! ��� a rock-face le-battered cliff above and in the ga d-hollowed eyes and mouth win s no shelter guarding the wreck, ehead... but there wa nest in, a pastoral for for birds to for Orpheus the breaker, the bleak-about air, prey of the gales, of liver, the goal storms and stars de ular blow, sway of the sea that ck-backed in the reg the sea flint-flake, bla was a shoal, inboard seas er of sand and the ne. the combs of a smoth h smart sloggering bri fting sand. and hawling, the ras run swirling gged down to the shi -nine men dra e hundred and eighty On d sea walls t-mica���d channels an ints as well, Sebo and I build brigh away, and our footpr sh them and watch the tide wa ach ng sand up the be the gentle swell pushi e turns, g it back when the tid and suckin -baked, lifting of sea-glazed sand sun g away smooth-slicked shine osts of shoals blowin gigs, gh off then in dry whirly sts and shining sails ze, mirages of ma reck coast. into summer���s heat-ha length of the ship-w and disappearing the appearing shimmy to shore s Sebo sees, surfers And other phantom the salty air, shine, vague in Gone under? in the shimmer of sun rl... gone! Have they? l, back under the rip-cu and crash I hope you always wil b, Sebo, look! ��� as But back up they bo wned shifting sands that dro and never know the here on hard ground whom we, standing poor Orpheus��� crew thers r, and their brave bro mourn and remembe all was lost. s to save them when who gave their live Painting by Richard Brydges Beechey 1863 Voyager NZ maritime collection as the ship still wallowed and quantities of wreckage were drifting downwind. Ropes hung in festoons from aloft, swinging pendulumwise with the weight of the blocks still attached, and masses of cordage washed back and forth in inextricable tangles and hung by the side of the ship, streaming down to leeward with every bursting wa wave. About 6 o���clock, Commodore Burnett hailed the crew and addressed them: ���Every one of you is to say his prayers and look add out for himself. I will be the last. The Lord have mercy on us all.��� ���By about 8 o���clock the guns had finally broken loose and the deck beg began breaking up. Around 8.30 pm the mainmast went by the boa board, and fell to port, taking the foretopmast and mizentopmast wit with it. The mainmast, falling, carried with it Commander Burton, Mr Strong the Sailing Master, Midshipman Broughton and Hunt, and about fifty hands.��� F February 7, 2013, one hundred and fifty years later, and com commemorations were held on Whatipu Beach to mark the occ occasion. A bright, windless day saw some two hundred invited gue guests and general public gather on the black sand dunes. Also present were descendants of some of the survivors of the tragedy. Jenny Newman, descendant of the ship���s carpenter com coming from Australia, and Caroline Fitzgerald from Dunedin. Her gre great grandmother, Orpheus Beaumont, came to live in Dunedin in t 1870s and her brother was Henry Newman, a survivor of the the wreck. Named after the wreck, Orpheus went on to invent the Sal Salvus Kapok Life Jacket in Dunedin after the sinking of the Titanic, in r response to a call by the British Board of Trade in the form of a com competition to invent a better life jacket than the cork one. Orpheus too took six years creating the jacket. With her design accepted, the firs first thirty thousand were made and sent to the UK. The British High Commissioner Sir Bob and his wife Lady T Barbara Harvey, naval historian Michael Wynd, and other Bar dignitaries, arrived with a naval escort. The Manukau Coastguard dig came in to the beach to pick up two wreaths which were cast cam with solemnity near the bar by Lady Harvey, a descendent of wit Ca Captain Wing, and by Jenny Newman, descendant of the ship���s ca carpenter, while the assembled guests sang Abide With Me. Few we were not moved. New Zealand���s current poet laureate Ian Wedde generously w wrote a poem for the occasion and, standing on that hot beach w with the bar behind, read his poem (shown left). Near the Cornwallis wharf lies a mystery grave. Here, three u unnamed from the Orpheus who drowned, are laid to rest in a neat grave in a quiet place. n

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