TEV Wahine — A Cyclone Drove a Ferry Onto Barrett Reef, 53 Dead

On the morning of 10 April 1968, the inter-island ferry TEV Wahine was driven onto Barrett Reef at the mouth of Wellington Harbour, New Zealand, by one of the most violent storms the country has ever recorded, lost a propeller and the use of her engines, drifted up the harbour disabled, and capsized that afternoon. Fifty-one people died on the day; two more later died of injuries attributed to the disaster, fixing the toll most commonly cited at 53. It remains New Zealand’s worst modern maritime disaster, and the New Zealand Court of Inquiry that examined it found the overwhelming cause to be the weather.

The Wahine was a roll-on/roll-off rail-and-road ferry operated by the Union Steam Ship Company of New Zealand on the overnight Lyttelton–Wellington run. She was nearing the end of a routine northbound crossing in the pre-dawn hours when the storm — the remnants of tropical cyclone Giselle merging with a separate southerly system off Antarctica — struck Wellington with extraordinary force, producing the highest wind speeds ever recorded in the city. The ship was caught in the worst possible place: the narrow, rock-strewn waters of the harbour entrance, with Barrett Reef on one side and the Pencarrow shoreline on the other. At about 06:40 she struck the reef, tearing open her hull and shearing off her starboard propeller. Disabled and taking water, she drifted up the harbour for several hours; by early afternoon, with the list worsening as the vehicle deck flooded, the order to abandon ship was given. Most of the deaths came in the water and on the rocks of the eastern shore, where survivors were dashed against the coast, and the ship rolled over and settled by mid-afternoon.

The New Zealand Court of Inquiry, chaired by Judge Raymond Douglas Jamieson, sat in Wellington from June to August 1968 and tabled its findings in Parliament in December. It concluded that the storm was the dominant and overwhelming cause. It found the master, Captain Hector Robertson, and his officers not guilty of any wrongful act or default, while identifying certain serious omissions or errors of judgment made under conditions of extreme difficulty and danger — among them a failure to keep those ashore fully informed of the flooding and the ship’s deepening draught. Charges against the Union Company and the Wellington Harbour Board were found not established. The Court’s verdict, in substance, was that an exceptional storm overwhelmed a sound ship and competent men.