The Wairarapa lies wrecked off Miner's Head, Great Barrier Island. (NZ Herald Archive)
The Wairarapa lies wrecked off Miner's Head, Great Barrier Island. (NZ Herald Archive)
About midnight on October 29, in thick fog and heavy seas, the 1700-tonne steamer Wairarapa with 251 people on board struck rocks at the foot of a cliff on Great Barrier Island.
Soon after impact, with panicky passengers rushing on deck, the ship began to founder and a big wave washed several people overboard.
Others climbed on the rigging where they were to remain for 12 hours and some gathered near the wheelhouse but were swept to their deaths when another big wave struck about 4am.
The dead totalled 121, but amid all the tragedy, the survivors had many stories to tell of bravery and selfless sacrifice.
The second engineer, J.W. Dunlop, and a passenger, Thomas Roberts, both saved women from drowning. A stewardess, Miss McQuaid, gave up her life jacket - and her life - in a vain attempt to save a young child. And steerage passenger John Madden rescued six others by throwing them a line from the aft rigging.
But none was more heroic than steward Burgess Kendall, who managed to swim ashore with a lifeline after two others had tried and failed to beat the power of the surging sea. By the time he made his brave swim, Kendall had been clinging to the rigging for 12 hours, wearing only his pyjamas, so he had to overcome cold and cramp before reaching the rocks with the rope that proved to be the saviour of so many.
"Perhaps no more conspicuous instance could be selected than that of Mr Kendall, the second steward, who, after two others had failed in the attempt, succeeded in getting a rope on shore, by which fifty lives were saved," said the Herald, commenting on a campaign to have his bravery officially acknowledged.
Survivors of the Wairarapa disaster. (NZ Herald Archive)
"The bridge with all those who had crowded upon it had been washed away. Those who were clinging to the fore-rigging were becoming benumbed and weak.
"Many of them would soon have had to let go, and in a short time most of the survivors would have been too weak to have reached the shore, even with the assistance of a rope."
The Herald compared Kendall's bravery with that of David Moore, who swam ashore with a lifeline when the Schiehallion went aground on the Isle of Wight in 1879.
It said that, like Moore, Kendall deserved a Royal Humane Society medal - and he got one, as well as a gold watch presented to him by his fellow stewards.
And now, we acknowledge him as New Zealander of the Year. Without Burgess Kendall, the Wairarapa disaster would have been so much worse.
