Grounding photo refloats memories

Lyndsey Craig and the picture of the Port Bowen. Photo / Paul Brooks

Upstairs at the Whanganui Regional Museum, in a large exhibition celebrating the port and the seaside suburb, museum front-of-house staff member Lyndsey Craig found a photo that resonates with her memories of Castlecliff.

The black and white photo, taken from Karaka St and looking out over the beach, shows the Port Bowen stranded on the sands and a huge number of cars parked on the beach as people come from all over the country to see the sight.
The steel, twin-screw, 8267-ton steamer ran aground on Castlecliff Beach just after midnight on July 19, 1939.

Lyndsey moved to Whanganui five years ago and they bought a place in Castlecliff.
"My mother-in-law and both my parents' sisters passed away recently," she says, and there lies her connection with Castlecliff.
With the port revitalisation happening now and renewed interest in the suburb and its history, Lindsey shares her story with an eye on the photo.
She has done some research on the Port Bowen and the stories that surround the grounding, the efforts to refloat her and the eventual salvage operation of the ship to save what they could, especially with World War 2 starting and an increased need for materials.

"It was a refrigerated ship with carcasses of mutton and lamb, and one of the generators from the ship went to Whanganui Hospital," she says. There it generated electricity.
"My auntie Bev has this story. Her husband, Don grew up in Castlecliff and, as a child, he used to swim and play around the wreck of the Port Bowen. In my mother's family, there was someone who worked for the shipping company." That provided a Castlecliff link between Bev and Don. Bev and Don Hogg lived in Karaka St when Lyndsey was young. It was an old villa and Lyndsey remembers the historical charm and the toilet with the traditional pull chain.

"I also had an auntie on my father's side, Grace, who passed away this year, and when we had a celebration for her 80th birthday we spent some time together, just the two of us, and she took out a lot of photos from maybe the late '40s or early '50s. She had trained as a nurse in Gonville."
There were photos of her at the beach at Castlecliff.

"My partner's mother was Dutch and she came to New Zealand in the late 1950s and spent all her married life here. She took all her children down to the beach at Castlecliff and that was the main thing they did together as a family. Her name is Ellie Metekingi — she married twice. My partner's name is Te Ua." Lyndsey says he spent a lot of time at the beach and was a keen surfer as a youth. "He remembers swimming around the wreck of the Cyrena, another ship that didn't make it, 14 years before the Port Bowen.
"So there are all these connections." And now she and her partner live in Castlecliff.
The photograph resonates with Lyndsey and her memories of people and their connections with Castlecliff.
Bev Hogg, Ellie Metekingi and Grace Scott are the three women Lyndsey associates with Castlecliff and her new home of Whanganui.

In the picture from Tesla Studios, the Port Bowen stands tall against the foreground of buildings and cars. The buildings shown later became the Alwyn Motor Court.
It's a classic photo of an event that temporarily increased the fortunes of Castlecliff as people from all over New Zealand motored in their now vintage vehicles to park up on the beach and watch the salvage process or just take in the sight of this huge ship stuck on the ironsands.
"[The Port Bowen] was travelling from Picton and it already had a lot of stuff on board and it was supposed to be coming into Castlecliff to pick up more, but didn't make it."
The grounding made the news around the world, even with a war on when there was so much happening.
The museum holds several objects from the wreck, including the ship's bell, a brass lamp, a six-metre mast, a serving tray, a piece of ballast and numerous photographs.