TUTANEKAI MEMORIES.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 262, 5 November 1928, Page 6

TUTANEKAI MEMORIES.

Faithful consorts in their busy seagoing life, Tutanekai and Hinemoa in their superannuated old age shall not be divided. At any rate that would be poetic justice in view of their long and steadfast service to the State. Two more useful little ships never thumped the seas of the Pacific. Now that they give place to new vessels many New Zealanders will recall stories of the days when these white-painted Government yachts were the admiration of port and coast. There were not many bays into which the Hinemoa did not poke her clipper bows, and the Tutanekai, when her day came, was just as grateful a sight to lonely lighthouse keeper and sea-isolated settler. The pair of them, too, have a more than local fame. They have shown the flag, regular navy style, in many a remote part of the South Pacific. Flying fish weather! Three days out from Auckland, bound for Apia in the days when Samoa was still a No Man's Land, just on thirty years ago. It was jolly comfortable and free and easy to be the one and only passenger in the Tutanekai, a glorious break in the grind of town life. TJje ship had an uncommonly important job, carrying British Government dispatches to tho Consul in war-ravaged Samoa, and Captain Fxank Post was as happy as if he walked the bridge of a twenty-thousand-ton liner. The grand trade clouds sailed like fleecy battleships overhead; the steady south-east trade sang in the rigging; the long roll of the blue, blue sea was a solace to the eye. As we neared the tropics the amokura, the tropic bird, with its two brilliant tail feathers streaming out astern, hovered about our mastheads, and the scuttering little maroro volplaned from wave to wave. No women on board, no dignified officials, no "distinguished visitors." So we went barefooted thoso brilliant days from the captain down, and wore as little as possible. "She's just about fifteen feet too short," said the captain when the seas increased in weight the second day out, and the Tutanekai thumped down into the swell instead of riding easily over it. (The new ship is to be only five feet longer, I notice.) So he ordered the fore trysail set. What a difference a little canvas makes to a steamer! It lifted her bows, steadied her, gave her an easier and more shiplike motion. And the Old Man pattered about, had the main staysail set next, now and again gave a tautening pull on the fore trysail sheet himself, hummed "Shenandoah" and recited his favourites from Bret Harte. "Wall, I declare," he declaimed with a twinkle in his eye, as he came to a right-about turn on the deck where I was lazily reading a novel, "you, a grown man, an' h'istin* that stuff in! Look at roe—cl'ar * two hundred and never read one in my life!" I wonder if one-time A.B. Joe Winter remembers the unfair advantage a Savaii pig took of him going up the gangway at Saleaula Bay. The Tutanekai was sent across from Apia to Savaii Island to rescue a little tribe of Malietoa supporters, threatened by the Mataafa faction, and bring them to the big camp on Mulinuu Point. On board they trooped, warriors, women and children, with their pigs and fowls and fruit for kaikai. The chubbiest sailor of the Government ship was carrying a load of stuff up the ladder; a dame of Saleaula was close behind him with a squealing porker in her arms. There was a sudden yell from a surprised and indignant sailorman. Piggie had neatly nipped him just abaft the beam. A New Zealander who has since made a big name for himself in polar exploration was a smart young officer in the Tutanekai those days. Commander Frank Worsley, R.N.R., D.5.0., was second mate, and a lively lad he was. It was a little later that lie was given command of the Government auxiliary screw schooner Countess of Ranfurly and performed some hair-raising feats with that Island trader. Like one of the South Sea tailor characters of "R.L.S." he could take a schooner through a Scotch reel. The Tutanekai in all her cruisings in perilous coral seas and around our coasts never hit the ground, but her career was not without tragedy. Just after tho "dog-tax war," happilv a bloodless rising, engineered by Hone Toia at "Hokianga in 1898, he brought the score or so of prisoners, including Prophet Hone himself, round the North Cape to Auckland. Captain John Fairchild was then in command; as it developed, it was his last voyage. Each morning the captain inspected the prisoners locked up forward. In his grimly jocular way he chaffed Hone on his supposed approaching fate for high treason and making war 011 the might of the British Crown. The Maoris glowered at him; it was no joke to them. We all came on shore at Auckland, and the Tutanekai went on to Wellington. She had not been there many hours when Fairchild, while giving orders for'ard for the rigging of' tackle to lift a heavy weight, was killed by an iron block which fell from aloft and fractured his skull. It may be imagined that the "tohunga Maori" did not fail to improve the occasion to his disciples when the news of this sudden off reached him in Mount Eden Gaol. ° It was in Ranfurly's time. That jovial Governor was on a cruise around the Northern Coast, and Sir James Carroll (then plain Mr. Jimmy) was with him in the Tutanekai. Timi had taken along as a guest the old Maori chief Hori Kukutai, of the Lower Waikato, a little, white-moustached fellow who always wore thick! coloured glasses; he was a familiar figure in Auckland. The steamer cruised in near Cape Reinga to give the Governor a close-up view of the famous leaping-off place of Maori souls, the legend-haunted Rerenga-wairna. Hori became greatly affected at this close contact with the entrance to Spiritland. The murmurous wash of the waves, the screaming of the seagulls, the sight of that lone rocky cape where countless multitudes of his people had gone to the Po, the Night, produced in the old man an intense melancholy. He heard the spirits of his ancestors calling him. They must be propitiated. Some offering must be cast into the sacred sea to quieten their calls. Hori dropped several articles through the port window of his cabin—one he shared with Carroll but still the spirit voices called. He had nothing more of his own to give, but some of Timi Kara's dress clothes were there. Hori was just about to send his friend's best starched shirt through the port to join other offerings when Carroll came down and saved it. Timi and Captain Post did their best to cheer the old man up, but he was still in a "pouri" mood when they landed at Auckland. The spirits called him, he said, and he must soon go to join them. It was not long afterwards that Hori fell off the platform of a railway carriage on his way from Auckland to Mercer and was run over and killed instantly. At the inquest it was stated that he was very shortsighted, hence the accident. And another soul joined the murmuring multitude at "the gate of the endless Night." —J.C.