THROUGH THE HEADS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 136, 12 June 1933, Page 6

THROUGH THE HEADS.

WELLINGTON'S GATEWAY.

(By J.C.) An cast wind never Mows in Wellington. The customary weather-way here is a sudden chop round from north or north-west to south, or vice versa. Less than two hours ago half a gale was blowing from the nor'-west; it fell to a deceptive calm, while an old-man southerly brewed outside in Cook Strait. The usual precursor of an Antarctic-like gale is a fog, and hero it conies; rolling in through the heads and over Lyall Bay lowlands and quickly swathing all the landscape. It is as thick as pea soup, a woolly kind of pea soup, and now through the cold, wet vapour conies the melancholy bellow of the Pencarrow fog-signal, affectionately called by waterfront Wellingtonians "tho old cow," otherwise "Mournful Maggie." The old girl's warning sounds at intervals of a minute; ft carries far through a fog; iti the heart- of the city its deep, long-drawn moo penetrates, through the street noises. Not every shoredueller cherishes respectful regard for the automatic signal. An aggrieved resident of Seatoun not long ago wrote to tho morning paper protesting against it; he said tho lioisc spoilt his in the early hours when he needed rest most, and he demanded that it should be shut off at those times, for the sake of the nerves of the bedded, populace. I should like to have heard some of the Cook Strait navigators' descriptive language when they read that letter. Deep-sea liners or trans-Strait coasters, their watches on the bridge, nosing in through the fog, listen with all tlieir cars for the bellow that tcfls them, "Here I am, come this way, but for goodness sake keep off my horns." It is a time of tense, anxious navigation, that fog-bound approach to Wellington's narrow sea gate. Inwardbound vessels have come to grief quite close to the high-level lighthouse, in thick weather; that was before the fog signal was established. Now, to strangers especially, that voice through the blanket of murk is sweeter than any songqueen's. Wellington's rock-fringed harbour entrance, so'different from Auckland's spacious gateways, has seen many ships come to serious trouble, but many more have been the narrow shaves from disaster. One has known a ferry liner suddenly discover herself, when the fog was beginning to lift, making serenely for the rocks round the corner eastward of the Heads. Most of the passencers were as serenely slumbering in their bunks. Those are the moments that give honest mariners white liair before their time. It was many years ago, but Cook Strait's fogs are just as dense and its currents are still as baffling; wherefore tho sailorman whose business takes him about those treacherous places fervently says his prayers to the reverberating minute-bellow j from Pencarrow. Even for the sea-seasoned Maori canoe crews of old time this entrance had ifs terrors. Rarigi te Puni, of Petone, an aristocratic dame of white hair and imperious features, once told me of lier youthful days when she used a paddle in the largo canoes' of her tribe which brought in cargoes of wheat grown in the valley of the Wai-nui-o-mata; some of this wheat went to feed the young pakeha town. The grain was loaded at Para-ngaretu, in Fitzroy Bay, and the wakas came running in between Rae-akiaki ("The Headland Where the Sea Dashes Up") and the jagged rocks of the Tangihanga-a-Kupe — Reef. (An American tramp is just now recovering in dock from a nasty shock she suffered there the other night.) There were critical moments there for the long dug-outs under sail, and Rangi was in a capsize there one squally day. It was wise, she said, to make an offering to the sea gods when passing the place where the lighthouse now stands. A fish from the hapuku catch, even a hair from one's head, anything would do, provided it was dropped into the sea with the appropriate short prayer. Omit that incantation and down would come a gun of a squall, and over perhaps would go tho canoe, with the loss of her cargo at any rate; the crew were like ducks inthe water. This was the place for fine- seamanship in the sailing-ship days. The late Captain Tom Bowling, of the Shaw, Savill Line, who served all his life under canvas, told me of an experience of his own when he commanded the ship Invercargill. Deep laden from London, he was sailing in to Wellington Heads, before a {air and fresh southerly breeze, when suddenly the wind dropped, and in a very few minutes chopped right | round to the nor'-west, and blow hard. He was well in, off Pencarrow; and ho had to make up his mind in a moment whether to go about and run out to sea again or not. Ho decided to beat her in, and that is what he did, worked the big ship in through that narrow passage, tack and tack again, until he came to an anchorage well up the harbour. "The old ship came round like a yacht," he said; "every time we tacked the men got a lot of grog; the yards went round like clockwork." That was the time a tot was needed if ever it was. The fine art of sail-liandling has not yet vanished from tho Wellington Heads picture. Half a dozen small craft of the auxiliary-screw scow type ply in and out of Wellington; they tramp Cook Strait in all weathers, busy little cargo-carriers working Marlborough and Nelson and Westland bays and rivers. They do most of their work under sail, simplified to three or at the most four sails. Ono of them, the Echo, trading up the Wairau River to Blenheim, is as icgular as a strain boat in her goings to and fro. She has been seen beating in against a strong nor'-wester. Often we see her sailing up the harbour to within half a. miltv of her berth; up she heads into the wind, down jib, down mainsail, then stow the foresail, and her screw takes her into the wharf. The wind is still the cheapest motive power. Such pictures take .an old Aucklandor back to the fleets of the Waitemata. The Echo came in the other morning witli a cargo of hundreds of boxes of Marlborough eggs under hatches, and a deck load of pigs'.. The waterfrouters, christened her "Wellington's breakfast ship." |