REEF OF DESPAIR Loss Of Trading Ketch

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30212, 17 August 1963, Page 10

REEF OF DESPAIR Loss Of Trading Ketch

[Specially written for "The Press” by

BADEN NORRIS

rpHE report of July 13 from Rarotonga that the trading ketch Siren had run aground at the entrance to Avatiu harbour will no doubt serve to draw attention to the extremely hazardous nature of navigation within the Cook Group. The loss of this extremely useful trader will be felt mostly in Mangaia and Rarotonga, between which she was used to convey pineapples, etc., to the canning factory at Avarua.

To Cook Islanders, and to Raratongans in particular, shipwrecks are by no mean* uncommon, for since the European discovery of their island by the Bounty mutineer* in 1789. there hav* been at least 14 recorded wreck* on Avarua’s 20 mile* of coast and 42 within th* group. Th* first reliable report of * shipping disaster was in 1833 When th* N*w Bedford whaler Orcas, on her way home after a voyage of three years plunged on to the reef off Avarua. Twenty years later, in 1853. the London brig Leonidas, dragged her anchors tn a gal* and wae smashed to splinters in almost the same place. Thia was the worst disaster in term* of human life—s 3 persons perished, watched by the helplees population. In 1883 a hurricane lashed the island and four schooner* at Avarua were driven on to the shore with the loss of 49 men from the four crews The ships were the Angus Belle. Ariki and an unnamed one, and the Atlantic: the Atlantic was salvaged only to tall victim of the same reef five years later.

Record Of Wrecks

A mile to the west lies Avatiu, where in 1884 the schooner Seabird piled up. She was engaged in the nefarious trade of blackbirding for the Queensland sugar plantations, and the captain was ashore arranging supplies The crew received Little in the way of assistance as they struggled ashore. In 1889 two fine ships, the American barque Red Cross and the English ship Suakim, disappeared (n a hurricane off Rar a tonga. The Auckland schooner Kate McGregor, left her bones amid the coral at Avarua in 1885. as did the barque Triton in 1913, but the largest vessel wrecked there was the Union Steam Ship Company's Maitai, of 3393 tons, which on Christmas day, 1916, while most of her passengers were ashore drifted on to the reef when her anchors failed to hold. Fortunately there was no loss of life. Her engines can still be seen on the edge of the coral, and appear to be surviving the endless pounding very well. The former well-known New Zealand coaster Rannah in 1954 added her remains to the Avarua coral when, with both engines under repair, she was swept helpless into the lagoon and after all attempts to free her failed was dynamited to clear the channel, her stem la al) that is visible now. On the southern side of the island, at Ngatangi the schooner Takltumu in 1894 came to grief, and she was

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loined by the ketch Jopeds in 1957; but neither of these wrecks caused so much Interest among the villagers of Muri and Avaana m th* stranding of the Iwakuni Maru, a large Japanese fish-ing-boat which in October. 1982, plunged on to the reef during the night at full speed and became a total loss Her hold* were crammed with albacore and bonito and many willing band* were found among the natives to salvage what they Could, so that not many Raratongans were lacking a fish meal for many days. Now that the Siren would appear to be about to join the company of the many fine ships whose voyages came to an abrupt end on the dreaded reefs that sufround Raratonga, let us hope that she can, as she did in 1952, cheat these reefs ,of diSpa ir.