1898 sea disaster brings researcher to N.Z.

Press, 15 August 1981, Page 16

1898 sea disaster brings researcher to N.Z.

By

KARREN BEANLAND

In 1898, the ship Mataura was wrecked in the Magellan Strait, at the southern tip of South America, on a voyage from New Zealand.

More than 80 years later Mrs Monica Milward, who was born in Patagonia as a result of that shipwreck, has visited this country “to find the New Zealand side of the story.” Her father, Captain C. A. Milward, was the commander of the Mataura, which was wrecked in bad weather in seas described as the most hostile in the world. The ship ran aground in January, 1898, three weeks after setting sail from Wellington to London. About 60 people, including three passengers from New Zealand, were on board. Mrs Milward says that all the passengers, crew, and cargo were saved because her father succeeded in running the ship aground after it foundered.

Mrs Milward is working on a book about the shipwreck, based on her father’s diaries. While she was in New Zealand on a holiday, she managed to contact relatives of some New: Zealanders on board to. learn of their experiences. Captain Milward settled in Patagonia after the wreck of his ship, but Mrs Milward now lives in Chile with her husband. >

“It was my life-time ambition to come to New Zealand,” she. says, “My father Galways said New Zealand counMrs Milward has found

one of the fullest reports on the wreck in “The Press” in January, 1898. The article says that the 5764-ton Mataura, which was built in 1896, was worth' £BO,OOO. It was carrying £300,000 Worth of cargo, including £250,000 worth of wool, frozen meat, and cheese.

The vessel belonged to the New Zealand Shipping Company and was considered to be one of its finest-boats. It had sailed to New Zealand, from Liverpool, and had loaded cargo at Napier, Wellington, Lyttelton, Port Chalmers, and the Bluff. Judging by the description of the region near the Magellan Strait in “The Press” article, the passengers may have faced a terrifying time on land after their ordeal at sea.

“It may be added that the natives of Tierra del Fuego are half-naked savages, very low in the scale of civilisation, and at one time they enjoyed a very bad reputation among sailors,” the report reads. “In some of the older charts they are marked down as cannibals. Missionaries have been at work among them and the frequent passage of steamers has helped to raise them a little in intelligence and civilisation.”

The. article'did not specify if the brew'members came from New Zealand or

Britain. However, Mrs Milward believes that the passengers were probably New Zealanders.

The three passengers were Mrs A. J. Park, her daughter Miss - Katie Park, and Mr Thomas Mill. Mr Mill, a medical student who was on his way “home” to finish his studies, was said to be the son- of Mr John Mill of Port Chalmers.

Mrs Milward says that the wreck was a tragedy for her father. Born in 1859, Captain Milward went to sea in 1874. The Mataura was his first command — and his last, as the company had a policy that a captain who lost his ship would not get another command. The wreck was the last in a series of misfortunes for Captain Mil ward, for in the previous year his wife, his parents, and his brother had died.

Miss Milward, his daughter from his second marriage, says the shipwreck changed his life. He remained in Patagonia, where he remarried and bought-into, an iron foundry business, the only one for a thousand miles. Aptly enough, the business specialised in ship repairs. He died in 1927.

Like any good sea-faring tale, the wreck of the Mataura has its mystery. Mrs Milward says her father was approached in Wellington by

a man called Louis de Rougemont, who wanted a passage to England. “My father didn’t want to take him. I don’t remember why,” she says. “The man was very cross and he ran up and down the pier in Wellington and said ‘Mind my words, Captain, you will have trouble to the eastward.’ Daddy was very upset about it, as you know sailors are very superstitious.” Oddly enough, when Captain Milward arrived to face the board of inquiry into the shipwreck in London he found the same Louis de Rougemont waiting outside the building. Nobody knew how he came to be there. .

“Did you have trouble to the eastward, captain?” he was said to have asked the unfortunate Captain . Milward.

Mrs Milward says that Louis de Rougemont later became famous for a “very incredible” book he wrote about Australia, but which was eventually exposed as being a great hoax. A journalist, Mrs Mil ward herself , has had an interest-, ing life. “Like any journalist, I don’t like talking about myself," she says. Educated in England, she worked in a. factory during the Second World War. Later she worked as a reporter in Buenos Aires, during the time the Perons were in power.

“That was a very interesting time in Argentina,” -she says. “I had several articles published in the British “News Chronicle” (now de-

funct). I used to get a big block on the editorial page. They got me into a lot of trouble. But the Argentinians used to say of course I couldn't have written them because I was a woman.”

The suspicion that foreign journalists were spies meant that she had a spell in jail before being deported to Chile.

She later spent a number of years working voluntarily for the United Nations, which she says she loved. While she continued to write feature articles, she says she does not like journalism any more.

“I find abroad they are only interested in how you die, not how you live,” she adds.

An example was the 1960 earthquake in Chile, -when she was asked to write human interest stories for a British newspaper. “I couldn’t bear asking people what it was like to have lost everything, so the strap-hangers on the London trains could read about it on their way to work. Then I wrote to the editor and said I would write his stories if he would pay double and send the money to the Red Cross,” she says, adding that she found many good stories by working with the helpers.

Mrs Milward is not keen to talk about the political situation m Chile, but she does say that the view of Chile overseas is distorted. She does not notice living under a military state — but criticism, even in New Zealand, is dangerous.