Yacht-race rescue hero still finds new horizons

Press, 7 December 1988, Page 24

Yacht-race rescue hero still finds new horizons

CHRIS TOBIN

talks in Timaru with a man of the sea,

who 37 years ago was the central figure in one of the most gallant episodes in New Zealand maritime history.

If any man has come near knowing the moods of the sea, it is Mr George Brasell. As a fisherman, boatbuilder and yachtsman, Mr Brasell has spent most of his 77 years on or near the sea. The worst conditions he ever experienced were in January, 1951, when a raging southerly gale of up to 80 knots whipped up 18-metre waves and turned the Canterbury centennial yacht race from Wellington to Lyttelton into a nightmare. Two yachts and their crews in the 20-fleet field were never seen again. Mr Brasell began the race as a navigator on one of the yachts and ended it as a hero after what Christchurch newspapers called one of the most gallant episodes in New Zealand maritime history. The race began in Wellington at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, January 22, with only an easterly breeze springing up after the fleet had earlier been becalmed in Wellington heads. It turned to the south-east and then into a howling southerly which was to last four days. Some of the smaller yachts turned back to Wellington, including the yacht Mr Brasell was sailing on, but others battled on to Lyttelton — and near Kaikoura they ended up in enormous difficulties.

George Brasell realised this was no ordinary storm, and after arriving back in Wellington at midnight he flew back to Lyttelton the next day having learnt that his crew had his fishing trawler out searching for yachts around Banks Peninsula. The seas were so bad a navy vessel turned back after venturing out to rescue the yachts and some boats from Kaikoura decided to head for home after spending an hour at sea. It took them nine hours, and a lot of luck, to return. Mr Brasell says his trawler the Tawera, which he designed and built himself, was the only Lyttelton boat good enough to go out in such foul weather.

As he flew south his wife Olive equipped the Tawera with supplies and fuel. On arriving at Lyttelton Mr Brasell picked Ray Clark, whose brother was one of the crewman lost on the Husky, Cecil Welsh, Pat Reardon and Jim Balfour to accompany him and his regular crewman, Archie

Childs, on the rescue. “The reports we had said the Astral was dismasted 20 miles off the Clarence River and that the Argo and Husky were missing,” he recalls.

The Argo and its seven-man crew was never seen again. The Husky and her four-man crew are thought to have come to grief somewhere off Cape Campbell and parts of the yacht were washed up in Wellington Harbour.

An R.N.Z.A.F. aircraft from Ohakea had located the Astral but because of fuel problems could not stay in the area. It was to return the following day. The Tawera steamed all night to where the Astral was last reported sighted but it was . not until the following afternoon that Mr Brasell spotted the aircraft circling the area. “The plane was circling over the yacht which we couldn’t see because the waves were so big. We steamed in that direction and were there in about 15 minutes. We hove to practically right next to the stricken yacht.” The crew of the R.N.Z.A.F. aircraft took photographs of the Tawera and Astral as they were pounded and buffeted by the wind and sea. Many copies are now displayed in yachting clubs around the country with large blown-up prints in the Royal Port Nicholson Yacht Club.

George Brasell says that when the Tawera arrived at the scene the Astral’s crew were battened down, and the yacht was taking in water through the cabin which had been broken. “We took them in tow for a while but broke the tow line. It was 150 fathoms long but even that appeared short in the big sea running.

“We steamed back over the course and found her again in the dark and we held our position as close as possible until daylight.” The wind was still blowing at 110 km/h at daylight on the Friday, and George Brasell experienced his most difficult assignment in getting the five

yachtsmen aboard the Tawera safely. Each man came aboard the Tawera on the end of a heaving line. They tied the rope around their stomachs and jumped naked over the side of the yacht and hoped for the best as the rescuers tried to pull them to safety. “The seas were up to 50 and 60ft and it was a major job. The first man half-drowned but the rest came through okay. “The first man to try his luck was the Astral’s skipper. He had damaged his back so they let him go first. They didn’t think he would get on board alive.

“We rescued all five and I couldn’t say how long it took. Each one was a separate operation and during the rescue they said they could see all of the Tawera’s keel.

“We then headed in the general direction of Wellington. We had been out for two days and two nights and I’d been at the wheel probably all that time except for about quarter of an hour.”

The Tawera arrived in Wellington to an overwhelming re-

ception, and George Brasell and his men virtually had the freedom of the city. “There were still yachts missing and we stood by in Wellington for a while to see if we could assist but nothing could be done. My right-hand man, the late Archie Childs, took the Tawera back to Lyttelton taking a wide course and made a final search for the Argo. “I went back to Lyttelton on the Joy with the Smith family, the one I was supposed to be navigating in the race.” George Brasell was on the Lyttelton wharf to greet the Tawera and he remembers it as an emotional moment. “As the Tawera came into the moles of the harbour, every train and boat whistle went; it was a wonderful reception from the Canterbury people.”

Several months later a civic reception was held in the Harbourlight Theatre in Lyttelton, and Mr Brasell received the Royal Humane Society’s gold medal from the Governor General, Lord Freyberg, V.C., and each of his crew received the society’s bronze medal. Lyttelton’s schoolchildren were given a half holiday to celebrate the event.

Some time later Mr Brasell was also awarded the M.8.E., partly for the rescue and also for his services to yachting.

“It was a big phase in my life,” Mr Brasell recalled. “It was a big thing to have designed and built the Tawera. It always proved a wonderfully seaworthy vessel.” George Brasell continued fishing out of Lyttelton for a number of years until a doctor told him to “get out of my gumboots” because of arthritis. He sold the Tawera — and it is still fishing off Canterbury, out of Timaru. “They recently upgraded her and one boatbuilder was amazed at her condition. He reckoned I was 30 yearn ahead of my time. When I designed her I tried to eliminate the faults in the old trawlers.”

Mr Brasell spend a year after the Second World War building

the Tawera in Lyttelton with the help of a local man, Jack Luxton, and an old Port Chalmers boatbuilder, Steve Carey. “She was the first with a transom stern and was deeper in the bow and fuller in the shoulder then the old type of trawler. She could go through any gale.” While George Brasell spent most of his working life as a fisherman he started out at the age of 14 as a boatbuilder, and only joined his father three years later fishing around Banks Peninsula and Akaroa largely to cure his asthma.

His spare time was spent yachting, and as a Canterbury representative over many years he went on to win two of the country’s leading prizes, the Cornwell Cup in 1926 and the Sanders Cup in 1932 and 1933. “Fishing and the war upset my yachting career,” says Mr Brasell though he was commodore of the Canterbury Yacht Club at one stage. During the war he served in the Merchant Service on cargo vessels up and down the east coast and with the Navy in Lyttelton. “I was grade three because of the asthma and they didn’t want me overseas.”

Following the dramatic rescue and with the Tawera sold, George Brasell and his family moved to Akaroa where he built the Bonita in his backyard — a trawler which is now fishing out of Greymouth, and the Miss Akaroa which he used to carry passengers around Akaroa harbour.

“I was about 10 years too soon for the passenger service in Akaroa. The tourists hadn’t arrived, and Akaroa was just a holiday resort for New Zealanders and was only busy at weekends and holidays.” So, with his son, Charles, he decided to steam down to Fiordland in the Miss Akaroa and take up Cray fishing with the help of Happy Hokianga as crewman. “We piled everything on board and steamed to Doubtful Sound where we used Miss Akaroa as home and operated the Cray fishing in the launch Mauriri.” The only contact with the outside world was by radio, but Mr Brasell stayed there for three years living on the Miss Akaroa

and air-freighting the crayfish out by float plane to his base in Te Anau. Mrs Brasell came backwards and forwards from Akaroa, either walking over a track to visit or flying in by float plane over the Wilmot Pass. In the early 1960 s the Manapouri power scheme started and since the terrain in the area was too steep to build a construction camp the former trans-Tasman liner Wanganella was brought in and used as a floating hostel. Mr Brasell was asked by the Utah Construction Company to berth her and so began some of the busiest years of his life. “The Wanagella was moored in Deep Cove, and because of the blasting required ashore I had the job of carrying the men to work,” he recalls. : “I was on 24-hour callout with three eight-hour shifts of men a day. I had a passenger licence to take 80 men at a time.

“My other work was taking the pilots out to meet the ships three miles out in the Tasman and pushing cargo ashore in large barges.” A couple of other launches were brought in, and George Brasell was in charge of manning and maintenance.

“The isolation was too much for many of the men,” he says. “The road over Wilmot Pass was under construction and proved a bigger job than they thought. Very few lasted long on the job. In the first 18 months they went through 1800 men to keep 500 there.”

Mr Brasell said that after a road opposite the Wanganella was blasted out of the hillside, the ship was brought into the cliff face where it was moored with two gangways. “There were about 17 nationalities among the 500 men on the Wanganella and no women except for two nurses. It was exciting, like a little city on its own.”'

The point at the stern of the Wanganella became known as Brasell’s Point, the Cove was called Wanganella Cove, and a point near a new wharf ahead of the Wanganella was named Archer’s Point after a young New Zealand surveyor. “When I was first employed there I asked how long they’d want me, and they said probably six months until the Wanganella was tied to the shore.

“It was 18 months before it got

to shore and the wharf was built for overseas ships — and I was there for six years. I think only three of us lasted out the six years.”

When the project finished for him George Brasell went back to Akaroa and converted his 120-year-old home into motels which he ran until “ill health and age” saw him retire to Merivale five years ago.

The old salt is still finding new horizons, however, and he has written an unpublished book on that disastrous 1951 yacht race. He also paints both seascapes and landscapes.

Recently he displayed his work at the Brasell family reunion in Timaru. Several of the paintings were of the Lancashire Witch which brought the Brasells from England to New Zealand 125 years ago, landing at Timaru.

“I started painting at Deep Cove and the paintings went all over the world to workmen and project managers.”

George Brasell has recently been guest artist at the Arts Centre in Christchurch.