THE STORY OF A NEW ZEALAND HEROINE.

White Ribbon, Volume 19, Issue 218, 18 August 1913, Page 13

THE STORY OF A NEW ZEALAND HEROINE.

It is almost fifty years ago this month that the brave deed □ Maori girl gained for her the title of the “Grace Darling’’ of New Zealand. But, as a clergyman said at her graveside, “Grace Darling had a boat and a companion, but Julia swam alone and unaided to rescue those who were not of her people.” “She came,” said a Maori orator on the same melancholy occasion, “from the utmost of her race.” On Aug us* loth, 1863, the brig Delaware, from Nova Scotia, 116 days out from the Downs, anchored in Nelson harbour. She was intended for tke passenger trade, and was pronounced the prettiest vessel in New Zealand waters. On September 3rd she sailed for Napier. She had hardly left port when, caught by a furious gale, she failed to weather a point on the ironbound coast on the eastern shores of Blind bay. In attempting to work the ship to windward, the jib blew out of the bolt ropes, and nothing remained but to drop the anchor. At s.x a.m. the patent windlass carried away, and the best bower anchor was let go with ninety fathoms of chain. The storm increased as the tardy daylight appeared. “It w?s blowing as hard as I ever saw it,” said one of the A.B.’s

Inter, “neither boat, canoe, nor ship could live in a gale and such a sea." At nine o’clock their la*t hope went —the cable parted—and to prevent the ship being stranded broadside on, she was headed for the beach. She drove blindly inshore, and at twenty minutes past nine she took the rocks with a terrific crash. There were brave men on board, and one, the first mate, although just off a sick bed, volunteered to make an attempt to take a rope ashore. He was a powerful swimmer, and with a lead line made fast to his body he dropped into the raging waters. The helpless vessel was rolling heavily on the rocks, and amidst the pandemonium of falling spars and shrieking tempest the crew held on for their lives, and arxtOusly watched his pro gress. It was seen he was in difficulties, and he was hauled back on board for dead. He revived sufficiently to groan “Oh, that rock,” and apparently expired. No one else dared volunteer. Then through the driving spray and flying mist three figures were seen hastening along the narrow stretch of rocky beach at the foot of the precipitous iron bound cliffs. Over the raging stretch of boiling water the crew gazed at them hopefully, but, alas! the y were only Maoris —and one of them a girl.

But she was a girl with the fighting blood of a long line of warlike ancestors in her veins, and although the men with her said it was madness to face that sea with its treacherous swirling backwash, she made the brave attempt. Out she swam, fighting her way inch by inch, against the thundering rollers, now lost to sight in the boiling foam, now Hung on high on the crest of a tumultuous wave—on she progressed, until at last she reached a rock near the wreck. A lead line was Hung towards her, but the gale swept it away, and it was only after repeated attempts that it reached the gallant girl. Then fastening the slender cord to her body, with an encouraging wave of her hand to the crew, she once more braved (he furious elements. But the Maori men who had watched her progress to the rock were not idle. Hopata Kahupuku—Big Bob, as the pakehas called him —a magnificent swimmer, swam out to meet her, and between the three they brought the line a>horc. “If it had not been for the Maoris,” said one of the crew at the inquest,” not

one of us would have been saved.” But Julia would never talk of it afterwards “It was nothing," she would declare, and turn the conversation.

A new hawser was fastened to the cat-head, and one hundred fathoms (six hundred feet) was passed out before the three Maoris accomplished the heavy task of dragging it to the beach and fastening it to the rocks. Then the crew made their way ashore, clinging to the plunging rope, one moment jerked in mid-air, the next buried in the seething foam. Any who failed to hold on were helped ashore by the Maoris. The captain, last man of all to leave the ship, went to the mate’s body and examined it in vain for signs of life. The haw ser, new an hour before, parted under the terrific strain before he reached the shore, but the watchful Maoris plunged in and brought him safely to land.

An hour later, as they sat watching the wreck, they saw to their horror the mate stand up and cling to the ngging. I n vain then was human help. The storm was still increasing, the tide was rising, and if, after their heavy labour, any of the Maoris could have reached the rock, it was no longer tenable. Nor could the helpless mate have assisted in his own rescue. After an hour of tense expectancy a mountainous wave swept over the vessel, and the mate was gone. The captain, worn out and unstrung, sat on the rocks and wept like a child. Julia’s name has been a household word in Nelson for the last fifty years, and when she was buried four years ago, on a lonely spot, sixteen miles from Nelson, about two thousand people, mostly pakehas, attended her funeral. There, on the lonely shores of Delaware Bay, as it is now called, Julia sleeps in a silence broken only by the voice of the sea and the cry of the circling gulls. But her name is written forever on the roll of heroic women who have accomplished noble deeds.