Chapter Fourteen: The Eligamite Tragedy

Visitation by the ancients

Jan 13, 2024

Times of Trouble, he said

“It’s calm out there tonight. The Sea is like a great big lake this night. Flat. Smooth.” The old man threw a small stick on the fire.

“But she can be rough, the moana nui. I seen some rough seas.”

We already knew from our short stay in New Zealand that the seas can be rough and treacherous. This gentle beach was sometimes covered with thundering waves and the water could hit the volcanic dikes with force that could set your bones to shaking, sending the water heavenward higher than the pohutukawas.

The old fellow continued. “If you go across to the end of Ninety Mile Beach, to Shipwreck Bay— well, the name tells you what it can be like around up here.” I was watching the reflected flames dance in his wide dark eyes.

One of the younger Pakeha boys spoke up now. “And tonight she’s sweet as, calm as, grand-dad. And your ancestor Māori come all the way out here from Hawaiiki to find Aotearoa but you get us lost this calm night. Bring us to the wrong beach. What a seafarer!”

The boys laughed. But the old man didn’t let it go. “Are we lost? Are we on the wrong beach?” He smiled. “And you, your ancestors sailed all the way out here from Angle-Land, all them Anglo-Saxon-Viking sailors, Captain Cooks and all them, and you helped get us lost tonight, this calm Aotearoa night. So who’s a seafarer now?” The old man’s smile was more mischievous than that of the young fellow.

We all laughed.

The old fellow continued. “But my own daddy was on the Greyhound with Captain Subritzky when they saved those poor shipwrecked souls from the Eligamite.”

He looked around at all of us, from face to face. “The Eligamite Tragedy.”

The old man spoke the latter with capital letters, spoke slowly and sadly. As though it happened yesterday.

The mood changed around the fire.

“You know,” he went on, “speaking o’ seafarers, none of us may be much these days, true, but this Doubtless Bay seen some seafarers. Seen plenty. The first white men to come near here were a French ship and an English ship, passed right along here on the same day, the selfsame day in 1769. The two ships sailed all about the world and all the way down here from Europe and ended up here the same foggy night, just passed within miles of each other and didn’t even know it. Do you boys believe in coincidence? I don’t. Do not and cannot.” He spoke emphatically.

“If you go across there to Whatuwhiwhi on the Karikari Peninsula,” he waved his arm across Doubtless Bay, “you’ll find a little street named De Surville. B’cause he was the Frenchie who sailed down here from France and ended up right out there that night. François Marie de Surville. And you can guess who was on the English ship that sailed down the River Thames and around the globe to discover us Māori, just sitting here waiting to be discovered?” He chuckled. “Sure. Captain Cook hisself, the one and only. Captain James Cook from Yorkshire. Maybe you’re named after him, there, you James. Maybe you’re his great-great-something-or-other.”

“Well sure and I am great. All us Stewart Islanders are great—”

“Great bumpkins,” said another young fellow, rolling over himself in the sand.

“The greatest bumpkin I ever met,” said the old man, Hoani, “was from New York City. If there is such a thing as a City-Bumpkin. What an idiot that one was.”

“Not from California?” I asked.

He laughed. “Well, maybe, let me think about it a little. I’ll tell you later. But if you go back a few hundred years past that De Surville and Captain Cook, both sailing out there in the foggy night and missing each other, maybe missing a big European fight down here in Doubtless Bay, if you go backwards a few hundred years, well, they say our own Māori ancestors first landed right over there in Taipa Township, just two kilometers away from this very spot. Sure enough, if you go to downtown Taipa—”

This got a big laugh from everybody.

“If you go to downtown Taipa, to the CBD, you know, right in the heart of the Central Business District,” he chuckled, “you’ll see a sad little cheap monument to Kupe, kind o’ ugly it is, a monument to the first Māori to sail from the home islands all the way down here to found the great city of Taipa and to found New Zealand, Aotearoa, while he was at it. Right here.

“Course this exact story is all a Pakeha invention of the 20^th century, took some of our Māori truths and gave people specific names and exploits, Europeanized the tale. Even most Māori believe it today, about Kupe. Don’t know our own true history. It’s more complicated than that, of course. Of course it is.

“But the bottom line, boys, the bottom line is. This is one of the first spots where our fathers and mothers first came to New Zealand. Be they Māori or Pakeha. Right here in Doubtless Bay, one of the first landing spots of the ole Māori and all along the East Coast of the Far North here. And the first landing spot of the Europeans, too.

“Seems Doubtless Bay is some sort of spiritual magnet. And then, too, some Māori first landed over on the Coromandel Peninsula, sure, and down in the Cook Straits between the Two Islands and then way down on the east coast of the South Island. Those four are our first Māori landing places on the Two Islands.”

“We got Three Islands goin’ here. Three important islands here in New Zealand,” said James.

“Oh, sure, how could I forget Stewart Island,” said the old man. “But you know what they always say, mate, North Cape to the Bluff, from one end of New Zealand to the other, mate. Seems like even the language always leaves out poor little Stewart Island, sitting down there all lonely-like off the coast from the Bluff at the bottom o’ the South Island. Bottom of the world. Or is it the top? You folk are just too far out in the wop-wops, James. But I’ll include you in New Zealand.”

“Thanks for that.”

“But tell us about the Eligamite and her tragedy now, pa,” said one of the Māori boys.

“And then maybe I’ll tell you about that pa up there on these boys’ hilltop. Where these two Yanks here, they come from California and get visited by the ancients.

“ Maybe I’ll tell you about that. Or maybe I won’t. Anyway, my daddy was on the Greyhound when they saved those shipwrecked souls after the Eligamite went down on the Three Kings.”

“The Three Kings?” I said. “The Three Kings Islands off the Cape Reinga, up at the top?

“That’s exactly right. Those rock islands up by Spirits Bay and Cape Reinga. 1902 it was.”

“The year you was born, grandpa?” said James mischievously.

“Sure if you think I am over a hundred years old. Sure, no problem. Maybe I am. Maybe I am. But, now, it happened like this. The Eligamite steamship was traveling from Australia to Auckland and got too close to the Three Kings in the fog and the dark. And the Three Kings was marked wrong on the captain’s charts.

“The Eligamite she got so close that though they didn’t know it, the ship was making her last Trans-Tasman voyage that night in November of 1902. Maybe not her last voyage but her last voyage in this sad and beautiful world.

“It was Saturday afternoon and the ship entered a heavy fog, maybe the same fog that cloaked Captain Cook and Captain de Surville a hundred and thirty some years before and kept them from meeting off the beautiful coast of the Far North here. So the poor Eligamite entered this thick haze and she struck one of the Three Kings and inside twenty minutes she was down, dead sunk she was.

“All the passengers, 139 of ’em, and her crew of 58, put to in her six lifeboats and two little puny rafts. Imagine what it was like, boys. Imagine the dread. Six little lifeboats and two little rafts in the great wild and foggy sea.”

He paused for a long while and rolled a cigarette.

“You know, boys, the spirits of all the Māori, and I warrant of all New Zealanders now, my own spirit soon enough, and you boys, too, one day, one day soon enough, our spirits travel up the islands, even from Stewart Island, young James, and at Cape Reinga we jump off the cliff and go down the gnarled roots of the ancient pohutukawa, as ancient as the Māori in New Zealand, and continue off to the other world.

“When we reach the Three Kings Islands, we turn and look back one last time at this lovely world of New Zealand, one last look before we continue on our way forever, e noho ra, noho ora mai, look after yourself—stay safe

“That November day in 1902, many aboard the Eligamite had their last look at this world right there at the Three Kings without troubling to go all the way down to Auckland first.

“And just over there beyond Hohoura,” he gestured with his head towards the northwest which lay in semi-darkness now, the moon low in the night sky, “just over there at Awanui, at Big River, Captain Subritzky lay sleeping. Lay dreaming. He awoke from a nightmare and rushed straight down to his Steamship Greyhound where the crew, including my father, slept away.

“He roused them, my father said the Captain had a bright look in his eye. ‘Get up, mates —we have to help them— I see in my dream a large ship in heavy fog, she crashes on the rocks sharp and jagged. I hear the voice telling me the folk are there, trapped, need our help.’

“Now my own father knew the tides were coming in, and Captain Subritzky knew it too, they knew that the entrance to the Rangaunu Bay was barely covered by the incoming tide but my father, he knew Captain Subritzky was right, they had to help.

“My father and his shipmates poled down the Big River from Awanui, Awanui boys, Big River. Well, you know it’s not much, you can almost jump across it now, it’s been silted up some, but it was big enough for the Greyhound in those days. My daddy and his mates they poled down the river in the dark night, to Rangaunu Bay, which is very tidal, not deep and fine like Doubtless Bay here, and they continued out to the entrance of the harbour at Rangiputa.”

The old man nodded his head westward from where we sat around the fire on Vara Prasada Beach. “Jus’ the next big bay over from Doubtless Bay, just the other side of Karikari Peninsula there, so they ran up all the canvas and Captain Subritzky raced the schooner dead straight at the bar, full speed ahead. There was a tremendous shudder as the keel struck and the boat, she wanted to come apart but she held and they made it over that sandbar and she headed north in the open sea, north in the moana nui.

“To the Three Kings they sailed. For, you see, the rocks Captain Subritzky saw in his dream were well and long known to him, part of the Three Kings Islands were those rocks.

“And three of the six little boats landed on rocks off the Middle King where the shipwrecked souls clung fiercely to a narrow ledge against a high cliff, the high seas pounding at them. A fourth boat capsized but all the poor living souls were pulled from the sea and crowded in with their saviors on another little boat which threatened to go under.

“Sadly, the last of the little lifeboats disappeared. And both rafts disappeared into the mists. Disappeared, äe.

“Back on land, an alarm had been received by now, yes, and another group of local men set to in their own whaler and rowed for thirty miles out to sea to intercept the passing ship Zealandia and to beg for help in searching for any survivors. The good ship Zealandia rescued 89 passengers from the rocks of the Three Kings.

“By now, all alarms had been raised and the SS Omapere and HMS Penguin were dispatched to the foggy search for the remainder who had disappeared, drifted away in that fog. Drifted away.

“Days later, the Penguin came across some wreckage but continued the search. She soon came upon the larger of the two rafts that had disappeared. A sorrowful sight. A little 12-foot by 8-foot framework between two long canvas floats. No shelter from the rain, the wind. No protection from the angry waves. Every wave crashed over those poor souls. Five days they had managed to stay afloat without food to eat or water to drink, without any shelter from the wild wind and water.”

Our little fire had nearly gone out and at this point James and another lad piled on some more brush and wood, as if to ward off the fearsome thoughts of cold drownings at sea. Here was warmth and dryness and calm assurance on the land, on the beach of Vara Prasada.

The name of this farm is Sacred Gifts

“So Captain Subritzky’s dream had a happy ending,” said James softly.

“Äe, lad. That’s ‘Yes’ in Māori, young James. A happy ending for those saved by Captain Subritzky and the crew of the Greyhound, a happy ending for those pulled from the sea by the Penguin and the SS Omapere.

“But not for those who disappeared into the mists, never again to be seen. Of the 197 aboard the Eligamite, all were found and saved, save for 17 crew and 28 passengers. A happy ending. But not for all, not for all. Even the Captain’s dream could not save them all.”

Soon, the talk died down. The fire began to burn low and no one bothered to add more wood. The moon was down now and the stars were out in full glory. Nowhere have I seen as many and as bright stars as in New Zealand, not even in the midst of the Sahara Desert, not in the wild fastnesses of the Karakoram Range of the Himalaya.

Down here, we are not exactly on the dark side of the moon, but New Zealand is about as far as you can get from the mass of people on the planet, from humanity’s bright lights and electric cities and no matter where on earth you go, you will never see the Milky Way the way you will see it down here on a clear dark night.

Here, the stars are brighter, more numerous. And mostly different. Different stars, different constellations, an almost entirely new heaven to wonder at.

So I lay on the sand looking up at the new stars, trying to pick out the few stars and constellations peeking over from the northern hemisphere, the few that peek over the earth’s edge and gaze down on the southern tip of South America, on the Cape of Good Hope at the bottom of the great African continent, the few familiar stars that peek over the edge at southern Australia.

The few familiar constellations that peek over at our far-away New New World of New Zealand.

Of the Southern Hemisphere constellations, the only one I was able to identify was the Southern Cross.

Looking at the unfamiliar stars, thinking of Arleen and he who would have been my brother, had he lived, little James, thinking of the Eligamite and those who drifted away on their little rafts, drifted away through the mists on their fragile little lifeboats, thinking of Dee and her bodings of tragedy, of my mother Eva hearing the cries of a sad future of baby death, of the dreaming Captain Subritzky of the Greyhound, his nightmare which saved most, but not all.

Not all.

Times of Troubles

Aaron do you know you—

At length, I fell asleep. When I awoke, I was back in my sleeping bag. I looked over and Beau was sound asleep in his sleeping bag beside me, Sophie and Deva crowded together warmly on his feet.

The events of the night rushed in on the tides of my sleepy memory and for a brief moment I doubted everything. Had I truly been visited the day before, visited from the pa? Had I dreamt everything, the little boat landing on our beach, the boys and young men and the old Māori man? I looked across to where we had sat and talked and listened to the old man.

I got up as quietly as possible and walked across the sands, just glimmering with first light, to see if footprints and the remains of a fire would evidence the old man and the others, would evidence talk of the Eligamite and talk of the pa, and talk of a visitation.

To give some credence to all the moonlit past.