Friday, April 10, 2020

COVID knocks off Wahine Day acknowledgement

I thought I'd wait till well into the day to see if the media were going to do the usual Wahine Day remembrance. Zilch.
The Wahine heavily listing shortly before sinking in Wellington Harbour on April 10, 1968. Lifeboats are just visible on the left.
It is April 10. But COVID obsession overrode recall of New Zealand's worst ever maritime disaster.
The day and date is etched on my memory.

3 comments:

alwyn said...

It was certainly a dreadful event, which I also remember very clearly but it was nothing like our worst ever maritime disaster.
Looking only at shipwrecks we had the following that were worse.
1863 HMS Orpheus 189
1881 SS Tararua 131
1894 SS Wairarapa 121
1865 Fiery Star 87
1909 SS Penguin 75
1866 General Grant 68
All of these had more deaths than the Wahine where there were 53.
You might exclude the Fiery Star and the General Grant, which were near the Chatham and Auckland Islands but all the others were very close to the main islands of New Zealand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_disasters_in_New_Zealand_by_death_toll

Lindsay Mitchell said...

Thank you Alwyn, I must have caught the exaggeration virus if nothing else. History does indeed extend beyond the last one hundred years.

Andrei said...

And the Ballantynes’ fire, Tangiwai. Erebus off the top of my head.

Shit happens...

... and that includes dementia patients getting viral pneumonia.

After all everybody is supposed to live forever