Horowhenua StarI couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen her.
It’d been a while. Fearing she might be gone for good, last weekend I scoured the dunes and was almost about to give up when I spied a tiny piece of her skeleton down in a gully.
It’s incredible to think it’s been almost 148 years since the Hydrabad was shipwrecked at Waitārere Beach the night of June 25, 1878. But she’s not quite ready to say goodbye.
Not just yet anyway.
Maybe kids are still digging the sand away from her bones, just as they’ve done for generations, playing pirates. There’d be people alive who would remember diving from her stern into the sea on a high tide.
Over the years people have done a great job collecting and preserving the history of the Hydrabad. There’re some great paintings of her from her prime high on the seas, and some stirring photographs as a shipwreck.
More than 1000 people from all over New Zealand gathered at the beach in 1978 to commemorate the centenary of her landing, including descendants of Captain Charles and his wife, Mary Holmwood. The Holmwoods and their son, Charles, were among the 35 people aboard the night of the storm. All survived.
The Hydrabad had carried 407 passengers in her previous voyage from Britain to Australia. Several paintings show a grand fully-rigged ship with three masts full of sails.
She was made of stern stuff and was first launched in 1865. She was 70m long – longer than two basketball courts – had three decks and displaced 1.4 tonne.
Her hull was black with a broad white line across her ports, and a smaller red line just below the water line. At her front was a huge statue of a Hindu warrior with a bushy beard and turban, gripping a sword in his left hand.
It’s cool to think there were attempts to refloat the Hydrabad. Six months after she had beached she was refloated just past the breakers, but the tow boat ran out of coal. Another storm and high sea sent her back.
Waitārere Beach is a unique stretch of coast that’s accruing at more a metre a year, according to Horizons Regional Council. So while it gives the impression that Hydrabad has sunk into the sand or that waves might have pushed her away from the shoreline, she probably hasn’t moved much at all.
It’s the sands that have moved around her.
