Monologue, Short Story

The Lifeboat – April 10, 1968

Nancy's Notes 🖊️♬

Inspired by a new blog called ‘Old Steam Ships’
by our friend, Max, this is a fictionalized account
in the voice of Tom Dartford, Quartermaster
of the New Zealand ferry, TEV Wahine.
Please show support for Max’s new endeavor
by checking out his blog. Thank you!

They will tell you I was brave. I wasn’t. I was simply the man at the oar.

Photo courtesy of Max @ Old Steam Ships


By the time she listed past saving, the Wahine was already half- swallowed by the sea. The cyclone had been at her all morning …. Gisele, they named it …. as if something that cruel deserved a woman’s name. We’d struck Barrett Reef in darkness, and after that it was only a matter of when.

I had my orders. I had a lifeboat.

The swells were twenty feet if they were an inch. You don’t reason with water like that …. you read it, the way you’d read a man who means to hit you. There’s a moment before each wave crests where it shows you its intention. I learned that in the first ten minutes or I’d have learned nothing ever again.

People were in the water; some had jumped, some had been thrown. I couldn’t think of them as people then, God forgive me, only as positions. Twelve o’clock. Nine o’clock. Pull.

Photo courtesy Max @ ‘Old Steam Ships’

One woman wouldn’t let go of her handbag; I didn’t argue. A man came up over the gunwale, blue as winter, and said thank you before he’d even drawn a breath.

I made the run again. And again.

I don’t know exactly how many we brought in. They tell me it was over a hundred. What I remember is the weight of the Wahine sitting lower with each pass, and thinking: she’ll hold, she’ll hold, she’ll hold.

Fifty-three people didn’t make it home that day.

I think about them whenever the sea is calm and everyone assumes it always will be.

NAR©2026

This is “The Wreck of the Wahine” by Mice On Stilts


The union boats are leaving town
Giselle went south for the spring
An antique haul, Tapuhi’s fall
Hector, my captain, take the reins away
We’ve lost control……
Go quietly by the rooms, there’s a child on board
Dragging anchor, looming founder
Ngake strikes his tail
Caught between the devil and the deep blue sea
Abyssal plains ahead
The drowning dogs in smokeroom lounges
Such an ugly day
We’ve lost control……
(Lyrics provided via Musixmatch)

The Wahine Disaster

Everything on The Elephant’s Trunk was created by me, unless otherwise indicated. Thanks for your consideration. NAR©2017-present.

22 thoughts on “The Lifeboat – April 10, 1968”

  2. Awesome story Nancy! That is cool how you weaved that story with the lifeboat. Thank you for the link! I love stories that are rooted in the truth… and this one certainly is!

    Sorry I was delayed…the puppies…all I need to say!

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  9. A very tragic story, and of which I’m quite familiar with … 2 members of my writers group are New Zealanders, and have presented their stories to the group, about their recollections of the ‘Wahine Disaster’, Nancy 🥰📃

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  10. I think it was late 1970s, or early 1980s here, that the powers that be decided men could also be powerful and awe-inspiring, and so we started alternating between female and male names for cyclones. In my early childhood, it was all women’s names. Another interesting thing about cyclones names, is that they’re recycled, unless they’ve done severe damage. So “Tracey” can’t be used again after Cyclone Tracey flattened Darwin on Christmas Eve 1973 (yes, I was a kid then, and I still remember the date, but mostly because of the fundraising song “Santa never made it into Darwin”.) The ones that fizzle out, their names just go back on the list.

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    1. In their infinite wisdom! Really! The first male-named hurricane here in The States was in 1978. The change was finally adopted following protests and campaigns from women’s groups, which argued that naming destructive storms only after women perpetuated sexist stereotypes. Thanks for that bit of “herstory”, Iris! 😊

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