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Don Ross has over 50 years’ experience of the waters off the Coromandel Peninsula. He tells Jack Perkins of his adventures, including watching a tidal wave (tsunami) that hit the coastal settlement of Whitianga in May 1960.
Sea faring is in Don’s blood; his grandfather sailed around Cape Horn, he obtained his masters ticket on a cargo steamship and later became Whitianga’s Harbour master. In May 1960 when the Eastern-Pacific region was hit by severe earthquakes the harbour experienced a tsunami; there were twenty minutes between tides, boats had broken their moorings, people stuck in their boats needed rescuing and North of Whitianga the historic wreck of ‘The Buffalo’ was revealed in the sand. Don describes how the people of Whitianga responded (sometimes quite comically) when the siren declared it was time to evacuate.
Don retells stories from running coastal boats around to Cape Colville and Auckland from Whitianga in the days when it was a real team crew effort – all hands were on. One time he remembers leaving Auckland Harbour and having a near miss with a Sunderland flying boat. He says the coastal boats don’t run any more.
Jack Perkins asks what Don’s seen out in the depths; he describes how once on a game fishing trip beside Richard’s rock they saw a giant basking shark approx. 30 feet long, another time he witnessed a goat fall out of a tiger shark and a 360 pound mako jump into another boat’s cockpit and smash everything around it whilst on the end of a line.
As Harbour Master it was his job to take a maintenance team out to the islands to service lights. One time he took them out to Three Kings island but when it came time for them to return, the sea was too rough. The men on shore got sick of waiting so, intending to swim out, tied their clothes onto their heads with flax. However suddenly one of the outboard oars was smashed to pieces by a big shark and they waved the team on shore back as it continued to attack the outboard’s propeller. Eventually, later that evening they got them off the island.