This past week has seen memorials and services marking the sinking of the Wahine fifty years ago.
Wikipedia provides a terse summary of what occurred:
TEV Wahine was a twin-screw, turbo-electric, roll-on/roll-off passenger and vehicle ferry of the Union Steamship Company of New Zealand. She was launched at the Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company in Govan, Scotland, in 1965 and worked the New Zealand inter-island route between Wellington and Lyttelton from 1966. On 10 April 1968, near the end of a typical northbound crossing to Wellington, she was caught in a fierce storm stirred by Tropical Cyclone Giselle. She foundered after running aground on Barrett Reef and capsized and sank in the shallow waters near Steeple Rock at the mouth of Wellington Harbour. Of the 734 people on board, 53 people died from drowning, exposure to the elements or from injuries sustained in the hurried evacuation and abandonment of the stricken vessel.The storm that ripped through Wellington is described as "the worst recorded in New Zealand's history":
