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Story source: The Dominion Post (19 January 2008) https://www.pressreader.com/new-zealand/the-dominion-post/20080119/...
On Tuesday, January 18, 1858, after five days of incessant rain, the Hutt River’s sedate flow had become a bolting nightmare of bouncing boulders, whole trees and tempestuous waters higher than a house. In its headlong rush, it took with it homes, bridges, livestock and, distressingly, 12 settlers, seven of whom had been in the Hutt barely a year. The flash flood, reported in the Wellington Independent and New Zealand Spectator newspapers, was the worst in the settlement’s short history. In terms of loss of life, it remains to this day Wellington’s killer flood.
‘‘From [January] the 11th to the 18th, the severe storm from the northwest to the southeast prevailed,’’ reported a Mr Mantell, who kept records at Hutt Grammar School. His rain gauge recorded five inches (125mm) falling in the period. Anyone living near the head of the Taita Gorge near Silverstream was in trouble.
Charles Rennall lost his mill when Silver Stream broke its banks. The Hutt River finished it off. It was the second time his mill had been destroyed. Disgusted, he resumed business in what is now Masterton.
The Barley Mow Inn, near Rennall’s mill, was wrecked, but worse befell the new settlers. The Stanways, who had just survived a perilous voyage from Liverpool that was notable for the number of deaths at sea, had barely made headway breaking in their small farm when the flood arrived. It’s likely they would have been roused by what the Independent described as ‘‘an immense wave crashing and roaring along and carrying everything before it’’.
Tom Stanway, a carpenter, and his wife Sarah clambered on to the roof of their cottage with their children Richard, Sarah, Louisa and Fanny. It was their last refuge.
The waters rose quickly and they were soon submerged, an inquest at the Travellers Rest Inn at Taita was told. The bodies of two Stanway daughters were recovered next day, and Mrs Stanway’s on the Thursday. Days later, Richard Stanway’s body was retrieved downstream. There was no sign, said the Independent, of ‘‘Thomas and one of his children’’, though their bodies were found a week later.
Blacksmith Charles Sollors, his wife Mary and their son Charles Samuel died, too. They lived near the Stanways; their bodies were found downstream, partially buried in sand.
Charlotte Hagan died with her newborn son, and with them went their midwife, Sarah Price, swept from the roof of the Hagan cottage when the building overturned.
Mrs Price’s husband Robert was away at the time but, reported the Independent, Charles Hagan, Charlotte’s husband, ‘‘was fortunately rescued, though much exhausted’’. He had been minding their two youngsters in a whare away from their home for the duration of Charlotte’s confinement.
Incredibly, there was a witness to the calamity that befell the Stanways, the Sollors, the Hagans and Mrs Price.
Charles Hartley, who was living with the Sollors, had gone to fetch a rope in the hope of saving lives, but lost his footing and was swept away. Half a mile downstream, the torrent threw him at a pile of debris; it was a life-saver. He spent 14 hours in a tree from where he witnessed the deaths of his neighbours. He told the inquest he saw Mrs Hagan, carrying her infant, and Mrs Smith on the cottage roof. As he looked on, the cottage was swept past him. He described the shrieks of the women as ‘‘fearful’’, and moments later the building capsized, spilling the three into the torrent. The bodies were recovered next day a mile away.
The valley, the Independent reported on January 20, was covered with silt, rocks and trees. Survivors had suffered great losses, among them ‘‘Mr D Riddiford, 120 sheep; Mr John Leverton 50 acres of crops [and] Mr Dew, an old settler, estimates his loss at not less than £500’’. (Today, about $480,000.)
The river had spread from ‘‘hills to hills of the lower valley’’, carved a new channel, removed two bridges, dumped sand and boulders over new pastures, destroyed hectares of crops and gouged trenches as deep at four metres. T WAS hard to figure out, the papers reported, where roads lay or whether they still existed. The road through the Taita Gorge on the valley’s eastern flank was in one part closed by a slip and elsewhere gouged away. For teenager Emily Stanway, the trauma of the flash flood was manifold. She lost her entire family.
For the Stanways and the Prices, the trials of 1858 were doubly tragic. They had been passengers on the barque Ann Wilson, a migrant ship that had arrived in Port Nicholson on Sunday, March 29, 1857. During the 120-day passage from Liverpool, they had been on starvation rations and a pint of water a day each since rounding the Cape of Good Hope. Four adults and 14 children died, one of whom succumbed soon after arrival. The Stanways and the Prices survived the voyage, though only Robert Price and Emily Stanway would be alive after the flood. As luck would have it, Emily had not been at Silverstream on January 18. The Independent reported that she had been ‘‘living with a Mrs Roy in another part of the valley’’. Mrs Roy survived the flood, too, but Emily was on safer ground altogether. She was visiting Kaiapoi where, according to family lore, she was staying with a family she had known on the Ann Wilson voyage.
It’s as likely she had gone south to test the waters with George Porteous, a fourth-year apprentice on the Ann Wilson. With others, he had jumped ship at Wellington. The voyage and the Ann Wilson’s commander, Captain Ruther- ford had cured young Porteous of any desire to further his sea-going career.
When the Ann Wilson made Port Nicholson, there was hell to pay. The charterers, James Baines and Company, and the owners, R and J Wilson, had connived, with a nod from Rutherford, to jam 222 passengers in to the 432-ton barque, along with seven saloon passengers and 21 crew. The ship had neither food nor water adequate to sustain that number. The cook complained ‘‘that the cooking apparatus was only sufficient to cook for 60 persons’’. When the ship anchored at Wellington, migrants and crew alike were so weak they took an age to disembark, and many were taken directly to the Colonial Hospital at Thorndon. Ashore, settlers were ropable. They took up collections and distributed goods and medicines among the newcomers. For Rutherford, there was trouble ahead. At a subsequent inquiry, he explained that he had not put in to Cape Town for supplies because his employer’s orders showed that he was not instructed to do so.
Emily Stanway married George Porteous at Kaiapoi on April 1, 1860. She put her age up to 18; George fibbed and lowered his from 23 to 20. They raised seven sons and five daughters. The closest George ever got to resuming his maritime career was as a labourer at the Kaiapoi river port before moving to Lyttelton and a job with the railways. Emily and George Porteous retired to Christchurch. They were inseparable. She died in 1919 aged 73; he in 1921 aged 81. They are buried together in the Sydenham cemetery.
There is no sign of what was apparently a common grave for some of the flood victims in the St James Anglican Church graveyard at Lower Hutt. A carved wooden marker, with Stanway details misspelled Stannaway, has long since disappeared.
Interestingly, an unmarked plot is on the church’s northern side. Whether it is their final resting place is not known. Compiled with the assistance of M Hillis, S Porteous, J Wills.