White Island's killer landslide, 11 taken without a trace
Friday, 15 September 2017
An element of mystery will forever lay over the 1914 event which killed 11 sulphur miners on White Island, finds Jessica Long.
It was early in the morning when a part of Te Puia o Whakaari's crater rim collapsed, causing a landslide which buried 11 men.
Like a bulldozer, the earth swept down the natural walls of New Zealand's most active volcano into the crater's lake.
Rubble buried the factory below and the sulphur miners camped within, possibly pushing their bodies deep into the sea.
It was Thursday, September 10, 1914, when the 'catastrophe' took place but without any survivors, exact times and dates were roughly pieced together.
A 'disastrous thermal eruption' was believed to follow the landslide, later blamed on debris blocking the blowhole, a 1914 New Zealand Herald report of the time said.
'A dense volume of black smoke was seen rising from the island', and a tremor was felt about 50km away at Ōpōtiki the next day.
Albert Mokomoko, the Northern Steamship Company's pilot, raised fears for the workers' safety after he'd lost contact with the men.
He'd met the labourers at the island just a few days earlier but it was almost a week after the disaster when Mokomoko decided to investigate the shoreline.
The factory where the men were believed to have slept was built close to the water's edge, inside the crater's 2 kilometre diameter. Mokomoko edged his boat along the water's edge in failing light but there was nothing, and nobody, in sight.
The area he scanned was once a lake but had been drained in the hope of finding rich sulphur deposits below.
He turned back to Ōpōtiki to report what he'd seen and on Saturday, September 19, search parties were sent to investigate the landslide.
Police found portions of A.J.C McKim's manager's house, his wire stretcher and employees' whares along the coastline and floating at sea.
'The material was so hot and steaming that work had to be stopped,' the first New Zealand Herald article of the event said.
The men who searched the area found mounds of dirt and rock spilled over about 40 acres.
Initial reports were uncertain if 10 or 11 men were killed. A cook raised the number of men but details on his whereabouts were unclear.
'No bodies were ever discovered. I guess they didn't keep very good records,' White Island Tours general manager Patrick O'Sullivan said.
The resident cat, 'Peter the Great', survived but was found in a 'manic state'.
O'Sullivan said one theory was that the cat prowled the outer parts of the crater in search of wildlife that night, leaving the men alone in the factory.
Today, the remaining mounds of the fatal landslide and remnants of the fallen crater walls lie at the bottom of the 'lake'.
A second factory was built in the 1920s above the original site and mining continued for about another decade before it was permanently closed.
The mined sulphur was of a poor standard, mainly used for fertiliser and eventually the business became unprofitable.
The New Zealand Sulphur Company produced 11,000 tonnes of sulphur in its 30 years of production and lost 13 lives.
NIneteen fourteen had been an an unlucky year for the company.
Three months after mining began a man was killed by a large retort which burst in May. It was believed to have been a result of corrosion and the plant was momentarily closed for maintenance.
Soon after another man was killed by 'exploding molten rock covering him', O'Sullivan said.
Decaying machinery is all that remains.
The island is now a private reserve owned by the Buttle Family Trust. Tours are run on the island to view the steaming vents and plumes of white steam and gases stretch metres into the sky on a still winter day.
In 2014, a commemoration ceremony was held at the Te Puia o Whakaari to honour the memories of the men lost. Seven of the men killed in the 1914 landslide were from Auckland. It was understood that all but one, a J. Byrne were single.
A search for the men's descendants was made, but it wasn't until last week a possible connection was found.
O'Sullivan said he received a call from a Tauranga man who claimed his wife was related to the labourer, Byrne.
He said it was exciting if the link was correct and work was underway to verify the claim. 'We thought the story got lost.'
O'Sullivan said there was an urban myth that kept locals calm about the deadly island. 'As long as it's smoking, it's fine because it's releasing pressure … locals still go with that story.'