The story of the SS Ventnor: A tragic shipwreck, hungry ghosts, and a bitter controversy

Friday, 24 February 2023

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In 1902, the SS Ventnor sank off Hokianga harbour, carrying the remains of nearly 500 Chinese goldminers being returned to their villages. The ship’s discovery in 2013 has sparked a decade of accusation, and antagonism towards those who helped find it. Now, that group’s side of the story has been told. But, as Mike White reports, it’s done little to quell a controversy involving the Chinese community, iwi, top government officials, and some of the world’s most famous divers.

When Liu Shueng Wong shows people where the Ventnor lies, she drives to the end of Signal Station Rd in Ōmāpere, overlooking Hokianga harbour’s heads.

Once there, facing the ocean, she tells them, 10 o’clock, 10 miles out to sea. That’s where you’ll find it.

That’s where you’ll find the hulk of the SS Ventnor, which wallowed and pitched below the surface in October 1902, with 13 crew, a bellyful of coal, and the remains of 499 Chinese men.

**READ MORE:

* Kindness shown in ship's sinking unites Chinese and Māori cultures in Northland

* Honouring the dead: Sinking of SS Ventnor in 1902 creates unique bond between Chinese and Māori

* Chinese community upset with lack of consultation after remains of gold miners found

* Shipwreck of SS Ventnor and its dead finally found

**

The Chinese were goldminers who’d died in New Zealand, and whose disinterred bones were being transported back to their villages in Guangdong province, where relatives could remember and honour them.

Wong learnt of the Ventnor story in 2007, when living in nearby Rāwene, and began researching it. She quickly learnt some bones and coffins had washed ashore, and been buried by local Maori.

But the majority remained entombed aboard the Ventnor, 10 miles out, 150m below the Tasman Sea’s storm-swept surface.

And that’s where the ship remained for more than 100 years, disturbed only by blundering bottom trawlers, and locals who knew the site as a good spot to hook hāpuka.

Then in 2013, a team led by Auckland property manager John Albert sent down a remote operated vehicle (ROV), which lit up the Ventnor’s encrusted hull, verifying this was where its voyage ended.

But what followed wasn’t congratulations and kudos. Instead, there were accusations of astonishing insensitivity and cultural trampling.

And as Albert’s group has continued exploring the wreck, calls for them to stop have risen, and the gulf between those involved has widened, deepened, and become unfathomably bitter.

Keith Gordon was the first person to see the Ventnor that day in 2013 as his ROV’s lights brought it to life from the gloom of the ocean floor.

He was on the surface, hunched over the ROV’s screen, and recalls the thrill of seeing the ship’s silhouette, a time capsule suddenly revealed.

Gordon, an internationally recognised underwater explorer and one of the country’s foremost shipwreck experts, had been contacted by Liu Shueng Wong regarding finding it, some years earlier.

But it was John Albert who was sitting beside him this day, watching the ROV slowly trace the Ventnor’s buckled deck and iron hull sitting upright on the sandy seabed.

Albert (Ngāpuhi, Tūhoe, Ngāti Maniopoto, Te Arawa) had known of the Ventnor all his life. As a kid in the Hokianga, his parents would warn him to behave, or ghosts from the shipwreck would come for him.

Decades later, standing on the Hokianga’s cliffs on a warm summer day, he was seized by an inexplicable chill. Albert describes it as the moment the spirits from the Ventnor entered him, and he was convinced their message was, help us continue our voyage home.

Chinese tradition holds the dead can’t rest until they are returned to the village they were born in, and buried with their family. There, descendants can remember them, and give offerings during the Ching Ming Festival, or Tomb Sweeping Day.

That’s what the miners whose remains were on board the Ventnor had wished for.

While working the goldfields of Otago and the West Coast, they had paid a fee in case they died before making it home to their families.

Led by successful Dunedin businessman Choie Sew Hoy, the Cheong Shing Tong society ultimately arranged for the bones of nearly 500 miners to be dug up across 40 New Zealand cemeteries, washed, separated, placed in calico bags, and sealed in coffins before being loaded aboard the Ventnor.

Sew Hoy’s death in 1901 meant his remains were also on board.

The Ventnor, which had been launched in Glasgow the year before, sailed from Wellington bound for Hong Kong on October 26, 1902, its main cargo being hot-burning West Coast coal prized by the British Navy.

Neglect of navigation saw the steamship ground on a Taranaki reef just after midnight. The captain, Henry Ferry, perplexingly decided to sail around North Cape to Auckland for repairs, rather than return to Wellington.

But the 105m Ventnor continued to ship water, and two days later it sank, taking a lifeboat full of panicked crew with it.

For the miners’ relatives, this was seen as a second death: Now their loved ones had been flung to a watery grave thousands of miles from home, a foreign limbo where their spirits would roam like hungry ghosts.

More than a century later, Albert became convinced he had been chosen to end the spirits’ unsettled wandering, and help the miners complete their journey home.

So, like Liu Shueng Wong, he too contacted Gordon, and New Zealand diving authority Dave Moran, to help locate the wreck. Their newly-minted Project Ventnor Group was augmented by Ōmāpere stalwarts and fishing guides John and Linda Pattinson, who led them to the site, where the ROV confirmed the wreck.

Before long, Albert had co-opted some of the world’s most experienced deep divers, an Australian group dubbed the Wet Mules.

Among them were Richard “Harry” Harris, and Craig Challen, who became internationally renowned in 2018 when they helped rescue 12 boys and their football coach from Thailand’s Tham Luang cave. Both were later awarded bravery medals, and named Australians of the Year.

In April 2014, after Albert had been asked to provide definitive proof the wreck was the Ventnor, Harris and Challen retrieved five objects from the wreck, including a small bell, porcelain dishes, and a porthole.

But the group had barely returned to shore before their celebrations soured, following protests from Liu Shueng Wong and officials.

Overhearing the Project Ventnor Group talking in Ōmāpere’s hotel that evening, two locals phoned an alarmed Wong, by then known locally as “the Ventnor woman’’,who immediately contacted Heritage New Zealand’s Northland manager, Bill Edwards, suggesting the wreck was being looted.

New Zealand’s law automatically protects all pre-1900 shipwrecks. But because the Ventnor sank in 1902, Albert’s group was absolutely allowed to dive on it, and retrieve objects.

However, noting Wong’s desire that the wreck remain untouched, Edwards suggested decreeing it an archaeological site, and Wong quickly contacted the Chinese community for support.

Letters flowed in, claiming the wreck was being “disrespectfully pillaged”.

Within weeks, with little or no consultation, Heritage New Zealand made an unprecedented exception to the law and gazetted the Ventnor as a protected archaeological site, claiming it was effectively a Chinese burial ground.

This meant nothing could be disturbed, or taken from the wreck, without its permission, though filming was still allowed.

Meanwhile, in the media, the dive group were being labelled grave robbers and souvenir hunters.

Albert, who was making a documentary about the Ventnor, was stunned.

He’d had endless discussions with government departments; Chinese community members, including descendants of Choie Sew Hoy; New Zealand Chinese Association members; the Chinese Embassy; government and opposition MPs; and been to China several times to meet officials there.

Equally bemused was Dave Moran, who presumed they’d get a pat on the back for verifying the Ventnor’s location and identity, but received a slap in the face instead.

“We thought they’d be over the moon. But the antagonism and pushback and resentfulness was just unbelievable.

“We’ve been very, very respectful of the wreck. And people have painted us as pirates and selling skulls and, oh my god, unbelievable.

“I just couldn’t understand the ‘them and us’ attitude, virtually right from the get-go. I’d love to know, what’s their agenda? What’s the problem?”

Kirsten Wong, speaking on behalf of the New Zealand Chinese Association, outlines some of the problems.

Primarily, they feel there was a lack of consultation with the Chinese community before exploration of the wreck started, undermining their role as their ancestors’ guardians.

“They needed to talk to us.”

Then there are the practicalities of retrieving the bones and taking them to China, as Albert has always wanted to do.

Beyond the difficulties of recovering the remains from the wreck, how would they be individually identified? How would they end up at the correct village?

And once there, do the villages and cemeteries remain?

Wong, who led efforts to create a Ventnor memorial, points out that the area most of the miners came from has been swallowed by Guangzhou’s expansion as it has grown to be China’s fifth-largest city with a population of more than 15 million.

“So all the beautiful land, groves of lychee trees, and all that romantic stuff, has now given way to bus stops, metro terminals, and the tombs are having to be relocated or put in aggregate burial sites.”

But there is another powerful reason the majority of the Chinese community oppose disturbing the bones of the Ventnor miners.

And that’s to do with the deep relations they have developed with Hokianga iwi in the last 10 years, the same iwi who reburied bones and coffins they found washed ashore after the Ventnor’s sinking.

They have visited Te Roroa and Te Rarawa, and there are now three memorials to the Ventnor that attest to the strong bonds between iwi and the Chinese community.

As Kirsten Wong explains, the spirits are no longer wandering: They have been cared for, and their descendants now have places to remember and honour them.

“They are home, because we are home.”

One of Choie Sew Hoy’s great-great-granddaughters, Jenny Sew Hoy Agnew, accepts it is important, just like Māori kōiwi (human remains), to return people to their homeland.

“But if your remains are actually in a place that you can pay respects, then that’s absolutely fine. And that’s what we’ve been doing every year, on the shores where the Ventnor sank.

“I think people have to realise that this is a new tradition that we can build, because we are here now, in this land, not over there.”

Sew Hoy Agnew, who, with husband Trevor, wrote a book about her famous ancestor, says nobody asked permission, or asked how the Chinese community felt, before divers went down on the Ventnor.

“It was just go in – it’s almost like grave-robbing, isn’t it.

“Rest in peace means something, doesn't it?”

The focus for much of the ill-feeling and accusation about the Ventnor is John Albert, whose determination to carry out the miners’ wishes, has seen him vilified by many.

Lynette Shum, secretary of the Poon Fah Association, which succeeded the Cheong Shing Tong, says Albert may have begun with good intentions of not upsetting anyone.

“But once you realise you are, what do you do?

“Do you say, ‘I’m going to do it anyway, because this is my right,’ and blaze through? Or do you just back down and say, ‘I’m really sorry, how can we work together?’

“They had a plan, and it seemed to me they were going into it for glory without any consideration of the cultural sensitivities involved.

“It’s a bit like boys and their toys.”

Liu Shueng Wong says she and the Chinese community had every right to challenge Albert’s diving plans and protect the Ventnor.

“And Māori said, ‘Go for it, girl, get those Pākehā off there.’”

When reminded that Albert is not Pākehā, Wong responds: “Well, he is. He’s a come-by-lately Māori.

“He is a Māori by choice, without really understanding Māori tikanga. In fact, I don't think he really understands it at all.”

Raising the fact Albert’s partner is from Guangzhou, Wong says, “he thinks having a relationship with somebody in China indicates he understands Chinese culture – and he certainly doesn’t understand ours.

Regarding claims Albert’s group has rummaged among the miners’ bones, Wong claims, “Well, he’s the person who’s been closest to having done it, if it was being done.”

Albert says years of such allegations against him have been inspired by one thing.

“Jealousy.”

He says until he became involved with the Ventnor, Liu Shueng Wong was a central figure in telling its story.

“We took away someone’s narrative, and she was bitter.”

The reaction to his project has stung, Albert admits.

“Because I have a lot of people who don’t know me, abusing me, accusing me of being a crook, of desecrating graves, of selling body parts to make money.”

As for Wong’s claims that he is “a come-lately Māori”, Albert points to both his parents being Māori (his mother was a kapa haka tutor), growing up on family marae, and a lifelong involvement with cultural events.

“How much more Māori do I need to be?

“She is way, way out of line, on my side, and I actually think that’s quite insulting.”

Albert is convinced many in the Chinese community actually support the miners’ bones being repatriated to China, but are scared to speak out, or “they just don’t want me involved”.

“They’ve been misled or lied to – actually, put ‘lied’ in capital letters – by Liu Shueng – and she can sue the shit out of me.”

And he simply doesn’t buy many of the arguments put forward by the New Zealand Chinese Association for not touching the wreck and the bones.

He points to the fact the miners’ bones were exhumed and cleaned once before.

He notes that archaeologists often uncover and remove bones from sites around the world, including if they become exposed in New Zealand.

And he says if a ship or plane went down while returning kōiwi to New Zealand, every effort would be made to retrieve them.

“If those remains had been European, they would’ve been picked up 50 years ago.

“If they were Māori, they would’ve been picked up 20 years ago.

“But because they’re Chinese, no-one gave a shit.”

Not everyone in the Chinese community regards Albert as a villain.

One of Choie Sew Hoy’s great-grandsons, successful businessman and former Senior New Zealander of the Year Donald Sew Hoy, breaks an apparent homogeneity of negativity, by lauding Albert’s group.

“I give them full credit and much thanks, and I have great pride in what they did to locate the ship. Otherwise, it would still be another 100 years and we wouldn't know where it is.”

He also accepts Albert and the Project Ventnor Group have been unfairly attacked, by people who have “no relationship to Choie Sew Hoy, or any of the owners of the bones. They have no reflection on what was done – they just open their mouths.”

That said, he feels the bones should remain where they are.

Because of the Sew Hoy family’s influence, Donald and his brother Duncan were some of the first people John Albert contacted, and records show they both supported efforts to retrieve the bones from the Ventnor.

However, in January 2015, Duncan’s son Peter emailed Albert asking him to not disturb the shipwreck in any way.

Peter Sew Hoy told Stuff he and his father are comfortable the human remains stay undisturbed on the Ventnor.

“But my 88-year-old father still wishes and dreams that someday, his great-grandfather, Choie Sew Hoy, and his fellow 498 Chinese goldminers’ remains be repatriated to, and buried in, China as this was the wish of all 499 of them before death.

“My father wants the voyage completed so that the spirits lost at sea, ‘hungry ghosts’, can finally be at peace. This is so important in Chinese culture.”

When asked to clarify how these apparently contradictory positions could co-exist, Peter Sew Hoy didn’t respond.

They’re not the only people who have left Albert confused.

In August 2015 he met with then-Gisborne mayor and newly elected New Zealand Chinese Association (NZCA) president Meng Foon, and Foon praised the group’s work.

Foon added he personally supported recovering more artefacts from the wreck, and believed the Chinese community had a responsibility to return the miners’ remains to China if possible.

However, within weeks, speaking on behalf of the NZCA, Foon criticised the group for disturbing the wreck, later calling Albert, “deceptive”.

Foon, now the Race Relations Commissioner, says his initial support was based on his opinion at the time, but he subsequently consulted a wider group, and believes Albert should have approached the Chinese community before starting diving.

Albert remains slightly bemused by the sudden shift in support, and hints at the influence of Liu Shueng Wong and others.

And he is equally confused by some official comments and decisions.

Heritage New Zealand’s Northland manager, Bill Edwards, accepts the group have acted legally, applauds their skill and tenacity in salvaging objects, notes they consulted numerous people, and acknowledges the artefacts they retrieved were recovered in good faith to help identify the wreck.

But Edwards then refuses to deny Albert is a grave robber.

“How do you define a grave robber? A grave robber goes in and takes things without informing people about what they’re doing and has no process. So, if that’s the definition of a grave robber, then John Albert was certainly on the edge of it.”

And despite telling New Zealand Geographic in 2020 that “there was nothing covert” about the artefacts’ recovery, Edwards now describes it as, “a secretive little mission in a boat when no-one was looking”.

(The group have always used the boat of a well-known local fishing guide, made trips during the day, and stayed in the area, and claims they worked undercover are “absolute bullshit”, says Dave Moran.)

It’s an example of the fraught nature of the issue, where those involved tiptoe a delicate path, bounded by legality, ethics and cultural sensitivity. Beyond that, there are political, professional and reputational concerns.

Unfortunately, the Ventnor saga has frequently fallen victim to enthusiastic misinformation, exaggerated hearsay and easy slurs.

Edwards accurately encapsulates the entire situation in two words: “It’s tricky.”

But Albert points to the irony of his group being slammed by many in the Chinese community for recovering the artefacts, yet they are now prized by the same community as a crucial way to help tell the Ventnor story.

If they are so precious, why have they made it virtually impossible to retrieve more, Albert asks?

Another irony is that Heritage New Zealand’s publication of the wreck’s exact coordinates now allows any fisherman to easily locate it.

“They make it a historic wreck,” says Dave Moran, “but, hello, you can still throw an anchor on it and hook into it and basically pull it apart.”

Keith Gordon says such is the misinformation and misplaced antipathy towards the dive group, their efforts in confirming the Ventnor’s location and state have been almost totally written out of the official Ventnor narrative and history.

At the 2021 unveiling of a Ventnor memorial in Opononi, the group’s role wasn’t even mentioned, seemingly inconvenient players in a story they’d helped bring to life

That was one reason Gordon recently published a book about the wreck: SS Ventnor, Ghost Ship of the Hokianga.

In part, it was to set the record straight and set out their side of the story.

But it was also to pay tribute to the phenomenal effort to reach the Ventnor – the deepest shipwreck dived in New Zealand.

The preparation is extraordinary – divers carrying $80,000 of equipment will spend seven hours underwater, all for 20 minutes on the actual wreck – the rest is decompression time during a slow ascent.

Just the helium for the gas mix they breathe costs $6000 each dive.

Liu Shueng Wong labels the group “an amateur organisation – or not even an organisation”, and wants only “professionals” to visit the site, such as those who explored the Titanic.

Gordon says this shows an utter lack of understanding of the calibre of people involved, like Richard Harris and Craig Challen, who are among the few divers in the world capable of such exploration.

Gordon and Moran have recently returned from Croatia where they worked with international archaeologists on a 2000-year-old Roman shipwreck, and Gordon says the reality is, wrecks are almost always found by divers – not archaeologists, let alone bureaucrats who make decisions despite never visiting the site.

Gordon, whose wife was part-Chinese, as are his two children, hopes some in the Chinese community will read his book, but none of those spoken to by Stuff had, many saying they didn’t want to pay for it.

Ultimately, he hopes their work, and the artefacts they found, contribute to the story of early Chinese in New Zealand.

But Gordon, 84, stresses it's not just a Chinese story. There were Scots and English among the crew who died.

“There were Māori involved, and Pākehā, and Chinese. So the way I look at it, it’s a New Zealand story to be told.”

Where to from here?

Albert, Gordon and Moran plan to return to the wreck with a new ROV later this summer for more filming.

Liu Shueng Wong says she has “friendly spies” who will alert her to any activity.

If she hears Albert has gone out again, she plans to contact Meng Foon and Bill Edwards and tell them to visit him.

“It’s about making it difficult. If you make it more difficult, then people can't be bothered.”

The items recovered from the Ventnor have been through a convoluted bureaucratic process, which is ongoing, but are now held by the Crown, which paid Albert modest compensation for retrieving them.

(A common claim, repeated to Stuff by even a senior museum official, is that the artefacts were taken illegally and later seized by police. They were in fact taken legally, and voluntarily handed over to the Ministry for Culture and Heritage by Albert while ownership was decided, and are now being cared for by Te Papa.)

Te Roroa general manager Snow Tane describes diving on the Ventnor as akin to desecration of a wāhi tapu (sacred site).

“They can come to us, and we’ll say we don’t want them to dive unless they get the blessing of the Chinese, and then we would consider whether we would support it.”

Donald Sew Hoy just wants to “let sleeping dogs lie”.

The Ministry for Culture and Heritage is still consulting various groups about where the Ventnor artefacts may be displayed.

Heritage New Zealand has ultimate control over whether bones are removed, but Bill Edwards says they’ll be guided by the Chinese community.

Dave Moran and Keith Gordon are comfortable with whatever the Chinese community decides, but Moran notes many of New Zealand’s 2500 shipwrecks have human remains on board, and the Ventnor has been treated differently.

Moran, who has led commercial dive teams around the world, published Dive New Zealand magazine for 27 years, and managed Kelly Tarlton’s Underwater World, insists Albert should be allowed to complete his documentary.

“If it was [National] Geographic out here, they’d probably think, ‘oooh, this is very good.’ But because it’s old John Albert …”

“Old John Albert”, now 70, says he knows bones remain on the Ventnor – some were filmed on their last trip in 2020.

And he’s still determined to help them return to China.

“Because of all the raruraru (problems) that’s gone on around it, I’m now more determined to do my very best and get them taken home.”

To that end, he hopes to contact relatives of the miners in China, to balance the views of New Zealand Chinese who insist the wreck shouldn’t be touched.

“My one problem is money – I’ve run out.”

To date, Albert estimates he’s spent more than $500,000 on the project.

“In the old days, all my family and friends crossed the street when they saw me because they didn’t want to talk rugby with me.

“Now they cross the street because they don't want to give me any more money, because they’ve run out themselves.”

The longer it all takes, the more the Ventnor will succumb to swell and storm, the fewer the artefacts that will survive, the less the chance any human remains can ever be recovered, Albert says.

After 11 years, Albert realises that if the miners’ homeward journey is to be completed, he has to do it.

“I’ve spent too much time and too much of people’s time to stop now, and I don’t want to let down people who helped me.

“And I also feel that those people in that boat chose me to do what I’m doing – and I don't want to let them down.”