Tarawera

— by R.F. Keam.

Published by the author. $169.00 (inc GST and packing & postage within New Zealand).

Reviewed by Philip Bradley.

"He says the new light he throws on the phantom canoe said to have been seen on Lake Tarawera just before the eruption could surprise some people". Thus the Dominion Sunday Times of 16 March 1986 whetted my appetite for a book written by Ron Keam, Professor of Physics at Auckland University. It was to be published to coincide with the centenary of the Tarawera eruption that June.

However, the book, which deals with far more than spectral craft, wasn't launched until 30 May 1988 (the 102nd anniversary of the canoe's sighting). It was delayed because Professor Keam decided to publish it himself to ensure a book of the quality he wanted. His courage is admirable; both as a piece of publishing and historical scholarship the result is magnificent. (My only reservation concerns the type face used on the dust jacket.) Having 472 pages (297mm x 210mm) the book is of a size and weight which makes it uncomfortable to read in bed or sitting in an armchair. This is a pity because the 1886 cataclysm in the Rotomahana district and its effects on the surrounding countryside and the nearby inhabitants is an absorbing subject. Many imagine the eruption was localised on Mt Tarawera. In fact, the eruption, or eruptions, stretched from the northern end of Tarawera to almost Rainbow Mountain in the South, a distance of 15 km. Keam has assembled all the material to give a complete picture of the event and its historical milieu. While Keam is ready with pertinent comments, he wisely leaves much of the narrative to eye witness reports. There were numerous illustrations, excellently reproduced, and most were new to me. They include some fascinating artists' impressions.

As a Skeptic I found the book well worth the wait. It offers the best account, or rather account Of accounts, of New Zealand's most famous ghost story. It is quite unique in the detail of its analysis. Keam takes a close and overdue look at the mythology engendered by the sighting of the phantom canoe.

The event, which took place early one clear morning at the end of autumn, was as follows: A party of tourists is being ferried across Lake Tarawera by some local Maoris to the landing point for visiting the Pink and White Terraces—'the Eighth Wonder of the World". The voyagers see travelling across the lake in the same direction as themselves, but some distance away, what is identified as a Maori war canoe. It is hailed but there is no response. No such canoe is known to the Maoris in the group. The Maoris consider the canoe to be a ghost. Ten days later the surrounding area is devastated and the Eighth Wonder of the World is destroyed.

It would be surprising if such an occurrence didn't engender a mythology.

Consider this extract from Geoff Conly's book entitled Tarawera; The Destruction of the Pink and White Terraces (a book which was published in the time for the eruption centenary).

"Of all the phenomena, mythological and natural, which could to some extent be seen to forecast the major natural disaster which was the Tarawera eruption the two independent Maori-Pakeha sightings of the phantom war canoe with its dog-headed crew and the symbols of death in the huia and white heron feathers [in the crew's hair], remains the most puzzling."

Having read Tarawera one can make the following observations:

1. There is no good evidence that there were two sightings.
2. The dog-headed crew was not reported by any of the European witnesses, only in three of the five guide Sophia accounts of the sighting. (In one of these the crew turn into dogs completely.)
3. The feathers were first mentioned by James Cowan in his 1925 "Fairy Folk Tales of the Maori". Keam wryly remarks "One notes with what increasing clarity the passage of time was allowing the details of the (canoe's) occupants to have been discerned."

Interestingly, one of the witnesses, George Sise, was quoted in the (Dunedin) Evening Herald as seeing, among other things, a "warrior chief with kaka feathers in his hair". The following day a denial from Sise appeared in the Otago Daily Times saying, among other things, "there was absolutely nothing in evidence to show they were warriors...No warrior chief with feathers or anything else in his head-gear was seen". (It seems that even in those days the press had lax standards when the supernatural was involved.) Sise makes it clear the canoe was too far away for such details to be seen. He said the canoe's occupants could have been "apple women or nurse girls".

The canoe was claimed by Sise to have been half a mile away "or possibly more". (The Evening Herald quoted him as saying the canoe was a quarter mile away, but this was one of the things he corrected the following day in the Otago Daily Times.) A second-hand, 34-years-after-the-event account also says the canoe was half a mile away. (This is the Warbrick account, the chief source of the two boat idea, so it should be regarded with caution.) Distances in the middle of a lake must be hard to gauge. But even if it had been a quarter mile away the canoe must be one of the most long distance ghost sightings ever recorded. Where was common-sense in all this? How could people discern feathers at all over such a distance? My own experiments suggest it would be impossible even with binoculars. However, I'm prepared to accept the flash of sunlight on the paddles (as reported by both Mr Sise and his wife) could have been visible even at half a mile—and without binoculars.

A shout would travel a considerable distance over water on a calm day. (And it was a calm day). Yet the canoe may simply have been too distant for its occupants to have heard the shouting from the tourist boat. A recreation of the events of 31st of May 1886 might provide the answer.

The distance factor could also explain the wide divergences in the various accounts as to the number of people seen in the canoe. Like the gospel record of the discovery of

~-the empty tomb the discrepancies in the accounts of the phantom canoe sighting are remarkable. There are others worth touching upon.

1. Sise said ""We were startled by a peculiar cry from an old Maori woman... Looking in the direction at which she pointed, we were startled by the appearance of a large canoe". Warbrick said "One of the passengers happened to look across the water to the Waitangi arm. "My goodness!" he exclaimed "look at that big canoe coming along there."

   (Of course, this could be the sighting from the putative second boat.)

2. Sise said the course of the canoe was "parallel" or "nearly parallel" to the tourists; Sophia said "The native boat was always directed at an angle away from ours"; Warbrick said "The strange craft was approaching the boats (sic)... The course of the canoe and the boats converged until..."
3. Sise said the canoe was apparently racing them. Why he thought this is not clear. Sophia's comment confuses rather than clarifies. She said ""When we rowed quicker they did the same and when we stopped they also did". A funny sort of race.

4. Sise I: 'As the (tourist) canoe rounded the bend in the direction of Rotomahana the (phantom canoe) shot out of view in a north easterly direction."; Sise II: "The boats continued side by side until the tourists turned into the arm of the lake leading towards Rotomahana, when the stranger, keeping up Tarawera, was lost to view."; Sise III: "...the craft... swept round a jutting headland and disappeared."; Mrs Sise: "we turned towards Lake Rotomahana and lost sight of the boat."; Dr Ralph: "the object was lost sight of somehow." (Ralph did not see the canoe, being unable to turn around); Sophia (a la Thomas): "'and then it disappeared."; Sophia (a la Mann): "... boat arriving at a spot beneath a certain tree...mysteriously disappeared."; Warbrick: "Then all at once the war-canoe vanished. It melted away like a mirage. The Maoris' belief was confirmed. It was a phantom canoe."

   (Roman numerals refer to the different interviews Mr Sise gave)

It should be noted that the last two of these quotations stressing the mystery of the disappearance are also the least contemporary with the event. The Sises saw nothing mysterious about the disappearance, indeed they saw nothing mysterious about the canoe.? Still it is interesting that the naturalistic explanation of the "jutting headland" did not emerge until the third Sise account.

In essence, the mystery is that what looked like a war canoe was observed, yet no such canoe was known to the local Maoris, nor to McRae, probably the European most familiar with the district. Dr Ralph reported that the canoe was 2 feet above the water. One wonders how this could have been gauged from such a distance. Estimates-of the canoe's length are, strangely, not recorded. Guide Sophia said there was a large canoe at Rotomahana, but this seems to offer no basis for an explanation, although Lakes Rotomahana and Tarawera are less than 1km apart and are connected by a stream.

The European accounts report that the Maoris were "struck dumb with astonishment" or "immediately became terrified". It is not clear how authentic was the Maori tradition of a spectral canoe and whether it involved the ferrying of the souls of the dead to the mountain of the dead (Conly). Certainly the canoe appeared to be heading in the direction of Mt Tarawera, a Maori burial place. However, the idea of a boat ferrying souls of the dead sounds Greek to me. My reading is that although the sighting was astonishing its significance may not have become apparent until the matter had been fully discussed with other locals that evening. No doubt the malaise of the local Maori people (one of the strengths of Keam's book is the detail with which this is described) and the weird natural phenomena encountered by the tourist party that day (surges in the lake level and unusual thermal activity) coloured the interpretation, which came to be accepted, that it was a bad omen.

In the appendix Keam presents a possible resolution of the "puzzle of the canoe sighting". His ideas, as he admits, "seem plausible rather than anything more definite". They are closely related to the weird natural phenomena on that day. Its suggestion that two small canoes may have been involved is ingenious and could help explain the variation in the numbers seen in the phantom canoe—even the change in its size reported in one of the more outre guide Sophia accounts. The ideas are beguiling—although perhaps one should insist on more documentation of the Maori use of gun powder as a means of signalling and of the practice of embellishing canoes with manuka and suchlike.

The canoe will always be a mystery. The problems are these: :

1. There was no written account of the sighting by eye witnesses until after the eruption. Claims that the canoe was sketched have no corroboration and at any rate no

• Adding to the impression of European nonchalance at the sighting Mrs Sise wrote "Dr Ralph didn't even look at it". Dr Ralph, however, was somehow so seated in the boat that he was unable to see the canoe. Dr Ralph was 73 and evidently not very fit, but it is curious that given the singularity of the event and the Maori response to it he was unable or unwilling even to sneak a glimpse.

sketch is known to have survived. A garbled, second-hand account appeared in an Auckland paper the day after the eruption. Conly, and also Robyn Jenkin in "New Zealand Ghost Book", quote the same paragraph from what they say is a letter written by Mrs Sise-to her son on the night of the sighting. Simply by quoting the entire letter Keam shows this is preposterous—it makes reference to the eruption. It could have been written decades after the event (and also seems unlikely to have been written to any of the correspondent's children).

2. There were only seven accounts that are with certainty near contemporary with the event: the series of four newspaper interviews with Mr Sise, a letter written by Mrs Sise, a statement by Dr Ralph, and one by guide Sophia (not involving dogs). The Sise and Sophia versions were all reported accounts and, as we have seen, one of the Sise interviews was quite inaccurate in parts. And Dr Ralph was recording the reports and reactions of his fellow travelers.

A book in which one might expect to see a serious attempt at assessing the story is Robyn Jenkin's "New Zealand Ghost Book" Not so. The book turns out to be a quite uncritical collection of ghost stories. Regarding the guide Sophia versions Jenkin remarks "Her version (sic) is so different from those of the Europeans that it almost falls into the realm of fantasy". The logic of this is difficult but it may be an attempt at cultural sensitivity. Jenkin also accepts the two boat idea. Her book is illustrated with a picture of Guide Kate, whom Warbrick said was in the second boat. Jenkin says "It is from (Sophia's) boat that most of the eyewitness accounts were to come" (emphasis added). Could she cite one account by an eyewitness who was not in Sophia's boat?

While we may have to accept that the mystery is insoluble, we can be grateful that Keam's authoritative work will make inexcusable the perpetuation of errors (some of them picturesque, admittedly) in modern accounts of the sighting.

Take, for example, the article by Nigel Coventry in The Dominion of 9 September 1984. He says "a large Maori canoe appeared out of the morning mist. The warriors were in full formation...their heads were bowed and their hair adorned with white heron feathers". The last sentence is lifted from Cowan's book (but hey, what about the huia feathers!). Both Conly and Jenkin cite longer extracts from Cowan's book as if it were an accurate account. Keam is surely right in suggesting Cowan was inspired by Kennett Watkins' painting in the Auckland Art Gallery. An ineffective black and white reproduction of the painting illustrates Cowan's chapter on the canoe. The full colour reproduction in Keam's book shows the painting to be a superb depiction of occult horror, but with its moonlight and fiery glow in the background it is clearly of a different apparition of the canoe to that seen on 31/5/1888. The morning mist referred to by Coventry is also mythical. Keam points out that the reliably near-contemporary accounts all say the air was clear. The mist comes from the account of Mrs Sise and could have been written decades after the event.

A recreation of the sighting could determine the visual effects of a real canoe or canoes over long distances. Such experiments may be considered sacrilegious by some. The Dominion Sunday Times article quoted at the beginning of this review tried to make much of the objections by a descendant of the Maori people who were devastated during the eruption. He was angered by what he called "the flood of books jumping on the commemoration bandwagon" and, prejudging Keam's book, was tired of "Maori spiritual beliefs, being dismissed". I have no qualms about investigation such an event as the phantom canoe. It was supposedly seen by Europeans; It is part of European culture. dn 11 April 1987 The Evening Post reviewed D.M. Stafford's The Founding Years in Rotorua. The phantom canoe takes up two brief paragraphs in the book which has over 400 pages of text. Yet the reviewer saw fit to refer to the incident and the sub-editor saw fit to headline the review—

"Phantom canoe heralded quake". The canoe is irresistible!)

When I wrote to Prof Keam to enquire about his book's progress I mentioned a booklet on the eruption which I had kept as a souvenir of a childhood visit to Rotorua. On checking the booklet I was amused to find its author was none other than R F Keam. Ron Keam's interest in the Tarawera eruption began fifty years ago when as a child he encountered the story of the phantom canoe and visited the buried village. I am pleased that "darn'd canoe", as George Sise came to call it in his third interview, has been so seminal.

The book is expensive, but it is excellent value. If you cannot invest in this book urge your library to do so.