“Vaite” Lost
p. 30 · Read in the full issue
Wrecked in French Oceania After 41 Years' Service
Prom Our Own Correspondent
I,™ , Papeete, Dec. 1.
IHE famous schooner “Vaite”, known ' he £ e for 40 years > has been wrecked in the Tuamotus.
The Tuamotu Islands have long ago been designated on maps as the Danger ous Archipelago. This vast barrier of atolls, coral reefs and strong, erratic currents—to the east of Tahiti—has been the last resting place of ships since man kind began to navigate these waters.
In the legends of such mighty navi gators as Hiro and Rata the perils of the luamotu barrier appear in the forms of the great urua (cavalla fish) “which looked like land”; the pahua-tu-tahi (unique tridacna) that swallowed ships and passengers; the great a’u (bill fish) that symbolized hidden reefs; and
matutu-ta’ota’o, the terrible demon bird that darkened the sky and drove ships to destruction.
But there was one ship of modern times that seemed immune to the dangers and the demons of the Danger ous Archipelago—the “Vaite”. During 41 years, the “Vaite” navigated the seas of Central Polynesia, until she became an institution to dwellers on faraway islands to whom she brought the mails and news and merchandise of the outer world.
The “Vaite”—a 93-tons schooner—was built in 1898 by C. and W. Bailey, of Auckland, for Thomas Harries, of Raro tonga.
Captain Harries was himself something of an institution among the islands of Central Polynesia, in the last decades of the nineteenth and early years of the twentieth centuries.
Later, the ownership of the “Vaite” passed to the house of A. B. Donald From that time to the present, the ship has been in the service of that companv. in the waters of the Cook Group and of French Oceania.
On October 18 of this year, the fate which befalls, sooner or later, all ships that navigate among the Tuamotu Islands, overtook the “Vaite”. She lies high on the reef of Raroia—Latitude 10 deg. South and Longitude 142 deg. 20 min West. The solid keel of heart of kauri wood broken and her hull damaged be yond repair, this finely built schooner has come to the end of her long and honour able service.
“Vaite” on the reef at Raroia.