Dean Lupo Anaki was born in Niue in 1942. As a young boy he would watch the United Steamship Company ships visit ‘the rock’ and as there’s no harbour in Niue, ships like the MV Matua and MV Tofua would anchor in the open sea and lighters would ferry goods back and forth to the wharf at Alofi, the main town. Dean dreamed that one day he would work on one of those ships and be able to travel as well as return home to visit his family. A visit from the Tofua in 1957 was the opportunity Dean had been looking for and he booked passage to New Zealand, at first working on the railways out of Wellington before an uncle helped him join the Merchant Marine as an Ordinary seaman.

Dean gained a Certificate of Competency as an Able seaman which meant increased responsibilities such as quartermaster duties which would see him assigned to bridge watches and steering. Heavy weather is an expectation at some point in open sea travel but one event in particular made a huge impact on the young seaman while he was on bridge duties. On March 12^th 1963 the Matua received a hurricane warning en route from Suva to Nukuʻalofa in Tonga. Captain Peter Bennett was the Master and he made the decision not to enter Nukuʻalofa but to hove to, west of Tofua Island, 155km north of Nukuʻalofa. The ship was not able to avoid the worst of the storm however and pitched and rolled in ferocious winds and high seas. Cabin passengers were confined to their rooms but the deck passengers had to be shepherded to the ship’s lounge. Many were seasick and terrified and therefore incapacitated, forcing the crew to drag and carry people to safety. Captain Bennett described the hurricane as the worst storm he had ever experienced. Dean recalls wrapping both arms around the binnacle at one point when the ship was hit by towering waves that dumped water down the funnels. The damage to the ship was extensive; deck fittings were torn apart and washed away, bridge awnings blew overboard, aerials and steel ladders were left twisted and demolished. One injury was sustained by a cabin passenger who fell from their bunk and suffered a broken back but otherwise the crew and passengers were safe and when the weather finally abated, the ship was diverted to Apia for repairs and to deliver the injured passenger to hospital.¹

In February 1970 Dean was working on a Seatrans ship, the MV Aotearoa, heading for Tokyo when they received a mayday call. A ship was in distress off the east coast of Honshu and the Aotearoa was in range. Dean was again on watch and steering duties but this time in snowing conditions and rough seas. The mayday had come from a Japanese ship, the  California Maru, a bulk ore carrier that had been hit by two freak waves during a gale and was foundering. The Aotearoa was half the size of the carrier but diverted and once they reached the ship, Dean’s job was to hold the Aotearoa steady while crew and lifeboats were dispatched to rescue the 25 men on the California Maru. Lifeboat teams brought most of the crew back to the Aotearoa and using cargo nets draped over the side of the ship, crew scrambled up and were hauled onto the deck. 

The Captain of the California Maru had made the decision to stay with his ship however and had tied himself to equipment in the bridge. The New Zealand and Japanese crews could only watch as the ship sank taking the captain with it. The Aotearoa carried on to Yokohama where they were welcomed by hundreds of people at the port celebrating the rescue of the crew with gifts for MV Aotearoa crew who were also given keys to the city. 

These experiences have left an indelible mark on Dean, and in one sense he has turned to creativity to express the emotional impact they have left him with. According to Dean, sailors are painters. He learned to paint from other men on the ships he worked on and the sailors taught one another about brushwork, paint types, and skills like palette-knife painting. They would buy supplies when they reached port, and oil paints are still his preferred medium. Typically referred to as midshipman’s crafts, the sailors would also buy clam shells in ports like Suva and paint the ships they were working on, on the interior of the shells. Dean’s painting of the MV Matua during the hurricane of 1963 is powerfully expressive and captures the drama of the night. Dean described the ship as falling sideways off the waves and unlike many ship paintings of the midshipman style, the ship is not in profile on a calm sea. The depiction of the ship itself, painted from memory, is only a small part of the image, it’s the feeling of upheaval and power that the painting communicates.

Conditions for sailors on the ships were shaped by the Seamen’s Union who were one of the most influential unions in New Zealand at one time. Maritime sailors were clearly distinguished from naval sailors. They did not wear a uniform but wore their own clothes, typically jeans, t shirts and denim jackets. Often buying Levis and Wranglers and other labels not available in New Zealand at the time because they would sometimes stop in Pago Pago in American Samoa. Seamen’s union rules also stated that whatever food the captain was served was also served to the crew. Dean remembered the delegate on many of his trips as being Harry Roe who has ephemera in the seamen’s union papers in the National Library. Harry’s photographs and their pencilled annotations give a less than positive image of the Matua in 1965. A worn and fraying fore stay, over loaded decks that were under-secured. A ‘Heath Robinson’ solution to removing fumes from the engine room where engine crew worked in foggy conditions caused by exhaust gases from generators. In the late 1960s and early 70s the Union Steam Ship Co was selling its fleet, the Matua was sold in 1968 and the Tofua in 1973. Dean was offered ship work in Sydney where he took his young family but found it as lucrative to drive buses and then taxis. His life at sea was over but the memories and experiences of those times cast a long and affectionate shadow of companionship, hard work, fair pay and conditions, adventure, and the sea.

Fakaue lahi to Dean Anaki for sharing some of the stories of his time at sea. You can see more of Dean’s story in Tāmaki Herenga Waka – Stories of Auckland.

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