Author(s): Bruce E. Collins

NZ Non Fiction

On the cold, wet Monday night of December 16, 1929, the Union Steam Ship Company steamer T.S.S Manuka hit a reef off Long Point (Irihuka) in the Catlins district of South Otago.

Awaiting one hundred and seventy-three passengers was a long night in an open boat of an unfamiliar and deserted coastline.

Once the news of the wreck spread this normally quiet corner of New Zealand became the focus of national attention. It would not be until the Wahine disaster in 1968 that this many people were shipwrecked.