CANOE THAT SANK A SANDRINGHAM

AIRLINES have lost planes to many different causes, foul weather, terrorists, and just plain bad luck amongst them.

But Qantas lost a huge-for-its-day Sandringham double-deck flying boat in the-then New Hebrides’ Port Vila Harbour to a more bizarre cause: it was a dug-out canoe.

The Sandringham, a civil version of the wartime Sunderland with a vast 31-metre wingspan and named Tasman, flew services from Sydney to Noumea in New Caledonia and Vila and Santo in the New Hebrides.

When she flew out of Vila she’d do so with a great roar from her four massive engines and belches of grey-white smoke from their throaty exhausts; with her vast wings and bulky floats dangling off them, and water draining from her gleaming hull, she gave all the appearance of some great migrating snow-goose.

But one day in June 1951 Vila locals were horrified to see the Tasman make a violent near-90-degree turn while taxiing for take-off, and with her engine’s thundering uncharacteristically while still in the confined Inner Harbour, head straight for the shore.

There she slammed onto a beach, carving a deep furrow through the sand, and with propellers slowly whirring to a halt, came to rest. Her eight crew and nineteen passengers tumbled out uninjured to immediately begin scouring the Tasman’s hull.

They found it punctured in several places, with water pouring from these mortal wounds.

In his official report, Captain P.J.R. Shields said an outboard-powered dug-out canoe had sped without warning across his path, and in maneuvering the Tasman away from certain collision, she’d run onto an uncharted coral outcrop.

With alarm bells ringing to indicate water rushing into the hull, the quick-thinking Captain Shields had given all four engines full throttle, swinging the cumbersome Sandringham to her right, and running her up on the only beach available to him before she sank.

Deciding it impossible to repair the plane in Vila and fly it safely back to Australia, Qantas put the event down to an “an incident” and wrote the plane off; the massive engines, instrument panels and passenger seats were salvaged. What remained was left abandoned on the beach.

The New Hebrides in those far-off days prior to becoming the independent nation of Vanuatu, was run jointly by both the English and French under what was known as a ‘condominium,’ but to the locals a ‘pandemonium,’ and typically neither side now wanted to take responsibility for what to do with the remains of the Tasman.

Eventually after months of complaints about the eye-sore in such a prominent part of Vila’s picturesque harbour, she was unceremoniously towed out to the deepest part of the Inner Harbour, and with water again flooding into her breached hull, allowed to sink.

But to the very end she maintained a will to ‘fly,’ and when cut free from her tow-line, instead of sinking straight to the bottom, glided at a graceful 45-degrees to settle on the harbour floor behind what is now Iririki Island Resort.

There she was forgotten until, armed with depth sounders and a lot of patience, sport-divers Denny and Merrell Smith and their son Justin decided to go searching for her, in the hope she’d become a wreck-dive for visitors to Port Vila.

Their eventual success in 1978 put the old Tasman back on the map, and today she’s one of Vila’s most-popular sites for more-experienced divers.

Sydney scuba diver Michael McFadyen who has been down to the Tasman numerous times says she’s a fascinating dive with wings thick enough to swim into spaces in which life-rafts were once stored, and although in murky water 40-metres deep, still easily identifiable in silhouette as the beautiful flying boat she’d been, and in smaller detail up-close.

Interested divers who want to know more can contact him on www.michaelmcfadyenscuba.info

WING-NOTE: The Tasman carried the registration VH-EBW and other Qantas aircraft that later inherited this registration have also found themselves in the news: in November 1974, a Boeing 707-338C, VH-EBW, made headlines when a baby was born aboard a flight from Brisbane to Auckland, and in April 2000 with 300 passengers aboard, Boeing 747-300 VH-EBW had her right landing gear collapse while taxiing at Rome Airport.