The graveyard ship

The steamship SS Ventnor left Wellington on a spring day in 1902 headed for China.
The big ship was filled with people - 499 of them were already dead.
Following the wave of Chinese immigrants coming to New Zealand hoping to work hard and find their fortune in the gold fields - mainly in Otago, came efforts to repatriate the bodies of those who had died on foreign soil.
A first shipment with over 200 bodies had already been successful.
The Ventnor had been chartered by the Cheong Sing Tong benevolent society, looking to return the bodies to their homeland. The rest of her cargo was listed as "5,347 tons of coal for the 144 sacks and 22 bales of fungus, one bale of tow and one bale of flax".
On board were 13 crew and nine Chinese coffin attendants, part of the ritual for returning the bodies.
But by 12.30am on October 27, 1902, the Ventnor had become stuck on a reef off Taranaki. While the ship got free, water was pouring into her hold.
Wellington had no shipyard that could take her and the Captain, Henry Ferry, opted to try for Auckland.
When her pumps failed to contain the water she began to sink off the Hokianga Heads and the order was given to abandon the ship.
Three lifeboats made it to safety while one - with the Captain board, capsized. The bodies - in metal-lined coffins - sank with the ship.
Months later some of the coffins - about 33 - began to be washed ashore. But not the metal lined ones. A number of remains, in normal coffins, had been taken on board in Wellington.
A number were buried by local Northland Māori tribes creating a bond between two cultures world apart, but with a similar philosophy about human remains. However, where exactly they are, is now lost from memory.
Among those bodies on the Ventnor was Choie (sometimes called Charles) Sew Hoy who was the president of the society helping repatriate the remains. A successful merchant, he had helped charter the ship and with the exhumations of hundreds of the dead. He had died shortly before the ship sailed.
The exhumations themselves had caused a great deal of fuss. The European belief of not disturbing the dead clashed with the Chinese need to take their people home.
The remains of the ship were only found and identified less than 10 years ago. It is one of the deepest wrecks in New Zealand maritime history and now a heritage site.