The river walker

For just over a year, New Zealanders were fascinated by a tightrope walker who distinguished himself from other entertainers by walking across our rivers.
Senor Vertelli - sometimes called the Australian Blondin (after Charles Blondin who famously walked across Niagara Falls) - came to New Zealand in 1867 to entertain. His plan was to string wires to buildings, walk up them and perform tricks.
But during his visit to Whanganui a new idea came to him. He would walk across the rope wire of the river ferry.
Vertelli was, in fact, John Morcom.
His father Samuel Morcom had come to Australia in September 1847 on the Rajah to be a mining captain in charge of a large group of miners who then departed in search of gold. But he ended up in Adelaide running Morcom’s Temperance Hotel. Samuel was a Quaker.
HIs family, wife Mary and children followed him out from Cornwall in England in 1849.
John Morcom (Vertelli was a stage name taken from a guest at the hotel) was born on June 12, 1840. He got his first taste of gymnastics at school then learned rope walking at Joe Worley’s gymnasium.
He began performing, often stringing a wire across natural features like gorges.
In 1867, Vertelli came to New Zealand, beginning in Hokitika where he strung a wire across Revell Street from the Commercial Hotel, walking it several times, sometimes pushing a wheelbarrow or blindfolded.
He went to Nelson and Wellington, picking landmark buildings to perform at.
Then in October 1867 he came to Whanganui. And for the first time he opted to walk across the river. It was 900 metres and he used the existing ferry cable. His initial performance at a building had had fewer spectators than he had liked and the walk across the river drew quite the crowd.
So at 3pm in the afternoon on October 17 he calmly strolled across the river. And then back.
It was more impressive because only a few months before James Cooke from the Great World Circus had tried and declared it impossible.
Vertelli said he would do it walking backwards - or carrying someone who could swim - presumably in case he dropped that person. The Whanganui Chronicle noted that no one was daring enough - or foolish enough - to do it with him.
It began a change to his tour. Where he could he would use natural features in his performance.
In Lyttelton he walked across the Waimakariri River - which he did, before diving into the water and swimming ashore.
The only misstep was on January 18, 1868, when he tried to cross Timaru’s Saltwater Creek but fell in when the rope failed.
By March 1868 he was back in Australia and spent many years travelling and performing before going to Japan and China in 1875 where he toured for over a year.
He also married Annie in about 1870 and had six children, none of whom survived past 1900.
He and his family went to America in 1877 based in West Berkeley, California until his health began to fail in the 1890’s ending up with a tightrope walker’s worst nightmare - paralysed feet.
Morcom/Vertelli died January 8, 1914 and is buried in West Berkeley in California.
Photo by Sean Benesh.