Wahine - 50th Anniversary.

On 7th March 2018 New Zealand Post issued 6 stamps, miniature sheet and other philatelic materials on the occasion of 50th anniversary of Wahine tragedy.

When the Wahine departed Lyttelton Harbour at 8.40pm on 9 April 1968, there were 734 passengers and crew on board. The overnight voyage to Wellington was nothing new to Captain HG Robertson: the often-turbulent Cook Strait was familiar in all its ill-behaved weather and swell. However, on this evening no-one was prepared for the raging storm that occurred when Cyclone Giselle swept down the coast, colliding with a southerly front. The result was one of the worst recorded storms in New Zealand’s maritime history.

These stamps show the Wahine in all her glory and the sequence of how the day played out. The newspaper headings on the stamps are fictitious but acknowledge the role media played in telling the story.