The stories of the storm come out of that dark night half a century ago like something out of a Melville novel; a thrashing maelstrom, raging surf, and tearing winds that frayed moorings, left boats adrift in the harbour, cut communications lines and left the Hunter ravaged.
The forecast 40-knot winds on that fateful night in May 1974 had set many of the ships near the harbour to flight, heading to sea to escape the encroaching tempest, but the 57-year-old captain of the Norwegian freight Sygna had chosen to stay.
40 knots were not beyond his ship's tolerance, and he reasoned that the 53,000-tonne carrier, waiting to sail a load of Hunter Valley coal to Europe, could ride out the storm.
He had missed the NSW Weather Bureau's gale warning for waters south of Kempsey in the mid-afternoon, but the forecast had been the same for the five days since he had arrived off the Newcastle coast from Japan. As the evening set in, the gusts had barely passed 35 knots, but the worst was coming. The Sygna dragged its anchor at about 9.30pm on Saturday, May 25, but Captain Lunde had the cable recovered, set a watch for the night and went below to sleep.
Across town, Tony King was preparing for a trip to Sydney early on Sunday morning. He had arranged a cab to pick him up from his apartment on Union Street.
When he woke around 5am Sunday and made for the cab, all hell had broken loose.
"Garbage bins were whizzing past, head-high, and horizontal," he told Topics, "It was bad."
A 19-year-old had drowned at Terrigal after his car was swept into the water at a campsite under a surging swell. And on Stockton Beach, the massive bulk carrier had run aground in the bight. By 1am the anchor let go and the ship was adrift. Captain Lunde gave orders to weigh the anchor but it was too late. The winds were ripping at 130 kilometres per hour.
The ship bounced on the bottom of Stockton Bight at least twice before it was pushed ashore and many believe it was one of these knocks that put the main engines out of action.
Unable to turn the ship's flailing head to the wind, Captain Lunde gave orders for a full starboard turn. A few minutes later, at 2.15am, Sygna was aground on Stockton beach.
The crew of 28 men and two women - mostly from the Bergen district in Norway - were not in immediate danger. Captain Lunde had already made some contact with the Newcastle pilot cutter and he also sent a telegraph message to his shipping agents in Newcastle. He wanted help to tow his ship, which he was not yet ready to abandon.
After 4am the Sygna fired a red distress flare which was seen at Nobbys and which helped locate the stricken ship. Captain Lunde again requested tugs at 5am, but was told the bar was too dangerous for tugs to leave port.
By 7.30am on Sunday, May 26, authorities found the ship had broken in the ordeal and appeared to be disintegrating. Oil was pouring out of the carcass of twisted steel.
Attempts to save the crew by lifeboat failed before a helicopter was called in from Williamtown RAAF base.
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Later, in a mammoth salvage operation undertaken by Kintoku Yamada of Japan, the front section of the doomed ship was removed and the aft was left in its grave. The story became part of Newcastle's maritime history, memories of which were conjured up decades later when the Pasha Bulker ran aground in a fateful storm on the other side of the Nobbys break wall.
Fifty years after that tempestuous night, Mr King - who went on to become the one-time Karuah Chamber of Commerce president - was rifling through some old Super 8 footage when he made a discovery.
Buried in his archives was a short clip of rare home footage shot, he thinks, around 1975 or '76 showing the wasted wreck of the Sygna on the Stockton sand, still with a gantry and pulley system set up that was once used to try to reach the vessel.
Mr King remembers riding the dunes on beach buggies each weekend and thinks the footage, which shows him scaling the gantry, was probably shot on one of those outings.
The wreck of the Sygna has since disintegrated, but the storm that shares its name and the rescue mission to save the crew has become indelibly etched in the Hunter's history.
- This article first appeared in the Newcastle Herald.
