KEY POINTS:
The photo depicts a scene that would have been replicated dozens of times along Wellington's Pencarrow Coast Road on the stormy day of April 10, 1968.
Fijian medical student Eroni Vaceucau, a tall man in his 20s wearing a life jacket, stands with a protective hand at the
back of a bedraggled-looking young woman, huddled in a raincoat.
Mr Vaceucau had just saved the woman's life, pulling her from the icy water and into a dinghy after the pair jumped into the sea from the foundering interisland ferry Wahine.
However, she never got the chance to thank him, and is now seeking the tall stranger who acted as a hero on a day she still remembers as terrifying.
Kate Watson (then McGibbon) was 19 and travelling alone on the ferry when it hit Barrett's Reef on the morning of April 10, 1968, sparking one of New Zealand's worst maritime disasters.
The Wahine sinking claimed 51 lives that day, with two others dying later as a result of injuries.
Now living in Queenstown, Mrs Watson said images of the 1912 Titanic sinking flashed through her mind as the storm raged around them.
"It was terribly frightening, horrific," she said. "We didn't know whether it was going to flip right over. We thought it was going to sink like the Titanic."
She met Mr Vaceucau on the deck and he told her to follow him into the sea. However, she had not put her life jacket on properly and it flipped over her head.
Mrs Watson said Mr Vaceucau pulled her into a dinghy, which eventually drifted to the Pencarrow Coast, where people were dying after being dashed on to the rocks.
It was a "huge, terrible sea" at Pencarrow, and she said they were lucky to have made it safely to shore.
Mr Vaceucau went back into the water to rescue a small boy off a rock, she said. He was later called a hero by the court of inquiry into the sinking.
Mrs Watson is in Wellington and will attend some of the commemorative services to be held today, the 40th anniversary of the disaster.
She would dearly love to track down Mr Vaceucau.
"I've made tentative inquiries. I've tried Google, and I've spoken to the Otago medical school. We should be able to find him."
Mrs Watson said that now, 40 years after the tragedy, she finds she has a mental block about much of whathappened that day.
While she has an article she wrote at the time detailing her experience, she said she could not write thatnow.
Hearing of various commemorations being held today was bringing a lot of memories back, she said.
"I'm just really lucky to be alive."
- NZPA
