SS Penguin SOS

By Adrienne Frater

Set in New Zealand in the 20's / 30's , a young boy goes to live with his aunt and cousin following the death of his father. He begins work on a school history project which uncovers a family tragedy and a hero in the household. 

Based on the true sinking of the SS Penguin, a sometimes forgotten NZ maritime disaster, and on the reallife heroine of the day, Ada Hannan.

Sadly, author Adrienne Frater died early in 2020, after a battle with cancer. She has previously published novels and stories in the NZ School Journal as well as a collection of short stories. She is a descendant of Ada Hannam and the character of Jack is based on her father.

• Language: English
• Publisher: OneTree House Publishers
• Release date: Jul 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781990035913

Book preview

Chapter one

– Secrets –

Rain raps.

Lightning flashes.

Thunder rolls.

I haul the blankets over my head and jam my fingers in my ears. I’m brave about most things, but not thunder and lightning. If I was home, by now I’d be in Mum’s bed. But I’m not home and Aunt Ada is not the cuddling kind.

More lightning. More thunder. I can’t understand how Wally, my older cousin, snores on. The house could be burning round him and he’d not wake. But it isn’t just storms that keep me awake. During the day I’m so busy with school and playing footie and helping out in my aunt’s boarding house, I have no time to think about Dad. My father died in the influenza epidemic. The picture theatre he managed had been closed down and as he had time on his hands, he helped nurse those who were ill. He was one of the last to die from it in our town.

You’re my man now, Mum had said when she found me crying in the woodshed. I haven’t cried since. I want you to go to school in town, Mum had said. It’s not for long – just until I get back on my feet. Mum and Gwennie are staying with one of Mum’s cousins in the country now.

How long is long? I wonder. I’ve been with Aunt Ada for months now. My aunt is my mother’s sister. They’re not at all alike. Mum laughs a lot and likes a good gossip but Aunt Ada keeps herself to herself.

Wally’s dad, my Uncle Joe, is dead too. He drowned before Wally was born, Mum told me, but she wouldn’t say any more. I can’t understand why Aunt Ada doesn’t talk about her husband. Mum and I talk about Dad all the time.

When Dad was alive, we’d have friends in for sing-songs round the piano. I’d hang around, hoping I wouldn’t be spotted and sent to bed. When the singing was over Mum would pour tea and Dad would pass around the fruit cake. They’d be talking away, then suddenly they’d lower their voices and look grim. It’s past your bedtime, Dad would say and he’d shoo me out the door.

The next thunder clap sounds like a bomb! I leap out of bed and tear downstairs as if a tiger is at my heels. It’s late and the boarders have all gone to bed but I know Aunt Ada will be where she always is in a storm. She’ll be sitting with her back to the window and will have drawn the rocking chair close to the fire. And she’ll be knitting. The knitting my aunt does during storms is not the normal kind of knitting – it’s frantic!

But tonight Aunt Ada is not knitting. She’s sitting in her rocking chair, holding the framed photograph that usually hangs on the wall. I can’t sleep, I say from the doorway, but she doesn’t hear. A gust of wind rattles the windows. When the next thunder clap sounds, I scoot across the room and dive into my aunt’s lap.

Aunt Ada is the tallest woman I know and the strongest. She can heave sacks of coal as well as any man and, as I said, she isn’t usually the cuddling kind. But she doesn’t like storms either, for tonight she lets the photograph drop into her lap and for the first time since I’ve been here, she hugs me. It’s a bony hug and she holds me so tight I can barely breathe.

There there, Jack, she says, rocking me. Don’t fret; it’s just a silly old storm.

You hate storms too, I say.

I go back there when it’s stormy, she says, looking down at the photograph. It shows an upturned white, wooden boat. It’s not a large boat and the number four is painted on the side. There are rocks in the picture and the waves look scary. It’s an ugly picture. My mother hangs pretty calendar pictures on our walls and an embroidery sampler she did at school. But not Aunt Ada.

My head buzzes. Boat... sea... storm... storm... sea... boat.

Aunt Ada sighs, then looks away. She goes to make cocoa. I love my aunt’s cocoa. She lets me have two spoons of sugar, while at home I can only have one.

You do hate storms, don’t you? I ask again, stirring in the sugar and hoping she doesn’t think I’m being cheeky. She spends a long time drinking her cocoa and I wait for her to say more.

But it doesn’t happen.

It stops raining.

It stops blowing.

There’s no more lightning, no more thunder and Aunt Ada hangs the picture of the boat back on the wall and picks up her knitting.

Off to bed with you, she says. And straight to sleep or you’ll be late for school.

Chapter two

– The Essay –

My cousin has a second-hand bike and he gets up early to do a paper run. It’s a large bike and most days he dubs me on the handlebars to school. This is going to be Wally’s last year in school, although my aunt doesn’t know that yet. Tall and strong like my aunt, Wally plans to go to sea when he leaves school and has made me promise not to tell. Wally is not a chatty cousin and often doesn’t bother to answer my questions. (I ask heaps of questions.) In the same way that Aunt Ada is the opposite of my mother, I’m the opposite of Wally – I talk a lot, read a lot and like to write stories. My dad was always reading.

This house has an inside dunny, but in Picton our dunny was in the yard. Dad would spend ages in the dunny then walk out with a book stuffed down his shirt. I guess I’m a lot like my dad.

Tell me about the boat in the picture in the kitchen, I ask Wally. I wriggle further back on the bar of his bike.

What about it?

Your mum took it down last night during the storm.

What storm?

The one you slept through.

Wally pedals through a puddle. We laugh as the spray wets our socks. We wear a uniform to school. In Picton, I went to school barefoot and wore what I liked but at Queen’s Park School I wear lace-up shoes, long socks and even a tie. Wally’s and my socks are hand-knitted and we loathe them. If we wet them on our way to school it gives us an excuse to take them off, but we always make sure to wear them home. Like me, I suspect Wally is a bit scared of my aunt.

My favourite subject at school is English. My teacher, Miss Bone, is so skinny if she stood sidewise you’d mistake her for a plank of wood. I like Miss Bone and I reckon she likes me.

I sit at the front and am always the first to get out my exercise book and pencil case. Dad made me the pencil case. Mum had told me that when she gave it to me, all carefully wrapped, for my eleventh birthday. It’s two storied and has a sliding wooden lid. I keep my rubber and pencil in the bottom part and my pen in the top. In this school the children learn to write with ink when they are in standard five. Miss Bone says I have a way to go. My writing is so blotchy it’s illegible, so most times I write in pencil.

Jack Cook, did you hear me? Miss Bone stops beside my desk.

Sorry.

Daydreaming again?

I am daydreaming. I’m dreaming of Dad planing the wood for my pencil case. (I think it’s macrocarpa). I can see his hand move back and forth. I can smell wood-shavings and linseed oil.

I sit up straight with a jerk. I can’t seem to help daydreaming. Most kids live in the now but I live in the then. My second favourite subject is history as I like to figure what happened in the past. Not just in the time of the Picts and Celts and Romans; I like to ponder what happened before I was born.

Josephine, tell Jack what the topic of the essay is, says Miss Bone with a sigh.

We have to write about a hero or heroine, Josephine says, smirking. Josephine is my rival. Sometimes she gets the top mark and sometimes I do. Miss Bone sets us an essay every two weeks. The last two essays Josephine got ten out of ten and I only got nine.

What are you going to write about? she asks me at playtime. The senior playground is divided into two. The boys play on the top field and the girls play on the tar-seal. The only common ground is a wooden form placed in between. Sometimes the standard six boys sit there with the standard six girls. Although Josephine is only in standard five, she sometimes sits there too. I have a weak chest, she explains. If I run around too much I might cough.

I don’t have a weak chest – I’m sitting down to retie my shoelace. Aunt Ada gave me a pair of Wally’s old shoes to wear and without socks to pad them out it’s like wearing boats on my feet.

Your shoes are too big, says Josephine.

Who are you writing about? I ask, anxious to change the subject.

It’s a secret. She smirks again. The truth is I