The passenger steamer Tararua struck a reef near Waipapa Point on New Zealand's Southland coast in April 1881. Rescue efforts continued while the ship remained stranded, but worsening seas finally broke it apart. Of 151 people aboard, only twenty survived.

The loss inspired New Zealand poems, hymns and broadside ballads centred on voices heard from the stranded vessel before it vanished. Such verse turned the coast into a remembered landscape of communal helplessness and prompted reflection on inadequate maritime safeguards.