Among the many rows of servicemen’s headstones in Te Hēnui Services Cemetery, three stand out. Instead of the standard silver fern, these headstones are adorned with American flags. Who were these three American servicemen and how did they come to be buried in New Plymouth, so far from home?
Two of the graves are the resting places of Viking William Lander and William Dwight Lindsay, crew members of an American ship called the SS Easterner, both of whom drowned in a maritime disaster which rocked New Plymouth in 1921.
Viking William Lander was born on 11 September 1895, the son of Swiss-born Anders and Rosa Lander. His father worked as a house painter and Viking grew up in bustling Brooklyn, New York with three other siblings. Some newspaper reports from the time give his middle name as Wolfe while the headstone incorrectly includes the middle initial D.
Viking signed up for military service in 1917 as a machinist with the US Navy when he was 21 years old. After the First World War he worked as an engineer in the steamer shipping industry, living at home with his parents in Brooklyn when he came ashore. He was 25 years old when he signed up as Third Engineer on the Easterner’s voyage to New Zealand.
William Dwight Lindsay was 24 years old, from the picturesque town of Westfield, near the shores of Lake Erie in New York State. Known as Dwight to his family, he was the oldest child of Benjamin and Dora Lindsay. Dwight’s father worked as an accountant and then as an auditor in the grape juice industry, for which the region is famous.
William enlisted with the US Navy in 1917, training and serving as a pharmacist then as a commissioned officer during World War One.
However, perhaps keen for a change of career or a sense of adventure, in July 1921 the tall, dark-haired American signed on in the position of Supercargo on the Easterner which was bound for Boston via Australia and New Zealand by way of the Panama Canal.
Easterner Disaster Unfolds
New Plymouth Port was busy in September 1921. Daily comings and goings were recorded in the local newspapers with up to five overseas vessels due that month, on top of all the usual coastal traffic. By the middle of the month rough weather was disrupting the port’s tight schedule, forcing some vessels to anchor at sea and wait for calmer conditions.
One vessel in this position was the SS Easterner. The ship had sailed from New York in July and visited several New Zealand ports before arriving at New Plymouth on Saturday 17 September to unload its cargo of cased benzine, kerosene and general cargo.
A local maritime disaster was set in motion when, after a frustrated day of waiting anchored a mile and half off the end of the breakwater, the Captain of the Easterner, Robert O’Brien, agreed to the request of two New Zealanders onboard to go ashore.
The two Kiwi civilians, Thomas Butler and Albert Piper, had boarded the ship at its first New Zealand stop in Napier. They were employed by local companies receiving the cargo and wanted to attend to business relating to its unloading.
It was difficult to assess the conditions of the surf anchored so far out to sea but, believing it was safe, Captain O’Brien chose three of his best sailors – Roy Deskin, Viking Landers and William Lindsay – to guide a small sailing boat, along with the two New Zealanders, into port.
However, as the little craft approached the shore the Americans quickly realised the surf was too dangerous to dock at the port. Moments later the boat’s rudder broke, meaning a return to the Easterner was no longer an option. The five men were left adrift in pounding waves.
It wasn’t long before the inevitable happened and the boat capsized. At first the men managed to right the vessel, but it then began drifting towards jagged rocks east of the port (in front of what is now Belt Road Motor Camp) and was again overturned in the breaking waves.
The captain and other men on the Easterner were unaware of the disaster unfolding near the shore but several Moturoa residents later recounted the horror they felt watching the men’s predicament and being unable to assist.
Despite heroic attempts by Easterner crew member Roy Deskin to keep the other men afloat, not all of them able to swim, they struggled in the strong surf and one by one the two New Zealanders and seamen Viking Landers and William Linsay succumbed to the waves.
Deskin was the sole survivor and only made it safely ashore with the aid of a lifebelt which happened to float past him.
After the disaster
New Plymouth rallied around the crew of the stricken vessel after the disaster.
Several advertisements appeared in local newspapers requesting members of the Returned Serviceman’s Association and several other community groups to attend the upcoming funerals.
At 10am on Tuesday 20 September a sombre cortege carrying the bodies of Lindsay and Lander left the hospital morgue on Barrett Street and made its way across town to Te Hēnui Cemetery and what was known then as the Soldiers’ Plot. Here, a crowd of locals and the remaining crew of the Easterner laid the men to rest.
The turnout was so impressive that two days later Captain O’Brien wrote a letter of thanks to the town: “The tangible evidence of such sympathy and kindly feeling, as evidence by the large number of people who attended the funeral of two strange lads, is a token of friendship and brotherhood that I will be proud to carry back to their loved ones.”
The New Zealand branch of the American Legion also thanked the people of New Plymouth for the funerals for the two Americans and assured the local Returned Servicemen’s Association that similar help would be given should former Kiwi soldiers ever “go west in a strange land”.
An inquest into the deaths was quickly concluded on 22 September. The coroner ruled that the captain “committed an error of judgement” in allowing the men to embark on such a small boat in rough seas. However, the verdict was one of accidental drowning.
On Friday 23 September, five days after the loss of life, the Easterner and her crew left New Plymouth Port bound for Australia.
Letter from Home
A year after the drownings, William Lindsay’s mother Dora wrote an emotional letter to Ann Burgess, wife of New Plymouth Mayor Charles Burgess and chairwoman of the Victoria League, thanking her for the care given to her son’s grave.
“Mr Lindsay and I hardly know how, adequately, to express our appreciation to you. We feel it a very loving and kindly deed which the Victoria League is [undertaking] caring for the graves of two strange lads from another country across the world.
The loss of our first-born child and our only son, as far from home and in circumstances as [this] has seemed sometimes pretty hard to bear, but I assure you that the sorrow has been softened and our hearts comforted by the kindness of the people of New Plymouth and those of the Victoria League.
I hope some that someday my husband and I may meet some of your kind people as it is our desire, if life and health are spared us, to visit New Plymouth… Meantime I trust that you will accept our gratitude from full hearts and convey it to the League…”
It is not known if his parents ever got to visit Te Hēnui as they wished, however 18 months after the disaster a friend of the Lindsay family did visit the cemetery. William Child said he was pleased with the honoured positions given to the two Americans’ graves and that they had been granted a military funeral.
The Burgess Connection
Just how, why and by whom the decision was made to bury two American ex-servicemen in the recently designated soldiers’ section of Te Hēnui Cemetery is not clear. According to statements on the headstones, the graves were paid for by their fellow crew members. Whatever the case, burying them in the Soldiers’ Plot ensured that any ongoing maintenance would initially be provided by the local branch of the Victoria League, who tended the plot, and later be covered by the Government (now managed by Ministry of Defence’s Veteran Affairs) and the local council, as all servicemen’s graves in New Zealand are.
It does appear quite unusual to have non-Commonwealth soldiers buried in a New Zealand Services Cemetery and the Ministry of Defence was unable to say if there were other examples of this.
Part of the reason why the Americans were buried here may be due to Ann and Charles Burgess. The couple were well known and generous local philanthropists and Ann Burgess, in particular, was very concerned with soldier welfare, having formed the Women’s Patriotic Committee during the First World War, as well as being involved in the Victoria League. She organised many fundraisers for service personnel during and after the Great War and established the first annual ANZAC Day gathering of local returned soldiers in 1918, something she continued to do until her death in 1947.
Both Ann and Charles were members of the War Graves Committee and help to set up the Soldier’s Plot at Te Hēnui, so when the deaths of Linsay and Lander occurred, it was likely the Burgesses who arranged for their burials to take place there.
Captain Forsythe of West Loquassuck
Perhaps this was why, when history repeated itself nine years later with the death of another American ex-serviceman in New Plymouth, it felt only right that the sailor should also be buried in that part of the cemetery.
The third grave adorned with the Stars and Stripes in the Te Hēnui Services Section belongs to former US Navy serviceman Alec Sanden Thomas Forsythe, although he died in quite different circumstances.
On the evening of Friday 31 January 1930, an American steamer called the West Loquassuck, which had left Sydney a few days prior en route to New York, made an emergency diversion to New Plymouth. The crew had demanded urgent medical attention for Captain Forsythe who was seriously unwell.
New Plymouth was chosen because it was the nearest port. Local doctor Wallace Wade boarded the ship when it arrived and immediately sent the highly respected captain to New Plymouth Hospital.
The ship paused for a day so Forsythe could regain enough strength to travel but when this seemed unlikely the West Loquassuck sailed on for New York without him.
Despite media reports initially describing the 42-year-old captain’s condition as “quite comfortable,” seven days after he arrived Forsythe died of rheumatic heart disease. Flags at the port and shipping offices all flew at half-mast to mark his passing.
A funeral cortege once again left the hospital on Barrett Street and made its way to the Soldiers’ Plot at Te Hēnui. About 50 people gathered at the graveside, including New Plymouth Mayor Victor Griffiths, representatives from the local Masonic Lodge, the RSA, the New Plymouth Harbour Board and crew from the HMS Laburnum, which was part of the New Zealand division of the Royal Navy at that time.
Few details have been uncovered about Alec Forsythe’s life before he became captain of the West Loquassuck, except that he was a member of the American Naval Reserve, came from New York and was single at the time of his death.
However, it was reported in local newspapers that Forsythe saw service in the American Navy during World War One, hence his burial in the servicemen’s section of Te Hēnui.
Documents
Accident happened yesterday (Taranaki Daily News 19 September 1921)
The Moturoa Disaster (Taranaki Daily News 20 September 1921)
Bodies found. Captain's statement. (Taranaki Daily News 20 September 1921)
Thanks from American Legion (Taranaki Daily News 3 October 1921)
Soldier's Graves (8 May 1923)
US headstones agreed ( 17 July 1923)
American grave at Te Henui (18 March 1930)
Dora Lindsay's letter to Ann Burgess (13 November 1922). Source Ancestry, Bratton-Lindsay family tree (accessed 17 January 2024).
Viking Lander Seaman Protection Certificate (1 August 1919). Source, Ancestry (accessed 17 January 2024).
William Lindsay Seaman Protection Certificate (7 February 1919). Source, Ancestry (accessed 17 January 2024).
Please do not reproduce these images without permission from Puke Ariki.
Contact us for more information or you can order images online here.
