SS ‘Wonga Wonga’ – Eloise Taylor

Rose Chapman: Thank you for coming today, and I’d like to introduce our speaker, who is Eloise Taylor. She’s the Public Programmes team leader at the Hawke’s Bay Museum and Art Gallery, and in this role she manages the museum’s curators and educators, and has overall responsibility for the museum’s exhibition, education and events programmes. Eloise took up this appointment in 2009 on returning from five years in the UK, [United Kingdom] where she worked at the Imperial War Museum in London. She has qualifications in history, museum studies and management from the University of Canterbury, Massey University and the University College in London. Her particular research interests include twentieth century New Zealand social history and material culture studies. Eloise is currently curating a new exhibition on the 1931 earthquake for the redeveloped museum which will be opening next year. She is also secretary of the New Zealand Costume and Textiles Association, and a [coughing] Creative Napier board member, so thank you very much – here is Eloise.

Eloise Taylor: Thank you, Rose. [Applause] I got put into this slot for your history talks at rather short notice, but luckily I had something I’d prepared earlier, and today I really just wanted to talk about what has been a wee bit of an obsession of mine over the past few months – a little steamship called the ʻWonga Wonga’. And as a historian I always think, ʻOh, it’s best to sort of give in to these obsessions and let them sort of take you where they will’, so that’s what this little ship has done for me. Today I really just want to tell the tale of a ship, the places she’s been and the things she’s seen, and some of the life she’s lived. And the story starts in Hawke’s Bay, as this is where I first encountered her in the archives, but we will travel to some other places around New Zealand as we go through.

So – on Wednesday 20th May 1857, just one month over one hundred and fifty-five years ago, the steamship ʻWonga Wonga’ departed Auckland bound for Napier. It was an exciting occasion; she was the first steamship to ever visit that new, settled Ahuriri in Hawke’s Bay. The voyage was called in the press, ʻThe Argonautic Expedition from Auckland to Ahuriri’, and I’ll talk a little bit about that reference later, but I just wanted to begin my talk today by reading a few impressions from the diary entries from one of the men on board that ship that day. So he begins:

ʻThe district of Ahuriri having been for a length of time been favourably before the public eye, and having indeed begun to assume no mean importance in relation to the other settlements in the colony, the opportunity occurring through the ‘Wonga Wonga’ was not to be lost by those who, either in connection with business or in pursuit of pleasure, were desirous of visiting a locality seen to be so highly favoured.

ʻWednesday May 20th in Auckland. The ʻWonga Wonga’, with a full cargo of merchandise in the hold and forty rams on deck, sailed at 5 pm. Captain Bowden, with his shining morning face’ – and I’m not sure what that means [laughter] – ’having assumed his position on the bridge.’

So it was a four day trip from Auckland down to Napier, and they had adventures along the way; the engines cut out; there was a big storm – I think one of the rams went overboard … whatever else. But just imagine you were on the deck of the ʻWonga Wonga’; you’ve been at sea for four days; it’s a bit of a crisp day like it is today in late May, and you’re coming into Hawke’s Bay. He continues:

ʻSunday May 24th, 6 am. Entered Hawke’s Bay, the morning one of much beauty. As we approached the southern shore the most prominent object was the Ruahine Range in the distance, the southern peaks covered in snow. On nearer approach we could discern numerous dwellings extending along the coast and in the neighbourhood of the town; also that portion of the latter which is built on the eastern side of Scinde Island. On rounding the Bluff the port opened to view, and the pilot came on board. It was dead low water, but in a few minutes we found ourselves guided through the narrow entrance of the harbour, and after touching for a few minutes, safely anchored in a snug little basin rejoicing in the name of the ʻIron Pot’.

ʻWhen inside, a vessel may set the elements as completely at defiance as if in the London Dock; the harbour being, in fact, a dock of nature’s own construction. It is sheltered from the sea by a pebbly bank thrown up by the surf, presenting an impenetrable barrier to the angry billows and leaving but a narrow outlet. This bank is termed the Spit, and numbers a good many buildings principally of a business character.

ʻIn an easterly direction along the beach and banks of the Plasse, about eight miles from town is the township of Clive. It is considered to become a highly flourishing place, and a visit gives some idea of the country which abounds with nutritious native grasses and every one adapted for a sheep district.

ʻIn a northeasterly direction from Napier are the far-famed and much coveted Ahuriri Plains, a district containing about eighty thousand acres of magnificent flat country for the purchase of which the government has been for some time in treaty.’

And I will talk a little bit more later about what actually happened during that visit, and who was on board the ship and what went down, but I just want to finish this part now with his departing impression when he left on the ‘Wonga Wonga’ to go back to Auckland on Wednesday May 27th.

ʻIn the course of this forenoon the return cargo of the ʻWonga’, consisting of three hundred and fifty fine fat wethers, were driven down and put onboard. At 5 p.m. the steamer was warped out of her snug quarters into the stream. The ʻWonga’ went out at full speed amidst the reiterated ʻhip, hip hurrahs’ of the large body of settlers who watched her departure. We need not add that the cheers were lustily returned.’

So there’s a much longer account of the adventures of this person as they travelled to Ahuriri, but hopefully that just establishes a little curiosity on your part about the ship. So now I want to go back to her beginnings; and it was quite complicated in the finding out, but hopefully will be clearer in my telling it to you now.

So we go back to the year 1854, the year the ʻWonga Wonga’ was built. And she was built on the shipyards of the Clyde by G H Lawrie & Company of Whiteinch, and she’s known as a [an] ʻSS’ (screw steamer) steamship, to know her apart from what would be prefixed with a ʻPS’ for paddle steamer. And for the people in the audience who are interested, I’ve got all her vital statistics. She had a gross tonnage of a hundred and fifty-two; two-cylinder steam engine capable of thirty horsepower; she was a hundred and five feet in length, and she could accommodate twenty-seven passengers and rather more sheep, as we have seen; and she was intended from the start for the Antipodean market. She was named for an Australian woodpigeon, or as Carol was saying earlier, an Australian vine – I’m not sure which.

So in 1855 the ‘Wonga Wonga’ arrived in Melbourne under sail, and she was soon purchased by the Auckland Local Steam Navigation Company.  [ALSNC] This company – it was one of those sort of speculative shareholder enterprises that was sort of being set up all over the place in New Zealand at that time – you know, people were on the make really. And the intent of the whole scheme was really to sort of open the channels of commerce into Auckland’s hinterland via water-carriage; there were no roads.  Steamship travel was the easiest and most inexpensive way to kind of connect the province. And steam was really the way of the future; it was still quite new at this stage, but she wasn’t the first steamship to come to New Zealand by any means. But it was still quite exciting. And so the steamship company went over to Australia, they conducted the hunt for the right kind of steamship, and they found the ʻWonga Wonga’, and thought she was just the ship for the task.

So the little Scottish steamship arrived in Auckland. Her job, as the ALSNC said in the papers, was to ʻensure no land was left to waste its fertility in the aggrandisement of a grasping squatocracy, but [be] placed within the reach of the industrious cultivator.’ [Laughter] What a sentence!

So there was a lot of interest in the town’s newest asset; and she had her first trial with all of the sort of mechanical and technical men of the district, and was exclaimed to be a beautiful little steamer. She went on a public outing later that week – an excursion from Queen Street Wharf for Howick, and then onto the Bay of Islands. A new settler wrote into the paper overflowing with admiration, and I’ll just read you a little excerpt of that, ’cause it’s rather charming and funny:

‘After a few hours excellent steaming we entered the Mahurangi River. If your readers will fancy our fairy-like little steamer’ – goodness me! [Chuckles] ʻplacidly reposing on the water, with a rich and undulating country stretching away ’til the prospect is bounded by the distant ranges of the Oma.’ [Phone rings] ʻI cannot but congratulate this province, more especially this city, on the possession of so excellent a steamer as the ʻWonga Wonga’. I do not think I ever trod the decks of a boat so well adapted in many respects for developing the resources of the colony.  Let us then look upon this steamer as our own.’

So the first Captain of the ʻWonga Wonga’ was James Bowden … he’s the one with the shining morning face … and he was by all accounts a popular and jovial commander. And there were these sort of [?] outings on the trip and on the ship, and all sorts of things. So the ʻWonga Wonga’ travelled the Auckland coastal routes; they’d do a sort of one week run from Auckland to Russell, up to Mahurangi, and then the next week they’d go to Whangārei, calling at the Bay of Islands and Kawau, and Coromandel.  And it’s true, as I said earlier, that a floating road was much cheaper than a real one at this time, but it was almost too soon for Auckland; with little outlying settlements of the province, they really couldn’t sustain actually keeping the steamship going. And the Auckland Provincial Council subsidised the running of the ʻWonga Wonga’ at £2,000 per annum, but it just wasn’t a commercial success.  So the time came when it was just too much of a burden on shareholders, and the steamship was sold in 1857 to the Wellington Steam Navigation Company.  The Wellington Steam Navigation Company intended her to go between Wellington and the fast-growing settlements of Ahuriri and Taranaki on either coast of the lower North Island, so do a week run up one side, then a week up the other one.

So – now we’re back in 1857, and the occasion of her maiden voyage south to Ahuriri. So just to give you a little bit of background of sort of what Napier was like at this time – the port had been declared a port of entry just two years earlier, and up until 1857 probably about half a dozen ships, small ketches primarily, [were] coming into the port every year. And they were coming from as far afield as Wellington and Auckland, but also from Wairoa and Mohaka and Poverty Bay.  And the population of the Ahuriri Block … European population … was five thousand or slightly under.

So I think probably most people living in Ahuriri at that time would have seen a steamship before. I think the very sort of smoke on the horizon as it were, coming to this particular part of the country, their own little adopted corner of the world, must have been incredibly exciting.  And so I recounted earlier the first impressions of the land, but what was really interesting about this visit of the ʻWonga Wonga’ were her passengers, and some of the political motivations, or fallout from the visit. And the passengers included Edward Stafford who was then Colonial Secretary, our third Premier, so one of the most sort of powerful men in the country at that time – our youngest Premier ever, I think. I think he was thirty-seven when he got the position; Mr Bain of Bain, Graham & Co, [Company] and he was just a big Auckland trading firm; Reverend David Bruce of the Scotch church, the Presbyterian Church; Mr John Alexander Smith who was founder and secretary of the Auckland Museum; and also representatives from all of the Auckland journals.

So thinking back to 1857, the key issue in Hawke’s Bay at that time was that of political independence from Wellington, and the local population was agitating really loudly on this matter for two reasons: Hawke’s Bay’s rich men thirsted for power, and they weren’t getting it; and they were also worried about radical elements in Wellington making discriminating pastoral regulations. And the broader population really resented local revenues going to Wellington, and then not being spent up here in Hawke’s Bay. And the difficulties in communication – because there was no regular shipping it made the situation even more acute. And so Hawke’s Bay felt really neglected by Wellington, and the settlers were really in favour of having a commercial and political allegiance with Auckland. And to go back to that argonautic reference earlier, one of the commentators on board the ʻWonga Wonga’ summed up the situation thus:

ʻIt was in fact, in one sense, an invading force – an army representing common sense and good faith, and sound legislation asking advantage of the opportunity furnished by the spirit of commercial enterprise; and setting off to the relief of a young but thriving pastoral community from the thraldrom in which it has up to this time been held by the aforesaid fussy knot of politicians who, instead of being called ʻThe three F’s’, have been recently christened by some of their less ardent admirers, ʻThe three buzz-flies of the bench’.’ [Chuckles] The Wellington Bench. So he carries on:

ʻThe result of the expedition shows that in more than in one respect, the ‘Greeks’ of the north are likely to succeed in bringing off the ʻgolden fleece’ of this fine district’ – milking it for all it’s worth – ʻfrom the loud-talking and loud-promising but little-doing ʻTrojans’ of the Empire State.’ [Laughter]

So it’s a pretty familiar debate today, and it’s funny to think how well entrenched regional rivalries were even back in 1850. So Hawke’s Bay, smack in the middle of a tug of [throat clearing] war between Auckland and Wellington, and the Aucklanders were pretty savvy – they seized upon the squabbles and sort of set themselves up as friend and ally to Hawke’s Bay; and they just were really after the economic opportunities that might arise out of being a particular friend to this province.

So one of the most important events of the trip happened on Tuesday May 26th, and again, I’ll read from the diary:

ʻTuesday May 26th a bustling day in Napier. The arrival of the Colonial Secretary had been telegraphed – and we might judge from appearances – to very remote parts of the district, for settler after settler came riding in until Munn’s was perfectly invaded by fresh arrivals.’

And that’s Daniel Munn’s Royal Hotel on Carlyle Street, I think.

ʻIn the afternoon an address, partly in congratulation and partly with respect to the wants of the district, was presented to Mr Stafford by Captain Carter on behalf of the settlers. Mr Stafford replied at some length, stating that he was in contemplation to introduce a bill in exception, for the purpose of making Hawke’s Bay a separate electoral district. The honourable gentleman addressed the meeting at considerable length, and was loudly cheered throughout. That evening a banquet was given in Munn’s hotel; between thirty and forty gentlemen sat down to dinner, the chair being occupied by Alexander Alexander Esquire, and the vice by Joseph Frews. To the toasts that were drunk on that occasion, to the speeches that were made, to the kindly feeling displayed towards strangers, to the hilarity that shone on every face, to the number in fact, of jolly good fellows who sat at the board, our limits, alas, will not permit us in this issue to dwell. Suffice it now to say that we never saw a happier meeting.’

[Chuckles] So it’s nice to think that maybe it’s partly in thanks to the ʻWonga Wonga’ who brought Stafford to see Hawke’s Bay for himself; and sort of give him the opportunity to hear the sort of determination of Hawke’s Bay’s first men that night in this hotel, over this sort of slap-up meal; settlers from all around the place sort of crowded around to find out what was happening. He succeeded in passing the New Provinces Act just one year later in 1858, and as we know, Hawke’s Bay was the first to avail itself of that Act and become a separate province. So … hurrah.

Now, the ʻWonga Wonga’ carried on on the Ahuriri route for a number of years, and with some success, and was very much appreciated. And the relationship between the ʻWonga Wonga’ and Napier continued too, because the second pilot for the port was Captain Thomas Murray, who was the next captain of the ‘Wonga Wonga’; and a boatswain of the ‘Wonga Wonga’ became assistant pilot in 1864, and then chief pilot, a position he held until 1902; so there were lots of sort of connections between the ‘Wonga Wonga’ and the town.

And it wasn’t all sort of trade for the ‘Wonga Wonga’ in this posting; there were pleasure trips too, and one I particularly liked that I found was of New Year’s Day 1859. The ‘Wonga Wonga’ took passengers to the inauguration of New Zealand’s first lighthouse at Pencarrow Heads, near Wellington. The newspaper article says: ‘As she anchored off the Heads, the sixty-five settlers crammed on board, dancing to a Hanoverian band, and as dusk drew near the light was lit amid cheers, by Wellington’s Provincial Superintendent Isaac Featherston.’ He’s one of those three buzz-flies of the bench that we were talking about earlier. But by 1860 it was all change again for the ‘Wonga Wonga’, and she was contracted by military authorities to be used as a troop conveyance during the Taranaki wars. And it’s military business that we find her engaged in on 7th February 1863, which is a very important date in New Zealand maritime history. She’s returning from her regular mail run from the Manukau to Taranaki carrying military dispatches.

And it’s worthwhile saying, up to this point when I was sort of tracing her story through time, I had no idea what she looked like, and I was getting really anxious ‘cause I just couldn’t find a painting … I couldn’t find anything. But then [it] got to 7th February 1863 – this is the day of New Zealand’s worst maritime disaster; the day the British man o’ war HMS ‘Orpheus’ was wrecked on the Manukau bar, and a hundred and eighty-nine men died as a result of that. But what I felt when I saw this painting, which is in the National Maritime Collection, was a great thrill because the ‘Wonga Wonga’ is there in the corner, in the background of Richard Brydges Beechey’s painting of the wreck, at what must’ve been sort of her greatest hour, and sort of worst hour as well, as the aid and the witness to the wreck of the ‘Orpheus’. And many of you will know the story of the ‘Orpheus’, but I’ll just recount sort of briefly the story ‘Wonga Wonga’s role in the events:

‘7th February 1863 – it was a fine and sunny day.’ Shipwreck stories always start this way. [Laughter] It all goes horribly wrong.

‘Early that afternoon there were two ships in the harbour of the Manukau. One was leaving, the ‘Wonga Wonga’, so she was captained by William Renner at this time, and she was starting back to Taranaki. And the other, HMS ‘Orpheus’, and she was coming into the harbour. She was a twenty-one gun Jason class Corvette, and she was arriving with reinforcements to relieve the naval sloops in the area, HMS ‘Miranda’ and HMS ‘Harrier’.

‘The ’Orpheus’ was following an out of date chart. She entered the harbour and she attempted to cross the sand bar, which shifts a lot in that harbour in just the wrong place. The signalman on duty at the time was twenty-one-year-old Edward Wing, and he was the son of the experienced harbour master, Captain Thomas Wing who was actually out, just returning from guiding the ‘Wonga Wonga’ out of the harbour; so he left his son in charge. And he signalled the ship to change course, and they tried to at the last minute but it was too late, and the ‘Orpheus’ struck sand at one-thirty in the afternoon. Her engines seized; by this time a wind had come up and she heeled over, and the whole portside was exposed to the waves and she soon started filling with water.

‘So both Captain Wing, the harbour master, and Captain Renner on board the ‘Wonga Wonga’, saw the vessel in the distance labouring heavily, and they started signalling to her, “Do you need assistance?” “Do you need assistance?” No reply; but they returned to investigate, and they separately made their way toward the ship. The ‘Wonga Wonga’ came upon the pinnace and the cutter from the ‘Orpheus’, which had been launched alongside with the ship’s papers and money, to go for assistance. And so Captain Wing boarded the ‘Wonga Wonga’; they took the Corvette’s boats in tow back to the ship, and they finally reached the ‘Orpheus’ at six pm, picking up about five or six men from the sea along the way.

‘By the time they got back to the ship, the ‘Orpheus’ was almost buried in water, and the seas were breaking clear over her.’ It was a really, you know, really dangerous situation because of the sand bar. ‘They came as close in as they dared to pick up all those who sort of ventured to jump and swim from the ‘Orpheus’, but lots of these men couldn’t swim, and you know, they couldn’t escape all the eddies and the currents swirling around the ship. By eight that night, you know, most of the crew had been sort of thrown into the sea.

‘As night fell, the ‘Wonga Wonga’ … they felt it was too dangerous to stay around the ‘Orpheus’, and they couldn’t really see what was going on anyway, so they steamed out to nearly a mile distant, just anchoring outside the breakers. She remained there overnight burning her blue lights, blowing her steam whistle and ringing her bell, looking for survivors by the light of the moon. And that continued all night, and in the morning the ‘Wonga Wonga’ went close to the wreck again, and there were sort of fragments of spars and masses of the wreck sort of drifting inshore with the tide. And there were a few sort of remaining sailors sort of clinging to these fragments. They were picked up, but really, nothing was visible at this time but the stump of a mast and a few bare ribs.

‘The ‘Orpheus’ remains our worst maritime disaster today, and a hundred and eighty-nine sailors died out of a total two hundred and fifty-nine hands. There were some initial grumblings that the ‘Wonga Wonga’ hadn’t got back to the ‘Orpheus’ fast enough; but really, all the eyewitnesses agreed that Captain Renner acted as best he could in aiding the men of the ‘Orpheus’.’

A surviving senior officer of the ‘Orpheus’ actually sort of wrote a letter of thanks to Renner afterwards, and presented him with – a strange present that’s in the Auckland Museum – like a pencil case or something like that. So they were sort of absolved of all blame; and there were lots of enquiries, [but] there was sort of never a satisfactory sort of outcome to that.

Now this is a further engraving I found in the Illustrated London News, which again shows the ‘Wonga Wonga’; this is the detail, so I was quite pleased to see what she looked like for the first time. Oh, and there’s Captain Renner. So in the Auckland War Memorial Museum Collections are some of the letter that was written to him by the surviving senior officer of the ‘Orpheus’, and his sort of ‘thank you’ present, really.

So coming in to the sort of close of my talk, I wish I could say now that the ‘Wonga Wonga’ went on to live a long and happy life steaming about the New Zealand coast, but sadly it was not to be. It was a very dangerous life being a coastal steamer.

‘And just three years later’, and my heart sank when I read it and found out, ‘the ‘Wonga Wonga’ was to meet a similar fate to the ‘Orpheus’. On 2nd May 1866 at one-thirty in the afternoon, she approached the bar at the mouth of the notoriously difficult Grey River on the West Coast. Conditions were good; it was a fine, calm day, and the ‘Wonga Wonga’ looked like she’d crossed the sandbar safely; but all of a sudden, on meeting the fresh water in the river she ran into a hollow in the sea, took the ground and lost her helm. There was no loss of life, but the ‘Wonga Wonga’ was no more. The captain, George Mundle, was named blameless in the incident. Tenders were called for her re-launch, but finally deemed impractical; it was just her most valuable undamaged parts – the hull machinery and the lower masts – that were salvaged and sold.

‘Popular to the last, the merchants and tradesmen of Greymouth addressed their sympathies to Captain Mundle in a public letter:

‘Dear Sir, We avail ourselves of the occasion of your leaving here after the unfortunate loss of your steamer, the ‘Wonga Wonga’, to express the sympathy we entertain for you on the occurrence of that disaster. The loss to the trading and general community of this place of the services of a vessel so well suited to their wants is much to be regretted.’

So – that is the end of her tale … just twelve years she had in New Zealand. But rather a good story I think, arising from that first chance encounter I had with her among the archives; you know, we can see from her story she was moving all about New Zealand, pulled this way and that by politics and commerce, and pleasure cruises and everything else. And really, I think that these steamships … you know, everyone across the country in these relatively isolated settlements at this time would all have recognised her, awaited her and appreciated her. And they were the points of connection between each place, and in proof of that I just wanted to end now with two images of the ‘Wonga Wonga’ that have happily been discovered, which shows I think, something of that legacy of those twelve years in New Zealand. [Describes photo] The ‘Wonga Wonga’ – it’s just the little one in the middle there which is from the Wanganui Museum collections; and the latest one I found which has come from the Museum of Wellington City & Sea, of the ‘Wonga Wonga’ … these are not painted from life, as it were … so I hope more will be unearthed. And I had a moment of delight last week because I found this painting by [?] from the Alexander Turnbull Library collections, and I though, ‘Oh! that’s the one of her coming into Ahuriri’. But it wasn’t – the ‘Wonga Wonga’ was actually over in Wanganui at that time stuck on a sand bar, and presumably had to throw all hundred sheep on board overboard so that it could get off. [Chuckles] That’s life; but I’m sure some other things will come to light. So there we go – there ends the tale of the ‘Wonga Wonga’. [Chuckles]

[Applause]

Rose: Thank you very much, Eloise – that was really, really interesting, and wonderful to see those old pictures. And your story was so well presented you could easily image in your mind the political furore of all those settlers sitting around drinking their whiskies and congratulating each other, and self interest was the biggest factor.

Eloise: Absolutely.

Rose: Does anyone have any questions for Eloise?

Eloise: No complicated political … [laughter] Oh, and I just remembered one other thing – Douglas Lloyd Jenkins – he’s started an online journal called The Napier Athenaeum, and the paper that I’ve written about the ‘Wonga Wonga’, that’s going to be going up on there shortly. It’s sort of like a local history sort of blog; if anyone’s interested … yeah, you can google it – Napier Athenaeum.

Comment: [Inaudible, deleted] … who came from Opunake – they used to drive their Ford Model T up to Auckland every rare occasion. And Model Ts used to go backwards better than they went forwards; [chuckles] so they used to go up to Mount Messenger which is a pretty steep sort of a hill, backwards, feeding the engine copious quantities of water to get up to the top; down to the river and take the steamer from the river over the top of Mount Messenger where there was a dairy factory … and take it up to Manukau, because it was much easier to take the car up by steamer than it was by road. And that was about 1915, 1918, something like that.

Eloise: Four days from Auckland to Hawke’s Bay is not bad going at all. But quite brave, you know; thinking about that ship that size coming out from Scotland under sail, and then coming out from Melbourne to New Zealand; she had like an engine failure at that time … you know, it was quite … you know, hair raising stuff.

Jim Watt: Eloise, I’ve got a picture of ‘Wonga Wonga’ at home, too. I think we forget the significance of steam to the coastal trade, because we still didn’t have proper roads, and before that we relied on sail. My great grandfather who was operating from Wanganui, his best time to Wellington was twelve hours and his worst time was three weeks. If you were a passenger on board, that was the gamble you took. When steam came – and the ‘Wonga Wonga’ was not only the first in Napier, but she was the first steamship in Wanganui – it made such a difference. You had a bit more reliability.

A lovely little story of a famous little ship, and we do thank you for you insights into how the passengers felt, and what they were on about. [Chuckles]

Eloise: Oh, thank you very much.

[Applause]