The answer lies in the right hand pannel, as for most things in starUML.

As you can see the messages in this panel are ordered as they're shown on screen. message1
comes before message2
. However, I want the order to be different.
You can right click a message and select move up
or move down
respectively to change the order.

After this you have to click back into the diagram to force an update and voilla. The order of the messages is changed and your life is saved.
Note
You can't drag the messages around in this right hand panel to change their order. Why not? I don't know... ☹️