By guest author Max Avery
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| Captain Thomas Sparrow Carmichael Photo courtesy of Carmichael Family Collection |
The separate appointments of Harbour Master and Pilot for the Port of Tauranga in 1864 may have sounded like soft berths, but they were no sinecure for Captain Thomas Sparrow Carmichael, London-born in 1826. A merchant navy sailor, in 1859 he became master of the coaster Petrel in the Auckland-Whangarei trade. After marrying in 1862 he bought a house in St George’s Bay Road, Parnell, and later applied to the Customs Department for a shore job.
Captain Carmichael was appointed to the two Tauranga positions by Robert Graham, Superintendent of the Auckland Province, on 7 December 1864, and arrived in Tauranga on 13 December. His accommodation was a tent on the slopes of Mauao, becoming the first European resident at Mount Maunganui, but more than a year elapsed before the Province provided him with a house.
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| Notice of Carmichael's Appointment Auckland Provincial Government Gazette, 8 Dec 1864 |
Excerpts from Carmichael’s diary, extracted by great-granddaughter Jean Goodison, describe his trials and tribulations, both with officialdom and locals. He arrived in Tauranga with no pilot boat, but managed to borrow an old dinghy from a Mr Rice at Te Papa (as Tauranga was then known), and proceeded to the Mount towed by the schooner Rapid. He recorded: “landed on the western side and pitched my tent. Obliged to stand up to my waist in water for three hours until the tide left the boat. Boat very old and leaky.” He awoke on 25 December 1864, to find that the boatman he had employed only three days before had absconded with all his provisions. No Christmas pudding for the Harbour Master.
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| H.M.S. Esk (at left) guarding the prison hulk Marion in Auckland
Harbour, 1864 Watercolour by Joseph Osbertus Hamley Collection of Alexander Turnbull Library, Ref. E-047-q-031 |
H.M.S. Esk arrived on 8 January 1865, but with no Jack hoisted obviously did not require a pilot. The next day the man-o-war practiced with her guns. Apparently attracted by his light-coloured tent they used it as a target, for the shells burst close to it. The Harbour Master hastily took shelter behind a large rock. When a boat-load of officers later came ashore and were appraised of their indiscretion, they apologized, saying they did not know anyone lived on Mauao. Carmichael magnanimously piloted the Esk to sea after she had hoisted the appropriate signal requiring pilotage. He warned visiting mariners not to interfere with unexploded shells from the Esk, but only a short time later there was a great explosion and Captain Doughty was wounded.
Unbeknown to Carmichael, his appointment had aroused some local animosity, including that of Captain D. Sellars, master of the schooner Tauranga. While at Te Papa on 24 May 1865, Carmichael received a message to pilot the Tauranga out of the harbour, which puzzled him, as that schooner regularly arrived and left the port without assistance. Sellars was asked the draught of the vessel, but the Tauranga grounded on the middle bank, the master having deliberately given incorrect draught measurements. Sellars then came from behind and struck Carmichael on the back and head, knocking him across the heel of the bowsprit and his hat overboard. He countermanded the pilot’s orders, and when asked if he intended to continue to interfere, replied, “Yes, damn you. You have the berth I ought to have. I only sent for you to annoy you.” Saying he would leave the vessel, Carmichael was then struck on the head by Sellars, who attempted to throw him overboard, but was restrained by his crew. Soon after the pilot left the schooner the Tauranga ran aground twice, and after returning to Te Papa ran aground again, due to Sellars, as he explained in the Tauranga courthouse two days later, having been drunk at the time. Sellars apologized for his behaviour, Carmichael withdrew his charge of assault against him and received the sum of thirty shillings as pilotage fee – rather hard won.
Lack of a sound boat and proper navigation gear made life difficult for the Pilot, who recorded that he, “made a buoy from a spar picked up on the beach, to be put on the spit running out from the eastern shore. The lower buoy was drifting to seaward, but no boat available to collect it.” Later, “For three pounds able to borrow Swallow to capture and replace the drifting buoy.”
25 December 1865 was recorded as the worst Christmas Carmichael had ever had: “The boatman was drunk, insolent and using bad language. There was fog, drizzle and gloomy weather, meat rotten – even a dog would not look at it. For dinner two wormy potatoes and two thin slices of bread.”
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| Mauao, Mount Maunganui, c. 1910s Carmichael’s tent was probably located roughly where the shelter at centre left was later built Real photo postcard by Henry Winkelman, Auckland (Tourist Series 997) Tauranga Heritage Collection, Ref. 0757/10 |
Carmichael’s hard life continued. He had to respond every time a ship fired a gun, and at night show a blue light before going out and piloting it in. Sometimes he rowed four miles back to Mauao after piloting a ship to sea, and once when it was too rough to get off a ship, he had to go to Auckland in it and return in the same vessel several days later. His boatmen were dismisses frequently for drunkenness and, in addition to piloting ships and maintaining harbour navigation marks, he had to organize the removal of unlawfully dumped ballast and mend his leaking tent after gales.
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| View of Mount Maunganui from the slopes of Mauao, c. early 1920s Later incarnation of the Pilot House visible at lower left Collection of Tauranga City Library, Pae Korokī Ref. 99-160 |
At the end of March 1866 Carmichael had an opportunity to talk again to Superintendent Graham at Te Papa about a house for the pilot station, and to ask for and be granted some leave. Governor Grey was visiting Te Papa at the same time and, when he departed on the steamer Eclipse on 8 April, Carmichael was also aboard. When the Governor went ashore at Kawau Island, it seemed that the Eclipse would stay there for a few days. Not wishing to waste precious days of his leave, Carmichael borrowed the ship’s dinghy and set out to row to Auckland at 9.30am on the 10th. Throughout the day there were south-west squalls with rain, but he arrived at Wynyard Pier at 10pm and was home in St George’s Bay Road at 11pm. Such was the seamanship and determination of Carmichael, who finally occupied the Pilot House on Mauao on 4 October 1866.
Thomas Sparrow Carmichael, one of the first Europeans to navigate the fabled North-West Passage, and holder of the Polar Medal, was probably glad to resign from his positions as Tauranga’s first Harbour Master and Pilot in late 1868 and return to a life as a ship’s master on the New Zealand coast. He died in Whangarei on 10 November 1900.
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