Tauranga’s Link with Rare Polar Medal

By guest author Max Avery

Captain Thomas Sparrow Carmichael
Courtesy of Carmichael Family Collection

It is not generally known that the first Harbour Master appointed for the Port of Tauranga, Captain Thomas Sparrow Carmichael, was one of the first sailors to pass through the famed North-West Passage and was also a holder of the rare Polar Medal, awarded for Arctic discoveries.

As far as is known his medal, now held by a great-grandson of Carmichael in Auckland, is one of only two in New Zealand. The octagonal-shaped decoration measures 33 mm in diameter. The obverse has an image of a Royal Navy ship obviously trapped in ice being abandoned by its crew, and the inscription, “FOR ARCTIC DISCOVERIES 1818-1855”. The other side bears the head of Queen Victoria and the words, “VICTORIA REGINA.” Around the rim is inscribed, “T.S. Carmichael.”

Certificate of Competency as First Mate for Thomas Sparrow Carmichael, dated 6 June 1856
Masters' Certificates, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London
Image courtesy of Ancestry.com

It was apparently a love of ships and the sea which caused Thomas Carmichael to become involved in the epic searches for the mystical North-West Passage, believed to be north of Alaska and linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Born in Limehouse, London on 5 March 1826, he early followed the sea. At the age of 17 in 1842, he reached New Zealand, crewing in the merchant ship Westminster, and continued to work his way up in the mercantile marine.

Meanwhile, the British explorer Sir John Franklin, commanding an expedition in Her Majesty’s Ships Erebus and Terror, set out in 1845 to discover the North-West Passage. The ships became trapped in Victoria Strait in 1846. Sir John died the following year, and the 105 survivors soon succumbed to starvation and scurvy.

Polar Medal awarded to T.S. Carmichael
Courtesy of Carmichael Family Collection

Thomas Carmichael joined the Royal Navy in 1850, and volunteered to serve in the expedition despatched in HMS Investigator (1850-1854) under Sir Robert McClure to search for Sir John Franklin. A crew list has Thos. S. Carmichael with the rank of A.B. (Able-bodied seaman). They found and passed through the North-West Passage (the Bering Strait) but had to shore up their ship to prevent it being crushed by ice floes and, after two dreary winters off Melville Island, the Investigator’s complement finally made it back to England in HMS Resolute.

Captain McClure (later an admiral) received a Parliamentary Award for discovering the North-West Passage – but that feat was later awarded posthumously to Sir John Franklin. Carmichael and other members of the Investigator’s complement were awarded the Polar Medal.

Thomas Sparrow Carmichael was appointed Harbour Master for the Port of Tauranga on 1 December 1864, and separately appointed Pilot for the Port of Tauranga on the same date – positions he held until late in 1868.

Old Main Road, RD2, Te Puna

Katikati & Te Puna Ridings Road Status Map, May 1986
Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. Map 20-150

Were he to return to his former address in Te Puna today, John Munro - who lived there between 1893[1] and his death in 1924[2] - would have little difficulty negotiating the roads between the Wairoa River and his home.  This 1986 map of State Highway 2[3] and its offshoots - our fishbone road – bears a close resemblance to the original route as constructed by the Armed Constabulary over a century before.  When my family took over the Munro farm in 1955, our address was as given in the title of this essay.  Why, you might wonder, was the road already “old”?

Rough sketch plan of Tauranga District, by James Mackay, 4 May 1867
Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. Map 20-265

In 1867, before there even was a road[4], the challenges confronting the Constabulary were significant.  There was no stone, so they used the technique of laying transverse boughs of manuka across the roadway and compacting fill over it.  As this “corduroy road” broke down into sloughs and bogs and dustbowls with use, the roadway itself tended to wander over the landscape.  Horses and vehicles picked their way through fern and wetlands, fording the smaller watercourses and stopping to consider their options at the bigger rivers.  The most significant of these for John was the Wairoa River itself, where a kauri bridge had been constructed in 1874 “under the superintendence of AC Turner, Esq., District Engineer.” [5]

Wairoa River Bridge being built, 1874
Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. Photo 03-244

John’s route from the bridge still winds up the hill, whose headland, Pukewhanake, was ravaged for engineering purposes.  The terraced pa sites behind Pukewhanake, so obvious until the 1980s, have now been covered over by a modern house.   The hill climb was windier in John’s day, creeping behind and around the hilside’s southeastern edge, but the straight stretch intersected by Te Mete Road to the south and, further on, Clarke Road to the north has remained relatively unchanged.  The dip into the Hakao[6] was a vexed issue for years and we can imagine John allowing himself a wry smile as he remembers hauling stone from the Te Puna Quarry[7] to satisfy the vigorous complaints of Mr JAM Davidson, County Chairman, about the “lake” at the gateway to his farm[8].

The roundabout at the four-way intersection of Minden and Te Puna Roads might have disconcerted our time-traveller, were it not for the fact that the construction of the Takitimu Northern Link, a massive new highway leading from the Tauriko interchange south of Tauranga city, including a new bridge across the Wairoa, and another one at the “Te Hakao Minden Gully”[9], is already obvious at various points along his route.

Artist’s impression of completed Te Rangituanehu Minden interchange, Takitimu North Link
Image courtesy of Waka Kotahi

This image[10], which does not show the existence of our present State Highway 2 (it is out of shot on the left), shows the extent to which John’s – and our – Te Puna landscape is about to change forever.  The “corduroy road”, and its later improvements, adjustments, and “deviations”[11] will become a thoroughfare much more akin to that of John’s day, however.  So maybe, were he to book a Tardis for, say 2025, he may feel more at home on what would by then be the old main road.

And what about the even older, so-called, Old Main Road on Rural Delivery route number 2?  John might be gratified to find out that this road, that he objected to when it was proposed in 1920[12], is now named after his family.  He may also be amused to discover that this new main road, known on a Lands and Survey aerial photograph[13] as the “Paeroa Whakatane State Highway”, did not stay new for long.  In the early 1950’s, further works along the Te Puna stretch of the highway returned “Bledisloe Road” to its original status as the main road, eliminated Pipeclay Cutting (now enjoying two names – Ainsworth Road to its north and Munro Road East at, confusingly, its western end) altogether and created Loop Road (these days, no longer a loop).

Loop Road is, however, the currently-intended end of the Takitimu Northern Link.  Having circled the Te Puna roundabout, John will return to relatively familiar ground.  He would recognise Quarry Road, which he was paid £33 15/- for fencing in 1913[14].  And he would know his own driveway, which is still where it always was. 

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[1] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT18931009.2.5

[2] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT19260609.2.3

[3] May 1986 local road network, image courtesy of Pae Koroki

[4] James Mackay’s 1867 sketch plan, image courtesy of Pae Koroki

[5] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT18750911.2.12

[6] Beth Bowden, “Te Puna’s Lost Watercourse” http://taurangahistorical.blogspot.com/2022/01/

[7] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT19110609.2.10

[8] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT19120403.2.24

[9] https://www.nzta.govt.nz/projects/sh2-waihi-to-tauranga-corridor/takitimu-north-link/

[10] Image courtesy of Waka Kotahi, takitimu-north-link-artists-impression-of-completed-te-rangituanehu-minden-interchange__ResizedImageWzYwMCwzODBd

[11] The technical term for re-routing the highway, much in use over the 1920s and 1930s

[12] “A Te Puna Deviation” https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT19200807.2.9

[13] NZMS 3, Sheet N.58/7 First Edition photographed February 1943 and published September 1949

[14] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT19130808.2.4

The Lady Jocelyn, SS Hinemoa and Adela Blanche Stewart, 1878 -1910

Early Maritime Tauranga: Vessels, Visitors  Settlers and Events,  Part XXV

On 17 August 1878 the clipper ship Lady Jocelyn (Captain Jenkins) arrived at the port of Auckland after a passage of 88 days from Belfast. Aboard the vessel were 451 passengers, including 378 ‘special’ immigrants. Part of George Vesey Stewart’s No. 2 Party of Ulster Scots from County Tyrone, the 378 were bound for Katikati via Tauranga in the Bay of Plenty.¹  In 1878, Lady Jocelyn was the biggest immigrant and trading ship to visit New Zealand. Many of the Vesey Stewart settlers were men and women ‘in prosperous circumstances’, and their arrival was regarded as a distinct forward step in the settlement of Katikati, the Tauranga district, and the colony itself.² 

Lady Jocelyn under full sail, 1852, by W. Gippoer
Collection of National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London, Ref. PAH0623

The Lady Jocelyn was built by Mare of London in 1852 as a 2,138 ton, iron auxiliary steamer for the East India trade, before being purchased by Shaw Savill & Company for the Australasian immigrant and cargo trade. Refitted and fully rigged as an immigrant clipper and with the engines removed, she was described as ‘a splendid ship; the saloon table alone holds 100 persons; the state-rooms hold but two persons, preventing the crowding suffered by the passengers in the Carisbrooke Castle’.³ Lady Jocelyn made four notably swift voyages to Auckland, Wellington, Lyttelton and Port Chalmers between 1860 and 1900.⁴

Aboard the Lady Jocelyn were Mrs Adela Blanche Stewart, her husband Hugh (a Royal Artillery Lieutenant and the brother of George Vesey Stewart) and their son Mervyn aged seven. In her journal later published as My Simple Life in New Zealand (1908), Adela casts light on the voyage to New Zealand and the settlement and progress of  the Katikati  district. Though generally rated  ‘a happy one’ by the immigrants, the voyage was marked by seasickness, being becalmed ‘with six vessels in sight’, an outbreak of small-pox (supressed by the ship’s surgeon), mumps that ran rampant, rain, snow, hailstorms and heavy seas that swamped the cabins and broke almost all crockery. There was ‘great excitement’ when the ship’s newspaper Lady Jocelyn Herald was printed, joy at the birth of a little girl, ‘Jocelyn, of course’, and the satisfaction of ‘greedily devouring’ New Zealand bread and butter on arriving in Auckland.⁵ 

Adela and Hugh Stewart with their son Mervyn (standing far left)
Front cover of My Simple Life in New Zealand, by Adela B. Stewart (London, 1908, reprinted Typographix, Katikati, 1996)

On 19 August, the Auckland Star’s maritime reporter noted:

         A large number of the passengers by the Lady Jocelyn, were on shore this morning, making purchases, and seeing the sights of the place, such as they are. They appear a fine class of people and very, desirable fellow colonists and, as they have all some capital, they will soon be able to bring their land, or the greater portion of it, under cultivation…. This morning they were engaged in packing up and making the necessary arrangements to leave the vessel. They will, we understand, be conveyed to Tauranga in the Hinemoa, the Lady Jocelyn remaining here to discharge her cargo… We understand about 40 of the party who were left behind are following in the ship Halcione, which left London on May 30.⁶

The New Zealand Government Service Steamer Hinemoa off the Kaikoura Mountains
Oil painting on board by Frank Barnes, 1911
Collection of Museum of New Zealand (Te Papa Tongarewa), Ref. 1992-0035-1910

SS Hinemoa conveyed Lady Jocelyn’s No. 2 Katikati Party to Tauranga without charge. Built in 1875 by Robert Scott and Co. at Cartsdyke, Greenock, Scotland for £23,500, it was a three-masted, 551 ton, New Zealand Government Service steamer. Designed for servicing lighthouses and patrolling the coastline, it had a length of 207 feet (63.1 metres), a beam of 25 feet (7.6 metres) and a draught of 15 feet (4.6 metres). Also required to carry out castaway checks on the sub-Antarctic islands and searching for missing ships in the Southern Ocean, it was, of necessity powered by two steam engines generating 150 bhp apiece.⁷ Adela Stewart recorded that after boarding the Hinemoa at Auckland ‘during torrents of rain’, they were conveyed in ‘a good 12 hours passage to Tauranga, arriving there on a sunny morning at 11 o’clock’.⁸  

At Tauranga, the entire European and Maori population turned out to greet the new settlers who ‘were mutely frightened… at the sight of tattooed Maoris smiling Tena koe (‘Welcome’) and anxious to rub noses… the children did howl and tried to hide behind their parents, themselves bewildered by the novelty of the scene’.⁹  Adela Stewart and her family, along with their servants, three children and ‘beds, bedding, provisions, luggage’, were conveyed in three trips from Tauranga’s Town Wharf to Bowentown and Katikati with the help of little coastal steamers Buona Ventura and Katikati.¹⁰

SS Katikati (left) at Pilot Bay, Mount Maunganui, 1910
Photographer unknown
Collection of Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Korokī, Ref. 00-338

As well as performing a host of unfamiliar domestic duties, Stewart joined her husband in ‘pulling up fern roots’ and ‘dug with all her might’ to help clear their 300 acres. ‘Homesick and depressed, also hungry’, they were not impressed with the district which was to become their home for the next 28 years.¹¹  The land was covered in fern, tutu, manuka scrub and swamps, the harbour channel between Tauranga and Katikati had not been marked and not a single river had been bridged. While the Stewart’s second house was tolerably comfortable (the first had been a raupo whare), their servants endured a rat-infested cottage, ‘where these voracious rodents boldly eat the crumbs on the floor, and still worse, far worse, the poor baby’s toe nails at night’.¹² While productive, the Stewart’s estate never generated the profits expected, and they came to regret not following advice to sell quickly and buy elsewhere.

Adela and Hugh Stewart were among some of the middle class emigrants to New Zealand, who later returned home to Britain, having made or not having made their fortunes
‘The emigrants' return’, by Edward Noyce, c1852-1860. (Bauerricher & Co, London)
Collection of Alexander Turnbull Library, Ref: E-079-006

The Lady Jocelyn made ten further immigrant runs to New Zealand after 1878, including one which conveyed a large contingent of Vesey Stewart settlers directly to the port of Tauranga in 1881.¹³ The SS Hinemoa had a remarkably long life, operating in New Zealand territorial waters until 1942 when it was purchased by the Royal New Zealand Navy and converted into a sullage (waste oil) barge for use by American ships under repair at Wellington. Decommisioned in 1944, Hinemoa was sunk in Pegasus Bay, 60 miles north-east of Lyttelton.¹⁴

In 1906, Adela and Hugh Stewart sold their home and estate ‘Athenree’ (800 acres) and returned to England. Over the years, their homestead had become the social centre for the surrounding district, which is known as Athenree to this day. Following the death of Hugh in April 1909, Adela Stewart returned to New Zealand on a visit. She died on the night of her arrival in Katikati on 12 February 1910.^15.

Endnotes

¹ Clement, Christine and Ellen McCormack, The Pioneers, Settlers and Families of Katikati and District, Te Puke, Christine Clement, 2012: 25.

² Brett, Henry, White Wings: Fifty Years of Sail in the New Zealand Trade, Vol. I,  Brett Printing, Auckland, 1924: 41.

³ Poverty Bay Herald, 3 March 1883: 2.

 ⁴ Brett, 1924: 41. Lady Jocelyn (Ship) Items, National Library of New Zealand·https://natlib.govt.nz › tap...

⁵ Stewart, Adela B; My Simple Life in New Zealand, Adela Stewart, 1908, Typographix, Katikati, 1996: 16-18.

⁶ Auckland Star, 19 August 1878: 2.

⁷ Hinemoa (Ship: 1876-1944) - National Library of New Zealand, https://natlib.govt.nz › records

⁸ Stewart, 1908: 19.

⁹  Ibid: 19

¹⁰ Ibid: 22 -23

¹¹ Ibid: 30.

¹² Ibid: 26

¹³ Brett, 1924: 43.

¹⁴  Hinemoa (Ship: 1876-1944) - National Library of New Zealand, https://natlib.govt.nz › records

¹⁵ My Simple Life In New Zealand – The Balance House, https://www.theballancehouse.com › adela-stewart