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