The Mount Maunganui Channel and the Wrecking of the Cutter Waterlily, 1873

 

Tauranga Harbour, its main entrance and outer waters witnessed the wreckings of many waka Māori, sailing ships and steamers, both large and small during the course of the 1800s.

The narrow Maunganui Channel particularly, with its outer southern reef, shifting winds, strong currents, rocky southern shore (under Mauao) and Stony Point Reef continued to claim vessels well into the 1900s.

In 1829, the Mount’s channel rocks almost wrecked the Australian whaling ship Vittoria. Fortunately, the whalers Guide and Prince of Denmark were also in the harbour seeking provisions from local iwi. The combined tools and efforts of all three crews repaired the Vittoria sufficiently for it to sail clear before the weather turned.[1]

Marked today by the statue of the sea god Tangaroa, the Maunganui Channel’s Stony Point Reef nearly claimed immigrant visionary George Vesey Stuart’s newly arrived Te Puke and Katikati settlers. Clearing the channel and emerging into the harbour under full sail in January and December 1881 respectively, the 2000-ton Lady Jocelyn and 733-ton May Queen lost way and began drifting back towards the reef. Fortunately, there were steamships at the Town and Victoria wharves, whose skippers steamed to the rescue and towed both vessels to the safety of the old Man O’ War Anchorage.[2], [3]

In January 1881, the 2000-ton immigrant clipper Lady Jocelyn narrowly avoided going aground at Stony Point.

Maurice Forester, ‘Painting of the ship Lady Jocelyn’, Pae Koroki, Tauranga City Libraries Photo 06-197

While the two great ocean-going immigrant ships escaped the reef, a variety of smaller European-built sailing vessels under 20 tons were wrecked from the 1840s, particularly when their Māori and Pākehā skippers sailed too close to the Mount while entering and exiting Pilot Bay. Among them was the Waterlily.

Described as ‘a fine little cutter’ the Auckland based ten-ton Waterlily (not to be confused with the 17-ton schooner Waterlily which was also active at the time), was wrecked at Stony Point in June 1873. A versatile, single masted, fore-and-aft rigged sailboat with two gaff mainsails and a long bowsprit, the Waterlily had previously traded between Auckland and the Bay of Plenty ports for several years without mishap.[4]     

Having left Port Charles at the tip of the Coromandel Peninsula and bound for Tauranga, Captain Eggerton and his crew of three experienced strong northerlies and ‘thickening weather’ off Tauranga Harbour’s Katikati entrance around 9 p.m. Entering the Maunganui Channel and driven through by the wind and tide ‘at full force’, the Waterlily crashed onto Stony Point reef around 11 p.m. where ‘the sea commenced to break over her immediately’.

Tangaroa statue, Frank Szirmay ‘Tangaroa’ (1976), Port of Tauranga 

Photo: Bronwyn Holloway Smith, Public Art Heritage, Aotearoa New Zealand, Tauranga City Council Art Collection.

Stony Point Reef extends from the beach below Mount Maunganui to the plinth and statue of the Māori sea god Tangaroa. The Waterlily struck the reef to the statue’s right (i.e., on the left of this picture).

The concussion unshipped the rudder, which drifted away and was lost, depriving the crew of all control over the cutter. Prior to the wrecking, the captain, who could barely distinguish the nearby Mount in the deteriorating conditions, reported later that no channel buoys were to be seen.[5]

An anchor was dropped in an attempt to keep the cutter off the rocks, but it would not hold. The captain and crew were forced to abandon the Waterlily, but not before saving most of their personal effects and the jibsail which they got aboard the vessel’s dinghy. Managing, with difficulty, to clear the point they rowed into the shelter of Pilot Bay where they passed a miserable night on the beach.

The following morning Captain Eggerton, who was the son of the Waterlily’s owner, and the three sailors were collected and taken across the harbour and into town by a boat dispatched from the Tauranga ketch Isabella. Captain Eggerton immediately telegraphed Auckland to inform his father of the wrecking. The Waterlily, which was insured, had been loaded with 45 tons of firewood (uninsured), intended for Mr. Piercy, a Tauranga merchant.[6], [7]

A small sailing vessel on the rocks in heavy seas. The crew are attempting to salvage what they can 

from the wreck.

Image: Johan Christian Dohl, ‘Stranded Ship’- Strandet Skip - KODE Art Museums and Composer Homes, BB.B  Public domain.

Later that morning, local identities Captain Thomas Moller and Charles Hopkins returned to the wreck with the Waterlily’s crew on the lifeboat of the steamer Southern Cross. Landing on the beach below the Mount at low tide, they made their way along the reef through heavy surf to retrieve the cutter’s remaining sails and tackle. The following day Mr. Fullerton, another Tauranga resident, twice took his cutter down to the Mount, where he and his crew took away the Waterlily’s cargo of firewood for Mr. Piercy.[8]     

Evaluating the cause of the Waterlily wreck, the New Zealand Herald reported on I July 1873:

The casualty is entirely attributable to the neglected condition of the harbour, the channel of which some eight years ago was properly buoyed out and marked with beacons, and a harbourmaster appointed to see that these were kept in repair. Three years ago the harbourmaster, who was also the pilot, was removed at the suggestion of the sitting member of the Provincial Council for Tauranga… The removal of the pilot station acts prejudicially on the district because it prevents the entry into the harbour of men-o'-war, of which there have been not a few in Tauranga.[9]   

Tauranga remained a high-risk port for all types and sizes of vessels in the 1870s, due to its poorly marked and charted channels and ever-shifting sandbars. The harbour beacon that Captain Eggerton and the crew of the Waterlily had so desperately hoped to sight when passing through the channel had been swept away some weeks previously. To this day, knowledgeable mariners, aware of the risks of the Maunganui Channel and hoping for safe passage, make small offerings as they pass the statue of Tangaroa and the Te Kuia and Kurī Rocks further around the rock-strewn base of Mauao-Mount Maunganui.

Twice the tonnage of the 10-ton Waterlily, the cutter Lee was built at Henry Nicol’s shipyard in Auckland’s Mechanic’s Bay in 1864. The Lee also undertook trading voyages to Tauranga and the Bay of Plenty 

trading ports.

Image: Auckland Weekly News, ‘The cutter Lee, winner of the trading cutters’ race’. 4 February 1909. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collection Record ID AWNS-19090204-07-04.

References

[1] Collin, David R.; Kirkudbright’s Prince of Denmark and Her Voyages in the South Seas, Whittles, Dunedin, 2013: p 4.

[2] Brett, Henry, White Wings Vol. 1: Fifty Years of Sail in the New Zealand Trade, 1850-1900, Brett, Auckland, 1924: 42.

[3] Bay of Plenty Times, 4 January 1881: 2. Also see Bay of Plenty Times, 
13 January 1881: 2.

[4] Bay of Plenty Times, 25 June 1873: 3.

[5] New Zealand Herald, 1 July 1873: 2.                    

[6] Daily Southern Cross, 28 June 1873: 2.

[7] Bay of Plenty Times, 25 June 1873: 3.

[8] New Zealand Herald, 1 July 1873: 2

[9] ibid.

The Pilot House on Mauao

 
Pilot House on the slopes of Mauao, Mount Maunganui, c. 1950s
Collection of Te Ao Mārama  - Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. Photo 99-243

Access by sea has always been important to Tauranga since the first European ship, the Herald, entered the harbour in 1826. The barriers of the Kaimai Range and a swampy strip of land between hills and sea prohibited any form of transport except on foot for many years.

By the time the Land Wars ceased, there had been an increase in the number and size of ships entering the harbour, and several had been wrecked or grounded on sand banks. In December 1864 the Auckland Provincial Government appointed Thomas Sparrow Carmichael as pilot for Tauranga and provided him with a tent to live in on Maunganui, as Mauao was generally referred to in those days. He had two boatmen to row him out to the ships as they waited offshore.

By 1866 the Provincial Government built a house for the pilot and another for the boatmen. Little is known about these buildings and their exact locations. One theory is that it might have been uphill above the Pilot Wharf, where they would have access to their boat, and the more likely theory, nearer to the location of the second pilot house built above the present camping ground, with a view out to sea. Ships needing a pilot would fire off a gun to signal their presence. The pilot then raised a flag to notify the townspeople that the entry of a ship was imminent.

With the end of the Land Wars, the decline in provisions and other goods needed for the military noticeably reduced the volume of ships into Tauranga and, after six years, Carmichael’s position was terminated. The money saved from upkeep was spent on building wharves on The Strand. However, after a few years, and growth in population of the town, an official decision was made to re-establish the position of pilot and in 1873 an experienced master, Captain Hannibal Marks, took over. By then, the original pilot house was in a state of “rack and ruin”.^[i]

Pilot House, Mauao, Mount Maunganui, April 1955
Collection of Te Ao Mārama  - Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. Photo 04-625

The Auckland Provincial Council approved payment of £200 for a new Pilot House in June 1874 and a second house for the son and family.^[ii] Captain Marks and his son, also called Hannibal, were drowned when the pilot boat capsized in the harbour in August 1879. Following the death of Hannibal Marks the Marine Department appointed Captain Best, formerly of Thames, to the position of Harbour Master and Pilot.^[iii] He appeared to have occupied the Pilot House in the Domain, as the newspaper recorded the Presbyterian Picnic as gathering on the beach behind Captain Best’s house. During all of this excitement, the pilot himself was watching for the arrival of the Lady Jocelyn, the first immigrant ship to arrive directly at Tauranga.^[iv] Stormy weather caused the loss of the “iron chimney” on the Pilot House in 1881. This was probably a chimney made of two facing sheets of corrugated iron inside a timber frame, a style common in early buildings.

Grace Earle & Violet Petheridge seated on a cow, Mauao, Mount Maunganui, 1920
Collection of Te Ao Mārama  - Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. Photo 05-456

With the cessation of the pilot service, the house fell empty, and it was suggested that it be handed over from the Marine Department to the Tauranga Improvement Society to use as holiday accommodation for visitors to the beach. The idea was even floated that Mount Maunganui become a destination for invalids like the sanatoriums at Te Puke and Rotorua.^[v] Although there was some enthusiasm for transferring ownership of the Pilot House reserve to the Borough Council, it eventually became the property of the Harbour Board like the nearby Mount Drury (Hopukiore). The Harbour Board repaired the roof and part of the house several times, and the Pilot House reserve was fenced, with some camp sites made available. Various people leased the Pilot House and reserve for raising poultry, solely for the accommodation or, as occurred in March 1933, for a returned soldier from the First World War and his family with their four donkeys.^[vi] The cottage had been described as kauri, having five rooms with electricity and a tank water supply with a four-roomed second cottage alongside. The whole property totaled one and a half acres.^[vii]

Pilot House and Mount Drury (Hopukiore), c. 1950s
Collection of Te Ao Mārama  - Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. Photo 99-244

The new tenant Fred Davies, with his family, and the donkeys called Smithy, Murphy, Brownie and Snowy, were to be a drawcard for the Mount Main Beach for the next twenty years. Fred named the donkeys after his mates who died at Gallipoli. He also built a corrugated iron shop opposite the Oceanside Hotel selling ice cream and soft drinks. The Davies sons supervised the donkey rides and when they left school their mother took over, until 1952 when she moved out of the Pilot House to her new home in Marine Parade.^[viii] The visit of the young Sel Neal in 1951 shows a building with a rusting roof and deteriorating cladding. Thus ended occupation of the Tauranga Pilot House. The house stood for a few more years but is missing from images taken in the 1960s, and the second house is recorded as being demolished in 1964.^[ix]

Sel Neal, age 9 with a donkey, at the Pilot House, Mauao, Mount Maunganui, 1951
Collection of Justine Neal

References

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^[i] Bay of Plenty Times (BOPT), 9 May 1874

^[ii] Daily Southern Cross, 13 Jun 1874

^[iii] BOPT, 4 Sep 1879

^[iv] BOPT, 4 Jan 1881

^[v] BOPT, 25 Jul 1887

^[vi] BOPT, 5 Mar 1933

^[vii] BOPT , 9 Sep 1930

^[viii] Neal, Justine, The Donkeys of Ocean Beach, Historical Review, Bay of Plenty Journal of History, Vol 64, No.1, May 2016, p19

^[ix] Cunningham, B. & Musgrave, K., A History of Mount Maunganui, Commissioned by Mount Maunganui Borough Council, 1989, p. 18