Early Maritime Tauranga: Vessels, Visitors, Settlers and Events, Part XXIV
Unlike the immigrant clipper ships Lady Jocelyn and May Queen in 1881, the barque Dover Castle never sailed settlers directly to Tauranga. Its first port of call was Auckland on the Waitemata Harbour. The vessel was nevertheless important in the history of Tauranga’s social and economic development. Dover Castle was the first of 12 ships to arrive in New Zealand between 1875 and 1884, carrying settlers for immigrant visionary George Vesey Stewart’s ‘special’ settlements at Katikati and Te Puke.
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On 25 August 1875, the Auckland Star reported:
The barque Dover Castle, with the first half of Mr. George Vesey Stewart's special immigrants, arrived inside Rangitoto Channel last evening after a quick passage of 88 days. In consequence of the westerly gale blowing she brought up in the channel for the night. The Dover Castle is a fine Sunderland built vessel owned by Shaw, Savill and Co.1
A wooden frigate-styled barque of 1008 tons, Dover Castle bore the distinctive figurehead of an Indian Prince. Built in Sunderland in 1858 for R. & H. Green's Black Ball Line, the East Indiaman was purchased by the Shaw, Savill Line for the New Zealand immigrant run in 1871.2 With a length of 185 feet (56m) and a beam of 34feet (10.6m), in 1875 it was described by The Auckland Star as ‘a sample of one of the good old comfortable, and yet fast sailing Indiamen - although these vessels are now superseded by the modern clipper of the Carisbrooke Castle stamp’ adding ‘The Dover Castle has just shewn us what she is capable of in the way of sailing, having beaten the more powerful Carisbrooke [in the run between Belfast and Auckland].’3
The Dover Castle (Captain Calvert) departed East India Dock, Belfast on 28 May 1875 with free New Zealand government emigrants from Northern Ireland. The nationalities were ‘English, 4; Scotch, 3 ; Irish, 357 ; total, 364 souls’4 Vesey Stewart stated that the Dover Castle left Belfast ahead of Carisbrooke Castle (by 10 days), ‘with members of No. 1 party’ who were to settle at Katikati.5 Some were people of capital; most were labourers, artisans, tenant farmers and young single women.
On their voyages to New Zealand, the two ships met at sea and sailed in company for two days. Though described as an uneventful voyage, at one point the Dover Castle was struck by a white squall and, running under bare poles for 24 hours, was driven 300 nautical miles closer to her goal. There were also 10 deaths on board, 2 from scarlet fever and 8 from other ailments.6 Interestingly, as an unarmed barque, the Dover Castle was painted with false gunports to look like a man o’ war and thus deter pirates.
On arrival at Auckland on 25 August, Dover Castle anchored off Rangitoto and hoisted a yellow flag, as one of the passengers was afflicted with scarlet fever.7 The vessel had on board the only boat saved from the ill-fated immigrant ship Cospatrick which had burned and sank with few survivors while bound for New Zealand. Quarantined off Motuihi Island, the passengers were cleared on 1st September. When the Carisbrooke Castle and its passengers arrived in Auckland, ‘The only thing that marred their satisfaction was the sight of the despised Dover Castle, which had beaten them by a fortnight’.8 After 3 days in Auckland, the reunited Vesey Stewart No. 1 Party went on to Tauranga in ‘semi-royal state in the fast and favourite government steamships Rowena and Pretty Jane’.9
The SS Rowena, Photographer and location unknown
Heritage Collections, Hamilton City Library, Te Oho mauri O Kirikiriroa, Ref. HCL_06579
(in favourable conditions, voyages between Auckland and Tauranga on coastal
steamers like the Rowena averaged 12-15 hours)
SS Rowena was built in Henry Nicol’s Auckland shipyard in 1872 for Capt. Alexander McGregor’s Auckland Steam Packet Company. Registered at 110 tons, he named it after the beautiful bride of author Sir Walter Scott’s fictional Saxon knight and crusader Ivanhoe. Intended for the New Zealand coastal trade and its variable sea conditions, the vessel had a skeleton of pohutukawa planked with heart kauri and a hull sheathed with copper. With a length of 101 feet (30.48m) and a beam of 17 feet (5.18m), the Rowena, while powered by two 30hp engines, was twin-masted and schooner-rigged (as were many coastal auxiliary steamers during the 1860s and 1870s). With its screw located outside the sternpost for greater power, it averaged a respectable 10 knots.10
Described as a vessel that ‘promenaded in style’, with its ‘fine lines and clipper bowsprit’, the Rowena conveyed Vesey Stewart’s wealthier settlers to the port of Tauranga in comfort. There was a 23 berth first class passenger saloon and ladies’ cabin aft. There was roomy steerage for the majority, who were tenant farming families with limited capital, and a large hold for luggage, capable of holding 300 sheep. With the vessel skippered by Capt. Daniel Sellars, who had sailed the Bay of Penty and East Coast in his own cutter Brunette since the 1860s, the new settlers were also in safe hands.11
Mount Maunganui and Waikorire-Pilot Bay as seen by the first Vesey Stewart
arrivals in September 1875. The steamer seen near Stoney Point may well be the Rowena,
the first to operate a Tauranga-Auckland service in 1874.
Watercolour by John Kinder,
1874
Collection of Auckland Art Gallery, Toi O Tamaki, Ref. 1937/15/46
On the morning of 14 September, the two steamers passed through the Mount Maunganui channel and anchored close to the town. From there, the passengers were ferried ashore in small boats to the Tauranga foreshore where:
A most enthusiastic reception was given by the residents, who all turned out to welcome the party. The Committee was headed by Captain Morris M.H.R., who presented an address of welcome to the settlers on their arrival. The Native Chiefs belonging to Tauranga also assisted at the welcome. Good fellowship between the new arrivals and the settlers is already established.12
On the following day the settlers balloted for their sections. After hiring assorted local craft at £15 pounds per trip, they made their way independently to Katikati’s three main landing places and temporary whares located on the Aongatete, Uretara and Tuapiro Rivers, before proceeding to their sections.13 As first arrivals in New Zealand, Vesey Stewart’s Dover Castle settlers ‘took on the airs of old colonists’ when interacting with those from the Carisbrooke Castle, affectations no doubt endured by later settler arrivals at Katikati.14
While Katikati’s settlers commenced the long and laborious task of clearing their sections, the Dover Castle was sailing from Auckland to China. Later sold and renamed the Kem, it was later broken up after becoming stranded on the Norwegian coast.15 The SS Rowena was acquired by the Northern Steam Ship Company in 1878 and, under Capt. Sellars, continued its twice-weekly Auckland-Tauranga passenger, freight and mail service. In January 1880, Capt. Amadeo took command and the steamer began sailing further afield. After several mishaps and in the face of growing competition the Rowena was laid up by its owners in 1886.16
Endnotes
1 Auckland Star, 25 August 1875: 3.
2 Auckland Star, 31 August 1875: 2. Brett, Henry, White Wings: Fifty Years of Sail in the New Zealand Trade, Vol. I, Brett Printing, Auckland, 1924: 121. New Zealand Settler Ships - Genealogy Projects - Geni.com, https://www.geni.com › projects › tag › ships_to_New_...
3 Auckland Star, 13 September 1875: 2. Ibid, 25 August 1875: 3.
4 Auckland Star, 25 August 1875: 3.
5 Bay of Plenty Times, 15 September 1875: 3. Otago Daily Times, 6 November 1880: 1.
6 Auckland Star, 25 August 1875: 3.
7 Brett, 1924: 121. Dover Castle (Ship: 1858 - National Library of New Zealand, https://natlib.govt.nz › tapuhi
8 Gray, Arthur J, An Ulster Plantation:The Story of the Katikati Settlement, A.H. and A.W. Reed, Wellington, 1938: 23.
9 Bay of Plenty Times, 20 September 1905: 2. Observer, 23 September 1905: 5.
10 Amodeo, C. F; ‘A Trial of Strength’, Part 1, in New Zealand Marine News, Journal of the New Zealand Ship and Marine Society, Vol. 31, No. 3, 1981: 76. (71-92).
11 Ibid: 79.
12 Star (Christchurch) 16 September 1875: 3.
13 Gray, 1938: 25-28.
14 Ibid, 1938: 23-24.
15 Brett, Vol. 1, 1924: 121.
16 Amodeo, C. F; ‘A Trial of Strength’, Part 2, in New Zealand Marine News, Journal of the New Zealand Ship and Marine Society, Vol. 31, No. 4, 1981: 129. (111-138).
