Early Sailing Vessels and Visitors to Tauranga, Part XXII
HMS Rosario was a regular sight in Tauranga harbour between 1868 and 1870. While on shore, the crew forged close ties with the town’s anxious residents who, following the 1867 Tauranga Bush War, remained under threat of attack by the Ringatu followers of the militant prophet and guerrilla leader Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki.
Launched on the River Thames from the Deptford Dockyard on 17 October 1860, the wooden sloop of war HMS Rosario had a displacement of 913 tons and a length of 160 feet or 49 metres. Rigged as a square-sailer she was assisted by a 2-cylinder single screw engine, which gave her up to 9.2 knots or 17.0 km/h under steam. Rosario carried a formidable 11-gun armament comprising a single slide-mounted 40-pounder Armstrong breech-loading gun, six 32-pounder muzzle-loading smooth-bore guns and four pivot-mounted 20-pounder Armstrong breech loaders.1
HMS Rosario
After serving as a fishery protection vessel in the North Sea and a patrol vessel in Caribbean and North American waters from 1862, HMS Rosario’s new commander George Palmer and his 14 officers and 112 men sailed the vessel from Woolwich to the Australian station in 1867. The sloop made regular patrols in South Pacific waters, where it pursued Australian and New Zealand vessels engaged in Blackbirding – the practice of seizing and selling indigenous Pasifika people to plantation owners in Fiji and Queensland and to the owners of guano mines on the offshore Islands of Peru.2
HMS Rosario also patrolled New Zealand waters for four years between 1868 and 1872, as the latter stages of the North Island’s Anglo-Maori Land Wars (1860-1872) unfolded. The vessel was first seen at Tauranga in June 1868, when the sloop escorted Governor Bowen who was aboard the government paddle steamer Sturt to Maketu. There, he met with Queenite or loyalist Te Arawa chiefs and assured them of government support. Commander Palmer then took Rosario out from Tauranga to meet the Sturt off Whaakari (White Island) where the government party went ashore to view ‘the sulphur springs.’ 3 The following month the Rosario transported a force of colonial volunteers under Lieutenant-Colonel Whitmore from Wellington to Poverty Bay, and later often conveyed other colonial troops, military stores and remaining Imperial troops between New Zealand ports.
HMS Rosario’s original armament had been reduced from eleven to four guns for its Australasian patrol, as evidenced soon after the vessel re-entered Tauranga harbour on 28th September 1868. Tauranga’s New Zealand Herald correspondent reported:
On Monday night, about nine o'clock, the people of Tauranga were surprised by the loud report from four great guns – one after the other, in quick succession – from on board H.M.S. Rosario. It appears to be the practice on board, within a certain period, to beat to quarters, and load and fire in order to ascertain the shortest time taken in its performance. During the brief visit of this vessel the officers and men have won the esteem and respect of all in Tauranga, the former, from their courteousness to all with whom they came in contact; the latter, as being the best conducted body of men who ever came to this port.
Since the Rosario's arrival our little town has been kept quite alive, putting one in mind of former times. First they treat us to a series of sports (a list of which I enclose, with the names of the winners), then a cricket match between eleven of the ship's company and eleven Te Papas, the score of which I also forward, and by which it will be seen we were well beaten; and lastly, a vocal and instrumental entertainment, as per following circular, widely distributed: “Rosario’s Christy Minstrels beg to inform the inhabitants of Tauranga that they intend giving a vocal and instrumental entertainment at the Government Store House in the redoubt, on Tuesday evening the 22nd instant.” 4
Tauranga, 1870
Tauranga
town and foreshore as it will have appeared to HMS Rosario’s crew from
the Monmouth Redoubt in 1870. The wooden structure in the foreground is the
redoubt’s draw bridge.
During 1869, the Rosario visited Tauranga on several occasions, bringing military supplies for other Royal Navy warships on duty in the harbour or replacing them on station. In October 1869, in a rifle match between the Rosario’s crew and Tauranga’s Armed Constabulary at distances of 300 and 400 yards, the sailors won by 77 points.5 In a cricket match between the crew and armed constabulary in November that year, the constabulary won by 10 wickets and 13 runs, with both sides celebrating at the Masonic Hotel.6 That month, the Rosario’s crew worked with the Armed Constabulary to build an embankment in front of the cemetery at Te Papa where the army and navy men who fell at the battle of Gate Pa were buried. The cemetery it was reported ‘although situated in a very pretty spot was too near the water,’ and was being washed away by the sea.7
Between 1869 and 1872, Te Kooti and his Ringatu followers attacked Maori
and Pakeha settlements and lone settlers on the East Coast and in the Central
North Island while being pursued by colonial and loyalist Maori troops. In January 1870 Te Kooti’s fugitive band visited to Te Tapapa, the village of the Waitaha prophet Hākaraia Mahika, located 10km east of Tirau, at the Western foot of the Kaimai Range. Ultimately Te Kooti, perhaps aware of the presence of three Royal Navy battleships anchored off Te Papa (HMS Rosario, HMS Challenger and HMS Blanche), did not attack Tauranga, moving his Ringatu fighters instead through the Kaimai and Mamaku ranges to Rotorua. Nevertheless, his proximity to Tauranga and persistent rumours that he was about to attack the town and district was a source of great distress for resident Maori and Pakeha alike.
While the Rosario’s crew forged close and positive relations with Tauranga’s residents, some of her sailors continued to rebel against the iron discipline enforced aboard the vessel. Punishments for offences ranged from extra duties and limited rations, to floggings with the cat o’ nine tails for mature sailors and flogging or caning on the bare buttocks for sailors under the age of 18. Six Rosario sailors deserted at Auckland and Wellington between December 1868 and February 1870, but were recaptured. Two Rosario sailors found temporary refuge among sympathetic local settlers and Maori after deserting at Tauranga in 1870, before they were captured.
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| A merchant seaman being flogged with a rope’s end |
Anglo-American whaling vessels entering Pacific waters for a 2-3 year cruise during the 1800s could expect to lose half of their original crews, including officers, who deserted at various Pacific Islands, including New Zealand. Many were welcomed and integrated into indigenous Polynesian communities, often leaving behind a considerable amount of wages owed. While the desertion rate from Royal Navy vessels was much lower, absconding seamen remained an ongoing problem for naval captains. HMS Blanche and Challenger who were also on station at Tauranga in this period, had sailors deserting in Auckland and Wellington in groups of three and four, At Tauranga in July 1870, the Rosario sailor George Watson was tracked down, arrested and returned to the ship for flogging and ironing ie. kept in irons below decks or in a naval prison, after deserting. He was fortunate as his shipmate, Louis Baker, one of the ship’s stokers, had been shot dead by the military officers in February 1870, after deserting at Tauranga.8
This sailor was Louis Baker, a sailor of French-Canadian descent, had a long history of military service with the Royal Navy. Described in one report as ‘a swarthy fellow, very wiry and muscular,’ he had served on a succession of British men o’war before either deserting or being paid off in New Zealand where he later joined Captain James Fraser’s military settlers at Napier.9
For reasons unknown, in late 1864, Baker deserted his post at Puketapu near Napier. He joined the ‘rebel’ rangatira Te Waru on the Wairoa River, the latter having returned from the South Waikato battlefield and Maori defeat at Orakau. Captain Preece, a Colonial Defence Force officer reported the deserter’s presence among Hauhau fighting men in the Urewera Ranges in 1865 and his remarkable feat of athleticism:
Baker was fighting against us at
Omaruhakeke Upper Wairoa and at Te Kopare, near Lake Waikaremoana. After Major
Ropata's defeat of the Hauhaus at Te Kopare, Baker reached Onepoto on
the lake shore only to find that all the canoes had been taken by the fleeing
rebels. He made his way round the rocks to Parekiri Bluff, and then swam across
the lake to Tikitiki, nearly three miles.10
At Taranaki in 1865, Baker became part of the notorious recruiting and propaganda campaign conducted by the militant prophets Kereopa Te Rau and Patara Raukatauri. Treated little better than a slave, he was forced to carry the cured head of Captain Lloyd, a British officer killed during the fighting at Taranaki:
This head had been carried from village to village through the heart of the Island; the Pai-marire prophets pretended to consult it as an oracle. Its bearer was the white deserter, Louis Baker. After the murder of Mr. Volkner at Opotiki this white slave was compelled to carry the missionary's head about the country on Kereopa's journeyings, and at each village it was displayed to the people on a kind of tray which was slung in front of him, supported by flax straps about his neck. A grim subject there for a macabre picture by some future painter of New Zealand historical episodes.11
Having survived his mistreatment by the Hauhau prophets and several clashes with, and pursuits by British, colonial and loyalist kupapa Maori troops, in 1868, Baker gave himself up and was arrested. Committed for trial at the Napier Supreme Court for sedition, he claimed to have been captured by the Hauhau and forced to fight. He was released as no one could be found to give eyewitness evidence against him. Regardless, local authorities had Baker rearrested under the Vagrancy Act for living among Maori, and he was sentenced to three months hard labour.12
An artist’s
impression of the Ringatu prophet-general Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki
Baker appears to have been returned to HMS Rosario where he served as a stoker until 1870, when he deserted at Tauranga to join the militant prophet Te Kooti Arikirangi and his armed Ringatu adherents.13 Oddly, perhaps in an attempt to salvage his reputation, Baker ‘got away by stealth’ from the Ringatu encampment. Arriving at Ohinemutu, Rotorua, he warned Captain Turner and the loyalist Te Arawa troops stationed there that Te Kooti’s force was approaching the settlement.
Recognised at Rotorua as a Rosario deserter by one of the Te Arawa troopers named Kepa, Baker was made a prisoner and placed in the custody of a policeman who escorted him from Rotorua to the military settlement at Tauranga. On the way, they were joined by three Colonial Field Force officers, two of whom executed Baker on the pretext that he was attempting to escape. On 30 May 1870, the Taranaki Herald reported:
This rascal has been long known here under the designation of Kereopa, his sympathies with the cannibal of that name being well known to us, as well as his constant communication with Te Kooti, Hakaraia, and other rebels; indeed, he was a more welcome guest with them than with the Europeans … His last desertion occurred last month, just previous to the departure of the 'Rosario' for Wellington, when he was seen offering a portion of his sailor's clothing (new) for a mere trifle. On the 13th or 14th February [1870] he endeavoured to make his escape to his old friends, when he was shot down. I am informed the recreant fell by the weapon of Major Drummond Hay; if so, that officer could hardly have rendered a more signal service to the district.14
In contrast the Whanganui Herald reported that having first taken ‘a tot’ of rum:
[T]he officers fired three shots at him [Baker], wounding him in the shoulder. They then rode up and blew his brains out…If this is not murder, it approaches very close to it, and is a deep slur on the character of the force. That officers should first "tot," to raise their courage, and then take pot shots at a prisoner in their power, is degrading to our race, and places the white man on a level with the savage.15
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| Lieutenant-Colonel James Fraser |
While Tauranga remained threatened by Te Kooti, Captain Palmer landed a detachment of Blue Jackets and Royal Marines from the Rosario each evening to reinforce elements of the Armed Constabulary, a force of Thames Volunteers and the 1st Waikato Milita defending the town. When Colonel James Fraser of Tauranga’s No. 1 Armed Constabulary division died of typhoid in March 1870, the Indian Mutiny veteran was buried with full military honours in the cemetery at Te Papa. The Rosario’s crew was in attendance and the solemnity of the occasion was enhanced by the booming of minute guns from their ship. The firing party of 100 men comprised men from the Rosario, the Armed Constabulary, the 1st Waikato Regiment and Thames Volunteers. The Evening Post reported how the loss of this courageous anti-Hauhau campaigner cast an unusual gloom over the town. ‘Archdeacon Brown read the sublime burial service of the Church of England in his usual impressive manner. The coffin bore this simple inscription, James Fraser; aged 29 years.’16
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| HMS Rosario’s officers and sailors during the seizing of the Australian blackbirder Daphne in 1869 |
Before HMS Rosario left Tauranga in May 1870, its citizens publicly thanked Captain Palmer for the way he had brought Rosario close in shore and anchored there to reassure the townspeople during the Te Kooti crisis and for the careful survey of the harbour that he had personally undertaken.17 They also presented him with ‘a tasteful and beautiful box, made of the different woods of New Zealand’. Within the box, a ‘beautifully illuminated’ letter read:
To Captain Palmer, Commanding H.M.S. 'Rosario.' Sir, — We, the inhabitants of Tauranga, wish to express our gratitude and thanks for the kind sympathy and ready aid we have so often experienced from H.M. ships of war, whose moral force, no less than their physical power, have on several occasions been our safeguard, restoring confidence to us, and deterring those who threatened our peaceful settlements. The frequent visits of H.M.S. 'Rosario,' and the fact of her being stationed so close to our town, have given us many opportunities of experiencing your kindness and that of your officers, and also to witness the uniform good conduct of the men belonging to your ship. We beg your acceptance of this address, with the case enclosing it, as a small token of our appreciation of the benefits to be derived from your sojourn amongst us, not only as a representative of the naval power of our parent country, but also for the personal efforts you have made to forward the interests of our, infant settlement ; and we trust that, in future years, when this district is peaceful and prosperous, and you may have retired from public service, you will look back with pleasure upon your various visits to Tauranga.18
In April 1870, George Palmer was replaced by Commander Henry Challis, and in September that year, a team from Rosario played the first New Zealand international rugby union match against a side from Wellington at the Basin Reserve.19 In 1872, Commander Challis took the sloop to the islands of Melanesia and Polynesia, on a cruise conducted entirely under canvas, in pursuit of the notorious slaver and pirate Bully Hayes who eluded capture. Later that year, the Royal Navy steamer Dido arrived at Sydney to replace Rosario on the Australian station. On her return to England the Rosario was decommissioned in 1875 and employed for a time as a prison hulk for young criminals. She was listed at the Chatham Dock Yards in 1880 and in 1884 was sold by the Admiralty for breaking up.20
Endnotes
1 HMS Rosario (1860) – Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › HMS.Rosario (1860)
2 Ibid.
3 Hawke’s Bay Herald, 13 June 1868: 2. Wellington Independent, 16 June, 1868: 3.
4 New Zealand Herald, 28 September 1868: 5.
5 Ibid: 30 October 1869: 5.
6 Daily Southern Cross, 30 November 1869: 4.
7 Wellington Independent, 23 November 1869: 2.
8 Auckland Star, 22 July 1870: 2; 24 July, 1871: 3.
9 Ibid: 13 March 1926, 2.
10 Cowan, James, The New Zealand Wars: A History of the Maori Campaigns and the Pioneering Period, Vol. II, R.E. Owen, Wellington, 1956, 88-89. 72-73.
11 Auckland Star, 20 Sept 1930, 8.
12 Hawke’s Bay Herald, 3 March 1868, 2.
13 Cowan, Vol. II, 1956, 389.
14 Taranaki Herald, 2 March 1870: 3.
15 Wanganui Herald, 30 May 1870, 2.
16 Evening Post, 22 March 1870: 2. Daily Southern Cross, 18 March 1870: 4.
17 Daily Southern Cross, 3 May 1870: 7.
18 Ibid: 7 May, 1870: 3.
Illustrations
Rosario chasing a man-stealing schooner in Polynesian waters, c. 1871. HMS Rosario (1860) – Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › HMS.Rosario (1860).
Back and white print, ‘Tauranga 1870. View of Tauranga from the high land beside Taumatakahawai (Monmouth Redoubt). Draw bridge to the redoubt on left. Tauranga Hotel centre. No wharves have been built, nor is there a seawall. Ref. 99-371. Pae Koroki, Tauranga City Libraries Photographic Collection.
Sailor being flogged on board ship, C. 1840 Non ATL-0123, Alexander Turnbull Library Wellington.
T.R. Spiller, Te Kooti, ca. 1800s, The Graphic, (London), January 8, 1870: 141. A-251-028, National Library of New Zealand, Wellington.
Meisenbach Company, Lieutenant-Colonel James Fraser, ca. 1860s, 1/2631242-F, National Library of New Zealand, Wellington.
Samuel Calvert and Oswald Campbell, Seizure of the blackbirding schooner Daphne and its cargo by HMS Rosario in 1869. National Library of Australia, Public Domain.
