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.
