The Wreck of the Cutter Oi on Panepane Beach, 1890

 

Panepane Point and Beach from Mount Maunganui, showing part of the narrow main shipping channel and the Tauranga harbour.

Populated for centuries by Māori iwi, and today mostly associated with Ngāi te Rangi hapū, Matakana Island is a long, flat barrier island 20km in length and about 3km wide. The island forms a sand barrier between Tauranga Harbour and the vast South Pacific Ocean. Since time immemorial Matakana’s dune-backed beach has been a landing and wrecking site for waka Māori, and before and following the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, a diverse range of Māori and Pākehā owned sailing vessels.

The name Panepane in 19^th century European sources referred to a specific southern section of Matakana Island close to Panepane Purakau or Panepane Point, not the entire ocean beach [1]. It was in fact a name for the southernmost three kilometres located across the channel from Mauao | Mount Maunganui.

Sailing craft, driven eastward during gales, were thrown bodily onto the beach where their crews attempted to leap clear into the surf, before their vessels began a deadly mast-shattering roll. Again, when sailing vessels of all sizes attempting to enter or leave the harbour during marginal conditions missed the channel by even a little, they, depending on conditions, either grounded temporarily or were rolled and wrecked among the breakers.

A Tauranga-owned and -based cutter, the Oi became a common sight on Tauranga Moana during its three-year working career - likely named, in part, after the common nautical haloo in use at the time, “Oi, ahoy!” Kauri-built cutters were much favoured by Tauranga’s small maritime entrepreneurs though they never outnumbered schooners. Interestingly, their single owner-operators also styled themselves master mariners though their crews might number only one or two.

On 16 January 1890, the Oi left the little Bay of Plenty port of Maketū. Crossing the Kaituna River outlet through heavy surf, it began the short 27km (14.6 nautical sea mile) voyage up the coast to Tauranga with a cargo of flax. Information on the cutter’s tonnage is not available, probably because it was unregistered. Regardless, the provisions and coastal timber trade on the Coromandel and Bay of Plenty coasts between the 1870s and 90’s was often handled by sailing cutters of 8-30 tons.

A gale had sprung up a day before the Oi’s departure from Maketū, but the captain and crew, later identified as ‘Messrs W. Turner and W. Cinnamon’ undertook the voyage regardless. The Oi cutter was last seen on the same day by people near Mount Maunganui around midday. It was then battling heavy seas just off Motuotau | Rabbit Island and Moturiki | Leisure Island and heading towards the Tauranga Harbour entrance [2].

 There were soon grave fears at Tauranga for the safety of the Oi and its crew, and two days later, despite the gale which was to last for a week, an intrepid search party comprising ‘Messrs Moss, C. Faulkner, C. Spencer, Allely, Maxwell, and Cotter’, was organised. First crossing by boat to Pilot Bay below the Mount, they were informed by the crew of another cutter that had just safely passed through the Mount Maunganui Channel, that they had seen wreckage of another vessel on Matakana Island’s Panepane beach.

The old Auckland-based, gaff-rigged cutter Jesse Logan. Note the long bowsprit which, without making their masts taller, increased the sail area of cutters while allowing the sail plan to be broken down into smaller, more manageable headsails.

Crossing the channel to Matakana Island and Panepane Beach, the search party found the remains of the Oi lying literally smashed to pieces above the high-water mark.

The mast was broken off to a stump, the bowsprit was completely wrenched out, and the timbers had all parted at the stern, leaving a great gap. Her hatches were off, and the hold was swept of everything. Her rudder was found broken in two places, and her sails were found on the beach double reefed. No trace of the crew was discovered, and there is little doubt that these unfortunate young men have found a watery grave. It is difficult to say what caused the catastrophe [3].

The following day, the same party began another search along the full length of Matakana Island’s ocean beach on horses hired from the Island’s Māori residents. Half way towards Tauranga Harbour’s northern Katikati entrance ‘they found broken oars, part of a hat belonging to Cinnamon, and parts of an accordion’[4].  Footprints on the beach initially gave some hope and the cutter Eleanor and several other local boats continued the search as the gale abated. The police also searched Mount Maunganui’s forested slopes but the Oi’s crew were never found [5].

 The loss of well-captained, shallow-draught, local vessels like the Oi had disruptive as well as tragic outcomes for the Bay of Plenty’s coastal communities. From December 1887, for instance, the Oi had transported much needed cargoes of provisions and sundries twice per month from Tauranga to the settlements of Katikati and Te Puke on the Uretara and Kaituna Rivers respectively, ‘cash on delivery’. In one instance, the cutter had sailed the inner harbour route from Tauranga to deliver, to the Uretara River bridge at Katikati, sacks of potatoes, flour, sugar, oatmeal, seed, ‘maize by the bushel’, and boxes of tea, soap, candles, jam and golden syrup for the new settlers there [6]. 

A beach-wrecked ketch or sloop at the high-water mark.

The Oi was by no means the last Pākehā or Māori owned sailing craft to be wrecked or temporarily stranded in the wrecking zone on Panepane Beach. In May 1893, just three years after the Oi’s loss, the wreckage of an unidentified ketch was found on Panepane Beach following a gale. The violence of the wrecking had broken off the 25-foot mast at deck level. Again, the bodies of the crew were never found [7].

References

[1] Panepane Purakau, Western Bay of Plenty District Council,https://www.westernbay.govt.nz ›community› projects

[2] Te Aroha News, 23 April 1890: 4.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Bay of Plenty Times, 9 December 1887: 3.

[7] Grey River Argus, 9 May 1893: 2.

Image credits

Panepane Point, Matakana Island, photo/file. Kiri Gillespie, ‘Matakana Island proposal: Panepane Point plan prompts encouraging level of interest’. Bay of Plenty Times, 27 August 2020.

 ‘Jessie Logan, circa. 1880s. Restoration of NZ’s Oldest Surviving Yacht’. Image courtesy of Keith Pine, New Zealand Prosthetic Eye Service, info@prosthetic eye service.

 Abandoned maritime wreckage. Stocktake royalty free images https://www.freepik.com › free-photos-vectors  

David Topi Werahiko Borell – a tribute

On Saturday 9 May, fifty years and one day after his death, representatives of Tauranga Historical were invited to gather with members of the Borell whānau  to commemorate their koro and our rangatira’s contributions to his community.

Paparoa marae, 9 May 2026  (Image: Beth Bowden)

Family man, famed sportsman and scholar, Mr David Borell of Te Puna was a member of the Tauranga Historical Society in various roles in the 1960’s.  He was on the Executive Committee for a long time, starting in 1963 and serving as Vice President for 1965 (the job was taken over by T. R. Te Kani in1966).  But his activities extended far beyond those administrative functions, and well into the century’s – and his – 70s.

Te Puna Rugby Team, 1920.  Davy Borell is third from left in the middle row. (Image: Te Ao Marama, 08-073)

Davy, as he was usually known, famously turned down the chance to play for the All Blacks because his wife was due to have a baby.  The confidence that underlay such a decision may have come from his earlier experience as a scholarship boy:  he had won his secondary education at a big-city school, Sacred Heart College in Glen Innes, Auckland, where he learned Latin, history and geography.  He spoke te reo all his life and moved effortlessly between te ao Māori and te ao pākehā.  In his retirement, he put these talents at the service of the Tauranga Historical Society.

In the Society’s September 1964 Journal (Number 21) [1] he published a long-form article titled “Historic Te Puna”.  Being the scholar he was, it took two full pages of background description of waka voyages, social context, and whakapapa before he actually got on to Te Puna;  and in the midst of this introduction is a small personal gem:  his father saw the famous, now lost, family portrait sent by Queen Victoria in return for a gift of a sack of wheat flour milled at Rangiawahia.  Davy mentions:

My father actually saw this portrait of the Royal Family, which he said measured about three feet by about four feet.  In 1932 communication was made to the then Governor through the authorities, for a possible replacement of that portrait or something similar, but of course the request proved negative.  It was I who wrote out the request and covered almost two foolscap sheets of writing paper.

Davy then goes on to describe, in order, the pā of Te Puna – Oikimoke, Epeha, Hamaruru, Raropua, Oturu, the strange and beautiful story of Hawaiki, the island pa of Tukoro, Hūharua on today’s Plummers Point, and the inland pa of Hopuni, Tawhitinui, Pukewhanake, Paerangi.

We must note here, given the current exhibition of toki at the Western Bay Museum:

The pā at Hakarua [Hūharua]… was a repository of scores of stone axe-heads.  Miss Violet Plummer, while I was there building at her home, showed me two boxes of these stone axe-heads.  Some of them were well polished, others were of a rougher nature, and the best ones she told me were sent away to the Auckland museum, a box full of them… a taiaha was found in swampy ground lower down… Who knows, there may be a lot of other old artifacts within or immediately outside that pā.

 Davy wrote beautifully, and was a great storyteller.  He could evoke character and personality, drama, emotion, and humour.  He describes the workings of the mill on the Wairoa River, and how his father Werahiko and Hone Bidois built St Joseph’s church.  He himself learned his carpenter’s trade from Werahiko.  As late as 1967 he was still using these skills for the benefit of the Society, making “a large cabinet” for the Society archives, “placed temporarily in the Sladden Library room adjoining the City Council Library.”  A suggestion that the cabinet was included in the Museum collection (Journal Number 42, April 1971) remains unconfirmed.

He was just as much at home of the water of Tauranga Moana as the mainland, and organised two trips, both involving launch travel, to entertain and inform Society members.  Under his guidance, in 1965 they enjoyed boating out to Ōmokoroa and thence (by bus) to Whakamārama; and, in 1966, took another trip out to Motuhoa Island, which started with a pōwhiri:

After these formalities were over, the tractors with their passengers and others who preferred to walk moved off towards the western end of the Island to the home of Mr. and Mrs. C. G. Borell.  It was a lengthy trudge, for those on foot, but it helped to build up a thirst and an appetite…Mr Peter Bidois, who is a highly respected elder of the Pirirakau tribe, extended a worm welcome to the visitors in traditional Māori style.  He likened their coming to the arrival of the early Māori fleet of canoes, with the winds, from the four corners of the earth, making the same waves that had carried both the visitors and the Māori people on their journeys.

Luncheon was then set on tables on the lawn…

By far the best story of island life, however, appeared in the April 1967 Journal (Number 30). It is an account of horse racing on Matakana Island, meetings which took place on New Year’s Day of 1919, 1920 and 1921: [2]

A Committee of management was elected, Mr. Aramoana Amohau being chairman and Mr. Turoia Kuka, secretary.  The first programme  was made known by way of notebook and verbal contacts.  The news spread like wildfire, and nominations were soon received for the various races.  … one such race horse, named Oaklands, a fine upstanding brown gelding, by appearance, and that alone; anyone would have deemed defeat in a race impossible; but alas, it was not to be.  Some of the Island half-racehorses which ran against Oaklands beat him to a frazzle. 

For the descriptions of the “Island half-racehorses”, and their names, and those of their owners, and the weight of their jockeys, and the adjudication of the races themselves, and the hilarious double-booking of the Tauranga Municipal Band that eventually triggered official intervention, you really do have to read the full article.  When Davy died eight years later, the Journal editor reprinted it, along with his obituary (Number 57, September 1976).

At the end of his very first article for the Journal, Davy expressed the fear that

As we are being borne aloft on the wings of progress and speeding on into the vortex of a faster world, the very things we loved and cherished are being swept away…

Screenshot of a Matakana Island beach race in 2012.  (Image: Stan Walker, J M Media)

At the commemoration we all agreed that he would be pleased to know that horses still occasionally race at Matakana Island. [3]  

 [1] All sources for the Journal references in this essay are available on Pae Koroki.  For the Collection Summary page, go to https://paekoroki.tauranga.govt.nz/nodes/view/23915

 [2] For a vigorous overview on horse racing activities in Tauranga, see Leabourn, B. From the Government Paddock to Group 1 Glory, especially Chapter 3.  https://paekoroki.tauranga.govt.nz/nodes/view/50640

 [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXgUvLgNpps&t=24s , JM Media

 

The Bay of Plenty Times, a history from 1872

From Tauranga City Library’s archives

A monthly blog about interesting items in our collection

Users of Pae Korokī - Tauranga Archives Online will regularly discover photographs from the Bay of Plenty Times. The library's Heritage and Research team has also collaborated with the National Library of New Zealand to put editions from the very first up until 1949 online via the Papers Past website. Here's a brief history of the paper, including an exciting new development for researchers! 

The Bay of Plenty Times was first published on 4 September 1872, making it one of New Zealand’s longest-running provincial newspapers. Its founder and first editor and publisher was W.B. Langbridge, with H.W. Penny also a publisher. Initially issued twice weekly, the paper consisted of four tabloid-sized pages and sold for threepence per issue. Printed on a flat-bed press from premises on The Strand, then Beach Road, it became known locally as the “Tauranga Duster.”

The first of the three long single story structures to the right is the initial Bay of Plenty Times on The Strand in the mid to late 1870s. A portion of Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries Photo 04-213.

In September 1875 ownership passed to Edward Mortimer Edgecumbe, a prominent Tauranga figure remembered in "Edgecumbe Road". By September 1878 public demand for news led the paper to publish tri-weekly and it was becoming clear that the newspaper was a powerful tool for shaping public opinion . At the start of 1879 control of the paper passed to George Vesey Stewart and A.F. Rathbone, Rathbone serving as editor and manager. Stewart was a central figure in the organised settlement of Katikati and Te Puke, and was destined to become the first Mayor of Tauranga in a few short years (1882). That first month new premises were built in Harington Street on the former Customs House site. Before the end of March, he had became sole proprietor and Rathbone was out, departing for England that May. These early years were marked by repeated disruption: in May 1881 a major fire destroyed much of the northern end of Tauranga, including the Times premises. Publication resumed in short order (7 June 1881), missing just two issues, and rebuilding began immediately. By August 1881 the new, new building was ready for use. Over the next year and a half the paper floundered and in March 1883 it was sold by order of the mortgagee. And who should be waiting in the wings but our newly minted Mayor George Vesey Stewart and the Rev. David Bruce of Auckland for £1000. 

Astute and influential, Stewart was well aware that power and media went hand in hand. But now with control well in hand and with a sympathetic business partner, management could pass to the Reverend.

Portrait of George Vesey Stewart (1832–1920), Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries Photo 21-1915

The sale was part of a wider pattern of financial instability: over its first 40 years the Times changed ownership many times, including several changes through mortgagee sales. Ownership changed again in November 1887, when Edward Alexander Haggen became proprietor and Walter James Pull was appointed printer. On 16 April 1888 Haggen handed over the Bay of Plenty Times, which was amalgamated with another Tauranga paper owned by barrister and solicitor James Galbraith.

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were difficult economic years for many provincial newspapers. Frequent changes of ownership, publication schedules, and printing arrangements were common, including at the Bay of Plenty Times. Despite this instability, the paper issued a Christmas supplement in 1897 that featured one of the earliest uses of photographs in a New Zealand newspaper. Stability began to return in the 1890s under William Elliot and General Arnold Ward, followed by technological upgrades and the construction of new printing premises in Willow Street. Photographic illustration, modern presses, and engine-powered printing kept the paper at the cutting edge in the region.

A major turning point came in 1913 when W.H. Gifford purchased the Bay of Plenty Times. Under the Gifford and Cross families, the paper entered a long period of continuity that lasted for most of the twentieth century. The Bay of Plenty Times Company was formed in 1929, and William Cross played a central role in the paper’s administration for more than sixty years. Circulation and staffing expanded steadily, supported by the growth of Tauranga and the wider Bay of Plenty, especially after Mount Maunganui developed as an export port in the early 1950s. New technologies were introduced, including linotype typesetting, reel-fed presses, rotary presses, and later full computerisation.

Bay of Plenty Times premises on Willow Street before it moved to Durham Street in 1955. Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries Photo 00-399

A 1976 fire destroyed the newspaper’s own collection of back issues, but copies survived on microfilm kept by the publisher and now held by the Alexander Turnbull Library. A collaboration between The National Library of New Zealand and Te Ao Mārama, Tauranga City Libraries has meant these historic papers are also available on Papers Past up until 1949. But in an exciting update, this collaboration in currently being extended and we can expect to see papers from 1950 to 1963 appearing in the first part of 2027. 

Bethlehem School pupils shown around Bay of Plenty Times factory in 1966. Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries Photo gcc-13613

In 1992 the Gifford and Cross families donated tens of thousands of historic negatives to Te Ao Mārama – Tauranga City Libraries. Most date from the late 1960s to the late 1970s and are primarily 35mm film, which had replaced earlier 120-format negatives, along with a smaller number of large-format negatives. These have since been digitised and made available through Pae Korokī – Tauranga Archives Online.

That same year, the newspaper was sold to Wilson and Horton. In 1996 Independent Newspapers plc of Dublin acquired a controlling interest in Wilson and Horton, bringing the Bay of Plenty Times into a broader Australasian newspaper group.

From the early 2000s the newspaper faced industry-wide challenges of declining print circulation and advertising revenue. In response, it made significant changes to format and delivery: on 5 February 2011 the first rebranded Saturday edition, Bay of Plenty Times Weekend, was published, and in March 2013 the weekday paper shifted from a traditional broadsheet to a compact format with morning delivery.

A series of images captured by Bay of Plenty Times photographer John Borren during the Rena Disaster, 2011. Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries Photo NZME-CD810_181111jb08

In 2014 APN News & Media’s New Zealand operations were restructured into New Zealand Media and Entertainment, or NZME, a merged national media company combining publishing, radio, and digital assets. Under NZME, the Bay of Plenty Times became part of a national network of regional newspapers. NZME lists the Bay of Plenty Times among its current publishing brands, and its Bay of Plenty presence expanded in March 2024 when it acquired Tauranga-based SunMedia, including SunLive, The Weekend Sun, Coast & Country News, and New Farm Dairies.

In 2023 a second large donation of negatives and Optical Discs containing born digital photographs was made to Te Ao Mārama – Tauranga City Libraries’ Heritage and Research Team. This captured images from the late 1970s through to 2012. These will enter the teams schedule of work in the future.

Users of Te Ao Mārama – Tauranga City Libraries can access recent editions from 2008 onward through the library’s PressReader subscription, available free to library card holders.

Sources:

Pae Korokī - Tauranga Archives Online, The Bay of Plenty Times, 1872 - (Organisation)

Pae Korokī - Tauranga Archives Online, Gifford-Cross Photographic Collection

Pae Korokī - Tauranga Archives Online, Bay of Plenty Times moments in history

Pae Korokī - Tauranga Archives Online, William (Bill) Cross interviewed by Rosalie Smith in 1985

Tauranga District Museum Oral History Unit, Interview with Mr William Frederick Wallis Cross

A Bay of Plenty Times timeline (1995), part of the Vertical Files in the former New Zealand Room (Tauranga Library)

Papers Past (Bay of Plenty Times)

New Zealand Media and Entertainment (Wikipedia)

---

 

Written by Harley Couper, Heritage and Research Team Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries

 

E is for Embroidery

“Success is not fame or money or the power to bewitch. It is to have created something valuable from your own individuality and skill, a garden, an embroidery, a painting, a cake, a life." Charlotte Gray, Canadian biographer and historian

This sampler is an example of embroidery created to demonstrate skill and proficiency in needlework. 
Tauranga Museum, 0283/84.

This embroidery sampler was created in 1913 by Iris Shead and, according to Tauranga Museum’s receipt book, was donated to the collection in 1972 by Mrs Wapp. When I first came across it, a few questions quickly came to mind: Who was Iris? How old was she when she embroidered the sampler? And where, or what, was Hamont?

Research revealed that Iris was born in Ashburton in 1898 to Amy and Walter Shead. Just a year after her birth, her mother was involved in a shocking railway accident at Rakaia, where four passengers were killed when two excursion trains collided due to excessive speed. Amy was pregnant at the time and sustained serious back injuries, prompting Walter to take a civil case against the Crown. The case was successful and became something of a landmark, leading to improvements in railway safety across New Zealand. Amy received £700 in compensation, and Walter £500, awarded for “the expenses he had been put to by his wife’s illness (he had been forced to hire a housekeeper) and as compensation for the loss of society and companionship.”

The Rakaia Railway Disaster: view of wrecked carriage in which victims were killed. 
Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections AWNS-18990324-04-03

 You may be wondering what any of this has to do with an embroidered sampler. A few months after receiving the payout, the Shead family left New Zealand for Europe. By 1913 Iris, aged 14 or 15, was living in Hamont, Belgium, where she embroidered this sampler.

In 1920, Iris married Englishman Wilfred Phillips, had a son, and eventually returned to New Zealand. She later divorced Phillips and, in 1927, married Arthur Wapp. Together they would also have a son. Through all these moves and life changes, Iris’s sampler travelled with her. Toward the end of her life, she chose to preserve it by donating it to the museum’s collection. What initially appears to be a modest example of needlework becomes something far more evocative - a stitched record of a young woman’s life shaped by family tragedy, migration, and resilience.

The Stranding of the SS Penguin

Matakana Island’s 20 km-long, ocean-facing Panepane Beach - notorious among 19^th century Māori and  Pākehā seafarers - posed a serious risk to paddle, sail and steam powered vessels. The beach formed a featureless, deadly, surf-pounded lee shore. Some vessels that hove‑to offshore during northeasterly gales often dragged their anchors on the sandy bottom and were driven ashore there. Others, particularly smaller sailing vessels under 20 tons that missed the channel entrance, even by small margins during such gales, were swept sideways onto the beach, rolled and wrecked.

The 5km beach section extending north from Panepane Point opposite Mauao | Mount Maunganui continued to claim shipping well into the 1900s. Had their skeletons remained they would have stood as a stark warning to careless or drunken skippers and those new to the Bay of Plenty. However, the many vessels wrecked there soon disappeared from sight, as the beach sands quickly absorbed their hulls.

Matakana Island’s Panepane Point and beach from Mount Maunganui across the channel

Built and launched in Glasgow, Scotland in January 1864, the steamship Penguin was sold to the New Zealand Steamship Company in 1879. Some 220 feet in length, with a gross registered tonnage of 749, the steamer became a familiar sight in Tauranga Moana during 1879 and 1880, as it delivered passengers, freight and mail to and from the North and South Islands’ east coast ports [1].

On 16 January 1880, New Zealand newspapers reported that the SS Penguin (Captain Malcolm), had gone ashore while entering Tauranga Harbour close to where the SS Taupo had been wrecked in February the previous year. Ironically, the Penguin had been purchased specifically to replace that unfortunate vessel on the return coastal route from Auckland to Tauranga, Gisborne, Napier, Wellington, Lyttleton and Port Chalmers [2].

The SS Penguin at Port Chalmers

The SS Taupo had gone ashore on Stony Point Reef at the base of Mount Maunganui where the channel opened into the harbour (marked today by the statue of Tangaroa, the Polynesian sea god). It sustained significant damage to the hull in the process and although salvaged, later sank off Tūhua | Mayor Island. The Penguin, on the other hand, was driven to starboard while attempting to negotiate the channel during ‘a terrific gale’. It went aground on a sandbank close to Panepane Spit at the southern end of Matakana Island’s Panepane Beach [3].

The little SS Staffa (Captain Baker), was at once dispatched from the town to the Penguin's assistance. The mail and passengers were taken off and landed at the town. On 14 January the Auckland Star reported: 

The SS Penguin came off the sand hillock at eleven o'clock this morning, with the assistance of the steamer Staffa under the command of worthy Captain Baker. No damage was done. She had not even moved a pound of cargo or coal. Her light kedge came home, or else she would have got off when she first touched [the Penguin’s light kedge or emergency anchor had failed to hold and had been dragged across the channel with the ship] [4].

After reloading her passengers and mail at the town, the Penguin immediately resumed her voyage to the southern ports on her itinerary, one editor noting, ‘as the steamer is built of the best Lowmoor iron it would be almost impossible to injure her’ [5]. Despite again running aground during dense fog at Nelson in November 1895, and being refloated without damage, the SS Penguin was to prove as vulnerable to shipwreck as any other New Zealand coastal steamer. 

The SS Penguin ashore at Nelson in November 1895

On February 12, 1909, the SS Penguin (Captain Francis Naylor), struck Thoms Rock in Cook Strait while navigating during a severe storm. The women and children were loaded into the lifeboats, which were swamped by the heavy seas. Only one woman and a boy survived. All the other children drowned. Other survivors came ashore on rafts. As the Penguin sank, seawater flooded the engine room and, on reaching the boilers, caused a massive steam explosion. It was New Zealand's worst maritime disaster of the 20th century: 75 people lost their lives while only 30 survived [6].

A court of inquiry found that Captain Naylor did everything possible to save the lives of his passengers and crew once the disaster occurred. Ultimately blaming Naylor’s navigational errors for the disaster, the court suspended his certificate for 12 months. 

References

[1] Ingram, C.W.N. New Zealand Shipwrecks,1795-1975, A.H. and A.W. Reid, Wellington, 1977: 308.

[2] Bay of Plenty Times, 4 March 1880: 1.

[3] Evening Star, 13 January 1880: 2.

[4] Auckland Star, 14 January 1880: 2.

[5] Manawatu Herald, 16 January 1880: 2.

[6] Ingram, 1977: 308.

Images

Cousins, John, senior reporter, ‘Panepane Point to be Returned to Hapu’, in Bay of Plenty Times and Rotorua Post. 26 January, NZ Herald,https://www.nzherald.co.nz › Rotorua Daily Post.

De Maus, David Alexander, 1847-1925: ‘Steamship Penguin at Port Chalmers’. Ref: 1/1-003381-G. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/22384677.

Auckland Weekly News, ‘The Grounding of the SS Penguin: The Vessel on the Rocks outside Nelson Harbour, April 28,1904’. Record ID AWNS-19040512-12-02. Auckland City Libraries Heritage Collection.