Early Sailing Vessels and Visitors To Tauranga, Part XXIII
Among the British battleships that anchored in Tauranga Harbour to disembark troops, artillery and sailors for the Tauranga campaign in April 1864 was HMS Harrier. Built and launched at the Pembroke Dockyards, South Wales in May 1854, Harrier was a 17-gun, screw-and-sail-powered, cruiser class sloop. With a displacement of 1047 tons and 160 feet in length, Harrier took part in the Crimean War and served on the Australian Station between 1861 and 1864. Most of her service over this period was in New Zealand waters during the Anglo-Maori Land Wars of the 1860s, with one action against ‘rebellious’ Fijians.1
Mainly stationed in the Manukau harbour, during 1863, Harrier and her captain, Commander Edward Hay and crew attempted, but were not able to rescue, survivors from HMS Orpheus, which foundered on the Manukau bar in January that year with great loss of life. Harrier also ferried Governor Sir George Grey around New Zealand and towed the steam powered gunboat Avon from Christchurch to Manukau. Her officers and men served in the Waikato River fleet, and some served in the Naval Brigade during the assaults on Rangiriri Pa in the Waikato in November 1863, and at Gate Pa and Te Ranga Pa at Tauranga in April and June 1864.2
HMS Harrier off Tauranga’s
Te Papa Peninsula, circa. 1864
Watercolour
of Te Papa Peninsula by an unidentified soldier, c.1864, showing (L to R) on
the skyline,
Col. Greer's house, Hospital and Col. Harington's house
Ngā Wāhi Rangahau Research Collections,
Tauranga City Library, Ref. Art 21-033 (Art Works Box 2)
During the Tauranga campaign, HMS Harrier left Auckland and arrived in Tauranga harbour on 26 April 1864 to find HMS Esk, Miranda and Falcon already at anchor. All had previously run aground on the harbour’s sand banks (as did the Harrier), before freeing themselves by reversing their screws (propellers) and rocking the vessels by having the crews rush the guns from one side of the deck to the other.3 After disembarking troops, stores and baggage, a hand-picked force of 54 Harrier men, comprising Commander Hay, two lieutenants and 51 bluejackets went ashore to join the Naval Brigade, which marched 1.92 miles (3.09 km) to reinforce the Imperial British forces then preparing to storm the ‘rebel’ Maori fortress of Gate Pa.4
Lieutenant General Duncan Cameron, who directed the Tauranga campaign, spent two days choosing with great care the officers and men who were to make up the initial storming party, traditionally (and ominously) termed The Forlorn Hope. He appointed 29 year-old Captain Edward Hay of the Harrier, commander of the Naval Brigade’s first assault group of 70 marines and 80 seamen. The youngest son of Rear-Admiral James Hay and his wife Mary (née Stewart), Edward Hay had been born in Dunbar, Scotland in 1835.5 A most capable seaman and officer, Edward had served as midshipman on HMS Havannah at the age of 14, and as mate on HMS Agamenmon at the age of 20, before being given command of the Harrier in November 1863.6
 |
| Commander
Edward Hay of HMS Harrier Quarter-plate
hand-tinted cased daguerreotype, by Ross and Thomson of Edinburgh, c1855-1860 |
Hay’s Naval Brigade joined troops from the 43rd Regiment in storming the Gate Pa’s defenses at 4pm on the afternoon of 29 April 1864. Bloodily repulsed by the 230 Maori defenders, those killed from HMS Harrier were seaman George Young, stoker A. Greenham and able ordinary seaman H. Clark. In all, the British lost 35 killed and 75 wounded, twice the estimated Māori casualties. The following day, 29 year-old Commander Hay died from wounds received during the fighting. According to one veteran: ‘The way in which he led the storming-party into the enemy's work at the Gate pah was the admiration of all; he was mortally wounded by a Maori in a pit below him while cheering his men on’.7 Among the survivors of the Harrier’s storming party was Samuel Mitchell, captain of the vessel’s foretop, who was awarded the Victoria Cross on 26 July 1864. The citation read:
For his gallant conduct at the attack of Te Papa, Tauranga, on the 29 April last, in entering the pah with Commander Hay, and when that officer was mortally wounded, bringing him out, and although ordered by Commander Hay to leave him and seek his own safety. This man was at the time captain of the foretop of the Harrier, doing his duty as captain’s coxswain, and Commodore William Wiseman brings his name to special notice for this act of gallantry.8
Coxswain Samuel
Mitchell V.C. of HMS Harrier Carte de
visite by William Francis Gordon; copyist; circa 1900
Collection of Puke Ariki, Ref. PHO2017-0124
Samuel Mitchell had entered the Royal Navy as a naval apprentice in 1857 and before joining the Harrier in 1860 had served aboard HMS Crocodile and Excellent. He was soon made the captain's coxswain and captain of the mizzentop, and later advanced to captain of the foretop. As Commander Hay's coxswain, Mitchell had stayed close to him in the assault on Gate Pa and carried Hay out through the rear of the pa under fire.9 Some accounts of the incident suggest that Mitchell alone rescued Hay. However, one eyewitness stated that Hay had been carried out by Mitchell and another soldier, and that a third sailor, despite being wounded, also assisted in the rescue.10 Nevertheless, the dying Commander Hay 'particularly requested the Commodore to get something for Mitchell his coxswain'. Mitchell received his Victoria Cross from the governor of New South Wales in September 1864 and was promoted to petty officer, first class.11
During May 1864, and to the delight of the Harrier’s crew, a survey of the ship’s biscuits by her senior officers at Tauranga declared most of them inedible. In a veritable feast for the fishes, 6,427 were condemned and thrown overboard. During the Battle of Te Ranga on 21 June 1864, when Tauranga Maori and allied tribes were heavily defeated, HMS Harrier was at anchor off Te Papa Camp. The crew initially mustered to quarters and prepared for action, but were subsequently engaged in sending boats ashore to convey wounded officers and men to HMS Esk which took them to Auckland. Total British losses at Te Ranga were 13 killed and 30 wounded with more than 100 Maori killed or mortally wounded. British and colonial troops had launched a surprise attack against the defenders while they were still constructing their defences.12
 |
| Coxswain Samuel Mitchell rescues Commander
Hay Cigarette card, George Arents Collection, The New York Public Library. "Samuel Mitchell, H.M.S. Harrier, winning the V.C. at the storming of the "Gate Pah" (New Zealand War, April 28th, 1861)." The New York Public Library Digital Collections. Ref. b15262620 |
In August 1864, HMS Falcon arrived in Tauranga Harbour to relieve HMS Harrier which left for Auckland, where the ship’s company took shore leave. On the vessel’s return to Sydney, and before their return voyage to Britain, their new commander William Fenwick read the officers and crew a letter of thanks from the British Admiralty for their services in New Zealand.13
Commander Edward Hay was buried in Tauranga’s mission cemetery along with many other sailors, soldiers and Maori who were killed outright at Gate Pa or later died of wounds.14 Coxswain Samuel Mitchell later returned to New Zealand and participated in the West Coast goldrushes. He later married and farmed land on the Mikonui River near Ross township. He was drowned while working as a ferryman on the river in 1894, leaving behind a wife and 10 children.15 HMS Harrier returned to England on 10 December 1864, via the Falkland Islands, reaching Spithead on 17 March and Portsmouth on 24 March 1865. The crew were paid off, and the Harrier decommissioned and broken up.
Endnotes
1 HMS Harrier - Royal Navy, https://www.pdavis.nl/ShowShip.php?id=158
2 HMS Harrier (1854) – Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Harrier_(1854)
3 Liverpool, Cecil Foljambe, Three Years on the Australian Station, C. Milton (ed.), Hatchard, London, 1868: 5. Bay of Plenty Times, 4 January 1923: 2.
4 Elliot, Gerald, J; HMS Harrier, 1860-1865. The Royal Navy in New Zealand
5 Hay, Edward, -1864 | Items | National Library of New Zealand, https://natlib.govt.nz/records/22382542
6 Lyttelton Times, 12 May 1864: 3.
7 Alexander, James, Bush Fighting: Illustrated by Remarkable Actions and Incidents of the Maori War in New Zealand, Sampson, Low, Marston and Company, London, 1873: 197.
8 London Gazette, July 26 1864: 1; Debbie McCauley, Author, Samuel Mitchell 1841-1894, https://debbiemccauleyauthor.wordpress.com/biographies/samuel-mitchell-1841-1894/
9 Fairfax, Denis, 'Mitchell, Samuel', Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, first published in 1990. Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1m44/mitchell-samuel
10 Alexander, 1873 (ibid): 200.
11 Fairfax ‘Mitchell, Samuel’, 1990, https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1m44/mitchell-samuel
12 Ellot Gerald, The Royal Navy in New Zealand 1860-1866
13 Ibid.
14 McCauley, Author, Edward Hay, 1835-1864, https://debbiemccauleyauthor.wordpress.com/biographies/edward-hay-1835-1864/
15 West Coast Times, 16 March 1895:2, Hokitika Guardian, 31 August 1936
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