Before the 1860s, visits by steamers seeking commercial cargoes at Tauranga were rare events. Between the 1840s and 1860s, the Tauranga-to-Auckland provisions trade had been dominated by local Māori waka fleets and Māori and Pākehā-Māori owned sailing ships. In March 1857, the little Auckland-based steamer Wonga Wonga made an exploratory visit to Tauranga with ‘sundries’ [1]. In February 1860, the SS White Swan visited while en route to Wellington [2]. However, steamers were not seen in Tauranga Harbour in numbers until the arrival of British and colonial troops in January 1864.
From the 1860s, the Bay of Plenty became an increasingly busy shipping zone, and despite the advent of steam-powered ships, it remained a hazardous maritime region. During Anglo-Māori tensions and fighting at Tauranga between 1864 and 1872, Imperial and colonial troops, stores, artillery and horses were landed from auxiliary-powered Royal Navy battleships and colonial government gunboat-steamers.
The remarkable number of commercial steamers who accompanied them provided logistical support for the troops and, later, provisions, livestock and general necessities for the military settlers. They included the SS Storm Bird, Huntress, Lord Ashley, Clyde, Tauranga, Wellington, Taranaki, Go Ahead, Enterprise, Katikati, Egmont, Midge, Beautiful Star, Royal Alfred, Southern Cross, Rowena, and Glenelg [3].
Tauranga Harbour and the estuary ports, reefs, rocks and islands of the wider Bay of Plenty wrecked several of these steamers in later years. In the Bay, fog, sudden gales and longshore drift combined with narrow, shifting entrances, powerful tidal flows, limited navigational aids, and skippers anxious to ‘make the bar’, were to sink or wreck thousands of tons of shipping, both sail- and steam-powered.
Reef at the south end of the Maunganui Channel stranded and wrecked a variety
of sailing and steamships during the 1800s.
The first major step in providing regular steam-powered coastal transport to Tauranga came with the Bay of Plenty Steam Navigation Company. Formed locally in 1866, it deployed the newly built SS Tauranga. The New Zealand Steam Navigation Company placed the SS Storm Bird on the same Auckland – Tauranga – Ōpōtiki run soon after [4]. Critical maritime lifelines, they supported settler and Māori communities, and the expanding agricultural economies of the Bay of Plenty. A Tauranga Argus article in December 1866 emphasised the need for improved harbour facilities to support the regular steam services [5].
The long, open Coromandel and Bay of Plenty coastlines followed by steamers engaged in transporting troops and, later, commercial cargo between Auckland and Tauranga were beautiful, but deceptively dangerous. On calm days they could be struck suddenly by fierce easterly gales or heavy swells arising from storms occurring far out to sea. Meanwhile, beneath the surface, lay reefs, rocks and shoals. Steaming ahead during dense fog, the 443-ton SS Taranaki was wrecked on Karewā Island in 1878. Low-lying islands, like the Rurimas off Matatā, sank the SS Tasman during moderate weather in 1921. A hidden reef sank the 1,159-ton SS Manaia off Whakahau-Slipper Island during rain and mist one night in 1926.
Closer to Tauranga, the Mount Maunganui harbour entrance itself was a notorious trap, with the margin for error almost nonexistent. The outer bar shifted constantly, reshaped by tides, storms, and longshore drift. Steamers entering or exiting the channel were able to cross this bar without risk only when wind, tide and swell were suitable. Before dredging began, the channel twisted unpredictably, requiring steamer captains to align their approach with precision, despite poor visibility or while fighting powerful cross‑currents and winds, when approaching the channel entrance.
Fierce, outgoing tides near Stony Point Reef, located near the base of Mount Maunganui at the southern end of the channel, temporarily trapped HMS Esk in April 1864 and wrecked the 464-ton SS Taupō in 1879. Attempting to negotiate the Maunganui Channel during a fierce gale in 1880, the 749 reg. ton SS Penguin was temporarily driven ashore on Matakana Island’s Panepane Beach.
Unlike sailing vessels, New Zealand’s coastal steamers were expected to maintain regular schedules, which helps explain why so many captains attempted the entrance when conditions were marginal. In fact, many post-wreck inquiries in this era reveal a common theme - pressure to maintain schedules. In 1921 for instance, the SS Tasman was ‘jammed for time to catch the bar at Whakatane,’ when it was wrecked at the Rurima Islands, a detail the subsequent Marine Inquiry highlighted as a contributing factor [6].
Similarly, the SS Taupō inquiry in 1879 censured veteran skipper Captain Hannibal Marks for decisions made under pressure, indicating how, strained by deadlines and fatigue, captains’ decisions could fail in a channel that allowed no mistakes [7].
New Zealand
newspapers repeatedly criticised the lack of proper wharfs, lights, and harbour
facilities from the 1860s and claimed during the 1870s, that the port was
expanding faster than its infrastructure. Before the 20th century, Tauranga had
no lighthouse at the entrance, minimal buoys, no dredging and no updated charts
of the ever-changing bar [8].
While the port was established in 1873, dredging the harbour to accommodate larger ships did not begin in earnest until 1965, with the main entrance channel dredged in 1968. Further major capital dredging projects, such as deepening and widening the channel, were undertaken in 1992 and 2015 [9].
Despite the challenges of negotiating the exposed Coromandel and Bay of Plenty coasts and accessing a harbour with limited facilities, steamships transformed old Tauranga. A significant improvement over its old pre-1860s Māori and Pākehā-Māori commercial sailing fleets, they reduced voyaging times for passengers, stabilised schedules and made the delivery of exported products and local mail faster and more reliable. In short, steamships were a catalyst for Tauranga’s transition from an isolated coastal settlement to an important, interconnected regional port.
The dominance of steamships waned as roads and railways improved.
The decisive moment came with the opening of the Tauranga–Hamilton rail link in
1928, which rendered the long‑standing steamer passenger service to Auckland
obsolete. It was formally abandoned in 1929 [10].
References
[1] Van der Wouden,
A; The Introduction of Steamships to the Bay of Plenty’, Historical Review,
Journal of the Whakatane District and Historical Society Vol. 38, May
1990: 21.
[2] Hawkes Bay
Herald, 18 February 1860: 2.
[3] New Zealand
Herald, 3 November 1865: 4. Nelson Examiner, 9 April 1970: 2. Hawkes
Bay Herald, 1 February 1861: 2. Daily
Southern Cross, 15 May 1868: 2.
Ibid: 14 November 1864: 2. Ibid: 22 March 18.
[4] Ibid: 24
November 1866: 2.
[5] Tauranga
Argus, 1 December 1866: 2.
[6] Auckland
Star, 6 June 1921: 7.
[7] New Zealand
Mail, 8 March 1879: 21.
[8] Bay of
Plenty Times, 27 May 1879: 3. 15 March 1872: 7.
[9] Mariana C.
Cussiolil, Karin R. Bryan, Conrad A. Pilditch and Willem P. De Lange,
‘Dispersal of Dredging Plumes in Tauranga Harbour, New Zealand: Field Study.’
Australasian Coasts & Ports Conference, 15-18 September 2015, Auckland,
mc204@students.waikato.ac
[10] Port of Tauranga. Port History to Modern Day, https://www.port-tauranga.co.nz›uploads›
Hamley, Joseph
Osbertus, 1820-1911; Williams, Edward Arthur, 1824-1898, ‘HMS Esk; stuck with
the Maoris taken prisoner at Rangiriri, 1863-1865’, E-047-q-031, National
Library of New Zealand, Wellington.
‘S.S. “Taupo” as she lies on the rocks at Stoney Point, Tauranga Harbour. Photographed at low water on the afternoon of April 9th [1879], by Charles Spencer’. Tauranga City Libraries, Te Ao Marama. Ref. 05-445
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.
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