The Arrival of Steamships at Tauranga and the Challenges of the Mount Maunganui Channel

 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.

HMS Esk on guard duty in the Waitemata beside a prison hulk for Māori prisoners of war. Despite its auxiliary steam engine, the Esk ran aground on Stony Point Reef in April 1864.

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.

Marked today by the statue of the sea god Tangaroa, Stony Point
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.

On the 18 February 1879, the SS Taupō ran aground and was wrecked on Stony Point Reef.

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.

The SS Penguin

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].

When attempting the channel in marginal conditions, sail and steam powered vessels also grounded or were wrecked on the 3km stretch of beach to the north of Matakana Island’s Panepane Point - a notorious wrecking zone.

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›

 Illustration Credits

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.

 Szirmay, Frank, ‘Tangaroa’ (1976), Port of Tauranga, Bronwyn Holloway Smith, Public Art Heritage, Aotearoa New Zealand, Tauranga City Council Art Collection.

 ‘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

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

 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.

Henry Williams and the Herald: Their First Visit to Tauranga Moana

Pilot Bay in the 1800s

Image: John Kinder, Mt Maunganui, Tauranga, 1874, 1937/15/46, Auckland Art Gallery, Toi O Tamaki

On 26th June 2026 the Karuwhā Trust held three events here in Tauranga Moana to commemorate CMS missionary Henry Williams’ first visit. 200 years ago, he arrived on the Herald, a 55-ton schooner captained by Gilbert Mair (senior) [1]. The two of them had helped construct the ship, launched in January 1826, on the beach at Paihia and the prime purpose for its voyage south was to obtain a better food supply for their fellow workers in the north.

Over the next two years Henry and others made at least four visits to Tauranga in the Herald, trading for potatoes.  While here, they were able to broker some peace and bring the good news of the Gospel to this area. They promised to send others to establish a mission station, which did come about in 1835. There were also other voyages undertaken to the Bay of Plenty in the 1830s, but these were in other vessels, as the Herald was unfortunately wrecked (but without loss of life) on the Hokianga bar in 1828. 

 

Dr Samuel Carpenter giving his Karuwhā Trust Lecture 26 June 2026.

Image: Karuwhā Trust

The three events held in June 2026 were very well attended.  The venue for the afternoon lecture by Dr Samuel Carpenter was relocated from the Elms Chapel to the nearby Vintage Car Club rooms to accommodate the demand for ticket sales. This was followed by a short walk to the old mission station and a guided tour for those who were interested in the Te Papa Mission site and its story.

Earlier in the day there had been a mihimihi and karakia at the Mission and Military Cemetery (formerly Otamataha Pā).  In the evening approximately 500 people attended the symposium presided over by Dr Joe Williams at Holy Trinity, where Dr Alistair Reece and others spoke.

Karuwhā Trust Symposium at Holy Trinity, 26 June 2026.

Image: Karuwhā Trust

There have been several previous articles on this website [2] dealing with Henry Williams and his various voyages.  Here I record a few other aspects of his life that I picked up from Dr Carpenter’s lecture and a podcast of an interview with Dr Alistair Reece. 

Henry was born in Gosport, Hampshire, in the United Kingdom in 1792 and rose to the rank of captain in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. Following this he became an ordained priest and married Marianne Coldham. In 1823 they were shoulder-tapped by the Church Mission Society to come and help lead the fledgling mission in NZ. They were quite strong and assertive in leadership and the CMS in Pahia began to make headway with the first conversions and baptism of two local Māori in 1830. Henry was strong on the learning of te reo by missionaries and their wives and was very involved in the preparation and signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. He and his brother William were largely responsible for the translation of the New Testament.

Henry Williams and te Kawenata Hou

Left image: Frontispiece, The Early Journals of Henry Williams. Pegasus Press Christchurch. Right image: Title page, first edition New Testament | Kawenata Hou.  https://www.abebooks.com/first-edition/1st-Edition-New-Testament-Maori-1837/32152870474/bd

Henry and Marianne had 11 children. One son established Te Aute College, another was a parliamentarian, and a third was appointed a magistrate in the Native Land Court. Two daughters married other missionaries — Octavius Hadfield of Kapiti and Christopher Pearson Davies.  The latter was another connection with The Elms Te Papa. C. P. Davies and his family lived and worked there for seven years.

Notes

[1] The shipwright, not the soldier. See https://wdc.recollect.co.nz/nodes/view/4929

[2] These are all by Dr Trevor Bentley and can be found at
https://taurangahistorical.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-karere-messenger-and-paihia.html
https://taurangahistorical.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-active-and-rev-henry-williams-1832.html
https://taurangahistorical.blogspot.com/2021/09/arama-karaka-pi-and-taeopa.html
https://taurangahistorical.blogspot.com/2019/04/during-morning-walks-over-mount.html
https://taurangahistorical.blogspot.com/2019/06/early-european-vessels-and-visitors-to.html
https://taurangahistorical.blogspot.com/2021/12/the-schooner-trent-and-major-thomas.html

Sources

Karuwhā Trust information online: https://www.karuwha.org.nz/
Dr Samuel Carpenter: I am Henry, lecture and article, 26/6/2026
Dr Alistair Reese podcast: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3mu9FvxYCQRMc5ZECo66a4
Voyages of the Herald: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herald_(1826_ship)
Wendy Davies, descendant of Henry William and Christopher Pearson Davies

Another new book from Trevor Bentley

 

Between 1864 and the early 1900s, Tauranga Harbour was not merely a backdrop to the district’s maritime history; it was the engine of it. Every local and visiting waka, schooner, cutter, barque, scow and steamer entering the harbour brought with them people, cargo, news and hope. During Tauranga’s Anglo-Māori War years (1864-1872), British battleship-troop carriers brought military occupation, violence, colonial officials, dispossession and despair.

While Tauranga’s early history is one of ships, it is also a history of the people who built them, sailed them, loaded them, anxiously watched them disappear over the horizon and joyously welcomed their return. This eight-part study casts light on Pākehā and Māori ship builders, their owners and their captains, on British and Māori fighting men, immigrant-settlers, merchants, labourers and visiting travellers, missionaries and officials.

The book restores their stories to the harbour and invites readers to see Tauranga not simply as a place on land but as a place defined by water - by tides, sandbanks, reefs, channels, and the vessels that once threaded among them. It is a reminder that our harbour has always been a gateway, a theatre of cross-cultural encounters, a workplace, a saltwater highway, a hazardous seaway and a home.

Racing from Tauranga to Auckland with cargoes of perishable goods, the Tauranga owned schooners Hope and Fortune arrived within a few hours of each other on 2 February 1866.

As many readers know, Trevor is a member of the society and an active contributor to this blog. His books and blogs explore Tauranga’s as well as New Zealand’s social, maritime and military history with a special focus on the Pākehā and Māori men and women who crossed cultures voluntarily and as captives. Dr. Bentley is the author of ten previous history books.

Book details

Early Maritime Tauranga: A History of Vessels, Visitors, Residents and Events, Volume II, 1864-1900s.

Author: Trevor Bentley

ISBN: 978-0-473-77735-7

Soft cover, 486 pages

RRP $39.99

Publisher: Kererū History Books.
https://www.kereruhistorynz.co.nz/

Image credit

Dawson, Montague. ‘The Orange Schooners,' from Ramsey, L.G.G. Montague Dawson, R.S.M.A., F.R.S.A., The Greatest Sea Painter in the World, F. Lewis, Leigh-on-Sea, England, 1970: 43, no. 179, plate 39.

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.

The Mount Maunganui Channel and the Wrecking of the Cutter Waterlily, 1873

 

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.

The Otūmoetai Beachfront Pathway- Three Later Walkers

 The Otūmoetai harbourside path with Te Puna’s Oikimoke Point in the distance

The Otūmoetai beachfront pathway was traversed for centuries by resident Māori iwi as well as iwi from outside the region with peaceful or warlike intentions. During the 1800s, a succession of European missionaries, traders, sailors, scientists and colonial officials also walked the pathway, after first crossing the Wairoa River from the Te Puna Peninsula to the west or the Waikareao Estuary from the Te Papa Peninsula to the east.

Reverend John Wilson

Rev. John Wilson, 1836

After ten years’ service in the Royal Navy, John Alexander Wilson was employed by the Anglican Church Missionary Society as a catechist. He was posted to their missions in New Zealand, arriving at the Bay of Islands with his wife and children in 1833.

By 1835 mission stations had been established beyond the Bay of Islands including Mangapouri (Hamlin and Stack), Matamata (Alfred Brown), Rotorua (Thomas Chapman) and at Te Papa, Tauranga, by John Wilson. However, as the intertribal fighting in the Tauranga region escalated, Wilson and the missionaries Alfred Brown and James Stack at Te Papa sent their families aboard the missionary brig Columbine for safety on 31^st March 1836. They remained at the Bay of Islands and did not return to Tauranga until the following year.[1]

In 1836, Wilson and the Rev. Thomas Chapman set out from the Bay of Islands in the hope of ending the intertribal war in the Bay of Plenty. The missionaries first visited the Ngati Haua iwi at Matamata, before crossing the Kaimai Range to meet with Tauranga iwi who were jointly planning an attack on the Te Arawa people at Maketu and Rotorua. Alone at Te Papa during July 1836, Wilson describes crossing the Waikareao Estuary by boat, before undertaking the (one hour) beachfront walk to and from Otūmoetai Pa.

9th. --Mr. Chapman left to-day for Rotorua. I walked some distance with him. On my return had a visit from one of the head chiefs of Tauranga, old Taharangi. He was very pleasant but sorry to see me left alone and grieved that everyone had left the station. Flooring my back room--found it hard work planing boards and getting them to fit, I being a very unskilful carpenter.

Sunday, 10th. --A few people came to morning service at the settlement [the Te Papa Mission Station]. Spoke from Matt xiii. 13 to 16. Felt deeply the fulfilment of the prophecy here quoted by our Lord as applicable to the present state of the Māori people. They appear alike uninfluenced by the love or the terror of God.

“At Otumoetai only sixty natives were present at service. Walked solitarily homewards, if a desolate house can be called home. And as I sauntered along the shore [the Otūmoetai harbour front walkway], the loneliness of the mission station, surrounded on two sides by water, without a habitation near, or native, save one [Taharangi, the elderly rangatira who protected the mission station], open and exposed to the enemy, gave rise to sad forebodings. But soon the thought flashed into my mind that it was for the Lord, and my gloom was gone.”[2]

Intertribal warfare in fact escalated during the remainder of 1836. Following the storming of Maketu and Te Tumu Pa and the slaughter of their inhabitants, and the plundering of the Rotorua mission station, Wilson and Chapman temporarily abandoned the region and retraced their steps over the Kaimai range.

Rev. Richard Taylor, 1839

Rev. Richard Taylor

Richard Taylor (1805–1873) was ordained as an Anglican priest in 1829. He was later appointed a missionary with the Church Missionary Society (CMS) and settled at the Bay of Islands in 1839. He took part in Treaty discussions at Waitangi in February 1840 and in later years he evangelised at Whanganui and Taupo with considerable success.^[3]

In 1839, Taylor had only been in New Zealand for a few days before he set out from the Bay of Islands with missionary William Williams on the cutter Aquila for the East Coast. They called at Tauranga during the voyage where they met the missionaries Alfred Brown, his wife Charlotte and John Morgan. Like the Rev William Colenso, Taylor was a keen student of natural history and the life and customs of Māori. He also kept a diary in which he detailed all that he saw and experienced. [4]

Monday 25 March – “I walked with Mr Morgan to the pa at Otutumoiti [Otūmoetai] which is a very populous one and much like the other distant about 3 miles [Maungatapu?]. I called upon a Mr Bidewell residing there [John Carne Bidwill, botanist and explorer]. He is supposed to be sent to spy the land by the New Zealand Association. He is a very gentlemanly and well-informed person. He returned with us to dinner and then accompanied us to see the mount [either Mount Drury or Maunganui]”. [5]

Taylor, Williams and their Māori crew remained for a week at the Te Papa Mission Station awaiting favourable winds, before they and the Aquila exited the harbour entrance to continue the voyage to the East Coast.

Joseph Cochrane, 1855

Joseph Cochrane

Like the traders James Farrow and John Lees Faulkner, the former Londonderry auctioneer Joseph Cochrane also located his store near the busy Otūmoetai pathway and foreshore. On passing Joseph Cochrane’s new store, from 1855, people travelling the beachfront would stop to converse with the trader - described by his peers as ‘a cheerful, intelligent kind and generous hearted man’. The store was a large building from which Cochrane supplied other traders along the Bay of Plenty coast. Located by his patron and protector Hori Ngatai on land, between the Faulkner's land at Okorore and Otūmoetai Pa, Cochrane regularly forded the Waikareao Estuary to stay and converse with his good friends Rev Karl Volkner and his wife Emma at the Te Papa Mission Station.⁶

On one occasion when Archdeacon Brown was away from the Te Papa Mission Station, Cochrane crossed the Waikareao Estuary and saw Rev Volkner and his Māori schoolboys engaged in clearing a patch of scrub near the cemetery. Wishing to assist, Cochrane set fire to the heaps of cut scrub, but when the wind suddenly changed and the fire threatened to spread, someone, hoping to preserve the wooden grave markers, pulled them up and threw them into the estuary. As the estuary entrance was rendered tapu by this act, Māori fisherman and traders were unable to enter or exit in their waka and sailing boats. To redress this offence and transgression of tikanga (customary law), a Māori taua muru (ritual plundering party), approached the mission station, but withdrew when Rev Volkner, a former Prussian Army soldier, confronted them with his rifle. [7]

Another Māori muru party later crossed the Waikareao Estuary to Cochrane’s premises seeking redress, but as he had considerable mana, being Hori Ngatai’s Pakeha, Cochrane’s store was not plundered. Nevertheless, utu (redress) was still required as without satisfaction the affected Māori traders and fishermen would be rendered huka kore or people of no consequence. To the satisfaction of the offended parties, utu was achieved when Cochrane’s wheat theshing machine was ritually struck and damaged with a tomahawk, an act considered tika - a perfectly correct response to the considerable inconvenience he had caused them. [8]

[Editorial note: Readers may be interested in part one of this article, The Otūmoetai Beachfront Pathway – Four Early Walkers, published here on Sunday 23 March 2025.]

References

[1] McClymont, W.G; The Exploration of New Zealand, Department of Internal Affairs, Wellington, 1940: 33.

[2]  Wilson, J.A; Mission Life and Work in New Zealand, 1833 to 1885, Star Office, Auckland, 1889: 41-42.

[3] Taylor, Richard – Dictionary of New Zealand Biography – Te Ara, https://teara.govt.nz › biographies › taylor-richard

[4] Taylor, Richard, unpublished journal, cited in Matheson, A. H; ‘Early Tauranga visitors’, Journal of the Tauranga Historical Society (Inc.), No. 51, August 1974: 21

[5]  Ibid, 26.

[6] Bay of Plenty Times, 23 October 1875: 2. Fletcher, Kathleen, Early Flax Traders Around Tauranga’, Journal of the Tauranga Historical Society, No. 59, September 1976: 26.

[7] Bay of Plenty Times, 16 September 1884: 2. Matheson, A. H. ‘Otumoetai Pa and the Early Days in Tauranga’, Journal of the Tauranga Historical Society (Inc.), August - September 1975, No. 54: 17-18.

[8] Ibid.

Images

Photographer, Sgroey,‘Otumoetai Beach’, 9 April 2022,https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ot%C5%ABmoetai_Beach.jpg

Wilson, John Alexander, Missionary Life and Work in New Zealand, 1833-1862, C. J. Wilson (ed.), Star Office, Auckland, 1899, title page.

Reverend Richard Taylor. Bates, Arthur Palmer, 1926-2002: Photographs of Reverend Richard Taylor and associations. Ref: 1/2-C-14302-F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/22607779

Hopkins, Wanda, ‘One of the Right Sort’ Kae Lewis (ed.), The New Zealand Goldrush Journal, Vol. 4, 2020. Kae Lewis, https://www.kaelewis.com › cochrane › hopkins