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 Mōtiti Road Rail Ferry

 

Two maps of Mōtiti.  Neither is contemporaneous with Brain’s work on the island, but the coloured image shows the settlement pattern of the island’s residents in 1929; the black and white sketch map shows the route (dashed line) of the tramline that once led to Orangatea Bay.  Images: (left) Western Bay of Plenty District Libraries, SAK 34A, digital only; and (right) Te Ara, An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, ed. A. H. McLintock, 1966

I first began researching the people who lived in the Brain Watkins House back in the early 2000s  when I was working for NZ Historic Places Trust (now Heritage New Zealand).  Among the listed achievements of Joseph Brain was “a tramway on Mōtiti Island to transfer cattle to a ship waiting off shore”.

George Alexander Douglas, An Irishman, originally from Derry, moved down from Auckland to Tauranga and received a Crown Grant of a piece of land in 1867. He became a successful storekeeper when he arrived in Tauranga.

He had begun working in Auckland as a commissariat contractor supplying the military forces in the country and was elected a member of the Auckland Provincial Council from 1869 to 1873. G A Douglas leased a portion of Mōtiti Island from a local chief Tupaea, probably commencing in 1867 but he did not move there to live until 1870. He improved the breeding of cattle and Clydesdale horses on Mōtiti. He was also responsible for the introduction of the Bumble Bees that were essential for the fertilization of the Red Clover flowers. The clover had been introduced to boost the quality of the stock food but could not flourish without the bees. The soil on Mōtiti was fertile, water was abundant from numerous springs, but it lacked a natural harbour. 

S.S.Staffa   Image: Te Ao Māramā – Tauranga City Libraries Photo 04-593

To ensure transporting stock and goods, Douglas bought a small coastal steamer S.S. Tauranga in 1870. From 1876 to 1881 he had the S.S.Rowena and S.S.Staffa. The difficulty created by the lack of a harbour was loading the stock onto his ship before he could send the cargo to Tauranga.

In Orangatea Bay Douglas built a system of stock yards, and tramline. The late local historian Alister Matheson, in his book Motiti[1], tongue in cheek, named the project “The Motiti Road Rail Ferry”. The stock yards held the stock until they were loaded on a punt that could hold twenty cattle. The punt sat on a cradle or bogie that ran down the tramline, gaining speed, and was attached by a rope on a winch on land. When the punt reached the steamer it was secured and the rope wound back by the winch. The cattle were individually lifted by slings on to the steamer, which then sailed to Tauranga.  Douglas was helped in the construction of the tramline system by Joseph Brain, the experienced ship and bridge builder of Tauranga.

Hoisting fat cattle from the wharf to a steamer for shipping from Auckland to Sydney, Australia, 1902. 

Image: Supplement to the Auckland Weekly News, 14 August 1902, p. 10

In an interview with Mrs Elva Brain Watkins, the youngest daughter of Joseph, Matheson learned that Brain’s practice was to row across the harbour to Mount Maunganui then walk along the ocean beach until he was opposite Mōtiti Island where he would signal his arrival.  A boat from Mōtiti would then pick him up from the beach. In his boatyard on The Strand Brain employed Māori men from Mōtiti who would stay at the Mōtiti Hostel across the street.

J. D. Brain, Brain Watkins House Collection.  Image: Shirley Arabin

At the time that Matheson wrote the book the only remnants of the Mōtiti Road Rail Ferry were decaying puriri posts at the site, so it is unlikely that there will be any evidence left of this project today.

When George Douglas visited Napier in 1892 to purchase sheep he fell ill and died there.  He had not married and in his will the beneficiaries of his estate were his nieces and nephews.

 [1] Matheson A.H.,Motiti,pub. Whakatane & District Historical Society P O Box 203, Whakatane 1979.

 

Editorial note: Readers may be interested in finding an extended photo-essay on Mōtiti Island life in the 1960’s by Tony Ahern, editor of Tauranga Photo News, Issue No. 34, April 3 1965:

https://paekoroki.tauranga.govt.nz/nodes/view/101354 

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 Wreck of the SS Tasman

Located off Matata, the low lying Rurima Islands or Rurima Rocks, were brought to the attention of Tauranga’s residents by the Bay of Plenty Times on 12 May 1921. At 4.25 a.m. on the 11th, the Northern Steamship Company steamer Tasman struck a reef near the south-western rock while steaming to Whakatane. The passengers and crew were saved, but the ship was lost along with all cargo and mail. The passengers and crew came ashore without their luggage and personal effects at Matata and Pikowai in three lifeboats, before being transported in trucks to Tauranga.[1]

The Northern Steamship Company vessel SS Tasman

Built in Auckland in 1903, the 179-ton kauri and iron steamer was 102 feet in length and powered by 280hp compound engines.[2] Placed on the Auckland to Whakatane run by the company, the SS Tasman was a regular sight at Tauranga’s Victoria Wharf between 1909 and 1921. There, it offloaded and took on new passengers, freight and mail, as well as coal for its boilers.

A Nautical Inquiry into the wreck of the SS Tasman held at the Auckland Magistrates Court the following month, expressed focused on four issues:

• The chief officer Mr. McManus was on watch and in charge of the Tasman with Captain William John Grigg also on the bridge when the vessel struck.
• Though the weather was squally, it was possible to see the higher points of the Rurima Group and also Whale Island. The vessel struck an island which could be seen at the time the accident occurred.
• When the steamer struck on the south-west point of the Rurima Group, there was about three miles of shore room between the shore and where the incident occurred.
• The course was a perfectly well-known one and had been run in perfect safety for the last 50 to 60 years and the Tasman was jammed for time to catch the bar at Whakatane.

The Rurima Islands
The SS Tasman struck a reef on the south-west corner of the Rurimu group

In evidence, Captain Grigg stated that he had been master of that steamer about three or four months before May 11. He had also been master of the Tasman at different periods and had originally been chief mate of the Tasman for close on three years. During that time the steamer had been wholly engaged in the Auckland to Whakatane trade. He had also been master of other vessels in the Northern Company’s fleet.

On the night of the disaster, he had kept a course close inside Mayor Island, which was passed at about 10 o'clock. He had followed his usual course, which he had always found a safe one, inside Whale Island. When passing Motiti Island the weather was clear, with no sea and just a medium breeze.

He was below when the mate called him at ten minutes to four, and told him they were close to Matata light, which was then just for'ard of the starboard beam. At this time, they were about two miles off Matata. As several other “objects” were in view, and Grigg "took a shot" at them over the steering compass, but took no other steps to place them accurately.

While the weather then was ‘fairly clear’ overhead, they were surrounded by black clouds. The wind was fresh, with squalls at times, from the S.S.W. Shortly after, the mate observed that the land was a little closer and altered the course half a point to the southward. A few minutes later the Tasman struck. The time was then within a few minutes of 4.25. He thought the vessel struck at the south-west corner of the Rurima Group.

According to the mate, the vessel did not seem to rest on the reef for any appreciable time, and backed her off, he steered straight for the mainland. SS Tasman sank scarcely a mile off Rurima.

Captain Grigg stated that he could have gone outside Whale Island that night, but there was smoother water on the inside. Mr. McManus, he said, had been his chief mate all the time he was on the run, and he had found him perfectly reliable as a navigator.[3]

A coastal steamer at Victoria wharf 1810s

On 9 June, the Nautical Court of Inquiry found that the SS Tasman was off her proper course when it struck one of the Rurima rocks and was wrecked. The first officer was adjudged negligent in not ascertaining his correct distance off' the land at Town Point (Maketu). The court also found that Captain Grigg, the ship’s master:

[D]id not exercise good judgment when deciding what distance the vessel was off the land at Matata. The court was further of the opinion that when the chief officer drew the master’s attention to the ship’s closeness to the Rurima rocks, the master, in sending a message to the officer on the bridge to alter the course a quarter of a point to the south, was not taking sufficient precautions for the safety of the vessel.[4]

Despite being found guilty of negligence and fined 20 and 10 pounds respectively towards the costs of the inquiry, Grigg and McManus did not lose their certificates.[3] Evidence had been put before the court that, in the vicinity of White Island, the needle of the compass would be liable to be deflected by the magnetic disturbance which existed at the time the grounding occurred.[5]

Sinking just 30 minutes after its initial grounding, the remains of the SS Tasman - the boiler, part of the hull and the engines - lie in 27 meters of water between the Rurimas and Matata.

End Notes
[1] Bay of Plenty Times, 12 May 1821: 3.
[2] Rurima Island, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Rurima Island
[3] Auckland Star, 6 June 1921: 7.
[4] New Zealand Times, 10 June 1921: 5.
[5] Ibid: 10 June 1921: 5.

Illustrations
[1] H. Winkelmann, SS Tasman 1903-1921, Auckland Weekly News, 19 May 1921, Auckland Council Libraries - Kura AWNS-19210519-43-01
[2] Photographer unknown, Rurima Islands, Wai 46 # A3, Te Rangahau Whenua Raupatu O Ngati Awa Report to Department of Conservation, 25 July 1992: 15.
[3] Frederick Radcliffe, Postcard, Tauranga, Victoria Wharf, 1910s. Accession number 0846/08. Tauranga Heritage Collection

New Books: "Early Maritime Tauranga" by Trevor Bentley

Tauranga’s seas and harbour waters are central in any historical account of its past - the zones where much of its history has been made and remade. This book charts the early evolution of Tauranga’s identity as an advantageous and contested living place, a central port for the Bay of Plenty’s commercial shipping, and the hinterland as a source of profitable, and sustainable export commodities.

It casts light on the fluid, shifting oceanic world of Tauranga Moana, initially inhabited by Polynesian migrants, and for hundreds of years by resident Māori iwi and hapū who plied its waters on a variety of waka. It identifies and describes visiting European explorers, whaling and musket trading ships, pirates of both races, sea-trader adventurers, fugitive convicts and sailors, shipwreck survivors, and bold sea captains from, and beyond the region.

The book explores the impact of Ngāti Maru, Te Arawa and Ngāpuhi war fleets on resident iwi and the remarkable artillery sieges of local pa during the Intertribal Musket Wars. It describes the sailing skills, arrival, and roles of the first missionaries, flax traders, colonial officials, and boat builders. The remarkable enterprise of local hapū during Tauranga’s shipbuilding and Auckland’s provisions booms is unveiled. It details the courage and seamanship of the captains and crews of Tauranga’s early trading fleets as they sailed the old shipping lanes between Tauranga, the Bay of Islands and Auckland.

Early Maritime Tauranga provides additional insights into the districts early social, military and commercial past. Richly illustrated with old sketches, paintings and photographs, familiar harbour and offshore locations will become more meaningful to readers. The study reveals the region’s unique history of interracial peace, co-operation and prosperity in the decades preceding the Anglo-Māori Wars (1860-1872). The breadth of research undertaken and the multi-faceted approach of the narrative, provide a fascinating and indispensable record of Tauranga’s pre-colonial, seafaring past.

ISBN 978-0-473-70190

Publisher: Kererū Books. Soft cover, 382 pages
https://www.kereruhistorynz.co.nz/