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.

Captain Wing and the schooner Fanny

Early Sailing Vessels and Visitors to Tauranga, Part XVI

The first survey of Tauranga Harbour was made in June 1835 by Captain Thomas Wing, an accomplished North Sea sailor with a lifelong interest in hydrography. In 1832, Wing served as first mate on the trading schooner Fortitude during its five month’s voyage from London to the Bay of Islands. Between 1832 and 1834, Wing traded around the northern coast of New Zealand and to Port Jackson in his capacity as mate of the Fortitude, acquiring in the process an excellent knowledge of New Zealand waters. In 1834, the Bay of Islands merchants Clendon and Stephenson appointed him master of their new schooner, Fanny. Wing went on trading voyages to Tauranga, Kaipara, Manukau, Kawhia and Raglan harbours (1835-1836), during which he made what are believed to be the first detailed charts of these harbours. When not at sea, Wing lived at Hokianga with Rautangi, a daughter of the rangatira Waiti. The couple had a daughter, Fanny, who was killed during the 1845 Flagstaff War at the Bay of Islands.

Wing’s 1836 sketch of his trading schooner Fanny

Unfortunately, only a few faded and spotted examples of Captain Wing's historic charts, sketches and notes remain, which have been described as having considerable artistic merit and a wealth of detail ‘written in such a clear hand, that they appear as living pictures of a bygone age.’ On his chart of Tauranga harbour, written concisely and legibly in small characters in one corner, are the following words:

A sketch of the entrance of Tauronga, a small harbour in the Bay of Plenty on the east coast of New Zealand, lat. 37.39 south. High water on the full and change of moon at 7.30 a.m. and rises from 7ft. to 8ft.The soundings were taken at low water, June, 1835.

The Fanny's track into the harbour is shown and to the chart is added:

Maunga Nui, a very remarkable high hill, seen in clear weather nine or ten leagues off shore. The coast at the foot of Maunga Nui is covered with large boulder stones. Vessels ought not to come out of Tauronga in the strength of the ebb tide if the winds are light, as the strong eddy setting round Stony Point would be likely to run them ashore on the north side of it.

Wing provided further information likely to be of service to mariners in this era, including: ‘In 1835 there was a remarkable tree that drooped over the water abreast of Stony Point with good fresh water close to it.’ Fresh water was still flowing there in the 1920s and to the west of the chart is an artistically drawn Maori pa, ‘close to low tableland.’ The fortress, shown in the form of a square, is surrounded by a strongly-built palisade enclosing six whare and two whata or storehouses, which Wing labelled ‘Tumaitai Pa.’ [Otumoetai Pa].

Part of Wing’s chart and notes on Tauranga Harbour

Describing the anchorage before Wing’s survey, the missionary William White had written:

The harbour of Tauranga in the Bay of Plenty, and a few leagues South of Mercury Bay, is resorted to by vessels for the purpose of trading in flax, pork, potatoes, and corn. It is a bar harbour, but safe for vessels of 100 tons burthen.

When Thomas Wing charted Tauranga Harbour in June 1835, the only permanent European buildings in the district were the stores and houses of the Pakeha-Maori traders James Farrow at Otumoetai Pa and the chevalier Peter Dillon at Maungatapu Pa, who accumulated cargoes for trading vessels from their hapu in exchange for muskets and munitions. Wing interacted with Farrow and the rangatira of Otumoetai Pa and was fortunate that his hydrographic survey was not interrupted by the intertribal fighting of the Musket Wars. Ngapuhi from the Bay of Islands had only recently ceased their long distance amphibious raids to Tauranga and the bloody storming of Maketu and Te Tumu Pa during the war between the Te Arawa people and the combined forces of Ngai Te Rangi, and Ngati Haua did not occur until the following year.

Thomas Wing about 1860

Captain Wing went on to survey Kawhia, Whaingaroa (Raglan) and Kaipara during 1836, with the Fanny narrowly avoiding a stranding in the latter harbour. In 1837 he went on to chart Port Ahuriri, the Otago coast and Foveaux Strait. In the same year he ceased to skipper the Fanny, captaining instead the trading schooner Trent and, in 1844, the 220 ton New Zealand Company brig Deborah. Thomas Wing was harbour master for the Manakau for thirty years from 1857, before his death at Onehunga in 1888. An accomplished cartographer, sea captain, harbour master and pilot, probably no other mariner of his day had a better knowledge of the New Zealand coast. The fate of the Fanny is unknown.

References
Byrne, T. B;  Wing of the Manukau, T. B. Byrne, Auckland, 1991.
Byrne, T. B; 'Wing, Thomas', Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, first published in 1990. Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1w33/wing-thomas
New Zealand Herald, 2 September, 1932: 8.
Tuckett, Frederick, The 1844 Expedition and Otago Survey, Gerald Franklin (ed.),  The Frenchay Tucketts, 2005: 18-19, 96.
Webster, John, Reminiscences of an Old Settler in Australia and New Zealand, Whitcombe and Tombs, Christchurch, 1908: 253.
White, William, Important Information Relevant to New Zealand, Thomas Brennand, Sydney, 1839: 19.

Illustrations
Wing, Thomas,  (Capt), 1810-1888. A sketch of the entrance of Tauronga [Tauranga], a small harbour in the Bay of Plenty on the east coast of New Zealand, June 1835. [ms map]. Ref: Map Coll-832.16aj/1835/Acc.423. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington.
Wing, Thomas, Chart of the entrance to Kaipara Harbour, January, 1836 with sketch of the vessel Fanny. Map 4613, Old Colonists’ Museum Map Collections, Auckland Council Libraries.
Photographer unknown, Thomas Wing (1810-1888), master mariner, cartographer, harbour master and pilot, ca. 1860, PAColl - 7246. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington.

 

The Brigantine Victoria and Ensign Abel Best, 1842

Early Sailing Vessels and Visitors to Tauranga

Part XII. The Brigantine Victoria and Ensign Abel Best, 1842

In 1842, the colonial vessel Victoria entered Tauranga Harbour after sailing from New Zealand’s new fledgling capital of Auckland. On board were colonial officials and British Imperial troops, intent on ending an intertribal war between Tauranga’s Ngai Te Rangi and the Te Arawa people at Maketu. The acting governor Thomas Shortland’s pretext for intervening was a report that each tribe had seized a vessel belonging to one of their enemy’s resident traders, for use as warrior transports.

Built at Deptford, N.S.W. in 1840 for Governor Hobson’s new colonial administration, the 200 ton square-rigged Victoria was well prepared for any conflict with Maori. Armed with two 18 pound carronades and a four pound cannon, there were 226 round shot and 175 rounds of grape shot and canister on board. The vessel also carried 40 soldiers of the 40th Regiment led by Major Thomas Bunbury (who had taken a copy of the Treaty of Waitangi around New Zealand for Maori to sign in 1840), and some seamen and marines from HMS Tortoise, for whom 7,100 musket ball cartridges had been loaded.

The colonial brig Victoria
Image courtesy of Keith Snow, New Zealand marine artist

Shortland established his headquarters at Maketu and began peace negotiations, but the leading rangatira at Tauranga and Maketu objected to the right of the British to interfere in their wars. Shortland managed to effect a temporary peace and the return of the cutter Nimble, seized by Te Arawa from the traders Charles Joy and Peter Lowrie. Conscious of the escalating cost of the expedition, the limited size of his military force and the intransigence of the opposing rangatira, Shortland withdrew his troops and returned to Auckland. This was the first of several occasions where British army and naval troops were called out to settle an intertribal dispute and to recover European property during the 1840s.

On board the Victoria during the initial voyage to Tauranga was Ensign Abel Dottin Best. A talented officer of the 80th regiment, Best had served on a convict ship in New South Wales and Norfolk Island. In New Zealand he was given special instructions by Bunbury to take detailed notes on the defences of all Maori pa he visited. Posted to India in 1843, Captain Best was killed in battle in 1845, not yet 30 years old. He kept a journal however, which casts further light on some of the residents, locations and vistas at Tauranga during July-August, 1842.

"July 13th Running down the coast passed close to the Islands Hausey Mercury Aldermans Mayor &c - and at Night shortened sail at times laying to.

14th The harbour of Tauronga is so remarkable that it cannot by any possibillity be mistaken. At its immediate entrance the S. E. head rises into a conical hill with a flat top of a very considerable elevation all the coast to the N. W. being low for at least 15 miles and about 12 miles off lies the island of Kawera.

Sighting Mounganui, the hill mentioned at daylight we beat in with close reefed Topsails against a strong Gale having the flood tide in our favour at half tide carrying in four fathoms. As the harbour was little known when inside Capt Richards let go his anchor in 10 fathoms. We had not long been anchored when a Canoe boarded us containing some of the people who had escaped from Taraia two of whom had been wounded one of them severely in the hand and thigh. The Canoe one of the best constructed I ever saw came down in capital style against a powerful tide her crew twenty in number keeping time to the waving of a battle axe dressed with feathers."

Captain Abel Best 1816-1845
Photo courtesy of Don Armitage, Voyages of the Colonial Brig "Victoria" 1842-3

"Shortly after Mr Browns (the resident Missionary) six oared boat arrived & we all went on shore  & were speedily introduced to Mr Brown & Miss Baker. Mr Brown having told us off to our respective Quarters Sd & Mr Clarke being allotted rooms in his house & Ed & I having the old dwelling of Mr Stack assigned to us we went to dinner and then amused ourselves untill tea wandering about. I observed that the Maories had adopted a system of imperfect Intrenchment as their system of Fortification probably owing to the nature of the ground & the deficiency of timber fit for Stockades.

In the afternoon the Brig worked in and let go her anchor opposite Otu Maitai. The Country round Tauronga for a distance of at least Ten miles is devoid of wood the first forest occurring on the road to Rotorua in which valuable timber abounds. I am of opinion that the whole of the Plains around Tauronga were once wooded but that the trees gave way to agriculture in the days when Tribes inhabiting the Bay of Plenty were in their glory. The whole appearance of the country the size of its remaining Pa's the ruins of Native forts all bespeak a time when Tauronga swarmed with thousands of Warriors and when its people were among the great of the land."

The Victoria’s master, Jeremiah William Nagle
Photo courtesy of Geoff Lloyd and Findagrave.com

"17th Sunday. Breakfast over Ed Sd Mr Clarke & I visited Otu Maitai, the main stronghold of the People of Tauronga it is situated on the Katikati about 1 1/2 miles from the Mission house. Part of the Pa is on the sea beach and part on the top of a cliff or steep bank 40 feet high. By its position naturally strong it is rendered more secure by a strong palisade and on the land side & flanks it is further protected by a deep and wide Ditch having a Stockade on its exterior side. Moreover the level of the exterior plain is somewhat lower than that of the Pa. Where it well defended its intricacy alone would render it formidable but at present there are not men in it to defend one fifth of its great extent. Nowhere have I seen so great a number of fine Canoes the care with which they preserve their fishing nets was also worthy of remark every net being placed on a little elevated platform and then securely thatched over.

18th Up at 1/2 past six and at nine shoved off in the Brigs boat for Mounga Nui which we ascended in about 20 minutes. The day was remarkably clear and the view we obtained from the summit highly interesting & extensive. To the S. W. the sacred mountain of Tarawera was distinctly visible though at a distance of at least fifty miles. Looking along the coast we distinctly saw Cape Runaway on one side and the high land near Cape Colvil on the other. Extensive plains extended some 20 miles up and down the coast running back to the hills towards Rotorua but the most striking object was White Island, enveloped in a cloud of smoke or vapour.

August 18th Taking leave of Mr Brown & his family we walked to our boat & shoved off amidst loud cries of Go to your friend the Governor at Auckland to which we replied we will go to our friend the Governor of all of us which repartee (for so it was when expressed in Maori) occasioned a hearty laugh & gave much satisfaction to this singular people who three days before would not have heard it without visible displeasure.

About 4 P.M. weighed with a light breeze and the ebb tide carrying four fathoms over the outside flat the water gradually deepening to 15 fathoms at three miles from shore.

19th Little or no wind crept up as far as the Mercury Islands inside which we passed without seeing the sunken rock reported to lie in that Passage. The water was perfectly alive with shoals of Porpoises darting about in every direction no doubt rejoicing in the fineness of the weather.

20th Found ourselves inside Cape Colvil little wind all day at night anchored off Wai Heke.

21st Weighed at dawn. Wind foul tried to make Taraias but the weather became so thick and threatening that with much reluctance Mr Shd ordered the vessel to be put about and at 3 P.M. in a heavy Gale we reached Auckland."

Sources

Armitage, Don, Voyages of the Colonial brig 'Victoria' 1842-3, sites.google.com › Home › great-barrier-island-history
Best, Ensign Abel, The Journal of Ensign Best, 1837- 1843. Nancy M. Taylor (ed.), Wellington: Government Printer, 1966.
Bunbury, Thomas, Reminiscences of a Veteran, Vol III, Charles Skeet, London, 1861.
Collinson, T. B., Remarks on the Military Operations in New Zealand, Vol III, John Weale, London, 1853: 48.

The Karere (Messenger) and the Paihia Missionaries

Early Vessels and Visitors to Tauranga,  Part V:
The Karere (Messenger) and the Paihia Missionaries

A schooner rigged cutter ‘of 30 feet keel,’ Karere was constructed and launched at Paihia in the Bay of Islands by the sea captain and merchant Gilbert Mair (Snr) in 1831. ‘Of light draught,’ the vessel was built for securing provisions for the local mission stations from Maori coastal settlements, rather than for deep sea crossings. [1] Described by the missionary leader Henry Williams as ‘riding over the seas like a duck, scarcely shipping a drop of water,’ in moderate conditions, the little vessel was notorious for ‘kicking her heels’ in rough conditions and laying low with seasickness, every Maori and Pakeha who sailed as a passenger. [2]

The Karere accompanying Titore Takire’s fleet to Tauranga

Accompanied by Rev. Thomas Chapman and a Maori crew, Henry Williams sailed Karere to Maketu in October 1831, before travelling overland to Rotorua, where Chapman subsequently established a new Anglican mission station. The voyage south, however, was not without its challenges and after entering the Bay of Plenty, Williams recalled:

At four o’clock every appearance of bad weather, and being close to Tauranga, we decided to run in. Came on to blow very hard; could scarcely see Maunganui, though close to it. As we drew near we obs’d the breakers high and nearly across the entrance with a very considerable swell. However, by the good providence of God, we entered safely at 5.20 and found ourselves immediately in still water, to our no small joy. [3] 

Rev. Henry Williams

Rev. Thomas Chapman

In February 1832, the Karere and the missionaries Henry Williams, James Kemp and William Fairburn accompanied a Ngapuhi amphibious artillery expedition to Tauranga in the hope of making peace and to ‘terminate the horrors of war.’ Led by Titore Takiri, the leading war chief at the Bay of Islands following the death of Hongi Hika, the invading force comprised 80 waka taua and several Maori-owned sailing cutters carrying some 800 warriors and a siege train of ten ships’ cannon. [4]

The great fleet voyaged slowly south in three divisions, raiding the plantations of both enemy and allied iwi as it went. The voyage south was not without incident. Some rangatira were accompanied by their turbulent Pakeha-Maori fighting men. Outside Tauranga Harbour, Williams was compelled to remonstrate with a group of these heavily armed renegades aboard the Maori owned sailing cutter Taeopa. Having just returned from a raid against Maori on Mayor Island (Tuhua) during which they fired on the inhabitants with the Taeopa’s bow cannon, and supremely confident in their fighting skills and firepower, these men were acting as a tribe within the tribe. Drawing alongside on the Karere, Williams explained that their reckless manoeuvering among the fleet was endangering the unity of the expedition. How the Pakeha-Maori responded is not stated. [5]
 
On 6th March, Titore’s fleet entered Tauranga Harbour through the Katikati entrance and camped first on Matakana and then Rangiwaea Island. Williams, a former Royal Navy officer recalled that on Matakana he was approached by a group of Ngapuhi rangatira. ‘My opinion required respecting the proper charge for their great guns, declined the honour.’ [6]

Titore Takiri

Hone Heke

Aboard the Karere now anchored in the Otumoetai channel, the missionaries watched the Ngapuhi infantry launch successive attacks against Otumoetai Pa, only to be driven off by bands of Ngai Te Rangi musketeers who emerged from the pa to meet them. The Ngapuhi rangitira Hone Heke Pokai, who was to achieve fame as an anti-British ‘rebel’ before and during the Northern or Flagstaff War of 1845, was seriously wounded in the fighting and ordered home by the senior chiefs.

During the siege, the missionaries watched the Maketu-based Arawa trader Phillip (Hans) Tapsell sail his cutter Fairy into the harbour. Tapsell, whose wife Karuhi was Ngapuhi, delivered six additional cannon and munitions to Titore’s warriors. During the transfer of ordnance to the Ngapuhi waka, the Otumoetai defenders who had at least two cannon installed in their defences, bombarded, but did not strike the Fairy, Williams observing drily how ‘the shot fell short.’ [7]

‘Dejected in mind’ at being unable to negotiate peace between the two warring tribes, the missionaries left Tauranga for the Bay of Islands on the 15th March and did not witness Ngapuhi’s extraordinary day long artillery bombardment of Otumoetai Pa the following day and eventual withdrawal from Tauranga. [8]

If entering Tauranga Harbour through the Maunganui entrance in October 1831 had proved difficult for Karere and the missionaries, exiting the harbour in March 1832, proved a near fatal experience. Williams recorded later,

In the evening, being high water, weighed and made sail. The wind directly in. Passed safely over the various banks, but when close to the great hill which forms the south head, the vessel missed stays owing to the swell caused by the ebbing tide and there appeared every chance of going on the rocks, which was prevented by letting go the anchor, and taking in the sail. Everyone was much alarmed and the sea breaking on all sides, but as the tide was setting to windward, there was no strain upon the cable. In about an hour the sea subsided. We again weighed and in a short time were out of difficulties. [9]

Encountering foul weather and rough waters during the homeward voyage, Karere rounded Cape Brett three days later and at 8 am. the three missionaries landed at Paihia ‘unperceived’ by their families and resident Maori. [10]  Three years later, in 1835, Karere was put up for sale. There was great interest among local rangatira who were competing to acquire their own cutters at this time, but details of the sale price and the name or names of the purchaser/s are yet to be located. [11] 

Endnotes
[1] Williams, W and J; The Turanga Journals, Wellington, 1974: 44.
[2] Williams, H. The Early Journals of Henry Williams, 1826-1840, L. M. Rogers (comp.), Christchurch, 1961: 411.
[3] Carleton, H; The Life of Henry Williams, Archdeacon of Waimate, Vol. 1, Auckland, 1874: 94.
[4] Bentley, T; Tribal Guns and Tribal Gunners,  Christchurch, 2013:  69-71.
[5] Williams, 1961: 228.
[6] Ibid: 231.
[7] Ibid: 234.
[8] Bentley, 2013: 76-78.
[9] Williams, 1961: 212.
[10] Ibid: 213.
[11] Ibid: 406, 409.

Illustrations
1 Artist, Henry Williams, The Karere, Yate, W; An Account of New Zealand, London, 1835: 184.
2 Henry Williams, Sherrin, R. A. A; Leys, T W; Early History of New Zealand, Auckland, 1890: 263.
3 Unidentified photographer, ‘Thomas Chapman ½-025274-F Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, from Philip Andrews. Chapman, Anne Maria and Chapman, Thomas, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, first published in 1990, updated November, 2001. Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand (accessed 12 October 2019)
4 Titore Takiri, Sherrin, R. A. A; Leys, T W; Early History of New Zealand, Auckland, 1890: 487.
5 Attributed artist John Gilifillan ‘Honi Heke [about 1846] A-114-003, National Library of New Zealand, Wellington.