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

The Otūmoetai Beachfront Pathway - Four Early Walkers

A map of the Otūmoetai Peninsula by the late Tauranga historian Alistair Matheson

Otūmoetai Peninsula’s beachfront path has been a major thoroughfare for Māori visitors and residents for centuries.  Walkers traversed a level and pleasant path of approximately two miles – often through groves of ngaio trees - from the Wairoa River entrance to the Waikareao Estuary entrance, just as they do today. Tauranga is a region of peninsulas and estuaries and accessing the peninsula path was not always an easy task.

Before the 1860s and the Tauranga War (1864) and Bush War (1867), Māori and Pākehā overlanders walking south through Waihi and Katikati or over the Kaimai Ranges from the Waikato would, from the Te Puna Peninsula, walk or canoe across the Wairoa River to access the walkway. Travellers trekking northwards from locations like Lake Taupō and the East Coast/Western Bay of Plenty, would first visit the Te Papa mission station before crossing the Waikareao Estuary to access the path.

Travellers in both directions often overnighted at Otūmoetai Pā, the district's Māori and Pākehā-Māori commercial hub. Also known as ‘The Capital of Tauranga’ before the 1860s, the pā was located approximately half-way along the path from the long abandoned Matuaiwi Pā. Early Pākehā travellers who trod the beachfront path included Rev. Henry Williams (1828-1832), Bishop Pompallier (1840 and 1841), Treaty of Waitangi official Thomas Bunbury (1840) and Captain Byron Drury of HMS Pandora, who surveyed the harbour in November 1852. The recollections of four additional walkers are described below.

John Carne Bidwill, Botanist,  1838.

On 3 July 1838, travelling English botanist John Carne Bidwell and his party of Māori porters crossed the Kaimai range to the Te Puna peninsula, from where he was carried at low tide ‘half a mile’ over the Wairoa Rivers dangerous outer crossing ‘on the shoulders of one of the natives’. During his walk to Otūmoetai Pā, he said:  ‘a mob of slaves and boys began to twitch my clothes and gun as I passed along, and make all kinds of impertinent remarks; however, I walked on as fast as I could... and after about a mile got rid of all but the most determined of my persecutors’.¹

From Otūmoetai Pā, Bidwill observed a visiting taua (Maori war party) ‘perfectly friendly with the Tawranga tribe’, leave the fortress for the Waikareao crossing at first light ‘as did they not leave at the time of low water, they would have about a dozen miles further to march’. He also noted that when any allied war parties traversed the Otūmoetai walkway, Tauranga’s resident traders, including those along the path like James Farrow and later, John Lees Faulkner, ‘took all possible precautions to prevent robbery, even to the locking of their stockades, and securing in them such bulky articles as canoes and boats, which would otherwise have been very probably taken away or destroyed’.² Unfortunately, no images of John Carne Bidwill have survived.

Lady Mary Ann Martin, 1846

Lady Mary Ann Martin, c1860s

Another early beachfront traveller was the intrepid semi-invalid, Lady Mary Ann Martin, author of Our Māoris (1884), a New Zealand best seller in its day. During October 1846, she accompanied her husband William - New Zealand’s first Chief Justice, on a journey from Auckland to Rotorua via Tauranga. During their crossing of the Kaimai Range by way of the Wairere Track, Mary Ann  Martin was carried by Māori bearers while lying on a stretcher. She recorded that after, finding herself in a vertical position on several occasions during the ascent, with sheer drops below, she instructed her bearers to tie her to the stretcher:

By one p.m. we had passed through the forest, and came out on a wide plain, from which we saw the sea and coast, stretching far away, and a mountain at the entrance of the harbour standing out against the blue sky; but our fatigues were not over: we knocked about till dark in a whale-boat on a rough sea, and when we landed the first sight that greeted us was a raging fire in the pah [Otūmoetai]. My bearers put me down on the beach, and rushed off to help extinguish the flames.

A kind Maori woman, whose English husband was away, received us into her house, and gave us bread and coffee, and when, after stumbling along [the walkway] in the dark to the crossing-place and shouting across [the Waikareao Estuary to the Te Papa Mission Station] in vain for a boat, we returned to her, she brought out a pile of new blankets and made a bed for us on the floor. About midnight, however, our host, Archdeacon Brown, arrived, and soon after we reached his comfortable Mission-house. After ten nights in the bush, an English bedroom seemed a great luxury.

I stayed for three weeks at Tauranga, while my husband went on to the hot springs. The house was all of native workmanship; the outer walls were of raupo, and the inner walls and ceilings reeded after the best Maori pattern. The windows of the bedroom were overhung with roses^.3

The house where Lady Martin and her husband found temporary refuge, was that of the trader and shipwright John Lees Faulkner - the ‘kind Maori woman’ being his wife Ruawahine. Their house, store and shipyard were located on her land at Okorore, a one acre property located about a half mile east of Otūmoetai Pā on what is today’s Beach Road. The Martins and their Maori porters were returned to the Te Puna Peninsula on Rev Alfred Brown’s whaleboat, from where they retraced their route to Auckland. The Faulkner house has been relocated at Tauranga’s Historic Village).⁴

An Anonymous Walker, 1859

Appearing in the newspaper New Zealander in April 1859 - one month before Ferdinand Von Hochstetter and Ernest Dieffenbach’s scientific expedition visited Tauranga – the following article was written by an unidentified overland traveller.

Leaving the Mission Station and proceeding westward for Otumoiti village, you have to be ferried over the other boat channel [the Waikareao Estuary], and, in making for the village, cross a sandy plain on which is a large, but for the present deserted, native settlement. At Otumoiti there is a considerable settlement, and the Roman Catholic Church, of native structure, is elaborately decorated in the most artistic native manner.

On the beach are the house and stores of Mr. Faulkner, who has resided here for many years, and from whom and Mrs. Faulkner the travellers receive'd a hearty welcome. A short distance further on is the store of Mr. Farrow, and on the opposite side of the harbour is the residence of Captain Sellers (of the cutter “Comet,") who trades along the East Coast. No other Europeans, that we are aware, are regular residents at Tauranga at present; but it is to be hoped that their numbers will soon have an increase, and that they will have the " White Swan" steaming into this noble harbour, and affording them the means of speedy communication with Auckland.⁵

Ferdinand Von Hochstetter, 1859

Ferdinand Von Hochstetter

A noted geologist and writer, Von Hochstetter was appointed to the Austrian round the world scientific expedition in 1857. Arriving at Auckland on the frigate Novara  in December 1858, he, the naturalist Ernest Dieffenbach (who had previously visited Tauranga in 1841), and his scientific party visited many central North Island locations including Taupō and Rotorua. Returning overland to Auckland via Maketu and Tauranga, Von Hochstetter and his companions were welcomed at the Te Papa Mission Station by the Rev Karl Volkner and his wife Emma. Departing after a two day stay he recorded on 12 May 1859:

Kind Mrs. Voelkner had baked some fresh bread and prepared an excellent roast-pork for our benefit on the road; and thus most liberally provided with food, we again parted from a Mission house, the kind and hospitable inhabitants of which I shall never forget. We crossed the Waikareao Creek in a boat, and thence passed over a sandy plain through a deserted Pah in a north-westerly direction along the shores of the harbour, which presents the character of a shallow estuary with, many inlets and studded with numerous islands, separated from the sea only by a row of sandhills, and extends, at an average breadth of two to three miles, in a N.W. direction, as far as the Katikati river, a distance of 15 miles.

After a short hour's walk we reached the Otumoetai Pah (others spell it Otumoiti), one of the principal settlements on Tauranga Harbour, at the same time the seat of a Roman Catholic mission. The church of the place is of a very neat construction; there are also some Europeans settled here. On the beach lay a number of beautiful war-canoes; and next to them a schooner, belonging to the Maoris, which they had bought for £500, leaving it afterwards to rot and decay.

From Otumoetai we came over excellent, fertile alluvial plains to the Wairoa Bay. The Bay is very shallow, and the sandy rather than muddy ground so firm, that, although the tide had already half set in, we could without danger wade through to Peterehema (Bethlehem)... How very different everything here will look in after-years, when a European City shall rise on the Tauranga Harbour, and the beautiful country round about be dotted with flourishing farms.⁶

References

¹ Bidwill, John, Rambles in New Zealand, W.S. Orr and Co. London, 1841: Capper Reprint 1974:  79-81.

² Ibid.

³Martin, Mary Ann, Our Maoris, E. and J. B. Young, London, 1884: 98-99.

⁴ Matheson, A. H; ‘Otumoetai Pa and the Early Days in Tauranga’, Journal of the Tauranga Historical Society (Inc.), August - September 1975, No. 54: 14.

⁵ New Zealander, 2 April 1859: 3.

⁶ Von Hochstetter, Ferdinand, New Zealand: Its Physical Geography, Geology and Natural History, J.G. Cotta, Stuttgart, 1867: 445-446.

Images

Matheson, Alistair, ‘Otumoetai Pa and the Early traders in Tauranga, Part II’, Journal of the Tauranga Historical Society (Inc.), August-September 1975, No.54. OT (2) 3.

Bartlett & Co. (Auckland): Lady Mary Ann Martin (1817-1884) PA2-0195. National Library, Wellington New Zealand

Dauthage, Adolf, 1825-1883. Dauthage, Adolf, 1825-1883 :Ferdinand R. Hochstetter 1859, aged 28.. Haast, Julius von: In memoriam. Ferdinand R. Hochstetter. Dunedin, J. McKay, 1884. Ref: PUBL-0135-front. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/23162756

The Mystery of the Monmouth Cannons Part 3: The Return of Captain Black

From Tauranga City Library’s archives

A monthly blog about interesting items in our collections.

This post follows on from The Mystery of the Monmouth Cannons Part 1 and Part 2, so be sure to check them out for the full backstory.

Te Tapihana cannon, Monmouth Redoubt, 2024.
Private Collection, Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries.

While transcribing Private George Crabbe's manuscript (see August's blog post on George Crabbe) we uncovered a crucial missing puzzle piece concerning the history of the Te Tapihana cannon, and its connection to the early Danish trader Phillip (Hans) Tapsell. 

George A Crabbe, (1840 - 1905).
Image courtesy of N. Wilson, Crabbe Collection, Tauranga Heritage Collection.

According to Crabbe's account, in early January of 1868, a schooner named Fortune arrived in Ōpōtiki carrying one of the old cannons belonging to Hans Tapsell of Maketū. The militia promptly got their hands on the gun and brought it ashore, where it was used for many years. Later, the gun was taken to Tauranga by a Captain Turner, though Crabbe does not provide a date for this.

Excerpt from Scrapbook compiled by Crabbe family (p. 21). George Alfred Crabbe, date unknown.
Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries, ref Ms 112/3.

This story accords with what we already know of Te Tapihana’s history, in which Captain Archibald Campbell Turner had acquired the cannon from a military officer in Ōpōtiki during the New Zealand Wars (BOPT, April 6th, 1914, p. 4). But Crabbe’s account provides us with more than just the connection to Captain Turner.

Captain A. C. Turner N.Z.M.. c. 1900.
Puke Ariki Heritage Collection, ref PHO2011-2311.

In Part 2 we talked about the sale of two Tapsell cannons by Retreat Tapsell to a ‘Mr. Black’ of Tauranga (likely early trader Thomas Black), in early May of 1864. As it happens, the name of Black’s vessel was the Fortune (DSC, 12 May 1864, p. 4).

Could this be the same Fortune that arrived in Ōpōtiki with the Tapsell gun nearly four years later? It certainly seems so, as shipping records place Captain Black onboard the schooner Fortune in Ōpōtiki at the time (NZ Herald, Jan 18th, 1868, p. 2). 

View, Waioeka River and Wharves, Ōpōtiki. Creator and date unknown.
Te Whare Taonga ō Taketake, Whakatāne Museum Collections and Research, ref 42434. 

Since Black had reportedly purchased the cannons as ballast for his vessel, it is very plausible that Te Tapihana had remained onboard the Fortune from the time of it's purchase in 1864, until it's reappearance in Ōpōtiki in 1868. If our theory is correct, it would support the long-held belief that Te Tapihana was part of Phillip Tapsell's battery of 'big guns' at Maketū Pā.

Maketū Pā, Bay of Plenty. Watercolour by Major General Horatio Robley, 1865.
Collection of Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, ref 1992-0035-826.

To learn more about Tapsell's battery of big guns, click here.

For more about George Crabbe and his first-hand account of the New Zealand Wars, click here.

Sources:   

 'Local and General'. (1914, 6 April). Bay of Plenty Times, 42(6097), p. 4.

'Maketū. (From our own Correspondent.) May 5'. (published 1864, 12 May). Daily Southern Cross, p. 4.

'Shipping Intelligence'. (1868, 18 January). New Zealand Herald, 5(1303), p. 2.

Crabbe, George Alfred. (n.d.). Scrapbook relating to Aotearoa land wars history, Māori culture, fauna/ flora/ reptiles, and sketch of Orākau pā. Collection of Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries, ref Ms 112/3, pp. 21-22.

The Mystery of the Monmouth Cannons: Part 2

From Tauranga City Library’s archives

A monthly blog about interesting items in our collections.

Tawakeheimoa cannon, Taumatakahawai Pā (Monmouth Redoubt) c. 1920s.
Collection of Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Korokī ref 09-082

Last month we talked about a letter written by Colonel G. Arnold Ward, Former Mayor of Tauranga, regarding the unknown origins of the old guns in the Monmouth Redoubt. If you haven't read it already, you can check it out here. In this month's blog post we will delve deeper into the intriguing history of the two Napoleonic era carronades - Tawakeheimoa and Te Tapihana.

Tawakeheimoa, the larger of the two cannons (pictured above), is believed to have once belonged to the early Danish trader Phillip Tapsell (Kean, 2018, p. 20). Tapsell was famous for his battery of twelve 'big guns,' which he used to defend his trading station at Maketū Pā - though this defense was short-lived. In 1836, an attack by Ngāti Hauā and Ngāi Te Rangi led to the successful capture of the pā and the destruction of Tapsell's trading station (Matheson, 1989, p. 2).

Phillip Tapsell and daughter Kataraina, c. 1870s.
Image courtesy of Alexander Turnbull Library, Steffano Webb Collection (PA-Group-00370),
ref: 1/1-008958-G.

As for the fate of Tapsell's battery following the attack, we are provided with varying accounts. In his memoirs, Tapsell states that following the fall of Maketū Pā, the victors spiked the guns and threw them into the Kaituna River (Adams, 2021, p. 154).

Sketch map of country around Waihī Estuary and Maketū Pā (A), shows location of Tapsell's store (B), Kaituna River, and Te Tumu Pā (I). Creator unknown, 1840. 
Image courtesy of  Alexander Turnbull Library, ref MapColl-832.16a/[187-?]/Acc.1848

Interestingly, an alternate version of events reported by the Daily Southern Cross claims that six of the guns were taken by Ngāi Te Rangi to fortify Te Tumu Pā. However, they were soon recaptured by Te Arawa, except for one gun, which had already been taken to Tauranga (Daily Southern Cross, 12 May 1864, p. 4).

One of twelve 'Tapsell' guns 'Te Haupapa', Wreck of the Falcon Memorial, Maketu.
Image courtesy of Ministry for Culture and Heritage, credit Lynton Diggle, 2009.

While we might initially be more inclined to accept Tapsell's first-hand account over any other, the second version of events does seem to have some credibility to it, owing to an altercation which occurred in 1864.

According to the Daily Southern Cross, the sale of two big guns to a Mr. Black of Tauranga (likely early trader Thomas Black) by Retreat Tapsell (eldest son of Phillip Tapsell) had prompted complaints from Ngāti Kererū, who considered the guns to be taonga, and their property (for further explanation see Bentley, 2013, p. 23-4). One of these guns was reportedly "Tawake hei moa", the other was one which had been found "lying in the water" (Daily Southern Cross, 12 May 1864, p. 4). A meeting was called to discuss the sale; however Black sailed off with the guns before the situation was able to be resolved.

Tawakeheimoa after it was relocated to the Tauranga Historic Village and District Museum, 1986.
Image courtesy of Tauranga Heritage Collection, ref 0460/08

At some point thereafter, Tawakeheimoa came into the possession of A. W. Burrows, who likely purchased it from Mr. Black. Burrows kept the gun in his private collection until his death in 1899, after which it was gifted to the Tauranga Borough Council for public exhibition in the redoubt (Tauranga District Council, 2004, p. 9).

But what about the other Monmouth cannon?

Te Tapihana cannon, Taumatakahawai Pā (Monmouth Redoubt) c. 1956-57.
Collection of Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Korokī ref 09-075

The smaller carronade donated by Captain A. C. Turner, locally known as Te Tapihana, has also been attributed to Tapsell's battery due to its similarity to the other Tapsell guns (Matheson, 1989, p. 9); however this identification is much less certain. In fact, evidence points more towards a military provenance. A note published in the Bay of Plenty Times in 1914 mentions that Captain Turner received the gun from a military officer in Ōpōtiki during "the Māori War period" (BOPT, April 6th, 1914, p. 4). Additionally, the crown stamp on the cannon's barrel indicates that it was produced for military use (Ward, 1914).

Te Tapihana, Monmouth Redoubt, 2024.
Private Collection, Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries.

Of course, these details do not exclude the possibility that Te Tapihana once belonged to the early Danish trader, and the evidence has only raised further questions. Unfortunately, we may never know for sure.

Bethlehem School pupils at Redoubt, 1961.
Collection of Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Korokī ref gca-2396

For more background on Tapsell's battery and the whereabouts of the other guns, check out this article by Alister Matheson here. 

Sources:

    Adams, J. (2021). Events in the Life of Phillip Tapsell. Oratia Books.

    Bentley, T. (2013). Tribal Guns and Tribal Gunners: The Story of Māori Artillery in 19th Century New Zealand. Willsonscott Publishing International.

    Matheson, A. (May 1989). Tapsell’s Big Guns. Journal of Tauranga Historical Society, No 37. Pp. 1-11.

    'Maketu. (From our own Correspondent.) May 5'. (published 1864, 12 May). Daily Southern Cross, p. 4.

    'Local and General'. (1914, 6 April). Bay of Plenty Times, 42(6097), p. 4.

    Tauranga District Council. (2004). Tauranga Historic Village Museum, Tauranga, New Zealand: Souvenir Book: Take a Walk in Living History. Tauranga District Council Publisher.

    Ward, G. A. (21 March, 1914). "Old guns in redoubt". [Letter from Colonel G. Arnold Ward to the Town Clerk, Tauranga]. Collection of Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries, VF CCR. 

Edward Clementson, Castaway and Flax Agent, 1833-1838

Tauranga’s Early Traders Part IV
 

Like the South Shields collier Mary shown here in two views, Clementson’s vessels Elizabeth and Bee were British built brigs – vessels generally defined as square sailed, 2 masted vessels, often with one or more try sails between foremast and bowsprit and a fore-and-aft spanker boom sail off the main mast.

Edward Clementson enters New Zealand history in 1830 as a 23-year-old ship’s mate on Captain John Stewart’s 236-ton English brig Elizabeth, which sailed from Sydney to New Zealand in search of a cargo of muka or dressed flax.¹   In return for a promised shipload of this commodity, Stewart transported 100 of Te Rauparaha’s Ngati Toa warriors from Kapiti to Banks Peninsula. There, they surprised and slaughtered many Ngai Tahu people at Takapuneke and captured their leading rangatira Te Maiharanui and his wife. Both were later tortured and killed at Kapiti. The Elizabeth’s crew was reported by Ngai Tahu survivors to have actively participated in the attack. John Stewart was subsequently arrested and sent to trial in Sydney where the charges were dismissed. Although Clementson had led the party of three sailors who seized and chained Te Maiharanui and was described in NSW official documents as one of the two principal offenders, he was not prosecuted.²

By 1832, Edward Clementson was in command of the brig Bee, sharing with the first mate responsibilities for the deck crew, ship’s cargo and navigation. Despite its assorted crews and skippers (including Clementson), the 135-ton, square-rigged sealer-trader was sailed repeatedly and successfully between Hobart and New Zealand, and along the latter’s uncharted, unlighted, inshore “cannibal coast”, for more than 20 years.³

Between Abel Tasman’s visit in 1642 and the Treaty in 1840, Maori throughout New Zealand launched 111 recorded taua ito (blood vengeance) and taua muru (ritualised plundering) raids against ships, ships boats and shore parties, almost all retaliatory in accordance with tikanga Maori or customary law. Given these turbulent times, the Bee had a remarkably long period of service, particularly as most voyages were made during the Sealers War (1810-1822) and the most intensive years of the intertribal Musket Wars (1818 -1839).⁴ 

The journalist-historian James Cowan said of the Bee’s voyages during this era:

Under one owner and another, and a succession of hard-case skippers, this busy Bee knocked about New Zealand and its off-shore islands wherever there was a cargo of flax to be picked up from the Maoris in exchange for muskets and gunpowder, or a load of oil and bone from its shore-whalers, or a lot of skins from the seal-hunting gangs. In her spare time she went whaling, like many other South Sea traders of that day.⁵  

In 1833, a time served convict from Hobart town named William Cuthbert, also known as Lincoln Bill, managed to raise enough capital from creditors to charter the Bee and a cargo of “trade” intended for barter with coastal iwi. On boarding the vessel, he directed the Bee’s new captain, William Stewart to sail for New Zealand ostensibly ‘to trade for flax and pigs, oil and “general fixings”, which at that time included smoke-dried tattooed heads; trade term, “baked heads”.  Cuthbert first ordered Stewart to proceed to Tasmania’s Maria Island where he took aboard three escaped convicts from the penal settlement and their captive policeman escort.⁶     

William Stewart was a master mariner and navigator of some repute and Stewart Island is named after him. Clementson, who remained on the Bee in the role of first mate quarrelled with Cuthbert who planned to sail the brig to Peru where he hoped to sell the vessel and its cargo. In due course, the brig reached the New Zealand coast at Tauranga. Here, Cuthbert ordered Clementson ashore at pistol point on one of its beaches “with barely more than the clothes he wore”.⁷

In 1833 Edward Clementson was abandoned on one of Tauranga’s beaches by the Bee’s piratical master William Cuthbert

The Bee’s crew set sail for the Pacific Islands where Cuthbert later dumped the police constable and the three Maria Island convicts. For some months, he and his crew, which mostly comprised time expired convicts like himself, commenced an island hopping, drunken debauch with Polynesian women from various islands between, and including, Tahiti and Hawaii, on their way to Peru. However at Honolulu Harbour, William Cuthbert disappeared, perhaps forewarned that the Sydney authorities had declared the brig a pirated vessel, though the Maketu based trader Phillip Tapsell was later informed that the pirate had been hanged.⁸ The Bee was eventually returned to Sydney and sold for the benefit of Cuthbert’s creditors.

There were no missionaries resident in Tauranga in 1833 and Clementson was fortunate not to have been captured by Ngapuhi or Te Arawa, whose allied waka fleets often entered the harbour and occupied its shores that year to make war on local iwi. Clementson found refuge among Ngai Te Rangi’s trader Pakeha-Maori at Otumoetai Pa, where he was soon recruited as a flax buying agent by the Maketu based trader Phillip Tapsell. Led by Tapsell, Clementson and several Maori guides set out from Maketu to Rotorua, then on to Matamata Pa, the base from which the castaway Englishman was to conduct his trade. The journey and reception at Matamata must have been a strange experience for Clementson, a veteran seaman recently turned landlubber. Tapsell told his biographer, the Maketu Postmaster, Mr E. Little in 1869:

For a part of the way our journey was very severe, over a succession of steep mountains, the sides of which were like precipices, and though the forest of Patatere [sic], which was so dense, and obstructed with undergrowth and supplejack, that our passage through it was toilsome beyond measure. Matamata was at that time a very beautiful place, and provisions of all kind very abundant, A great feast was prepared on the arrival of our party from Maketu. Pigs were killed and roasted, baskets of eels prepared, and stacks of potatoes sufficient for a hundred men; in addition to which a large number of live pigs were sent for our party to kill for ourselves.⁹ 

When Tapsell had negotiated terms of trade with Te Waharoa and other leading rangatira, he and his guides returned to Maketu, leaving Clementson among Matamata’s Ngati Haua people.¹⁰   

Tapsell had already placed traders at Matamata Pa to exchange muskets, munitions and general trade goods for dressed flax. Appointed chief trading agent by Tapsell, Clementson appears to have been readily accepted by his fellows, while he adopted their Pakeha-Maori lifestyle and became fluent in Maori. When the Anglican missionaries Williams, Fairburn, Brown and Morgan ascended the Waihou for the first time in 1833, they were welcomed at Matamata by Te Waharoa. Williams noted that Ngati Haua’s traders were "very civil" Nevertheless, that evening when the missionaries and their christianised Maori porters commenced a hymn, Clementson and his three companions countered from within their whare with a voluminous version of Old King Cole.¹¹

This sketch by Henry Williams of missionaries crossing a swamp is based on his arduous traverse of the Matamata’s great Mangapouri swamp with Revs Fairburn, Brown and Morgan in 1833. The same swamp was traversed by Clementson’s great cross-Kaimai flax trains from 1833.

As arranged by Tapsell and Te Waharoa, for the next several years Clementson's consignments of flax were back packed or pikaued through the great korari or flax swamp known as Mangapouri (Dark Stream) and across the Waihou River, seperating Matamata and the Kaimai Range. They were then laboriously transported up the 1,600-foot range by long lines of women, older children and slaves who camped overnight on the broad summit plateau. Descending the ancient and deeply rutted Wairere track the following day, the porters crossed the Te Puna Peninsula to the Wairoa River mouth. There, they were met by the Otumoetai based Farrow brothers who supervised the consignments’ loading aboard vessels bound for Bay of Islands and those contracted to the Sydney merchant Richard Jones.

While Clementson’s consignments were intermittent, they were considerable. In a letter written to Henry Williams in on 11 September 1835, Alfred Brown who was visiting Tauranga reported: "Mr Clementson is just going to transport upwards of fifty tons of flax to Tauranga in two thousand back-loads. All this has been scraped by the natives since I have been here".¹²

A trader bartering with Maori for baskets of dressed flax and a pig during the 1830s

Despite his actions during the Elizabeth affair, Clementson established and remained on good terms with Tapsell, his fellow traders at Matamata Pa and the Bay of Islands missionaries during their temporary visits to Tauranga between 1833 and 1838. When Clementson learned that Te Waharoa was planning to attack Maketu Pa in early 1836, he twice sent one of his traders to warn Tapsell.¹³ When Rev John Wilson visited Tauranga on the little missionary cutter Kukupa in 1836, the year intertribal warfare in the region reached its apogee, Clementson sent him a bodyguard - a ferocious bull-dog cross, incongruously named Breezy.¹⁴  

Later that year, when Clementson and James Farrow visited the Bay of Islands, they joined the missionaries in supporting a petition to King William IV, by settlers, exasperated at the absence of law and order.¹⁵ Fortunately for Clementson, when he once cursed Te Waharoa “native fashion”, a curse associated with evil and death, a timely intervention by Alfred Brown saved his life. The utu (payment or compensation) demanded by Te Waharoa, and known to have been paid by Brown, while unstated, will have been substantial.¹⁶   

 

Te Waharoa died in 1838 and his Pakeha-Maori Edward Clementson, died soon after, during a voyage from Tauranga to Matata. His trader contemporary James Farrow who survived the voyage informed Phillip Tapsell:

 

       He [Farrow], his wife, Clementson and a young man named Jenkins had set out … with a view of meeting with Mr White [resident trader at Matata and later, a prolific boatbuilder], and when off the place, were overtaken by a gale of wind. It would have been easy for them to have run under the lee of Whale Island where they could have had smooth water, and there have waited till the storm subsided, but their young companion being inexperienced and very confident, was strongly desirous that they should at once land at Matata, which he was of the opinion they could easily do.

 

Yielding to this opinion, they pulled for the mainland, on approaching which, they found a very heavy surf breaking on the bar. Appearances were so threatening, that when near the entrance to the river, they laid on their oars to deliberate on the best course to pursue. They consulted so long that before they were aware, the boat drifted into the breakers and was capsized. Jenkins not being able to swim, went down like a shot. Clementson was a good swimmer, but was so encumbered by heavy boots and buttoned up to the throat with a pea jacket, that after a few strokes, he sank also.¹⁷  

 

James Farrow, who was also a good swimmer, almost succumbed to exhaustion, but encouraged by his Maori wife who swam by his side, he eventually reached the shore and safety.

 

References

¹ NZ pre-1846, Person page 791, Early NZ history, nzearlyhistory.com, http://www.nzearlyhistory.com › p791 

² Ogilvie, Gordon, Banks Peninsula, Cradle of Canterbury, GP Books, Wellington, 1990: 155. McNab, Robert, Historical Records of New Zealand, Vol. II, Government Printer, Wellington, 1914: 594.

³ Daily Southern Cross, 4 August 1869: 6. 

⁴ Bentley, Trevor, Pakeha Slaves, Maori Masters, New Holland, Auckland, 2019: 22-23, 25-26.

⁵ Cowan, James, ‘Rovers of the Brig “Bee’ – The Story of a Lawless Cruise in the Old Pacific’, in The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Vol. 13, Issue 3, 1938: 17-20.

⁶ Daily Southern Cross, 4 August 1869: 6. 

⁷ Auckland Star, 8 December 1928: 1. (Supplement). Cowan, JPS, Vol. 13: 18.

⁸ Daily Southern Cross, 4 August 1869: 6.

⁹ Ibid.

¹⁰ Ibid. 

¹¹ Vennell, C.W; Brown and the Elms, D.H. Maxwell, Tauranga, 1984: 12.

¹² Gifford, W.H. and H.B. Williams, A Centennial History of Tauranga, The Tauranga Centennial Committee and A.H. and A.W. Reed, Dunedin, 1940, Capper Reprint, 1976: 209.

¹³ Tapsell, P; ‘Reminiscences, 1777?-1873’. Ref. ½-005486, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, NZ: 155-156.

 

¹⁴ Wilson, J.A; Missionary Life and Work in New Zealand, 1889: 56.

 

¹⁵ Polack, J.S; New Zealand, Vol II, Richard Bentley, London, 1838, Capper Reprint, 1974: 188.  

 

¹⁶ L.W. ‘Te Waharoa of NgatiHaua’, in The Journal of the Polynesian Society, Vol 71, No. 4 1962: 368.

 

¹⁷ Tapsell, P.  ‘Reminiscences’,155-156.

 

Illustrations

John Scott, The South Shields Collier Brig ‘Mary’ 1885, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org ›wiki › Brig

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

Henry Williams, ‘Passing through a swamp in New Zealand’, PUBL-0031-1836-1. Alexander Turnbull library, Wellington, NZ.

John Williams, ‘A European male, thought to be Joel Polack bargaining with three Maori males’, [1845-1846]. A-079-017. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, NZ>