Old launch thought to be historic lifeboat

Press, 20 November 1981, Page 14

Old launch thought to be historic lifeboat

By

GARRY ARTHUR

A Papanui handyman is putting many happy hours into the restoration of an old fishing boat which he believes was a ship’s lifeboat dating from the days of Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s first expedition to the Antarctic from 1901 to 1904. For Tony Holmes, the work is a labour of love. He is a retired merchant seaman and is thoroughly enjoying messing about with this boat. It is a cutter, 16ft 7in long, sft 9in in the beam, and has a draught of Ift 9in — all clearly stamped on the gunwale, together with the fact that it is to take 11 persons. What is missing is her nameplate. Tony Holmes says it has been removed, but he has found a bit of brass plate on the port side embossed with a coat of arms and the word “Prim.” From this he judges that the boat' was built in Aberdeen because there used to be an Aberdeen boat-building firm of that name. At first the boat was thought to have come from the Nimrod, one of the ships of Shackleton’s Antarctic expedition of 1905-07. But Mr Baden Norris, curator of the Lyttelton Maritime Museum, says he knows that a motor launch offloaded from the Nimrod at Lyttelton was broken up at Picton in 1967. It had a nameplate showing that the boat was a gift from the people of Australia, and could be positively identified. Further research by Mr Holmes at the Canterbury Museum, which has good

files of photographs of the Antarctic expedition ships, convinced him that the lifeboat he is restoring must have come from the Morning, a steam yacht sent out from Britain in 1902 to search for Scott’s ship Discovery, which had spent the winter in the Antarctic. She arrived heavily laden and with much of her deck space taken up with lifeboats. Five can be seen in one picture. Another shows a clinkerbuilt lifeboat stowed inboard on the starboard side that is different from the others. The rest are pointed fore and aft, but this one has a squared-off stern, just like the one in Mr Holmes’s backyard. His boat has an unusual circular steel cover surrounding the propeller to direct the thrust, instead of the conventional flat rudder. He believes he can detect the same device in pictures of the Morning’s lifeboat. Why would the Morning have left a lifeboat behind? Perhaps, like the Nimrod, it had to make room for other essential supplies. The “Weekly Press” of the day reports Captain W. Colbeck’s complaint that the Norwegian-built ship’s one disadvantage was that she drew 14ft of water without any cargo aboard. “There is so much wood and iron below that she is practically a laden ship be-

fore she takes cargo aboard,” he told the “Weekly Press” on his arrival from England. The Morning was consequently overflowing with supplies and equipment, right down to a fresh stock of recordings for the Discovery’s pianola. It is conceivable that Captain Colbeck may have decided to dispense with one of the lifeboats to make room for more deck cargo, either on the Morning’s first trip south in 1902, or her second the next year when she accompanied the Terra Nova. Mr Baden Norris, however, cannot recall ever reading or hearing that the Morning left a lifeboat here. Mr Holmes says that the lifeboat he is restoring was kept in the old New Zealand Shipping Company woolstores at Lyttelton until 1957, when she was surveyed and done up by a Kaiapoi boatbuilder. He added a superstructure and decking and the boat was used for-fishing, first at Akaroa and later at Moeraki and then Lake Ellesmere. She disappeared from view for a long time, but was acquired not long ago by another former merchant seaman, Mr Byron Hart. He was surprised to discover how old she was, and decided to have Mr Holmes restore her to as near original condition as possible. The lifeboat, built mostly

of teak, has an original bollard foremast under which Mr Holmes expects to find the sovereign or Queen’s shilling traditionally placed there by shipbuilders. The motorboat is driven by a 10 h.p. single-cylinder Stuart Turner engine, but Mr Holmes is doubtful that it is the original. The nozzle rudder — an

idea used on modern stern trawlers — is the first of its kind he has seen. He estimates that it would give the boat another 3 knots over the conventional spade rudder. Mr Hart, the boat’s owner, would like to see it preserved as an historic boat, perhaps by the Navy’s shore station in Christchurch, H.M.N.Z.S. Pegasus.