Part of old gunboat discovered

Press, 16 August 1984, Page 6

Part of old gunboat discovered

PA Hamilton Pieces of the historic gunboat Rangiriri are still being dragged from the Waikato River, and art museum officials have been excited by the latest find. Dripping with water, weatherbeaten but sound, a complete rudder and tiller from the sunken boat reached daylight for the first time this century when a barge-mounted excavator pulled them from the riverbed slightly downstream from the hulk’s old resting place. The Rangiriri, the remains of which have been turned into a viewing platform on the river’s eastern bank, had two rudders. A section of one is already in the Waikato Museum for Art and History. The latest find, unloaded from the barge yesterday, is completely intact, right down to metal fittings, and the museum archaeologist, Mr Steve Edson, said that measures to preserve it would begin immediately, the first aim being to ensure

that the metal parts did not erode now that they had been exposed to the air. The artefacts were scooped from the river by an excavation contractor, Mr Peter Arnet, who has been working from a Waikato Valley Authority barge on drainage projects and on the installation of jetties on both sides of the riverbank. He said he had been asked by the Hamilton City Council to look for the Rangiriri’s anchor, believed to be somewhere along the riverbank. Instead, the rudder and tiller emerged. He was reasonably sure of the anchor’s location, however, and — if asked by the council — he would search for that next

The museum’s historian, Ms Rose Young, was ’.thrilled to bits” with the find, and said that once drying out was completed the rudder and tiller would go oh display, either in the new museum, or with the resurrected hulk.