AN ARMCHAIR ESSAY

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 126, 25 February 1928, Page 24

AN ARMCHAIR ESSAY

PACIFIC STEAMERS—OLD AND NEW

(Written for Tub Dominion by Charles Wilson.)

A few years ago, the well-known New Zealand journalist, Will Lawson, who, as a poet, had given us much stirring verse, mainly describing maritime life, produced a modest little volume, “Steam on the Southern Pacific,” in which he gathered together many

pleasantly informative articles describing the old-time steamers which ran between New Zealand and Australian ports, or in the New Zealand coastal trade. He has recently, for a firm of nautical publishers, Messrs. Brown, Son, and Ferguson, of Glasgow, widened his scope and written a bulky work dealing with “Pacific Steamers” generally, a book, with which as an old-timer myself, my personal knowledge of Maoriland commencing as fat back as Christinas Day, 1879, I have just spent two or three pleasant evenings, the book containing, as it does, so much interesting information concerning steamships, large and small, whose names were much on the public tongue in the ‘eighties and ‘nineties. It is not the present writer’s intention to give a detailed review of Mr. Lawson’s new book, for he covers

so much ground as to render that undesirable, but rather to jot down a few discursive, I fear, notes, on such oldtime steamers in the Pacific as were specially known in New Zealand. First a little gossip by Mr. Lawson and myself, on the earliest New Zealand steamers. Long before the Australians sent a steam-driven vessel to these shores there was built, of wood, of course, the little steamship “Governor Wynward,” at Freeman’s Bay, Auckland. She did her trials, in 1851, on the Tamaki River, and her first ocean trip, the carrying of a gold prospecting party, was' to the Hen and Chickens Island. She made no money for her owners in either the harbour or river trade, so the paddle boxes were removed and she went over to Port Philip under sail. Crossing the Tasman, so Mr. Lawson tells us, she was in charge of “Mr. Chantrey Harris, mate of a clipper ship who was afterwards a journalist.” This was the Captain Chantrey Harris, who at one time owned the 'New Zealand Times,’ of Wellington,and whom, when I was a budding journalist, once asked for a billet. The old gentleman, very pompous and not a little choleric, was good enough to inform me that I ‘had better stick to schoolmastering’—‘l’m afraid you will never make a journalist!’ Poor Chantrey Harris, he himself was never a very successful journalist, and on one occasion the Wellington public chuckled and chortled not a little when the good man actually published an acrostic, which, rumour attributing' its authorship to a clever and very close lady relation of his, read, when interpreted, “Chantrey Harris is an ass.” The “Governor Wynyard” ran on the Yarra for some time, and afterwards on. the Tamar River out of Launceston, in Tasmania. According to Mr. Lawson, the first merchant vessel to cross the Tasman Sea under steam was a little craft, the Ann, of 154 tons. She came over to Wellington, via Nelson, in 1853, and thence went south to Lyttelton, or Port Cooper, as it was then called. Mr. Lawson tells us that "the residents had just built a wharf there, capable of handling 100 tons of cargo, which they boasted of against Wellington, the capital, which had then no wharf at all.” A striking difference to shipping conditions to-day at Poneke, where wharves extend from Te Aro right along to Thorndon. Two steamers, the William Denny, built by the famous Dumbarton firm, which has built such a long succession of fine boats for the U.S.S. Company, and the Nelson, came to New Zealand in 1854. The William Denny maintained a service between Sydney and Auckland for three years, running monthly to connect with the English mail boats. She then came to grief at the North Cape in a fog, and had to be abandoned. Mr. Lawson tells us that “traces of her can still be seen, for all the many long years of storms that have swept over her bones.” The same year, 1854, which witnessed the arrival of the William Denny, the Nelson started running a service between Dunedin and the Manakau, her chief officer being a Mr. Kennedy, afterwards a much respected skipper in ; the U.S.S. service, and father of Mr. W. A. Kennedy, now and for many years past manager for the company at Wellington. The Nelson was soon replaced bv the Zingari, and went back to England to lie engaged as a transport in the Crimean War.

Next we read of the wreck of a Government steamer, the White Swan, at Flatpoint, while she was conveying sixty-five passengers, nearly all Government officials and their families—the seat of government having been removed from Auckland to Wellington—all being saved. But a lot of valuable official records were lost, for which a reward of £l5O was offered, but never claimed. Mr. Lawson gives tlie White Swan’s engineer credit for saving all on board. He rigged two condenser pumps after she struck, so as to pump the ship till she could be beached. The above vessels were, of course, years before my time, but in the ’eighties the little Stonnbird was “going strong,” as is now said of a certain brand of alcoholic beverage. The Stormbird I can remember as a very pretty model of a boat. When, in the eighties, tlie present writer was a junior pedagogue at tlie Wanganui Collegiate School, I travelled more than once to J’oneke by the Stormbird. In those davs there was a yarn that she had been built for a gentleman’s vacht, but Air. Lawson says that she first came out to Melbourne to be a tender to the Panama boats. Subsequently, she came over to New Zealand, trading on its coast for over sixty years, until, alas, she was lost on the Wanganui bar—which she had crossed a thousand times—at two o’clock in the morning, three men being drowned.

She was outward bound, and there was a heavy set m the river and a bad sea breaking on the bar. A big sea hit her and threw her aaginst the tipheads of the breakwater. The next sea overturned her, a dramatic and ignominious ending for a ship which had been working river bars all her days. The Stormbird had had so many close shaves that she was known as “the charmed ship.” Originally, as I have said, she was a very pretty model, but in 1883 she was lengthened by 17 feet, which, to my mind, spoilt her smart appearance. There were several handy little steamers engaged in the Wanganui trade in the pre-Main Trunk days, the Stormbird, Tui (wrecked on the Foxton bar), Go Ahead (lost, I think, on her way to Napier), and the Huia, now a meat ship tender at Wanganui. The skippers of those boats were hardy, clever seamen, but some of them could “put away” their nips very liberally. On one occasion I remember leaving Wanganui with the three principal officers, captain, purser, and chief mate, and engineer, of a certain little steamer, all, I fear, “under the influence.” We passengers were a bit anxious till we were over the “flats” and “across the bar.” Thereafter we were all safe. These men, even when they palpably “had had one or two,” knew their job, and did it. At times you could strike some mighty bad weather on the run to Poneke. One trip I recall when there were but three passengers, two well-known Wellington “C.T.’s,” both, alas, long ago “gone West,” and the writer. Shortly after leaving Wanganui it was deemed necessary to stay more rigidly in the “saloon.” On deck were two score or so well-bred sheep We had a bad time of it before sheltering under Kapiti, and an even worse time getting round Terawhiti and Sinclair Head. Alas for those sheep. When finally allowed on deck, off Worser Bay, we emerged, a pallidly yellowish trio, after thirty-six hours’ close confinement below, to find that of those unfortunate “muttons” there remained but six. The rest had gone overboard I Nowadays one journeys from Wanganui to Wellington snugly ensconced in a comfortable seat, but, ah, “those were the days!” Mr. Lawson tells of the loss, nearly twenty years before I saw New Zealand’s shores, of the ill-fated City of Dunedin, which, in '65, left Wellington for Hokitika with fifteen passengers, was seen in Cook Strait in calm water, and never seen again! Miss McMenamen was said to have seen “a steamer circling round, and ran to tell her brothers, but when they came to look the steamer was gone.” “All that came ashore,” says Mr. Lawson, “was a hen coop, washed up in Palliser Bay.” I see Mr. Lawson mentions a boat on which I once travelled from Dunedin to Oamaru, the Ladybird. Another Dum-barton-built boat, I can remember her having fine clipper bows. She first ran between Melbourne and Hobart, was then a popular coaster here in New Zealand, and was scuttled in Cook Strait in 1907. For some time, if I remember aright, she was a hulk in Wellington harbour. I can also remember the Charles Edward and the Kennedy, which ran so long in the Nelson trade, but what was tlie end of either I cannot say. The Kennedy was at first a paddle steamer, but ran ashore and when refloated was turned into a screw steamer.

Steamers which, as an old Wellingtonian, I can well recall, were the little Government steamer Luna, after many years taken to sea and scuttled off Lyttelton Heads; the Albion, afterwards the Centennial; the Jubilee, the Tararua, the Arawata, and Ringarooma, and that good old timer the Wakatipu, so long commanded by the popular skipper Captain Wheeler, and the favourite U.S.S. boat running between Wellington and Sydney. The Albion, after long service for the McMeekan Blackwood, was sold to the U.S.S. Company and again sold to a Mr. Ellis, who renamed her the Centennial. She had a short but merry career, in conjunction with the Jubilee, in opposition to the U.S.S. service, and was finally sunk in a collision in Sydney harbour in the later ’eighties. The Jubilee had formerly been a Messageries liner. Mr. Lawson styles her the Duplex, but she was named, I think, tlie Dupleix, after tlie great French. General of that name.

-lie Jubilee I shall always remember ns having taken a big crowd of New Zealanders in about 1881 or 1882 to the Kimberley goldfields. Many popular young New Zealanders went to Australia in the Jubilee. The Kimberley diggings were much talked of at that time, but proved, I fancy, a decided frost. At one time tlie Albion and the Jubilee maintained a warm opposition to the Union Company, taking passengers to Sydney—a l20')-ni:1e trip—at as low as fifteen shillings a head. The rivalry soon ended, and nowadays one pays nearer £l5 than 15s. for a trip to Port Jackson.

'The McMeekan Blackwood people brought out from the Clyde, in 1873, the Arawata and the Ringarooma. They ran in the Melbourne-Dunedin trade, but were soon taken over by the U.S.S. Companv. I can remember the Ringarooma ami another U.S.S. boat, the Rotorua, which latter Mr. Lawson does not mention, as being both very fast but “dirty” boats in bad weather, their decks being nearly always awash. The I Arawata finished up as a store ship in Wellington Harbour, while the Ringarooma was sold to a German firm, and, renamed the Samoa, traded in the East. 'Hie Japanese bought and re-engined her in 1903, naming her the Geiho Main, but she must have been wrecked or met some inglorious end, for Air. Lawson says the name is no longer on Lloyd’s Register. And now I must close for to-day, having much more to say about the Tararua and other old steamers whose names once were so familiar in New Zealand waters. With the kind permission of my editor I must defer the conclusion of these rambling notes until next week