ARRIVAL OF ANOTHER TAINUI: LINK WITH MAORI TRADITION

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23137, 27 December 1949, Page 6

ARRIVAL OF ANOTHER TAINUI: LINK WITH MAORI TRADITION

Six hundred years ago the great Tainui canoe, one of the most famed of the great canoes that took part in the migration from Hawaiki in the fourteenth century, sailed across the North Taranaki Bight. Another Tainui, a trim little motor-ship, followed almost the same course on its first voyage from Onehunga to New Plymouth.

The Arawa (Shark) and Tainui (FJood-tide) arc considered to be two of the greatest canoes that took part in the migration from Hawaiki in the middle of the 14th century. Both have connections with the history of the Taranaki Maoris. At Mokau. The story of the Tainui is steeped in Maori lore and tradition and has its interest for Taranaki, as the great canoe is said to have found its last resting place at the mouth of the Mokau River. There, preserved to this day and held sacred, is the anchorstone of the canoe. A grove of trees there are traditionally believed to have sprung from the Tainui’s raids. So well founded is this tradition that one of New Zealand’s first naturalists, the late Sir James Hector, named the tree Pomaderris Tainui. Nowhere else in New Zealand was the same tree to be found. The New Tainui The modern Tainui, which passed within a few miles of the traditional resting place of the old Tainui, is one of the most up-to-date coastal ships serving on the New Zealand coast. Formerly the Vestria. she was built in Sweden in 1945 by Kalmar baro Jonstorp. Bought by the Northern Steamship Company, she was renamed the Tainui and along with the Apanui, formerly tire Goldfinder, and the Hauturu, serves on the New Plymouth, Lyttelton. Picton and Raglan service With a grass tonnage of 555, a length of 175 feet and beam of 281 feet, the Tainui has a service speed of 101 knots. Cargo handling is made easier by electrically powered winches. Other features of the vessel, which has a most businesslike appearance, are powerful radio and radio-telephone equipment and direction-finding apparatus,

When the present Tainui first called at Raglan the ship and crew were accorded a civic reception, for the Maori tribes of the Waikato and adjacent districts claim their origin from the first Tainui.