A TINY SHIP.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20361, 19 March 1928, Page 12

A TINY SHIP.

CM A LONG JOURNEY,

BELFAST TO LYTTELTON,

A letter from the late Mr (P. W. Mansfield, at one time a resident of Wellington, to a relative in Ireland, was published in a recent issu© of the Belfast Telegraph. It contained an interesting and informative account of a voyage made in the early ’sixties to Lyttelton from Belfast by a small screw steamer, the Waipara, which was under 48 tons net register. It was built by Messrs Harland and Wolff, somewhere in the vicinity of 1862. The writer, during the course of his lengthy letter, said :

“ I was only a kiddie of five years when we loft Belfast in November, 1863, and therefore at that time had only the happy memory of a child, which, as you will probably confirm, has no faculty for storing up the hard disciplining things of that period. Of the voyage and its incidents I have consequently a very hazy recollection personally, but I have had access to the records in our Parliamentary Library, and extracted the following from the Lyttelton Times of May 12, 1864: —‘ May 11,1864, — Arrived at Port Lyttelton : Waipara, Capt. Bothwick, from Belfast. Tire s.s: Waipara, which arrived at Lyttelton yesterday from Belfast after a passage of 152 days, is 48 tons burden, and is commanded by Captain Borthwick, wha reports having experienced light trad© winds to the Cape, but bad weather after passing the Cape. The Waipara made the land on Saturday, and passed through Cook’s Straits under steam. Sh© is an excellent sea boat, and is the first steamer for the Salt Water Creek and Kaiapoi Steam Navigation Company. The following ig a list of her passengers :—Mrs Mansfield and four children, and Mrs Redpath.’ ” A FEW BAGS OF COAL.

Regarding the reference “ under steam ” (Mr Mansfield “continues), “ it seems singular to mention this circumstance, but the fact is we did not come out under steam, for the simple reason we had only room to carry provisions and water for passengers and crew, including the engineers—about 48 tons in all, and I suppose a few bags of coal to enable us to steam out of the doldrums and also into Port Lyttelton when we reached New Zealand. Her draught, remember, was only 7ft '6in, and it is a fact that the sailor had no occasion to let go the handle of th© bucket when he stooped over the bulwarks to get a bucket of water to swill down the deck. “ I remember the occasion of our sailing under steam in th© tropics—for on sighting a big East Indiaman w r e steamed up to her (I suppose for the purpose of exchanging latitude and longitude), and 1 have a distinct recollection of being very frightened of the size of the ship which towered above us so high that she seemed as though she might roll over and kill the lot of us. In my fear I stooped behind our false bulwark, and in my safe hiding place peeped through a chink in the boards and all I remember was seeing » negro (very black) with his arms akimbo, and someone was holding up a blackboard with the latitude and longitude chalked upon it.

“ There was no verbal communication between the ships, although we were practically alongside, so I presume now that the ship must have been of some other than English must have thought us a suspicious-looking craft—locality and other circumstances considered.

“ Another incident on the voyage at that time was the catching of a huge shark, which my mother espied just in time to save one of the engineers from going over the side to dive after a pannikin or tinplate which wc children would throw overboard at Ms request. On this occasion, however, he postponed his dip until he caught the shark, which he did by the tail, if you please, by skilfully dangling a piece of pork iu front of a bowline noose whrough which the shark’s enormous tail could not pass. It is recorded that we had fresh steaks of fish from off the said tail for several meals, of which I remember nothing; but I have often heard mother refer to the much appreciated fresh fish after the everlasting salt ‘ junk,’ and how she had given a silver coin to boil with the fish as a test for poisonous matter. The coin coming out as bright and clean as it went in, the cook pronounced the fish good and wholesome. “ The Maoris are not quite so fastidious as the Europeans, for they catch and dry the shark for food at certain seasons of the year, when they visit the const for that purpose. RUSH TO GOLD DIGGINGS.

“But to return to the Waipara—the little boat had a wonderfully successful carfee.r, and earned much money for her owners. She was recognised as such an excellent sea boat that she was secured by the shipping interests of tho other side of the island from Kaiapoi, to become a tender on the Hokitika Bar, on the West Coast of the South Island, a very inhospitable and, rough coast. In the early days Hokitika was a very important town, because of the gold diggings which attracted thousands from Australia and other places. The M’Meekan and Blackw6od mail steamers .made Hokitika their terminus, and the little Waipara, I am told, charged fl per head to land passengers and their belongings. It was a not uncommon occurrence to land 2DO passengers from one ship. “ I have spokea to quite a number who have been over the Hokitika Bar in her. The collector of Customs there fir many years, who had been out in her hundreds of times, told me she was a wonderful scaboat and very easy to handle He has been aboard her on a particularly rough trip when he has known the captain to ’bout ship marvellously quickly to meet a particularly heavy ‘ roller ’ coming in. I fancy she must have'' been one of the very first steamers built for the New Zealand trade.

“ Shortly before retiring from the civil service I had a visit from an old surveyor, who mentioned incidentally that ir the days of his cadetship he had been employed on a Government survey party laying out a township in Martin’s Bay, West Coast, in the early ’seventies, for a period of twelve months, and the Waipara used to bring their mails and supplies every month. When I told him of my connection with the vessel he was deeply interested, and asked me if I would like to look nt a picture of the Bay, showing the little steamer snugly anchored close inshore; opposite the Survey Camp. A few weeks later, to my surprise, he brought me a copy of the picture to keep. I had it framed, and to me it* is the most interesting picture in the house.

* “ But to return to the records of the vessel. During her thirty years’ tender work on the Hokitika Bar she was wrecked, or rather stranded on the shore several times, but always successfully relaunched, until in January, 1898 she struck on a sand bank on the Okarita Bar, where she became waterlogged and an obstruction to navigation. The owners evidently did not think her old hull was worth saving, and so abandoned her. She was evidently very strongly built, for she withstood the wcar-nml-tenr of tho sea for over eighteen months, when the Government instructed the Marine Department to take steps to ‘ remove the obstruction from the fairway,’ and on October 22, 1900, according to the records of the department, the little Waipara was blown up. The records also showed a full report of the strandmg, or, rather, the inquiry to tho cause. There were pages of it. The court cleared the captain and blamed no one for the disaster.” The measurements of tho Waipara are given os follow Length 80ft, breadth 16ft, depth 7ft, gross tonnage 09.09, net tonnage 47.98.