OBITUARY

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19824, 29 December 1938, Page 4

OBITUARY

COLONEL R. W. TATE SERVICE IN SAMOA (Per Press Association.) WELLINGTON, this day. The death occurred in the Greytown Hospital on Wednesday morning of Colonel Robert Ward Tate, C.M.G, C.8.E., F.R.E.S., Greytown. He was a son of the'late Mr. E. H. Tate, of the Union Bank of Australia, Wellington, and was born in 18641 He was educated at Timaru High School, studied law and was admitted to the bar in Christchurch in 1886. In the same year he went to Greytown and began to practice. Keenly interested in military affairs, Mr. Tate began his military career as a gunner in the Timaru Battery. In 1911 he was appointed colonel of the Wellington Infantry Brigade, and in 1914 officer commanding the Wellington district. In 1916 he became Adjutant-General and in 1919 was appointed Acting-Military Administrator in Samoa. In 1920 Mr. Tate became the first Civil Administrator in Samoa, a position he held for four years before resigning in 1923 and returning to New Zealand. Later he was appointed a stipendiary magistrate, located at Whangarei and New Plymouth. Retiring in 1933, Mr. Tate resumed his former partnership with Mr. J. F. Thompson in Greytown. He became a member of the Masonic Lodge in 1890 and was master of the Greytown Lodge in 1894 and 1901. He was made a past-grand registrar in 1936. Mr. Tate was married twice and is survived by a widow and a grown-up family—Mrs. K. Fullerton-Smith, Taihape, Miss Dorothy Tate, Greytown, Messrs. A. R. W. Tate, Sydney, and J. W. Tate, Greytown. MR. WILLIAM SMART SERVICE WITH UNION CO. Mr. William Smart, formerly superintending engineer for the Union Steam Ship Company of New Zealand, Limited, who died at Dunedin on Christmas Day, was born in Auckland on February 28, 1857, and was thus only a few weeks short of his eightythird year. He joined the service of the Union Company in August, 1884, as .third engineer of the Penguin. After serving in that capacity and as second engineer in a number of (the company’s early steamers, he was promoted chief engineer of the Southern Cross in July, 1889. Subsequently he was chief engineer successively of the Wainui, Taieri, Grafton, Moa, Pateena and Waikare.

In 1899 Mr. Smart was appointed superintendent engineer for the Union Company at Melbourne, and a few years later was transferred in a similar capacity to head office, which was then in Dunedin. In 1912-13 he went to the United Kingdom to superintend the building of new ships for the company, and to investigate the possibilities of Diesel-engine propulsion of ships, which was then in the early stages of development. He also went to Vancouver in 1913 to superintend the conversion of the boilers of the Niagara to burn oil-fuel, she being the first merchant ship to be so equipped.

Mr. Smart retired from the Union Company's service in 1920 and was sueceded by Mr. James Smith as superintending engineer.