RAUKAWAKAWA.

New Zealand Illustrated Magazine, Issue 309, 1 August 1905, Page 371

RAUKAWAKAWA.

The Great "War Canoe that never was Launched.

By REV. J. LOTHIAN,

WAY down the Tamaki Channel, on the eastern shores of the Hauraki Gulf, some twenty- five or thirty miles from the City of Auckland, there is a little landlocked bay, named Taupo Bay, formed and protected by the Sandspit islet, and just opposite the lighthouse on Chamberlain's Island ;Ponui). Around the shores of the bay, which is cleft in two by a jutting bluff of rock, there is a strip of flat ground of varying- width, liere and there stretching" back through gullies into the heart of the bush-clad slopes of the eastern face of the Hunua ranges, which extend from Clevedon and the little Wairoa Valley towards Miranda. In Maori annals and traditions, this flat has been for generations counted a sacred (tapu) and historical spot. Here, it is said, that about a century ago, the great chief of the Ngapui and Northern tribes, the Hone Heke of that day, arrived with a larcre fleet of war canoes, filed with hundreds of warriors, who immediately landed and made a fierce and sanguinary raid upon the Gulf tribes who, under the leadership of the Urikaraka tribe (whose headquarters were at Taupo), gathered to meet the invader at that spot. The story goes that Hone Heke had but recently returned from a visit to Britain, whence he had brought with him a large number of musket®, which were used on this occasion for the first time in Maori warfare, with deadly effect. Hundreds of the coastal warriors were shot down, in what seemed to

them a mysterious manner, by this new implement of war. It is said that the holes made by the bullets in their bodies sorely puzzled them at first, and they tried to plug them with bits of clay. The dead were buried where they fell, on the banks of a little creek that flows into the bay. The land was a huge sepulchre and has been "t'apu" ever since. It is said that this ancient burial place and battlefield has passed somehow into the hands of the pakeha, which has caused some regret to the tribes, who scarcely as yet like the idea that the bones of their brave ancestors might become "bone-dust/ On a corner of this land, now overgrown with tall and thick ti-tree, not far from the mouth of the creek there lies a most interesting and remarkable Maori relic, supposed to 'be some sixty or seventy years old. It is the decaying hull of a majestic Maori war oanoe, and most probably the largest specimen of canoe architecture ever fashioned by Maori hands. The rains, the winds, and weather exposure of over sixty years have told on this ancient and interesting relic of the past, which is fast hastening to decay, and probably in a few more years what was once perhaps the biggest canoe ever built, will have become a mere heap of vegetable dust. It is said that in 1868, during the visit of H'.R.H. the Duke of Edinburgh, -thei big canoe, which was then quite sound, was thought worthy of being completed and taken up to Auckland in honour of the Royal visit. But alas! the energy and discipline of the tribes were not then what they had been

fifty or one hundred years ago, and they could not muster sufficient men or means to complete the undertaking, and thus the giant canoe was left to rot slowly away on the site where it has lain so long. It is a misfortune that the Government of that day was not in a position like, say, our present Government, to take some interest in the relics and antiquities of a fast vanishing and very interesting race, or it is possible that the great canoe then (1868) said to 'be so sound and strong, might have been preserved and taken to grace some of our museums. It would have contained within itself quite comfortably the present large 80 feet canoe that is in the Auckland Museum, with plenty of room to spare. The measurements of the remains of the vessel as she now lies at Taupo are as follows: — Length 90ft, width across the centre gunwales 10ft. But as a considerable portion, somewhere over 10ft, of one end has qmite decayed, the vessel when first brought on to the beach must have been more than 100 ft long, and her width, had she been completed with the usual "top sides," would have been 14ft to 15ft. Yet these measurements, large though they be, do not represent her original dimensions when she was first hollowed out and built at Tawhine gully, on the slopes of the neighbouring ranee, about three miles away, where grew the mighty kauri tree from which she was fashioned, for it is related by the Maoris themselves and also by the pakehas who knew that in hauling the vessel down to the beach along the crest of a steep and high spur that led to the flat an unfortunate accident happened. Along the ridge and through the bush tall and thick ti-tree was felled and laid flat over for skids, ancl with the aid of some six or seven hundred men who handled her she was? got under way down the steep and long narrow spur. As she began to go the momentum increased with the steepness of the descent. Unfortunately, the vessel

swerved at one point and rushed down to the gully below, smashing about loft to 20ft off her fore part, so that her original length, as she came from the hands of the ship- ! uilders was from 150 ft to 120 ft, a ' ortion of which was joined on afterwards. However, it appears that she was like the Great Eastern, an illfated or unlucky vessel throughout her whole history. But let us think what a splendid monarch of the forest must have been that towering- kauri from which this monster canoe was hewn. Experienced bushmen, and the natives too, have stated that a tree large enough to construct a vessel of such dimensions must have 'been from 130 ft to 140 ft in height, with a girth of from 30ft to 40ft. and a diameter of 16ft to 18ft. Such a mighty tree was but one of that great army of the forest kings of which New Zealand is being swiftly denuded, and whose extinction is almost within reckoning, with no successors in view. We think of them a§ — " They fell — those lordly pines ! Those grand, majestic pines ! Those captive kingfs, so straight and tall, To be shorn of their streaming hair, And, naked and bare, To feel the stress and the strain Of the wind and the reeling main, Whose roar would remind them for evermore Of their native forests they should see not again." The vessel was hollowed out, not with ancient Maori stone tools, but with the tools of the pakeha, which had then been introduced in many parts of the land. The great kauri tree itself, however, the Maoris say, was not felled by axes, 'but by the ancient Maori methods witn fire, maintained for days, and nights, and weeks at the roots of it, and it is said that after its fall it lay for several years 'before they began to fashion it into the likeness of a vessel. Now, this great warship was named Raukawakawa, by which name it is well known to this day among all the tribes. It was under the author-

ity and auspices of Wiremu (William) Rauroha, chief of the leading tribo on this coast, the Te Urikaraka, that the construction was begun. The headquarters of the tribe were then at Taupo, and they were assisted by a smaller tributary tube, the Ngatipawa. Rauroha took counsel with Horibokai, the chief naval carpenter of his tribe, and said, "Let us build the largest canoe of all our fleets, the strongest and greatest warship that sails the seas of all the Land of Main." " Build me straight, oh worthy master, Staunch and strong, a goodly vessel, That shall laugh at all disaster, And with wave and whirlwind wrestle ! " And so, it is said, the construction of the great battleship of that era and of these seas was 'begun in the reign of Governor Hobson, and the vessel when hollowed out and fashioned in the form of a canoe was brought down to Taupo beach, near the ancient battlefield, where now she lies awaiting dissolution. But why lies she there, the wreck of a ship whose keel never kissed the shining waters, or sailed the wondrous gulfs and Ibavs that fringe the Land of Mam? Why was the Raukawakawa never launched? There is no mystery about the answer at all. It was because Wiremu (William)

Rauroha, the chief, died before the vessel was completed for launching. Then, according tc* ancient Maori custom, all was "tapu." "Tapu" was the great canoe; "tapu" was the very ground on which she lay. And there she lay year after year, and when at length there came a time when they thought they might launch her, a change had come over all the tribes, and the process of degeneration had set in, so that they could find neither men nor means to launch their ■ greatest canoe. This itself was a sign of the process of deterioration that seemed to be growing as the years rolled on. Sixty or a hundred years ago the shores of the Hauraki Gulf were dotted with Maori villages and settlements, located in quiet and sheltered bays, and all along these shores and on the banks of the creeks and rivers the hardy children of a brave and hardy race had their homes. On the water of Waitemata, on the T'amaki, the Piako, among the islands, and all along the eastern coast were found their great war canoes, filled with warriors and boldly steered by their chiefs. But all that is of the past; and now Maori settlements are few and far between, their lands are turned into "waste lands/ and no Maori canoe now sails the waters of the sea.