Maritime History of Watt Family – Jim Watt

Rose Chapman: Well I’d like to tell you a little bit about our guest speaker this morning, Jim Watt, who’s had an interest in maritime matters from more than a hundred years ago. His great grandfather was a professional mariner, and while his grandfather was a lawyer, he was also a rower, and is on record as having swum Virginia Lake in Wanganui from end to end.

Jim Watt: Fresh water, too.

Rose: Okay. [Chuckles] His dad was a medical doctor who served aboard the hospital ship ‘Marama’ during World War I, and compiled the Watt Index, which is the New Zealand section of the register of all British ships. Jim has two brothers who have offshore yachts in Otago and Southland, and his own son owns a yacht in Auckland which he sailed over from Australia. So Jim has written a history of the Norwegian overwintering base at Stewart Island, and compiled a record of Foveaux Strait Ferry Service. So I think it’s fair to say that Jim has salt water in his blood, and without further ado I’ll hand over to you, Jim. Thank you.

[Applause]

Jim: Thank you, Rose. Good morning, everybody. I indicated that the title would be ‘Three Wrecks and a Fatal Collision’, but I’ve actually changed that slightly; it’s now going to be ‘Three Wrecks, a Drowning, and a Fatal Collision’. [Chuckles] But it was really a continuation of a talk I gave last year here, where we looked at the ship wrecks on the coast of Hawke’s Bay. And we sort of did that geographically, from the north working south. And there’s a long list, and I just forget the tally, but it’s a hundred or so; some of which are more significant than others. Today I wanted to be able to link with Hawke’s Bay and our talk with [on] Hawke’s Bay wrecks by telling you about a ship that was in the family … part of the family … for some years, and was wrecked down at Ākitio on the coast from Dannevirke. It was wrecked there in 1856, so it was one of the early ones. Ākitio is more famous now for the wreck of the ‘Pleiades’, and you can still see a little bit of that sticking out of the water at low tide at times. And the bell off the ‘Pleiades’ of course, is up in the hall at Ākitio. She was a clipper ship in her latter days.

I want to link with last year’s talk, telling you something about the wreck of the ‘Catherine Johnson’. [‘’Catherine Johnston’’] This little cutter had been brought to New Zealand from Sydney in 1841 by my great grandfather, William Hogg Watt, and his business partner, Thomas Ballardie Taylor, but the wreck did occur after the ship had been onsold, so it wasn’t a wreck while it was in Watt ownership. I’ll then move on to describe other more direct losses and tragedies that befell that particular generation and that partnership. This all perhaps suggests, and the title of the paper suggests, a rather negative light on the business of the day, which was that of coastal and colonial trading in the days before road and rail; but it makes for a good catchy title and it underlines the risks, which were considerable.

But I should state right at the very beginning that the partnership of Taylor & Watt – it was a good one. It culminated in forty years of successful trading out of Wanganui, to Wellington, Nelson and Sydney, and these were [the] days before road or rail so shipping was the way you got around. Both men married young girls whose families had been fellow passengers on the same ship coming to New Zealand – that was the ‘Martha Ridgeway’ – the Day family and the Small family. [The] men married in Wanganui and Wellington; they had large families in Wanganui; there were nine siblings in the Watt side of it and about five in the Taylor side. Both men were seasoned mariners with entrepreneurial skills. They both had been apprenticed to master mariners and had served their apprenticeships in Scotland, and in the Baltic and around Europe. And both had enough Scottish grit to see things through, and I think that needs to be said because they gambled on circumstance; and sometimes they lost and sometimes they won, but they stuck at it. And to this day it’s interesting that the succeeding generations and the descendants do get together on occasion to share our stories and to enjoy each other’s company. So it’s an enduring friendship that has lasted now down through four generations, and we hope that will continue.

Regarding the wreck of the ‘Catherine Johnston’, we’re always intrigued by the name, because we don’t know who ‘Catherine Johnston’ was. And yet the two men bought her in Sydney from the builder, and we suspect that it was actually the builder that had the ship named. The ship was wrecked on the 21st February 1856, about high tide; and we’ve checked back and that would’ve been about 6:15 in the afternoon. It was at Ākitio, just north of Castle Point, better known for the ‘Pleiades’. There was also another cutter wreck there called the ‘Ākitio’; we don’t know much about her, but it was probably owned by the station at that area. About the ‘Kitty J’ [‘Catherine Johnston’], she was only thirty-one feet long, nine feet wide, 4.4 [four feet four inches] in depth; about ten and a quarter tons, and she had a cutter rig. And there she is. [Shows slide] That was a watercolour done by [John Alexander] Gilfillan; Gilfillan came out to Wanganui as an early settler. In 1847 his family was massacred on their farm. He escaped, and one of the daughters escaped, and he then abandoned New Zealand and went to Sydney. But there’s quite a story attached to the Gilfillan massacre and there were quite a number of consequences in Wanganui history from that.

We need to contrast it with this boat – this is the modern ‘Catherine Johnston’ down in Port Chalmers that my brother built. She’s forty-five feet long; the old ‘Catherine Johnston’ was thirty feet long, so this particular ship is ten feet longer, or half as long again as the original one. What I’m saying is, the original ‘Catherine Johnston’ was pretty tiny; she was just a whalers’ longboat that’d been decked over. We can also contrast it with the ‘Columbine’ which was built in 1833, which was the Anglican Mission vessel on the coast at the time, and that’s the boat that Williams and Colenso came down from the north to Hawke’s Bay in. She was fifty-five feet, so just ten feet longer than that; so these were pretty small ships. [Shows slides] There’s a couple of sketches here that are worth sharing – that’s in Wanganui. That’s another sketch by Gilfillan, and if we look up in the top corner here, we have ‘Catherine Johnston’ – we like to think it’s ‘Catherine Johnston’; it probably was because the dates all line up. A cutter rig, single mast. So anyway, that’s an interesting early picture, and that is taken from Downes’ ‘History of Old Wanganui’.

And this is another picture which I dismissed initially, but I find I keep coming back to it. It’s a representation of the mouth of the Whanganui River looking up to Mount Ruapehu, and what it shows on the left there is the Castlecliff. The suburb is still known as Castlecliff, and the area is still known as Castlecliff, but the reason it’s called that is because of this big sand complex on the left hand side there. It has now been eroded away, it’s not there at all; and so people ask why the place is called Castlecliff – that is why. And it also sort of gives some inference of what the conditions were like on the bar. Entering the river was always a tricky business, and a number of ships met their latter days there. There’ve been several things written [cough] about this era; one is a series of articles in the Wanganui newspapers in 1947/48, called ‘Coastal Traders of the Forties’. And in recent years I have compiled all those clippings together into a volume, and we’ve indexed it so that you can get to the lists of vessels and the lists of people that are mentioned, including passengers on those early boats; and a list of places. And because of the index, the whole book becomes very usable and worthwhile. But Dad wrote this during the Second World War and I guess he didn’t have funds for publication; but the newspaper picked it up and serialised it, and so you can get the clippings by going back through about six months of newspapers.

There’s also a new book published in 2007 by Bruce Atwell called ‘The Wharves of Wanganui’; because it wasn’t like going into a port today where the wharves all sort of lined up beside each other. In the early days different companies put their different wharves in different places on the river bank, and so on a river like the Whanganui, you could have wharves up and down both sides of the river in different places.

And then finally, while we’re on publications, this is a little book called ‘The Plucky Little Catherine Johnston’, and this is written by Marion Rainforth – she’s a descendant of Thomas Ballardie’s sister. She wrote this for a family reunion a couple of years ago, and it’s basically the history of the little ship, which is a delightful little book. And she’s done some of these drawings in it, and used a bit of licence in places, but often [microphone noise] the licence just gives that bit of additional information.

It’s easy to get sidetracked [microphone noise] with the life story of the ‘Kitty J’; she became known as the ‘Kitty J’ as a term of affection. When the ‘Kitty J’ came into port it was a good day in Wanganui, because it was bringing merchandise and goods of all sorts up from Wellington. Suffice it to say that she was built in Sydney, by James [?Degarro?]. She was registered in Sydney as a British ship on the 30th November 1841. She was basically a decked-over whaler’s longboat, and she was purchased by Taylor & Watt who filled her with merchandise; and they spent all their money down to their last half-crown, so it is said. The two of them set sail out of Sydney for New Zealand; now, they weren’t sailing into the great unknown because both men had served as mates and skippers of boats from Sydney and Melbourne to New Zealand, prior to 1841. So they knew where they were going, but they had the pluck to choose a little cutter with one sail, or with one mast. We know that the ‘Kitty J’ called at Auckland; she came down to Wellington. She took a load of bricks to Porirua, and then our records show that she turned up in the Whanganui River on the 10th April 1842 from Wellington, complete with sugar, tea, flour, beef, and three passengers. There was a Mrs Jackson, a Mr Lett, and a Mr Wansey, so there was the three passengers plus the two crew on that little boat. She was piloted up the river by the local Chief Constable, who happened to be down at the river mouth shooting ducks; his name was Mr John Garner. And I discovered just last week – some of you will know Susan Wylie over at the Napier Library – she’s a descendant of the Chief Constable Garner, so there are still those generations’ descendants around.

The ‘Catherine Johnston’ commenced a regular trade to Wellington and Nelson; of course both Nelson and Wanganui were settlements by the New Zealand Company, and she became very, very busy. And for some years she was the only boat operating, although there was competition at other times too. But in 1846 they needed a bigger boat, and by that time Taylor & Watt had saved up enough to be able to have built on the Whanganui River, a ship of their own, custom built. Governor Grey was in Auckland at the time and was the Governor of New Zealand, and they named her in honour of him. This was therefore the schooner, ‘Governor Grey’ – two-masted, she was forty-five feet by twelve feet by six feet, and twenty-five tons. She was over twice the capacity of ‘Catherine Johnston’.

Now I’ll just come back to 1847 in a minute, but I want to go on. Because of the ‘Governor Grey’ coming onto the scene, they sold the ‘Catherine Johnston’ to New Plymouth interests, and the ‘Catherine Johnston’ is then recorded as going down to Otago. And also, she’s well-known on the Poverty Bay route under Captain Armstrong. And there are several good stories if we’re just looking at ‘Catherine Johnston’ on her own. She went down to Otago four times, that little boat. In 1848 she ran ashore at Worser Bay in Wellington Harbour and they thought she was a goner, but Captain Armstrong managed to repair and the ship lived on.

In 1848, she was under the command of a Captain Murphy, but he was drowned from her after the ship jibed going on a trip to Nelson, and he was knocked overboard by the boom; and being at night they were unable to turn the boat … well, they did try to turn the boat around, but he was lost. So that was a sad loss.

And in 1851 there’s a very interesting story of Captain Armstrong being down at Akaroa; and he did a bit of dealing with a whaler that was in port at the time, and purchased a couple of barrels of whisky and brandy. And he took that whisky and brandy round to Sumner, and he came in over the Sumner Bar. Unfortunately, somebody had seen him doing the trade in Akaroa and split on him, and Armstrong was convicted of smuggling alcohol into Christchurch, [chuckles] and he lost his boat … he had to forfeit his boat. However, history doesn’t relate [cough] just how things evolved, because two years later we find Armstrong back in command of the ‘Catherine Johnston’, so … [chuckles].

There’s another lovely story up at Scott’s Ferry, at the mouth of the Rangitīkei. Armstrong was the captain, and he’d gone into the mouth of the Rangitīkei to load wool to take to Taylor & Watt in Wanganui. And he was having difficulty getting out of the bar of the Rangitīkei, and two Māori waka came and towed her out. And you’ve got a picture of the two Māori waka towing the ship out, and then when they got beyond the breakers the Māori waka turned and came back, and at full speed they paddled past the ‘Catherine Johnston’, saying, “Hey, Wanganui!” [Chuckles]

And then in 1855, there’s a neat little story of [the] ‘Catherine Johnston’ being in Wellington, and of the Captain being accused of aiding and abetting the custody of an army deserter. The police happened to discover the deserter hiding in a barrel on the deck of the ‘Catherine Johnston’. But the Captain was found not guilty by a jury, but … [Chuckle] Anyway, that was the sad story; that was 1855.

The following year she was on a trip up to the Poverty Bay. And she’d run in with a cargo into Ākitio, and was coming out of the Ākitio River at night when she missed stays, which is the [a] nautical term … missing stays is really when you have the wind on one side and you turn around to have the wind on the other side, and half way round you don’t quite have enough momentum on to be able to pull the boat all the way round, and so you get jammed with the head of the bow … head into the wind, and you can’t catch the wind on either side. That’s missing stays. And basically you’re powerless in that condition; and the boat drifted back into the waves and capsized, and for want of assistance she became wrecked – no loss of life. So that was the end of the ‘Catherine Johnston’.

But I just want to go back now to 1847, and pick up with the launching of the ‘Governor Grey’. It’s interesting [microphone interference] that the government of the day had purchased a gunboat in Wellington. The gunboat was actually one of the lifeboats off a sailing ship called the ‘Tyne’ which had been wrecked in Wellington. They converted her into a gunship by placing a small carronade on the bow. And that gunship was based in Porirua, but HMS ‘Calliope’ had taken her up to Wanganui and the gunboat was based at the mouth of the Whanganui to aid any ships coming in and out at the time of the start of the hostilities with Māori in the Whanganui River. Unfortunately the gunboat did have occasion to fire one day, and the greatest damage was done to the gunboat itself. [Chuckles] She blew her bow off [laughter] which was a bit embarrassing. But anyway, the carronade … and I’ve looked that up; a carronade was a lightweight cannon that was introduced in 1778. It was built at the Carron Foundry in Falkirk in Scotland – that’s where it got its name. So it was a cannon, but it was known as a carron [spells] … carronade, which was a particular type of small brass cannon. That cannon was transferred onto the bow of the ‘Governor Grey’, and we have some pride in picking up Bob McDougall’s book, ‘New Zealand Naval Vessels’, which is the complete history of the New Zealand Royal Navy, and we find ‘Governor Grey’ mentioned there as being one of the early gunboats. [Chuckles] Only for six months.

About the same time, Taylor & Watt were able to open a monthly schedule to Wellington from Wanganui, but that wasn’t sufficient to satisfy everybody and they purchased another boat called the ‘Edward Stanley’. The ‘Edward Stanley’ was very, very similar to ‘Governor Grey’. We believe she was possibly built by the same builders, although one was in Wanganui, and the ‘Edward Stanley’ was built at Kaiwharawhara in Wellington Harbour. The builders were Walter Scott and James Walker. It was named ‘Edward Stanley’ because the Captain of the HMS ‘Calliope’, which was in the harbour at the time, his name was Captain Stanley and so the boat was named after him. Similar dimensions; it went down to Akaroa and Otago on occasions, and actually brought back some of the surveyors who’d been surveying the city of Dunedin – this was in 1847. Others were less lucky – they boarded the ship the ‘Levin’, which went missing at sea on the way. But the ones on the ‘Edward Stanley’ made it back to Wellington. She’s very well known on the Poverty Bay run; she was purchased in August 1848 by Taylor & Watt, to enable them to start a fortnightly service. Before it was just a monthly with the one ship; but with the two ships they could do a fortnightly service to Wellington. And if we go back through and look at the manifests for 1849 coming out of Wanganui – it’s not always fully reported, but we have records of six hundred and seventy four hides and skins; two and a half tons of flax; six tons of bacon and hams; barrels of pork – a hundred and five; barrels of lard – twenty-five; eleven bales of wool; four tons of wheat; eleven and a half tons of potatoes, and eleven thousand feet of timber. So that was what was being exported from Wanganui. Imported – she was always up to the gunnels in general merchandise; including particularly, slates and shingles, because roofing was one of the resources that they didn’t have in the early days; always flour and salt on board. She carried three gun carriages, which is sort of reflecting the start of the Māori river wars in Wanganui; and, of course because the 65th Brigade was now stationed in Wanganui, there was lots of ale and spirits … eighty-five hogsheads of ale; eighty-four hogsheads of rum; [chuckles] forty-five cases of wine; twenty-three casks of gin; seven casks of brandy, six of stout, and two of whisky. [Laughter] So the poor old soldiers were a thirsty lot, but it was a lucrative cargo. [Interference]

The next sad story really comes with the loss of the ‘Edward Stanley’. In 1850 she was en route from Wanganui to Nelson; she was in ballast from Wanganui to Nelson; she got caught in a very bad storm off D’Urville Island, and was capsized. And I have got the story, which if I had more time I could read to you, because it’s quite interesting how they coped. But there were four crew and there were three passengers onboard; they managed to get the dinghy untangled from the mast, ’cause the mast was [of] course down in the water; the boat was on its side. They all climbed into the dinghy, and by having the passengers crouched on the floor of the dinghy – the crew were in the stern or the bow – and they managed to get the bow of the dinghy into the waves, and they were able to sail backwards. Now the reason for keeping the bow into the wind was that being not a flat transom but a sharp bow, it handled the waves better; you didn’t get so much water onboard. And they did this for about six hours and they slowly drifted backwards towards D’Urville Island, and they finished up being able to get into Croisilles – is that how you pronounce it? It’s a name given by D’Urville, and I understand it was something to do with D’Urville’s mother; it may’ve been her maiden name, or it might’ve been the French town that she came from. But Croisilles – I’ve got a map over there if you want to see where it is – it’s on the mainland, but it’s south of D’Urville Island. She went in there, and fortunately they found Māori at Croisilles who were friendly and who looked after them, and even lent them their own boat to carry on a few days later to Nelson. But I’ve often wondered what it must’ve been like – that was Captain Morrison in charge at that time; how would it’ve been for the Captain to be able to knock at his boss’s door when he got back to Wanganui, and say, “Well boss, here I am, but I’m afraid I’ve lost your ship”; [chuckles] which would’ve been one of those dilemmas [that] would’ve happened with quite a number of wrecks.

‘Edward Stanley’ was wrecked in 1850, and the ‘Governor Grey’ was wrecked in 1854. She was under Captain Bell at the time; she was usually under the command of Captain John Watt who was a brother of Williams. But on the 15th November 1854, the only record that we have of her demise was this in the paper: ‘On entering the river the vessel struck the bar, and the next morning a heavy swell set up preventing all attempts at saving her’.

So a number of ships did run aground coming in, and they’d wait for the tide to go out and then they’d try and refloat them on the next tide. And that sometimes worked; indeed, it worked for Taylor & Watt – they were able to salvage quite a large ship called ‘The Lady Denison’ later on; but on this occasion … if the wind gets up and a heavy swell sets in, then there’s no chance at all of getting the boat off, and they generally come side on onto the beach and then start breaking up, and it’s what happened to the ‘Governor Grey’. I was talking to my brother the other day about this, and he commented that probably the loss of ships would have been almost expected in those days. They were built of materials that were available; they couldn’t wait for the latest mahogany from India, or for the kauri from Northland; they had to make do with the timber they had on the spot. And that goes for all the fittings as well, and perhaps to last from five to ten years would be a reasonable expectation for those early craft. So the ‘Governor Grey’ was afloat for eight years, and perhaps that wasn’t so bad.

Continuing on after the loss of those two ships, the brigantine ‘Rosebud’ was owned by them, and ‘Rosebud’ was mainly operated from Wanganui to Sydney. TB Taylor had family in Sydney … two brothers in Sydney … so he had good occasion to go back there fairly frequently; and the Taylor & Watt company did quite a big business bringing stuff to and from Sydney to Wanganui. And then from 1856 on they had another schooner, a thirty-six ton schooner, called the ‘Tyne’, named after the early wreck in Wellington; and she ran for the next fourteen years.

So things went on until 1880 when the business passed to the two eldest boys in the family. But from that point on there was a lot of competition, and it was quite a different circumstance; and we find the company being sold out – finished up in Dalgetys, and then – well, whatever happened to Dalgety’s … [it’d] be Pyne Gould Guiness [PGG Wrightson] and down that line I suppose, to the present day.

In 1871 however, a tragedy occurred when Thomas Ballardie Taylor fell overboard off the ‘Lady Denison’ in Cook Strait. He was not the skipper at the time, but they were unable to turn the ship around in time; and again it was just on nightfall and he was never seen again. Now the loss of Thomas Ballardie Taylor [microphone noise] – he had a young family of course, in Wanganui – and it was a very bitter blow to my great-grandfather. William was devastated. Not only had he lost a business colleague, but it was the end of a long and unbroken friendship. A public subscription was called to erect a memorial, but in the end William paid for it himself and it stands today in the grounds of St Paul’s Presbyterian Church in Wanganui. And I do have a photograph somewhere of it – I couldn’t just locate it yesterday. It’s a memorial to a treasured friendship and a business colleague, and right at the end there’s an inscription which sort of reflects his emotional ache; and I think it’s a quote from Byron, but I’m not sure – but it says: ‘Long shall his’ [her] ‘virtues be the theme of all, when tombs decay and mouldering temples fall.’ *

It’s a powerful script, and a great thing to have on a memorial, I believe. But you can feel for William, having lost a lifetime … they’d met in the old country in Scotland and were both kindred spirits, and had done thirty years of successful trading on the New Zealand coast. Māori might have just said, ‘akeake’, which means forever and ever, rather than writing a [chuckle] Byronic statement, but I find it quite moving to look at those words and just to understand how it must’ve felt to lose your business partner and to know that you had another young family that you sort of had some obligation to look after as well.

Well, things went on; life continued. Most of the Watt family were reasonably well-educated, and in 1876 the second daughter, Margaret, took her two younger brothers from Wanganui to Wellington, and then on a ship called the ‘St Leonards’ to London. They had a pretty good time on the ‘St Leonards’; I think the skipper must’ve been a pretty good sort because he gave the children the run of the ship, and when the weather was right he even allowed them to go to the masthead every day. And there’s one letter I have from him, writing back to his father … of Grandfather James writing back, saying, ‘Dear Papa, I’m sorry – my hat blew off from the masthead this morning; it was that nice one you gave me when I left’. [Chuckles] ‘But here’s the latitude and longitude’. [Laughter]

Well Margaret, being the older sister by about six years, got the two brothers settled in at school in England; and they’d gone for a holiday up in Scotland, and she then was coming home to New Zealand and leaving the two boys in school. She was onboard a ship called the ‘Avalanche’, which was a Shaw Savill ship; and she was outward bound in September 1877 from London … from Gravesend. Running down the river she had the pilot onboard, but she did foul another ship going down the river, and she lost her figurehead and some of her rigging in the bow, but it didn’t delay her enough to warrant going ashore and fixing it; they managed to effect repairs on the go and the ship continued out to sea, still with the pilot from the English Channel on board. Well that night a southerly storm developed and it was very windy … very poor visibility; and ‘Avalanche’ was on the port tack – no, she was on the starboard tack and another ship was also going out on the port tack. Now the rules of the road say that the port ship has to give way to the starboard. Well unfortunately, that assumes that the one on the starboard recognises that and turns in time. But in fact they didn’t see each other with sufficient time, and in the darkness and with the poor visibility what ended up was the ‘Forest’ going straight into the side of the ‘Avalanche’ at ninety degrees, and then she hit the ‘Avalanche’ about three times. The ‘Avalanche’ went down on her stern and sank in three minutes. There were a hundred passengers on board. Now we could go and look at the newspapers of the day and get the record from the newspapers; or I’ve also been to the official enquiry record and looked at what happened as a consequence of the official enquiry. But for this morning I thought it might be more personal to read you a little snippet from a letter that my grandfather, James, wrote to his father, describing what it was like back in London when they heard of the news. ‘Dear Papa, instead of writing you a letter relating our pleasant trip through Scotland, I have to write one full of the most disastrous news’. And going on: ‘I must give you an account of the collision, as you will be most anxious to hear the correct account that occurred on Tuesday evening, nine-twenty pm on September 11.’ 9/11. ‘The wind was very high, the sea was very strong and rain was falling. About twelve miles off the Bill of Portland, the ship ‘Forest’ of Windsor Nova Scotia, fifteen hundred tons, saw a light; and in about quarter of an hour she ran into the ill-fated ‘Avalanche’, striking her just behind the main mast. The vessels did not clear of each other, and the ‘Forest’ ran three more times into the ‘Avalanche’, causing her to sink in two minutes. So sudden was it, that Mr Sherrington says none of the passengers had time to get on deck’. Sherrington was the third mate on the ‘Avalanche’, and he had been the second mate on the ‘St Leonards’ when they had gone to England, so they knew Sherrington very well and James had been able to talk with him after the collision. ‘Sherrington and two sailors were all that were saved of the hundred people on board the ‘Avalanche’. He managed to scramble onto the ‘Forest’.’ There would’ve been a rope or something on the bow of the ‘Forest’, and he managed to grab that and swing himself up onto the ‘Forest’; ‘and he was on her when he saw the ‘Avalanche’ go down. So as soon as the vessel struck [microphone noise] he saw Captain Williams, and told him to come with him and save himself; but he says the Captain stood like a statue, quite thunderstruck, not able to speak a word. The poor man – no, he would not have saved himself if none of his passengers could be saved. But if he’d had a chance of saving himself clear before his eyes, he would not have deserted his ship and the passengers. He was not in command at the time, as there was a pilot on board. All blame, if any, is attached to the ‘Forest’.’ Which isn’t quite fair; there was blame on both sides. ‘And an enquiry is now being held. The Captain of the ‘Forest’ and eight of his crew were saved in a boat’. ‘Cause the ‘Forest’ actually capsized and was found floating in the English Channel a couple of days later. ‘I saw Mr Sherrington today, and he says that the lady passengers had all been sick and they were in bed; and that none got onto the deck, so that it is comfort to think that death would have been instantaneous, and they would have no suffering. Poor Annie Taylor would’ve gone down with Margaret’. Annie was a daughter of the Taylor partner, so both families were affected. ‘The papers will be all sent to you’… newspapers … ‘and from them you can get as good account as I can give you. Letters of sympathy come from different friends.’

And so he goes on, and he talks about: ‘Today I went and got some black cloth on our hats and some black ties, and Dick got a suit. The bill came to three pounds sixteen.’ And later on he says: ‘Mr George Fleetwood went down to Portland.’ That’s interesting; I was talking to Peggy earlier – Margaret’s sister married a Fleetwood a couple of years earlier, so that would’ve been the connection there. But he was in England and he went down to Portland and left instructions with the harbour master should the bodies be washed ashore. ‘But they never will be, as they were all in the saloon and will never get loose.’

Okay – so that’s a wreck in the family; the poor old ‘Avalanche’ went down, with a hundred on board who lost their lives. Most of them were Wanganui people, there were some Wellington families too. But the surnames of the Wanganui people were: Bobbin, the Chamberlane family, Foote, Montgomery, Richards, Shield, Taylor, Watt and the Wilkins family, two adults and five children, all lost; and a Mrs Wychodil. Five of the families were members of St Paul’s. Well the reaction in Wanganui is interesting, and I thank June Springer in Wanganui for these notes. The population then would’ve been about three thousand people, and growing quite quickly as a result of Vogel’s immigration policy. [Microphone interference] And she writes: ‘On receiving confirmation of the news, the town went into mourning’ – the whole town – ‘as everyone expressed their sympathy. Shutters were closed, some bound with crepe. Flags were at half-mast; church bells tolling; partial cessation of business and postponement of entertainments. Special church services, some of which were fully reported in the paper’. So it basically affected everybody, because there would’ve been somebody on that ship almost, that everybody knew. So it was a black day in Wanganui, and in Wellington when the word got through; the ‘Avalanche’ ship was well known in Wellington. This was her fourth voyage out to New Zealand, and there is a photo of her in the slip at Evans Bay.

The enduring consequence of that is that there are three memorials; one is a plaque on the side of the Taylor memorial at St Paul’s in Wanganui, just recording the loss of those people on the ‘Avalanche’. The second memorial would be the Margaret Watt Children’s Home, which is now the Margaret Watt Children Trust in Wanganui. There was a trust set up with her part of the family estate at the time, which now delivers several thousand dollars to the benefit of children[’s] organisations every year, and that’s still running. But most encompassing for all families of the hundred and four, is the Memorial Church at Portland. This was put together by [with] funds by public subscription in 1983. The wreck of the ‘Avalanche’ was located in the English Channel and divers were able to bring candles and crockery ashore. And the trustees there had a fair, and the candles and crockery were sold and the proceeds were able to finance a new roof for the church, because the old tiles had deteriorated in the hundred years.

[Shows and describes slides of photos fromTaylor & Watt families]

Thomas Ballardie Taylor, from a photograph; that’s my great grandfather, William Hogg Watt. That’s a picture of the ‘Catherine Johnston’ sailing from Sydney. That’s Ākitio, looking north; this was just taken … oh, 2007; it’s looking north though at high tide, so conditions would’ve been much like that when the ‘Catherine Johnston’ went out.

The ‘Governor Grey’ – she was a two-mast schooner rig; there’s four and a half sails on both masts, but she’s got the square stop sails which turns into a topsail schooner. Another picture of the ‘Governor Grey’ – this was done by Charles Heaphy, and that’s probably the best picture we have of all. Charles Heaphy was the surveyor/artist employed by the New Zealand Company in Wellington. And you’ll find a lot of Heaphy paintings in the early records of New Zealand, sort of before the days of photography.

Here’s the ship the ‘Avalanche’; she was a three-masted barque. She was a barque because she had a fore and aft sail on the after mast, to help make it a bit more manoeuvrable. That’s a photograph supplied by Shaw Savill in London; they responded to an enquiry by me, and I was lucky to get that. This comes from the Wanganui Museum; that’s a picture of the ‘Avalanche’ on the slip at Evans Bay in Wellington. So obviously on one of the previous voyages she’d been serviced at Evans Bay. There is an interesting story on the return of the third voyage from New Zealand to England. There were three ships – there was the ‘Ocean Mail’, the ‘Crusader’ and the ‘Avalanche’, all left either Lyttelton or Wellington on the same day. And they agreed to make it a race back to The Lizard rock at the entrance to the English Channel. The ‘Ocean Mail’ got as far as the Chathams and ran aground on the reef on the north coast there, and in fact the beach is still known as the Ocean Mail Beach. [Cough] All her cargo came ashore … the wool and everything … so the locals did fairly well out of that wreck. But that knocked one contender for the race out. And the ‘Crusader’ actually got back to the Lizard about ten days in front of the ‘Avalanche’, but that’s by the by, I guess.

This is a picture of the rescue at Portland Island, on the south side of Portland Bill in England; and for those who’ve been watching the sailing on the Olympics, Weymouth is just on the north side of Portland Bill, and you would have seen Portland Bill in some of those photographs of the sailing. But on the other side there is a very steep gravel beach, and the locals had developed a particular kind of rowing boat that they could go out and catch herrings and so forth; and that was there main livelihood. Those boats are now out of date, but when word got to the Chesil Beach fishing community they immediately launched their lerret, which was a special kind of rowing boat, and went out to look for survivors. They were only able to find twelve and they brought them ashore, and this is a painting of them bringing the people back ashore.

And this is an even better picture which I really am attracted to; it shows the settlement of Portland in the background. It shows everybody on the beach on top of it. This is the gravel – it’s a bit like the beach at Napier, I suppose, but much steeper, and of small rounded pebbles.

The trick of these vessels – they had a rope tied to the keel underneath the boat and the person in the bow would throw the rope ashore, and the people ashore would grab the rope and then hold it and act as a [an] anchor while the sea went out, and prevented the anchor from being sucked back out. And then they’d wait for the next wave to maybe just bring it a little bit further up the beach. But it was a technique which worked and had evolved over time, and it’s just somewhat sad now that these boats are now an extinct type of boat. That picture is taken from the Illustrated London News on the 22nd September 1877, so just within a few days … ten days … of the wreck actually occurring, the artist had assembled this picture. There are some wonderful pictures in those early Illustrated London News’ such as this; in a way they’re better than a photograph.

That’s the church at Portland and inside there’s a number of memorial windows, including a memorial window to Annie Taylor and Margaret Watt. That’s a model of the ‘Avalanche’; that was presented to the church by the prisoners of the Portland Prison, which is just down the road.

And I’ve included that at the end – that is just a thank you to my dad, who did most of this research. It’s his book plate; it includes the family coat of arms at the bottom, which is a Wanganui coat of arms – it appears on the City of Wanganui. This is the Whanganui River, and this is the British and Māori craft, symbolised on there. But up on the top we have the ‘Catherine Johnston’.

And that is the house flag of the company; it was only a company in the latter years, it was more or less a partnership before that. But you’ll find that in the Wanganui Almanac in 1872.

Well thank you, folks, for your time; I’ve taken my whole hour. [Chuckle] But I’m happy to answer a quick questions if anybody has any.

Question: One thing that’s interesting … just a comment really. Over the last few [?] there’s been a lot of controversy about putting the ‘h’ back in Wanganui …

Jim: It has always been there; it’s been dropped off and was put back and dropped off. Yeah, and even within Māoridom there is argument as to which is correct. You’ll find one group will be active in promoting it, and others say it makes no difference.

Question: Is it not true that the river was always spelt with the ‘h’?

Jim: Yes.

Question: And the township without it?

Jim: Yes. It was the township that dropped the ‘h’. It used to be known as the town of Petre … [spells]. And that was the original name given by the New Zealand Company … the town of Petre. But the locals didn’t like that name very much, and they couldn’t understand why the township be named after one of the Lords of the Admiralty – no, no – he wasn’t even the Lord of the Admiralty; this guy was one of the principals of the New Zealand Company back in London. And the argument was that, you know – why should the town be named after one of the directors? [Chuckle] And they petitioned the governor for a change and changed it to Wanganui, which they spelt without the ‘h’. But the river has always had the ‘h’ and the region is known with the ‘h’. Interesting.

Question: Jim, was insurance ever a problem with these boats; insurance generally?

Jim: Yeah, that’s an interesting question, Alistair. I don’t know. For the Taylor & Watt ships, I doubt that they would’ve been insured, because probably the cost and the rigmarole of trying to insure a ship in New Zealand back at Lloyds in London, [chuckle] with three months each time you sent a letter – I think it would have been too difficult, but I honestly don’t know.

But the whole issue of insurance is intriguing in that it gives rise to all sorts of thoughts, because if these ships were not built to endure, and none of them are – even a ship today has only got a life of twenty to thirty years – the issue comes [becomes] what does an owner do when he knows his ship is, you know, over twenty years of age, for example? If he hangs on to it then he’s going to be faced with the problem of disposing of it at the end; whereas if an accident happens he might get the insurance back. So you can end up with all sorts of conspiracy ideas as to some of these wrecks – that they could be partially deliberate on the owner’s part – to be able to claim insurance. And I have no doubt that that is true in certain instances, but you can’t really definitely say it for any without being publicly liable. [Chuckles] But I think it’s a factor worth considering; I mean, today you have to pay to tidy up the ship yourself; or we hope that that’ll happen to the ‘Rena’ in Tauranga. But who pays for that? Does the government pay for it? And why should they? Does the owner pay for it? The owner doesn’t want to, thank you, if they can get out of it. Does the captain pay? Well he doesn’t have infinite finance, so claiming insurance is quite attractive.

Question: Jim, when Taylor Watt were doing their coastal shipping, did they take ownership of the goods that they were carting backwards and forwards? Or were they just sort of a middle man and agent?

Jim: Yeah – good point and quite critical. They always took ownership of their cargo. They purchased their cargo on the wharf, they took it to the next port and sold it on the wharf. They never carried other people’s stuff. In fact that story of the wool coming out of Rangitikei; it was being purchased by Taylor & Watt in Wanganui; and they weren’t wool brokers at all, but they purchased the cargo and they would sell it to a wool broker in Wellington. And I think that was why those early traders did pretty well, because they would pay for what it was worth at the origin, and they would sell it for what they could get for it. And often what they could get for it was quite a fanciful price; but good luck to them – they took the risks too. [Chuckle]

Question: In your research, have you found out how many wrecks were on the bar at Wanganui?

Jim: No, but it certainly … it’d be quite easy to find out; they’re all listed. I’m guessing it would be getting up towards a hundred, I would say, altogether, if you count the fishing boats and the pleasure boats and … But the book of Diggle – I didn’t bring it with me – but Diggle’s Shipwrecks of New Zealand, all the shipwrecks are in chronological order, and there’s a very good index on that. And a regional index too, so you can go and research Wanganui. That figure is easily found out.

Question: How many drownings did you have in the Taylor Watt family through the years?

Jim: I don’t know; I haven’t added them up. There’s certainly Captain Murphy on the ‘Governor Grey’ was lost. Yeah, TB Taylor of course, he fell overboard. They were the critical ones, but there could have been crew members overboard. Falling overboard from a sailing ship was was pretty much the end, because a sailing boat had great difficulty in turning back and getting back to where it was. It could be a hundred yards out and think it was in the right place. So if you didn’t have a lifeline on and you fell overboard, it’d be very difficult to be picked up again. But drowning wasn’t a big thing, but yeah, it was a risk. I haven’t counted the number specifically, but I don’t think it would be more than half a dozen at the most. But there’s those two critical ones early in the piece that were important. Jocelyn?

Jocelyn: You mentioned the ship, the ‘Calliope’, and that’s interesting ‘cause my father’s original family came out on the ‘Calliope’.

Jim: Really?

Jocelyn: Yes. And there’s a Calliope Wharf at Devonport.

Jim: She was a naval ship. Yeah – HMS ‘Calliope’. There was another one, HMS ‘Invincible’. She was a paddle steamer, and she was the first steamboat into Wanganui, and she actually brought ‘Governor Grey’ from Auckland down to Wanganui in … well I guess it was 1847, at the outset of the troubles there. So that was the first steamship in, but that was another naval connection. But that ‘s interesting that your people came out on the ‘Calliope’. She was in Wellington for quite some time I think, as a backup … well not as a backup, but as a support vessel.

Question: Is that the one that survived the storm, and everybody in the harbour went out to sea rather than staying in port? In the 1890s?

Jim: In which port?

Questioner: Oh, somewhere overseas. I think it was up [in] the Pacific Islands somewhere.

Jim: It’s the sensible thing to do in an earthquake or a tsunami, is to try and get the boat out to sea if you possibly can. In fact, mariners will say that, you know, if you’re in trouble head out to sea; don’t head for land, because when sea and land meet you’ve got problems. And there is a story too, in Dad’s book of Coastal Traders, of the 1848 earthquake in Wellington, and of many of the settlers actually taking refuge on one of the sailing ships that was in port at the time; and the Captain sort of opened the ship to them and they were able to stay on for two or three days just while they gathered their wits and were able to work out what was going to happen next. So yeah, the ship survived, the buildings didn’t, on that occasion.

Peggy van Asch: Jim, thank you very much indeed for a most interesting talk.

Jim: Thank you, Peggy.

Peggy: And I think also, it was the way of life, and people you know, went from A to B by sea. But such small ships, that carried such a lot …

Jim: The main thing was not to be so deep in the water that you hit the bar. [Chuckle]

Peggy: But thank you very much indeed, it was very enjoyable, Jim. Thank you.

[Applause]