Posted on May 3, 2018
By Roger Moroney, nzherald.co.nz
A once familiar slice of Hawke’s Bay maritime history is back in its home waters after more than 40 years docked in Wellington — well, not quite in the waters of the Bay but not far from it.
It is a shining and working 1.5m model of the dredge Whakarire which served the old Napier Harbour Board, not to mention carrying out vital wartime duties when called upon, between 1934 and 1973.
After four decades on show, and later stored, at what was the Wellington Maritime Museum it has finally come home — to a fine mooring in the Old Customhouse Museum in Ahuriri where some impressively solid parts of the actual Whakarire are on display outside.
“Wonderful to see it here,” museum volunteer Dorothy Pilkington said, adding that her husband Denis had always been keen on the colourful story of the grand old dredge, and equally keen on hoping that one day it would return.
That day was April 17 when the securely packaged box arrived and was carefully opened.
It was earlier this year that the curator of the Wellington Museum contacted Alison McKimm of the Old Customhouse Trust to ask if they would be interested in having the model as part of their impressive maritime display.
The answer was an immediate and enthusiastic “yes!”
Pilkington said the model had been built for the Napier Harbour Board and had been on display there until the full-scale Whakarire was finally retired and in 1974 was towed to Auckland where it was scrapped.
In 1975 members of the board wrote to the Wellington Maritime Museum and asked if they would like to have the model on permanent loan, and they replied they would.
The official handover was on November 3, 1975, and it had been on display there, although lately in storage, until last week.
“We are not sure who actually built it but they took great care with painstaking attention to detail,” Pilkington said.
And while well secured and brightly displayed it is effectively a working model.
“There are many moving parts, including the dredge’s bucket chain.”
The model Whakarire is in fine company at its Ahuriri “moorings” near the equally historic Iron Pot as The Old Customhouse Museum also holds much of the collection of the old Napier Harbour Board historical items and archive material.
And a couple of the original great steel buckets, and its anchor, sit outside near the entrance, which is in direct sight of the roadway across the channel — Whakarire Avenue.
Pilkington said seeing the fine model would bring back plenty of memories for those who had seen it chugging and clanking across the nautical landscape around the harbour.
“Some people actually complained about the noise it made,” she said, adding that one photo she had seen of it at work was effectively smothered by the billowing black smoke its funnel belched out.
The Whakarire was originally Wellington-based, having been built for its harbour board in 1905, by Lobnitz and Co of Renfrew, Scotland.
The dredge steamed out to New Zealand under its own power via the Suez Canal, and in 1911 it made its first voyage to Hawke Bay after the Napier Harbour Board hired it for exploratory dredging as part of a proposed development scheme of the inner harbour.
It was here for two months and dredged and area of 200sq m to a depth of just over 10m.
After the Hawke’s Bay earthquake of 1931, developing the inner harbour was no longer feasible and in 1934 the Napier Harbour Board bought the Whakarire from the Wellington Harbour Board to deepen the Breakwater Harbour from 9m to 10.7m so that larger ships could berth.
Being able to get them to tie up would see an end to the cumbersome process of lightering cargoes out.
During World War II the Whakarire was requisitioned by the Government from August 1942 for two years and was modified to serve as a boom ship in a blockade against enemy invasion at the entrance to Auckland Harbour.
While the Whakarire went through major refits in Lyttelton in 1958 and 1960, involving boiler replacement, new propellers, tail shafts, and dredge ladder, it was clearly showing signs of age — and in 1973 retirement called.
The dredge was ageing and in 1973 the Whakarire was finally retired and scrapped.
Since then, all dredging work has been contracted out.
The Pilkingtons are part of an enthusiastic crew of volunteers who man The Old Customhouse Museum.
While it is open every Sunday during summer months it goes back to one Sunday a month heading toward winter, so next opening times for keen Whakarire spotters and those interested in seeing the colourful tale of how the Port of Ahuriri developed will be May 6 and June 10.
Source: nzherald.co.nz
