The Seagars:

Ironworkers, founders and yachtsmen Three generations of one family contributed a huge amount to the early engineering and yachting history of New Zealand.

The Seagar family originated in Hampshire, in the south of England, where they developed skills that would prove useful in New Zealand in Wellington, Thames and Auckland.

William Seagar was born in 1806 in Gosport where he worked as a ship’s joiner. He and his four sons, all highly experienced boilermakers and engineers, immigrated to New Zealand in stages. Charles, born in 1833, was the first to arrive in New Zealand, in 1857 on the Acasta. He set up in business in Wellington as the Phoenix Foundry and as a marine engineer.

In March 1867 he constructed the Alpha, the first steamer constructed entirely with New Zealand-built components. Edward, born in 1844, followed Charles to Wellington in 1861, on the Asterope. Charles set up the successful Victoria Foundry in 1878, specialising in boilers, steam engines and mining machinery. The eldest son, William, born in 1831, arrived with his family on the West Australian in 1864, bringing his widowed father.

Finally, George, born in 1847, arrived in Wellington on the Hydaspes in 1873 and joined his brother Edward’s engineering business to build railway locomotives.

The son William was a highly skilled boilermaker and ironworker who had worked under the highly regarded civil engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, on the Great Western Railway which linked many parts of England with London. William also held a responsible role in the construction of Brunel’s technically innovative GWR Royal Albert Bridge across the Tamar River from Plymouth, Devon to Saltash, Cornwall. Then,

in the late 1850s, William moved to Bromley in South London to work nearby, at Milwall, on the construction of Brunel’s crowning achievement, the iron steamer Great Eastern. Built to carry 4000 passengers non-stop to Australia, at 19,000 tons she was by far the biggest ship ever built at the time.

The Seagar brothers seem to have taken to sailing as a sport and were probably accomplished watermen before leaving England. Edward ( Ted) Seagar took part in sailing in Wellington from 1864 in open boats named Old Sieve and Red Rover. He and his brother George’s son Edward ( Ted Jr) remained prominent in Wellington yachting for many years.

Soon after the Arawa Sailing Club was founded with great enthusiasm in Wellington in 1893, the members organised restricted class racing by adopting the overseas half-rater formula. This produced fast little keel or centreboard yachts of around 25ft loa, 16ft lwl, 5ft 6ins beam and 3ft 6ins draught, usually with a fin and bulb keel and a fashionable lug sloop rig.

Robert Logan Sr in Auckland built three yachts for Arawa club members to the rule in 1895: the W Fife-designed Miru and Ruru, and Vixen to a design by Professor R J Scott. Locally-designed and built half-raters followed. Ted Seagar Jr sailed on Dauntless, built and owned by boatbuilder Jack Chalmers of Clyde Quay who was married to Ted’s sister Louisa Seagar. Later, Ted sailed on his own 14-footer, Belle.

In 1896 Ted Jr ordered a half-rater from Jack Chalmers for himself and Jack Moffat; he called her Arawa. They raced her regularly until they sold her to Wanganui in 1903. From 1899 onwards, Seagar and Moffat also raced the second class straightstem keel yacht Kotuku, a three-tonner built in 1884 by M’keegan as Iris. Jack Chalmers was not only a crack yacht builder and yachtsman but also became a professional racing cyclist. He later moved to Australia.

The Wellington Seagars always had a steam launch on strength to assist in their businesses, several times converting old yacht hulls to steam, like Violet (1880). Ted Seagar later owned the 50ft steam launch Paiaka. In 1911 Ted Seagar Jr joined with his Arawa Sailing Club mates Charlie Petley and Charlie Cording in getting a 32ft launch designed and built by Edwin ( Ted) Bailey of Clyde Quay. They called her Dauntless after their old half-rater and rigged her to carry a good press of canvas.

While the brothers Charles, Edward and George stayed in Wellington and prospered, the eldest brother William Seagar took his family north in 1866 to the freshly opened goldfields at Thames to set up in business manufacturing mining battery plants, gold dredges and other heavy machinery at Haven Street, Grahamstown. William soon faced stiff competition as A & G Price opened a foundry and engineering shop in nearby Thames in 1871.

In 1878, as business declined, William moved his works to Albert Street, Auckland. His four sons, a new generation of Seagar brothers, worked in the firm. William was born in 1857; Charles in 1863, George in 1865 and Henry in 1869.

By the time of their father’s death in 1893 they had taken over the business, trading as Seagar Bros with premises at Hobson Street Wharf, adjoining the Auckland Graving Dock. They flourished when the country’s economy got underway again as New Zealand’s Long Depression, which had started in the late 1870s, drew to an end. Seagar Bros was amongst the handful of Auckland engineering firms who could build steel hulls, boilers and steam engines from scratch. And all the brothers threw themselves into yachting.

The first record of them racing on the Waitemata Harbour was with the yacht Dolphin in the 1876 Anniversary Regatta under-six tons race, in which one of the Seagar boys got a second. In March 1882 the brothers built a 4½ ton iron yacht, Cygnet, which never won a race and gained the nickname “The Tank”. At the end of 1883 they sold her cheaply to the Dufaur brothers who had her overhauled by James Clare, but she then disappears from view, possibly the result of rust but more likely of indifferent design.

Interest in the sport of yachting had been growing since around 1892 as New Zealand’s economy began to recover. There was a good market for yachts, many of which were built to overseas rating rules, not only to copy exciting new international design trends and provide close racing but also with the prospect of establishing a market overseas, particularly in Australia, for Auckland-built raters. This was magnificently achieved by the Logans and the Baileys later in the decade.

Every November and December from 1890 a new crop of raters was launched in Auckland, particularly in two classes of bigger keel yachts: the 2½ raters of about 35ft loa, and the 5 raters of about 45ft loa.

Avid students of international yacht trends John Waymouth and his sons John and Oliver started off the 1890s contending with the Logans and the Baileys as designers and yacht builders. All three boatbuilding families competed for a share of the burgeoning market, but racing and commercial honours were almost always with the Logans. Then John Waymouth Sr died in December 1892, just days before his radical new 2½ rater Yum Yum was to be launched, effectively removing one of the top three Auckland yacht builders.

But 1894-5 was a season of radical change because Seagar Bros took on the two established stables with a 5 rater, built with 1/ inch

8 steel plate on frames, not in the Auckland trademark construction of triple skin diagonal kauri. The Seagars now made an infinitely more successful attempt at building a competitive keel yacht than they had with their Cygnet of 1882.

The big news for the 1894-5 season was the Seagar Brosbuilt Thetis, commissioned by fellow iron-workers Reg and Val Masefield of Herne Bay. Her design was radically up-to-date, showing the influence of Britannia which had been designed by G L Watson and built on the Clyde in 1893 for the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII. The obvious design cue that stood Britannia apart from all yachts that had gone before was her elegant spoon, convex bow which enabled the body of the yacht to be carried further forward, bringing many hydrodynamic advantages.

Oddly enough, John Waymouth had used a similar bow in his successful 33-footer Seagull, later Mapu, in 1883. William Seagar and Oliver Waymouth appear to have collaborated on the design of Thetis, giving her a decidedly modern-looking spoon bow and another feature that raised eyebrows and hackles: a fin and bulb keel for which her steel construction was absolutely suited.

In future columns I’ll tell the story of Thetis, her steel 2½ rater stablemate Huia, and some delectable steam launches the Seagars built for themselves and others. B