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Onelua PTII
Onelua proved to be a bittersweet triumph for Charles Bailey; she showed but a fleeting glimpse of her pedigree and her potential, in a potent clash of history and cultures.
In the last issue I related how Charles Bailey launched King George of Tonga’s new superyacht Onelua in April 1913. Then, a few days later, he helmed her as a late and unofficial entry in a race to Kawau the Squadron put on for crews from the Dreadnought HMS New Zealand. In Onelua Bailey cleaned up all the local cracks, including her Logan counterpart, Ariki. Bailey crewman William Swinnerton crowed about Onelua’s performance in the press.
But Bailey’s sweet taste of victory was short-lived. Sailing back to Auckland the next day, Onelua lost her mast overboard! The westerly that brought her to Kawau on the Saturday had hardened, nearly dismasting the big Bailey yawl Heartsease off Whangaparaoa. Sunday brought strong conditions.
Before reaching Tiri, a heavy squall hit Onelua, the weather masthead rigging screws parted, the mast broke nine feet above the deck, and the whole rig went over the side. Bailey was alone on deck at the helm while the rest of the crew, including Swinnerton, were at lunch.
Fortunately, Alex Burt’s launch Matakana (32’ Logan Bros, 1909, 15hp Ralaco engine) was alongside, narrowly escaping the falling gear. Charles Court’s powerful launch Gladys (38’ Bailey & Lowe, 1910, 25-40hp Sterling engine) came to assist, and the two launches towed Onelua back to moorings off Stanley Bay.
Swinnerton’s press comments about Ariki stung the normally-reticent Arch Logan to respond. He made the points that a coppered bottom is better than a foul bottom and that all the yachts were being sailed by strangers, as the event was for the Dreadnought’s officers, who were allocated boats at random. That old subterranean Logan-bailey rivalry had erupted fullblown. Arch must have felt the need to descend from Olympus to thunder a little to protect the Logan brand.
Swinnerton replied in the NZ Yachtsman issue of 24th May, 1913, in a piece written just before he set off on her delivery voyage to Nuku’alofa, concluding, rather tongue-in-cheek, “I am pleased that Mr Archie Logan should give his opinion also, and I would certainly bow to his superior knowledge.”
The following week, James Reid, the well-known Auckland boatbuilder, entered the fray:
“Sir, I noticed a letter from Mr Archie Logan in your columns re Onelua and I quite agree with him. It seems all the trouble is over the race to Kawau when the officers of HMS New Zealand handled the yachts in the race, the Onelua going with them, handled by Mr C. Bailey, who is an expert. Well, I think that if she could not knock corners off the others she would not be much good. Onelua is a new boat while Ariki and Iorangi are
She proved herself a very fast boat, beating in a trial spin the best of our fleet.
about nine years old. Any man knows that a diagonal boat gets heavier every year. To sum up the whole matter, it is reviving the old question of the two yacht-building firms, and who has ever heard of other than a good yacht being turned out by Logan Bros?”
Bailey put the mast failure down to the rigging-screws having been cut too deeply in the threads. It then took some days to find a replacement spar, so it was not until Monday, 19 May 1913 that she finally left Auckland under the same crew that had delivered the Free Church of Tonga’s Bailey cutter Koe Fetu’u Aho in 1912: the Swedish-born master mariner, Captain E.A. Stenbeck, Swinnerton and Charles Mansell.
This delivery passage has entered folklore as being an extremely fast passage. Five days is often quoted; the truth is somewhat different. It was marred by hasty preparation. Gear was shoved in the fore part of the yacht, giving her a bow-down attitude which caused her to ship a great deal of water over the bows; a skylight was poorly covered, so Onelua took in a considerable amount of water through it in the initial stages; Bailey had not adequately solved the rigging problems and gear failure continued.
In addition, Stenbeck, probably pushed by Bailey, who must have been embarrassed by the delays in delivery, took off into an adverse weather system which gave them a pasting for several days, radically reducing their ability to make good averages.
Swinnerton wrote a detailed account in an article published in the February 1914 issue of the American Rudder magazine. He sets the scene for the American audience:
“Onelua was built and designed by Chas Bailey, Jr. of Auckland, 53 feet over all, 11 feet 9 inches breadth, eight feet draught, with 6½ tons of lead on her keel, and about 1,600 square feet of sail. She was well finished inside, being also roomy and comfortable. Built of New Zealand kauri, all planking running the full length, and finished on deck
with teak fittings, all metal work being brass, giving her a good appearance. She proved herself a very fast boat, beating in a trial spin the best of our fleet.”
After bidding goodbye to friends, Onelua set off at 1430 on 19th May 1913 under storm jib, staysail and trysail, with a falling glass. It was almost a flat calm. A launch towed her to the Rangitoto reef. By 2100 they were in full gale from the north with mounting seas. Bow-down, with the stores packed forward, Onelua was shovelling up the seas. Sensibly, they ran back to Mahurangi to shelter after getting a pounding off Tiritiri. There they found that the anchor winch was unusable. They took the opportunity to better trim the yacht, fix the leaking skylight, rig a preventer backstay and get some rest.
At midnight on the 21st they took off again before a southwesterly gale. At 1300 the next day a standing jibe took out the main shroud rigging screw, preventer-stay and backstay chain plate. After some frantic work in heavy seas the crew got the sails off and saved the mast, carrying on under bare poles. Then Onelua got pooped, the seawater filling the cabin to the locker tops. It was desperate stuff.
After the gale eased Onelua made good time until she had to heave-to for the night of the 28th off the high island of ‘Eua, only 19 miles from Tongatapu. The next morning they arrived in Nuku’alofa to a royal welcome.
In his Rudder article, Swinnerton deducted the time spent in Mahurangi and the time spent hove-to off ‘Eua, coming up with a distance run of 1225 miles in 192 hours, an average “of nearly six and a half miles an hour,” and a best day’s run of 216 nm. Not too dusty, considering the conditions, but nothing to justify the legend of a “fast passage” which actually took from May 19th to May 29th. Swinnerton and Stenbeck returned to Auckland on the Union Steam Ship Co’s steamer Atua, leaving Onelua in the hands of her royal owner.
The next local reference to Onelua is in the New Zealand Yachtsman of 1st November 1913 when she was reported to have carried away her mast again, off ‘Eua, during a state visit by the King. This was put down to the substitution of locally-installed iron rigging wire for Bailey’s original rigging. That rigging was terribly suspect, as we have seen, so getting rid of it would seem to have been wise.
While Bailey’s excuse about the rigging screws was probably true, the stresses set up by a taller than usual gaff rig on a beamier (therefore stiffer) than usual large yacht were probably beyond rule-of-thumb calculations and the materials and hardware available in Auckland at the time. It must be said, however, that the Logans had got it right with Ariki in 1904. And one wonders at the absence of a proper shakedown, the hasty preparations for departure and the lack of wisdom in heading off into bad weather.
From here on the story of Onelua becomes fragmentary and she attains an almost mythical quality. BNZ