The dead tell tales
Annie Kells 1906-February 6, 1927
When the party of four young people – two men and two women – set out in a boat onto Rotoroa (Hamilton Lake) on the evening of February 6 1927, it is doubtful whether the Treaty of Waitangi was in their thoughts.
It was a lovely summer evening and the ‘‘pleasure party’’ headed out onto the lake to enjoy themselves.
But two hours later, disaster struck and three of the four were dead, drowned in the lake. One of them was 20-year-old Annie Kells of Te Rapa.
The sole survivor, George Enoch Smith of Clyde Street in Hamilton East, described events to the coronial inquest.
He said that he and Trevor (William Trevitt) Graham, who were ‘‘great pals’’ met Annie Kells and Ruby Harlow and went for a stroll in the lake grounds. At 8.30 they hired a boat, rowed around for about an hour then drifted.
He and Annie were on the rower’s seat and Ruby and Trevor in the rear seat, with each couple a bit to one side, but keeping the balance.
At about 10.30 they decided to row to shore, but the movement of George and Annie reaching for the oars caused the boat to roll over. The four of them were catapulted into the water.
George managed to free himself of his heavy coat; when he surfaced he joined the other three in clinging to the edge of the boat, but their combined weight overturned it again. They all went down for a second time but only George re-surfaced.
George, again clinging to the boat, did not see or hear anything of them. George yelled for help and eventually was heard.
Two men rowed out from the boat shed and rescued him, but there was no sign of the others despite a search by the rescuers and then by two policemen.
The next day a search party dragged the area. The three bodies were found near where the boat capsized. Annie’s body was the first recovered; Ruby’s and Trevor’s not until about 4 o’clock. The coroner said it seemed Trevor had done what he could to save Ruby.
They all had fairly heavy clothing on, and Annie, at least, could not swim.
Annie Kells arrived in New Zealand from Ireland in 1914 when she was six years old, with her parents Henry and Annie and four siblings.
The birth of another child was registered later in 1914. Henry Kells farmed at Ohaupo before moving to Te Rapa – confusingly, there was another Kells family farming there as well, and the newspaper reports of Annie’s death identified the wrong parents. The death notice and the shipping list found by one of the Hamilton Library Heritage Team clarified the information.
At the time of the tragedy, Annie Kells and Ruby Harlow worked at the Grand Central Hotel, Annie as a maid and Ruby as a waitress.
The Grand Central, in Hood Street, was a large boardinghouse that catered for long-term boarders and travellers; it had 23 bedrooms, two bathrooms and a kitchen and would have had several staff to assist the proprietor.
The young women probably lived in. The building was designed by local architects Warren and Blechynden and is on the council’s Heritage Schedule and listed by Heritage New Zealand. More recently it was known as the Loaded Hog, now House on Hood.
Ruby Harlow (aged 22) came from Napier, and her body was transported there.
Annie and Trevor (also aged 22) were buried in Hamilton East Cemetery. Trevor, ‘‘a well-built young fellow’’ worked for his father William J Graham of Von Tempsky Street, Hamilton East, in his carrying business.
These were not the first, or the last, drownings in Rotoroa, but for three young people to die at one time was a shocking tragedy.
George Smith deposed that they had taken no refreshments into the boat and ‘‘there was no skylarking going on’’: just four people enjoying the peace of a dark summer’s night.