Off the grid

A BRIEF VISIT TRIGGERS AN INVESTIGATION OF OUR SOUTHERNMOST SHEDS

2019-12-02 - By Murray Grimwood Photographs: Murray Grimwood and expedition members

Totally off the grid - exploring Auckland Island sheds

Our sub-Antarctic islands are inhospitable places — you need shelter to survive. Apart from a single-season 13th- or 14thcentury Māori visit, the history of the Auckland Islands is one of sheds. It divides naturally into three parts: sheds built by and for sealers and castaways, sheds dedicated to wartime coastal surveillance, and sheds facilitating recent conservation initiatives.

Discovered by Europeans in 1806, sealing gangs were soon being left on the islands, sometimes for long periods. Their shelters were improvisations of canvas and local materials; mostly southern rātā, grasses, and ferns.

Some gangs were forgotten, or abandoned, for years. At least those folk went ashore voluntarily and somewhat prepared. Myriad are the tales involving neither. Typically a vessel would pile into the western side of the island group, popularly charted as being 35 miles (56km) further south. Survivors would straggle ashore wet, cold, and ill-equipped. They faced near-impenetrable low-canopy forest, peat-mud underfoot, and saturated everything.

The Grafton shipwreck

The most famous of these castaway stories is that of the Grafton; a 54.8x18.0 feet (16.7x5.5m), 56-ton schooner.

Written about by two of the five-strong group — Castaway on the Auckland Isles (Thomas Musgrave) and Wrecked on a Reef (FE Raynal) — and subject of a recent Radio New Zealand serialization, this is a MacGuyver story extraordinaire, albeit one which had some lucky breaks.

In early 1864, after a two-day gale inside Carnley Harbour, the Grafton’s anchor chains parted, she struck a rocky beach, and she foundered. The crew first built a shelter, then a substantial dwelling, which they called ‘Epigwaitt’ (North American Indian for ‘dwelling by the water’). Epigwaitt measured 24x16 feet (7x5m), with seven-foot (2m) walls and a 14-foot (4m) ridge. The fireplace was 6x4 feet (1.8x1.2m) and the walls one-foot (30cm) thick, consisting of 5000 bundles of thatch weighing over two tons.

Their lucky breaks included being able to access the wreck and salvage a lot of useful stuff, not to mention being alongside good running water. Inspired leadership and a fine understanding of morale, married to an amazing knowledge of chemistry, saw them storing food and firewood, besides constructing sleeping cots, a table, and a writing desk using only an axe, adze, hammer, and gimlet. When ink ran out, they substituted seal

Grafton’s anchor chains parted, she struck a rocky beach, and she foundered

blood. With scurvy in mind, they grated, boiled, and fermented a root to make beer. They tanned seal skins and made them into clothing. They shot, salted, and smoked waterfowl. They produced potash and thence soap. They made a chess set, ran educational classes, and raised a flagpole to alert passing ships.

Time to be rescued

After a year had passed, they decided to rescue themselves. A forge was built, including a bellows constructed from sealskin, to turn metal from the wreck into “chisels, gouges, and sundry tools” (including a saw made from sheet metal), 180 clinch bolts and 700

nails, spikes, and sundry fittings. After a false start attempting to build a “cutter of about 10 tons” from scratch (held up by Raynal’s inability to forge an auger!) the 12-foot (3.6m) ship’s boat was lengthened, strengthened, and had its freeboard raised.

Nineteen months after the wreck, three of the five set out for Stewart Island, arriving at Port Adventure five boisterous days later.

In response to their claim to have seen smoke elsewhere on the island, a ship was sent (by the governments of NSW and Queensland) to search for castaways.

That ship left an impeccably carved inscription on what has become known as the ‘Victoria tree’, which still reads: “H.M.C.S. Victoria Norman in search of shipwrecked people Oct 13th, 1865.” The hand carving is router-perfect. They landed goats and rabbits, and also planted vegetables. Later, castaway depots would be established, some of which remain.

One 1880s photo in a Canterbury Museum collection shows what appears to be a castaway shelter being erected on the Epigwaitt hut site — it resembles the still-existing shelter erected on Enderby Island by the crew of the

Stella in 1880. To direct castaways towards the depots, wooden ‘fingerposts’ were erected at the coastal bushedge, many of which still exist.

Many lives lost

Besides the Invercauld (simultaneous with the Grafton and possible source of

that observed smoke), wrecks include the General Grant, Anjou, Dundonald, and Derry Castle. Every one of them is a tale of survival and (as with the four survivors of the General Grant who sailed for New Zealand and were never seen again) non-survival. Forensic archaeology has added the survivor-less Rifleman (1833) to the list of known wrecks, and there must have been others. A punt built by the Derry Castle survivors exists in the Southland Museum, as does the frame of the coracle built by the Dundonald crew, which is in the Canterbury Museum.

Island sheds

Next come the buildings — from mansions to boat sheds — constructed by would-be settlers.

A township was attempted here, named ‘Hardwicke’ and championed by Samuel Enderby, but it only lasted from 1849 to 1852. At least two private farmers — Monkton and Fleming — tried their hands also. In all cases, the lack of sun and warmth, the persistent rain, wind, and mud, coupled with the logistics of getting to and from this piece of rock in the Southern Ocean, beat them all. Of all these abortive attempts, virtually no trace exists.

On 15 October 1874 a team of eight

German scientists arrived at Port Ross harbour to observe the Transit of Venus. The team erected their kitset buildings, including a house, a wooden shed for equipment to measure magnetic variation, and “an iron shed in which a tool to assess the tide was placed”. The brick plinths they erected to steady their instruments remain.

Defence sheds

Of more interest to New Zealanders are the two sites where structures were established for World War II surveillance — not that any ships were sighted! The only enemy vessel to visit, the SS Erlangen (6010 tons, 142m) did a runner from Port Chalmers at the outbreak of war but had insufficient coal aboard. For 39 days they cut and loaded 235 tons of wood in Carnley Harbour, having to make special saws because the southern rātā was too strong for axes. The HMS Leander having visited but missed them, they did 35 days to Chile, partly under sail. Then, intercepted by British cruiser HMS Newcastle, Erlangen’s crew scuttled her.

The two World War II sites are at Ranui Station in Port Ross, and Tagua in Carnley Harbour, presumably named for the vessels that kept them supplied. Ranui is an iconic story in herself, built on a sandfly-infested beach in

Stewart Island’s Port Pegasus, launched in 1936, requisitioned by the New Zealand Government in 1939. Having been many things in between (including a stint as an oyster dredger) Ranui lives today fully restored, in Auckland.

Keeping watch

Codenamed ‘Cape Expedition’, the World War II programme saw coast watchers stationed on-site, for 12 months at a time, in prefabricated huts. The bigger huts were constructed in a modular fashion, purportedly for an abandoned Antarctic project.

The modules featured a 10mm plywood exterior covered with painted fabric, a 16mm Pinex sheet as a central air-gap divider, and 8mm interior ply, all framed in Oregon pine. Transmission from lookout shed to base shed was by telegraph — No. 8 fencing wire strung through the bush on insulators, earthreturn. If you get lost in that bush today, you can still follow the No. 8 wire.

The Ranui buildings are in good nick and well maintained, as is the Tagua lookout. The Tagua main building is, sadly, past saving. Graham Turbott wrote of his coast-watch experiences in a book titled Year Away. It’s an interesting read.

DOC sheds

The most recent Auckland Island constructions are Department of Conservation (DOC)–initiated, and are prelude to a proposed pest-eradication operation. There are pigs, cats, and mice (but no rats — which suggests that the cats got there first). Following their successful Million Dollar Mouse eradication effort on the Antipodes, the team is moderately confident as it tracks the range and habits of all three species.

But local conditions haven’t changed from what those early castaways endured. Sheds and good logistics planning are essential; you are a long way from a hardware store, and it still pays to have MacGuyver-slash-sheddie skills in such a hostile environment. Long may we nurture them.

Books on Auckland Islands

Wrecked on a Reef — FE Raynal

Castaway on the Auckland Isles — Thomas Musgrave

Year Away — Graham Turbott

In Care of the Southern Ocean — Paul Richard Dingwall, Kevin L Jones, Rachael Egerton

Far South — William Dougall

Beyond the Roaring Forties — Conon Fraser

The Auckland Islands — FB McLaren

Straight Through to London — Rowley Taylor

Island of the Lost — Joan Druett

Reference websites

doc.govt.nz/our-work/maukahuka-pestfree-auckland-island/