The Seagar brothers Early steam launches

In this third part of a series on the Auckland Seagar brothers, Harold Kidd explores their foray into steam launches.

The last article in this series ended with the four Auckland Seagar brothers, William, Henry, Charles and George, moving on from steel yacht building and racing. In 1907 both William and Henry died, leaving Seagar Bros., the thriving engineering business at the foot of Hobson Street, in the hands of Charles and George. The contemporary Cyclopedia of New Zealand described their business as “Engineers, Boilermakers, Iron and Brass Founders, General Smith Workers, Manufacturers of Cyanide Percolating Vats, Wrought Iron Water Pipes, and Fluming, Steel Steam Launches of Guaranteed Speed, Designers and Makers of Steel Yachts, Ventilators, Tanks, Girders and Plate, Iron Workers.”

Much of their output was for the quartz gold extraction industry in the Thames, while they also built gold dredges for alluvial gold recovery in the South Island.

The Seagars were members of the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron and keen on both the pomp of the Squadron and their fishing and cruising. They had owned several steam launches used in

connection with their business but they were grubby workboats with no pretensions to comfort or style.

Now that they had sold their steel yacht Huia they decided to go in for a superior steam launch for private use. They knew both Charles Bailey Jr and his younger brother Walter well. Trading together until 1899 as “C. & W. Bailey”, in 1895 the brothers had built the decks and interiors and had rigged Thetis and Huia, the two Seagar-built steel yachts.

In mid-1902 the Seagars commissioned Walter, now trading with Bill Lowe as “Bailey & Lowe”, to build them a wooden hull for a steam launch for which they provided the boiler and engine. Unsurprisingly, the Seagars christened her Huia.

Surprisingly, though, they almost immediately sold her to the Wellington Harbour Board where she was still in service until at least the mid-1930s. Bailey & Lowe built a replacement but, in July 1903, the Seagars sold her to “a gentleman at Piako” announcing their intention “to have a larger one built for themselves”.

It was at this time that the “oil engine” or petrol-fuelled internal combustion marine engine had become reliable and affordable. The winds of change were blowing hard. The New Zealand Herald of 9th February 1906 reviewed the new technology. “One of the most striking features in the history of Auckland shipbuilding has been the impetus given to the industry by the application of oil engines……..the oil, or petroleum spirit, is put into the reservoir, the flywheel is given a turn or two, and the engine is ready for work. There is no coal, no water, no waiting for steam to get up: no mess of coal-dust, and no leaky boiler tubes to watch; and the cost of oil is materially less than the cost of steam.”

At the time every port in the country had a flock of little steamers like Auckland marine contractors Bradney & Binns’ 42ft Presto, which C. & W. Bailey built for them in 1898. But in 1900 the Wellington Harbour Board commissioned Logan Bros to build it the 64ft “oil launch” Uta with a two-cylinder 50hp Union engine and ran her successfully until 1958, until 1927 with the original Union.