The Willetts Family
Waitere II
From to Flanders’ Fields
In the January 2017 Vintage Perspectives I took the story of the Stanley Bay Willetts family to August 1913 when Joe Slattery of Judges Bay completed and delivered the 26-foot mullet boat Waitere II to Arthur Willetts and his active yachtsmen sons – Philip (‘Son’), William (‘Farmer’ or ‘Bill’) and Albert (‘Trotter’, ‘Trot’ or ‘Alf’).
Two more Willetts boys were too young to race, Fred, aged 10 and Harry (known as ‘Pete’, confusingly), six. The last son, Myrven (‘Merv’) was to be born a year later. There were four girls too; all grew up as water rats along the shore of Stanley Bay and the inner waterway, Ngataringa Bay.
The culture of Stanley Bay revolved wholly about the sea and maritime matters. Not only did Devonport’s Naval Base and Calliope Dock dominate the North Shore waterfront from Stanley Bay to Devonport Wharf but a great number of boatbuilders and shipwrights lived in the bay.
The most prominent was undoubtedly Arch Logan in Stanley Point Road but Walter Bailey and Bill Lowe, the principals of Bailey & Lowe, then probably the premier launch builders in New Zealand, lived in side-by-side houses in Summer St, a few hundred metres away from the Willetts in Waterview Road.
The famous scow builder, Davey Darroch, lived in Waterview Rd as well, two doors from the Willetts family. The Willetts boys and girls were chums with the Wild family of Glen Road of which Waterview Road is an extension.
They often sailed together in those halcyon days before the Great War. It was soon after the launch of the Wild brother’s 26-footer mullet boat Calypso that the Willetts built their 24-footer Waitere.
country was wracked with political upheaval. Cologne was one of the centres of Red revolution.
Many of the New Zealanders, sickened by the War and the killing, convinced that soldiers on both sides were but victims of international capitalism, came home with vigorous socialism in their hearts. But the yachtsmen among them came home determined to get out on the water as soon as they could, to sublimate the horrors they had survived. Returned soldier Frank Cloke put a red star on the sails of his and Joe Patrick’s 14-footer Desert Gold and their keelers Speedwell and Rainbow.
Farmer’s only political expression was limited to taking over Waitere II from his father, putting a Dove of Peace on her mainsail and setting out to dominate the 26-foot mullet boat class. Knowing her performance had so far been hampered by poorly-cut sails and
“The yachtsmen came home determined to get out on the water.”