Vintageview
ONE MAN AND HIS BOATS
Harry Pope & Sea Wolf BY HAROLD KIDD
Harry Pope is a legend in Auckland boating circles. At 88 years of age in retirement at Stanmore Bay, he has lost none of the humour, the energy and the daring that created that legend.
Harry was born in Mt. Albert in 1929, the son of Devon man Harry Full, a Royal Navy matelot aboard HMS Dunedin and HMS Diomede on the New Zealand station, based at Devonport Naval Base. Harry Full was a Seaman Boy aboard HMS Iron Duke at the Battle of Jutland in May 1916 and was later to suffer terrible burns in WWII when he was the only survivor of the sinking of a destroyer.
Harry’s mother, Myrtle Ladbrook, was also from a long line of naval men. Her grandfather, Capt. Robert Christian Lamb, was a master mariner and coastal skipper, born in Auckland in 1851, who commanded the cutter Stag. Capt. Lamb’s father was William Lamb of the Royal Marines, Woolwich Division, who arrived in New Zealand in 1849 with a land grant at Onehunga. So Harry has great maritime DNA.
Harry has recently self-published his autobiography, The Adventures of a Pope at Sea, a hugely entertaining book of reminiscences of Harry’s life as a boatbuilder, yachtsman, ocean racer, diver, delivery skipper and marine surveyor.
But in its 505 pages the book is brief about his early life, which he skates over in just three pages before embarking on valuable material concerning his 20 years at Charles Bailey and Sons, the premier boatbuilding firm in Auckland and his first trans-tasman race in 1951. So, this article is something of a prequel to his book.
Harry sailed and owned many yachts before he and Bill Brierley did the 1951 trans-tasman in their Sea Wolf. In the introduction to his book he says, “I was fortunate enough to sail with some very competent and well-known yachtsmen during my formative years and this grounding has held me in good stead over a lifetime.
“The basic start was standing on the Point Chevalier beach wearing my lifejacket hoping someone required extra ballast or a bailer boy as the wind increased. These earlier years were in T, Y and Z Class which formed the nucleus of the yacht racing and the little converted dinghy cum 6’ 11” yacht Twerp which I sailed when other rides were not available.”
Point Chevalier was a hotbed of yachting development at the time. Trot Willetts was building remarkable centreboarders and crack yachtsmen like Ron Oliver, George Mckeown and the Croad brothers were giving the other Waitemata gun skippers a fright (see Vintage Perspectives, May 2017).
Harry joined the Point Chevalier Sailing Club in 1938 at the age of eight. He had free use of Twerp which was owned by his mate Vernon O’shea and looked something like a P Class gone wrong. The first boat he owned was a nondescript square-bilge 12-footer which conformed to no particular class so provided no racing but which Harry used extensively for exploring the upper harbour.
In 1944 he sold the 12-footer and bought a square bilge 18-footer rejoicing in the name of Flash for £45 through W.A. (“Wilkie”) Wilkinson’s Speedwell Agency, the yacht brokerage firm in Exchange Lane off Queen St.