Kiritona & Koutunui
A fascination with the trading motor vessels of the New Zealand coast started in my childhood. This article is a tribute to those vessels, sparked off recently when I bought a splendid water-colour of the Kiritona.
Ispent the latter part of WWII as a child living on the Hokianga Harbour where life, to a great extent, revolved around the comings and goings of boats, of launches carrying cream from the numerous small farms around the harbour to the dairy factory at Motukaraka and of Frankhams’ coastal trader Hokianga out of Onehunga.
Hokianga had to negotiate two bad bars which demanded great seamanship, especially in westerlies. She was a magic sight standing in over the Hokianga Bar, Mr Bryers at the signal station at the Heads having given her the signal to enter.
Hokianga was built by George Niccol at Auckland in 1929 for Frankhams and had twin Fairbanks-morse 100hp diesels. She replaced their auxiliary topsail schooner Isabella de Fraine which rolled over and was lost with all hands on the Hokianga bar in July 1928.
Hokianga called at all the harbour’s major wharves unloading kegs and bottles of beer for the pubs, 44 gallon drums of fuel for the garages and the carriers, super-phosphate for the farmers and supplies for the Andrewes’ stores and then loaded butter from the Hokianga Dairy company’s factory at Motukaraka, cheese from the Waimamauku dairy factory and wool bales from the local farmers, all bound for Onehunga.
But to turn to Chas. Bailey’s coaster Kiritona, a very similar little ship to Hokianga. By 1909 Bailey was no longer dependent on yacht-building for his business. He and his brother Walter, trading as “C. & W. Bailey”, had forged a powerful reputation in the 1890’s during their years of competition with Logan Bros to build the smartest and fastest keel yachts season after season.
In fact, Logan Bros were now only months away from closing down and turning to building houses. Charles and Walter had gone their separate ways in 1899, Charles trading alone and Walter in business with Bill Lowe, their former foreman. Charles was still at the old yard at Customs Street West with its slipway into Freemans Bay. Although the premises were old and constricted, business was very good. He employed 40 to 60 hands all year round and was barely coping with orders.
At this time the trade in wool and meat down the east coast of the North Island from Tolaga Bay to Castlepoint was blossoming. The two major ports of Gisborne and Napier were serviced by the big “Home Boats” the cargo liners of the New Zealand Shipping Company, the Union Steamship company and the Tyser Line, but the smaller ports like Wairoa, Tolaga Bay and the many open beaches up and down the coast needed a system to get the meat and wool out to the steamers.
The New Zealand Shipping Company was formed in Christchurch in 1873 to bring settlers and cargo from Britain to this country and to return with its produce, mainly wool, kauri gum and tallow. After the ship Dunedin proved that the export of refrigerated meat was viable in 1882, the trade expanded enormously as New Zealand, Australia and Argentina became the suppliers of much of Britain’s food.
By 1909 the New Zealand Shipping Company had become a subsidiary of the P&O Line. It had put a great deal of money into building a freezing works and wharf at Tokomaru Bay. To convey the frozen carcasses out to the Home boats, the refrigerated steamers of the company and the other lines serving New Zealand, the company used smaller craft that could get close inshore.
Bailey had already built a number of boats for this growing
trade. In 1905 he built the 97ft steamer Tuatea for the Union company for use as a tender at Tolaga Bay and Gisborne. For Nelson Bros of Gisborne he built the launch Hilda in 1908 and the steam tug Hipi in April 1909. Now the New Zealand Shipping Company ordered from him two substantial “powered lighters” for working out of Tokomaru Bay and up and down the coast.
The term “powered lighter” raises the implication that these vessels were just lighters and only marginally powered. In fact, they were well-powered craft with the capability of plying around the coast independently. Their name came from their primary purpose, lightering cargo from shallow ports or inlets on the coast out to the steamers anchored offshore in westerly conditions.
These activities were impossible in moderate to strong onshore winds when even powerful steamers were at risk, like the Tyson steamer Star of Canada, which was blown ashore in a strong southerly onto the rocks at Kaiti, outside Gisborne in 1912 and became a total loss.
The two new wooden craft Bailey built for the shipping company were the 137-ton motor vessel Kiritona and the 168ton steamer Koutunui. Both were insulated for the carriage of frozen carcasses. Kiritona had essentially the same configuration as the later Hokianga, a sturdy motor vessel for working difficult ports.
Her dimensions were 87ft loa, 24ft 5ins beam, and 8ft 5ins draught and she was 137 tons gross. She had capacity for 2300 carcasses of mutton or 230 tons dead weight. Her power came from twin 75bhp three-cylinder Standard petrol engines which gave her a 7 knot service speed, assisted by a ketch rig which
Both these little ships had long and effective lives.
was useful in her mainly north-south passages.
Kiritona left Bailey’s yard on 20th October 1909. Her first trip south was in the November in charge of Capt. Martin of Gisborne with a load of coal and timber for the freezing works at Tokomaru Bay. Charles Bailey was on board, beating the drum in Gisborne for his boatbuilding business.
Bailey launched Koutunui in 1910. She was slightly bigger, with twin compound steam engines by G. Fraser & Sons Ltd of Auckland of 26 nominal horsepower total. In 1929 Richardsons re-engined her with twin three-cylinder Fairbanks-morse engines, similar to Hokianga’s, which improved her performance considerably.
Both these little ships had long and effective lives. At first their prime duty was to lighter frozen carcasses, wool and tallow from the Tokomaru Bay freezing works out to the New Zealand Shipping Company’s ships in the roadstead. The anchorage was exposed, especially in heavy southerly weather when the Home ships were compelled to put to sea and the two lighters had to run for shelter around East Cape.
They were also used to land coal for the freezing works brought from the West Coast by Blackball Coal colliers. Both were bareboat chartered by the Richardson Shipping Company of Napier between 1912 and 1925 when Richardsons bought them outright and used them in their trading along the east coast.
Apart from some strandings and collisions, Koutunui’s career was sturdy and unremarkable. In the 1960s her engines were removed and she was converted to a dumb freezer barge for packing deer carcasses at Nancy Sound, Fiordland. Later she was moved to Deep Water Basin, Milford Sound for processing fish. On 28th March 2002 she was towed to sea and scuttled. Her distinction was that she was the last vessel afloat ever owned by the New Zealand Shipping Company!
Kiritona had more excitement but didn’t last as long. The Navy requisitioned her in April 1942 with the number Z08 for use in Auckland as a mobile deperming (degaussing) station for neutralising the magnetic fields of steel ships. For this she was fitted with four welding machine generators driven by four Junkers diesels.
After a spell doing the same work in Wellington the Navy converted her to a welding platform for ship repairs at Auckland. Between October 1945 and early 1955 the Navy used her at Devonport Naval Base as a dumb lighter for stores and ammunition. Parry Bros bought her for use as a stores barge, but broke her up in 1961. BNZ