What lies beneath
The curious tale of why NZ’s first (and only) submarine may be below a former chocolate factory. Hamish McNeilly delves into the enduring mystery.
‘‘The sea is everything,’’ French author Jules Verne wrote in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.
‘‘It covers seven tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and healthy. It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, for he feels life stirring on all sides.’’
The classic science fiction novel, first published in English in 1872, features a futuristic submarine, the Nautilus.
A year later, and half a world away, a 10m submarine made from iron plates, dubbed the Platypus, was ready to explore for gold possibly nestled in the bottom of Otago rivers, where a gold rush was sparked just a decade earlier.
But it never happened. Initial success was followed by an aborted trial, and the Platypus was left lying dormant on the wharf at Otago Harbour, becoming an early playground for Dunedin children.
Decades later the hulking object was cut into three parts.
The front two parts later ended up in the inland Otago settlement of Middlemarch, but the middle section mysteriously disappeared after initially being used in a soap factory.
Enter Pete Sparrow.
The chair of the Strath Taieri Historical Society submarine committee knows almost everything about the Platypus. You could say it is in his blood.
His great-grandfather Joseph Sparrow and his business partner William Thomas were behind the splendidly named Otago Submarine Gold Mining Co.
The search for the missing middle section of the Platypus – which Sparrow calls the ‘‘family submarine’’ – has taken him on wild good chases across Otago.
‘‘I have looked at a lot of rusty old boilers in paddocks.’’
On those many missions to unlock the mystery of the submarine Sparrow arms himself with a homemade ‘‘authentication kit’’, which details the exact size of the rivet holes to gauge the authenticity of any find.
But one of the largest infrastructure projects in New Zealand’s history may reveal the answer. The former Cadbury factory is being demolished to make way for Dunedin’s $1.4 billion hospital project.
The Platypus’ missing middle section had ended-up at the former McLeod’s soap factory, which was on the site before Cadbury, which closed in March 2018.
‘‘Whether it’s still there, we’re not sure, but it is possible,’’ Dr Hayden Cawte, New Zealand Heritage Properties director, said.
The Platypus, if still at the site, was likely to be in an area designated for the hospital’s new inpatient building, which is scheduled to open in April 2028, with excavation work expected to take some time.
Before part of the Platypus ended up as a rendering tank in a Dunedin soap works, it was the latest in undersea technology. ‘‘Owing to lack of funds the work took some time to complete,’’ Joseph Sparrow wrote in a letter to the editor of the Otago Daily Times in May 1924.
The idea behind the project was that the potentially gold-rich mud and rock from the bottom of the river could be retrieved via a hatch in the Platypus’ hull.
The swift current of the river was to turn the half-enclosed paddle wheels, which would also operate the rudimentary machinery inside.
Eventually the contraption was launched at the Rattray St jetty and floated to Pelichet Bay, not far from where Forsyth Barr Stadium is now sited on reclaimed land.
That small journey may have been a giant voyage for mankind, or at least New Zealanders, but it was not a pleasant one.
‘‘After being about two hours underwater the monster was brought to the surface and the unfortunate crew were released more dead than alive,’’ Sparrow wrote.
A report from the Otago Daily Times about the launch on December 13, 1873 said: ‘‘The four men, from their worn and tired appearance, had evidently had quite enough of it; and as one of them remarked, ‘I think I would rather be up in a balloon than pumping down there’.’’
Although not ‘‘termed a decided success, was a very long way from a failure’’, the article said.
But months later the company was running low on cash, prompting some shareholders to be worried they were in too deep.
The directors, however, remained confident of ultimate success, an ODT article (December 24, 1873) noted, with hopes that the business would one day own many similar vessels, ‘‘to be built out of the gold won by the first Platypus’’.
But it wasn’t to be, Pete Sparrow laments. Archival documents and old newspaper articles determined that there were four voyages of the Platypus, with half of those deemed successful.
One of the unsuccessful voyages involved a note being floated from the submerged Platypus, which warned: ‘‘We are prepared to meet our maker’’.
One of those successful dives saw the Platypus take 45 minutes to reach the bottom of Otago Harbour, where the crew of eight were able to open the bottom hatch and scoop up some keepsakes, including an old fishing line and some shells.
Water did not enter the Platypus due to the pressure pumped around the airtight iron-clad submarine – once the various leaks had been sealed from earlier expeditions.
But the bold business slowly sunk, with Sparrow conceding his relative having no real love for a project he called ‘‘the monster’’.
The Submarine Gold Mining Co became insolvent in April 1874,
and the Platypus was put up for auction and sold for the princely sum of £400, and stripped of its fittings.
It never went underwater again.
Sparrow remains sceptical the missing third is under the chocolate factory, after it was repurposed as a 25-tonne rendering tank for the former soap works on the site.
Nor had it been found at the company’s relocated soap factory, with the trail long gone cold.
Perhaps the biggest mystery for him was the lack of photographs of the intact Platypus, including during its launches or when it was in situ by Otago Harbour.
The only photograph was a grainy, enlarged picture which ‘‘shows a large cylinder’’.
However, anyone who could produce a missing photo of the Platypus be warned: ‘‘I would kiss them on both cheeks,’’ Sparrow said.
Until then, it remains another mystery. The Platypus remained by the edge of Otago Harbour until 1924, until it was relocated to make way for the New Zealand and South Seas International Exhibition which opened a year later.
Cut up into pieces, two thirds were sold to a farmer near Middlemarch where it remained until it was donated to the local museum in 1991.
Sparrow hoped to find the missing piece – and a photograph – to tell a more in-depth story of the craft.
The missing section wouldn’t be hard to miss, at almost 2.2metres in diameter and about 3.5m in length.
‘‘I hope we find it ... I really do.’’ Sparrow originally wanted to recreate the submarine, but had since changed his thinking, with the museum instead to install information panels while allowing people to enter the Platypus.
An American archaeologist on maritime heritage, James P Degado, wrote to Sparrow about the importance of the Platypus, in a 2014 letter.
‘‘What you have at your museum with Platypus is a ‘local’ craft which as far as I can tell is a sole survivor of the earliest successful diving submersibles which inspired Jules Verne and opened up the undersea world starting in the 1840s.’’
The Platypus was the only remaining example of Dr AntoineProsper Payerne, and his designs were copied around the world, Degado wrote.
‘‘You have, in that seemingly rusted iron craft, something that will attract the attention of all who have an interest in the oceans, subs, and early diving.’’
‘‘After being about two hours underwater the monster was brought to the surface and the unfortunate crew were released more dead than alive.’’ Joseph Sparrow, writing in the Otago Daily Times in 1924