Festivities marred by drowning in Waikato River
Benjamin (Ben) Spence c1890-1906
Christmas-New Year festivities have been marred for many families recently, with many drownings in the ocean, rivers and lakes. The hot weather has meant people have flocked to the water to cool off. The Waikato River has claimed even more lives of swimmers with its unpredictability and underwater snags, and people not coping with the strong current − unfortunately, not rare events.
Drownings related to boats are also not rare in the Waikato district, whether in Hamilton’s Lake Rotoroa, other lakes and in the Waikato and Waipa Rivers.
There have been many instances of people not knowing how to manage boats, especially unfamiliar boats, with capsizes leading to deaths by drowning.
Ben Spence’s death on Boxing Day, 1906, was one such instance. He drowned in the Waikato River, not swimming, but in a canoe accident. He was 16 years old.
He and two girls, Misses Charlotte Stockley and Caroline Read, all three being servants of Rev. NCW Radcliffe, vicar of Hamilton, had the afternoon off work and went for a drive along River Rd.
They stopped to turn around ‘‘opposite Mr Farrer’s residence’’ – this was Bankwood, now part of Waikato Diocesan School. Charlotte was left in charge of the horse and trap and Ben and Caroline went on foot down to the river bank.
Ben immediately spotted a canoe fastened to the bank, and got into it – or ‘‘jumped into it’’ according to Caroline Read. She said: ‘‘No sooner had he done so than the boat swayed and swung around, then capsized, precipitating him into the water’’.
She endeavoured to reach him with a pole, but was unsuccessful, and ‘‘after a short struggle, he disappeared’’.
It happened very quickly and Ben did not even call out.
Caroline ran back up to the road, screaming, ‘‘Ben has gone, down the river’’.
The girls went to the Farrers’ for assistance and Mrs Farrer and her son came to help, but although they found the canoe, there was no sign of Ben.
Police began dragging operations and kept it up until dark, but without success.
The search for his body continued for several days – the Waikato Times reported ‘‘Doubtless, as in previous similar case, the body will be found between Ngaruawahia and Huntly’’ – implying that even by the early twentieth century, drownings in the Waikato River were not uncommon.
In fact, his body was found on New Year’s Day, floating near the scene of the accident, caught in a willow tree.
The man who found it, Benjamin Munro, removed the body to the bank, covered it with a sack and went to tell the police.
The body was taken to the Commercial Hotel for the inquest, held that same day. Caroline Read’s was the only evidence, as she was the only witness to what occurred.
The inquest returned a verdict of accidental drowning ‘‘in consequence of falling out of a boat’’.
Ben was the eldest son of Benjamin and Isabella Spence of Pukete.
The Spence family had come to the Waikato only a few years earlier.
Benjamin Spence senior was born in the Orkney Islands, Scotland, in 1851 but visited Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand before farming in Canada for ten years. Spence had visited New Zealand twice already before settling here, buying a farm at Pukete in 1902. He and Isabella had two daughters and two sons.
The death notice they inserted in the Waikato Times included a poem, with the lines:
Thou left this earth in joyous youth, When all seemed fresh and fair; We little thought when parting last, That here we’d meet no more.
O may thy sudden death then be, A warning to us all;
For soon or late we all must bear, The Master’s solemn call.