August 2008(pdf) - Port Nelson

Port Nelson Limited report. August 2008. Page 12
looking back
On the Rocks
Imagine the drama there would be today if a ship ran aground on Rocks Road.
The Union Company steamer, Hawea aground on the Nelson foreshore in 1886. Kingsford and Baigent, Museum of Wellington Collection.
In 1886 shipwrecks were more common, but there was still plenty of consternation from residents near the
old harbour entrance around Haulashore Island, when they awoke on March 30 to see the Union Company
steamer Hawea with her nose on the beach near the sea wall.
It was a fine, clear, starlit night and the Captain, Joseph
Hansby, said the course was the one he always steered when
coming into Nelson and that he had come in earlier on the
tide twice before.
“The only way I can account for the accident is that she
took a steer in the strong eddy and did not answer her
helm sufficiently quickly. The engines were working properly.
We were coming dead slow. As soon as she touched the
engines were reversed and put full speed astern... but this had
no effect on her,” He told the Nelson Evening Mail.
The 25 passengers were disembarked onto the beach and the
cargo was redistributed from the forehold to the stern, but
there was no budging the stranded vessel on that tide.
The Hawea stayed on the beach all day, and as the evening
high tide approached the crowd grew. The Nelson Evening
Mail somewhat whimsically suggested that if cabmen had
their say ‘there would be a vessel ashore at the harbour
entrance two or three times a week at least for they were kept
pretty busy conveying spectators to the Rocks from the town
as the time for high water approached’.
Another Union Company ship, the Mahinapua tried to drag
the Hawea into deeper waters, but succeeded only in breaking
three towlines, and was dispatched on her journey to the
West Coast.
The Hawea remained aground until the following morning,
when she spontaneously floated off on the high tide. Thanks
to the soft shingle of the beach she was undamaged.
An enquiry held on the stranded vessel while she was still
aground found no one to be at fault. The Mail reported:
'the grounding of the steamer was one of those accidents
which it is said it is impossible for the best regulated families
to avoid’.
The Hawea was a 66 metre single screw steamer built in
Scotland in 1875, and able to carry 92 passengers. She was
speedy in good conditions and in 1876 steamed from Picton
wharf to Barrett Reef, Wellington in 3 hours 20 minutes.
The vessel had a short but eventful career and sank after
striking a submerged object while coming into New Plymouth
(from Onehunga) in 1888. The Hawera and Normanby Times
reports that the ‘mails were landed all dry’ and the passengers
were taken by boat to the wharf where arrangements were
made for them to continue by train. There were two race
horses on board, Allegro, which had just won the Auckland
steeplechase, slipped her sling and was drowned, while the
other horse, Armourer, made it safely to shore.